here is the repeated image of a lover destroyed; glassheart

[Cordis]

History echoes. She knows this. God, but she knows this. (Or, more crassly – history is damned to repeat itself.) Repetition is nothing new to her, the cyclical nature of her life. Once, she lived for those cycles, for the best parts of them – the parts when they came together. Those brief instances before someone left. Circles are broken, though, spilling bones and hearts into the river, and now her life is a different kind of repetitive – nothing grand, just the aching stupid cycle of survival. Moving and breathing and thinking. Wishing. Replaying those memories until they’re worn thin, to the point of translucence. Well loved. Well warped. She doesn’t know this girl – this ghost – or her story, but she does. Like reading in a language she has only passing knowledge of, she recognizes the glint of gold there, the shape of her crest here. Words, but not the story. Does she want to know? Curiosity is a morbid thing, and one she is unused to, lately. Nothing has mattered much to her, she views the world in a haze of lighting and hurt, and nothing looks flattering in such a light. Nothing looks worth investigating. Until something does. Until this girl, with her golden haze of memory, looking at Cordis in a way that feels familiar, feels awful. Are you alone, she asks. Of course she does. Maybe Cordis knew she’d ask it. She still doesn’t know how to answer. She thinks of the other heart beating in her chest. She thinks of lightning striking, begging, don’t leave me here alone. “I’ve never been sure how to answer that,” she says. (Of course she is alone. Of course. Two stupid hearts don’t mean anything in the awful midnight hours when the world’s asleep and she’s not, because she doesn’t need to sleep, because her dreams are all too fraught with memories and she is fucking sick of waking up crying, so she just doesn’t sleep, and she’s alone, she’s alone, she’s alone.) “Are you?” c o r d i s I’ll touch you all and make damn sure that no one touches me