Return of the one long gone

You're dead to me (but I still care)

Scott never thought he would wake up to a day where Xornoth wasn't a threat, or that he would be in his own house, cuddled with Jimmy because life was finally returning to what it should be; he could finally love Jimmy with the other around him. He thought, the day he left, that would be it. Karma for being the only uncorrupt member of his family to survive. He was never certain if he would be chosen to die too, or live the rest of his years constantly running until his last breath.

But he hadn't. He had been given the chance to live the rest of his life normally. Unlike his brother. Some part of him regrets it. Part of him wonders if something could have saved him, given him the person he's seen in flashes out in the wild, when nothing but Xornoth's looming presence and the wilderness surrounded him. Maybe if he had done something else when they were children, he could have already married Jimmy instead of running. 

Yet he knew that wasn't what the universe intended for him, at least not in this life. Only one of two could survive. Not because one was weaker, or because one was favored over the other. But because it was Scott's duty as champion to ensure peace ran through every street and river within the country and the world. It was Xornoth's to do the opposite. To kill and meddle. He would forever think of death as a game. Will he kill them will he not. Almost as if everyone's lives were in the hands of evil, that he was God, choosing who dies and who lived. In Xornoth's world, no one would live. They would either be dead or suffering for all eternity, waiting for something to extract them from the painful existence they would live.

A voice whispered to him then, almost as if sensing he was blaming his brother for life and the destiny they lived. It said, "Evil isn't born. It isn't a natural instinst as a baby. Evil is made and manipulated into people. That's what happened to Xornoth. Don't blame him, just love him unconditionally because he is blood and you two had a connection stronger than anyone else." He remembers the voice from somewhere. It's hazy, but female and soft, motherly almost. He doesn't remember how his parents sound, they died when he was too young to have the memory of it, but something in him, maybe the memories you always have some recognition of, were pointing the signs as his mother, her words like those on a death bed.

He was never told how his parents died. He asked for a while during his teenage years, but his advisors would never tell him. They knew the answer, that was clear enough. Their faces always morphed into this look akin to being lost. Like they had been taken to soon, by someone who had no right to do so. Maybe now he had the answers to that question, maybe he could finally know why they died. Maybe it was Xornoth, when he was first corrupted, whenever that was. He wishes he had time with his brother, not the monster he was forced into becoming.

Part of him wished it wasn't them in the next line of champions.

He remembers the first time he read the book. It was hidden in a cave, possibly covered when it was placed there. Rivendell was centuries old, it wouldn't surprise him if a generation long before his own decided to let fate come to whoever was next in line, instead of them coming to fate, or having it lying in a library, or handed down to each person who it could have been. Maybe they could have never been certain who it was going to be, maybe that was for the universe to decide.

Being Champion to a God wasn't a choice. It wasn't a way of life that you yourself could pave. It was an honor and a duty. It was a power bestowed only upon those worthy of it. That was something Aeor would constantly remind him of when he felt like he was doing nothing but waiting for the prophecies to come true. For him to blanket the world in snow if the worst came. 

Scott had never possessed self-confidence. It was never taught to him. Neither was happiness or anything else apart from professionalism and cold heartedness. That's who he had been for years. It was possible his brother had that too. Maybe his parents weren't who they were made out to be in the history books. Maybe his family had never been happy, what he thought could be an arranged marriage, war, corruption, two brothers, one good, one evil, both fighting against each other because they were champions of Gods who had also fought each other.