aphelion. {sunrise v} | calbraxas

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

"she had once thought her hand to be a cage where abraxas's heart would rot beneath the piling sin."

{ shadows all around you
as you surface from the dark
emerging from the gentle grip
of night's unfolding arms ;

Moonlight and darkness streaming in from the window swathes around my body like ribbons, silver and black crossing into delicate tangles across my skin.
But the night —
it's too cold.

With ashen skin and a blackened heart, there are no flames dancing across my flesh to chase away the ice that hisses along the night sky. I have never feared the endless valleys of darkness stretching out before my fingertips, nor have I dreaded the arrival of its blackness rolling over the dying light. For it was the night, kissed by the falling sun, that carried my soul into the shell of my body — never could I fear my creator.

It is the night that holds the beacons of the stars and the moon I have come to love so dearly. Silver light, silver fire of the moon promise me asylum against beasts of darkness who dare bare their teeth against the barrel of my gun. Silver light, silver fire of the stars take my hand and lead me from the mists curling across my vision to the winding paths of great adventure.

It is the night harbors the crooks and the monsters — no, they're not hiding beneath a child's bed — but growls and gunshots are music to my ears; the crooks, the monsters, they are of my blood, they are my sisters — we are one.

Pistol strapped to my thigh beneath midnight blue satin, black heels click click clicking like bullets roaring through the air against the ballroom floor of Thaddeus Bloodworth's mansion, I am nothing more than a fool pining for her sister, violently ripped from her grasp by a brotherhood bathed in blood and darkness. I am a chess piece shoved across a bloody board, and this game is not mine.

I do not take kindly to the suffocating bindings of rules — their rules.

Before them I am rendered easy prey, for a piece of my heart — or what is left of it — lies in their iron grip. My armor fell away with Xanthe, leaving me with one defense: the black mask across my eyes.

The inside of the Bloodworth Mansion is somewhat of a fantasy, all gold, white, and blue. Marble floors, polished and pale gold, beam against the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Paneled off-white walls lined with gold hold long windows, draped in midnight blue velvet, looking out into darkness. Ivory columns stand along every bend of the walls, where refreshments — mostly glasses of champagne — are clustered upon elegant white tables.

Among a sea of copies of myself — fine clothing and elegant masks — the name Calypso Delacroix and her ghost, hanging over my face like a blood-stained shroud, abandons me, leaving me bare but in liberty at last.
Freedom is so sweet on my tongue, it tastes bitter.

Weaving like a dark serpent through the dancing crowd, drinking in the smell of champagne rising into the air with every steady breath, I keep my eyes locked on the Brotherhood members, easily distinguished from the others. They stand with the pride and grace of gods over the crowd — their crowd — elevated at the top of a marble staircase against the wall at the far end of the ballroom. His face, no longer shrouded in harsh shadow, nor obscured from my prying eyes by a mask, summons a swell of bitterness in my mouth. None of them hide their faces like their guests, perhaps to showcase themselves out of their own sick pride.

A promise is carved into the back of my skull —
Thaddeus Bloodworth, I will have your head.

The unspoken words burn my lips.

My eyes scrape like nails against a chalkboard across their ranks, boring into Thaddeus Bloodworth, imagining how good he'd look drenched in his own blood, and onto the next brother, scrutinizing every slightest movement, every twitch of the fingers, every rise and fall of the chest.
Until I find my gaze in a gridlock with a someone I recognized all too well, and not because I had shaken their hand in the shadows.

[People to avoid:
Colgate O'Leary
Abraxas Morrigan
Cordelia Eaglebrooke
Mr. O'Leary
Mrs. O'Leary
Katerina O'Leary
Scope O'Leary
Crest O'Leary
Marbles Marvis Marvis whatever the fuck his name is O'Leary
Clio Burke
And anyone else who gave a damn about her]

Abraxas Morrigan's eyes are daggers into mine.
They drive through the hard bone of my skull as if it is air.

A manic fear seizes my windpipe, and I forget how to breathe.

Tearing my eyes away from his and turning my back to him, goosebumps riot beneath my skin and chills dart down my spine like panthers submerged in the cold thrill of the hunt.

My mind seems to leave the confines of my skull, leaving my heart, roaring in my chest, and shell of a body to take reign. Every fiber of me rises as one, screaming an order, an omen, for me to flee. And I heed them, breaking away from the crowd as hastily as my feet, imprisoned by high heels, can carry me. Up the stairs, around the corner, down the hallway — they are mindless movements. It is as if my body moves on its own, as involuntary as the beat of a heart.

Fingers closed around the doorknob of one of the guest bedrooms, heart risen to my throat — I am not ruled by myself, but by something I cannot name. Instinct, perhaps, an ancient compulsion at the very roots of my being.

One push and the door swings open with a soft groan.

My feet carry themselves forward from the hardwood floors of the corridor to the carpets of the bedroom, leaving my heartbeat to fall at rest. In the arms of a temporary haven, I spare my lungs and inhale sharply, drinking in the comfort of safety, no matter how short-lived.

{ darkness, darkness everywhere
do you feel all alone?
the subtle grace of gravity
the heavy weight of stone ;

. . .

lyrics: "you are the moon" by the hush sound.

[presto]

CALYPSO DELACROIX

[/presto]

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

"the pain of losing her was a pain unlike the others. this pain demanded to be felt."

{ now you've got to breathe
it's only where your feet fell
people are so cruel,
but somebody wants you ;

He still was not entirely convinced where his success had come from after Hannah's death: the sheer want to please a person who would never be able to see, or the sheer hatred of the world that had taken her away from him.

Regardless, from the way they all talked, Abraxas Morrigan was well on his way to becoming more than a hired hand to scare the monsters from beneath beds of the wealthy. Golden marble floors, lavish lighting, fancy dresses and tailored suits, all finished with detailed masks were what Abraxas Morrigan's night would consist of. His one and only job: keep an eye on Thaddeus Bloodworth and anyone who came within a twenty foot radius.

For the most part, his job was easy since Thaddeus mostly sat in a throne chair and watched his party breathe to life in front of him. He had a bit of a god complex, Abra realized, but that was none of his concern.

For the most part, people seemed more interested in the sparkling amber liquid served in crystal glasses. Middle-aged women laughed with gloved hands pressed against their chests. Bearded men swallowed entire flutes of alcohol in single swallows. People circled the room, some dancing, some conversing, all observing the obvious wealth of Thaddeus Bloodworth, none particularly keen on the man himself.

Good, Abraxas thought, Less work for me.

Although, a girl much younger than most walked all alone. Some things she did were familiar, he felt. The way she walked with her shoulders pressed back but her gaze cast down, the way she was tall and lanky with a larger-than-normal amount of dark hair. She was someone Abraxas knew very well, he thought, and incidentally, when her eyes met his, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

She turned in an instant and began to flee as discreetly as possible. Abraxas Morrigan never took his eyes off of her.

"Marlon," Abra called to the boy on Thaddeus's other side. "I saw her too. Go. I'll keep an eye on him." Abraxas nodded in agreement and disappeared within the crowd of people.

The further into the room he delved, the more lively it appeared to be. He heard conversations of pearls and how completely wasted some were, how tacky others thought it was to get intoxicated at such a lavish event, but he did not see the familiar girl. For a moment, he thought she had gotten away, but he happened to catch the edge of her dress turning a corner.

He nodded to an elderly woman who smiled at him and raced after the girl.

"Gotcha," he mumbled as he watched her closing the door to a bedroom. Well, not just a bedroom, the bedroom.

He guessed she was planting something, possibly something to frame Thaddeus with, possibly to kill him with. Regardless, her plan was foiled when he burst through the door.

"You aren't supposed to be in here." he spoke in a calm voice, "But I get the feeling you already knew that."

Before she could stop him, he reached up and yanked the mask from her face and--

"Hannah?!"

The girl he had thought was familiar turned out to be a carbon copy of Hannah O'Leary: the dead girl. His dead girl.

Something happened inside him. He couldn't explain what it was but in the same moment he had watched Hannah take her final breath he had felt it. And it was back now: a burning sensation deep within him that made every part of his body ache. He forgot how to breath and for a second, he thought he might pass out. Or cry. Or vomit. Maybe he'd do all of them before the night was over.

"How-- What? How are you here?"

{ a lover come back
i wanna dance like her
like nobody's watching
but nobody's watching ;

. . .

lyrics: "feel real" by deptford goth.

[presto]

ABRAXAS MORRIGAN

[/presto]

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

"she had once thought her hand to be a cage where abraxas's heart would rot beneath the piling sin."

{ you don't see what you possess
a beauty calm and clear
it floods the sky and blurs
the darkness like a chandelier ;

Seven.

Seven days — and countless dark eternities — had torn past since her face was woven into the crystalline stars by a hologram, since the rain of her seraphic blood cursed the ground, since the ichor of her sunfall roared through the skies. But my lungs, shattered by sobs risen from the depths of my heart abandoned in the eons before the rise of my empire, are not free of the scorch marks like charcoal-black scars. These trails left in the path of tears, carved into the insides of the hollow of my stone chest for eternities to come by the blade of her tongue, will never fade with her breath.

Stark white creeps over my knuckles, summoned by the tension in my clenched fists, stones at my sides. Inhale — the world seems to crack in two. Exhale — white ash riots in my lungs and follows the gentle trail of my breath. The tension locking my body in stone only flourishes, biting, ripping, through my veins.

The intruder's entrance escapes my ears. But his words, oozing coldly through the air, do not.
"You aren't supposed to be in here. But I get the feeling you already knew that."

My heart roars in my chest for gunfire to tear the mansion apart. But my rigid body is suffocating beneath concrete, and my hands cannot move to grab the pistol against my thigh, just beneath the satin of my skirt. My eyes, masked in midnight black and tiny rhinestones, face the white-trimmed window, glaring out into the crossed arms of the stars.

The air around me becomes tar. Immersed in this prison of darkness, I barely muster the strength to turn my body to face him. My eyes, cast down to the floor, scrape upwards to look upon his face. I expect one of the brothers to be standing like a dark god, gun steady in hand, the barrel facing my forehead in not an empty threat but a promise of blood. But it is not a brother, not one of the black devils painted in my nightmares.

My skin screams a threat to tear away from my body and leave me a bare skeleton —
Abraxas Morrigan stands before me, and my bones nearly crumble from beneath me like a war-battered castle.

Inhale — a dagger lodges itself in my windpipe.
Exhale — the freed breath slices down my ash-bathed flesh.

I hardly see his hand rip away my mask to reveal the ghost rotting beneath it.

"Hannah?!"
Her name spills from his lips,
and cold nostalgia pours its bitterness into the air.

And I have lost my words somewhere along in the rifts the dagger has made in my throat. My eyes seem to turn to empty orbs of blue glass, staring out into a void. I had broken the surface for a short moment, gasped for air above the sea of black tar that envelops every part of me, but once more I am captured by the undertow and my sunken head shatters the waves.

My teeth dig into my lip as his voice slices against my ears.
"How — What? How are you here?"
He poses a question I myself cannot answer. This foolish boy, riddled with the poison she left behind, reduced to broken fragments of porcelain, knows nothing but his own heartbreak, a curse laid upon his head by a blood-stained blade.

It feels like I can't breathe and yet I

inhale — emptiness expands to infinity in my chest — and
exhale — bitter words find each other on my tangled tongue.

The dagger lodged in my throat leaves with my words, weaving itself into their darkness.

"How dare you call the name of a dead girl."
My voice, identical to Hannah O'Leary's, rattles me to the core as it shreds the air.
"You are wrong," the venom rolls off my serpentine tongue. "Hannah O'Leary is not the heavy name over my head."

Bitterness wells up in my heart, along with nervousness churning churning churning my stomach, and a strange sentiment I cannot name, as a crooked smile — forced to show in place of the rising unease — shatters the stone composure of my face.

"You must know who I am — and it is not the girl six feet under in a casket, I assure you — considering who you work for.
Does the name Calypso Delacroix ring any bells?"


Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

My heart keeps time to the passing eternities.

{ all the light that you possess
is skewed by lakes and seas
the shattered surface, so imperfect
is all that you believe ;

. . .

lyrics: "you are the moon" by the hush sound.

[presto]

CALYPSO DELACROIX

[/presto]

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

"the pain of losing her was a pain unlike the others. this pain demanded to be felt."

{ now you've got to breathe
it's only where your feet fell
people are so cruel,
but somebody wants you ;

"How dare you call me the name of a dead girl." was all Abraxas Morrigan heard before he began to see stars. His heartbeat thump, thump, thumped against his skull. His chest stopped pulling in air. His fingers felt tingly and his stomach turned.

Hannah O'Leary is a dead girl, he told himself, Yet there she stands.

Without meaning to, without caring about the consequence, he pulled her into an embrace. "I've missed you, Hannah. You really... You really were a phoenix after all, huh? Back from your ashes?"

"You must know who I am — and it is not the girl six feet under in a casket, I assure you — considering who you work for.
Does the name Calypso Delacroix ring any bells?"

No.

No?

He pulled away, shock in his eyes. no, those eyes were not Hannah's, were they? There was no warmth of the sun and a fire forged from famine and passion, this was a cold anger, a frostbitten soul with snowflakes for skin and a case of ice for her heart to sleep on.

She was not her.

She was not his Hannah.

Mortified, he pushed her away and took a few steps back himself. "You--" How would he find the words? His love had been ripped out of his hands-- hands built for protection-- and buried under the ground. He had attended her funeral, for Ripred's sake. Yet hopelessly hoping had kept her alive in his head. He talked to her, even after the funeral, just to remind himself of what she would say.

Perhaps when he saw her at first he had... He had still known she was not Hannah, as much as someone with a remarkably strong resemblance. She was not his Hannah, she was an enemy. He took her forearm up, refusing to cry.

"In that case, you are definitely not supposed to be in here."

Together, they walked. Lucky for the ghost girl, and for Abraxas honestly, no one would see them leaving. The proper thing to do was to take her straight to Mister Bloodworth but, well...

He couldn't.

What would have been his excuse? "She was in your bedroom?" She surely would have claimed she had lost her way to the bathroom, or that she was waiting for Mr. Bloodworth himself to join her, or some other lie. Abraxas realized with a start that had this not been an exact replica of a dead girl, he would have simply asked her to exit to room and instructed her not to come back.

But she was a dead girl, wasn't she?

Once outside, he let her go. "This is a warning. Don't come back here." You belong with Dustyn Chase and Annora Taylor and Cody Bowers-Fox, he wanted to add, you belong in a casket.

For a moment, he was going to let that be the end of it: to let her disappear and pretend he'd never saw her. But seeing ghosts was not something people like Abraxas Morrigan could grow used to. "What's your purpose here, H--" he tried again. "Why are you here, Calypso?" The words tasted like vinegar, but Abra knew they were right.

She was not his Hannah.

She was an impostor, in more than one sense.

And yet he still felt the need to reach out and hold her hand.

{ a lover come back
i wanna dance like her
like nobody's watching
but nobody's watching ;

. . .

lyrics: "feel real" by deptford goth.

[presto]

ABRAXAS MORRIGAN

[/presto]

ooc; short, i know. me sorry. love me anyway

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

"she had once thought her hand to be a cage where abraxas's heart would rot beneath the piling sin."

{ i will bring a mirror
so silver, so exact
so precise and so pristine
a perfect pane of glass ;

Bones shattered by his embrace — arms with the force of the sky — I stand with empty lungs robbed blind of their air. He is a crook, no doubt, by the way he steals the air right out of my lungs before my unsteady heart can beat twice. Ashes gradually falling away from my skin, descending like snow to the ground below me, embers, the harbinger of my old friend, poke their eyes out to peer into the dark of my eyes. They whisper of the rebirth, scattered in a gray snowfall across my skin, and return of the fire, my old friend. Last we spoke it left a knife in my back and black on my flesh. Fire is a traitor, but fire is a part of me.

Abraxas's lips part and the break of his words —
"You —"
punches a hole through my stomach.

"You —" it is an accusation, a finger pointed at my forehead like a gun. You, you are not Hannah, you, you are an imposter, you, you are a liar, you, you are a traitor of the eyes. I can almost hear the bullet firing.

"In that case, you are definitely not supposed to be in here."

(You're right — no, no I'm not, not here, not with you.)

His touch, so gentle on my arm, ignites my flesh, unfolds an ember into a flame and a flame into a fire.
But his touch turns into a grip and gentle turns to iron. Hand closed around my forearm, he leads me away and I do not speak, I do not breathe, for his words hung black in the air is a rope wrapped around my neck.

With the hand free of his grip, I place my mask back over my eyes as a cloak to shield Bloodworth's eyes from scraping over mine and summoning the name of his rival from the dark of his mind, and we weave through the crowd. People drowning in champagne and their own satin skirts form a shield, a barricade, around us two serpents, from the gods lounged in the thrones above us.

The doors, gaping open into the night, welcome us to the darkness past the beaming lights of the Bloodworth Mansion. Once in the arms of the wind and the night, my eyes avert to the sky for a fleeting moment, and I swear, I see Hannah O'Leary woven into the stars. Oblivion had been so certain before, but doubt turns my chest cold beneath her — not her ghost, her.

His hand falls away from my arm, leaving only flames behind, and his voice yanks my eyes from the stars.
"This is a warning. Don't come back here."

I blink.

My hand rises to my face and removes my mask to strike my skin against the moonlight. Part of me claws against my skull and screams with the absence of the mask, screams for me to cover the girl in the stars, but something else reigns tonight and it is not my mind.

Body encased in stone, mind locked in the stars, I find my breath again, only to feel it shatter in my lungs.
My senses seem to abandon me, to ascend into the darkness of the sky and leave me behind with only eyes and ears.

"What's your purpose here, H —
her name dies on his tongue but carves a void into my chest.
"Why are you here, Calypso?"

And I swear my name is laced with venom.

Words tangled on my tongue emerge into the air before my mind can process them, spilling from my lips almost without a single, burning thought. They stain the air like black ink on white; they singe my tongue like an open flame on delicate paper.
"I'm here for reasons that are none of your concern.
But I could ask the same — why are you here, Abraxas?
I'm the enemy and yet, here you are."

I owe him nothing — not an apology, not an explanation, not one single reason why I dared set foot in my rival's kingdom. If it was not Abraxas Morrigan that stood before me with a mouthful of questions and a heart broken for a dead girl in the ground, the barrel of my gun might be pressed between his eyes in a threat, or I would have bolted the moment the words "you aren't supposed to be in here" clawed against my ears.

"If you really wanted to me to never return," I say, "if you really saw me as the enemy — as exactly what I am — you would have left without another inquiry, or you would have brought me to Bloodworth the moment you saw me."

My mind does not reign tonight.

I inhale — air floods into my lungs, but it feels like needles.
I exhale — blood crawls up my throat.

{ i will set the mirror up
to face the blackened sky
you will see your beauty
every moment that you rise ;

. . .

lyrics: "you are the moon" by the hush sound.

[presto]

CALYPSO DELACROIX

[/presto]

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

"the pain of losing her was a pain unlike the others. this pain demanded to be felt."

{ now you've got to breathe
it's only where your feet fell
people are so cruel,
but somebody wants you ;

He had never meant to fall in love. Most monsters didn't even have the capacity to love, but there he found himself. The first time he found her grave in the dark, he slept next to it and it was really a pity, the situation he found himself in. He realized fate truly had a sick, twisted sense of humor, and fate did not believe in change. Abraxas was punished for trying.

Typically, to escape one's thoughts, one would go to sleep if at all possible. But even in his dreams, he was not safe. She was always there. Sometimes she was covered in blood, crying, her chest heaving as she struggled to breathe. Those dreams were hard to handle. Other times she was smiling that beautiful, warm smile, whispering how much she loved him in his ear.

Those were even harder.

He tried telling himself that was all this was-- just a dream, just a dream. It had to be! Logically, there was no girl who looked this much like his Hannah. Logically, if she was who she said she was, an enemy to his boss, he would have killed her on most days. In the event that he hadn't, he would have forced her to leave and he wouldn't have turned back. But there he was: staring at her in her gown, scowl on face, hands on hips-- the very same mannerisms Hannah had once had.

"I'm here for reasons that are none of your concern.
But I could ask the same — why are you here, Abraxas?
I'm the enemy and yet, here you are."

Why was he here? Because he was witness to a miracle on that day, and while most of him was terrified, the rest held fast to hope. He ran a hand through his hair.

"Stop. Shut up."

"If you really wanted to me to never return, if you really saw me as the enemy — as exactly what I am — you would have left without another inquiry, or you would have brought me to Bloodworth the moment you saw me."

"No! Shut up! I said stop!"

His breathing deepened; his chest rose and fell too quickly. His hands clenched into fists by his sides and the veins began to rise beneath the skin of his neck. "You are right, you know? You are the enemy."

He contemplated what to do next: step forward or step back. Stepping forward meant ending this girl, ending his miracle. Stepping forward meant burying her just as he had buried Hannah.

Stepping back meant letting her go: letting his miracle slip through his hands. Would he ever see her again? Was he willing to risk it? Would he be able to live with himself if he stepped forward instead?

He stepped back.

"But I won't hurt you." he breathed in deep.

"I... can't."

{ a lover come back
i wanna dance like her
like nobody's watching
but nobody's watching ;

. . .

lyrics: "feel real" by deptford goth.

[presto]

ABRAXAS MORRIGAN

[/presto]

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

"she had once thought her hand to be a cage where abraxas's heart would rot beneath the piling sin."

{ what if i said i would break your heart?
what if i said i have problems that made me mean?
what if i knew i would rip your mind apart?
would you let me out? ;

Silence. He begs for silence. "No! Shut up! I said stop!" Abraxas says. But it is not an order, not a command, not in the slightest. I hear the brokenness in his voice; he pleas silence, he pleas for stillness. His hands turn to stone by his side — knuckles stark white, fingers rigid and curled — but the rest of him is glass. The rise and fall of his chest quickens — inhale, exhale, inhaleexhale inhalexhale inhaexhale inexhale — and I watch, the heat from the fire breaking through my flesh like a knife and into my bones.

It doesn't hurt.
The flames that have crawled from my fingertips to my shoulders — they don't hurt me. (I am ablaze, and yet I am so cold.) This fire is mine; we are one. And his voice — "You are right, you know? You are the enemy" — is kerosene rain, fuel to my fire. I swore I heard poison laced in his voice, sharp as a blade. But when I brace myself for a slash to the chest, I am met with the stillness of soft, soft nothing.

"You are the enemy."

It doesn't hurt.

My gun, tucked away from eyesight, burns my flesh. It is a whisper, a tap on the shoulder. You could just shoot him, Calypso. From the back of my head, I am reminded that he is my enemy as I am his, that I could punch a hole in the Brotherhood's defenses if I broke his skull with a bullet. This is war, and it is as stark as black is on white that he is not on my side. This is war, and the smarter thing to do would be to pull the trigger. But I won't, I know. Perhaps if he had Xanthe's blood smeared across his skin like warpaint — maybe not even then.

IX. Kill only if you must.
(Must I?)

I just stand there like a fool, my eyes boring into his. I seem to lose myself in the darkness of their depths, twist in circles and circles and circles within myself. And for several moments, he is as still as me, until he takes a step back. But it isn't a surrender, no, it is a goodbye. He steadies himself with a breath, brings himself back into balance.

"But I won't hurt you," he says. "I . . . can't."

My words tumble from my lips before I hardly know what I'm saying.
"No, you won't," I say. But when I speak, there is no venom broiling on my tongue; my words do not cut through the air for a killing blow. "Because you can't bear to watch her die again." (If I had a different face, there would be a bullet between my eyes.)

He stepped back, but I step forward.

(Step.)

There is a sun between us. It burns brighter, hotter, than the fire dancing upon my flesh. (I am ablaze, and yet I am so cold.)

Step.

No, it is not between us — it is him.
The sun; hope.

(I thought there was none.)

We are only inches apart and my breath is breaking before it can even leave my lungs.

{ maybe you can stop before you start
maybe you can see that i
just may be too crazy to love
if i told you solitude fits me like a glove
would you let me out? ;

. . .

lyrics: "you should know where i'm coming from" by banks.

[presto]

CALYPSO DELACROIX

[/presto]

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

"the pain of losing her was a pain unlike the others. this pain demanded to be felt."

{ now you've got to breathe
it's only where your feet fell
people are so cruel,
but somebody wants you ;

Abraxas Morrigan no longer minded being the one to hide within the clouds of cigarette smoke and empty promises. He was a train with no track, headed nowhere in particular at a lethal speed, and he had accepted it.

People like Abraxas did not get to be happy. He had been silly to think otherwise. He had been silly to ignore the looks he got when he held Hannah's hand or his thoughts when they were alone. She was too good for this world and, certainly, too good for him. But he had defied fate's plan, and he was punished tremendously for it.

As he stepped back, his eyes remained glued on the girl. How, he wondered, had fate thought this joke would be anything less than cruel? Yet, maybe that was the intent. Hannah's death would only be the beginning of his suffering, it seemed.

"No, you won't. Because you can't bear to watch her die again." She said, icy tone and fiery eyes a contradiction that tore him up from the roots.

He took another step back.

"But," he said, holding up a shaky finger.

"You won't hurt me, either."

He turned on his heels and refused to let himself look back.

"I will not let you."

"I will not let you close enough."


The thought of just returning to the party seemed to be a joke to him. He would be expected to do something like that, Abraxas Morrigan: duty before emotion. And that, he thought, must have been the punchline. Because now, as he retreated into the shadows of the hedge around his new boss's home, emotions were the reason he could not finish what he had started.

He would never finish what he started, he reminded himself.

Not his work, and definitely not with his new Hannah. No, not his new Hannah, and not Hannah at all in fact. She was a prosthetic version of a girl buried into the ground, and nothing more.

Maybe he was just going crazy. For a dreadful moment, he wondered if he had imagined his life with Hannah, or if he had imagined the girl summoned as her replacement.

No, they were real. Both of them. They had to be.

He slipped a tiny flask out of his waistband and tipped it down his throat.

He would not finish his work that night, he decided.

And he pulled his coat tightly against him as he headed for the cemetery. He needed to see her, or the idea of her. One last time.

{ a lover come back
i wanna dance like her
like nobody's watching
but nobody's watching ;

. . .

lyrics: "feel real" by deptford goth.

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ABRAXAS MORRIGAN

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