A conspiracy of fools... with the leader, the architect, being my own mind.

How ironic. My own worst enemy, as always, the voice that whispers to my dried-up husk of a heart.

Goodbye, phoenix- hello, razor.

Lost in Space

Masks in the dark. Which one is me? Which on is a lie? Are they all me? Are they all lies?

Do any of you look further? Do any of you look beyond what I show you? Every time I leave the door, I'm someone else. I don't even know whose eyes I'm looking through anymore.

It's the same as it ever was. hours of conversation, vicious cutting at each other with verbal slashes I'd never lay across anyone else. Why do we hang out?

Because she's the only friend I have left who I can trust to tell it to me straight, no holds barred. Because of all my friends, she's the only one who reviles me.

I need that. I need that check.

But does she know who I am?

Take off the mask, phoenix. Take them all off, cut yourself bare.

Shut up, Razor. You don't know who I am. I don't have anything but masks, my wheel of different faces.

Even my lady love, the luminare, she has no idea. How can she, when I don't? Is this even fucking fair to her? I don't know.

Daylight cracks across the bedroom, Razor cuts away inside of me. Restless. Empty. I need you, Lumi. Get here soon.

-slicing away

Perponderances in the Dark

The nights are priceless, the days perfect.

I lay my thanks at the altar of the old gods, and raise my hands in quiet worship.

The monster rides me still, but he doesn't scream so loud. He whispers of futures and of pasts, and of how the dead can never change.

Can we ? Can we become more than what we were? Or do the same ghosts ride us forever, tormenting us, damning us to relive the same sins and the same sorrows again and again and again?

I wish I knew.

Tommorow was his wedding day. He stood at the window again, looking up at the tower. The princess, now his betrothed, was in his bed again, sleeping soundly. She had barely noticed the scent of blood on his breath. Why would she?

There was no way she would know he killed her mother today. The queen was merely late; after all, she was being escorted by seven of the king's Lions. What harm could come to her?

He watched the tower, and a single tear started to slip down his face. The maniac high of the battle was gone, and he was left alone under the moonlight, alone to face who and what he was. You're a traitor, Jack. You have betrayed those who love you.
He shook his head.
They had to die. This is for my people... this is for my brother. The voice in the back of his head, always a woman's, always hers, laughed.
Perhaps, Jack. But there were other ways. You enjoyed it. You enjoyed what you did to her.
He shook his head again, turned, looked back at the sleeping princess, bare under his silk sheets. Saw her dark hair pooled beneath her head, studied her long lashes. There was a shimmer, and his eyes were drawn to the chair next to the bed... the chair where Razor hung. Razor. His power and his curse. He remembered the day he was given the sword, remembered the look on the Lady's face when he first held its hilt.

"This sword is yours, boy," she had said. "It has been bathed in your tears and your blood, and forged to the sound of your screams." He remembered what she looked like. Fierce black mane of hair falling to her ankles, eyes that flashed like garnets, skin pale as ivory. He remembered looking at her and feeling nothing... not fear, not hate, not pity, not love. There was no feeling left in him anymore; he had been made into the perfect weapon for her, for the dark lady; she who drives the strong to madness. He was her tool. He held the sword, and saw his face mirrored in the blade. He had held the sword, and had seen the tower.

He fell back into the present.

You remember well. Remember this: You are my son. You are what I made you. Tommorow, the city burns.

Standing by the window on the eve of his wedding, Jack looked up at a tower and wept.

There's no shining Light

I can't be your hero. There's no white knight in me anymore... he died a long time ago. There's been too much pain; I have done too much ill to ever hold my head up. I can't fix you. I can't wave my hands and make everything all right; to tell you the truth, there's no magic in me. I'm just a tired old man who wishes he could sing.
(Why? Because one day he was told the price of his soul, and decided the price was good enough. If you smell in the night, you can still smell the brimstone on his hands.)
But I can offer two arms to hold you, and ward you against the night with my own flesh. I can give you a shoulder to rest on. I can give you what warmth I have to fight the chill in your bones.
I don't know how much of me I can give you. I'm not sure how much of me you want. But I'm willing to give you everything I can, and hope that can help you on your road.

Why is the road to the future littered with the glass shards of the past? Step carefully, my children, lest you rend your feet.

-seamus out

Oh, Baby; why you gots to make me hurt you?

A little farther, a little higher.
Take her there, boyo. Make her bend and break and melt for you.
Muscles tensing in the night, gasping breaths and sweating flesh.
Everything about you makes me want to hold you down...
Dancing naked beneath the moon, holding you to the cool wet earth and driving deep into your core.
Can't you feel my spirit rising?
Panting out your name to the sky
Burning Razor slicing hot
Why do you have to make me bleed?
Why do I have to taste your sweat?
What are my reasons?
...
Somehow, I don't need reason any more.

It was a different time. We were different, then. We walked different roads, we sang different songs. Now times have changed, and so have we. We can never be who we were, though some parts of us will never change. We are not slaves to the past, we are merely shaped by it; and we couldn't walk the roads we walk now if we hadn't walked then.

It can just be so hard to let go. To stop feeling the old pangs, to stop feeling the old guilt. Guilt and regret have made me who I am. Long nights of feeling the coming weight of judgment, of knowing that there would be a reckoning, shaped me. Long nights of crying over you, and the path you put me on, long nights of feeling alone and imperfect and worthless and just not good enough- they are the foundation on what I am built. You helped put me into a cycle that repeated itself over and over again, that I couldn't break no matter how much it hurt me- but not anymore. I have grown up. I am a man now, not the boy that you broke. Not the boy that couldn't satisfy you. Oh gods, I wasn't good enough. Couldn't make you feel good enough. Couldn't make you love me enough. I failed you.

I... I'm free of you. You can't hurt me anymore. Now the only person that can truly hurt me is myself. My shell, my armor, is impassable, because I hold my own value in my heart. Stupid seamus. Jim wasn't even good enough to make them be true- any of them. They always needed something more. But I'm not Jim anymore. I do not have the same weakness. I do not make the same mistakes. I will not make the same mistakes.

I won't let myself be broken. Not ever again. You have to be. Death is part of it all, phoenix. Come, let me cut you. Bleed for me, precious. Show me that you love me.

(Hold me down. Hurt me. I want to hurt so bad. I can't take it anymore.)

No. I close the door, I walk away.

Never again.

-seamus out