Open If it was up to me I would have figured you out

Bound for trouble from the start
I've been walking through this old world in the dark

It’s been a lifetime. At least it feels like a lifetime but Beqanna was always funny about the limits of time. Fluid, fickle. Most of those years had been lost to madness, fueled by hate. Hate of her, hate of him, but most of all the hate of himself. The self-loathing, the anxiety, the mental breakdown. His captivity to the red eyed ghost. He had almost broken completely then. Almost turned into the thing he feared most. A killer, soulless. It would have been so simple, with that heavy glass heart that still resides in his chest. That still refuses to thump and bleed normally. But the red eyed ghost had one day, vanished. And with the last desperate grabs at his sanity and freedom on his lips, he vanished too.

And now. Now he stands on Tephra’s soil once more. The last time he had been here was after Carnage had spit them all out on the black salt stained sand, the heat from the mountain behind them glowing as fiercely as the anger that consumed him. His cracked mind, his cracked heart, his broken body, unstable shifting as he finally let the rage win. Dahmer and Ellyse. His children. Innocent, like he had been at their age when the world crashed around him. It still hurts to think about her, to think of everything that’s happened between them. Everything that’s happened since the day he was born. To realize just how badly he failed to protect his family from the very thing he had grown up to live with. He had stood there, tearing at the X branded forever over his heart. Spilt his blood and flesh on the ground before her, gave up everything that he was. Accepted that he was worthless.

But today, today he tastes the ocean on his tongue instead of sooted ash. The breeze that plays across the warm waters gently plays against his flaxen mane and tickling the empty socket that once held a gold flecked eye, fanning him as surely as the flames of his heartache that turned him into a monster that day. There are some things that can never be forgiven. There are some wounds that can never be fully healed. He had been a shell of himself, had fallen into a hole that he never thought he would crawl out of. Fully ready to accept death, just waiting for it. Wishing for it. But one day the ghosts that haunted him stopped being so unkind. The sun would start to fade and he could suddenly appreciate the beauty in the colors of twilight, the way the last rays sparkled through leaf and limbs. Slowly, one small step at a time, he started to pull himself out of the hole without realizing it. Not every day was a victory but he could acknowledge the small accomplishments when he left his sleeping place for the day. When he forced himself to eat. To bathe. He couldn’t remember the first time he laughed again, what caused it, but he can remember the realization of feeling a sense of joy again. The way his throat cracked with raspy notes of delight. It was thrilling. It scared him. To feel joy, to feel anything, was a chance to get hurt again. To experience those sleepless nights, curled into himself to self soothe, unable to escape his memories or turn off his brain. Where anxiety and depression and most of all his loneliness would defeat him each and every time. Remembering when for a moment he almost let love back in and how his heart had cracked and the physical pain brought him to his knees. What had happened with Ellyse had been a catalyst, the toxic relationship that consumed him to the point where he couldn’t think logically anymore. But it hadn’t all been on her. There was years of trauma that he had pushed down into himself, further and further within, thinking he had it handled. It had only been delaying the inevitable. It had been throwing a bandaid on an amputation. It hadn’t all been her fault.

What Ledger didn’t realize was that he was stronger then he ever gave himself credit for. He had lived through death, abduction, emotional loss and physical pain, heartache that seemed to never end. And yet… and yet… he was still here. Still standing. Still breathing. Still alive. It had been work. Hard and painful. Something he would have to work on every day. He had done it, himself. Loving yourself is hard and it was something he hadn't completely mastered. Sometimes the hard days still got the best of him. The madness would creep in. The moments of insecurity, the self loathing, the doubt in himself. It was part of him now. But as he stands here in Tephra, the gold flecks in his eyes clear, he is accepting. Accepting of everything that he is. Broken but not beaten. Monster and Lover. Bear and Horse. PTSD. Anxiety. Magnus’s son. A heart of glass that longed to beat again. A father who hoped to one day make things right. Hope. HOPE. When was the last time he had ever felt that?

A glance across the land, realizing with a jolt that he has watched his homeland literally change before his eyes numerous times. Heaven’s Gate, Tephra. The land had moved and shifted over time and yet there was always a pull that brought him home. Home? He still wasn’t certain of that. That he would ever actually have a place he truly considered home. For a moment he closes his good eye and breathes in deep. The warm salty air filling his lungs and refreshing him. A release. A goodbye to the warrior he had once loved and letting her go once and for all. There is nothing left for him here.

Purple shadows dance across the meadow as he arrives, caressing the trees and taunting him with promises of sleep and missing starlight. It seems it’s always dark now. Only a sliver of light ever seems to stretch across the horizon but he has spent so long in the darkness of himself that he no longer fears the shadows that blanket around him and smother the world. He knows tonight will be another restless one, he doubts he will be getting more then a few hours of snatched slumber. His mind is too active, all sparks and cylinders, unable to stop thinking of memories despite his goodbye. A low branch from a nearby oak grazes against his branded side, his blind side, and he can’t help but flinch. It had been a long time since he had been touched by anyone and physical contact made him wary now. He can feel the bear within him rumble, as if checking to make sure he was ok as it gauged his fight or flight response. Once he had fought against his shifting abilities, had been afraid of the creature he could turn into. Now the polar bear within him was his one true and trusted companion. They were one. They were the same. Who knew that when Carnage had taken everything from him, he had also provided him a source of comfort. He allows the bear to peek but only enough to shift his eye that allows him to see better in this new dark Beqanna.

Backing up so the tree that startled him is now behind him, trying to calm the feeling in his stomach, his anxiety peeking as he stands for the first time in god knows how long near the company of others. Perhaps being here is a mistake, coming back was a mistake. Perhaps it was too soon. The familiar threads of doubt weave into his chest and twirl around the shiny opaque heaviness he calls a heart. Another deep breath as he turns his muzzle towards the sky. Tonight he will try to count the stars through the inky clouds. He will breathe. He will seek this new path, one filled with light. With hope.

Ledger