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You are familiar with hatred. In fact, you embrace it. You embrace the power held within your palms and the insistent urge in your core telling you to destroy all that you loathe for now you have the means to do so.
You embrace anything that cures the almost insatiable boredom which bothers you as if it were an itch that lay just beneath the surface of your skin that you will never be able to satisfy without tearing through your own flesh along the way. You are the embodiment of all things negative and you have no qualms about acting on all the devious and awful things your mind tells you to do.
But your feelings for her, what your mind and what the rhythmic drumming in your chest practically scream at you aren't yearnings to batter and bruise but something far more despicable and far more dangerous.
What you feel for her is something close to what you had felt whenever within proximity of the human girl but not exactly so for it’s more potent and more personal. Yet at the same time it’s nothing of the sort. You do not know her. You recognize her, yes. You know who she is and why she detests you as she does, know that it was she who honored her end of the bargain by handing you the crowns of her monarchs, and yours by giving her the small green parcel in which she sought. Know that she has risen to power just as you have in that you were both pawns at the end of the playing board who ultimately surpassed their rulers and became their own sovereignty.
Know that the feeling that manifests whenever you dare glance in her direction seconds too long makes you physically sick— makes your head spin and your mouth dry as if even speaking to her scathingly as you have ever adversary before her would harm you rather than her.
Know that despite both your own instincts and those of the being whose body you now partially possess all telling you that you should despise her just the same as she does you, it’s still a continual struggle to swallow back down the heart that sits snugly at the tip of your tongue and threatens to spill out of your mouth whenever you do so much as bare your fangs at her with feigned malice.
Know that you cannot bring yourself to do more than struggle to defend yourself, and so you run.
For all the infinite knowledge and prowess you may possess being the unnatural thing that you are, it’s her who you know holds the potential to be the source of your undoing, subsequently becoming both your maker and your breaker.
You cannot read nor predict her as you can just about every other living thing that crosses your path; every thread of this universe and the rest lay within your grasp but they law within hers as well and it’s for that you know why looking at her feels like static— why she remains the only unpainted canvas in the endless art gallery that is every timeline and next. She hovers before you a blank slate with potently pointed corners and sharp sides and though slicing open your palms is inevitable, you still want nothing more than to be able to have the privilege of painting her with your own colors.
The longest she’s ever been without fight is a second’s stillness before she strikes again, her blade pressing hard against yours as she pushes her entire being into the assault. You find your heartbeat drumming in your ears despite yourself even as you see a rancor reflected in her eyes that you know all too well as hatred has always been your soulmate and hostility your best friend; that she feels now the same absolute enmity you felt prior to her, during your state of insatiable bloodlust when your hands were dirtied with the blood of countless bodies, you know beyond a doubt. You are the only two entities who could ever truly understand each other who carry the exact same newfound emptiness within your core, and while the void where her humanity formerly was is now filled with anger, yours is filled with its antithesis. Because of her you harbor a love you should never have been capable of whereas she harbors a hatred that she should have never have been able to weaponize; you fight with a heart you should not possess and she with one that should not have been broken. A pawn of the opposite color and the yang to your yin, that you complete each other in every way you shouldn’t makes her everything you could ever want and never have. You’re at your worst both with and because of each other, and for that, you know in some terrible, demented way, you think you complete each other.
Beautiful is not a word that suits you nor is it one you would ever apply to another aloud, but when she is as radiant as you are grotesque there exists no other word that slips into your mind as naturally as one with the most sickening of sentimentality. But beautiful as she may be it isn’t with sweet and saccharine connotations that the word comes adorned but rather with ones that give it a morbidly ethereal meaning; it’s that you share solidarity in being a monster with the intelligence of the gods you’ve both become with no other aim or purpose than to leave ruin in the wake of destroying what you detest the most that draws you simultaneously to and from her. For you, it was every and anything. For her, it’s you and you alone.
Occasionally during your seemingly endless trek through oblivion do you find yourself wondering whether she could ever forgive you, if there existed any chance of her abruptly turning tail and deciding it not worth the effort despite you knowing better than anyone that hatred is the most unrelenting emotion of them all.
It’s only when reality itself starts to shatter as if it were made of glass that you find for the first time in the years since you’ve been running from her that you’re glad she’s here with you. It’s what’s reflected in her eyes and in yours that makes you think for a moment you finally understand each other in a language you both speak fluently— fear. The only thing in your own life you’ve ever held in high regard is that in itself and even as a god, the prospect of your own demise is not one you take lightly. And to her, the only thing you believe she has left is being the one to take away the exact thing you’re afraid of losing; to lose your life to something out of her hands, to have her retribution stolen out from under her nose by the divinity's equivalent of natural causes would be nothing short of cruelly tragic. Or maybe, you think, she fears death just the same as you.
Your train of thought is cut short by the look of lips curling into a snarl you’ve long become acquainted with, and it’s with a sinking in your chest that you do what you do best when faced with hurting the only thing you’ve never wanted to harm and when faced with the reality of being capable of feeling an emotion stronger than hate: you run. Both from her, and from yourself.
You are unfamiliar with love. In fact, you detest it. You detest the fluttering in your stomach and the inescapable tugging at your chest telling you that the being before you is never to be harmed for now you’ve come face to face with someone you know is the only equal you will ever truly have. For all the awful and unforgivable deeds you’ve done and for all those that you’ve killed, for every life you’ve ruined and for every civilization you’ve destroyed, you know she will not and could never be the final victim of your rampage. But you might be her first.