Chapter 83 (3)
The darkness was complete and absolute, and Elijah floated in it for a long time with no sense of his body and no sense of time and no sense of anything except the void that surrounded him.
Then a light appeared in the distance, small and white and faint, and it grew larger as it approached until it filled his entire field of vision.
The white figure stood before him, featureless and bright, and its voice echoed through the darkness like a bell ringing in an empty cathedral.
"You would leave everything behind for a woman," the figure said. It was not a question.
Elijah stood in the darkness with his arms at his sides and his eyes fixed on the white figure, and he did not hesitate because the answer was clear in his mind even if it was not clear in his heart.
"I want her in my life more than I want to see her gone," he said. "If I'm prepared to lose her for my goals, then I should be prepared to lose my goals for her."
The white figure was silent for a moment, and when it spoke again, its voice was softer, almost sad. "Do not use your emotions to make this decision, Little King. Use your mind."
"The pain in my heart is telling me something else," Elijah replied, and his voice cracked on the words because the void inside him was still there, still empty, still aching for the woman who had told him to come back to her and only her.
"The heart is a liar," the white figure said. "It tells you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear. You cannot have both, Elijah. You cannot be the King that you need to be and the man that Lisa wants you to be. You must choose."
Elijah shook his head because he did not want to choose, because choosing meant losing something that he could never get back, because he had spent his whole life running from choices like this one and he was tired of running.
"I refuse to choose," he said. "I refuse to lose her, and I refuse to lose myself."
The white figure sighed, and the sound was heavy with disappointment. "If you choose the girl, I would rather die with the King than watch a King become pathetic. There is no third option, Elijah. There is no path that gives you everything you want. That is the burden of leadership, and if you cannot carry it, then you were never meant to be a King."
The white figure faded, dissolving into the darkness like smoke in the wind, and Elijah was alone again.
Then another figure appeared beside him, and this one was not white and featureless. This one had his face and his body and his black hair, and his eyes were silver and calm and familiar.
"Alter Elijah," Elijah said.
Alter Elijah stood beside him in the darkness with his hands in his pockets and his silver eyes fixed on something in the distance that Elijah could not see. "Are you here to change my mind?" Elijah asked.
Alter Elijah shook his head slowly. "I'm here to show you something," he said. "Follow me."
The darkness around them dissolved, and Elijah found himself standing on a boat in the middle of an endless ocean.
The sky above him was black with storm clouds, and the waves crashed against the sides of the boat with a force that made the wood groan and the ropes creak.
Rain pelted his face, and wind whipped through his hair, and the boat rose and fell on the swells like a leaf in a hurricane.
"What is this place?" Elijah asked, raising his voice to be heard over the storm.
"This is our state of self," Alter Elijah replied, and his silver eyes were fixed on the horizon where the storm seemed darkest and most violent.
"It is stormy here, and hard to control the way we are going because of all the waves coming from the storm. We are being pulled under, Elijah, and we have been for a long time."
Elijah looked at the waves crashing against the boat, at the dark clouds swirling above, at the endless ocean stretching in every direction with no land in sight. "What do you mean?"
Alter Elijah raised his hand, and images appeared in the air around them like ghosts made of light and shadow.
Elijah saw his first girlfriend, the one who had broken his heart, the one whose face he had tried to forget.
He saw the way she had looked at him when she said it was over, the way she had walked away without looking back, the way he had stood there with his hands empty and his chest hollow.
Then the images shifted, and he saw Lisa.
He saw the first time he had kissed her at the party, the way her lips had felt against his, the way she had looked at him afterward with something that might have been surprise or might have been wonder.
He saw the mornings they had spent together in her apartment, the coffee and the pastries and the easy conversation that had made him feel like a normal person instead of a gang leader.
He saw the way she had laughed at his jokes, the way she had held his hand, the way she had told him that she loved him.
Alter Elijah let the images fade, and his silver eyes were soft when he looked at Elijah. "I will miss her," he said. "And that is okay. But there will come a time when I won't miss her anymore, and I will still love her, and that will be okay too."
Elijah stared at his other self, at the silver eyes that held so much of what he was feeling, at the calm expression that seemed to accept things that Elijah could not accept.
"It's okay to want her," Alter Elijah continued. "It's okay to miss her and to want to have her. But good things come, and good things go, and they go so that we can see the sun at the end of the storm."
He stepped closer, and his silver eyes burned with an intensity that made Elijah take a step back.
"I don't want to go back to who I was," Alter Elijah said. "Because if she stays, she won't just ask you to stop marrying Sylvia. She will ask you to leave the gang, to have a normal life, to be with her and only her. And that would be good for a few years, maybe, but deep down, we would start to hate ourselves, and that hatred would hurt her more than any goodbye ever could."
Elijah's throat was tight, and his eyes were burning, and he could not speak.
"The greatest pain for every man is not losing someone you love," Alter Elijah said. "It is losing the dream of the person you can become. Take your choice, Elijah. But never take your choice while you are still on the boat."
He vanished, dissolving into the rain and the wind and the waves, and Elijah was alone on the boat with the storm raging around him and the ocean stretching in every direction and no land in sight.
He looked down at his hands, at the hands that had killed and fought and held Lisa in the darkness, and he did not know what to do.
The boat rocked beneath him, and the waves crashed against the sides, and the wind howled in his ears, and he stood there with his hands at his sides and his heart in pieces.
Then he looked at himself, at the version of himself that stood on the boat with his hands gripping the railing and his eyes fixed on the horizon, and he saw the fear in his own face and the uncertainty and the desperate hope that somewhere beyond the storm there was a place where the sun was shining.
He walked across the rocking deck, his feet finding purchase on the wet wood, and he stopped in front of his other self.
The two of them stood there, identical in every way except for the color of their eyes, and Elijah looked into the silver eyes of the person he could become.
Then he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Alter Elijah, and he held him tight, and the panic that had been building in his chest since he read Lisa's message began to fade.
The storm was still raging, and the waves were still crashing, and the ocean was still endless, but he was not alone on the boat anymore.
Alter Elijah's arms came up around him, and they stood there in the rain with their bodies pressed together and their hearts beating in rhythm, and the panic disappeared completely.
When Elijah pulled back, his silver-eyed self was gone, and he was alone on the boat with his hands on the railing and his eyes on the horizon.
The storm was still there, and the waves were still there, and the ocean was still endless, but something had changed inside him.
He took the helm of the boat, his hands gripping the wheel, and he turned the bow toward the unknown.
The storm was ahead of him, and the waves were high, and the wind was strong, and there was a very real chance that he would die along the way.
But he did not turn back.
He faced the storm, and he sailed forward, and the boat cut through the waves with a purpose that had been missing before. The darkness was still around him, and the rain was still falling, and the thunder was still rolling across the sky, but he was moving, and moving was enough.