The Prince
By Ysabet
Notes: Hi! Errrrr… this is rather weird, I admit (like what else is new with my fics?). It was posted as a present/commentary for the last chapter of Kouri Arashi's "Falling Is Like This" (which, if you haven't read it, should be read IMMEDIATELY. Do not stop, do not pass Go—just get out of this fic and read it. But read "Live Through" and "Somewhere I Have Never Been" first, or you'll be utterly lost. They're flat-out magnificent! AND are here in this category…. Just go read, then come back here later, okay?.......... anyways… I wrote this after reading the last chapter, and another poster (HangedMan, who writes seriously good commentary) nudged me into putting it up for reading. Dunno if this was a good idea or not, but whatever… here it is. I think it's rather pretentious and all that, but so it goes. You can probably figure out the characters rather easily…..
Um, Kouri Arashi? I hope you don't mind me doing this….. If you do, say so, and I'll take it down. Okay? (dives beneath a pile of printouts to hide)
"Once
upon a time there was a terrible prince who lived in a far and distant kingdom.
He was evil and deliberately cruel, killing and torturing his way across the
land, spreading sorrow and wanton distruction in his
path with each passing, bloody day. He would have gone on with this over many
centuries, but something happened to him, something great and very strange.....
someone to whom he had done a great and terrible wrong came to him one day and
told him: "it doesn't matter anymore to me-- it's not important, and I
have more interesting things to think about now than how you hurt
me.""
"No-one had ever told the terrible prince such a thing before; he had, in
fact, come to relish the thought that his intervention of pain and death was
the most important and traumatic (and above all, *interesting*) thing to happen
in the lives of his victims. He could understand being feared, hated and
despised; he could NOT understand being ignored or forgotten-- or dismissed as
simply unimportant."
"This made him think. And the more he thought, the more he changed;
before, he had avoided understanding anything other than the pleasures of
Shiva, of the burning ground and the joys of ravagement. Now he realized that
someone could actually *think of something else* after his shadow had passed--
and that was a mortal blow to his pride."
"The terrible prince grew melancholy (or as melancholy as such a murderous
being could get); if he lost importance in his victim's eyes, then he lost it
in his own. What could be so powerful that it could replace the terror and
trauma that he had caused? He called upon his most potent ministers to aid him
in learning this, and the answers that they gave him puzzled him deeply;
forgiveness and love. He did not understand forgiveness (and his victim hadn't
said that he had forgiven him, just that he had better things to do), and he
did not understand love (besides which, his victim did not love him. THAT was
certain enough). Somehow... he thought that simply *knowing* these answers was
not enough."
"So the terrible prince gave himself up to a study of those two things
which he previously had found so worthless, forgiveness and love, which he
still could not understand. He could not forgive; he did not love. But he could
think about them..... This so consumed his time that he forgot to ravage and
destroy, and his every waking hour became a part of his study and were no
longer devoted to the hunt or the kill. He could not love-- he did not
understand love; he could not forgive-- he had done unforgivable things. And so
this tore at his heart, eating it away, until at last it broke and the candle
of his life was blown out."
"And he died, and his spirit was STILL so caught up in the consuming curiousity that had held him that he could not fall into
the Hell that awaited him; instead he hovered, halfway between the land of the
living and that of the damned, linked by the lightest of threads."
"At last, the one whom he had spoken to so many years before came to find
him, looking puzzled. "I remember you, but you aren't quite as evil as you
used to be, or you would have fallen; what do you want to do now?""
"The terrible prince looked at him. "If I fall, will I finally
understand?""
""No; that's part of Hell-- nobody understands anything there, they
just suffer. If you learned things there, you might be able to move on-- and
they hate that sort of thing.""
"The terrible prince looked at him still. "If I stay here, will I
finally understand?""
""No, you'll just get bored. And boredom is vastly overrated, even
among the dead.""
"So the terrible prince gave up the last of his pride, staring down at
Hell. "Then will you help me understand?""
"His former victim thought about it, then sighed and nodded. "I suppose....."
And so he caught him by one hand and took him elsewhere, to a place above Hell
and below Heaven and sideways to Earth, where he gave him up into the hands of
his superiors. "Teach him," was all he said, walking away; "I have
better things to do with my time-- and better company to spend it
with.""
"The terrible prince stood in his new place, listening as his lessons and
tasks were explained to him; he would learn forgiveness by helping others to
forgive themselves and their evildoers, and he would learn love by teaching
others that something better and stronger than hate existed. He still did not
understand..."
"But as he watched his former victim walk away, disappearing among the
sakura trees, he smiled a little and shook his head. "Teach me?" he
said-- "I think the teaching started already, a long time ago."
"And the terrible prince turned away, to begin his lessons and learn about
forgiveness and love; for he, too, had more important things to do than to just
suffer."
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Silly, ne? But that's it. Things change………. Ysabet