For the Heart I Once Had

Disclaimer: Troubador has and never will own Yu-Gi-Oh! or Nightwish.

"Heaven today is but a way

To the place I once called home

Heart of a child, one final sigh

As another love grows cold" - From For the Heart I Once Had by Nightwish

It all began one night, no different than any other. It was just as cold, just as dark, the stars glittered and danced eternally in the sky, the jackals cried among the dunes. It was a night just like the one before, and the one before that.

But in this single moment of eternity, it would change many nights that preceded it.

He was still soft and unmolded, like that fresh play-doh you get from the store, unmarred by others hands, ready to take on any shaped willed by its creator. And at its core was a still-beating heart, full of a myriad of emotions form the brightest joy to the blackest despair. His mind free of dark voices or violent dreams that plagued even his waking moments, when he dared to close his burning eyes.

He once had a heart, saw the promises of heaven in the sky, and still believed in joy despite the hardness of his life.

Until the soldiers came.

In an instant, he was running from the screams, the fire that danced more seductively than the belly dancers his father sometimes brought home and the marching soldiers that spread destruction as fast as the fever that had swept through the village. He choked on the acrid smell of burning flesh, wood, and stone, as the smoke smeared across the sky and obscuring the stars like a living shadow.

He sat wide-eyed behind the remains of his friend's house, as soldiers cornered some men and ran spears through them, so they hung limp like the fish he caught from the Nile. He still forced himself to watch, tears blurring his eyes as the remains of his people were thrown into the boiling pot, fleshing melting of the bones like candle wax, burning disintegrating into nothing but the liquid that was poured into a mould.

And when it lifted, smoke and steam hissed like angry serpents from the slab where golden items lay, glinting and shining like the stars, but without the same promises. He could only wish and pray and stare, his brain numb and his body as stiff and unmoving as the stone he looked at. It wasn't until the conspirators began to talk in earnest, that he was free from the hypnotizing spell that had lay hold of him since the first moment he saw the solider mercilessly hack away his kin.

He had no idea how he got into the granary, stuffed amongst the remains of sacks and cloth and grain. His mind was numb, uncomprehending of the weight of his new changed world. He was lost and cold, shaking as he stumbled to his feet. The temple, the Gods, his grandmother's voice whispered. Seek their help.

So he did.

But they rejected him. The remains of his weak and hoping heart were crushed and smashed like the bits of pottery they threw at him as they screamed for him go. To return the fiery pits of Apep from which surely a white –haired demon like he had come from. So he fled, tears streaming down his face to mix with the dried blood and grime that caked his face. He fled to the river, to hide amongst the reeds and papyrus plants that stemmed and thrived along its blanks…

Yes, he remembered that single moment, that infinitesimal spec among the millennia he had existed that defined his existence, made him what he was today. The child and light that once existed was gone, snuffed out faster than a burning candle or a dying light bulb. In its place was a crazed animalist being, with darkness holding what was left of his heart together.

In the long stretching darkness that was his eternity, that moved and stretched like long cold molasses he sometimes finds himself wondering what if.

What if that night had never happened, was never conceived? What could he have become, what was the foreseeable events of his future? Perhaps a prideful life as the best thief of his village, strong and lethal like a lion. No future of luxury or politics, for although he and his kin were human, they still broke laws. Hunting and foraging by the Nile, marking the passing's of the year with its rise and fall. Watching his family and friends grow up, and although he may have still been a defiler to the gods at least he would still be human, still has enjoyed the sweet taste of freedom and life and oh so much joy, so much love…

But time does not heal a dead boy's scars.

The crimes done to his person, to his people would not go unpunished. The laws of the gods themselves deemed it so. After all, wasn't "I have not slain" one of the confessions pronounced in the Hall of Two Truths?

So what if he punished the wrong man? So what if he ended up helping the very Priest who had started it all? As long as he got his revenge, as long as he satisfied his peoples' lustful desire, the longing thirst of revengedeathsufferinghate…

Not to mention their endless suffering, trapped in the jewels they so once coveted. He was justified in his cause, and so he did what was necessary to achieve his goals.

But he was trapped, and all the open wounds were left unhealed, to sting and ooze, as infection and shadows and it took hold within them. The wounds were already deep and bleeding when he had fought the first time, so when those self-righteous priests and that Ra-damned fool sealed him they just grew and grew over the millennia.

Until finally, what came out was so much colder, more demonic with only the barest and thinnest shreds of who he once was. Like a prisoner from his cell he was released into the light, the soul of an innocent.

The boy was young, not as young as he was when it all happened but still growing and changing. His soul shined and glinted like new fallen snow in the morning's first light. When the Thief saw it, he laughed, cruel and madly, at the naive and foolishness of this boy. He would be the perfect vessel to carry out his vengeance.

Even when the boy was aware of him and began to fight, even when he whispered with tears in his eyes, "…why? Why do you do this? What are you? Don't you have a heart?..." he still laughed and mocked him. What did he care? His heart had been lost long ago, disappearing among the shadows and sand and blood and utter darkness. Faded and torn, old and forlorn it was. Whatever was left would not even be a fit meal for Ammit should he ever truly die and be brought before the scales. So why should he care, about having a heart?

But in some vague, dusty distant corner of his mind where his last shred of humanity existed, the boy reminded him of what he once was. So that when the end truly came, as he screamed and writhed and pleaded in his final moments, did not some small voice weep, weep for the heart he once had, for the child forever gone.

Time will not heal a dead boy's scars

Time will kill

For the Heart I'll never have,

For the child forever gone,

The music flows because it longs

For the Heart I once had.

Fin.

A/N: R&R plz, constructive criticism welcomed