Behind Blue Eyes
I, slipping on slime-edged stones,
To that dark place by rusty foxfire lit,
Where they lie waiting, fingering old bones,
Go with my question. Deep into the pit
Of the Black Forest, where the Erlking rules
And truth is told but always at a cost,
I take my puzzle. Like the other fools
Who've slipped on these same stones and played and lost
I come because I must. I have no choice.
The Game is timeless and like all
Games, it has its price.
I leave them waiting there below.
I hear them laughing as I go.
- Forbidden Game Volume I: The Hunter.
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No-one knows what it's like…
To be the bad man,
To be the sad man,
Behind blue eyes.
The youngest Shadow Man (and the nicest) was dying.
He was dying hated and reviled and feared and above all, alone.
Life is fragile and bewildering. And death – death is inevitable and worse than anything you can imagine.
The worst thing he can imagine?
Life.
Living for eternity – day in, day out. Forever. Watching all you love and cherish and hold dear crumbling around you, fading with the centuries. Never forgetting, always remembering – always watching from the shadows. It wasn't living – it was existing. A pointless existence, day in and day out. Jenny had given him a taste of what real living was – and now, that taste was over. Fog and smoke and mist rolled over Julian, aljunnu, – limbs weakened, the illusion of breathing slowed and heartbeat stalled and eyesight dimmed – spiraling.
Spiraling into oblivion. Salvation. It makes you look wild and beautiful. His heart raced for a moment – fear? Doubt(less)ful. But oblivion was blue, like a mile-deep lake at the heart of a glacier, like the blue at the core of a flame, like filaments of pure energy – it was cold and elemental and full of shadows – is this where I will go? He wondered – more shadows? More darkness? But this darkness couldn't be fended off with stone lamps.
Yet it remained the greatest danger of all.
Softly, slowly – fall. Float. Fade. Quicksilver and mercury, ice and frost, dissipating. Those beautiful eyes now shadowed, that perfectly sculpted upper lip trembling of its own volition.
And no one knows what it's like…
To be hated,
To be fated
To telling only lies.
Oh, you would, would you? You cheat.
I never cheat. I practice Gamesmanship.
(The art of winning games) He'd been cheated – can you lose by simply being born something you wished you weren't? (Without actually cheating) Oh, he had worn the mantle with pride – he was (is) a Shadow Man. Immortality, perfection, powers beyond imagining. What everybody else wants. Power, knowledge – the easy way. A free ride.
Things humans would (die) kill for.
To die for love, then, was ironic. Die for something humans found easily as he could turn water into ice. To cherish it. To destroy it.
Ironic – the destroyer. Jenny… Jenny was all that was precious and good. And look now – the destroyer lay dying and she stood victorious over the Shadow Land.
A whisper - I have to breathe. Things are happening so fast.
Did Shadow Men have to breathe?
Oh gods, he would miss her – those delicately beautiful features, that golden aura. Those Nile-green eyes that looked straight into you and through your very soul, her honey-in-sunlight hair, soft and yielding as silk. Her innocence and purity, the very opposite to him. Love and despair, gold and silver, fire and frost – and her hidden depths, her stubbornness, her courage, her loyalty and outright goodness.
His senses were turning against him, oblivion coming to claim him – but it was so soft and alluring. He knew the danger of softness. It spun a web of shadows around him, moth's wings and twilight kisses.
But my dreams… they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be.
I have hours, only lonely –
My love is vengeance
That's never free.
Was this Ragnarok?
Don't you, Jenny? You care if it's a cruel and pointless universe. You care if you're surrounded by evil.
Pointless. Cruel. That was what love was – but Jenny did care. Enough to show a poor powerful Shadow (man)…
If. He knew the dream he wanted – he'd pictured it many times. A rushing, heady glimpse of life with her, a Shadow Man with a princess of light as consort. Himself, in the sunlight and warmth, out of the shadows, his eyes and smile becoming less terrifying, less otherworldly, less different – growing warmer and gentler, never sparing a thought for the world of ice and shadows and pain and death he had left behind.
What it could be like – if. Humans, capable of surviving heartbreak, disease, loss, pain, war, love. This is my gift to you now.
Life is a game. Living is a fight.
I don't care.
But I need you –
He had given it all up for her – for an altogether too-brief feeling of joy – said the world was evil and horrible – but then he proved himself that it wasn't.
A Shadow Man with a conscience. Damnable.
And his love was her curse.
Now, lying (and dying – oh, how droll,) in the very room that he had first seen Jenny (lived his life in shadow), which had been like finally having the sun on his face. Bathed in light. Julian could feel the ethereal animation seeping oh-so-quickly (things are happening so fast) from his body, like rich ruby blood from veins. One by one, the runes that were his essence, the ones that afforded him the most power – slipping away – he could almost hear the Old Ones, his ancestors, their chillingly beautiful voices sounding as they first carved him into a stave – he was drawn back to that time centuries ago. Where he had been nothing but elemental chaos and frost and fire and something, something intangible, something with no name but with a definite presence – the reason that candles and cars and guns had been created.
Fear
Coursed through him – those sinisterly sweet voices rang and segued together, the whispers of angels. Dagaz had been first. The catalytic dawn. His eyes. Isa – ice, and kenaz – fire. A cruel joke – fire and ice could not peacefully coexist. It accounted for the duality of his nature. And almost as an afterthought – uruz and thurisaz, for magical strength and control over time, space, elements. Hagalaz, hailstones, and perthro – the gamble. The rune of chance. Eldrunan, for endless energy and vitality. In essence, immortality. And of course – trollrunan – chaos.
No one knows what it's like…
To feel these feelings
Like I do – and I blame you!
No one bites back as hard on their anger.
None of my pain and woe can show through.
Like the other fools
Who've slipped on these same stones and played and lost – Jenny. Golden, beautiful Jenny. Losing her, not just once but many times over born in perfection but incapable of gentle emotions his heart broke. Many times over, it had broken before – each rejection hurt. More than words could describe, and it only sufficed to anger him more because (you don't want to make me angry) he didn't understand it. What was it? To both want to hurt and comfort – to torment and treasure and adore…
Don't leave me, don't leave me, don'tleaveme – I love you
Because what could a Shadow Man understand of love?
But my dreams… they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be.
I have hours, only lonely –
My love is vengeance
That's never free.
So many dreams quick, go into the dream please let go. So many dreams – illusions of normalcy, ideas and thoughts and concepts all calling out to the Shadow Man at the moment of fading, begging – into time, disappear into time - the essence of things, a pure, untouched form of what humans live for was all featured in them. All of them had Jenny. Jenny of the straight soul and beautiful heart. Jenny, beauty and mercy and light and sweetness all in a body – if she was a rune, Jenny was wunjo – joy. All the powers of goodness and joy made flesh, clothed in a human body.
Who could ever love someone whose life was in the shadows? What could a Shadow Man give her? Every moment out of the light and in the shadows sapped her goodness – the songs the darkness composes to worship the light I love you Jenny. I love you.
I've made up so many things, now I'll just go into one. I'll be part of it.
I'll always be with you Jenny. (Your ring…)
Part of love is knowing when to let go, isn't it? And if what you loved came back to you, well, that meant it was yours for eternity. But, see – that was the problem – humans don't live for eternity.
But he didn't care, whether there was future or past, he just wanted this. He just wanted her.
One of you probably doesn't have the strength to get through.
No one knows what it's like…
To be mistreated, to be defeated
Behind blue eyes.
No one knows how to say
That they're sorry and don't worry,
I'm not telling lies.
Get her out. Get her out of here! Before I do something we'll all be sorry for –
A shattering inside.
I am a wolf but I like to wear sheep's clothing I am a bonfire I am a vampire I am waiting for my moment (sounded like "at nine" but undoubtedly was "that's fine")
"I'm a wolf in wolf's clothing."
And never again see her, touch her, even have her glare at him, mixed anger and rage and frustration and need and want and desire, all perfectly balanced and warring every moment –
Tears. Golden, shimmering tears fell from cypress-green eyes and beauty his eyes widened, flickering azure flame dimming wondrous. Lights played across his frost-white hair, all washed-out blue and faded violet. Because things fade here.
He was still shocking to the senses. A bittersweet heartrending shock, like a funeral requiem that doesn't just pull at the heartstrings, but tears and yanks and rips them asunder.
But my dreams… they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be.
I have hours, only lonely –
My love is vengeance
That's never free.
To die where one first lived – a cruel, glorious joke. Oh no, Shadows didn't live – but this one – this 'Julian' – loved. That was his legacy, his legend (like a flood of sunshine) dying as she gazed at him, like those fifteen years ago only then his heart, his icy
frozen
numb
cold
heart had felt warmth and delight and happiness
and now it was numb once more. Feeling receded from his limbs and there was only silence (blessed silence) a peace that was already gathering.
You get pricked with a thorn or a spindle or a needle and then you die, or go blind, or you sleep forever.
Sleep forever. Heart slowing, eyelashes fluttering, love
Not ebbing the slightest amount and
The heart may freeze isa or it can burn kenaz.
And those keening angry voices, cracking ice-floes and shattering bells were gone; blissfully quiet because now, Julian was his only master
All I refuse…
"You can't just go out."
And thee I chuse…
A smile. "No."
Dream. Another dream, the final one.
No one knows what it's like…
To be the bad man,
To be the sad man,
Behind blue eyes…
A flood of sunlight. Forbidden fruit. All that was good and wonderful and pure and sweet and forbidden to a Shadow Man – all that wasn't. All caused by a door opening, a simple and thoughtless action. Humans are infinitely more powerful than those in the shadows if by simply opening a door, they can tear one's heart out, cause a fire in the brain. By simply opening a door, open up an entire world of possibilities and ideas – if by opening a door, they could kill.
Light kills shadows, don't you know? And of course, the other way around.
"I'll dream you into a place without any shadows, only light."
"Nothing really dies as long as it's not forgotten."
You're forgiven, not forgotten.
"Go to the dream. Go quick, now."
A thick impenetrable mist laid its spell over him, surrounding him. And at the moment of death, of fading, of going out, Julian smiled. A last thought… I'm warm now.
Because that mist – it wasn't blue, that unnamable unknowable blue of his eyes.
It was gold. Gentle gold, yielding and sweet. Gold – like Jenny.
--
And I get blinded when she opens the door,
It's like looking into the sun, you know…
- Smile, James Marsters
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AN: I have no idea what I was trying to do, this was written quite some time ago, and I never thought it was just quite ready. But now I'm here and can't find anything to add that flows to my satisfaction, so up it goes!
Please leave a review, I've never tried this style of writing before and I would really appreciate feedback. Thanks so much!
WalkThruTheFire
PS: LoL, went a little crazy just now and started doing APA Referencing for all the times I used a FG quote or idea-derivative. TOO MANY ASSIGNMENTS! (Hear that, lecturers?)