Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you'd gone
and let the world spin madly on

She lay in their bed, as she'd done for days. She stared at the ceiling, ignoring the concerned phone calls, ignoring the laptop that sat on the bedside table in which she knew she'd find a mountain of comforting e-mail. She wanted none of it. None of it was real any more.

She'd known real, and she'd let it slip through her fingers, blind to it by ambition. She'd let love turn into ash, and ash blow away in the wind.

She thought of all of them, the pile of lovers. Of Reilly and Saint, Elias and Caleb, Galahad and Felix. Each stood on the stage of her half-dreaming haze, eyes sad as they regarded her.

Everything that I said I'd do
Like make the world brand new
And take the time for you
I just got lost and slept right through the dawn
And the world spins madly on

The children had been packed off to live with a guardian. Someone who would keep them safe, because she was in no state to mother them any more.

She wept, in the house in Scotland that she'd never wanted and was planning on never coming back to. She let the tears fall silently on the pillow that would always smell like him. Then she stood, picking up the bag she'd packed, and smiled wistfully.

I let the day go by
I always say goodbye
I watch the stars from my window sill
The whole world is moving and I'm standing still

Pulling the door shut, she murmured the words of the spell that would hold long after she'd gone. The spell that would preserve this place for the day the children were ready to receive it.

Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
The night is here and the day is gone
And the world spins madly on

The Lotus pulled down the driveway one last time. Parked at the dock. Gave up one tiny, thin, dark haired body to the quiet of not-quite dawn.

I thought of you and where you'd gone
And the world spins madly on.

And as the Arcana left the slip on its final journey, she wondered if her blonde boy was still in Antigua.

She sits, still as the eye of a storm, watching the ocean. She can hear him, moving in the other room. Speaking. Laughing. The tears his ghoul sheds as as crystalline clear to her senses as if she were standing there.

She imagines him in their mother's arms, her face creasing slightly in a frown. Their mother. She wonders, briefly, if he understands the way it feels when he talks about their past flippantly. As though it means nothing that she can never have the gift she gave him. The gift of self.

She wonders if he is so selfish as to not care.

And then, in the dark, still night, she lets the thoughts go with the ocean breeze.

I’m not sober all the time
You bring me down at least you try
Until we see this eye to eye
I don’t want you

It's comforting. The click of the round chambering, the click of the safety. It's a weight I'm not used to, but it's a comfort in my hand, the slight waffled roughness of the grip. I can objectively disengage with it in my hand, see things clearly. See who I am now.

There's a slightly bitter smell in here, I think it's motor oil and gunpowder. I used to wrinkle my nose at the smell, but now it just reminds me of where I belong. What I have to do. Where the next hit is coming from. I'm used to it. I don't like it, but I'm used to it. To the taste in the back of my throat that's iron filled like blood, but thicker. Heavier.

I wipe my hand on my skirt, and then I wince. If I wrinkled it, he's going to be pissed. I don't have time to look, so I just have to hope that I'm lucky tonight. Just have to hope. Hope's a funny thing, I think. It's the most intangible emotion, but it's so fucking powerful.

I tuck the piece in its holster, pull on the racing jacket. It's one of his, so it fits wrong, but right. Like having him with me. Like having him watching over me. Gives me the strength to go out and face what I have to face, knowing what's waiting for me out there. I know if I don't face it I'll have to face his disappointment.

That thought crushes me.

I must be running out of luck
Cause you’re just not drunk enough to fuck
And now I’ve had it up to here
I don’t, I don’t want you

It's comforting, the easy release of the gears as I lean my foot into the clutch. The engine purrs under my ministrations and for the first time tonight I feel free. This is where I live, in the handful of seconds between start and finish. The minute and a half of easing this collection of fibreglass and metal around corners and through streets.

I reach for the button on the dash and press it, the music filling the car with noise. Anything but my thoughts. Anything but my shaky hands on the wheel as I beg, plead, with a God who's not listening to let me win, because if I don't these shakes'll continue. He'll cut the line for himself, and make me watch, and I'll just stand there and stare.

Or he'll make me do it for him, my hands trembling like autumn leaves. That's when it's worst. When I'm so close I could slip, and get a little at least. Under my fingernails. Just enough. But he knows, he always knows, and then I end up shut in the closet with a bar full of wire hangers my only company. Them and my conscience.

One of these days I worry that he'll forget me in there, and I'll just sit. Until it gets so bad I leave, and find out he's gone.

So I pray.

I’m not angry all the time
You push me down at least you try
Until we see this eye to eye
I don’t want you

How many boys have had his name? How many boys have I fucked while pretending they had his face and his hands and his voice? None of them have.

I could go home. Get back on a plane, and walk down the street in Camden. I might even run into someone who sounds a little like him, looks a little like him. Someone who'll sell me coke at a discount and might actually fuck me for it.

Not like this, not this strange half-life I live in. I have bruses in my back from where he pressed me up against the door, one hand in my panties, and...left me. There. On the edge. Threw another bag of coke at me and left.

Would it even matter if we fucked? Or would I just end up as broken and bruised as every mess of his I've ever helped clean up, every body I've helped fit in a dumpster in a no-name town behind a motel history forgot? Would he even care, or am I more useful as what I am than what I could be?

It took so long to see
You walked away from me
When I need you
Wake up I’m pounding on the door
I’m not the man I was before
Where the hell are you
When I need you

She sat, more perched really, on the edge of the roof. One perfect pale leg dangled off, kicking back and forth idly in front of some girl's window. Some girl who huddled under her blankets, hoping, praying, begging a God that didn't exist to keep Nadia outside of that window. For once she was lucky enough to get her wish, Nadia had other things on her mind.

She watched as the pale, generic imitation of her crossed the lawn. Hesitated at the door to his office, then knocked, Nadia like. The smallest, most vicious of smirks crossed her face as he opened his door with a murmured, "Nadienka?" only to find it wasn't really her. As his expression fell, she laughed, just loud enough to be carried to him on the wind.

He wasn't the only one who could punish...

I have such a envy for this stranger lying next to me
Who awakes in the night and slips out into the pre-dawn light
With no words, a clean escape, no promises or messes made
And chalks it all up to mistake, mistake, mistake

She tossed and turned in the thin silk sheets, listening to the rain fall outside. Eventually standing, she watched the body next to hers turn over, reaching for the warmth of her empty place and curl itself around the pillow that smelled like her.

She slipped her arms into the robe, tiptoeing from the room and pulling the door flush to the frame silently. A few hurried steps took her down the stairs and out the back path to the garden, where she sat, raindrops falling to send shivers through her body in the seconds it took them to warm on her skin. Soaking her hair.

Closing her eyes, she just sat and breathed. "What am I becoming," she whispered to the night, to no one in particular.

And there are no tears
Just pity and fear
No vast ravine
Right in between

Memories of sitting in the office with Cormac played like a movie behind her eyes, Victor standing like an enforcer. Bane, and his half-mad reaction, his admonishment that he didn't deserve help.

No one deserves help, that's why it's help. She sighed, forcing herself to stand, pacing the stone paths and thinking. Her mind just turning again, and again.

A storm at sea the bow cracked and I was capsizing
And I sunk below where I swore I would never go
If you can't stand in place you can't tell who's walking away
From who remains, who stays, who stays, who stays

The weight of a crown she didn't yet wear weighed on her head. "Ah, my presumption," she laughed to herself. "The hand and will of Summer. I am... I am what I was designed to be. That's the joke, isn't it? I will always be what they made me..."

And there are no tears
Just pity and fear
No vast ravine
Right in between

Victor and Jack found her in the morning, meditating by the pool, a few tear streaks on her cheek.

Spare no tears
Just pity and fear
And I recall
The push more than the fall
The push more than the fall

She had learned not to rise to the bait offered to her. Too many cutthroat women had broke in her the habit of temper. Too many women who would take her place had stilled in her the tiny, raging voice that would see her smash everything she loved in a fit of pique.

And so when the "Alder" made her less than subtle threats, Liliana simply tuned her out. The Invictus who assumed she was one of them, the woman who would push her from her throne.

It was almost too easy to leave her there, slightly shaken, and wondering what would occur.

**

The Dominus, Body Count, had listened to her idea with an open mind. Atlantic City, while not her favorite place in the world, was rapidly growing in her affections. It would never be a Florentine vineyard, never have the simple charm of a small summer palazzo, but it was not bad for what it was, settled in the new world.

And through it all, Christian stood there. Watching her. Wishing to reach out and touch her, and restraining himself God only knew how. She surely didn't.

**

Quintus occupied her thoughts. She wondered how he was getting along in Scotland without her, how he would react to the installation of a new retainer. Of a Kindred. He was tolerant of her quirks, their marriage had been long enough that he had learned not to question her on the women.

But how would he feel about Christian. Her confessor, her knight...how would the Roman lord take to sharing.

**

The night full of thoughts filled her head, and finally she laughed. She didn't care what they thought, not truly. For in the end, they would think as she wished them to. The privilege of the courtesan was that when you dealt for yourself from the bottom of the deck it was charming, instead of cheating.

And she had only begun, this time around, to play.

The obvious heart has come to collect
Cause it tore apart like a tortured insect
The obvious heart waits here to heal
And balances out a subtle reveal

She seemed almost out of place in the bar. Her skirt was criminally short, her hair pulled back in twin braids. The black wife beater clung to her curves. She set the glass down on the bartop, empty, and smiled up at the bartender coldly. "Another."

The bronze shimmer in her skin hadn't started to fade as it usually did in the autumn. Still gleaming in the light, like the golden glimmer in her eyes. The bartender had stopped charging her ages ago. Even angry she'd still drawn more people to the bar, who tipped him better than usual.

"What's your damage," he finally ventured, as the night started to wind down.

She just looked up at him with her gold-veined green eyes.

Cause there’s a remedy close
In a familiar dose
This bitter pill to swallow
Is last in the bottle tonight
You’re empty it’s alright

"I told you you were a good king, Jack," she said quietly, standing on the balcony in the beginnings of the rain. Now the storms could come, Summer could fade easily into Autumn. They'd done what they needed to. And Jack had gotten his blood. He'd stood above them as king.

"You need a vacation too," he looked her dead in the eye. She ached for it, wanted to take the hand he was offering, but she knew he didn't mean it. Not really.

She was what They had made her, and he didn't want any part of that. He might tell himself he did, but when it came down to it...he didn't want the war goddess, the avenging angel. He wanted a soft girl, a girl who needed him.

"You should go inside and be with your people," she murmured, praying he wouldn't leave...but not surprised when he did.

He didn't want her.

And full of yourself
No need to explain
To anyone else

It was easy enough to travel the hedge to Lancaster, once she'd slipped out of Ashika's. The self-congratulatory toasts, the drunken king, she didn't want any part of it. Let them celebrate their victory through her plan, without acknowledging her.

She had kept them safe, as she was meant to do. She had borne the blood and responsibility and let them have their glory. She would let Jack pretend he was king of the world.

Her swords fit easily in their bag, wrapped as they always were. They'd taken a battering at the hands of Crow, they'd probably have to be replaced soon, but they'd served her well and she wouldn't let them down.

The few shirts and pants she'd left at his place fit into the other bag with room to spare. A hairbrush, a toothbrush, the scattered accoutrements of her life spilled in on top of them haphazardly.

Looking at the bed they'd shared, she sighed, and began stripping the sheets off of it.

Broken in time
Taken what’s left
No need to deny
The cause or effect

"Another," she purred at the bartender, the haze of intoxication finally starting to veil the burning anger, the desolate sorrow in her heart. He tipped another generous shot of scotch into the glass and watched her, fascinated, as she brought it to her lips.

So did a businessman a few seats down.

She didn't notice either of them.

This heart is not a broken one
But where have all the colors gone
It’s still among the lucky ones

The blades flashed in the light of the house, moving with her usual grace and speed. She'd flown them in, she'd kept those who needed to stay out of the fire out of the fire, and then she pressed her advantage. Climbing onto the couch without thought she brought down one of the swords, letting it go when it caught in the air, and striking with the second instead.

She shuddered as he fell to the ground, the dragon inside her desperate to uncurl itself. To roar. She pulled away from the group, tried to hide it again, tried to subsume its glow beneath the gentle perfume of flowers, the night in her garden.

But it had woken. And it was hungry.

And she would not do this to him.

Not to another man.

Not again.

This heart is not a broken one
But where have all the colors gone
You’re still among the lucky ones
And burning longer than the sun

She slipped the concierge a bill before retiring to her room, and slipping the bottles from her bag. Scotch and something homebrewed she'd traded for at a Market. Sighing softly, she eased the scotch open, poured herself another liberal glass. Sat on the windowsill and watched the rain fall, and wondered if he missed her.

Wondered if he'd even noticed her leave.

Wondered if she'd ever still the ache in her hands and the low beat of the dragon's heart in her chest. The teeth and claws that craved escape from her.

Wondered if the air was hotter around her now, or if that was just her imagination.

Cause there’s a remedy close
In a familiar dose
Now you can find out who knows
Soaking the truth that she says
In taken chances

Staring at herself in the mirror, she weighed the options. Church, or the bar?

The bar won.

Cause there's there's a remedy close
In taken chances

I can feel his absence when he is gone. It haunts me, perhaps more than the burning of his passion when he stands before me. The heartbeat he does not have, or the breath he does not take.

I pass each bead through my fingers as I pray quietly in Latin, the picture of devotion to a God who has forsaken me. Each bead is as smooth as the nails he grazes down my spine, as well loved and understood as the purr of his voice when he asks me to name my sins.

I believe it excites him, loving the sinner. Offering me the forgiveness of a deity I will never meet, and who has never loved me as I am a woman. And a whore.

When I kneel, I picture his face and smile to myself. The hunger in his eyes, the restraint of the mask he wears. How far can I push, tonight? How far will he let himself go towards that abyss of self-gratification?

I ache for him, each moment passing like a decade, the denial heightening each eventual reunion. Each possessive snare of his fingers in my hair, each biting kiss with which he is so careful not to draw blood. To fall to the reckless condemnation of his peers. A condemnation he secretly desires, as he desires so many other things.

As he desires me.

"Nice of you to join me. Is it effective, body guarding me from across the city?"

"Oh I'm sorry, have you enemies?"

"I could. Some tragedy of leather and hooker heels could be plotting my demise this very moment for being more attractive than she is."

"If I were to guard you from every woman whose beauty yours eclipses, we'd be in a cave in Kabul, and I'd be killing every woman that managed to walk through the opening."

**

"How long has it been since your last confession?"

"Three weeks, or so."

"That's a very long time."

"It is. But I haven't many sins to confess, and lying to ones confessor is a very grave crime."

"All people sin, my child."

**

"Do you pity me, then, Christian?"

"No, Liliana. I offer to forgive you."

"But you would do so anyway. Unless you have a confession you wish to make about what the recitation of my litany provokes in you...?"

"You know what you provoke in me."

"But I want to hear you say it. Trade your confession for mine. Unlike you, I do not ask you to go to your knees for it... A simple whisper will suffice, if you wish."

"And if I leave you wanting for it?"

"Then I shall leave you wanting for me."

"You would deny yourself that?"

"With assurance that such denial will only heighten my inevitable surrender? Yes. Will you deny yourself?"

"I'm a very weak man, Lady Orsini."

"All you have to do is confess one tiny thing to me."

"And what would that be?"

"Confess the zeal my piety incites in you."

"You have lit in me a fire, within which I gladly burn. It consumes me, and the only response I wish to it, is to beg you to make it burn hotter."

"Then let us retire to a place where I may beg you for an act of contrition with which to earn your forgiveness."

"As you would have it, my lady."

"Make up a new game, Christian...or I will. And I feel petty and vicious tonight. I can't promise you'll like it."

The tatters of red silk on the floor were not new, though the sting of the slap was. The way her head turned against it, into his hand, as if she wanted it. Not the slap, but the passion behind it. The freedom of a pure emotion. Jealousy subsumed into a desire so deep she was dizzy with it.

The rough hands of a soldier cradled her gently, elicited shivers from her as she arched towards him. Traced the curves of her body while he commented on how perfect it was, how beautiful she was, how he could see no one else. But every time she tried to press forward he smiled the same cold smile. Stepped back the same few steps. And shook his head.

"Not yet, Miss Orsini. You haven't apologized."

Seconds began shakily to feel like hours as his fingertips burned her nerves into wakefulness, only to be rebuked by those caresses turning sharp as his nails raked her skin. Kisses teased her neck and collarbones, the edge of his fangs ever reminding her she'd baited a lion and she was collecting her reward.

Her hands tensed on the edge of the table, gripping it as if to keep from falling. From sliding to the floor at his feet in need. But her composure was a lie, and they both knew it. Saw it confirmed as the black lace of her underwear was tossed to her dress, her breath catching in her throat. Driving him to distraction. Shaking him from the reverie of fascination with her body.

"But I'm not sorry..."

After a long think, I'm going to combine all my IC LJs into this one. Because of that, almost everything is going to start being cut tagged. In adition, I'll list the character the entry is for in the title, and the locked group if there is one.

The characters available to read about will be the following:

Lucia Orsini - Requiem Vampire
Vashti Aerichs - Requiem Vampire
Lachesis - Awakening Mage
Pixel - Awakening Mage
Aoife Solais - Lost Changeling
Violet Penny Farthing - Lost Changeling
Nadia - Sabbat Vampire

This is going to be a sticky post on the sidebar, and will be updated as things require.

Hey you, hey you
Devil's little sister...

"No, Michael, we can't," she murmured softly, pushing his hand off her leg. Letting her eyes go wide, she tilted her head. "You're engaged, and I'm too young."

She'd been feeding him the same line for weeks. In different combinations, different phrasings, but the sentiment never changed. Look, but don't touch, she left unspoken. Want, but you can never have.

She couldn't help it. She'd known about him for a year and change, but she'd had to approach him carefully. Delicately. The only way it would work is if he thought the whole idea was his. And so she planned it all out, from the color of her nail polish to the height of her heels.

And now she could see she was close. So close.

Just a few more nights.

Hey you, hey you
Finally you get it...

She picked up the phone, dialling the number she'd memorized when she was just a child. "I won't be there tonight," she said softly. Something in her voice spoke of regret, the person on the other end of the phone sounded similarly sad.

As she hung up, she reclined in the hotel bed. Monaco. Paris. London. The cities all started to blur together in a single heap, but she didn't care. It had finally come. Her victory was at hand, though she'd have to remain silent about it a bit longer.

She smiled widely, easily, as the door opened, and the body sank into the bed next to her. Her whisper sweetened as she turned towards him. "Be gentle...it's my first time."

The platinum of her wedding ring caught a stray beam of light.

Hey you, hey you
This won't hurt a bit...

She hugged Michael carefully, and shook her head, a stray tear slipping from her eye. "I thought you'd have made a move before now," she said softly. "I thought you wanted me. I thought you loved me."

She turned from him, pressing a hand to the window, "I guess I was wrong. So I married the only person I could make happy."

"I married Marc."

Curled up in the pink blanket, she looked out the window at the falling snow. All that work on the house in London, and now here she was, banished to Scotland. It wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the fact that she'd been so excited about the house, and her neighbors, and the chances it would bring her.

She warmed her hands on a cup of cocoa, tiny marshmallows melting in it. They coated the top like the snow outside, Glasgow in January. Chewing her lip, she wondered if there was any social life for her here. Anything besides visits from Weatherman (at least he's interesting) and Emeritus (less interesting, but smart) and Ayr. Baby shopping, or a Cartier store.

Anything except another day cooped up inside.

I have started a new LJ for my IC stories. It's a community, so that I can post to it with all my PCs without having to try to carve up 15 icons between them.

If you'd like to join, it's twopennytheatre.

Join! Join today!!

Dear Diary,

God, it's hot here. I miss London. And central air. I mean, this place is a palace to those other guys, but I have closets bigger than this at home. No. Really.

Michael says stilettos not appropriate jungle wear. I want to know why he keeps trying to push the hiking boots on me. He claims they work better with the shorts. I'm beginning to wonder if my beloved isn't a pervy archaeologist fancier. Oh well, I'm getting laid when we get home.

God, why did I say I was going sober this trip? Seriously could use a nice line or two right now. But if I ask he'll give me the dad face. Stupid dad face. I mean, just one tiny line. It can't hurt anything, right?

At least it's me archaeologying this time and not Liv. And we're somewhere not so fucking rainy.

Oh, gotta go. Michael says we can finally leave this dump. Hmmm, champagne or sushi first?

Love,
C

(OOC: This is in response to elias_deveraux's entry, and should not be taken AT ALL seriously.)

He spends his nights in California
Watching the stars on the big screen.
Then he lies awake and wonders
Why can't that be me?

She's grown up so fast, Awakening at 16. She was White's prize student, she was the protege of Felix Wordsworth and Elias Deveraux. But it was the things that eluded her that made her think.

She thought about the first time she'd ever met Eris. It was just after she'd first kissed Elias, and some misplaced desire to show off prompted her to imply there'd been more. Something made her open her mouth to try to bait the woman. She still didn't know why.

It didn't matter now. He'd given her up, when they got engaged. And she'd chosen Reilly, and they could have been happy. They could have had a life.

But she remembered the way the woman looked, like a princess in jeans, and the way her voice could set you on edge even as it complimented you.

And for the first time in an age, she felt envy.

Cause in his life he's filled with all these good intentions.
He's left a lot of things he'd rather not mention right now.

All she'd ever shown Michael was the jealousy. That Helena'd had him first, that she could seize his attention when she wanted it. She only showed him these things because she knew he would never understand the other side of the coin.

Wanting to be someone as composed and self-posessed as Helena Lane.

Now in dreams we run.

Acanthus and Thyrsus. She'd watched Helena draw Felix in, and wondered how much of the dance he'd danced with the Thyrsus had been for her sake...and how much for love.

She realized she blamed the woman for the men in her life, because she was afraid to make them take responsibility. But it wasn't her fault.

If situations had been different, could they have been friends?

She spends her days up in the north park,
Watching the people as they pass.
And all she wants is just a little piece of this dream, is that too much to ask?
With a safe home, and a warm bed, on a quiet little street.
All she wants is just that something to hold onto, that's all she needs.

London. Paris. Tokyo. San Francisco.

Cities with names she doesn't remember, and she knows the Ladder is her life, and she wonders what she could have done if she'd learned from Helena. If she'd taken the woman's example instead of fighting it in jealousy and fear.

And then she realizes she has. She learned more from watching her in KaTet and Florida than she might have in the classroom.

Helena had given her the keys, if she could use them to unlock herself.

If I could be like that, I would give anything
Just to live one day, in those shoes.
If I could be like that, what would I do?
What would I do?

She tried not to cry, but she knew her life would lack something now. Eris had been a whetstone on which she could sharpen her mind, her soul. A challenge that wouldn't be softened by those who loved her and wanted to protect her. It might have killed her, but it certainly would have made her stronger.

She's becoming old, she's becoming one of the ones that others look to.

She hopes she can live up to the shoes she has to fill.

Falling in.
I feel I am falling in to this again.

Name: Cynthia Vaughn
October 31 1988
5:18 AM Time Zone is EST
Baltimore, MD

( astrological chart below... )

I dreamed I was missing
You were so scared
But no one would listen
Cause no one else cared...

I woke in the night, the stillness too heavy. I felt my skin sticky with sweat, and slid out from under the sheet. His sigh almost drew me back, but I couldn't settle.

I slid my feet into my slippers, and my arms through the sleeves of the black silk kimono I kept in our room. Opening the door quietly, I padded down the hall towards the study.

After my dreaming
I woke with this fear
What am I leaving
When I'm done here...

I picked up the slim black book, and bit my lip. It was the first gift I'd been given after Awakening, a book of treatises on the Silver Ladder. It had been copied out by hand, painstakingly, the first of them in Latin, the last written in the 1950's. I didn't know where he'd got it, or whether he'd kept a stock of them for his students.

I opened it to the front leaf, smiling a little at the inscription.

Lachesis,

It will be an honor and a delight to teach you, if you show half the facility for learning that you have eagerness.

Master White
November, 2004

A tear slipped down my cheek, and I wondered at it. That I was crying for him. For this man whose praise had been impossible to earn. I can count the number of times it came truly unqualified.

But oh, when it did, how the world stopped.

So if you're asking me
I want you to know
When my time comes
Forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some
Reasons to be missed
And don't resent me
And when you're feeling empty
Keep me in your memory...

I shoved my hands in my pockets, watching the sun rise. The cup of coffee steamed on the table, but I couldn't drink it.

It was heartache. That's what the feeling was. I hated it.

I remembered the first time I'd ever stayed up all night, studying for him. The first time I'd demonstrated some control over my abilities. The first time I saw a sunrise in Pennsylvania.

The tears slid silently down my cheeks and I reached up to brush them away, thinking of the last time I'd cried over him.

Don't be afraid
I've taking my beating
I've shared what I made...

I remembered standing before him, the lesson Lissa'd given me still fresh in my mind, as I wove the strands of Fate together to shift the odds in the card game.

And dealt him eighteen losing hands in a row.

It was the first time I'd ever seen the smile reach his eyes, as three days before the end of my year with him, he said quietly, "Congratulations, Master Lachesis."

I'm strong on the surface
Not all the way through
I've never been perfect
But neither have you...

I put the book back on the shelf, remembering all the things others had said about him.

I never wanted to believe them.

Not when I saw his face in my dreams.

Forgetting
All the hurt inside
You've learned to hide so well
Pretending
Someone else can come and save me from myself
I can't be who you are...

I will be strong, for who he taught me to be. I will use the Ladder to make the world a better place.

I will defy his expectations. I will remain.

Slipping back into the bed, I let a single tear fall on the pillow.

The last tear I'll ever cry for Aaron White.

When my time comes
Forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some
Reasons to be missed
Don't resent me
And when you're feeling empty
Keep me in your memory
Leave out all the rest...

The winter here's cold, and bitter
It's chilled us to the bone
We haven't seen the sun for weeks
Too long too far from home...

Some cavernous club in New York. They'd been almost inseperable that night, he'd held her hand when she had a panic attack before the first tab of E set in. They gossiped about nothing in particular, and he kept handing her bottles of water.

She brushed a piece of hair out of his eyes, biting her lip without thinking about it until he reminded her. "C'mon kitten," he said softly, taking her hand and dragging her out into the cool night air, the two of them laughing like children.

That was the first time she'd called him Angel.

I feel just like I'm sinking
And I claw for solid ground
I'm pulled down by the undertow
I never thought I could feel so low
Oh darkness I feel like letting go...

I'm sitting on the bed in the London house, fingering the edges of photographs, the last memories I have. Our last conversation hurt, I can still hear his voice in my head as he tells me he's going to the north. That I should come see him in Colorado, that I could meet Cian and make cookies with them.

That he wants me to be happy, even if he thinks I'm going to end up unhappy.

That if I'm in love, maybe, maybe it will work.

If all of the strength and all of the courage
Come and lift me from this place
I know I can love you much better than this
Full of grace
Full of grace
My love...

She sat at the table with Eris, and Felix, her thoughts occupied with Elias. Biting her lip, she realized there was nothing she could say that would make the Thyrsus accept her as one of them, and Felix was too busy being enchanted by her to help. She looked over at Levi, making the "help me" eyes.

Over the course of the evening, their table filled, Eris drifted away. He'd saved her, and he sat there with her. He kept her grounded as she sat with a table full of the Awakened and struggled to find the way to keep her head above water.

His smile had lit her way home.

So it's better this way, I said
Having seen this place before
Where everything we say and do
Hurts us all the more...

I'm sitting at a desk in a hotel suite in Coco Beach, and trying to write a note to go with the photographs. Pictures of us, younger, smiling and happy. I have a picture of him at my grandparents' place, making a snowman, a long red scarf wrapped around his neck.

But it doesn't compare to the pictures in my head. The image of him talking fencing with Cybil. How he kissed my forehead and steadied my hand. How he nursed me through my first hangover.

How even when he was Levi, he'd been Camael.

Its just that we stayed, too long
In the same old sickly skin
I'm pulled down by the undertow
I never thought I could feel so low
Oh darkness I feel like letting go...

She resented him when he gave her the talk. About how he was disappointed, about how he knew she was better than she was acting. She bit her lip and resisted the urge to slam the phone down, but her voice was cold.

She wanted to hate him, because he'd turned his life around. He'd walked away from it all. And she couldn't. She needed it too much. She loved it and craved it, and laying a line down on the table, she inhaled it and listened to him on the other end of the phone. She wondered if he knew what it was like. Really.

When she ended the call, she cried. She didn't want to disappoint him. But she could never be as good as he was.

If all of the strength
And all of the courage
Come and lift me from this place
I know I could love you much better than this
Full of grace
Full of grace
My love...

I'm sitting in a window seat on an early morning flight to New York. I stare at the gray sky, thinking how appropriate it is, as I slip the headphones of my iPod in my ears, my fingers twisted with Michael's. I'm listening to a play list of songs he loved, and trying not to cry.

I miss him. He was my best friend. My inspiration. My angel.

I pray he's at peace.

It's better this way...

Not feeling too shiny with Lach recently. Hoping my latest plot twists will help.

In the mean time, meme me?

a) What's Lach's theme song?
b) What's a song that you associate with Lach and your PC's relationship?