Chapter Text
Felix doesn’t have regrets.
To live a life without them is all he’s ever known. Maybe there were things he could have changed, but what’s the point in that?
“Do you have anything to say?”
Show remorse. Isn’t that what they had told him? Show remorse. Grieve. To do anything to avoid a longer prison sentence. They say it as if he is afraid to be behind bars, to be restricted in any sense of the word, but he doesn’t think that he is. He’s numb, if anything. Annoyed. At how this has played out, like a little Game of Life in which his schoolmates would cheat in, fake cash all crumpled in a heated fit. That’s all it is. Life is but a game to him and he had been winning.
Of course this was happening.
Only, this isn’t the board game he had grown up with, and he was tired of life being like so. To get to the end of the board, you could cheat. To get to the top of the world, you had to cheat. In every sense of the word. Felix has never cheated before: of course he’s stuck here. Of course the people that cheat, steal and lie go further in life. He’s watched it happen time after time after time. Big bankers wrecking the economy, politicians winning polls on broken and stolen promises, even teachers getting raises for how the mind of other people worked. There was nothing that was fair in life.
So be it.
Why should life then be fair? Why should he have played by the rules? Why should he have stayed silent when there was something he could do about it from the bottom of the sea they had left him in? Roses only grow from the dirt, anyway. Felix has stayed stuck in the mud for far too long, and it was not his fault who nicked their skin upon his thorns.
He rests here now, growing through the cracks of the sidewalk of a toxic, greedy society in which lies are valued more than the truth, and money is valued more than life.
He can’t show remorse for that. No, but he can lie.
“Your Honor, I . . .”
If Felix is anything, he is an artist. Con artist, dancer, actor, singer, writer, poet: an artist. A deep soul that connects with everything around him. And as he stares up at the look of the woman’s face, wrinkled with time, stress and clear confusion, brow quirked as she sits up just a little taller as if she looks down on him. He must be at the bottom truly then. Can she even hear him if he breaks?
Felix breaks down crying and just as his tears are salty, the reaction is rich. People stare and gasp, shifting uncomfortably in their seats and why should they not? He wants them to see, wants them to watch what the face of injustice looks like, wants them to realize that they did this, they chose this by looking down upon him. The Judge herself presses her lips together in a line so fine it reminds him that he’s supposed to be acting, but he can swear it feels so real.
“Your Honor,” his attorney is such a kniving, evil man, so rotten, so manipulative, so good, “is this really the route you want to take? Over the last week, you’ve read my client’s file: young, poor, abandoned. This kid—yes, people, look around, this kid is barely twenty years old. Grew up with no parents, no one to teach him right and wrong. Discipline is just one form of justice! Who’s right in this scenario? Someone who breaks the law or someone who breaks the law to out others breaking the law? Why go after a kid when you can go after all the adults on this file, who broke laws, who accepted bribes, who play with the economy like its a toy?”
People are sheep, Felix knows this well. They will listen to whatever they are told is right.
Felix waits three breaths until the Judge goes to open her mouth and he wipes at his eyes, speaking into the mic that he has no permission speaking into.
“Your Honor, I was just doing what I thought was right.” A sentence so short travels miles into the depths of society’s distanced, icy heart. Felix doesn’t care about right and wrong in the eyes of people and their individual morals. Is lying wrong? Is stealing wrong? Is cheating wrong? Is bribery wrong? In whose eyes?
“Mr. Lee, do not interrupt and compose yourself.”
Fuck. If this Judge is anything like the other, he won’t be able to slip out of her grasp so easily. But he can’t just give up—the show must go on.
“How can I compose myself when my life is going to be ruined?” Boring, really, when his life is going to be boring. “I only did what I thought was right, like anyone else would have! I know they would have! You can’t tell me I’m wrong. I’m human too, aren’t you?” He wails it as if he truly believes the woman before him is a monster and not someone who upholds the sacred law, but she could be. Anyone who values the law over the dubious morality of law’s intent should not be upholding the law anyway. Not when the poor are cycled into jail continuously and the rich walk free.
People stare at him in pity, whispering things until the Judge demands the jury to settle down, and Felix can feel the tingle in his tummy sparkle. He loves this. Hates that it’s his head on the table but loves the way the people’s faces churn in pain, torn over what truly is right and wrong. The looks he receives show that some of these people are longing to stand up and shout that he, this poor little kid raised in a dirt poor house, was just performing an act of vigilantism. Some probably don’t care. Some shake their heads in bitter disappointment—at the way this case is being handled or the way he’s acting or the Judge herself—he doesn’t know. But either way, he stares at them with hot tears of judgment, with eyes that squint together so close that the tears flow freely. If tears were diamonds, he would be rich enough to walk out of here.
Poor, poor Felix. Who, on paper, has only ever wanted a loving family, who grew up knowing only violence and injustice, a foreigner to be pitied and protected but now resides in the Lion’s mouth, breath hot and ragged. But he doesn’t squirm or cough or back down. Felix knows he is right, and he’s going to win.
What is winning? What is a victory?
“Your Honor”—
Is there anything that he regrets? Is he simply someone who lives with his choices, or does he regret them all?
“The jury has come to a decision.”
Would he ever be brave enough to admit it if he did regret it? No, he’s not a coward. He can’t be. He’s lived through way too much for this, has seen too much, has done too much, has been too much. Felix knows more than he gives himself credit for, and gives himself too much credit for the things he often does not know that well.
“Officers, you may now escort Mr. Lee out and prepare him to be transferred.”
Felix doesn’t really know anything.
He’s smart and he’s brave and he’s quick and he’s much sharper than most people because he doesn’t have the luxury to not be. He knows the law, he knows what to do, he knows who he is and what he can achieve, and he knows he can achieve it. Maybe it was him shooting for the stars. Flying too close to the sun can be your downfall though, and it has been.
Drunk on power and drunk on revenge, they had said, but in reality, he had only been in love with reconciliation. But he’s lived nearly a thousand lives in his two decades and he’s been close enough to the sun to be burned, falling down below into the depths of the sea that wash him away from the body of it all, away from society, as if he is simply an inconvenient piece of trash. Discarded, forgotten, unwanted. Not even worth enough to hold onto.
Does it count as littering then? To be tossed away as such, shunned from society, to have to weep in front of the masses as if he means it? Isn’t it punishment enough to have his life put on display, to have the facts all out there in a fancy little font, for them to nitpick and belittle every aspect of it? No father, no mother, no family to love and nurture him. No higher education, no healthy lunches, no haircuts after seventeen, no god damn yellow crayons for him to color with, no teachers that could attest to his attentive and compassionate personality. Did he look too healthy, not healthy enough? Did he ever remember his parents? Did he read children’s books that taught life lessons in preschool? Did he learn how to share? Did he feel a connection with other people? Did he feel guilt or remorse?
Show remorse .
Wasn’t it punishment enough to have remorse? Even if he didn’t. Wasn’t it punishment enough to sit there as they debated and berated over weeks and sleepless nights, over files and screenshots and passwords, over backstories and explanations? Wasn’t it enough to be cuffed and zip tied, to be stared at like he was less than a person? Wasn’t it enough that he had been escorted in and out, been told who he was and what he had meant, words in his mouth being twisted like the red vines he had particularly enjoyed years ago in movie theaters?
It simply wasn’t. The world wanted Felix to suffer .
And Felix thinks that this is it. This is his punishment. To succumb to a forever sleep, just barely awake, not aware of his surroundings fully but certainly not asleep enough to dream. He opens his eyes and the room spins and he falls asleep and the room spins and he breathes in through his nose and exhales through half bitten lips and the room spins as if he’s simply on a tilt a whirl. And in this spinning he doesn’t quite remember anything other than the judge who harbors disappointment and wields rage as an acceptable tool. Will he remain this way forever? Like all the fairytales he’s once read and dreaded? What if he never adjusts to the pounding in his head or the dryness in his mouth? What if he is just meant to become a Sleeping Beauty? And how trifling it is but how justifiably poetic. Like this, he can’t do any harm, can only ever dream about it. His entire life he’s been afraid of being useless, has been taught nothing but the rewards of hard, soul breaking work, and here he is,, now reduced to nothing.
Useless.
He opens his eyes.
He blinks, taking in the shielded light of the room as he wakes. Where is he now? The courthouse, the jail, the bus, the doctor’s office, and now here. He’d been so sleepy throughout the entire ordeal. They’d let him sleep after the checkup, his attorney muttering in Satoori he couldn’t understand, flipping through papers after a change in the charges. He had won. He knew he had won the moment the Judge had heaved a heavy sigh and looked at him with nothing short of a frown.
But had he really?
He remembers being given medication for the lack of sleep, remembers being moved in his bed, the entire room spinning as he was wheeled out, remembers . . . Blue, and latex gloves and lavender hand soap, remembers voices and paper shuffling and apologies. He remembers giggles and hair touching and a car ride he hadn’t been cuffed for. He remembers very little else.
So where is he now?
He turns his head, going to shift in his bed and—yes, of course he’s cuffed. He pulls at his hands, confused when they’re met with soft, squishy restraints. They don’t hurt when he pulls on them and he pulls but they don’t snap.
The peers through the bars of where he lies and can’t help but giggle. What, was he so dangerous that they needed him behind bars when he slept too? In his bed? He snickers, staring up at the ceiling and sighing to himself. What a bunch of cowards. Too afraid to stand up to the real criminals in their society and too afraid to stick up for him. To even be afraid of him, really. But a part of him also likes the idea of that. People being afraid of him. Bed behind bars?
Hilarious. Who is that protecting?
“Yellow, blue . . .yellow?”
He focuses in on the voice as much as he can, shocked to hear one so similar to his own. It’s English, he knows it, but he can’t quite place the accent unless he’s being biased. It’s so faint, lying just near the other side of the room, and he stills. He hadn’t realized someone was in there with him. He holds his breath as they whisper to themselves. The door shuts and the person is gone, he thinks. He cranes his neck and tilts his head back to try and look through the flat, wooden slates of his new prison bed. He thinks they’re gone.
He thinks about resting his eyes maybe, taking a nap until someone comes to get him when the thought occurs to him. What if no one is coming? What if his new sentence is to be . . .stuck in this bed all day except for when he’s fed? That’s impossible, he thinks. That’s somewhat short of torture. He won’t be stuck in this bed forever . . .
Right?
The door opens again and he can feel the sudden cool air of it. It closes with a gentle click and he’s barely coming out of his worried thought of being stuck there forever when he hears an indefinite noise.
“Fuck—he’s awake,” they hiss, and Felix barely makes out the hushed voice. Fuck. He closes his eyes anyway and pretends to sleep, not moving even as he hears a noise of someone lingering just over the bars of the bed.
“Language,” another voice now and Felix feels the dread start to set in. Where is he? How many people are here? Why is he stuck in some weird prison bed?
“Sorry.”
He hears them come closer now and he takes longer, deeper breaths.
“Are you sure he was awake?”
“Yes, I saw him moving around.”
“Do you think he was just dreaming?”
As if he could dream.