Introspective Two (Raven : Breathe No More)
I've been looking in the mirror for so long
That I've come to believe that my soul's on the other side
I'm so tired of looking at someone else in my reflection. Not that anyone knows, but I never see myself in any reflective surface. Or rather, I see the me that I keep caged, buried, hidden and restrained. And every glance, every single glimpse, is always the demon of my mind.
I don't have any mirrors in my room at all. Not even in the adjacent bathroom, and when I use the others, I never look in them. I only look in one mirror. The one that Beast Boy and Cyborg fell through. At least there I can see the monster in its cage and not in me.
But sometimes, it gets loose in the mirror. Sometimes, I can see it without the bars, an illusion of freedom that it creates. I can still sense the restraints, sense that I retain whatever meager control over it that I maintain, but I can't see it. And that's the worst.
Because it's during times like these that I know it can see me.
All the little pieces falling – shatter.
Shards of me,
Too sharp to put back together.
Like now, for an excellent example. After that not-really-a-fight with Starfire a week ago, I've caught it stirring more and more often. Pacing. Prowling. Waiting. She's been staring at me for a while, and so I've been staring back. After lunch, I locked myself in my room and took out my mirror. One of the others would think that I'm meditating, as I just sit here and stare at my reflection in a hand mirror without blinking or twitching. But I'm not doing anything of the sort. Just staring. Like she's staring at me.
This person I don't know. And the one in my skin. That is what makes this so hard. She may be influenced by my father, but she's still totally me. In me, about me, is me. She's beautiful, and expressive, and powerful, and very, very dangerous. Usually she's so nasty, snapping and hating. But today she just looks, so I just look back.
But she's breaking me. She knows it and I know she knows it. She's what I will become someday, that demon temptress that will live for the night and the pain she has the power of bringing. It's almost like she's slowly trying to reverse our places, so it's her on the outside and I'm the one that's the reflection. There are times when I think that she's done it already.
Its little things, painful things. Things that will never be gone, no matter how hard I try to forget them, because they are what cannot be forgotten. The memories that wont be lost. A slip of control here, an extra unnecessary coldness there. I hurt someone, and more of me breaks off, another shard of the reflection I'm slowly becoming hits the floor and stares back at me with the guilt and accusation.
Too small to matter,
But big enough to cut me into so many little pieces
If I try to touch her.
I can't clean them up. Every time I touch them, they cut too deeply, and the wound never closes.
And I bleed,
I bleed,
And I breathe,
I breathe no more
A set of crimson eyes stare steadily back into my violet irises. I note absently that the second set is closed. Trigon must be occupied with other matters besides my seduction. The thought gives me no comfort. She watches me watch her, out of my own face, in my own mind, thinking my own thoughts and scheming my fathers.
She's waiting for me. To do what, I have no idea, but she'll wait forever for me to screw up, I know that much. She's as patient as the dead. Waiting is, after all, all she can do. I'd rather not fall for any of her tricks, but I'm getting restless.
So I finally reach out with my mind, in something not-quite meditation and brush against her. The sound comes instantly, the beat of the song she has playing inside my head flowing over me. Outwardly, I give no movement, not even a change in expression, but inside I've frozen. Even as the cold seeps in and clings gleefully to my bones.
Take a breath and I try to draw from my spirits well.
Yet again you refuse to drink like a stubborn child.
One of her eyebrows quirks up. It was only then that I realize that was what she was waiting for me to do. And now that I hear it, I can't make it go away. Damn her.
Suddenly, faster than anyone could see, my fist flashed out and slammed into the glass. The shards flew everywhere, surrounding me. Sharp bits littering the floor. Pain flared through my senses as blood began running in rivers down my arm from the deep gashes in my hand. It was the first movement within my room all afternoon.
But it still wasn't enough to get my mind away from the words of the song as they flowed through me. I dropped the mirror frame from numbed fingers to hold my bleeding hand close to my chest. Ignoring the blood and glass all over. I started rocking slightly, head bowed, as a few desperate lines slipped from me, part of me hoping for someone to answer.
"Lie to me,
Convince me that I've been sick forever.
And all of this,
Will make sense when I get better."
Silence. No one else was there, after all. No one was ever there. Bitterly, the next lines came, and I could not stop them as they fell from me.
"But I know the difference,
Between myself and my reflection.
I just can't help but to wonder,
Which of us do you love?"
Which indeed? The other people in my life couldn't tell the difference. Did they love the powerful titan that fought and never had any problems? Did they love my reflection? Or the lost little girl bleeding on the floor surrounded by glass?
I didn't need a magic mirror to tell me the answer to that.
So I bleed,
I bleed,
And I breathe,
I knew I'd have to fix the mirror later. But for now, I just curled up tighter on the floor. The longer I could put it off, the longer I would go without. I hate that mirror.
I breathe no…
Bleed
I bleed,
The music never faded.
And I breathe,
I breathe,
I just sat in the dark and bled. While my fractured reflection watched silently from many crimson eyes.
I breathe-
I breathe no more.
((End Introspective Two))
Is the only way to escape your own shadow to venture into the deepest of all the darkness? Or does that just let the demon drown you?
"Breathe No More" By Evanescence