10-19-2021, 07:46 PM
It makes her seethe with pain and fury that this conversation has turned itself on her, that he is so intent on proving her goodness when she is sure there is none but what exists out of a strange, inexplicable affection for him. “I underestimate nothing.” She says, and she feels like there must be wounds opening across the chimeric white and black of her skin because every part of her hurts to exist in this moment, every part of her feels made of broken glass. But it is so important that he understands the nature of her, so important that she not be yet another piece of trust misplaced and returned to him broken. “Don’t you remember what happened when night eclipsed day? The dark was like a sickness.” She is like a sickness. There is pain on her face and in her strange eyes, pain in the way she steps back from him like it could ever be enough distance to keep him safe.
“Stop, please stop.” She thinks she must be begging, but this pain inside her chest makes the words feel flat, feel hollow, feel like shards of a heart that had been created broken. He makes her sound like someone good, speaking of her light and her mercy. Maybe that is why it feels so easy to love him, and maybe it isn’t love at all but some need to keep close the only one who has ever seen her as something worthy, something worthwhile. But she knows what that looks like, and she knows that she is not it. Not like her mother, maybe not even like her father. She is something caustic, something that seethes and ruins, something that had been made to thrive in the violent dark of a broken world.
“Then I’ve misled you in some way.” She tells him, and she makes her eyes as hard as stones, as hard as the frown on her mouth, as hard as that beating thing inside her chest so busy falling and tripping over itself. “Because I would take you from your family if I thought I could ever convince you to stay here with me.” It makes sense, suddenly, this chimera of colors split across her skin, the bright halo and the dark halo, the part of her that is angel and the part that is shadow; in this moment she is both. She means every word of this dark secret, she is the ugliness she speaks of. But it is also a lie, an ugliness that feels like erosion inside her chest. “I would keep you, Nashua.” Because he is the oddity that anchors her, he is the good that makes her want to be better. He is everything when she only knows how to be nothing. “My shadows are deeper than you will ever know.” Yet even they seem to need him. “I will ruin everything if you let me, because all I have ever wanted is to be what you think you see in me, but I am not that.” A promise, a warning, the sound of her heart tearing itself apart against the blade of her ribs. “And if I lose you, I lose that too.”
But he is not hers, not even to lose.
The darkness shrouding them falters as she takes more steps back away from him, masking this unraveling inside her chest with distance that will never, ever be enough. “You can’t trust me.” It seems out of place, but there is a note of pleading in the tone of her voice, an ache that shadows firmness until the lines go blurry. “Maybe, subconsciously, you are drawn to me because I am like what you know.” She means the treachery of his family, of his father and his siblings and the sin of his bloodline. Her voice is quieter now, like it knows these words feel like shards of glass in her mouth, like it knows she’ll bleed if she says it any louder. “I don’t want you to pay for my sins either, Nashua. I think you should go home.” It is a new kind of dark that blossoms like a void inside her chest, cold and fisted, tangled in the brokenness of her ribs. It is a loneliness unlike what she has known before, it is the loss of light in her dark world.
“Stop, please stop.” She thinks she must be begging, but this pain inside her chest makes the words feel flat, feel hollow, feel like shards of a heart that had been created broken. He makes her sound like someone good, speaking of her light and her mercy. Maybe that is why it feels so easy to love him, and maybe it isn’t love at all but some need to keep close the only one who has ever seen her as something worthy, something worthwhile. But she knows what that looks like, and she knows that she is not it. Not like her mother, maybe not even like her father. She is something caustic, something that seethes and ruins, something that had been made to thrive in the violent dark of a broken world.
“Then I’ve misled you in some way.” She tells him, and she makes her eyes as hard as stones, as hard as the frown on her mouth, as hard as that beating thing inside her chest so busy falling and tripping over itself. “Because I would take you from your family if I thought I could ever convince you to stay here with me.” It makes sense, suddenly, this chimera of colors split across her skin, the bright halo and the dark halo, the part of her that is angel and the part that is shadow; in this moment she is both. She means every word of this dark secret, she is the ugliness she speaks of. But it is also a lie, an ugliness that feels like erosion inside her chest. “I would keep you, Nashua.” Because he is the oddity that anchors her, he is the good that makes her want to be better. He is everything when she only knows how to be nothing. “My shadows are deeper than you will ever know.” Yet even they seem to need him. “I will ruin everything if you let me, because all I have ever wanted is to be what you think you see in me, but I am not that.” A promise, a warning, the sound of her heart tearing itself apart against the blade of her ribs. “And if I lose you, I lose that too.”
But he is not hers, not even to lose.
The darkness shrouding them falters as she takes more steps back away from him, masking this unraveling inside her chest with distance that will never, ever be enough. “You can’t trust me.” It seems out of place, but there is a note of pleading in the tone of her voice, an ache that shadows firmness until the lines go blurry. “Maybe, subconsciously, you are drawn to me because I am like what you know.” She means the treachery of his family, of his father and his siblings and the sin of his bloodline. Her voice is quieter now, like it knows these words feel like shards of glass in her mouth, like it knows she’ll bleed if she says it any louder. “I don’t want you to pay for my sins either, Nashua. I think you should go home.” It is a new kind of dark that blossoms like a void inside her chest, cold and fisted, tangled in the brokenness of her ribs. It is a loneliness unlike what she has known before, it is the loss of light in her dark world.
ILLUMINAE
we can't dream when we're awake,
or fall in love with a heart too strong to break
@Nashua