After the Fall Chapter 46 - Reunification

Reunification

Carth

I was lost, small, drowning in blackness, sucking it in like oxygen from a breather mask, the cruel image of my own son facing me with a sword in his hand burning betrayal through me. He couldn't be here, it wasn't possible.

Revan--Revan helped me save him. But Revan was lost, far away from me, like a dream. Of course, a dream. My life is nothing beyond the next kill. And that happened to be the thing that wore my lost child's face.

He isn't lost, he isn't lost! I must be losing it. Maybe this will be the final mission, the one that gets me what I wanted all along.

The one that claims my life.

I fought him with fury, egged on by the voice in my head. The single sword of his was strong and he matched me blow for blow. But he would not strike back, and it infuriated me.

"Father."

Liar!

"You cannot win."

I brought both swords down on his and the blade shattered. I raised my swords again.

He struck my sternum. "Let it go. Accept it." Accept who you are. The voice was not his, and the words ripped through my head as if they'd been thundered by a god. Energy leapt from him to me and back, completing a circuit that burned into the darkness inside me. I went under, into an endless sea of death and recrimination. The tattoo on my skin radiated fury, hatred, despair. My ribcage split apart with the force of it and the tattoo became a live thing, peeling itself apart from me, taking my skin with it. I split into two and my own despair took on life of its own and stared back at me.

Embrace your rage. I felt it burning through me. Let it burn, and let me turn to ash.

I felt it curl in on itself, rip itself away from me and leave me drained empty.

The pain overwhelmed me. A scream tore from my throat and whatever it was that drove Dustil--for now I recognized my son--drove something into me as well. Behind my eyes burned the afterimages of my own dark rage.

I looked into it fully, for perhaps the first time in my life, and it looked back.

What remains after a man loses everything? Nothing more than his own self, demanding acknowledgment. I looked into my own dark soul and found a spark of love and hope, hidden beneath the black fury. Revan was in there, waiting for me to find my way back. Dustil, Morgana, the good men and women I served with, and called friends. I reached for the spark.

Gray crept into my head then, not the dark fog that blurred my senses, but the blessed nothing of unconsciousness.

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