"...In all cases, there was a lone tunnel, obscure and solitary; mine." -Ernesto Sabato, The Tunnel.

I'm trying to keep things clear. Trying to keep the lines from blurring or meshing together. It's difficult being me; not knowing when things really are what they are and wanting them to be things they are not.

It's such a task being me, so incredibly trying. How can anyone stand being near me? Oh, right. No one can.

That's why one of my only two friends is that grumpy cat in the corner, purring or growling or whatever at me. Fat little piece of shit.

Here, listening to a certain old song about a man sleeping on a hill, I can't help but wonder why I bother keeping the lazy grime-ball around. It's not as if I like cats. In fact, since the day that gnarling animal came into my house, I can actually say I've grown to acquire a vicious dislike for cats. Dislike sounds too soft a word though. I mean revulsion, almost like a kind of natural enmity so deadly I'm sure some day I'll start sweating the toxic feeling from out my pores. Perhaps I already have and that's why people tend to keep themselves a certain distance from me.

But I'm trying. I'm a nice guy. Really. You should give me a chance so you could see how much I've truly changed. Do a 'Before and After' and I'm sure you couldn't tell the ragged jeans and grubby smirk of that crook from the almost-decent new me. I'm all deodorant and white teeth now. I'm already half-way to paying a debt that could cost me my neck, and all I had to do was sell all my furniture.

Tell me if that isn't trying. I'm sleeping on the goddamn floor without a cover and it's winter, for goodness sake!

I've sworn off red-lit corners and sticking stuff inside my arm; aren't you glad?

Really. I'm trying.

And I don't deserve your condescending sneer. I've earned more than your skeptical laugh. This isn't much a matter of faith as it is of you wanting to make me feel like shit. I know I fucked up, alright? How many eternities do you want me to apologize until you believe I repent? What kind of pleading do you want from me so we can bury the hatchet? So we can start again and piece the shards together?

It can be like before. I swear to god I can make it right. You just gotta trust me on this one; remember? Like you used to do.

What. You don't want to hear about it, do you? Why? Because you've hear it before, am I right? Because you don't have it you to care anymore? Well what a fucking nice guy you turned to be. You're just the friend I ever wanted, aren't you? You're just the antithesis of me and all that I represent, aren't you? You thought you could mold me the way you liked, but you tossed me like I'm sour candy when you realized you couldn't, didn't you?

Yeah. It took me a while to realize, but fuck it if I'm not joyous I finally figured you out.

Shit Chrom. You aren't all saintly smiles and pristine hair, are you? It's a beautiful veneer, I'll give you that much. But gods, are you fucking hideous inside or is it just me?. See, I used to think you nearly perfect, yeah, nearly the thing I wanted most but always knew I could only admire from a distance. This deception of mine... serves me right for being blinded by the mask.

How do you do it, friend?

How do you prepare the face to meet the faces that you meet?

Is it natural talent or did you learn as time ate at your insides?

I'm really curious about this one, because up until now I thought evilness was exclusive to the ones born divergent. You know. The ones with a label ascribed to the front of their brows so that the others know who to keep away from.

But nobody tells you about the nice ones, do they? You shyster; this is so fucking unreal I think I'm gonna cry. Or laugh. Or both.

It's just. I really liked you. Like... I really... really liked you.

And the only reason I'm telling you this is so you know that you too fucked up. You messed with the wrong type of deviant. I wasn't all addiction-driven madness. I was still conscious and thriving on you, somewhere inside, somewhere you didn't bother seeing. Maybe you were too busy having an inner laugh at how malleable I was in your hands. Maybe that's why you didn't notice that the more you spoon-fed me all these delusions of a better place, the more I started to believe in the sugar and the rainbow-sprinkled kind of life. I wanted the white picket fence to keep the monsters at bay, and I wanted you to be on the other side with me, and I wanted to know you would always be there.

Like you fucking promised, you rotten piece of filth. Like you said it could be.

Never break a promise you make to the devil, you moron. Never make a sad, dull, broken person believe in things you can't give. Mind your flappers lest you want someone barging in to your bedroom at night to slice them right off with a butter knife. It ain't gonna pretty, and you can bet your sorry ass it's gonna hurt twice as bad as the heart you stomped into the grave. Just you wait till I get a hold of you. You're gonna wish you'd never met me under the rain, and you're going to have nightmares about heated nights trying to keep quiet under the covers, and you're going to cry when you hear my voice forever squirming inside your skull. You'll wish you kept your promise, and I'm gonna enjoy every waking moment inside a cell, inside my own head, reliving what I did and how I'd do it again.

I'm not afraid of the consequences.

I'm not afraid anymore. I'm just this mutilated rag doll you used to like playing house with. I'm this thing running on spite.

So fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and fuck your promise.

I don't need anything anymore.

All I want is you; quiet and stuffed with cotton to keep me warm at night.

I'd be crazy to throw you away just like that.

I'd be crazy to not keep you around.

I don't know what would be worse; having to watch you from a distance or having you close and pliant and breathless in my arms.

You know what? I think I can settle for having you stiff. I think I still like you; just the you that that meets the eye. I don't want any of the insides or the lies. I just want to hold something in the dark... A little keepsake. Something that reminds me I once was capable of loving.

I loved you, Chrom.

I swear I really, really did.

Try to remember that when I'm digging my hands inside your chest.

A/N: I forgot to mention; reference to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and to the rock song "Rip Van Winkle". Really. I blame that song for making the angry flow so easily out of me. Not that it's an angry song, but it just incites that out of me.