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Mirrors
By Ash Night
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A/N: A short story involving Aubrey and his memories and thoughts about just how similar he and Risika are. Quite dark. You are warned.
Disclaimer: All belongs to the mighty Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. I am a mere mortaling. *bows*
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He traces the scar that runs across his collarbone. Pale and shadowy, he thinks, so different from the vivid memories stored inside his head. He remembers the shattered glass, laid frailly plastered against the wall, as if it were to collapse had a silver piece been plucked away, to crumble into fairy dust that would bleed across skin in fine cobwebs and threading rivers of blood, mere shadow of the lines etched and carved so deeply in mirror.
And he hears the pounding music, and sees the blood red lights flashing through the night darky as if it were more than just a memory. He feels the pain, tracing the thin white scar, distinct and seeming gentle, bitten by his own knife and his own creation.
They rise like phantoms in the brain, crawling from burrows and crevices covered by the burials of shame and pride. The memories and memories built within three thousand years time lurked in places he would much rather forget. Stirring they come, leaving him the wake of dreamy tumblings in the ocean of his heart. Snippets of conversation, sparks of emotion: hatred, anger and fear, blurring and blurring the thin imagined lines between all extremes.
Monster, monster! he hears in the distant recesses of his mind. Monster! she shrieks, staring fearfully at the mirror's reflection. And there, the fine crackling of glass and the wispy reflection disappears into fragments of reflecting light, sharp and dazzling. He watches as she falls to the floor sobbing in tears and in pain. He remembers feeling the bite of morality then, and wonders now at the monster she has become.
The memories come unspoken and silent, echoing like a coming storm rising to cadence in the whirlwinds of his mind. He watches, observing, curious but unconnected, at the trickling of colors, red, black, gold, the movement of the world of falling and falling, and the images of black roses. A part of him thinks of the sharp prickle of pain he had felt when he pulled the first of many from the secluded forest secrets.
He remembers her. Again. In the quiet hours of morn, in the silence of the sunbeamed room where the dust sparkles in the air, in the desperation of prayer, mouthed words, tear streaked cheeks, humbly dressed, on knees, on the hard wood floor of the church, where the world is empty and witness to the mumbled pleas for the forgiveness of sins. Death, murder, blood, killing, all sins, lust and death again, all sins. All doomed in her mind, embedded into her soul, hallowed as hell, defiled to the graces of fallen angels.
He feels for her, the tragic sympathy. Girl, almost woman, frozen in time and lost in dreams and illusions, so unreal, but the unreality of it is part, perhaps, of what makes it ever more tragic. He tried to shake those forever damned foundations of good and evil away, half to save hers, half to save his own sanity at the near absurdity of it all. Tragic cruel universe, he thinks, were there such a god, to slaughter such innocent lambs and make them repentant for their sins.
There, and there, he wants to cry, show her the world stripped of its glories, bleak, stark and unwelcoming, cold empty universe, there is your god. There is your god you have so begged the forgiveness for, for the blood spilt, for the pain felt, for your being, the god who cares not a whisper of your humanity, has abandoned you.
But, she has been too sheltered, mewed to the abstract concepts of truth, justice and good, given the world in sun shinning meadows and happiness found in daffodils and other flowers. And to tear away the veil to reveal the inner workings and puppetry of darkness, is, to break her. Shattered and torn is her world, heart and mind. And he regrets, regrets the things he should have done. Should have let her live a brief life in the light than to drag her into an eternity of darkness.
Sunshine and daisies were not meant to lurk among spiders, monsters and other crawly things that squirm beneath your skin.
He secrets these thoughts, these memories, back under the covers of his mind, away from the world that would sully and taint. Secrets them, for himself and for her, one who was never meant to live an eternal life. And he stares into his own mirror, in his own dark room, fragmented, torn and shattered, light glimmering and reflecting like daggers in the fading streaks of blood-red sun.
Monster, he mutters, shivering as he closes his eyes. Bathed in darkness again, he feels the night seep into his skin, wrap around his soul, senses the chilling of his insides as he feels the blood rushing through his veins like stolen life, for unsavory purposes only to take more. He shudders again as the sun sets deep into the earth, tracing fingertips across the scar again as he had seen her do so often in the seclusion of her room.
Shadowy and pale, they think.
Gone are their reflections, faded into ashes and dust, tangled in spider webs of glass, broken.
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A/N: My writing style has changed slightly to become more lyrical. I think it is perhaps because of all the fan fiction I've been reading lately. Yes, there is an infinite number of parallels and themes running in this little ficlet. Try to find them all; I'm still trying to. Perhaps, just perhaps, this can be loosely considered to be the sequel to Awakenings, but it's not necessary since both were created to be independently standing on their own terms. Reviews are always appreciated. Want to point out a parallel or a theme? Tell me that I horribly skewered whatever concepts of grammar that had been invented? Constructive criticism is always welcome. While flames are used to heat my house in the winter.