The love, this terrible, all-consuming ailment, he could not cut it out of him. He had tried, over and over, he had tried, and all it did was swell inside the walls of its confinement. With the years he had forgotten—forgotten how to be kind, how to love him, how to love at all. He was a beast locked away in a cell, a wounded animal licking his wounds. He learned to bare his teeth when he was touched, to presume violence out of a soft caress, to feel a knife against slicing open his throat when he heard 'I love you' from a mouth—and though he craved it, he craved it with such fierce intensity—he feared it, too, the weight of it, how it stripped him of his senses. The aching vulnerability of hope, the hope they would not leave—that they meant it. They will not leave, not this time, this time these words will hold its meaning—again and again he had told himself that, again and again they had left.
The world was so dark, dark and hopeless and starved; the wretched thing so many warned him in vain. What was the point of saving it? Of living another day of this death?
He looks at Lian and his eyes are wet, and his breath catches somewhere between his lungs and throat, lodged there as though he could not breathe. Lian, Lian… Lian was still there. Still there… still in this world. Did he believe it could be saved? Did he still have hope? The room swims around him, Lian's hands clutching desperately at the front of his robes. When had he become so small? He sees him as he was, the small child littered across the portraits of their home—chubby cheeks, sleek black hair, those soft, round eyes staring at him as if he could be saved. Everything feels so distant. "Dìdi…" I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. "Dìdi, I have to!" it cracks like a whip, too harsh, always too harsh. "I have to, I have to—you're my little brother, it's my job to keep you safe… I have to keep you safe, I have to…" The sound of his own voice was unberable inside his skull—he clutched to it as if it wanted to explode. I love you, he says, with such reckless abandon. No… No. No, no, no. He could not bear it—he could not bear it… he could not leave him too. Please take these disgraceful words back, he wants to beg, and plead. The shaking starts before he notices it, in his hands, then the broad slope of his shoulders, and suddenly he is pushing him too weakly to mean it, a body too used to violence to perceives love as anything else; he is shaking, trembling. What else is love but the abandonment of self? "Please, Lian…" his eyes squeeze shut, a wounded sound bobbing in his throat. Small, pathetic, broken. It sounds nothing like him. It sounds exactly like him. Had he forgotten the sound of his own voice? "No... No, you don't—you can't… you…" the word barely leaves his mouth, he is shaking his head—horrified. Again. Again. As though he could physically reject what is being offered, outrun it when his legs could not move.
The decanter slips from nerveless fingers, shattering on the floor—he slips off his seat a broken thing, kneeling over the broken glass, hands pressing to the wet floor; alcohol and blood mixing into one—his blood, her blood. Was it not one and the same? They both had killed him, her with intent, him with his incompetence. Would he kill Lian too? Why was he born in this horrible shape? What crime had he committed to be condemned to this wretched body, this cursed soul? Why? Why could he not break himself, rearrange these bones into something worth loving, worth keeping—worth being chosen, just once? He would leave—he would leave too, he felt him every day, drifting further and further away... he should leave. What was left of him was barely a brother, barely worth mourning.
Coward. Sad little boy... clingy, needy, pathetic. What is the purpose of you?
It was a dragon's mourning, eternal; the tears streaked down his cheeks in a sorrow too deep for an unbroken heart to fathom; he could feel the splintering of his soul with every ragged breath—the pain unending, his shredded grace pouring at his brother feet, his keeper's. It hurt. Gods, it hurt. It hurt so badly it felt as though something inside him was being torn apart with claw and teeth, he felt it tearing and he shuddered through it as though he couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. When the dam breaks, it all comes pouring out; the crying turns to a diluvium, sorrow pouring out of him endlessly, hiccups between gasps like a child's wailing. "Why… why do you love me… why do you keep…" Coming back. Again and again? Had he imagined him, too?
"I can't do this anymore—" his hands reach for him in defeat, starved, years of abstinence undone in a second, clutching desperately at the fabric draped over the length of his back as though he wished to dismantle the entity of him, hands coiled into fists, fingers winding tight as though his brother might slip away like sand between his fingers, as though he was the only solid thing left in the world. "You should… you should leave… Dìdi, I'm so selfish… I'm so selfish... I don't want to be alone again, I don't want you to leave," it's the most selfish thing he ever said out loud—to even justify… letting his darkness touch him—how could he do this? His pleas dissolve into a wrecked sobs, his tears soaking into the soft fabric draped over his shoulder where his head was lowered in defeat. What was the point of all this, if he did not make it? His tall, proud frame folds inward, collapses on itself like a crumbling cathedral of unanswered prayers, of broken devotion. The proud line of his spine bent crooked beneath, his weight theirs to carry back to the surface; he cannot swim, he can only feel himself sinking deeper and deeper into this well. "I can't—" a hitching breath. "I can't, I can't—please stop, stop forgiving me, don't forgive me…" No, no, no. The word repeats soundlessly. His head drops against Lian's lap. Black hair spilled over the floor, curtaining his face as his body trembled.
When he stumbles out of his bed as the sun set outside and catches a glimpse of him in a reflection, he is always so afraid— he hates that he sees. How can anyone not? He cannot stand to be seen, to be ravaged by the light; he was a creature meant to be obscured by darkness—he was always meant to rot in the bottle of his cave, obscured by darkness, alone; why does he keep searching, keeping seeking the light when it was never meant for him? "Everybody leaves me..." The plea is a weak, strangled thing, a sinner begging for mercy at the altar of an absent god—hopeless. "I hurt you, and I… I keep hurting people—I can't help it… I can't help it, I can't..." his fingers tighten. "Please, stop—just stop..." Stop loving me. Stop forgiving me. Stop looking at me like there's something worth saving. His shoulders shake violently, the tears refusing to stop. "I tried..." he whispers, the words broken, muffled against him. "I tried … I swear…" To be a good brother to be kind, to be good, to carry everything alone so nobody else would have to—so nobody else would get hurt. But they did, didn't they? They still got hurt. They got hurt, and he couldn't stop it. All this, everything… it was for nothing. "I'm just so tired..." His face presses harder into the fabric of Lian's robes, ashamed, exhausted. "I'm sorry, dìdi… I know it's too late," the admission is quieter, breaths heavier as sluggishness settles over him. "I just wanted to keep you safe… from me… from these other monsters, lurking in the dark… I didn't care if you were unhappy… but now I just miss seeing you smile. I'm so sorry I'm such a disappointment…"
