Alone.

I drifted, half aware, through a sea of infinite black. Dark skies stretched above, as barren and empty as the deep below. There was no divide between heaven and ocean, and I moved freely through both.

Images bubbled up from the deep, fragmented imaginings that filled my mind.

Was it a dream?

Danette and me, best friends forever, a relationship built of convenience. We'd arrived at the village around the same time, and the other children had never really accepted either of us. Danette was just a little too slow, and me a little too quiet. They found her stupid. They found me creepy

We'd been having training sessions together since childhood. She'd wanted to be a town guardian. I just wanted to have a friend. She wanted the admiration of the peers that had scorned her. I didn't want to be alone.

It was after our last training session that events had been set in motion. We'd been forced to wrap up early, for Lady Layna had summoned us. One did not make Lady Layna wait.

Was it a memory?

We kneeled as Lady Layna spoke. My heart swelled with pride and happiness as she gave us what we'd wanted. Danette and me, together we'd be town guardians, siblings in battle. She'd get the admiration she wanted. I'd get to see her beaming face and know we'd be inseparable. But I was confused; usually there was a more public ceremony…

Afterwards, things became clear. Too clear.

It was if the frosted lens of my perception had been shattered, replaced by crystal clarity. It was a pure and unblemished view that showed the world in a new and horrible light. It was all so obvious. The pain of a broken world, the vain schemes of those who tried to fix it, and how little it all mattered. It was like standing on a mountain vista, the planet before you in miniature, small and trivial.

The solution was as clear as my mind.

I looked up at Layna. That woman had raised me, was practically my mother. It was like looking at her for the first time. I did not see a caring parent, a loving protector. I saw a schemer, a betrayer, someone who saw me as nothing more than a tool.

I was not angry. I was annoyed.

She seemed so… insignificant, a bug that I could squash. I knew her machinations, and they were as minute and unimaginative as she was. Where did the insect get off thinking it could use me?

It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a memory. It was a nightmare.

Danette was covered in blood. Layna's blood. I'd never seen so much blood. It was… interesting. I'd never killed a person before, and now I knew I'd been missing out on quite an experience. It was great fun.

My best friend on the other hand was all torn up about it. She was wailing like a big baby over Layna's corpse. It was pretty embarrassing, really.

"How… How could you?"

I would have to kill her of course. A shame.

"I'll kill you… I'll kill you!"

I stared at Danette with burning clarity.

"Everybody needs to die."

It was an awakening.

--

Alone forever.

I floated in a universe of shadow. How long had I been here? Days? Weeks? Years? There was no such thing as time in a world of permanent dark. Dreams and visions came and went. Were they significant? There was no such thing as significance in a world of nothingness.

After a moment or millennia of stillness, I decided to try moving. I stretched my hand out in front of me, reaching into the dark for something, anything. There was only the hand, stretching out into an eternity of nothing.

I stared at the hand that had slaughtered so many. It was the hand that had killed friend and foe alike. It was the hand that had worked for an empty world, much like my prison of solitude. It was my hand.

If I had a second chance, would I have stayed that hand? Did ever even have a choice? At first, it was so clear, so obvious, and so necessary. Everyone needed to die. That was that. Then…

In the end they came for me. Most didn't know me beyond my title and my terror. A few had faced me in battle before, but they did not know me either. There was one exception. She was there, back from the dead.

Layna.

She talked of the pain of the world and righting the wrongs. She offered me the chance to turn away from the bloody path I walked. Part of me wanted to, a single fragment of my old distorted self. A fragment I hadn't even known existed. It wanted to return to simpler times, back before clarity, before emptiness, before being alone. I said as much, but they would not allow it. They had come to kill me, and they would accept nothing less.

I wasn't ready to die. Everyone else had to go first.

But before the slaughter began, the knight came to the front. Good, it had been a thorn in my flesh for too long. I expected another melodramatic tirade before the battle would begin. Instead the knight spoke with a familiar voice, and removed her helmet to reveal a familiar face.

…Danette?

Danette.

My friend. My only friend. Layna had betrayed me. Gig had betrayed me. Lobo had betrayed me. The others would have betrayed me eventually, or I would have betrayed them, it didn't matter. Danette, in her own twisted, stupid way believed in me even as she did her all to snap my neck. Tried to save me even after I had betrayed and tried to murder her. If I had asked her, she probably would have told me she was fighting for me.

It was so contradictory, so dumb, so like her.

I beat them back but did not kill. I wounded but did not slay. Everything demanded that they must die, but a tiny sliver of myself made me hesitate. Layna was there, and she above all deserved a cruel death, but so was Danette and…

"Danette." I said, as if trying out the name.

She always had been my weakness. Even in the beginning, I had hesitated in her case. I'd left her for last, and then I had only stabbed her. It was little surprise she had survived, Layna's intervention or no.

Why was she my weakness?

It was because I was afraid, afraid of being alone. It was because even as I sought to murder the world, I feared being lonely. Danette and me, we had always done everything together. When Layna had been aloof and the other children avoided us, then at least we had each other. With her, I was never alone.

The second offensive began soon after. Danette led the charge.

She came at me at full speed, her blades drawn. It was a mad, final kamikaze rush, her last gambit to stop me. She always had been kind of dumb. I struck first, a forward thrust, expecting it to be parried so she could…

She was face to face with me. The blade hadn't missed. She hadn't blocked. It was sticking right through her. Danette…

She smiled at me.

It was a sad smile.

Now she was gone, and I would forever be alone.

I looked at the hand that had murdered my best friend. It still reached into the dark, but now it was reaching for something, a slight glimmer in the night sky, a single star in all the darkness.

In hindsight it was such an obvious strategy. She had sacrificed herself to become a crimson tear. She had died to help them stop me.

It was so stupid it was brilliant.

I looked at my opponents, and saw with insane clarity that I could beat them. Could crush them. Could bring about my apocalyptic vision of the death of everything.

But Danette's smile haunted me.

I moved through the dark, swimming through the night sky, flying through the black ocean. My murderous hand stretched with all its might. Would it grab, would it throttle, would it bring even this last glimmer to an end? It didn't matter. I had to go, had to see-

I lost. I failed. I died.

I didn't even care.

Even as my life ebbed out of me, I felt nothing but cold apathy, and thought about nothing but Dannette's final smile.

They asked what fate I wished of my soul, and I said it didn't matter. It didn't, my quest had failed, my friend was dead.

They decided to seal me, after some deliberation. They wished for my soul to find peace.

How could anyone find peace alone?

Hours, seconds, minutes, it didn't matter, I charged into the dark, accelerating even faster as the glimmer began to take shape. I had forgotten? How could I have forgotten?

"Danette!" I called into the dark.

She had been waiting for me.

We had been sealed together at her request. She couldn't explain why, but I understood all the same. Danette and me, best friends forever, we had always been together, and only bad had happened since we had been torn apart.

She said she would help me find peace, but first I would need to rest. She sang the words of the lullaby that I had taught her so long ago, and I drifted off into the dark.

I somehow managed to stop before I slammed into her. I paused, almost not believing she was really there, really in front of me.

Danette stirred from a deep slumber, stretching and rubbing her eyes. She looked at me without hint of alarm or fear. "Oh, your awake. What time is it?"

After realizing I was only floating there gaping at her, she seemed to remember where she was. She placed her hands on her hips and attempted to look authoritarian. "Hey! You better not be planning anything funny! I'm a big bad crimson tear now, so I can snap your neck before you even think of trying anything."

"Danette…" I said.

She looked at me funny. "Why are you sticking your arm out like that anyways?"

I remembered my hand, my bloodied, murdering hand. It knew what it had to do, it knew with the purest clarity that it would have to snake, have to grab, have to snap and shatter. It would have to escape and bring everything to an end.

Instead, it reached out and clasped Danettes arm, anchoring me to her and my punishment. She struggled at first, but then seem to realize it was not an attack. I pulled in close, embracing her.

I shook with convulsive sobs, but the tears never came.

--

Together.

We drifted through the dark abyss. To some the infinite black would be overwhelming. To some even one companion would be a vast loneliness too great to bear. But we had each other, and that was all we had ever needed. In truth, to us the world had always been dark beyond one another, so it was hardly a sacrifice at all.

Danette and me, best friends forever, a relationship built of the truest type of love.