Farewells.
This had been a long time coming.
A lot had changed for him over the course of the past year. A year and a half ago he'd lost Sucre and had seen the place he'd called home ripped apart at the hands of the Batter. He'd fled the file and entered what could best be called a depressive coma, hiding in the nothingness and going days without moving, eating, sleeping, nothing. And then there was the reckless behavior once he came out of that. The constant picking of fights, the alcohol, other things he wanted not to think about. But he'd changed. He'd come out of that place. He could hardly recognize that as him and not some other alternate he'd met along the way. He had the memories, he could recall the experiences, but they just didn't feel right anymore. They weren't the same person. That Zacharie had been a drunk, semi-suicidal. But then he'd made friends, friends he'd never be able to replace. He had fun times, and he had times where he'd almost died, he'd even fallen in and out of love, and he'd even been crowned king of a kingdom he'd hoped never to return to. And he'd learned that above all else, life moved on. So maybe it was time for him to move on. To where and what he didn't know. He had some ideas. His first stop would be to go home. Home, home. Not to any file, not to the kingdom he now called his, not anywhere but the place he'd left before all these crazy adventures had started. The place he called home before anywhere else. Before toad kings and credits and talking cats and the Batter. He could sort the rest of his plans out from there. And so, slowly, reluctantly, he'd gone to each Zone he'd visited--and a few other places, of course. With Lawson's help, he'd left notes at each shop door, "Out of Business. Closed indefinitely." He'd left notes for some of his friends, though it seemed there weren't many left these days. Several of them had moved on already themselves, to other things. Some of them had died. Some of them had simply grown distant, drifted apart. This wasn't goodbye, he'd say. Not really. They could still get a hold of him if they needed--and who knew, maybe some day he'd be back around of his own volition. But right now he just needed something new. A change of pace. A new direction. Something forward.And then, with Lawson's accompaniment, Zacharie turned to face the future and take his first steps towards whatever 'moving on' could bring.
