Before I start, I should just like to say that this little fic is dedicated to my lovely, radiant wife. You know who you are, darling. Let this be a representation of our love, as dark as it may be. You're my brilliant sun, and I should like to think I am your faithful moon.

Imperfect

I am a mistake. I am a cruel mistake, an imperfect... inhuman... creature that lives only for worthier souls to die. Despicable, counting the minutes of the day as the hands on the clock pass. Each they grow slower. Each day, I falter a little bit more. And each day, I am reminded of my humanity. My cruel, fragile, worthless life. Something that I am ungrateful of, though I should be indebted to my parents for bringing me into this world, even if I am worthless.

I am not perfect. One might say perfection is an impossibility, but it cannot be. I must be perfect. I must be, so I can accomplish everything, so I can earn wealth, so I can take care of...that person.

Strange, some think, that I cannot refer to her endearingly, yet only as that person. It rips me to pieces. I am not worthy of her, yet I am so ridiculous I cannot go a day without talking to her. Every morning, when I get up, she's there, and when I go to bed, she sits near me, her hands brushing over my skin until I am asleep once more.

I don't understand how such a radiant person could be attracted to something so pathetic, so worthless.

She calls me her King. Though I don't deserve it, she is forever my Queen.

And I will stay here for her.

The factories of Six are cold, desolate, black with dirt and grime. My hands often stay black for days after sticking them through the machinery. The scars and calloused bumps...the premature arthritis settling in my fingers. At seventeen, I am already so broken.

In the day, I go to school, sitting near the back of a classroom. Sometimes we watch the games there; I must be despicable, for I do get a joy out of seeing those children die. It makes me feel assured that there are worse things than what I have accustomed myself to, than what I settle for. And even though I must work at night and work in the day, there are moments of serenity in between, when I can hear her laugh and see her smile beside me.

I'm not quite sure what I want out of life. I'm not sure why I'm still here.

Paying for my own clothes and education, buying my own food, going home to a depressive mother who wants nothing to do with me while I sit in the dark confines of my windowless room, crushing paper in my hand.

I like to pretend I'm real sometimes. I like to pretend that I'm normal and wanted and that I deserve her.

But I don't.

I allow myself to say her name, let it flow from my worthless, dirty lips.

Anthe.

Anthe Nikkali.

I still don't know why she continues to sit beside me.

Two years since we met. Two years of her verbal abuse at the hands of her parents- her friends- struggling with depression and making it through. Day by day.

I have nothing to show for any toils of my own. I have nothing to show for my efforts- if they are efforts at all. In the span of a day, when I work even twenty four hours, why is it I can never accomplish anything? I am so lost, so frenzied... so imperfect.

And without perfection, I'm worthless.

She tells me I'm not. She is there with me, passing the days by; slipping me notes in class, waiting for me to come home at night. I don't have problems passing out in her arms, tears falling in torrents until we are both crying, both soaked in our own tears.

Because while I have her, she has only me; why shouldn't she have the world? She's perfect, after all.

The strain becomes worse, and I am accustomed to less air at all moments, less room to breathe.

I am sitting, head faced downward in the filthy room that we now share, her hand running the damp rag over my face. The black is always there, even when it's not. I fall forward, my arms clutching tightly to her waist as I drown my sorrows in shallow, ragged gasps of breath, and my chest is on fire, as it always is.

I cannot breathe and she forces me onto my back, tells me to control my own thoughts, my own breath, that it will go away. I believe her because she is always right. And as I lie there, grasping her hand in mine, her tears fall onto my own face.

"Why do you cry, darling?"

"The same reason that you cry. Because you feel sorry for yourself."

I can laugh with her at this, because I do. I always do. But she's perfect, and I'm not. I am dull, and listless.

I am as black as the oil that stains my hands from the factory.

She makes me smile, that day that she promises me an eternity, and I hold her tightly to my chest.

"I love you so much, Anthe."

"I know."

"I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I think I would die. You said for better or worse, in sickness or health, till death do us part... I don't want you to have to deal with my stress fits, I just get so angry sometimes...can't figure out what I'm doing wrong and that makes it even worse...please, I'm just so- so sorry-"

"Haiden, I love you." She says. "Don't ever doubt that."

And for a minute, despite being imperfect, I allow myself to believe that someone wants me.

The days pass, and it breaks my heart as the roles become reversed, slowly but surely, with every minute the clock ticks away. Anthe has become so fragile, a shadow of her former self. She's been abandoned, and I die when she cries.

"I don't know what to do anymore...I can't...I need something...s-stable. I don't want to be a failure."

"You're perfect, Anthe." I say, brushing her hair back. "How could you ever be a failure?"

"I'm not perfect." And at those words, my heart twitches to life again.

"We're both imperfect, but together...together we are perfect."

As I lie beside her in the dimly lit room that night, staring at the ceiling, sweat on my brow, her hand clutched tightly in my own, my chest throbs painfully, and I realize that I can breathe with her. She makes me real. She makes me human, and for those brief moments, I can believe that I'm not dead.

I can feel her next to me, arm brushing against my own, and it seems to surreal, I think, as I move her head onto my painfully fragile chest, leaning forward to press a single kiss to her brow.

How did I ever become so blessed? It's so tragic, what I've done to her, and now she is just like me...just like me, and that's why she stays. She can't live without me. And I can't live without her either.

I drop out of school the year I turn eighteen. I work full time in the mechanics factory, spend my remaining money on finding someplace to board. I'm not letting her go to the orphanage and I'm not living with the people who could care less. As long as I have her, I am happy. I am human.

She's crying that day, when I return, and she never tells me why. I wish I had an eternity to erase her tears. But I'm human, and humans die.

And even though I'm alive again, I will die. The only difference is now it's not desirable. Because I could never leave behind my beautiful, fragile, broken queen.

"You're the most imperfect perfect person I have ever met," I whisper in her ear one night, as she lies beside me, face buried in the pillow, almost in sleep. Her skin is so pale, like the snow that fell on my birthday, and the corners of her mouth twitch upward into a smile at these words.

"Haiden..." she murmurs, and I give a sad smile at the sound of my name.

"Why do you love me?" I question. "Why would you love something so filthy?"

She never answers.

We stand at the stairs of the Justice Building in District Six.

It is the last year of reapings I must attend when the escort calls out the name "Haiden Kael", and I fall apart.

I am dragged forward abruptly, my head pressed to my chest, body folded over in pain, the anger in my chest tightening more and more, and I can't breathe, just like I couldn't back then. I can't breathe and it's like dying all over again.

"I volunteer!" Is shouted from somewhere amongst the masses, and the tears stream freely down my face as I begin to scream. And then I'm hitting the peacekeeprs holding me, and they're shouting at me, and Anthe is there, grabbing my shoulders, trying to calm me, and I hit her in the face with my elbow, knocking the reaping bowl off the stage.

I was fixed.

And now they're expecting me to crack again.

And as the needle is jammed into my arm, I'm too broken to resist. I'm too broken because we're both dead now. And she was supposed to live forever. And I was supposed to be her prince, but how could such an imperfect creature save someone so beautiful?

My darling...my love...Anthe, please...

Nobody comes to say goodbye to me, and it's not a surprise when they shy away from Anthe as well.

We're crazy, after all.

I don't fight death anymore when the gong rings. I don't fight it, and I don't allow her to fight it either. I imprint the outline of bloody hands onto her purple neck, screaming into the wind as I do so. And as I scream, I cry, and I laugh, and I feel almost sated, somehow.

And when I drag the knife across my arm, from wrist to elbow, deep rivers of red blooming brightly on the surface of pale skin, I smile, and my good hand finds hers as I bleed out into the sand, arms already numb and dead, chest tight and painful, but I know it won't last any longer.

I'll finally be resting. And so will she.