A story to my heart

This post is of absolute emergency and I cannot linger any longer before writing this but O M G

I thought it was impossible, but I have found one of the best fanfictions I have read thus far. A story of greater lenght than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, this fanfic is 203 000 words long, and that is over 800 pages in a book.

I read this story in two days. I was just going to check in on the first chapter, but man, I was hooked.

Time well spent. Why did I become so invested in this story?

Because it is one of the best redemption arcs I've seen in fiction ever. A boy who committed murder,  is almost forgiven by the one he attacked and hurted by his crimes, the princess of the country. Only almost. He can't see his own fault and blames everyone else for what he's done. He can't see himself guilty and sees himself as a martyr. The princess tries to forgive him, trying to see whatever is good left in him, and after almost getting killed again by him, she can't anymore. She casts him aside, let him get abused, pained, infected, an infection that later SPOILERS kills him. (but u'kno magic brings him bAck okay).

9 chapters later, 150 000 words, and a few hours of reading, he and the princess, the one he wants revenge on, gets trapped in a labyrinth and they have to work together to get out.

Slowly he's realizing his past, and realize that what he did was not right. That he's not free of blame, that he IS the one to blame (and the one who caused the death of his father). It breaks him. It almost destroys him when a lie he so well imposed upon himself and believed cracks and crumbles at his feet.

He can't believe the princess brough him back from the dead, when he in fact, deserved death sentence. For what he'd done.

But he redeems himself. In trusting the princess, when he has no reason to. He lets the venom go. Let him be stripped naked of lies, and he asks for forgiveness.

That is powerful in a story.

That is powerful in fiction.

That is powerful in life.

And here we have it. The tragic villain getting redemption. One of my FAVOURITE tropes, favourite characters.

I almost cried. Here you have a little snippet of the story. Read, and see how beautiful it is. Ah god.

Stories like this cause a reaction in me. I can't pinpoint exactly what it is, but it feels like a heroin shot straight into my creative center of my brain. I just feel so MUCH about this kinda stories. About villains. About lost teenagers in their own world of anger and hatred. About characters driven to madness by some doctrine they themselves have created.

Because once I've been one of them.