Legend.
London was odd. One minute it took you in and left you breathless, the next it made you want to run away screaming to some far off land about which you had read and longed for with something in you that was wild and unbidden. A solitary man wandered along the banks of the Thames in the early winter sunlight, his breath swirling in a foggy mist in the air around him, giving him undeniable evidence that he was actually alive. The streetlamps shuddered as they went out and the air over the Thames swirled in mystical and romantic motions that left the observer cold. He could feel nothing but the cold air biting into his uncovered hands and whipping around his face. The blood that once warm and had trickled down his face in a torrent, was now cooling and congealing around his hair. He did not care, the fight was over and he had won – as he knew he would. The aftermath was the worst, this feeling of isolation, of loss, of not knowing quite what to do next. He heard a shout from the river and jumped, but smiled when he realised it was one of the mudlarks shouting to a friend. He watched them, those wretched innocents run away to…to what he wondered? Slowly he made his way home, not wanting to face the deluge of questions that inevitably waited for him. Here he was at peace, alone, the way he preferred his life. He sighed as he became colder and the mist over the water began to thin and reveal faces to him, breaking the magic as they appeared. The slow footsteps of this solitary man were heard by the people of the river who turned to look at him as he passed, silenced by his silhouette, almost reverent in their gazes; he ignored them of course. It would not do for such a lofty figure to be seen acknowledging those who fear him, so he strode off in the direction of home, not entirely oblivious to the gazes that followed him, observing him the way he had often observed them. They watched and they waited for his last footfall to die away before returning to their work.
He walked a long way back home, the gazes of the people lingering in his mind; he smiled as he realized that they were making him into what he always knew he would be – a legend.