{bon voyage} 61st Finale

There is silence in the library. My footsteps fall upon dead ears, for those who are not already lost are far beyond my hesitant grasp. Everything, at first, seems beautiful. The shelves are crammed with books, their spines all facing outwards in a perfect array of bound magic, open and safe. The air is thick with the heavy smell of parchment and ink, reminders of days long ago in which people set their own quills to the paper in order to paint brilliant pictures of wonder. That time is gone, now.It is too late. Too late to save this library - the peace is slipping away as though the ornate rug has been pulled from beneath my feet. Am am standing surrounded by wisdom, I am surrounded by infinity, balanced upon shelves and threatening to come crashing down around me. I never knew something so perpetual could be so stable; the one thing I thought would never falter is in danger of doing just that. And these books - the things I believed with all my heart were pillars in a shattered world, the only things holding the rest of the universe afloat in the sea of burned out stars - have endings. Everything comes to an end, as does the library, so elegant and majestic and grand. It is swallowed in all of it's entirety and I watch the flames devour the very first page. It curls, delicate and just as beautiful as it was unmarred moments ago. The ripple of brilliant scarlet begins to steal away the printed words and a silent scream bursts from my lips. Every letter that is consumed by the hungry monster is another promise broken, another heart splintered. The flames rip the universe from my fingertips and I am powerless to suppress them. They are fierce. I am weak, and the silence that fills the library grows darker still.

Nobody is following me as I flee from the place I called my homes. Homes. Not one place of refuge, but a million different escapes from a rainy day. Tears that fall into the spine of a book are seldom regretted, and the pain they harbour always falls away soon enough. Stories can steal the fears from your heart, but they can also take you to more dangerous places than your feet ever will. This is the beauty of words - the power they hold is never quite powerful enough to save themselves. It is so strong. Strong enough to entangle someone completely, hold them tight and never let them free again, but when the words are threatened they stay bold and defiant and welcoming. The story glows until I can no longer make out the words. The tears that make tracks down my cheeks make no difference when they land amongst the flickering flames. Just another raindrop in an ocean of sorrow. This is when the smoke begins to billow all around me, plumes of grey hiding the ceiling, the walls, the floor, until all I can see is the bright light which burns through my eyelids even when they are closed. The fire is stronger now, growing faster and faster, a dull roar breaking the impenetrable quiet. the beast has broken the rules of this establishment, so why can't I? Just because the boundaries do not apply to the raging clouds of ash that fall, words still printed upon shards of splintered paper, does this mean that I do not have to abide by them? No. The rules are still the rules, no matter how many dragons I have slain. When it comes to it, no amount of beauty stolen from life and put back together again in a picture of words will ever be able to defeat it's true enemy. My feet carry me away as the ashes settle in my hair. Through another burning hallway, books sliding from their shelves and tumbling to the floor. My kingdom falls to the ground around me. My world is suddenly burning at my feet and I am without the courage or strength orbravery to stop it. So I watch it fall and I watch it burn and I am silent as the library.

This is the dream I used to have almost every night - a library that I had never entered, silent as the sea, breaking down around me. Sometimes I would try to salvage fragments of smouldering pages - snippets of tales too broken to be told. All children, except one, grow up. But these fractions are never enough to hold close when I awake, frighteningly untouched by my dreams. In stories, people awaken sweating, flustered, crying out for mercy. My dream always fades away long before I see the sun. The sun is shining now and I am wishing more than anything that I could fall right back into my dream, go back to a time when burning books was something I feared. When my dreams were still more terrifying than my reality. I look around myself at the bodies of all who have perished, those beyond saving. I stare at the sea, but it does not return my gaze. I used to be filled with questions - why me, why am I here, what have I done to deserve this? But now my heart has fallen silent as twenty-three other hearts have fallen still. I am very almost alone. Alone is a questionable fate - is one ever truly alone? Am I alone now, as I stand silent, facing the waves? Was I alone as I struck at the tiny child earlier, as I fought with my friends days ago? Have I always been alone, right from the moment I learned to read and take myself away. The day I first fell headfirst into a book, I taught myself how to run away. At three years old, I grasped the concept of escape. I have done nothing but escaping ever since.

My hands shake and yet I am not cold. It is as though I can feel the eyes of the nation burning into me, judging my every action. This is where this ends, all of it. The final confrontation when all hope is gained and lost and the verdict is decided once and for all. The cannon will fire and there will be no going back. I stare into the sky for another moment until I realise that this is already over. I'm going home. The end has come and somehow I am the unlucky one in all of this. I have seen every sin, lived every tragedy, and yet my breath is still steady in my lungs. They felt pain for a moment, and I will feel it for a lifetime. I am numb; as though the icy water that surrounds has somehow seeped into my heart. Devoid of emotions, I turn around to face the boy I once loved. He was my brother, my best friend, my ally and my bookshelf in this terrible library of bitter stories. He held me up. I was the boy who struck the match it took to burn him to the ground. Perhaps the words I will adress to Stark Harper's grave will not be lies, after all. This was what I wanted, wasn't it? I will see my family, my brother, my love. His voice will once again sound softly in my ears, drawing every concern I feel to a closure. He will set my sins to rest, his arms strong and unbreakable around me. It will be bittersweet, for now I know I can stand alone without his support. None of this matters, because I am going home. I miss the way the hallway is lit late at night, when I tiptoe through the house. I almost forgot how the house never falls silent, as though we are one being, always alive, always breathing. I let my mind wander - did they miss me? Do they forgive me for what I have done in order to hold them again? Is it easier to forgive yourself, or somebody you love? Surely I will be able to live hating myself for eternity, but I could never cope if they held my mistakes against me. Will they look at me the same? Frosty blue eyes, once warm, turned cold as a winter's morning. I have changed so much - more than anything I want them to embrace me as the boy I once was. It's too late to look back now.

If I was them, and they were me, would I forgive a boy who struck his own allies down? A boy who considered consuming the flesh of another human before tossing it away. I am a boy who has somehow played the Game - most of it by accident but some of it deliberate and cruel and selfish.Ever since I was born people have remarked on my intelligence - and how my understanding of people is so very lacking in comparison to the facts and equations I know. But it's different. People are complex and confusing and there is no right and no wrong. People are a whole lot of maybe, shifting and changing before your eyes. Has my family changed? When I see her again, will Lyana be a couple of centimeters taller, will Jamarion's stern eyes be just a little softer? I hope not; a huge part of me wants to slip back into life right where we left off. This is impossible. I have changed, I have broken, my heart is weighed down by my lost loves and my sins. Watching someone die moulds a person, killing shapes you and betrayal defines you as surely as the name printed on your birth certificate.
In conclusion - not at all. I do not meet the eyes of the boy who stuggles before me. He has lost his face, his name, his identity in my mind. He is just another lifeless soul who will soon be another body in a coffin. Fitz, was it? It is not out of disrespect that he grows blank when I attempt to picture him in my mind - it is out of the pain that just staring blindly toward him brings to my shattered mind. His voice is limp. My boy Ripley is gone, and I never really forgot him at all, not even for a moment. "I guess I was never King of the castle after all, was I, Klaus? It was you all along. You're the King, not me. You're the one who gets to rule." He is wrong. I was not the King from the beginning. When this started, I was so far from being King. And yet I think perhaps I must believe in destiny, in fate. There is no other explanation to how the child who spent the Bloodbath unable to stand, who kissed the boy he loved when it was far too late can be standing here now. The only one still standing. Twenty-three others all fallen at my feet. Somehow that makes me King by default, but what is a King without subjects, who is the King who has defeated his own kindgom?

"I don't know how I'll pay him back, Klaus. The Ferryman is waiting. I took up their debts, but I don't have anything. I have nothing to give him, Klaus, and I don't know what to do. He won't let me cross. I'll never see them again if I can't cross." I do not understand the words he speaks, and yet somehow they ring true. Can dying people lie? Who is the Ferryman? How can I explain to Fitz Ripley that every debt he has ever owed is far more than payed - that he has given me a gift I will never get the chance to return to him. I am a murderer, and he is a matyr. There is, of course, an incredibly thin line between the two. "There are four of us, Klaus, my brothers and I. There always have to be four, okay? You have to take my place, alright? Please, be their brother. Keep it, alright? Just, please. Please, at least stay as their brother, even if you wont be mine?" Words I was too caught up in my own thoughts to heard before hit me like a wave. How could he ever doubt me? How could I ever have doubted myself enough to do this to anyone? Necessity, Klaus, we do what we do because we must. My fathers voice is tired and worn and filled with a sorrow that never once escaped him. Of course I will be their brother. But Fitz Ripley, I lied. I am your brother, too. I nod, but it is too late. He spoke the words so long ago. Time is slipping away from us, mixing itself together in my head in a terrible flurry of blood and war. Finally this is ending. It is over for everyone but me.

I look into his eyes and think that he has perhaps forgiven me already. "Live, Klaus. Don't regret."Penelope taught me to love and Destiny taught me to swim and Fitz taught me to live. None is more valuable than another. The others, I learned from, too. Mahlah showed me strength, Stark radiated brilliant confidence, Jae Moreno was loyal. I hope that I taught them something, too, before they died. Of everything that can be learned from me, I hope that they learned to hope. To love without reason, to give without taking, to feel without breaking. I hope they learned to smile, to cry, and I hope they will remember me as not the person who fought and battled and killed, but as the person who gave back almost as much as he took. I don't want to be the boy I am,but at the same time I want to be nobody else. The cannon fires, leaving me alone with only the echo of life in my ears. The whole arena, empty but one lost soul, right out to sea. They are coming for me. It's time, Klaus. Time to say goodbye to this beautiful, terrible, life changing place. This sea took you, these shores made you. These loves, they lost you. Suddenly I am flying, yet I have never felt closer to the ground. For eight days, I have been sure that this was not how it was supposed to be. But every story has an ending, and I can never sleep, never whisper goodnight until I have reached this ending. And reach it I have. "My name is Klaus Goravich, and I am coming home."