"why is a raven like a writing desk?"

She saves him from a monster, and though she speaks nothing of it to him—no. Because she speaks nothing of it to him, he hears more than she wants him to.

She loves him, but her love is a thing he cannot understand. Even then, he does not need to understand, because he is his mother's son. Deep down he knows it already, he just does not want to see it.

Her love is sacrifice, her love is salvation, that much is true—but the question there is, for whom was it for? He won't know the answer just yet.

For now he sees it on the other side—love is not wanting to be saved, even if it means staying and hurting, so long as it means I can spend one more moment with you.

He will not understand her, so long as he stays her little boy.

That's fine.

Lee Sookyung loves her little boy, she wants him to grow up to be a man even when she isn't there by his side anymore.

Her love is sacrifice, her love is salvation—her love says if you are saved by my leaving, then even if it hurts me to leave you, even if it means i can no longer see you grow, i will leave, if only so you can be saved.

She does not quite say it like that. She does not say it at all.

That's fine.

One day, her little boy will be a man, and then he will have someone he loves like she loved him, and he will understand. And he will love, just like his mother did.

He won't see it like that. He won't see that his love is a love just like hers, that it will hurt his love just like his mother's love hurt her love.

His love is—imperfect. It is not whole, not like others'. His love is broken, just like hers.

She sees the seeds of it that sprout from the moment he comes to her with eyes bright like his eyes before, and she knows then that he will find his love. She sees it grow, shrink, stagnate, and grow again. She sees the moments leading up to when that love of his would soon outgrow hers.

She sees, in the final days before he never comes back again, a glimpse of the man he will become and the love that he will have.

And she knows, then, that it will be the last time she will see and hear her little boy, that the next time she sees him he will be a man.

And she is right.

.

(“Mother knows best, Dokja-yah.”)

(For you, my love, I will sacrifice even my salvation.)

.

for you, @sincerelysamedt, @tbiris, @tls12lessthan3

hahahappy belated birthday to our one and only squid~

Pieces of him, broken off and wanted still by someone. He hates it, hates being wanted in such a form because it makes him want to carve away the sides of him that they want.

Because it makes them happy. Because it’s the part of him that they want.

And what he wants is to give them exactly that.

He doesn’t know how to be whole, because he’s never quite been.

Whole is a foreign concept to him who has always been loved in pieces and fragments and never all of them. Only some of them will ever get loved by anyone, and that means there are pieces of him that many have loved and will continue to be loved, but that also means there will always be fragments broken and jagged and unwanted, unloved.

There will always be some part of him that will never be loved.

But still.

If that is what it costs to be loved, in some form, in some way, then.

He is willing to sacrifice even that, just as long as someone, anyone, will keep on loving him.

Even if it isn’t all of him.

It is worth the sacrifice.

It should be worth the sacrifice.

.

—Is it any wonder, then, that anyone who loves him must sacrifice just as much—if not more?

There is a boy he knows, quiet and meek but never weak. That boy can never be weak, because to be weak, that boy fears, will mean he is no longer worthy of love. He must be strong, because the strong never get left behind—they will drag themselves forward if they must, and they will.

(Because if he does not chase and run with all their might then they will be left behind, and there will be no back for them to see, to chase after anymore.)

There is a girl he knows, guilty and troubled but strong and resilient for it. She hurts, oh, she hurts, for all those who are drowning in so much pain they are blinded to hurts not their own. She is stained and washed in blood—it is her baptismal waters and her burial mound in one. She used to want to die because living meant living with all her guilt and pain but then he came and taught her to value sacrifice.

(She hates sacrificing so much of herself, but she knows she will lose so much more if she does not, and so she makes the choice. She no longer wishes the choice be taken from her for she knows now how much more terrible such a thing really is.)

There is a woman he knows, wrapped in ivory and silk to hide the genteel strength she has yet to know she has. She is the sharpest of weapons and the softest of hearts, but her duality only makes her lovelier and deadlier in equal measure. But the world is not kind to her, and neither can he be, if he wants her to live, so he bids her sacrifice her heart of silk for one of steel and even then the sacrifices he asks of her does not stop.

(She gives him her everything and more. She is the only one who sees inside him, but the cost is herself. Her sacrifices are no lesser than his but her heart is still so full of love to give and his is hungry, so, so hungry it gorges itself on what she has to offer but it is still not enough—what more can he want, what more does he want?)

There is a man he knows, kind and gentle and steady and strong, a heart that feels so strongly for it has yet to be forged into steel. He is a shield and sword in one, firm as a mountain and sharp as its peak. Defense has always been his best offense and yet he knows it will not be enough so he takes and he takes and he takes until all that is left for him to do is make offense his best defense. And as that man’s heart had told him from the day they met, he goes and forges himself into the best of shields, a sword of steel.

(It is hard to feel with a heart of steel, but still his heart beats and so he feels. He has sacrificed so much but his heart will not be the last he must offer. His heart is not the only one he has to offer.)

There is a woman he knows, weary and jaded and jagged but sharper, harder, and more patient for it. She is rage and thirsting justice needing direction and a drive to push her, and she finds it in him as much as he pulls it out from her. She is anger and compassion and love and hatred all melting together, chaotic but burning brighter than any fire. She burns herself in her own ruinous flame, a phoenix immolating its path to glorious rebirth.

(When the fire is out of things to burn, it burns itself. And her flame is unquenchable, an eternal beacon of war from one who wishes most desperately for peace and rest. It is a rest she sacrifices, for him.)

There is a girl he knows, wounded and drowning but still running, still breathing. She wields her blade not for herself but for all those who are still drowning. She breathes for a friend whose breath has long since ended. And she sails the seas she despises for a friend who loved it, and for a man who asks her to, to sail them to the end of the horizon.

(The ocean is vast, and the distance she must go is more than she can bear. It does not stop her from crossing the distance anyway. Living is her atonement, and every day she breathes is a day she keeps her head above the water that threatens to drown her.)

There is a woman he knows, beautiful and deadly and kind like few others. There is poison in her touch that is medicine to everything else. Kindness to her is a choice she always wishes to choose, even when it is cruelty that she must become. There is love in her that has yet to be given, love that she was meant to give another but does not because it is no longer hers to give.

(She was not the other half but she was the one who fit the closest and the best, and so she made herself fit. She was who he needed at the time, just as he was the one she needed then. She was beautiful and desired but more than that was this: she was kind, and she was. She had fit herself to someone for so long she hardly fits anyone else, and that is the sacrifice she has to live with.)

There is a man he knows, tired and weary and remembering as much as he is forgetting. He carries the weight of the world on his back even when no one asks it of him. He walks, he stands, he fights, he falls, and then he stands back up again. There is no reprieve for him in death, because all it brings him is to another world where every step taken is washed away like sands against the tide. He keeps walking anyway.

(There is nothing else he can do except walk and walk and walk. He does not run, not because he can’t but because he has already done so many times before to the point of exhaustion. He is not a hero nor a villain nor an extra—he is the protagonist of a story kept turning and turning and turning for the sake of a being that lives for nothing else but the next page and chapter. He is a living sacrifice just like any other, and yet he is the most. He walks on and on and on and on—)

There is a woman he knows, neither good nor evil, both kind nor cruel. She is both and neither to him, a woman he does not quite hate and does not quite love. He trusts her as much as he trusts no one else. And both he and this woman know that she will sacrifice her everything for him, whether he asks it of her or not. Because that is the love she has learned he loves. And she has loved him with her everything since long before she can remember.

(She loves the boy he used to be. She loves the man he has yet to become. She loves the reader who has trapped himself behind broken walls. She loves him more than he will ever know. She loves the parts of him that he himself despises. And she hopes to love him even more, even the parts that he himself has forsaken and forgotten.)

There are more people that he loves, and they are all sacrifices and sacrificed to him, just as much as he has been sacrificed for them. There is no altar but their devotion and the many corpses he has left them to mourn him with.

Sacrifice is something they have learned to live with, having loved him and being loved by him.

Never once do they ask for his sacrifice, because for as long as they have known him sacrifice is the manner by which he shows his love.

All they can do in return is sacrifice as much of themselves as they can to fill the pieces of him that have been carved out and hope it will be loved as much as they have.

.

It is a terrible thing, to love him.

For to love him is to love pieces and in pieces, for whole is something he has never been.

To love him is to love something broken and incomplete, and hope that maybe, just maybe, you might be the one to complete him so he knows he is loved, he is wanted, and he does not have to break himself in pieces just to be loved.

Loving him is hoping for the best but never expecting anything but the worst.

For loving him is Sacrifice in and of itself.

~~~~~~~~~~~

for you @sincerelysamedt, @hehearse and all you orv lovers