In the black landscape, the exhausted singing of one young man was the only sound that filled the shadow.
"Oh, you can tell by the way I flap my wings, I’m a woman’s man, no time for balls..."
Lying on the ground, Everett swirled the mist that was his finger along the smoke that covered the floor. At least he thought there was a floor under there. He had to be lying on something.
"Ah-ah-ah-ah, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die."
...For a while now, morale had been horribly low.
Everett no longer saw a way out of the predicament that had befallen him. Every attempt he made to touch the mirror somehow only made it worse.
By now, one could breathe on the thing and it would probably shatter. So would Everett.
The horseman was beside himself. Now, he was only trying to make peace with his dying.
*Huff!*
Everett rolled over so that he could look at the beast who was currently nudging him.
"Oh, hey buddy... Didn’t know that you could show up in here too."
Everett placed his head against the floor like a defeated animal.
"You should... probably get out of here though. I don’t want anything to happen to you from being in here while I break down-"
Riot suddenly stamped his hoof on what should have been the back of Everett’s head.m
Somehow, he did still feel the pain.
"OWW! I’m already dying here, or maybe that fracturing thing. Can’t you let me pass painlessly??"
"...Bitch."
"What?!"
Riot was a lot like his cousin Mercy. He didn’t really talk to his rider a lot, usually giving his approval of things based on bodily cues.
Stomping on his rider’s head and calling him a bitch was the most expressive Everett had seen him.
He would have been in awe if he weren’t already in pain.
"What the hell is your problem..?! I’m trying to make sure you can get out of here safely, dingus!"
"We go." Riot nudged Everett onto his side with his muzzle. "Not give up."
Everett gently reached out to stroke the snout of his most loyal companion. His chest felt tight and full of bile.
"...I don’t know what else to do, Riot. I’ve tried to be confident. I tried humility too. I have tried to be as honest with myself as I possibly can, and yet..." Everett felt himself bite his lip.
"I’m sorry you got stuck with the worst rider possible... If you had just gotten paired with one of my siblings, then-"
"Who say that?" The horse seemed to frown.
"What?"
"Who say you are worst?"
Everett fumbled on his words. "I-I mean, I just... It’s kinda obvious, you know...? I mean I can never really seem to do anything right, and all of my best decisions come from listening to someone else... I’m better off like-"
"Ask again." Riot nudged him with his hoof. "Who say that?"
It was an answer Everett knew. He simply couldn’t decide on which version of it to give. There had been many who had thought of him as...
"...That’s it...!"
"What it?"
Everett used his horse’s body to get up from the ground.
On shaky feet, he walked toward the mirror that was the source of his earlier madness .
"I guess... Sometimes we get so used to hearing certain things from the outside that we don’t really realize it. We carry these words and opinions about ourselves, and they become so natural that... we never really stop to ask if what we think about ourselves is from our own voice... or just the perspective of others."
Riot didn’t have a clue what his rider was talking about. He only knew that being humanoid sounded unnecessarily complicated.
For a while, Everett stood in place, drawing in deep breaths as he prepared to do the most insane thing he’d ever thought of in his life.
"...I’m... a misfit. But I like being good at things. I like other people knowing that I’m good at things. Swordplay, sex, I even learned how to dance just for those stupid parties my dad used to take me to.
I don’t really like how being good at things makes people I care about feel small. I’m not some asshole, I just... Want people to see how hard I worked to have what they think is natural talent. But it doesn’t matter.
I wanted my brothers to stop hating me. I wanted things to be like when we were kids, and we could just mess around without a care in the world. Things made sense back then. But now, it’s just like they look at me and see everything they aren’t.
That’s never been something I wanted. But by the time I tried to dial back, it was already too late. The old man had already shown me too much favoritism. I was an outsider, but I thought I could fix that.
Turns out, that bridge had already been burned. Not to mention...when you stop being the golden child, your parents stop giving a crap about you, too. Your mother can’t stand the sight of you. And your father sends you away to a dangerous military academy, not because he wants you to be better. But because he doesn’t care if you live or die."
Everett hadn’t realized it, but his feet had gradually reformed. From the ankles up, he was regrowing.
"...I liked being good at things. But pleasing people... that’s something I really seem to have a hard time with. So i just played around. But then i met my family and...
I want to start living up to my potential. I want to be good and keep getting better as the years go by.
But I don’t want that for my mom, my dad, or even my... other parent. I want to be fucking good at everything, because I hate the thought of being mediocre."
Everett’s blue eyes shone a deeper azure than ever before. More electrifying than a raging storm.
The cracks within the mirror slowly sealed themselves up. In the end, there was only a single broken shard left. Everett brought his hand to the glass and pushed it back into place.
"For good, bad, or worse... I want to give everything my all. Might be a little crazy in the future, but... the old man named me Havoc, right? I’m sure it’s nothing I can’t handle..."