AUTHOR'S NOTE: Once more, thank you for your continued support and for keeping me encouraged to write this story. I feel like in the last chapter, things started getting real. I hope you felt the same. So... as far as I've read in the series, we've never had a chapter from Myrnin's POV. I don't know if that changes in Bitter Blood or not, and I probably won't know until well after the holiday season - I'm saving all my love for - 1. This fan fiction (and I don't want it to get messed up if I start reading BB) and 2. The next Dresden Files novel, Cold Days by Jim Butcher, which comes out on November 27th. Mark that date on your calendar, kids. It's definitely a day of celebration. So, forgive me if this chapter isn't cool enough, or crazy enough, or... whatever enough for you, but it's how I think Myrnin's brain would work. If you have any tips for me, let me know. Please read. Please enjoy. Please review. Much love! ~ Billie

MYRNIN

It was gone. All of it. It had been there, I knew it had been there. I had seen it, and smelled it and touched it and tasted it for so long that I knew it was there. And then there was a flash of light, the same kind of light I felt go off in my mind when I discovered the answer to a particularly puzzling question. And then there was fire. The white-hot fire. It was like the lab had finally become me, burning up inside with this fire of passion and this need to just... devour the things I loved. And then suddenly everything was gone. And I was gone with it.

No. No, I wasn't gone. I was here, on the floor of a room I suddenly didn't remember, with strangers standing all around me. Except - Claire. Claire was here. If Claire was here and I was here then we would be okay. She would keep my mind safe. She would keep my heart safe. I loved her so deeply, because I knew she would never love me back. She had only eyes for that boy, the one who was like me and not like me all at the same time. He was gentle and fierce and strong and weak and he needed Claire and I was gentle and fierce and strong and weak and I needed her. But she liked the way he needed her more. She liked the way that he ached for her and longed for her and the way that his love devoured her slowly through soft kisses and gentle touches.

My love would literally devour her. And it would be a swift, painful death. If I were given the chance I would hold her and touch her and kiss her and then without any warning my heart would take over and the blood would become too sweet and too gentle and too... insanity inducing and I wouldn't be able to stop myself and I would just want a taste, and then just a little bit more and just a little bit more and her blood would sing so sweetly through my veins and then suddenly I would want to be inside of her, in there with her blood and her muscles and her lovely, lovely bones and then she would be gone and I would be left to weep over her empty body. And her blood would leave me too soon. Everything left me too soon.

It wasn't all gone. There were books here, on the floor of this place, and I knew that I knew this place but I wasn't sure why I knew it or if I really knew it or if I'd just dreamed it. That happened to me sometimes. The dreams. They were so real sometimes. I think sometimes, they weren't actually dreams at all but real events. But then again, sometimes I couldn't remember. I spent so much time alone. All alone. But not completely alone, no, I was never completely alone.

I had my books, they called to me, they taught me they questioned me and made me question myself. I had the voices of the past, pleading with me and condemning me and praying for me over and over in my head until I wanted to scream. I had my trinkets, things that I knew held so many memories of my past but I couldn't remember the memories they held for more than a few moments on my more lucid days.

And they were few and far between, those lucid days.

But sometimes, when I was a sweet boy and took the tiny colorful pills they handed me, I would remember to remember the things that made me who I was - I would remember to remember the darkness inside of me, and the darkness of the spaces I had been forced into and held captive in and the darkness is my mother's eyes and the darkness in the basements in which I would hide over the years and the darkness of the heartsblood I would drink from the people I loved. And I would remember to remember the darkness that coated my soul like tar. And then, sometimes it would all be too dark and I wouldn't be able to see the light at all and then suddenly, like she knew I was alone and afraid and trapped in the dark, Amelie would send me someone.

Someone like Ada. Someone like Claire. And then, for a while, their bright lights would hold the darkness at bay. But never long enough, they couldn't do it. As strong as Claire was, the darkness of eternity was so much stronger and even now as I stared at her in this room - I was in the Glass House, that's where I was - and as I stared at her the tendrils of darkness were creeping in and I knew that not only was I so hungry because I had been working for days and had forgotten to eat but I also knew that the darkness was coming and that it would never stop and that I would never be able to be happy as long as I remembered that the darkness existed because it was me remembering the darkness that made the darkness exist and if I would just stop taking the tiny candy-like pills then I could forget that the darkness existed and then maybe I could be happy.

But if I stopped taking the pills and I forgot about the darkness, then I would forget to remember that all the things I loved left me too soon and then I would forget to remember that I must never love things that will love me back because I will destroy them. I will tear them apart and suck the marrow from their bones and I will slaughter them in their sleep as they rest beside me because when I forget to remember the darkness, I forget to remember that their blood that sings to me is a siren song, as strong as the song of the draug.

The voices in my head, they were too strong and they were too loud and I knew I knew I knew that the graug were dead I had killed them with my quick mind and my brilliant schemes and my brave, brave Claire and yet they sang in my head even now. They joined the voices of the thousands I had killed both corrupt and innocent both feisty and dull both good and evil both all none everything the same and everything was gone and nothing here was of any use to me at all because everything else was all gone it was like a puzzle only I didn't know what it was supposed to look like and I didn't have any of the edge pieces, they had all fallen in the water and swollen to the wrong size and...

They were gone. The voices, the singing, the condemning. They were gone. I could think. I was, for the moment, alone in my own head. I realized I was laying in the entryway of the Glass House, and people were kneeling before me. Claire, tears in her eyes. Eve, silent and trembling. Michael, his hand on Eve's shoulder, ready to pull her behind him if I lashed out. The Collins boy was coming down the stairs, his hair wet and dripping. And the woman, the one who was touching me. I knew I didn't know her name, but it wasn't because I had forgotten it. We had never met before.

Her hand on my shoulder felt strong and steady and in her eyes, I saw a sort of kindred spirit. I felt the tears that had been pouring from my eyes begin to dry on my cheeks, leaving tiny crystals of salt behind that made my skin feel tight and sticky. The woman leaned down and handed me a silk handkerchief. "Dry your eyes," she said softly. "You have survived. You can begin again. Nothing has been taken from you that can't be replaced, no matter how much it feels that way right now. You have survived. That is all that truly matters."

I took the handkerchief from her hands and picked myself up off of the floor. I walked unsteadily to the living room, where I sat in the arm chair. I cleaned my face. No one seemed to know what to do with me. Claire was huddled in her lover's arms her eyes wide and frightened both for me and of me, as was Eve, Michael holding her close, and the woman was watching me with eyes that felt like something I could not remember ever having known before - they felt like home.