A Life for a Life
Title: A Life for a Life
Author: adina_anne
Fandom: The Prestige
Rating: G
Warning: Do NOT read if you haven't seen the movie. It will destroy the entire movie for you.
Author's Note: My Prestige buddy, captain_elessar wrote A Price Well Paid and inspired, and then pressured, me into writing something similar from Robert Angier's point of view.
Maybe a hundred top hats lay in the snow. Each one exactly like the one next to it. The only difference I could see was their orientation on the ground and the amount of snow cover. Hats cascaded down the hill, a few rolling as one of the black cats jumped over them. There was only one hat, and only one cat. And there is only one of me. Left.
Alfred Borden is standing before me, gun still leveled at my chest and his words are not falling on deaf ears. I visited him in jail. He killed me, and in my wicked plot I killed him. His neck was bruised by the rope that held him, just like his wife, whereas my lungs filled with water just like my wife. It seems fitting that rope, his first weapon of choice, was the object which took his life. And yet the only non-ironic twist is that Borden is the only true murderer. Julia, then Sarah, myself and even himself. But he still lives.
With my last few moments I hear him walk away. I am staring at him, my eyes unseeing, my heart still. More still than his. His is still beating, half as strong as before.
I didn't win. He didn't win. I killed his magic, I learned his secret and in the process he took everything except mine. My magic, my secret will stay hidden. It is all for the best. If Borden knew this secret, if he held this kind of magic he would be unstoppable. But it is gone, as am I. A life for a life. My private for his professional. The debut has been repaid and the price was high. There is nothing left between us.
He rounds the corner, past the last of the glass tanks, my eyes no longer able to float over his silhouette. The fire caused by the fallen lanter turns the excess of my life into ash. For all the energy, time, hatred and life that went into this feud, there is nothing left to be seen.
Author: adina_anne
Fandom: The Prestige
Rating: G
Warning: Do NOT read if you haven't seen the movie. It will destroy the entire movie for you.
Author's Note: My Prestige buddy, captain_elessar wrote A Price Well Paid and inspired, and then pressured, me into writing something similar from Robert Angier's point of view.
Maybe a hundred top hats lay in the snow. Each one exactly like the one next to it. The only difference I could see was their orientation on the ground and the amount of snow cover. Hats cascaded down the hill, a few rolling as one of the black cats jumped over them. There was only one hat, and only one cat. And there is only one of me. Left.
Alfred Borden is standing before me, gun still leveled at my chest and his words are not falling on deaf ears. I visited him in jail. He killed me, and in my wicked plot I killed him. His neck was bruised by the rope that held him, just like his wife, whereas my lungs filled with water just like my wife. It seems fitting that rope, his first weapon of choice, was the object which took his life. And yet the only non-ironic twist is that Borden is the only true murderer. Julia, then Sarah, myself and even himself. But he still lives.
With my last few moments I hear him walk away. I am staring at him, my eyes unseeing, my heart still. More still than his. His is still beating, half as strong as before.
I didn't win. He didn't win. I killed his magic, I learned his secret and in the process he took everything except mine. My magic, my secret will stay hidden. It is all for the best. If Borden knew this secret, if he held this kind of magic he would be unstoppable. But it is gone, as am I. A life for a life. My private for his professional. The debut has been repaid and the price was high. There is nothing left between us.
He rounds the corner, past the last of the glass tanks, my eyes no longer able to float over his silhouette. The fire caused by the fallen lanter turns the excess of my life into ash. For all the energy, time, hatred and life that went into this feud, there is nothing left to be seen.