There was once a naive child with gifts he didn’t understand that believed he could use them to make Arcadia a better place. That he could dispel the darkness with a little emotion, that he could nullify the vile and venom permeating through this broken world with but a smile and a smattering of hope.
The only thing standing in his way was a father who refused to let him follow his destiny.
He honed his abilities, he became stronger, faster, understood that he could make a real difference but at every step, he was blocked and hindered from his true path in life. Shackled through stubborn arrogance, he watched as the world got worse and worse, how innocents suffered he knew he could have helped and the moment came.
The day they both lost someone they loved knowing he could’ve saved them if only his father believed in him.
The boy begged for his father to let him go and be a hero, to save this world in her memory and he finally relented…but not in a way the boy wanted.
His father cursed his very name, casting him out the only home he’d ever known, ripping his heart out in the process, leaving the boy homeless, shattered, an orphan alone in a cold and dark world.
Nobody is born evil, they become it through the way the world compresses around them. Stuck at a crossroads where survival means making despicable decisions that haunt your very soul.
Eventually it becomes easier, you lose less sleep over those you destroy and then it becomes second nature, another predator born from helplessness.
I’ve never truly interacted with the kid but it’s like looking in a mirror, your son’s exactly who I used to be. And if you keep coddling him, if you keep holding him back, it won’t matter if you save him because I’m his future.
A wish for a normal life for the only thing you have left that will twist and turn sour and for once, I won’t have to do a thing to make that monkeys paw curl.
Even if you save him, he knows the lie behind the bandages now. How for months you pretended to be someone else, dissuading him from heroics at every opportunity rather then be the father he needed. And the worst part is you clearly love your son.
The pain and torture I alone put you through for mere bread crumbs proves how much you’d sacrifice for him but all that will mean is you get to watch every moment as he falls into the abyss.
Unless you walk away.
Find him, make him safe but let go of the fear and allow him be the hero Arcadia needs. Or wrap him in that wool fleeced protection as you watch him kill himself proving to you he can be a hero until he snaps.
As the innocent boy you cherish becomes a true monster just like I did.
With his hands drenched in the blood of the one who failed him the most.