Work Text:
You have died, and I am dying still.
Death is more pedestrian than I'd guessed:
No God around, but no Gehennic chill.
I am yet a girl in gothic dress.
I am yet a fool without a quest;
My fingers reek of black and blistered things.
And, God, the blood -- but lady, I digress;
I will not talk of gods or Furthest Rings.
So go brightly through the stifled night,
Bravely walk where monsters fear to tread.
Upon gauche shadows, deign to shed your light.
You shall be the hero in my stead.
Don't shake your head. It's true, and rightly so:
You know more than I can ever know.
You know more than I can ever know.
Of myself, I understand jack shit.
When we began I thought you stiff and slow
As dull starched linen, sacrificing wit
For didactic, prosy,
There I Told You So
's.
A girl of warnings: mewling, weak and tamed!
I did not listen when you called out, Rose,
(When do I listen? When am I ashamed?)
A Prospit prude who shrank from umbral gloom.
So when your tongue proved acid, thrilling, cold --
Your brain a garden strange of leaf and bloom --
Your heart a paper crane of ornate fold --
I was undone. I had never bent.
In you was all my arrogance misspent.
In you was all my arrogance misspent,
In you I ploughed my fields thick with salt.
I am not John. With even vague assent
I will aggress, abuse, assail, assault,
despoil. I coo no friendship niceties.
And yet you ever persevered?
A masochist, Miss Maryam. Your decrees
I mocked, I twisted and I commandeered
And ground your patience down, so I could know
Your hate and irritation's silhouette,
The worn patina you hid far below
Your chill mien, which I would soon offset.
My attitude to want is not opaque;
I never grasped a thing but it would break.
(In festertongues, the word is argoleth.
It means to want and ravage, maim, revere
To raze and hold within that selfsame breath.
There are no terms for kindness; only death
is their form of love-word. Let's adhere:
argoleth, Kna'ya. Thusly cleared,
Horrorterror romance sure is weird.)
I never grasped a thing but it would break,
I never played a game but breached the rule.
But you my awkward hand did not forsake;
You guided, gentled, nagged. When I was cruel
You met my thrust for thrust in coup d'arrêt.
My fate was sealed. In you my match was met.
There are no words to capably convey
The thousand kinds of fire which our duet
Enkindled in me, broiling me to char.
In trolling, you're restrained. In arson? No.
I burned as embers from some dying star
With all the scorch a teenaged girl can know.
I don't presume your interest. Just know this.
You'd have my grimdark, cremains-tasting kiss.
You'd have my grimdark, cremains-tasting kiss,
You'd have the grave-robbed contents of my soul.
I bid you turn your smoke-blent cheek, dismiss
the prattle of some fool no longer whole,
But still, they're yours, these inept billet-doux.
Mine are now the fabled blackdeath throes;
Mine perdition's bloodbreath so to rue;
Yet as I lucent virtue do oppose,
Specks of me remain. One speck for Jade.
One speck of me for Dave, one speck for John.
And one small speck in these dull grains arrayed
is yours, all yours. The rest of me is gone.
Death was long decreed, but when we part
Your name will be three beats upon my heart.
Your name will be three beats upon my heart.
I hope I die as better women died:
I knew one who was a thing apart.
I lack her prowess, though I have her pride.
You're prideful too, but wield it like a knife.
We have changed, Kanaya. I'm your shade;
We stand abreast, one life beside unlife,
But you wear death as though it were brocade
And I am drained of pigment, tint and hue.
I know I've engineered my own demise.
I know this is a dim, prolonged adieu;
But though I yet descend, you shall arise.
Two girls regnant. Sound our crowning shrill.
You have died and I am dying still.