Bound for trouble from the start
I've been walking through this old world in the dark
Grief is an old wound lodged firmly in the center of his pulsing heart. It sits on a throne, holding court with Loneliness and Misery. They’ve been entertaining a new guest recently. His name is Rage. Carnage left rage in the chestnut’s chest where it infiltrated into his entire being after claiming his weak fluttering heart. It comes in surges, in and out like the ocean tides. He knew where the anger had stemmed from in the beginning, the torment of what he had been dealt at the hands of a madman. What he didn’t understand was that anger has layers. The Dark God hadn’t placed the emotion there, he had merely coaxed it out. It had been laying passively underneath so much despair and self-loathing, dormant. Now that it had been released, he could barely restrain it.
He doesn’t know if Magnus is still here. If he had died off again, come back, or simply stayed. Even though Ledger had slipped away, he was sure that his father would have looked for him. Searched for him, asked about him. Surely Magnus would have been devastated to let his damaged son slip through his fingers once more. It’s a hope he clings to, a selfish one. He needs to believe it. For there was a small nugget of truth that had played out in that dark metal cage he had been captured in. In the alternate reality where he had murdered his father, the hateful words that had flown between spittle and blood. It was something that hadn't left him all these years.
Magnus had been fine not knowing he existed. While Ledger watched his mother’s death mere minutes after birth and had been thrown into the hands of an emotionally stunted woman by the very person who had stolen his life… Magnus had moved on. He had loved others, fathered more children. When they were brought together, finally reunited, as bittersweet as it had been… Hadn’t there been that twinge deep in his gut? The one that wondered why he hadn’t looked for him. Surely he had known deep down, surely he had realized that Raaquel had been pregnant. He had been lovers with the the very mare that had been concealing him for god sake. Why didn’t you save me? Why?
He had blamed his wrath on the brutality of having his eye ripped from it’s socket. From dying and being brought back to life in worse condition then he had left it. But the churning anger towards his father had always been there. As badly as he wanted a relationship with his father, it was hard to look in the mirror image of his eyes and not feel utterly betrayed and abandoned. However this time would surely be different. There was no way Magnus would have let him down again.
The world he once knew had changed. Dramatically. He doesn’t understand any of this yet, is just beginning to put the pieces together. The Meadow is off but he doesn’t understand why. It seems more… Divided. The paths don’t line up, they don’t seem to lead in the right directions. It’s as if God himself had taken the world between his hands and shook it. Now everything was displaced. It was disorienting. His facial features are arranged in faint bewilderment when a figure of pale gold seems to materialize beside him. His good eye darkens as it fixes in on her, the flecks of gold becoming brighter. She is attractive despite the lines of sadness that seem to tug at the corner of her lips and darken around the hollows of her eyes. For a moment he forgets to be self conscious about his disfigurements, misery has found company.
”I am. I think I am.” He pauses, unsure. ”Maybe. I doubt I’ll find them though.” Raspy words, harsh to his ears and flat. His tongue not used to forming words after being silent for so long. Part of him hoped that the girl of glass would be here. He had never been able to truly apologize to her after becoming more atrocious then she could ever think she was. And of course he was looking for the stalwart figure of the man he had forever been searching for. A flicker of anxiety in his sunken chest, the small glimmer of hope that he would be wrong this time. If he was not… He dares not think of the beast within and what it might do.
Ledger