It’s 4am in London, and you’re already up and running. Training, rather, because you don’t particularly like running but you do like the idea of taking any step, many steps, to becoming better in any way possible. Stronger. And you never feel weaker than after you leave Destiny City.
You hear a noise in the early morning dark. Passing an alley, you catch a glimpse of someone standing too still, of another leaning too close. You run past them, the taste of ozone sparking across your tongue.
The whole wide world is under the control of something so much larger than yourself. You’re both safer and more helpless out here because of it. A cage can be very comfortable, it's so very secure in here. And maybe, if it’s big enough, is it even really a cage?
Your chest starts to burn and for a moment, it feels like you’re doing something. It wouldn’t hurt if you were standing still, right? Or worse yet, staying in bed another hour. That would be nothing. This is something. Even if it’s just a bandaid for your frustrations, at least the math is easy.
The next few weeks will go as follows:
Run.
(Just keep going.)
Tend to Mindy.
(You can’t fix a thing, but you can make tea the way she likes it. You can find her notes and journals. You can brush her hair.)
Study.
(You’re still so far behind. She’s in almost all advanced classes next year. She hasn’t mentioned it yet, but maybe she hasn’t even checked. You already have her coming schedule memorized. You’re already planning on how to wedge yourself in at the corners of each block.)
Clean.
(And this, at least, feels better than ever. It’s always felt good but now the movements aren’t just more fluid, you can feel extra purpose behind them. Your mind calms down. It’s even more than a mere something that’s only benefit is in being more than nothing.)
Plan.
(In a few weeks, you’ll be doing even more. There is a whole entire world of more. A thousand years of more.)
Sleep.
(You dream of platinum hair turning brown as the red red red begins to dry. You dream of the sweet smell of incense against perpetual night and the rhythmic rasping of brooms across marble.)
Wake up.
(You lay there for several minutes of nothing. You know you could stay in bed and the world won’t change, not at all.)
Run.
(Keep going. Don’t stop.)
You love your family and your Miss. You love your place within this house. You’ve never wanted a role greater than staying at her side. But the desire to go back to Destiny City, go back to Hestia hasn’t faded at all since actually doing so. If anything it’s stronger. The gap between nothing and something has grown wider while the bars of the cage can now be seen around every corner.
Before leaving that world, you’d taken up a responsibility. Made a sort of promise. And every time you pass those noises in the dark, leave some ominous tableau behind you, you’re breaking it.
You want to stay like this. You hate to stay like this. You keep running.
