Tiger's Short Stories

It Was Too Late

It Was Too Late

You think that you know him, that because you’ve seen the violence spread all around, the cities leveled, and the people killed that you know him. No, you only see a shadow of him. I won’t pretend that he didn’t do all those things, that he didn’t murder countless of innocents. I won’t even pretend that I wasn’t a part of it.

Power changes people.

He started off as my hero, and when he discovered that power, I was so glad, so happy. Some would be content to just let that be, let that discovery be written in the books and then move on. But the world is so messed up, and we’d been through our share of pain all throughout our lives.

Was it for revenge that we launched the first attack?

I can’t say.

Sure, revenge was part of it.

But we truly believed that we could make the world a better place. That as the violence spread, that it was just the pain of the night before a bright new day.

So, what changed?

Why am I raising an army against my brother?

I can’t say for sure.

The devastation, the bloodshed, you could say it was that.

Maybe it was even the day that the little girl came running to me, asking for someone to come help her mom get out of the destroyed house. She didn’t know who I was, that I had been the one to coordinate the attack, but she just saw a person, and so she trusted me.

It was too late.

Maybe it was the day where we turned the capital into a crater, left the Emperor dead along with his entire family. They didn’t see it coming, they thought of us as just a bunch of foolish rebels who were an annoyance at worst. He didn’t know that his life would end that day. Sure, his spies learned that something was coming, but he didn’t know the danger.

Not until it was too late.

That day, we changed the world.

And maybe we changed ourselves then too.

We had secured our place of power, a foundation for a land of peace and prosperity.

We didn’t call it an Empire, but that’s what it was. As the years passed, our territory and influence grew. We became heroes, the ones for whom everyone cheered. But when living in that kind of terror and pain for so long, it’s hard to get use to peace. The Empire hadn’t died with the death of the Emperor, we faced the threat of death on a daily basis. Maybe it would have been better if one of them had succeeded.

Was the world better this way? I didn’t know, and I still don’t. But one thing’s for sure, it’s not the way it should have been. My brother became paranoid, the adoration he inspired in the people soon turned to fear. I truly believe he cared about the world, he wanted a place where children could grow up without the abuse we went through. That’s probably why it took me so long to act.

I finally did though, prepared to strike him down.

But it was too late.

…

A/N: So, I bet your wondering what this piece is. Well, I’m a fan of the band Linkin Park, and for a long time, I’ve wanted to write a story based on their music. Specifically, an overarching story that spans their CDs A Thousand Suns and Living Things. As I started to hear some songs from their new CD, Hunting Party, this idea started to expand to that one as well.

With that being said, this story is a look into one of the main characters at the point in the story between A Thousand Suns, and Living Things. I may do more of this at some point, I don’t know. At the least, I thought it’d be fun to put up here.