===> Caine: Regret Everything.
You guess you can do that.
---
Your name is Caine Soren, and for a brief moment you are
pitifully aware of the fact that this wasn’t what you wanted. It’s not exactly
a sudden realization – that would’ve been too simple, too predictable, and
despite all your flaws - you’re painfully aware of them - predictability isn’t
one of them. You can pride yourself on that, if nothing else. Sometimes, when
you’re on your own and you can’t hear the constant nagging of the kids you’re
supposed to be ruling, the fighting and arguments and just ever-present noise
you think it would’ve been a lot easier if all you had ever been was
predictable. No, it was a drawn out realization if anything – too long, too
agonizing for you to adequately describe with the frivolity of the fickle
written word. And yet, you’d never fully appreciated just how much you screwed
up. Now, sitting alone with a gaze of blank topaz, you mindlessly, methodically
run your eyes over a cold landscape, fields and rivers and sky stretched taught
across the horizon, and wonder how you screwed everything up this badly.
You can think of 30 reasons - excuses - and not one of them
fits.
---
If one were to describe you you doubt you’d be awfully
surprised by how many of the words used were those enduring negative
connotations - megalomaniac; dictator; brat, and you suppose for the most part
whoever was making the list would be completely and utterly infallibly correct
– but you can’t help feel that no-one would really be able to convey the sheer
extent to which you were agonizingly aware of just how bad a person you were.
You guess if you were anyone but yourself you’d probably be laughing right now,
laughing at just how pathetic and childish and downright idiotic you sound
sitting alone staring at the sky like some star-crossed lover, some child with
dreams of fairytales etched into the edges of their consciousness, butterflies
and dreams whisked away by the chill of the air surrounding you – but you’re
not, and all you can bring yourself to feel right now is disappointed.
Disappointed in yourself more than anyone else.
---
You’re a Coates child born and bred - and it shows. You’ve
spent years living, thriving in the empty shell of a school that you guess is
the closest thing you ever had to a home – by all means you should be almost
used to being treated unflinchingly as little more than a delinquent with
delusions of supremacy. You aren’t.
You were once told you suffered a superiority complex. Such
accusations had never particularly bothered you, you guess, but it always hurts
when it hits that little bit too close to home. It’s quite common for people
with a superiority complex to suffer a hidden inferiority complex, and
vice-versa - they built themselves up to compensate for the constant feeling of
being less than everyone else.
---
It’s funny when you remember as a kid how enamored you were
by the idea of equality, and it’s especially ironic given your apparent
dictatorship over the kids of Perdido Beach at current, but it was something
that had always interested you. You’d always wanted to be that one kid who’d
lead everyone else to victory, that one person everyone looked up to because of
who they were, what they did – not because they felt they had a duty to, not
out of dread or terror or because it was the only way to get what they wanted.
You guess that title went to Sam pretty early on, and as much as you fake the
whole dispassionate feeling, as much as you pretend that the whole ‘I’d rather
be feared than loved’ thing holds true it doesn’t really make for a
particularly great argument when so much of your time is spent with your head
in your hands contemplating with a bittersweet grimace just how accurate they
were when they said the good would always prevail against the evil. Sometimes
you contemplate just when you decided you were the bad guy, too.
---
Occasionally you think about what it would’ve been like if
it had been you. Not Sam. What it would’ve been like away from Coates, what it
would’ve been like growing up without the constant restrictions, the constant,
never-ceasing cry of others expectations. Sometimes you think about exactly how
Sam would’ve turned out in your position, whether he would be the one wasting
all his days and nights remembering and regretting. (It makes you equally upset
when you realize he would’ve done a much better job than you at Coates anyway).
You think about whether you would still have been the
villain of the tale had you been the one raised by the caring mother, whether
you could’ve been that on hero you’d always wanted to be, whether it would’ve
made any difference at all.
---
You almost always end up deciding that you would never be
anything but the bad guy.
---
It’s not exactly a sudden realization but for a brief moment
you are pitifully aware of the fact that this wasn’t what you wanted.
And you’re sorry.
I just love this. It's the perfect summary of who and what Caine is- selfish and self-pitying, but somewhere deep down inside, terribly, painfully human. All through the story, he denied it, but at the end, he admitted what he really felt for Diana. What's more human than love? As I said, Caine had no illusions about himself. He was cruel and narcissistic and self-centered, not to mention a murderer. But I remember what Edilio said to him. "You're smart and powerful and you don't scare easy." And one of my favorite moments in the whole book is this:
They used needle-nose pliers to pry pieces off. Skin came
away, too. Each time they asked him if it was okay, and each time he gritted
his teeth and said, “Do it!”
His hands were being skinned. Piece by piece.
Quinn could barely stand to watch it. But he had to admit
one thing: Caine might be a thug, an egomaniac, a killer, but he was no coward.
For all his failed plans, Caine was pretty darned smart. He knew when to attack and when to retreat. He could read people- far better than Sam ever managed. He was a leader, albeit a harsh one. And, at least in my mind, his final actions went a long way towards redemption. I find it incredibly powerful that he was so blunt about his faults. I guess if there’s any kind of fairness in the afterlife I’m probably in hell getting roasted. I feel like that confession letter at the very end was his way of apologizing to Sam- a gift from the grave. Sam's get-out-of-jail-free card. Diana was right when she said that "Caine was not a person who could let himself be vulnerable." A make-up scene would have felt too insincere. But in his own way, Caine made his peace with his brother with that gesture. And that last kiss... so sad and yet so heartrendingly beautiful. You can almost see it, the two of them spinning gently above the water. Caine was not a great person, or even a good one. But in that moment, he thinks only of Diana's safety. In an odd way, the last thing he asks Diana to do reminds me of Snape in the Pensieve at the end of Harry Potter. Snape begs Dumbledore not to tell anyone about his protecting Harry and his love for Lily. And Dumbledore says, "Never to reveal the best of you, Severus?" Caine asks Diana not to reveal the true reasons behind his self-sacrifice- love and redemption.
