Part Seven,B: Gaze.

The room was cold, as always. Empty, damp, black as the night, and even darker. Everything was as usual. The little desk, the floor, the huge windows, the night life below them. Everything.
Andrew was again looking down at the world, at all the little ants working, clubbing, living and dieing. His face was pale from the lack of sleep, the lights, and the many days he was at home and never went out at day.
He let out a small sigh.
"Our world runs on irony." He said.
Solidus, who was now standing beside hims smirked.
"Poetic justice." he said.
Andrew shook his head.
"Different names for the same thing." Then he smirked as well.
Some moments passed. Then Andrew broke the silence once more.
"I wake up, every day. And every day, I feel as bad as one could feel if someone close to them had died. Yet no one has. And I don't know. Why does my heart feel so bad? Why do I feel so empty inside? Why is it that I feel an inexplicable burden inside my chest? And why is it that I haven't cried yet?"
Solidus' smirk fainted.
"Young one. You are most unlike all the others. When everyone else drank beverages and thought of models and the like scum, you sat and you wrote poems about pure, passionate love."
"While everyone else looked at fancy clothes, cars and jewelery to make their spiritual emptiness seem less, you sat alone in a dark room thinking about what can be done to reach spiritual awakening and help others free themselves as well."
"When everyone else thought that they were chained down and striped of their freedom, it was you (although with the help of Quetzalcoatl) who told them that freedom is there, and that they simply haven't thought of reaching it."
"You always knew without knowing. You always saw without looking. Therefore you must know by now, and I am sure that I need not remind you, that everything comes at a price. If you are unable to bear the consequences, then you must surely die, either spiritually or physically. As they say, 'if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs'."
Andrew nodded. And waited for Solidus to carry on.
"When you wake up, and you feel as though the world has forsaken you, it is merely another small, yet seemingly gigantic obstacle set in your path. You should not give in to your sorrow, and you know that, yet still you do. And as you delve deeper in the doom of your own thoughts and feelings, you find that you have died."
"And when you died, again without knowing it, you emerged from your own dusts, resurrected like the Phoenix. Stronger. Faster. Better. More capable. So it was, and so it will be. Until, of course, you reach Awakening at last. "
"As for the burden you feel in your chest, and the emptiness that you have allowed to come over you, there is only one remedy, though when you reach for it it slips away, and when finally you turn your gaze elsewhere, it comes back to sit at your finger, like a beautiful butterfly bearing the salt of the earth."
Andrew was still looking outside, though he was lost in Solidus' words. Then his lips parted and he said in a low voice:
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."
Solidus nodded.
"It all comes down to that, doesn't it?" Andrew asked.
"Until further notice, yes." Solidus smirked.
Andrew thought of all this for a moment.
"When was it, dear Solidus? When was it that we met for the very first time? I was such a naive fool then.."
"It was apparently four or five years ago. And you were no fool, judging from everyone else. You can trust me on that. Not every ten-year-old has the ability to create a universe in its head, or make it rain or arrange for certain things to happen."
Andrew's eyes half closed, and his eyebrows united in an angry look, which soon faded.
"I wonder.. How many others like me there are.."
"Not many, I can assure you. But that doesn't mean you're better than them. You are just different. Get cocky and you lose it all."
They nodded, still not looking at each other.
In the background, Chris let out a wail of lament.
What goes around comes around.
As above so below.
It' only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.
Only after disaster can we be resurrected.
Same thing, different names, Andrew thought.