Through Her Lives

Reborn

United States of America, 1832

He walked the same streets with a confusion he had felt since his birth. He no longer believed that things were impossible. The mere fact that he was standing there, as a man, proved that.

The streets hadn't changed much in the twenty years he was gone. If asked he could draw a map of them with his eyes closed. He'd learnt them off by heart when he was working at the plantation.

Many looked at him in disgust, torn clothes, blackened hands and smelly but he just smiled. It didn't matter how he lived, he was not going to ask questions but he would be happy as long as he lived.

He took these walks daily since coming back with nothing else to do he wandered the streets. And it was on one of those ordinary walks that he saw him. His old grey hair bobbing up and down as he walked in his fancy clothes. His walking stick tapping beside him, in eighteen years it was almost as if he hadn't changed a day.

His blood ran cold as he watched the man walk further and further away. He had let him get away with it again, he thought as the man went around the corner. This was the day he was on earth for and he had simply watched as his killer walked away. Not even noticing him.

He ran like he had never before, through the crowds on the streets. Not bothering to stop and apologise for the shoves he gave and the people he tripped.

"Bewegen!" he yelled with such force people jumped and instantly moved out of his way. He was puffed as he turned the same corner as the man had.

The dirt of the streets clouded his view and the air was thick. 

Where had the horrible man gone? 

His eyes drifted from one side of the street to the other. Spotting the man further down, hobbling away as he tapped the walking stick. The man turned again, down a narrow street. Without thinking he followed, making sure now to keep his distance to avoid detection. When they were far enough away from the common pedestrians walking the streets he whispered his name.

"Ashford" The man didn't turn around and he grew surer by the second. Anger was nearly bursting through his chest , he quickened his pace. He was right behind the man now and in an angry blind haze he grabbed his walking stick. Stopping its incessant tapping, he paid no attention to the man's face as he pushed him to the ground the anger taking over his actions.

 He drew the walking stick above his head as if it were a hammer used by a blacksmith and brought it down upon the man's face with a whack. He stood up as the man yelled and screamed. Whacking him again and again, enjoying his pain and fear. The smacks were accompanied by snapping, the snapping of bones. He kept hitting until the man drew quiet.

He screamed in frustration as the man stayed quiet, no longer fighting. He took each blow, his body moving like a bag of hay. Sending a final blow to his head, causing more blood to cover the small street he bent down over the man.

"How's it feel oh mighty Major Thales?" and he looked down at the man's blood covered face a smirk on his face.

He looked at the brown eyes, the low forehead, the very few wrinkles and the single eye glass and his eyes widened. His heart missing a beat, it was not possible. He had somehow altered his appearance but even while thinking it, he knew it wasn't true. He looked at the unsuspecting, innocent man he had just killed and cried. Long streams of tears ran off his cheeks and onto the man's body. Yet again he had been fooled. He had not only killed a man but killed a man that had done nothing to him. He fell to the ground in devastation, shaking as he picked up the walking stick. It wasn't even the same, there were no silver fittings, and this, he looked at it sadly, was the walking stick of a middle class man. He checked the man's body, finding nothing then looked at the man's hands. They were the same as hands he had seen all through his previous childhood. Hands the helped him through hard times. The hands of a watchmaker, slightly dirty, unique due to the strength of them but the delicacy of them as well. He had seen the back of a  middle class watchmaker.

He spent a long time in the ally way with the corpse of the man he had just killed. It was a while until anyone found them. By the time they did it was night and he had been sitting there, no more tears left to cry for hours. The night man happened across them, bending down to help the man he held before noticing he was dead. He stood up in shock, looking at his blood splattered face. The night man's previously kind face turning into an ugly twist of a sneer and hatred, he walked back to his wagon without a glance backward, offering them no help. 

He stood up, staggering slightly and walked down the street. Happening across a member of the night watch walking drunkenly around the street. He pulled him aside and explained the dead man he had left in the ally and the truth that he had in fact killed him. The man called of the other night watch men to grab him and throw him in the cell as he went to retrieve the watchmaker's body.