“Go ahead, kid. You deserve to be happy for once…” His voice, heavy as a stone, is accompanied by the morbid stare that could only be precipitated from the angst in his eyes.
“Don’t do this to me Professor. I don’t want this” The sleeper, now the spitting image of a young scholar in professional attire. "Please Profes-"His eyes welling up as the tears begin to tremble oh so slightly as they stare down at the cliff that beckons them forward.
“Do what you must do! You wanted life.” Now the professor mirrored the boy’s tears and striked his own away with the side of his gloved hand and the unmistakable and undeniable authority of his profession…a silence falls over them, swallowing them whole leaving them in eternity in oblivion…but with so much at hand, eternity seems minute.“Take mine or I’ll set it free myse--!” like glass in a mirror, it shatters as Mockery lets out his last cry to the world and breaks that eternity, cut short of breath and short of life and short of everything that he’s ever felt and ever known at that brief moment as the grim reaper sweeps forward materializing in the palm of a chivalrous night, his fist digging into the polyester fabric of the coat vest of his teacher, clenching tightly into his skin as if he were to take his heart by the roots…’why’…a thought so lonely escaping through the maw of his mouth...one can only surmise that it too was joined in hand by life’s tender touch as they depart for a new home, perhaps this time they could live together in peace, perhaps this time they could live without pain, perhaps this time…with heart.
“Jack…why…” The apprentice and the mentor crash to the floor, the sound of bone hitting the metal clanks loudly and contaminates the air in that same insanity that these characters have been born with and with such monotone does it echo softly in the house of mirrors. Their tears mixing together as they envelope themselves in one last fatherly embrace and as Jack nears closely to his student he whispers in the boy’s ear:
“because, kid, memories don’t live forever….see ya kid…thanks.” and with a chuckle, an old friend, an old teacher, a father, a son, and a youth that never had the time to breathe died…but not a heart, let’s get that straight, heh…not a heart.