you have forsaken all the love you've taken
sleeping on a razor there's nowhere left to fall
He thinks of her, of course, because that is simply the way of him.
He fixates on things, he obsesses. He wants to make them his, wants to keep them locked away or pressed against him and held tight. Devonae had been the first, and he had loved her. But he does not remember when love turned into obsession. He does not remember when love turned to toxic poison, when he realized if he could not have her he did not want anyone to have her. She disappeared (the memories are foggy, though — did she disappear, or did he kill her? He has killed before, he remembers that in dreams, in snapped twigs of the forest sounding like snapping bones), and she took with him what was left of his sanity.
He did not try to replace her. Not exactly. He did not try to romance anyone, he did try to lure them in with false promises and charm. He was ruthless and he took what he wanted and left behind what he did not. He doesn't remember most of their faces, and certainly not any of their names.
The chasm in his chest refused to fill, and when he finally returned to the land of the living it was so yawning, so large, he couldn’t even feel it anymore. He didn't know it was possible to split apart like that.
It left plenty of room for her to take up space. To light up the dark with her northern light-skin and the starlight she spun, and he hated how badly he wanted her from the moment he saw her.
He had forgotten what it was like to want — to truly want. To have his nights haunted, to feel that incessant itch beneath his skin and that ache in his gut.
He disappears and he does not look for her, because he is afraid of what will happen if he takes her. She is young and lovely and he is damaged and destroyed, and he will drag her down to the slums just so that he doesn’t have to be there alone.
And yet when he sees her it never occurs to him to do what he has convinced himself is the right thing (it's so easy to know what's right when he is alone and the drug is not sitting there in front of him, just waiting). Instead of walking away from her he fixes his dark eyes onto her beautiful face, lingering over the cloak of starlight that billows behind her, and he goes to her.
She says his name, and he thinks it would be impossible for it to sound so sweet from anyone else’s mouth, and something inside of him shudders in delight. “Aurorae,” his voice is still rough, but her name feels familiar, because he has said it in his mind a hundred times. They are both bold in how easily they close the space between each other, neither of them shy in how they push against the tension, as though daring the other to step away, or to come closer. He eyes the starlight as it settles around them, but his gaze always goes back to her, and the smile on his face is a ghost of the boyish charm he had once possessed when he asks her, “Are you here to tell me all the new secrets you have discovered?”
Dacian
your body's aching, every bone is breaking
nothing seems to shake it, it just keeps holding on