Sectumsempra
Desire is perhaps the cruellest of the Endless; or, indeed, perhaps the only one to whom such an appellation may be attached at all.
Desire and Despair are twins. This is an important fact, and must not be forgotten.
Desire and Despair find amusement in playing games with the lives of mortals; or, to put it more precisely, Desire does.
(Despair, as she herself once put it, is never pleased or displeased. She simply is.)
Sometimes in the games, Desire and Despair play on the same side; and sometimes, they play against each other. If they play against each other, they never play to win. There is no satisfaction in the win for Despair, and there is no possibility of a loss for Desire.
Instead, they play until Desire, fickle as always Desire is, bores and drops the toy. If the toy is broken enough, it is then picked up by Despair. (Or, sometimes, by Delirium, who rarely strays far from Desire and Despair.)
Despair is patient.
---
There was once a man who was still a boy; and, perhaps because he was still a boy, he wanted to prove that he was a man. And when he found out that he had chosen the entirely wrong method to prove it, Despair awaited him behind the old, dirty mirror of a haunted bathroom.
As chance would have it and Destiny has always known, Desire was then in his (and her) twin's grey realm, on a matter which does not in the slightest concern this tale. And so, Desire witnessed all the events which followed; and among them, another boy-man's broken claim that he neither wanted nor meant the first boy-man's hurt.
This quite amused Desire, who knew for sure that the boy-man was lying.
The boy-man provided some small diversion for both Desire and Despair in the weeks to come.
(He proved to be an exceptionally fast learner.)
---
Desire is selfish. She (and he) knows that all you have to do is want. To want is to get; Desire cares not for collateral damage.
(That is, if Desire has ever in all eternity known the meaning of the word. And that is not at all certain.)