[ OT ] Sunday Free Write : Flights of Fancy Edition

I guess this is a good way to start out if anything. Going to post a short little something I wrote last year. It's a little confusing looking back at it now, but it just felt good to write it. I hope you all enjoy it. 
 
 ~*~*~*~*~ 
 
 So few would understand everything he had done for everyone. All of the sacrifices he had done to his own sanity in order for people to rest easy in the forthcoming nights. No need for them to be afraid of danger anymore, because he had saved them. Yet he knew that nobody would see the good he had done. No, despite all he had done for them, he would not be known as the savior of history. The textbooks would name him as a criminal, whose atrocities were comparable to those of Stalin and Hitler. His name would become taboo. They would forget they were alive because of him - the anger of seven billion people all funneled to a single man. 
 
 He saw all this before his eyes, in a world that was in between worlds. His eyes flickered left to right, breaths hard yet shallow. There stood the savior called criminal. Was it worth it? This reality showed him what the sacrifice of the few to save the many would have on him. 
 
 A plague stopped. 
 
 Billions of lives saved. 
 
 And for what? 
 
 All for nothing. He sighed and closed his eyes for a few moments, thinking. In this world between worlds, time was irrelevant. A second was a thousand years, and a hundred thousand years was just short of a minute. He did n't try to act as if he understood it, but when he opened his eyes he saw... Nothing. The sky was black. It was a solitary and lonely world. So then, what would be the point of living this reality in the first place? He stopped one catastrophe, but a few thousand years later another one came. 
 
 He could n't stop it all. He would be mad to think he would be able to stop it all. 
 
 His ambition and determination grew... thin. The wire unraveled inch by inch, dismantling reality along with it until, at last, the wire was but a thin string, and reality was no more. No, he was no longer a hero nor a criminal. He was neither loved nor hated. He was just... Himself. He knew that all reality was gone and yet he was also aware that he was trapped in a reality of his own. He took a deep breath and finally let go. 
 
 It was a bright and, at first glance, scary place to wake up at. An endless plain of white with no visible horizon, no differentiation between what would be the sky and what would be the ground, and no visible features that would help someone coordinate the exact location at which they were at. The reality itself, this world in between worlds, was so simple so... Unexceptional, his brain was unable to comprehend what it was. When he looked too hard, his eyes wept red. Quickly he had learned that doing nothing about it was better than doing anything at all. 
 
 And then there was the ability to look at the other realities. Revisit the past, gaze at the present, or have a peek into the future. His memories did not live within him but rather they floated around the space of white. Like air, swishing back and forth, and he recalled these memories by reaching up and swiping one from the air. As he held it gently in his hands, a world would open up before his eyes. Wherever he looked, it followed. He was n't a part of this reality, but rather became something of an audience member. But these were all his memories, both from his original reality as well as all the other alternative realities from which he was able to glimpse into. 
 
 At first it was one. Every time he blinked, eight more showed up, until it reached the point that with every blink a thousand new realities would appear. And yet, he would be able to go over those thousands of realities five times over before finding the need to blink again. It was n't that he worked fast; simply... This world worked that way. 
 
 He blinked, and in his head he counted ten thousand new realities that had appeared before him. Floating translucent orbs of light, giving of warmth and comfort, or perhaps a dangerous cold. The longer he held these memories, the further into them he was able to go. 
 
 There was nothing left for him here, and so he let go. His hands, cupped around the ball of emotions, slowly opened up. He watched it float before it was carried off by a wind that was not there. An overwhelming desire to cry overcame him. Doubling over, he vomited as his eyes wept, over and over until a black puff of smoke left his mouth. Quickly he caught it in his hands, crushed it, felt it squirm against his skin... And then nothing. He opened his hands, and inhaled. The next reality was one he had visited previously, asking the question that was within a hundred other questions. 
 
 Who was he? 
 
 A name had no meaning in this world. An age or a birth date had no significance. He was just a person; a being from another reality that did n't belong yet somehow fit in perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle. In this one, he watched a younger version of himself, traveling in a car, laughing. With so much life and meaning, with companions to come along on a journey ahead. He felt no sense of tragedy coming. He was no savior here, nor was he a nobody. He was just himself, a one out of millions. No bother to the world and the world did not bother him. 
 
 He almost... Did n't recognize him. 
 
 Another reality, alone in a room. Another reality, grandchildren. Another, space. Another, eaten alive by a shark. Another, and he was on another planet. Another, and the stars were no longer the limit. 
 
 He paused, his eyes began to bleed once more. 
 
 These realities... They were not his. These realities were dead. Hundreds of thousands of dead memories piled atop one another, floating silent. Dead realities because they were not his. His reality was different. His reality was real. This is real. The white space, the emptiness, the nothing. That is what was, and what is, real. Being nothing was him, and he was nothing. No name. No recognition. A nothing looking at himself do something; hating, loving, confused, and anxious. Reality was the reality between realities. The limbo. He could watch people love him and feel joy. He could watch people hate him and feel nothing. Only he held himself back. 
 
 He grasped a memory. The reality was torn open in front of him. He remembered now, just how much he hated the limbo. 
 
 What an odd punishment...
