Because of You
It was all because of you.
It is the one certainty you could not shake, not even after you left it all behind. It is a trigger and a blade and rope, braided tighter around your neck as the hours go by.
It has been your fault since they day it began. You are no less than the outcome of a war you did not fight. It was but cowardice to lead you this far, to force yourself here, on the dark floor of your office.
You are not the one scapegoat, you remind yourself. You were the last sacrifice of a long row — and then, as a murderer put out lives to save his own, you let him make his weapon out of you. You are no better than him, the moonlight whispers to you. You could not be.
It is because of you alone that they all died, innocent or not — and saying you could not stop it, now that it is all said and done, would be a hypocrisy you are not entitled to. Today, like yesterday, you are the last person who can judge.
You look up, to the veil of your curtains, and see the people you sent to their fate. Their ghosts walk in a silent procession, stepping on every sign that you still live — on your pulsating temples, on the breath that rains down from your nostrils, in steam, in water. You are so close to offering your blood, to make up for the lives you disposed of as you pleased, and yet you know it will never be enough.
It is a matter of fact, you think in shivers, with the blade you just got back barely caressing your skin. You live, and they don't. Because of you.
It was your weakness, and you never questioned it. Manipulating you was just too easy. It was your choice to deal with your conscience like that, to knock back its head and drown it every morning. You passed by the mirror as if it didn't exist — you were no less guilty than what you thought they were, and all you needed to forget was refusing to look. So, unlike them, you made it to today.
Why do you live, then? Why are you still here, instead of them?
The way the answer rolls back into place, against your will, is as grave and natural as the weight of your tears. In the end, the plan did not work. You were supposed to be dead, and you aren't.
Hadn't it been for a single person, it would already be over. You were expected to give in as always — in the end, there is so much a man can bear alone. But he didn't let you.
He dared save you, or so he believed. He even told you why. And he had the nerve to lie to you, for so long and so many times — because he had to be lying, with his grin and his force and his devastating courage.
Because of you.
Coming from him, the very same words as before turn into the opposite. That's just the way it is with him. And it is a miracle.
No matter how many times you brush it off, the reason he gave you echoes again, always in his voice. It returns to you like waves on a shore, unchanged in intensity. It reminds you of who he is, of how desperately he fought for that one reason.
You heard it said so many times it hurts. But listening, daring to believe, would be too much.
Your fingers are giving out, the hilt grows slippery from sweat. The pain of a whole life is sliding out of your eyes. You think of your past, moment after moment of conditioning, and you find it is true — anything good you could have done, if you ever did, had to exist beforethat.
He could be telling the truth, a sliver of doubt hisses against your ear. It could have been you.
But you have forgotten. You just cannot believe it. Nothing this good could be your doing — nothing like him, so brilliant and so strong. There must be another reason.
Because of you.
The knife clatters on the ground nonetheless. There might still be time — and that chance is a pang of vitality in your might be a way back.
You let yourself wait.
"It's because of you that I became one," he says two years later, and it sounds like a breath of relief.
The world finally makes sense.