Can of Worms by GaiaVoidMother

Chapter #1 - Circle of Champions

I can’t touch this ghostly echo of you. Your frozen horror, that wrenching cry of soul-deep pain. -Isn’t this enough? Was my sacrifice, my pain, so worthless that you bring me back for more?-   So I wait. Paralysed. And my inaction wounds you further. Intangible slices mar your spirit and you bleed joy. Emotions scar and you fold within yourself a little more each day. My presence is nothing but a splinter in your heart. We infect each other with every word.   ‘No you don’t, but-’   ‘You are less than nothing.’   ‘Try to remember that I hate you.’   Heroes aren’t meant to survive these world-saving sacrifices. It renders their efforts a little less heroic, tarnishes that holy shine to something a touch more drab. If every hero comes back you say, how can it be a sacrifice? How does redemption work when the end, just isn’t? And it comes down to touch again doesn’t it? That balance of love and the passion that binds it. Dedication to the physical ties that hold us only pours lust over the hollow spaces within. And the cerebral ideal falters without that comfort of feeling.   Finality. It lacks finality, that last gasp, a faltering heartbeat. When even death isn’t enough to still you. Treat me like a man, I dare you. Tell me I’m beneath you. The blinding pain sears me still, and I thank any god listening because it means you still see me. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and I love that line because what am I but a blind fool reaching for the sun. I know it’ll burn me to ash but I crave the fire, the warmth. The soul.   I could kill you for making me feel but to lose you is to lose my life. And I am not ready for you to not be there. My safety-net, save me from suicide. Keep you at arm's-length so I don’t filthy your gift with my grief, my agonised renewal. The afterbirth of my sorrow could drown my heart again. So let it. Can’t keep it from foul choices. The bereft propping the blind toward a light neither believes in anymore.   Keep playing our favourite songs. They break bones but the melody keeps us dancing. Wear your heart on your sleeve and never mind the bleeding. Never forget, Hell is other people. But only other people will ever tell you what you need to know. Avoid this like the plague, their poisonous murmurings will divide your heart from your soul and hang them up to dry in the wind.   We are mirrors of the worst of ourselves. Always the worst. A step forward means a leap back, and it’s hard to follow the dance when the moves change as you make them. But there’s a light at the edge of the storm, a break in the clouds. And despite everything, I can see a tiny ray of what looks to these tired souls like hope.   We speak across a gulf, and we’ve never been fond of bridges. Our every effort to surpass the divide has met with a swift rebuttal. Too soon, not enough and finally- too late. When the music finally stops someone gets left behind. Every time, it’s like a charm against comfort. Sometimes I feel like this One Girl business pins us to the card that reads despair. We don’t get the happy ending, that’s reserved for every other girl in the world we’ve shouldered the burden for. So this time, like so many others, I’m left standing by the crater that contains yet another wreck of might-have-been. Might have been happy, might have joined you. I stood there praying for some sympathetic Power to strike me down so I wouldn’t be left behind again. And then I get pulled away, sat on a bus. Off back to one of my previous failed attempts at happily ever after. Back to the beginning, and the interlude. God I wish it was the end.