Disclaimer: Not mine, will never be mine, but I play in the sandbox of doom anyway.
A/N: This chapter is dark. Believe me when I say this chapter is dark. It is dark to the point where I almost believe that it may disqualify me from the competition altogether. But this is the way I intended it to end, and it is the way I will end it. You have been warned. Final edited edition.
*
Not even death. No death can kill those indebted to death. Years, years, endless, endless years. Jonathan gave up trying to avoid the pain. Gave up trying to quell it, understand it. It was no longer possible, no longer feasible. Intuition came across so purely now. Unadulterated. Liberating. It welcomed him, like cool black velvet against a raging inferno that burnt, singed so terribly that the very blackness of his heart was charred and left to fade, ashes, ashes, only ashes.
It sang within his soul. A melody he longed to embrace, to lose himself in. A cold, icy facade where he could hide. Hide forever from his own mask of lies. Lies.
Lies. Lies.
Screaming. Endless screaming. He could not block it from his bleeding ears.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
Only increasing in volume, only more intense. Echoing down those endless corridors, down those endless corridors, corridors, corridors, corridors.
How many corridors had he passed? How many innocent lives had he seen swept beyond them? How long had he clung on? How long? How many? How much? What innocence? What life remained? Only desolate corridors. The desolate corridors of his life, shrieking a song, a wail of death, handsome death. Beautiful death.
'Do not let her die,' Jonathan rasped. 'Do not let me die.'
Vande looked torn between disbelief and pity. There was no light in his eyes. They were dead, almost as dead as Clambrithe's own had once been, were, were not, no, no, never. Clambrithe's eyes never had pity in them.
Pity. You don't want my pity, pity, pity, you don't want my pity, you don't want my pity, you don't want my pity, you don't want my pity, you don't want... you don't want... you don't want... want... want... my... pity. Want my pity.
'Sir,' Jonathan cried, 'don't let her die.'
'Jonathan,' the colonel replied, eyes finally flickering to life, black eyes finally showing some substance. Something. 'Jonathan, let go of her.'
'Don't! No, no, no, not her.'
Jonathan moved back, back, back, back until he contacted with the wall. Clar shivered in his arms even as he quaked, feeling. Feeling. Felt fear for the first time, emerging from the pool of madness in which he had submerged himself in, breathing air, real air. Gasping.
'Jonathan, you do not even know who she is. What she is,' The colonel approached him, some form of compassion in the arms of duty Jonathan knew would be offered. Clambrithe shuddered. He knew that love, that love for duty, passion, that need to do what was right. Jonathan screamed, screamed in his mind, screamed even though he knew nobody could hear.
'Neither do you,' he whispered. 'Neither do you.'
'Don't give us humanity,' Clar said from where she was, 'You do not know what humanity entails.'
*
They moved the discussion up to the Forge. Jonathan stood, lifeless, next to an almost catatonic Clar. Staring at his life through a pane of silvered glass. A distorted mirror, seen through time, seen through an evolution. The breeze from the window scented the ocean. The ocean said nothing to him.
I was like that, part of him muttered, I was death when death was all I had to give.
'Jonathan, you have to see the insanity of this. That thing that stands next to you has magic, Jonathan, a kind of magic that has never been seen. Dangerous magic.'
'No, sir, you do not understand. She has only the magic to understand intuition. She understands life. Not death.'
His own voice sounded strange. Sounded young, as if he were still under the tutelage of the phantom of the colonel that stood before him. Widepaw looked unimpressed.
'She is a danger.'
'She is a danger? My lord, she is hardly a child!'
Clar stirred.
'Do not give me humanity, for you do not know what humanity entails.'
Widepaw growled impatiently.
'Humans. Humans do not exist.'
Such futility.
'My lord, she has done nothing to ail you.'
'She has poisoned your mind, Jonathan!'
What was I? What am I?
Major. Celebrated. Brilliance. Ranking.
Dead.
'No. No. No.'
'Jonathan, you've gone mad.'
'No,' Stammering now, blinded, fumbling. Lost. 'No. She cannot die.'
'She must.'
'No!'
Jonathan almost threw himself across the table, crazed. Wanted to fight against the death, the death he had seen, the death he knew was coming, the mindlessness that sundered him, those whom death would leave sundered.
The young ones, the leverets, those uneducated, ignorant, still alive.
The patrollers, the officers, the dying and the dead.
Everybeast. Everybeast who would suffer this injustice.
'You cannot just allow us to die.'
Vande threw him a startled look.
'Jonathan...?'
'You cannot allow us to die! Do you not you understand? This is death. Endless death.'
'Enough.'
Widepaw. He who knew best.
'She has clearly driven you insane, major. She is a threat.'
'She liberated me.'
Clar finally spoke.
'Do you understand? Do you understand what lives you have destroyed? How much blood has been spilled because of you?'
Widepaw was unfazed.
'How much more blood would have been spilt if not for the patrols?'
'Less,' Clar said quietly. As if already accepting death. 'Less, for no souls would have died first.'
Disjointed thoughts. How? Why? Why?
Sandfur. Cleft. Vermin. Clar. Everyone. Death, death, death. Dying. Gone. Mindless.
'The mindlessness of intuition,' Jonathan abruptly said, breaking the tense silence that followed. Vande and Widepaw glanced at him. His blue eyes flickered, turned dark. Finally breaking the ice of detachment. Welcoming intuition. 'The mindlessness of intuition.'
Glanced at the hare he had lived to make proud. Glanced at the badger lord he had sought to serve. Glanced at Clar.
Major Jonathan Clambrithe turned to the window.
And he was running, and Clambrithe was running, and Jonathan was running away.
He jumped.
Velvet death. Freedom. His soul sang. Rushing air. Life. Jonathan knew. Not death.
For the first time, Clambrithe smiled.
Clar turned away from the sand stained red.
'Do not give me humanity,' she whispered again, 'For you do not know what humanity entails. Set them free.'
They. Them. Those who had yet to die. The free. Liberation.
'You're mad,' Vande whispered harshly. Shocked. Bereft.
Clar cast her eyes to the shore, to the broken body that lay on bloodied sands.
'Not mad. Mindless.'
Life. Not death.
*
Heroism. Villainy. Clar provided one.
Jonathan did not know. Did not need to know.
He was free.