Months passed.
And still I stayed, chained in the darkness.
I suppose, in the moments that I was left alone, the old thoughts and feelings came back to me. The voices of my trainers, of my teammates, of my own mind, all of them telling me to, ordering me to, begging me to…
Kill [him].
And I had no reason to refuse.
Lenin stayed in the dungeons almost every night, but he spoke to me less and less, spending more time working out things on a computer. It was merely a keyboard with a glowing blue hologram serving as a screen.
"What is he working on?" I asked YV-7144 once, out of curiosity.
"I'm afraid Lord Lenin's work is not privy to you," the android replied.
"Me?" Lenin looked up for a moment. "I'm just doing some research. Architectural stuff. The Prince's orders."
And he did not say anything more.
And this Prince of his…would I ever see him again?
Kim came by often, hidden in Lenin's shadow. She never smiled, always staring at me like a watchdog. Under her watchful eye, I knew that I couldn't attempt anything. No chance of escape, even less of kill [him]…
Because she understood me.
With those frequented dreams, my thoughts might as well be hers.
Perhaps she told Lenin, perhaps she didn't, but there she was, constantly trailing behind him, and when she was around, Lenin was no longer as friendly as he had been. Perhaps she had told him to have some more respect for himself as a noble.
And one day they all went and left.
I didn't know if it was a dream or if it was the darkness, but when I woke, everyone was gone.
Even the android guards.
And in the darkness of the cell, [he] came.
The one they called Evian Grace.
"Rinthe Akiya?"
I tried to speak, but no words came out. It was as if he had infiltrated the darkness that was in my mind, and had come before me, standing there, looking at me.
He bent down and picked my chin up, so that I could see his eyes, one scarred, one whole.
"You are a very special person, you know, Rinthe?"
Rinthe…
It had been so long since someone called me by that name.
"Do you know pain, Rinthe?"
And he hit me across the face.
As I lay there, tasting blood in my mouth, memories of my old training came back to me. "Get up!" they'd say. "You can't face [him] if you're weak like this!"
And then I would be enveloped by the darkness again.
I felt like I had been shot. I couldn't move, and could only lie there, blood slowly pooling around me on the cold, hard floor…
Was he still there? The one they called Evian Grace?
I glanced up, and saw his shadow looming over me.
"Why?"
"That is a story for another day, Rinthe." And in that moment he sounded more of an adult and less of a child.
Whether or not it was a dream I don't think I would ever find out, because when I opened my eyes again, there was considerably less darkness than before, and the familiar figures of DG-8260 and MK-5567 stood at my cell door. There was no trace of blood on the floor, though I still tasted it in my mouth.
And I still felt like I had been shot.
Could it be some kind of trick that Kim was pulling? Because day and night, my dreams and reality were mixed together in the darkness, and full of blood and pain and all those memories that should have been long forgotten…
And one time, as I lay there, all I could hear was Darius's familiar voice over the radio.
"So Mr. Akiya, you know when they say that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence?"
"…yeah."
"Well, since there's no grass and no need for fences anyway, I always wondered…could they say the same thing about the sky as well?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Like…oh, I don't know…the sky is always bluer on the other side…of the horizon?"
The corner of my bruised lip twitched upwards. "I think it sounds fine without 'horizon'. 'The sky is always bluer on the other side.' That's a lovely image."
Darius laughed. "But…is the sky really blue, though?"
"Used to be, I suppose…"
And his voice faded away, and I looked up to see that nightmare version of the prince, staring down at me, the radio broken in one hand.
"Your friend sounds lovely," he said. "Why don't we invite him to Shuijing as well?"
"No…" I croaked. "No, don't do that…"
The prince chuckled, then sat down next to me, placing a hand on my shoulder. "I was only joking, of course."
His touch was light and airy, but a presence was still there.
The boy tilted his head back and looked up, at a nonexistent scene outside of this darkness. "The sky is always bluer…" he murmured. "Have you ever seen a blue sky?"
"Have you?" I countered.
"Wishful thinking…summer days…"
Perhaps it should have occurred to me then, and it certainly occurred to me later, that this was not the real Prince Evian. No, this was merely a dream, a shadow, a mirage…
An illusion of him.
One wrought by someone's mind.
The only question was, was it mine or his?
And because of this I couldn't say to him, "You're just a child." Because his mind was clearly far beyond that of a child's.
And besides, who could bring themselves to kill a child?
I wasn't that kind of person.
I had to kill [him]. And that was it.
Nobody else.
"Do you want to see a blue sky?" And when I turned my face I saw his eyes looking down at me, one broken, one intrigued.
"A blue sky?" I repeated, then rested my head back on the bloodied ground. I stared at the ceiling, pretending that beyond it, there was a sky waiting for me.
The sky was always bluer on the other side.
"I suppose it would be better than a red sky." Because that was what we had now. What we had for years. "But I think that we're lucky to even have a sky."
"That was expected from you." The prince grinned. "But do you know what a red sky symbolizes?"
Sunsets? Sunrises?
"It means a dying world."
"So what does a green sky mean, then?"
"That? Those are the auroras. The lights. I suppose if you were to ask me, a green sky would mean that something is coming, but all is well."
A green sky…
"The world is at peace."
All is well…
Wouldn't that be nice.
The boy closed my eyes, like I was a dying person and he was a close relative. "You should sleep now," he said. "I'm sure it must be tiring for you."
But wasn't I asleep?
But everything was dreams, dreams and realities and hallucinations and mirages and thoughts all mixed together in the mind…
And yet still, the darkness existed.
Why couldn't I dream of light for once?
But I suppose, since I had been in the dark all this time, all my mind knew of, remembered of, was of darkness. To dream of the light, I had to be in the light.
But I knew of the light, and I remembered it. It had never left me.
But I had left it.
A sky, a blue sky…
"Perhaps next time you come out, the sky will be blue. Waiting just for you."
Was that an empty promise? Because I had been sure that it was Evian Grace's voice in my ears.
But who was he trying to fool? He was the one who had locked me in here, never to see daylight again.
[He] was the one that I needed to kill.
Only then would I be able to rest in peace, to go on and meet all those who had set this path before me.
Because if I failed, it would mean that all their work was for naught.
And I was not going to let that happen.
Not even to see the other side of the sky.