Disclaimer and notes: See Part One

Feedback: Yes, please, I love feedback. Loved it? Hated it? Or want it for your own site? Please let me know at LadySet@gmx.net

And now, on to the second part, I hope you'll enjoy it. Again big thanks for my wonderful friend Kiva for doing beta-testing and encouraging me to post this one. Also thank you Kylie, my one and only review for this one so far. I am so glad you liked the story and hopefully still will. All others, don't be shy, please let me know what you think of this one. I don't bite ;)

Two Souls

by Belladonna

"Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast."

Goethe, Faust

Part Two

Angel – Free

 My whole life I have felt like a prisoner. Had it been when I was still alive, as a prisoner of my class in society and the bindings that this time I lived in wrought upon me or later the circumstances of my life, if one could really call that still living.

I have never been able to fight it, to overcome it. Always had I been too weak to be able to manage even the slightest action against it. But is that really the truth? Could I really never fought all that was forced upon me or had it only been convenient to simply put my hands into my lap and do nothing?

I have never been too weak to fight al those things that bound my mind and soul in chains, for I have never really tried. That had it been what for I had been really too weak and it is that weakness that had kept me prisoner for my whole life, down on the ground and in the darkness.

If I now look back, it might have been those continued constraints, all the pressure that had caused me to become a good-for-nothing, a real shame for my family and someone who spent his days in the pubs, drinking like there would be no tomorrow and sleeping with everything willing to spread her legs. I probably really would have died of some disease back then, maybe it would have been better if I had. So many things wouldn't have happened. It had been all those social constraints that had caused me to become that worthless piece of shit I had been, at least that is it that I am always able to tell myself.

It is so easy to put the blame on somebody else if you don't want to have it yourself, to deal with it by yourself or cannot bear it any longer. Yes, how easy is it indeed to blame others for your actions and let them suffer for things you have done yourself or have endured.

But for yourself you have nobody else you could blame.

There is nobody you can put the blame on for being yourself.

It is strange how you really start to think about everything, all your life and things you've done once it is already too late; too late for everything that you might do to change it or make it undone.

Oh, I still have him to blame for these things, for it had been him who'd done all that. All those things, the cruelties and killings, all the slaughter and madness he'd caused are things he had done. All those innocents that are pleading towards me in my dreams and whose eyes I can see, begging for mercy every time I close mine, they all are on his account, and their shed blood is on his hands.

It is so simple, so easy, isn't it? And again you can shove all those unpleasant things towards somebody else so that you won't have to deal with them, your own soul is pure that way. It is so easy to say that you have nothing to do with anything that had happened and keep yourself out of it, telling this to yourself and keeping yourself, your conscience clean.

But how can you do that with a lie?

I have seen everything he had done, and I was unable to do anything against it. I had been too weak to fight him. I have seen everything he'd done, like through a veil have I watched him doing things, seen him commit atrocities and other abominable actions, I cannot understand or comprehend, that have terrified me and disgusted me beyond anything I had ever seen. And I had been helpless against it, could do nothing to prevent him from doing them, for I had been a prisoner, bound by invisible chains only to his own passion, his own perverse pleasure, only to torture me for eternity.

Even this is still not the whole truth, and even this half-lie cannot manage to relieve my conscience or clean it.

It would be so easy to put myself into the position of another of his victims. But that also would not be the truth.

True, I had been too weak to fight him, the demon that had inhabited my body and still is within me; the demon that had taken over my body and used it, abused it to commit atrocious crimes I could not imagine or speak of. But like in life, it had been my own weakness, my own cowardice that kept me from fighting him. I was unable to do anything against him, couldn't stop him, but even here I have to admit that I didn't even try. My own cowardice kept me from doing that and left him to do as he pleased, let him reign over my body and mind, my very being, my soul; to do what he wanted to do and did and he had reveled in every second of it.

It is really simple, easy to say that it had been him who did all those things, those crimes, slaughter and killing, but when I face the harsh and cruel truth, it had been me who had done them all, by simply letting him do it.

Now I might be fee, my soul be finally free of the prison in which he and that way I myself had put me in. The chains might have fallen off, but they are holding me still. The blood of the innocents, it does not stick on his hands but more on my own that I have watched doing the killings he did. I myself am it, who still is hearing those screams in his dreams, all those pleas for mercy I know he never granted them; also never to me.

For I have never granted it to myself.

My soul might be free now, freed from the prison it had been put in, but truly free is something I will never be, never can be. He will always remain with me and remind me of all the things he did. For they are things, that I have done, with a smile on my lips; things I would rather forget but never could or should.

My own soul had it been, that had freed me from him, I know that now. But what is pressing harder down on me, is the fact that it had been that same soul that had kept me in that prison of my own weakness and allowed him to roam free.

I might be free now, but truly free I will never be.

Because of myself I cannot free me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AN: Should I continue exploring the viewpoint of the two 'souls' inside of Angel and continue the character study of him? Please let me know, 'cause I'm not sure. Also let me know how you liked it, don't be shy, I don't bite, really I don't.~Bella.