Wings

40: Never Going To Let Go Of That Wire

A/N: Couldn't find an official Regina Spektor YouTube version of this song, so you instead get one of my favorite animatics of all time. 

Luke POV

Track: Two Birds, Regina Spektor

In hindsight, the insanity was good for me.

This is for multiple reasons, the first being that it made me just crazy enough to do something like throw a knife at my dad—I don't think anyone in their right mind could ever have done something like that. If I hadn't been clearly struggling to keep a firm grip on my mind, maybe they wouldn't have let me be around him at all as things started to go to shit. As it was, though, I wasn't really enough of a threat to worry about, and no one quite cared enough whether I got myself killed to make me go into hiding when the war broke out. (If I had been sane, I'm sure they would have put me on the battlefield instead. Really, it's a marvel they didn't make me go despite my madness.)

The second being that no one quite believes I'm better yet, and as long as I act a little weird every once in a while, they maintain that they're not really that worried about me.

And the third being that I now see how ridiculous it was that, even before the insanity, I saw Hermes as such an untouchable figure. All-powerful. He's just a man, really. A knife can take him down just as easily as it can take me. It had seemed impossible before.

The fact of the matter is that somewhat soon after my father died, I found my head began to clear again—coherent thoughts no longer feel like a fight with myself, the world remains steady under my feet, and no illusions come to haunt me. It's strange how much easier it is to live my daily life with this burden no longer on my shoulders.

With this newfound clarity of mind, I discover that I have completely shifted my worldview.

And if I've had a change of heart, then who knows—perhaps others have as well. And that's what motivates me to at least try.

So one morning a few days after Nico di Angelo's trial, I head down the twisting staircases, finding that the lights are dimmer the farther down I go, and moisture drips off the walls in certain places. All in all, the dungeons are not what I would consider to be livable —they're dirty and dark and mostly insufferable.

But I'm not king, and prison reform is no longer something I have to think about.

Down and down the rows of cells, one would expect to find hundreds of prisoners after a war. That's not quite what happened, however. In all of the cells throughout the entire dungeon, there is only one prisoner of war.

At the end of a long hall, a solitary door. The Monster's old cell, I've been told. (I've heard we're not calling him the Monster anymore. No one else can come up with an appropriate nickname, though. Some tried "the Angel" or "the Guardian," but that makes little sense when there are apparently millions of Guardians out there, not just one. I'm sure someone will come up with something, eventually.)

I stand at the door and very briefly consider turning back around and giving up. She probably hasn't had a change of heart, anyway. She probably will have that same look on her face that she always does, the look that tells me to be quiet so that he doesn't get angry.

The great thing about me being insane last week is that no one really pays much attention when I break into rooms of the castle where I'm not supposed to be, I think to myself as I pull a stolen keyring from my pocket and fit the key to the door.

The door creaks as it swings open. On the other side, my mother flinches at the sound of movement.

She looks awful. Whatever she did to become a god, it must have been draining—and she now wears bandages over her eyes. She's injured in several places, actually—gauze drapes off her arms like one of the fancy dresses she used to wear. (Someone should come in and redo those. It's not going to be me, though. Heaven knows she never helped me with mine.) (Maybe I'll take her to the doctor in the village...)