Diary

See disclaimer in Entry #1

:Future:

What is a "future"? Is it all the life ahead of you from this moment on? Is it your possibilities, your hopes and dreams for tomorrow? Is it tomorrow itself? Is it no more than an idea and a wish?

Is a "future" a definite thing at all?

And can it be given or taken away?

What would life be like without your future? I think it must be an awful prospect. Hopeless, loveless, listless, every day more of the same, every day holding nothing but suffering. Knowing that something intangible yet integral to you is gone, would you have the strength to keep struggling forward?

I wonder.

Fia agrees with me, and I can tell she's giving the matter as much thought as I am. Instead of saying like the others that your future is obviously something that can't be taken from you, I see her eyes cloud with painful sympathy. Instead of worrying about the "how" and "why", she wonders directly if a life like this could be bearable for long.

And I wonder now if Malice isn't just as much of a pawn as Ledah and I were.

I'll never forgive her for his death, but if this is all Hector's plan I can forgive her for her blind faith in him. Without a future, even cruel guidance given is guidance taken with gratitude.

I couldn't save Ledah, but maybe…

Maybe there will be some way that I can reach Malice…

Or maybe this is just more wishful thinking, just another way to crush myself in a later failure.

Still, I can and will do my best. That's all I can do now. Do my best to save Riviera. Do my best to defeat Hector. Do my best under the weight of all the lives that are counting on me.

Because there was a life I couldn't save, and because I will not let Ledah's death be in vain.

And also for the selfish reason that I want to prove my own existence apart from being Asgard's Grim Angel.

I was born to become one, after all; I was thrust into this destiny, this wretched fate, and no one ever asked me if I wanted it or not. I became a Grim Angel because I was chosen and because I had no other choice. No one can point the finger at me and accuse me of getting myself into this mess, like Ledah and I suppose Malice did. But just because I'm blameless there doesn't mean I want to stay that way, a nameless, faceless, hapless creature fulfilling a role and nothing more.

I wonder if, in the grand plan of the Magi, even before Hector's acts of betrayal, I ever had the right to choose my own future at all.

I am me, I want to tell them. I am not your doll, and I will not do what you want me to. I have free will. I can make my own choices. And I can change my own destiny if I want to.

It's a fanatic idea that almost borders on heresy, but that's what I've begun to believe.

In the end, Ledah—who was always a great believer in destiny—made a choice to do the right thing, when since he'd become a Grim Angel he'd been little more than Hector's pawn. Maybe that choice, in the end, was what let him stay himself despite all he'd been put through. My grief wasn't so blinding that I couldn't see the real tears on his face. My despair isn't so choking that I still can't hope the best for him.

For him and because of him, I've made up my mind.

My future is mine now, mine and no one else's. And I'll direct it as I will.