Loss. It was a crippling reality on his worst days and a nagging, incessant whisper at the back of his mind on his best. It was the narrative that defined his life from the moment he first let a starseed pass his lips and though he had tried, even getting clean and putting himself back together had failed to restore all that had slipped through his fingers. That, more than anything, was what continually made his mind wander to better, simpler, more careless times. If he had managed to build the company up at his worst, why was he treated like a careless toddler at his best?

Acid eyes stared long and hard at the laptop screen that glowed dully in front of him, reading and rereading the letters printed across the backdrop of his email like he might glean some alternate meaning from them if he just concentrated enough.

Due to your long absence… another agent… doing well… still proud to be a part of Argent Industries.

Argent Industries.

The rebranding shouldn’t have made him as angry as it did but every time he thought about how much he missed Jade in his life it was overshadowed by the knowledge that he had raised her up only to have her take everything that he had ever worked for. It wasn’t her fault that he had worked himself into a dark place and it wasn’t her fault that Chase had chosen someone else but he had been a part of Renegade Media since he was nineteen. He had been there from their humble beginnings and fought to become the head of his department, he had pitched the importance of the take over to Chase, he had planned and cultivated all the ways a mass media company could benefit the Negaverse image among Destiny City and (eventually) the world. It felt like his entire life had been stolen from him and that was something he knew he could not forgive. Lumiere would never have taken that offer. Zinkenite never would have done that to him. Not even Xenotime, he thought, would have ripped the only thing he had done right in his life away before giving him the chance to correct it.

How many clients had been passed on to someone else? How much of his work had been assumed by other people? What was even the point of his continued employment in this place other than to indulge him because their new CEO had a soft spot for him?

Levi was growing angrier by the minute. He knew that he was spiraling and yet he couldn’t, wouldn’t, bring himself back from the edge of that dark place he had been trying so desperately to avoid. His jaw ached from the pressure of grinding his teeth together and the mouse in his hand was crunching beneath the weight of a fist that tried to curl around it. This was selfish and petty and angry but he didn’t care.

All of this had been his work, his company, his right.

With a sudden surge of rage, Levi stood and pelted the mouse in his hand squarely at the window of his office door. It shattered on impact and a spider web of cracks blossomed on the tempered glass while the mouse crumpled to the carpet beneath it, scattering in dozens of tiny, fractured plastic pieces. On the other side he heard a frantic scuffling of the stout, tubby woman someone had assigned to be his assistant and a distant call of his name. That just infuriated him more. What point did she even have other than to keep an eye on him? He wasn’t important. His work didn’t matter. He wasn’t that busy. A frustrated growl rolled off of his tongue and he tossed the laptop away as easily as he had the mouse; it didn’t shatter as easily as the tiny plastic thing had. It wasn’t as rewarding.

One hand grabbed his bag from where he stowed it beneath his desk and then he was wrenching open the door and flying out past the reception desk without a glance for the stammering older woman who was already picking up the phone to call someone - Chase? Jade? Security?

“M-Mr. Drummond, let me call Ms. Argent, she can-”

“She can go ******** herself, Patricia. You can too.”

One hand rose to flip her the bird over his shoulder but he didn’t stop, nor did he bother to look back as he walked out on his life's work.

(755 words)