Author Games: Empty Night

Finals: Leo Wilder

Fear.

It is a word that Mal would have never found in her vernacular. If she were still here today, she'd laugh for Leo even having a glimpse of what the word meant.

It is also a word that had saturated every fiber of Leo's being since the very day he began to understand who is father was and what his father expected of him. James Wilder had seen to it that Leo fully grasped the concept of fear. That not having power was the single scariest thing in the entire universe to him. That without power, Leo would have nothing to defend himself against the world.

Fear.

It is something that coats your tongue in the copper taste of blood. It injects itself into your bloodstream, carves itself into the entire length of your spine. It poisons you, filling your body with toxins so that you would do anything to be rid of it, but you wouldn't know where to start.

It is a cluttered room with no hopes of eradicating the mess. It surrounds you until it fills your lungs every time you suck in Oxygen, until it feels like your suffocating under the weight of it. It is a perpetual ocean with you in the middle, struggling to stay afloat as the waves keep forcing you under the surface.

Fear.

Do you know what it's like to live in a constant, unceasing state of fear? How that takes so much of a toll on the mind that your body starts to suffer, too?

Fear is something that Leo is not capable of feeling anymore. It had been cradling him for so long, that he felt 100 pounds lighter at just the realization that he'd finally rid himself of it. He'd flushed it out of system the moment he'd buried his father under the soil.

He no longer fears who he is and where he's come from. He knows now that there is no reason to fear these things, that the entire time what he truly feared was disappointing James Wilder and winding up just like the rest of his family. He also feared his powers, that they'd drive him so far off the cliff he'd destroy more than he could handle.

Control.

He knows his limits now, he knows how much he can take before it comes too much. For the first time in his entire life, he has control and he knows how to keep it. Leo has come to reside within the person he was always meant to be. He is now himself, and not the man his father expected of him or the man that the voices were trying to form. He is Leo.

Grief.

Leo was no stranger to loss. He'd lost the only people he'd ever loved, he'd lost his childhood, he'd lost his happiness. He was, however, a stranger to how deeply that his grief could cut him. He had never thought that his grief could chisel his heart out of his chest, shape it into something new so that it would no longer function well enough to pump blood throughout his body.

He wasn't very old when his mother had been murdered, but he had been under the advisement of his father long enough that it didn't matter. He had already been impacted greatly by the river of impassivity.

"Leo I'm going to get you out of here, I'm going to get you away from your father. I want you to be able to be normal, do you understand?" there was a particular fervency to his mother's voice as her hands tightly gripped his shoulders and her hazel eyes peered into his. He couldn't help but nod, enchanted by the fear that crossed her face as a roaring yell erupted throughout Sanctuary.

It was odd to him to see emotion carried so heavily, like it was worth more than the entire galaxy to have an ounce of it on your shoulders.

"Mom, he's coming," his little sister Miko tugged on their mothers' shirtsleeve, the fear in her eyes mimicking that of an Antelope awaiting the starved Lion.