You Lost the Colors Again

The stale-smelling hay-filled mattresses were maybe not the most luxurious of beds Winski had slept on, but he didn't care. Curled next to Jelena he slept well and didn't dream of anything. The surly baatezu woke them up, bringing them a bowl of grayish soup and bread, and changing their pitcher of water into a fresh one.

- "... comes here voluntarily... all sort of self-flagellating lunatics I have to look after..." he grumbled.

- "I have never flagellated myself," Jelena said in a matter-of-fact tone. "That would serve absolutely no purpose, and it wouldn't please Ilmater either."

- "Oh, and this would, then?" the baatezu retorted. "You could frolick there in the upper planes drinking nectar and sniffing flowers with other goody-two-shoeses, and instead you come here to rot? Pardon me, but I don't see the difference."

- "The difference is that this serves a purpose," Jelena said. "This man here, Winski, is the true love of mine. He made some bad mistakes in his life, and has to pay retribution for that. I will help him get through it, and the bond between us will be even stronger after the ordeal."

- "Oh, don't tell me." The baatezu's voice dripped with sarcasm. "You... 'love' him. You have unselfish motives and you would put your own life in line for him."

- "Well, yes." Jelena faced the devil's look without flinching. "My motives are not purely unselfish, of course, as I wish to spend my eternity with him. But aside from that, yes."

The baatezu laughed.

- "Love. One of the illusions of self-righteous mortals. It never ceases to amuse me how you gild your actions in all sorts of guises of altruism and higher purposes. There is nothing but greed and wish for survival, and all else is just aimed to make you feel better about yourselves."

- "You are wrong, devil," Jelena said. "I don't think a creature of your nature can ever learn differently... but for the sake of an argument, imagine that you were chained into a cave, ever since your birth. Facing the damp, dark rock, not able to turn around. All you ever saw was shadows. And then someone would tell you that there is a whole world with a wonderful spectrum of colours, tried to explain to you what they look like... of course you would think they are lying. That is how I see evil."

- "You and your illusions, woman..." the devil muttered and went away.

- "Jelena..." Winski said. "It was a wise and beautiful thing to say. What chills me is that he is just like I was. I would have said exactly the same things." Winski's eyes were large.

- "There is a difference. He is a creature of evil. He is born in the nether planes, and has not chosen to be what he is. I don't know if he could. He doesn't suffer, as anything else would be unfathomable to him. Now, if he spent a long time in a loving environment... I don't know. I really don't."

- "You know... when you said that you loved me... in our first life... it was like I was in that cave. And you unlocked those chains and turned me around to face the colours."

- "And then you lost them again. Winski... now we should start with the retribution," Jelena said, her eyes very sad.

Winski shivered and nodded.

- "I have no burning desire to be here any longer than I have to," he said. "So how do we go about it?"

- "You must be humble and keep your mind open. You must not hold back. Just relax, put your head into my lap and rest on the mattress. You do think you have done wrong, don't you? You do think you deserve to be punished?"

- "Yes," Winski simply said. He really did. He had started to see things that way already in his mortal life, before Jelena was taken from him.

- "So just keep your mind open and let anything I show you just flow in. I will show you the consequences of your actions. You will feel them as if you were the one experiencing them. I know this is harsh. But it is necessary. And if it feels that it is too much, that you can't take it... squeeze my hand. You are safe, you are resting in my lap."

Winski emptied his mind as he best could, ready to face what he had to. He almost wanted it. The guilt was eating him alive.

And then he started to see. First it was the families of those he had casually murdered for business reasons. He felt how it was like to have grim-faced messengers telling that the person you loved, the person you curled next to each night would never come back, was lying somewhere slaughtered by a few magic missiles so casually tossed by him. The pain, the despair, the gripping in chest. Then, the times he had tortured people. He never had liked it, but neither had he realized how horrible it was if you were the target. The abject horror of helplessness, of being there and not being able to do a damn thing about it. The pain, the inhuman faces of the torturers... you could scream and scream, and it made no difference at all.

Me? I did this to someone? I, who always so hated petty, sadistic people like Reiltar and his ilk? I thought it was necessary, that it was business as usual... that they knew the risk when they robbed our caravans or burglarized our headquarters... but if someone did that to Sarevok, would I have excused them on that basis?

- "Jelena... stop it... I... I can't! Please, don't they have a torture chamber? Couldn't they flay me or whip me or anything... to punish me for it..." he was crying profusely, something he almost never did. "I can't... I don't want to..."

- "Winski... this is your punishment. Flaying or whipping would just hurt, but this will cleanse your soul. But... perhaps this is enough for now. Rest. We will continue later."

Winski sobbed in Jelena's lap, starting to fall asleep. Jelena kept petting his coarse hair, weeping silently herself at the pain she had to cause to the man she loved.