whydowefall | For albumconcepts: The Bravery, "Rites of Spring"

I was made up of nothing
You put something inside
You opened my chest
And put that hurt in my eyes

He is not a happy man. "Satisfied" is a good word; sometimes, even "content" works.

But it is never a pure state of being. Never a good emotion left uncolored by the bad. No matter how peaceful or pleasurable the moment, it's always tinged with a bit of sadness, a bit of longing, a bit of guilt or of anger.

"Happy" is reduced to flashes of now-distant memories: his father's lessons and encouragements; his mother's love and reassurances. They're two and a half decades removed. They happened to someone else, in another lifetime, to someone who grew up to be an entirely different man.

"Happy" isn't something he's had since that night in the alley, after the opera, when he was eight years old.

Now I’ve got a pain I can turn to
When I wonder if I’m still alive

"I'm not staying," he'd told everyone when he came back from Princeton. He said it over and over, and he knew they thought he meant he'd go back, or he'd go away, after this hearing. That he wouldn't remain in this place.

What he meant was, he would not be allowed to remain in this life.

It would be him standing before the judge next time… if he wasn't cut down in a return hail of bullets. The thought weighed heavily on his mind as he turned his back on the courtroom, turned his back on Joe Chill, and strode out into the corridor to load and prepare his gun with shaking hands.

Whatever came to pass… so be it. He was ready to do what needed to be done to avenge his parents.

He was ready as the courtroom doors opened and Chill and a crush of reporters and court personnel spilled out into the corridor. Chill was headed straight for him.

Their eyes met for half a second and he knew the moment was here.

But someone beat him to it, as he watched, half horrified, half delighted, wondering if he should be disgusted with himself for that last emotion… and finding he couldn't muster it, no matter how deep inside he reached.

The other thing he didn't find was satisfaction.

I was dead in the water (dead in the water)
I was dead in the water
You left me dead in the water (dead in the water)
I was dead in the water

He is not a happy man.

He won't lie. While over time, the delight in Chill's death lessened, and passed, he's still not sorry. He doesn't grieve. He doesn't begrudge Falcone setting that turn of events in motion.

Sometimes he wonders if he should have gone ahead and shaken Falcone's hand for that.

But as much as he's unrepentant, he's also still not happy. Mindless vengeance is empty. It doesn't unburden the soul. It doesn't make his loss, his longing, his guilt any easier to bear.

He finds himself pondering this, perhaps more frequently than he'd like to admit, in the dark hours of the early morning, as he watches over his city from some dizzying perch, his cape drifting gently as the wind picks up the edges.

One man that he never knew, that he never spoke to, that he saw for all of a combined ten minutes, total, in his entire life. This one man nevertheless managed to shape his life in two volleys of gunfire. One burst of violence took everything out from under him. The second pointed him toward the path that gave that anger direction.

Sometimes it's nearly unbearable to know that one man had so much impact.

Everything I’ve got I got it from you...