The Sanity of Insanity

Gwen crosses the street.

If she were stupid, she’d have walked towards him (or whatever it was).

It is early in the morning and the wide, urban streets are bursting with a clutter of rumbling cars and bustling people, most certainly on their way to work. The autumn wind bites at her fingers as she pulls her hoodie tighter while peering anxiously for any sign of Jewels. She can still see Donni as she looks over her shoulder. Donni who is smiling at her. Donni who is a murderer. Donni who is dead. He is following her, weaving through the crowd elegantly, never once taking his eyes off her. She picks up her pace and turns onto another street.

She can’t be going mad – not now.

The Diamonds are searching for her and she cannot afford to lose focus for even a moment. It would only result in the loss of her life.

Which reminds her.

This is all his fault. The Jewels only want her dead because of him. He is the murderer not she. But the Monarchs didn’t see it that way because he had gone and gotten himself blown up by an Onyx of all Jewels. They had automatically assumed that she was the appalling Amethyst who would blame her actions on a dead Amber. Amber’s who cried when the all the other Jewels eradicated Havocs. Donni was nothing like the usual Amber though.

She almost halts and turns around just to confront him, to yell in his face about all the complications he has brought upon her life, the weight of his careless actions, how much she abhors him and deeply wishes he had stayed dead.

But she knows she is being an idiot because it has just occurred to her that he is most likely an illusion fabricated by the Moonstones. If the Moonstones have found her then they will most certainly tell the Diamonds and she will be dead in two minutes.

She is running now, the want to live overpowering the breathlessness and the sore ache in her chest. She briefly wonders why Donni chooses to pursue her instead of Folding and trapping her in the Unseen – or why he won’t just use magic to bind her, after all he had been a Pearl before he Switched.

Maybe it really was him. Maybe coming back from the dead had severed the link between him and his magical core or –

No. She won’t entertain that thought. It is probably all part of the Moonstone’s ornate plan.

She takes a left onto a much quieter street; one she does not recognise. She can hear his heavy footsteps almost right behind her. He is much closer than she wishes him to be, but she can hear that he is wearing out.

So long as he does before her, she may live.

She takes another left and she is at a dead end.

She is going to die.

She is going to die in a back alley and no one in the world will notice or care.

Her parents are worthless and she doubts her brother is aware of her existence. Any other relatives she may have despised her for reasons she was unable to fathom.

Her only friend had been murdered and an illusion of him was currently chasing her around town. She feels like screaming.

“Hey,” he says softly from behind her. This was it. Her death was imminent.

“Hi.”

She turns around and is struck by how alike this illusion looks to the person it is impersonating. The way he smiles down at her, the tug of lips, the wrinkling around his eyes. They are in a dark alley, yet she can see the mirth dancing in them. Somehow he lights up this dim and shabby area. This illusion is every bit of him in every feasible way. And then she knows he is real. Real. And alive.

“You suck, Gwen. You realise you made me chase you for ages and I – ”

“You’re dead,” she says simply, plainly. He is still panting from their run as he smiles.

“No.”

“You died.”

“Yes. It was rather painful.”

“So … you’re dead.”

“Nope.”

“You’re alive?”

“Not really. Could we take this conversation elsewhere? Maybe the Hub or the – ”

And through the awe of his remarkable survival she remembers why she should be annoyed with him – why she is seething with rage over what he’s done.

“I’ve been charged with the murder of the Ruby King,” she sees the quiet understanding laced in his features and chooses to continue. “The Diamonds want my head so no; I can’t take you to the Hub or the Command Centre or anywhere else in the Unseen.”

“I’m sorry.”

She looks at him disbelievingly.

“You could turn yourself in now, considering you’re very much alive.”

They both know what his answer will be. She is used to this.

“I can’t do that. Not now. I already told you, I’m not really – ”

“Of course, you wouldn’t turn yourself in,” she is tired now. They can’t have spoken for more than five minutes and she is already fatigued. He is a leech she can’t get rid of. Not even death will cleave his grip on her. He really is incorrigible.

He’s never cared for anyone but himself. He only plays for himself. Always.

“I really am sorry. For all of this.”

She decides there and then that she is done with his lies. There are people searching for her and she can’t lose focus. Not even for a half alive friend. But she must know.

“Why are you here?” she asks finally. She knows that since he is not here to turn himself in, he must need something from her. Because she is now certain that he did not come for a meaningless reunion or to apologise for being the way he is. Whatever he wants, she will not give.

“I need to go to the Academy,” she would have laughed at that absurdity of that statement if he had smiled as he said it. He is wearing a somewhat vacant expression that she chooses to ignore.

“No. No no no. Why would you – why would I – must you always – why? I just said that I can’t go to the Unseen – I’ll be killed – no!”

She takes decisive steps past him. She will leave this back alley and be done with him.

“I’ll turn myself in if you take me there.”

She freezes.

“You’re lying.”

She turns around to see him smile at the statement.

“While I was dead, I discovered things – things I wish I didn’t remember but I do. I have a theory I need to research and the best place to do that is at the Academy. I would go myself, but I no longer have a magical core which is rather dangerous.”

Now she is certain he is lying. Every living being has a magical core, from flora to fauna – even humans had one (it may be miniscule but still). She wishes he would at least try to be more creative. Maybe then she would actually fall for it and they could pretend none of this ever happened.

“No magical core? That’s silly, the link has probably been –”

“You don’t think I checked? I can’t use magic anymore! Try searching for my core – ah, you’ve noticed now. It’s gone. So you see – I’m not dead but I’m not alive either. I need to search the Academy for something that will help me.”

When she feels out to him with her magic there is nothing, simply emptiness. A bottle drained of its contents. She wonders if this is the price he paid for returning to life or if it is his punishment for being an unremorseful murderer.

“Why did you kill him?”

“I had my orders.”

“Ambers don’t order assassinations.”

“What would you know about that? You’re not an Amber and you don’t know what we did with our spare time.”

She can understand that. Every Guild had their purpose that they couldn’t share with those of other Guilds. After all, she would never tell him what the Amethysts really did deep in the Chaos Circles of the Unseen.

She sighs.

“You promise, you’ll turn yourself in? That I can go back to the Unseen and my job without a worry? That you are willing to be sentenced to death?”

“They won’t kill me. I was a Pearl. I’ll turn myself in and be out within a day. Then we can both go our separate ways.”

She knows he is lying and at some point in the distant future he will return and mess up her life again but she chooses to ignore it for now and smile. He has always had the irrevocable but dangerous talent of making her forget all her worries – to make her believe in something. To have hope.

Hope.

She can only pray that Hope doesn’t kill her.

They reach the Unseen through a Gateway on the other side of the city, mainly because none of the nearby Gateways led directly to the Academy and Gwen decided it would be prudent to spend as little time ambling through the Unseen as possible.

She had decided to use a Gateway instead of Folding for the same reason. Also because Folding would require her to use magic which the Diamonds could easily track.

The two hour taxi ride had been fraught with tension and anxiety and the usual worries of ‘would she be caught by the Diamonds’ or ‘what if they were waiting for her at the Gateway’ had run through her head dozens of time until she felt dizzy.

Making it through the Gateway without being seen had been challenging but they had somehow managed to slip by the fatigued Aquamarine Guards with their teal uniforms.

As of now they were deep in the labyrinth that was named the Academy.

The Unseen was nothing like the human world regarding the fact that each time a person walked into the Unseen it looked vastly different. This was mainly because nothing ever really stayed in the same place for longer than five minutes, not even buildings.

It was worse in the great Academy where a person could be standing in a room and find themselves in a corridor minutes later. The only room exempt from that was the library but even then books could disappear and reappear as they pleased.

All in all, the Unseen was not a wonderful place to live in which was why all Jewels but the Diamonds, Moonstones, Onyxes and the unlucky few chose to live in the human world.

At some point, Gwen had been one of the unlucky few forced to live in the Unseen. She had lived there with her squad before they all died terrible deaths she didn’t like to think about.

“We’re here.”

“Where exactly?”

After taking hundreds of twists and turns they found themselves in a small corner of the library that she couldn’t remember from all ten of the years she spent training here. She is embarrassed mainly because the library was where she spent all here time when she was younger. She had always enjoyed to lose herself in the fantasy of fiction. She had never much liked studying because that brought her back to the uncomfortable reality of having a brother who had been much more loved than her.

All the books are coated in a thick layer of dust and the faded wallpaper was peeling, swiftly indicating that no person has been here in decades. As she watches Donni’s eyes examine the shelves delicately, she wonders how he knows this place even though she is sure no Monarch does.

Maybe something he discovered while dead?

Quite suddenly he lunges forward and clutches a gold rimmed book, trying his hardest to pull at the thing which … seems to be fighting back. The book … growls and writhes in his hands as he pulls it from the shelves with one final tug. It pounces at his face and he roughly wrestles it to the ground while simultaneously attempting to open up a specific page.

Gwen can only watch from the side-lines dumbfounded as his face lights up when he sees something (important to him, she is not sure what the book contains) in the book’s gnarled pages. He turns to her to say something when the book latches itself onto his neck and he screams. Red drips down his neck and dampens his pale blue t-shirt.

Seconds later the book is gone and Donni is staring up at her. He bears no injury and she is momentarily confused but chooses to be glad that he is all right.

“That was fortunate,” she comments.

Donni simply stares more.

“What. Was?” he says finally.

“The Unseen obviously. It took the book away – look! We’re in a different section of the library now,” she replies as evenly as she can.

He nods, suddenly aware of their new surroundings and gets up from the floor, brushing dust off his clothes.

They have taken no more than three steps when they hear it.

The soft whoosh of someone Beaming. Then another. And another. Eleven more times to be exact.

She flinches from the sharp white light that surrounds them and once she opens her eyes she is surrounded by people wearing clothes of the same blinding colour.

The Diamonds have found her.

One of the dozen surrounding her has stepped forward to say something but she is engrossed in the fact that Donni doesn’t look a bit surprised to see them.

“What did you do?” she hisses at him.

He ignores her and strolls over to the Diamonds then stands at the side of the one who is bellowing orders at her.

“You killed the Ruby King,” Donni states quietly but she still hears it. She sees red.

“I didn’t –”

“Yes. You did.”

“I’m not the murderer here!”

“You killed him and then you killed me. Because I found out what you had done and went straight to Aquamarine’s!”

“I’M NOT A KILLER!” she moves to attack him but white tendrils of magic bind themselves around her until she is kneeling on the marble floor with her arms behind her back.

“YES YOU DID! I was your friend and you killed me!” he continues angrily, features contorted into something foreign on his face.

She knows she is not a killer. He is the murderer not she. He has to be.

“REMEMBER!” he thunders.

And then she does.

She is a murderer. She killed the Ruby King as he slept, slipping something into his drink earlier in the evening then decapitating him late at night. She had confided in Donni, wishing to tell someone of her deep secret, hoping he would be proud. Instead, she had gotten disgust and revulsion then he Beamed away from her instantly (she assumes he told the Aquamarine’s then). She had killed him later that day, an explosion that killed twelve others and destroyed a Sapphire building.

She is a murderer.

And she cannot remember for the life of her why she did it. Why she killed all those people. Why she doesn't feel remorse.

“There is something very wrong with you. Maybe it’s from watching all your squad members get mauled or maybe it’s from all the time you spent in the Chaos Circles – either way you have a fundamental problem. After all, I’m not really here.”

She struggles against her binds, hoping to see if he’s lying. She can’t be going mad – not now.

But she sees him fading. He has no magical core because he doesn't exist. It seems she has been mad from the very beginning.

“You brought yourself to the Unseen. You went to the Academy. You led the Diamonds here yourself. You used magic to Beam the book and you didn’t even notice.”

She is going to die.

She is going to die and she deserves it.

“You brought your death upon yourself.”

And then he is gone.

“-YOUR SENTENCE IS DEATH!” the Diamond roars, the final cadence of his glorious speech. The conclusion to her pitiful life. It seems that Hope really did kill her in the end.

White lights stream towards her at impossible speeds and she is-