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It was funny really how things always seem to end this way for him. Life always seems so unkind to him.
He wonders what he did in a previous life to deserve a mother whose love for him was so overwhelmed by her desire for revenge that she only saw him as a tool to use against his father. What was he atoning for by having a father who feared what he could become so much that he ordered all children born on the same day as him sent out to sea on a boat with a leak.
Maybe his crimes were truly so vicious that the resentment and hatred he gained from his brothers after they fell for their mothers manipulation was justified. Perhaps that previous version of him was truly so monstrous that only by enduring the hated glares and hushed whispers of the court may he be forgiven.
He wonders if he was ever truly happy and of course he knows the answer to that. He was once when that foolish idiot came to court, that boy who didn’t judge him and cared for him like no one else. Of course that couldn’t last, in his life nothing good could ever last. Before either of them knew that foolish boy was sent off on a quest with one final goodbye and a promise to come back, a promise he would break.
Despite everything he suffered through in life, he thinks that it was the loss of that foolish boy that had led him to his destiny. It wasn’t his half mad mother or his emotionally abusive father, nor was it the fear in the eyes of the citizens. No, what led him down this path was the feeling of being genuinely cared for, loved and cherished for the first time in his life just for all that to be taken from him in an instant.
In the time since the foolish boy left he’s found himself wondering what could have been if they were not both bound by fate, if they had been born from men who were not so powerful, if the foolish boy didn’t take that vow and if he wasn’t a slave to his dark nature. How he wishes now that he stopped the foolish boy from leaving or that he went with him but he couldn’t, he was too afraid of what would happen if he did.
Sometimes he wondered if the old wizard foresaw all of this, if he was toying with their lives for the future he believed was best. He hoped not, he hoped that some part of this was caused by his own will, that at least something he did was his choice and not the will of a higher power.
He could no longer hear the battle that raged on when he first fell, he wondered if the battle was over or if he had just passed the point where his body was losing function.
His mind was foggy and he couldn’t think clearly any more, only one image lay in his mind that of the foolish boy he missed so much. A part of him wanted to say "he would see him soon" but another wanted to laugh at the very thought. He knew that he was doomed to the down below while the foolish boy, pure as he is, will have gone through the pearly gates.
Still he couldn’t help but think that this was nice, seeing the foolish boy's face again after so long was nice. He wanted to reach out and touch it, to tell him all the things he couldn’t before, but he was too tired to even speak yet alone . He supposed he could do it after a nap, a nice nap with the foolish boy sounded divine, just the two of them.
He slowly shut his eyes, a smile on his face and a single thought in his mind of that foolish boy.