"Doorway to Paradise"

The darkness was closing in on him; he could feel it now, nearly tangible and all around, for so long unnoticed because it had almost been a part of him.

Something had gone wrong.

Somehow he had staged his quiet rebellion against it; somehow his farce of failure had become so real it would now be impossible to win. Not ever. Not ever again.

He could no longer see clearly. That had been worsening. He knew when he was able again there would only be his own death to see. His eyes closed a moment, shuddering. That would be soon. It was so close.

He was terrified.

In the start of it, he had turned to anything-- turned away-- turned to his youma, who obeyed in a sort of quiet shock. They knew too, surely. There had been a time it had been an honor to serve in his legions; now, they fell quietly apart. There was not even the energy in them to whisper cruel rumors, and he was not sure whether that was good or ill. He fell and the kingdom with him and everyone knew it. Closer. Closer.

It had been a long time since he had glittered with visions of his future. Longer since he had dreamed. Nights passed like blinking, asleep then awake again without any awareness of it all. Outside it was quiet, black and with the distant stars sparkling but faintly. No-one cared about them now, and no-one had, for a long time.

Longer than he had not cared about things.

He had given up with the youma when he found he did not like them. Having one was more annoyance than any relief or pleasure; more often than not he had killed them afterward. They made him angry. They reminded him of himself; and their simplemindedness and greedy willingness to please he found irreverant and intolerable. Nephrite had liked that, but Nephrite was not here now. He had not been, for a long time, and mostly no-one missed him.

No-one missed much of anyone.

They functioned like clockworks, he mused, and realized: it's coming. The whole place ran mechanically, scrabbling like starving dogs to find a halfway decent life and backstabbing to keep it. Now it was rusting away beneath them, all of them. Some had played by the rules as long as they were able. Some thrived on the whole system of it, doing everything to eke every last drop of life out of it; they lived, dancing on the brink of the abyss as long as they were able. "It's a game." one of them had once said, "Why not?"

There were those who did not thrive. They died.

They died. He was dying. They were all dying, every last youma and every last delusion of grandeur. She'd die soon, but she was maybe the only one who didn't know it. And they would have subsisted for thousands of years all for nothing. Just waiting, preparing, anticipating this final victory that never came. Then they would be gone and no-one would remember them.

His fingers twitched slightly. No-one would remember anything because there would be nothing to remember. No-one would remember those thousands of years ago and no-one would remember now.

He did. But he could not, for long, and then... no-one would remember him.

That was not altogether displeasing. He closed his eyes. There must have been a reason it had all begun, thousands of years ago, and he must have believed in it. But that, no-one would ever remember; only a flickering shadow, a faint idea snuffed out by the oppressive darkness of the years which had swallowed everything else and now would swallow him.

He could not embrace it with any sort of relief, but he lacked the energy to fear it anymore. Somewhere his eyes had focused but he was too tired to deal with what he could see. There was nothing to be done, anyway. And he should not die a hero.

Standing; he knew it was thousands of years too far to go back and no way to amend a thing if he went on. Perhaps it was not his fault, all of it, but he was not sure what to regret what was. He regretted nothing. He regretted everything. The darkness was closing and it was inside him now and he was a silhouette against the faint starlight in the window. It is the last time anyone will stand here, he thought, and surprisingly he felt he could be sorry for that. There was someone who had liked it, very much.