Jack used to be a wide-eyed liberal. Back in the sixties, he had protested against a corrupt government more concerned with the appearance of winning than morality. To him, the Constitution was more than simple words on parchment. It was a living embodiment of justice, a bastion of logic and reason in a chaotic world. Like a giant tarp spread over the nation, it protected each and every citizen, rich and poor, young and old, black and white alike, from the torrential downpours of treachery, and tyranny, of government over the people, not of the people.
It wasn't the sixties anymore. Slowly over the years something had changed. He had changed. The man that looked back at him from the mirror looked about the same, albeit with more gray hair than before, and a good many more wrinkles. Nonetheless, the hazel eyes still glinted and the trademark smirk still twisted the corners of his mouth. Even the words that left his lips sounded much like the old Jack, full of fire and brimstone.
And yet, he knew. He knew that somewhere along the overgrown road he had traversed in the name of justice, he had strayed down a dark path, full of thorns.
Those magical words penned by those demi-gods over two centuries ago had lost some of their luster amid the constant stains of blood and corruption. The ones who got away, the walking wastes of air set free by befuddled judges and the misplaced sentiments of juries less interested in justice than rhetoric. Thorns, each one of them, snagging at his resolve, tearing away at his sense of morality, leaving jagged holes in his garments of honor, of sanctity, of righteousness.
Now it was more about winning than any pretensions about serving Lady Justice. He still seemed to struggle for her, but he had long ago stopped laying bounty at her feet. What did it matter anyway? She couldn't see, she never would. He had watched as time and again the bandage was ripped from the pathetic remnants of her eyes, their empty, milky white gaze staring unfocused toward the past, never the future.
Some mornings he awoke with a start, not from a lingering dream, but from a void, an echoing abyss that weighed down on his chest like the tonnage of a thousand worlds, each as dense and equally doomed as his own. Somewhere he had lost his ability to feel joy, and the empty space left behind sucked at him like the most powerful black hole, drawing into its depths all that remained of innocence, of youth, of hope. What was left was simply the shell. He wondered sometimes if anyone noticed.