Challenge [293]: Settle

[silvertsuki.livejournal.com]

Title: Villain
Word count: 239
Summary: He is not the hero.

Once, in an age long ago when dreams had perhaps not been so fickle, he had read fairytales.  His most favorite of days were not those spent among researchers and darkness, but with young children who would tug on his robes until he paid them mind. 

“Please, tell us a story!  Please, Lord Ansem?”  He would pretend an errand, to tease them, but in the end he would allow himself to be coerced into a tale.

He would sit, book in hand, as the children gathered ‘round his bended knee to hear fables of knights, princesses, and all manner of heroes.  They would listen with rounded eyes, dreaming of all that they themselves might one day accomplish.  For surely they could become such fine and admirable figures!  He would smile at them, knowing as all adults know that these stories were made for the young – to give them hope and example.

In his own childhood, he had never been given the pleasure of such imagination or wonder; that he found it so late in life only to lose it in betrayal is an irony that never fails to make him laugh. That he was ever called wise! For he now knows himself to be the greatest fool of all.

He envies the young for their endless possibilities. He has only one set course left to him, one path to follow.  His role is not the hero, nor anything like.