Chapter Text
Light is nature’s greatest force. Unlike sound or pressure, it transcended the earth and it existed beyond what was material. It was all that was intangible, all that was visible, all that was colorful, and made all things that were beautiful such. Without light, life struggled and never would have been. Though light was associated with goodness, it also burned, and, from him, it took a bit or two every time it struck his eyes. He was good, or at least he tried to be. He was sure he'd been told that he was, despite his intolerance for goodness. Light, that is. Light was goodness, and since light was goodness that meant that he was at his best when he wasn’t breathing. Wasn’t that dark? That was alright. He preferred the dark. Goodness made it harder to think clearly. If light was goodness, then the dark was badness. Since he could only thrive in the dark, wouldn’t that make him bad? He was sure he wasn’t bad. The others told him that he was good.
This world was made of ones and zeros, which were made of light, and that made it good. He had done good. This world was good, but also delicate. Even at his dimmest, he was perceptive to the constance of things flickering and failing. In spite of his burned out psyche, the compulsion to fix what was broken there nibbled at his frontal cortex. He tried to keep in mind the bugs that needed to be worked out, but he never retained any of it. Light washed away any part of him that could be helpful to this place or the others that lived there. Or was it goodness? Butterflies only came out when it was light, and moths went where it was good. Fireflies only appeared when it was bad, but brought goodness with them. Maybe he was like a firefly.
Only when he wasn’t breathing, at least. Wasn’t that dark?
He went over the stages of grief daily, but would forget his process of accepting this eternity every time he left the sobering badness of his fortress. Abstraction was not purgatory to him, but release and reunification, and he had long since accepted it. She had been taken far away from him, and he was prepared to go where she was one day, too. He only hoped that nobody got hurt in his wake. He would be good if he could remember.
He had accepted the darkness hundreds upon hundreds of times, but if you were not miserable, you were not lost. Every time he accepted his eventual abstraction, it got further away. His natural resistance to freedom should have made him miserable, which would have then put him in the condition necessary for him to at last be released. That paradox held the potential to break this brittle world of goodness, but the king’s blessed forgetfulness ensured it never would. The circus stood, the fortress never fell, and the king lived long.