Prologue
Broken. Broken.
That's all it would ever be.
I give up World.
The joke's on me.
How many years had it been? One? Two? Twenty? It didn't matter. What did matter was that it was over and it would never be again. All the pain, all the lies, and all the decisions were final and conclusive. It was a choice, he decided, one that wiped him off the face of the earth, but also gave him a second chance to let it all go.
They were looking for him, somewhere in masks and context clues, but he had made sure without an inkling of a trace, that he could not be found. It was the only plausible way to sever ties, to smother damaging memories, and to maintain a stability that his whole his life had been fluctuating. It had hung in the balance, skewed by an undeserved anger, by a misdirected quote. Deep down, he hated himself with ferocity; it beat against the cages, but it was smothered by layers and layers of time that dampened the pain, the simmering guilt. It would never, by any means, heal the wounds across his soul, so etched and scabbed with vivid evidence, but perhaps it would fade—fade into the soft soil covering his trails, into six feet where the countless lives he took would hold his shameful secrets.
They would never find him, because he had reinvented himself. He had thrown away the power-seeking motives, the burning disdain, and the ambition pulsing through his blood. All of it, he had given away, or smothered so tightly inside himself, that even if he tried to recall it back, he wouldn't be sure he'd actually know how. Some days, it felt like an object dressed in thorns lodged inside his chest. Every breath would sting and scratch. It was as if the past was trying to claw its way back from the recesses of his heart to the open air. He pushed it back down no matter how difficult it made his breathing, no matter how tightly his chest constricted with the pain, and no matter how unbearable it seemed to him.
How long had he been the world's puppet? How long had he played into the jokes of the world? It didn't matter, he was wiser now. He could see the lines of manipulation and he strayed from them. When they tried to soothe his heart, he shielded it, covering it with a dark veil so thick it could've been iron. He spoke; he was polite, demure instead of cold. He was distant, but not as proud. When he walked, there was no air of confidence, no superior aura that surrounded him as it once had drowned others. His head would be held high, but his eyes never looked up and those endless black pools were rare in sight. His dark locks framed his face like a curtain and his ivory skin so pale he appeared like a gentle ghost, moving though the villages. He wandered after all, never staying in one place for too long.
Permanent residence meant building relationships, it meant making memories that would some how influence his future. It meant an impression upon his thoughts, to which he would not allow. Everything was fleeting, he discovered, and to hold it within his hands, only to know that it would be taken away or lost was humbling. He moved through villages, his eyes taking in only certain things, and then when he felt they touched to close to home inside his deeply covered fragments of images, he erased them. Perhaps it was an empty living; a lost and purposeless exposure, but it was better than playing the fool, than suffering a thousand times over for something he didn't realize sooner. It was his dreams, more often than naught that haunted him. Flashes of ruby eyes, a bite so painful he blacked out, a boy so bright and bold he reflected the sun, and a coldness so thick he woke up wondering if he was a corpse. He learned quickly, that sleep was a time for confrontation, a point in which he could not escape. So he slept little, thought even less, and merely kept moving.
Broken, was the world and ideals he thought he knew. Broken was all he could be.
AN: are you interested? Lol this is kind of my new idea till I come up with the next chapter of "The Mate" Leave me a review let me know what you think =]