BOOM. I'M POSTING TWO STORIES.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sisters Grimm.
Understand, before you understand anything else, the primordial truth of man:
our power means nothing. our magic means nothing. our science, our politics, our brains, our truths, all dwindle into oblivion on this pale blue dot we call home. in the eyes of the universe we are nothing but the meaningless flash on the dust mite —blink and you'll miss it— and objects so small we exert no gravitational force but rather are pulled apart by the strength of others. we are helpless to the whims of larger forces, while the din of our wars and the ecstasy of our loves is inconsequential to individuals who are not us.
But then there are Gods who exist only to humans. Gods, deities, heroes and monsters, symbols of power whose influence transcend the mortal realms which constrain us. Their voices touch hearts, their fingers break swords, blink and you can't miss them or they'll kill you for ignoring them.
Understand that while men are pawns to the pawns on a cosmic game of chess, there are men who are higher than other men. That all humans are equal but some are more equal than others, and the power imbalance is too great for our feet of flesh and bone to pass. No magic can turn a human into a God. No power can make a God of humans important to non-humans.
So then, with that in mind—
Wait.
What.
I wish I had all of your power!
What is this?
But I need more.
No. No. No you can't do this.
I'm taking the magic that makes them immortal. I need it.
What? What are you doing! NO, this isn't how it goes, this isn't how the story ends—
Stormclouds infiltrates his neurons. And essence of Death is what runs through his veins. And the sound of birdsong is what erupts from his lips, a soul-tearing all consuming scream, which resonates across all frequencies and refracts into all wavelengths, his sounds converting to light, to colour, to deafen and blind all humans that walk across the earth.
His back sprouts wings. His eyes combust. His skin cracks like porcelain. And the man who was just a child becomes a God who should never have existed, whose DNA is lead and whose body has become poison, for human bodies were not designed for Power, and vessels break under strain that is too much for them to handle.
Jake, what have you done?
He smiles, and light shines from the gaps between his teeth. His sun eyes flare, and a flake of skin peels off his forefinger, that great terrible forefinger pointed at the sky, as he yells "I CAN SAVE EVERYONE!"
He giggles in manic glee. His brain swirls with the oxytocin of power, and the self-induced heroin of I Can Make Things Right. He snaps his fingers, and instantly the horizon swivels on its fulcrum, and day turns into night.
"Don't you see?" he asks.
No, not ask. He demands.
He is not human, nor is he god, nor is he God. He is gOD, a god born of unnatural things, a human who has walked along paths sane men dare not tread. He is aNTICHRIST, gANESHA, zEUS, and jUNO, and death death death, above all he is Death, and it expresses itself as the shadow under that impenetrable light that shines forth from him.
"Don't you see! I can do it!" His body shakes with mirth. A windstorm manifests itself around him, as if nature itself has been entangled within the nets of his power, and he is the unstable eye of an abnormal hurricane. "I can! I can, and I will, I'll bring them back, I'll change the world! I'll save everyone who needs to be saved, I'll shatter this barrier so we can all live normal lives, I'll do it, for us, for all of us!"
"What about the Everafters? You're killing them!"
"They've had their time in the sun." And he snaps his fingers and out the sun comes. "But their time is over, and the only way I can make things right is if they die." And he snaps his fingers, and all things become hazy darkness again.
Lit under the backdrop of stars, his face melts into deformed features. And lit from the light that comes within, his face is held in deep disturbing focus. From the light that comes from darkness and the light that comes from a place no light should come from, the cracked grin of the man with the cracked skin dissolves and sharpens, breaks down and bubbles up, as he becomes a haunting vision of the Reaper, of gOD Death and Death gOD.
He is a body of contrast and combat. Motifs warring, power escaping, and chaos infecting the natural order, the Great Chain Of Being.
His very breath is nebulae. The sounds of his wings are thunderclap. In the frigid night air a shooting star curls upwards from his nose, and drops of moonlight rain down from his shaking fingers.
Yet around him lies the wasting bodies of immortals. Yet around him lies a Wolf fading white, and eyes misting over with blindness (and intense, intense pain), and beautiful women growing ugly, and ugly women growing even uglier. Around him lies Death in all its glory, and him drawing power from it.
"Jake, please!"
"Sorry, Brina! This is the only way."
"It doesn't have to be!"
"It must."
"It doesn't!"
"It MUST!" Fire licks its way into the stormcloud of his brain, and his eyes arc into blue scimitars. "You find a way to bring back the dead then! You find a way to bring my dad back!" He points his terrible forefinger at her.
She doesn't answer.
"That's what I thought."
He slashes his arm up, and a tear appears in the fabric of their reality. A doorway, and through it they can see calm and tranquility. "Go through it! Go! I can't hold it for much longer!"
"What is it?"
"It's a new world! A world where we can be happy!" All traces of his former anger have dissipated (for the moods of powerful people move as fast as the lightning they wield), and he gestures frantically. "Don't you see, Brina, we can have our happily ever after! Through me, we can do it! You can have Puck, and I'll have dad back, and mom and Ron and Henry and all of us! We can go through, and live our lives like normal people." His eyes well up. "We can be happy again! We can be a family again, before magic and Everafters tore us apart!"
"Jake..."
"Go, please!"
"What happens if we go?"
"Then I'll go."
"And after that?"
"Then this world dies. It'll break up, and that world will become the present."
"Jake, I can't."
"Yes you can! It doesn't matter if they die! You'll never even notice, I'll make things right, please! I can do it, I can, I will!" He turns to Relda. "Please, mom, convince her. I can do this. Trust me. It won't... It won't be like last time. I won't fail like last time."
"Jacob... No."
"Mom!"
"Jacob, I cannot!"
"Daphne?"
"No, Jake."
"Anyone?!"
And all this wretched man can hear is the whip of wind and the roaring of blood in his ears, that peculiar thrum of pain that comes when you have failed once again.
"Please!" He tries one last time. "I can save you, please! I love you all! Let me love you!"
"If you love us, Jacob, then you will let our friends live!"
"Mom... I can't."
"Then I'm afraid we will die amongst the people you murdered."
Something deflates in the gOD. He cries, and his tears shine as they fall, iridescent drops of gODHOOD, blackened gold like the ichor that flows through his veins.
He turns back to Sabrina. Dear sweet Sabrina, who he has pinned his hopes on. She, only she, can understand what is going on. She, who is addicted to magic like he is, who has gone through that same terrible heartbreak as he has, who knows what it's like to lose your parents, and to endure the burden that is protecting others from the dangers of the world. She alone can save him. She alone can take his failure and turn it into success.
"Brina! I'll grant you a wish!"
"What?"
"Pick a wish, and I'll grant it for you! You'll make the right wish, I know you will, and I'll grant it for you!"
"Jake..."
"Power, don't you want power? Not that measly wand you've been carrying around, I mean power, real power! I mean the ability to move mountains, to boil rivers. To make sure your family never dies, and that you can be with the ones who love you forever! You do, I know you do. Just ask for it, Brina, and I'll make it come true."
"Jake..."
"Just say, yes, Brina! Say yes, and I'll make the world better than you can understand!"
Sabrina falters. In this grand moment of crisis the girl of twelves falters, pressured as she is with expectations and altered realities. She sees what could happen, sees how she could be like. How she could save the lives of the people she loves most, who love her most, and gOD Jake was right when he said that only she could understand the true intoxication of the power he wields. Woven amongst the tattered threads of her morality is selfishness, desire, and all other wanton vices of men. She is damaged goods, and Jake, perhaps cruelly, realises and uses this.
He shines like an angel. She looks around, and sees all that lies around this aNTICHRIST gOD angel of Death.
His diseased heart shows itself in the presence of his now-ebony tears.
And her decision is made.
"I know what I want, Uncle Jake," she says.
His expression is feverish hope. He attempts a grin. "Make it count!"
"Uncle Jake, you're smart, you've got a great family, and you're a Grimm." She strains to make out the features of this broken man. "I wish that deep down you had always known how much power that gave you."
His grin fades.
And just like that, the universe snatches chaos away from its site of infection. Order leaks back in, and the tears that leak from Jake's eyes shimmer back into clear. The windstorm fades. Failure inverts into success (or perhaps subverts into further failure). This man of guilt and so much love drops gently to the ground, and night turns back into day; dying Everafters begin to breathe again. He hugs his mother, sobbing, apologising, and she holds him to her breast like the child he is and tells him she loves him.
So love fixes the failures that come with being loving, and the god who should never have existed ceases to exist.
So the earth spins on, as always.
Interesting, isn't it? How the universe works.
How when threatened with change, it will tip the scales to restore balance. This continuous fight that rages between order and chaos, entropy and enthalpy, and the breakdown of love into more love, is what makes up the very nature of divinity.
It may act through the hysteria of a broken man.
Or through the tender words of a young girl.
But act it will, and act it must. Order must coexist with chaos, or else there is no life, and the interdependent relationship of these two unyielding constants make up the very fabric of the universe.
So understand, after you understand everything else, the primordial truth of the universe:
it is a conflict of two immiscible liquids. and this conflict means everything. its truces, its flares, its weapons, its soldiers, all make up the divine structure that governs genetic evolution, and all the feelings and other things that come from it. In the context of the past it is everything, in the context of the present it is everything, and in the context of the future it is everything. for infinity does exist, and it exists in the war that never ends, made up of rising action and falling action, of climaxes and denouements. the battle between heads and tails makes up all atoms, quarks, protons, and nuclei, and only through its inception was substance and form birthed.
Understand that though you may not be able to change the alignment of the planets or the configuration of the stars, you are composed of the same ceaseless matter that makes up gODS and stardust. You are weak in the context of time and infinity, but you can change the worlds of those you love and who love you back, in the most beautiful or devastating of ways.
Your voice can touch some hearts. Your fingers can break some swords.
To the universe, you are a dust-mite.
But to another dust-mite, you are a universe.
Argh it's late. I should probably sleep soon.
But, man, I got all fired up when I was writing this. Haven't felt that in a while.