Huh so my first Fai fic... I am actually very proud of this 'cause it took me forever to try to figure out the ending. Thanks to LinLin for all the help and Fai avvies to help me keep going. On a side note, for those of you who may not know the Cain and Abel story, it's from the Bible, and the story goes that the first two brother born were Cain and Abel, and Cain was jealous of Abel and killed him.
-Shadow
Fai knows exactly how many steps there are on the staircase leading to Ashura's throne room. He's climbed them so many times that he can go up and down them backwards with his eyes closed, it's a talent he's cultivated since childhood because it made Ashura smile and Fai wanted so desperately to make Ashura-ou smile.
There are many more things Fai knows about the castle of Celes, how many columns there are that support said staircase, the best window to stare at the moon, the most convenient location for imprisoning someone. Fai offhandedly counts the numbers as he raises his foot to tap each stair in his mad flight to the top, thinking briefly of all the times he rushed up them so see Ashura back when the world was perfect and right and everything Ashura said had to be true because Ashura-ou was Ashura-ou.
Ignorance is bliss; this is something Fai has learned along the years. The lesson at first seemed odd to him, which was the only natural reaction for a person who had been brought up in an environment that valued forced education of all types. Fai had patiently sat through hundreds of lessons that refined the magic he has shown to posses at an early age and couldn't understand that odd feeling of unhappiness that grew as he mastered each spell.
Fai has always known what to do which always corresponds with what Ashura wants him to do. He's always known the words to the spell that would fix each situation that would leave no regrets and no bodies. Fai has always obeyed with blind devotion no matter if the results nagged quietly in the back of his head and his hands seemed tinged with red no matter how hard he scrubbed them. These things have made him top among Ashura's favorites, a position he worked hard to get but is quickly coming to realize, he may not want.
And Fai loves Ashura which is what makes the past, present, and future such hard things to bear. Fai has always loved Ashura, not in the way that some courtiers whisper about with fans raised and voices lowered; Fai loves Ashura in the way one loves a god, with whole-hearted devotion and a good dose of fear. Fai loves Ashura like a brother, but Cain must have at one point loved Abel and look at how that turned out.
He's almost to the top of the stairs, to the place that is conveniently the best spot to view the moon and to imprison someone and flying to the moon seems easier than doing what he must do at the bottom of that whirlpool. He stops suddenly, his body half way ready to lurch him involuntarily to the next step because Fai's always been talented at going through the motions and smiling when all he feels like doing is crying, crying, crying, the full force of what he's about to do coming suddenly to him and stealing the breath from his lungs and he can't remember what stair number he's on, how can such a thing be?
But for once Fai's heart overcomes his mind that vainly argues for Ashura's cause, and his eyes fall to his hands, gloved to protect from the cold and to avoid remembering, pleading, screaming, blood, things he'd rather forgetFai remembers what step he's on, only a handful left before he faces oblivion, and smiles, even though it hurts, because this is what he has to- wants to- do. There's no going back, as Ashura would say when Fai showed the faintest hint of hesitation, when Fai knew that the occurrences would serve as nightmares until Ashura's next order. Fai wonders when things began to go wrong and recognized that they had always been so.
Fai has always known what to do, these are Ashura's order I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so, so sorry, he has always known what his future would be he'll obey and obey and then, hopefully, die. But now he doesn't know, when he passes under the grand arched doorways he can now see he will enter a new path that will only allow him to see the next step, how beautiful and terrifying to not know ones future.
How many steps left? There is no more running up stairs backward and blindfolded; now there is only 3 steps, 2 steps, 1 step, oblivion.