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These feelings have been there for as long as I can remember. They weren’t this intense at first. For most of my life, I didn’t recognize them for what they are.
When we were little, I told myself I was looking at you because you were my enemy, and it was good to know what you were doing at any given moment, just in case you’d decide to launch an attack. A part of me was frustrated when you didn’t look back. I told myself it was because I wanted to be seen as a threat and you didn’t give me the time of day.
This changed as we got older—maybe because I worked harder to be seen as a threat by you, but possibly (more boringly), it was because I was a more interesting target for your frustration than Ortus could’ve been. The full scope of your reasoning I didn’t know back then—didn’t know for a very long time—but I also didn’t care. All that mattered was that you were finally looking back at me.
There was the time we got into yet another fist fight, when you were maybe eight and I was nine. I won, because the purely physical fights I always won, and I had pinned your back against a wall, and got maybe a little too close as I did.
You scowled at me—you’ve always been very good at scowling, from a very young age—and we were so close that I could feel your breath on my neck. Then you nasty little swamp rat looked me dead in the eye and spit in my face.
I think I loved you then. Having another girl’s saliva all across my face—in my mouth, too, because you’ve always been a particularly nasty bitch like that—was gross as hell, but also a little exciting. Maybe nine year old me thought it was some weird courting ritual. Maybe I just had a concussion. All I know is that this was the first time I wanted you to kiss me.
Which, now that I think about it, is really fucking weird. Like, no normal person would go “kiss me” right after someone spits in their mouth. What the fuck.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Neither of us ever really got the chance to be normal.
At any rate, the next time we fought, I spit back, and at the back of the mind of one very messed up child, I thought that maybe we were married now.
I enjoyed our frequent fights, even when they hurt—they always did, since we were Ninth children who fought to the floor—because they were the only form of touch I got, the only form I knew. My heart beat fast and I told myself that it was the adrenaline, because it would’ve been silly to hate someone as much as I hated you and still have my heart beat staccato whenever you got close.
I spited you because it was funny, and because I wanted you to bite back. Because getting you riled up was an easy way to get your attention, and your attention was all I ever wanted. Maybe I thought that was what flirting always looked like.
You were a vicious bitch, and as such, you eventually turned all fights from fist on fist to necromancy practice, probably because you realized you didn’t stand a real chance in physical fights. I’ve always been so much stronger than you.
Our fights hurt more from that point onwards, but that was okay, because at least you were still looking at me with that same fire in your eyes. Fire was great, since it wasn’t the pain I often saw instead. I pitied you a lot. You were always so fucking sad, and I felt like that was my fault back then—I did kill your parents, after all, so you had every right to be sad and also every right to be really fucking angry at me. (It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that I did not, in fact, kill your parents. Probably because I was a kid back then and by the time you told me it was stupid that I blamed myself, I’d already embraced the guilt.)
The reality of it is much worse, actually—that you only hated me because I reminded you of everyone who died for you, and because I’d witnessed that you couldn’t even die when you were supposed to. (I’ll forever be grateful that you didn’t. I’d say your parents can go choke, but… well.)
In retrospect, maybe this whole thing was for the best. Knowing what kind of parents your father and mother were for you back then, I fear what they might’ve done to you if they’d stuck around to see you grow up. I mean, these people deadass committed genocide to conceive you and then decided it was fine to tell you about it when you were a literal infant! Who does that? My mom was a crazy bitch and all, but at least I only learned I’d been intended as a bomb when I was eighteen.
Moving on… Our relationship had been messy before your parents died, and it remained messy after. It’s hard to tell if it got a lot messier than it had been, really, knowing that the murder attempts I’d always alleged to you were actually just Crux hating my guts. (This one is pretty funny to me looking back, despite the fact that he, y’know, consistently tried to kill me for years. Like, imagine giving someone a dose of poison that would kill the average person ten times over, and the only thing they get is a nasty stomachache and some digestive problems. Crux must’ve been fucking terrified of me, which I absolutely love. Suits him right. Bow to your immortal goddess, you faithless ass.)
Really, the thing that mostly got messier was how you clung to me—metaphorically speaking, not yet physically. You got more determined not to let me leave the Ninth, because you started doubling down on your self-hatred (which must’ve been hard, considering how much you’d already hated yourself before), and I was the only other person in your life who genuinely hated you, too. The whole congregation worshiped your ass, and you despised that, because you didn’t even think yourself worthy of love, much less worship. I genuinely don’t think anyone should ever be worshiped, the whole idea is blatantly stupid—well, outside of kinky fun, that one gets a pass—but I can only imagine how hard it has to be to hear others sing your praises while you hate yourself with the blazing fire of Dominicus. These people didn’t know you, what you really were or how you’d come to be. They didn’t understand who it was they were praising.
Stressing again that worship is utterly stupid in my opinion, and as god’s daughter I think I should, in fact, get to make the rules on this, but I’d still worship you before I worship him. You give my life meaning. When it mattered, you really came through. You saved me, from others and also from myself. He couldn’t be bothered to send me even one lousy birthday card.
Moving on…
It still scares me a little how easy it was to get attached to you when we got to Canaan house. Suddenly we were… flirting, almost. Still messily and nastily because we were still us, but less so than we had been for years. You were so vulnerable and almost human, never an open book but more open than I’d thought you capable of being. You trusted me, with your life and your pain and your biggest secret, and suddenly I had all the devotion in the world to give to you. (Maybe I’d always secretly longed for just that.) I kissed you for the very first time, even if it was just on the forehead. And, well, as much as I hate to bring your freezer meat into this—it’s almost good that she interrupted us when she did. Not saying we’re not complicated now, because we absolutely fucking are, but man, can you imagine how messy we would’ve been back then? We definitely weren’t in the right headspace for a relationship, especially not one with each other. We still don’t really are, but… we’re getting there.
By now I’m pretty sure we’ve always had these super intense feelings for each other, and just assumed them to be burning hatred because that was the only thing we knew. Well, it turns out they weren’t. They never were—as much as we tried to convince ourselves otherwise. That’s why it’s always been so hard to stay away. At the end of the day, as nastily and messily as two traumatized, abused kids like us could only love, we loved each other. (Man, it’d be funny how much you despise the fact that I don’t actually hate you if it wasn’t so fucking depressing.)
As “nastily and messily” very heavily implies—and so does, honestly, the rest of this whole fucked up story—I never did quite love you right. How would one who’s never been loved by anyone in their life know what that looks like, anyway?
I loved you in the same way that wood loves fire, hot and destructive in a way that consumed all of me, leaving you to burn your hands trying to put the glowing embers back together.
…wait, hold on. Can you even burn yourself when you’re the fire in that metaphor? The entire second half of this makes no sense now that I think about it. Anyway, point being: it wasn’t good for either of us, but especially not for me.
You never loved me right either, ridiculous as the thought of you loving me at all was for a very long time. You loved me viciously, in your own twisted way—because you could make me hate you the way you hated yourself. Because I was the one person that looked at you the way you wanted everyone to. I was your punishment, the reckoning for your heinous crime of daring to be born. You made yourself dependent on me in that way, and you probably wished for me to strike you down way longer than I can imagine, when I still thought the chances you gave me to be mere arrogance rather than born of your desire to die. Well, it was either that or your masochistic ass just found the thought of my hands around your neck kinda hot. Not that I of all people could blame you for that one. (No, sorry, I’ll stop. I just… it’s hard, not to look at all of this stuff through a humorous lens. I’ve been protecting myself with that wall my entire life, and there’s no way to tear it down cleanly now. It’s too high, and the plaster has long dried, so every brick I dare to remove has to hit me straight in the fucking face. The bandage comes off slowly and painfully, with a whole bunch of skin that’s never really healed. It’s nasty.)
Not that, when I look back on it today, any of the shit you did to me was ever okay, but… a part of me still struggles to fully blame you, even when I feel like I should. Even when I know you want me to. As expendable as I used to think myself to be, I at least also knew what it felt like to love myself. That’s always been relatively easy—because well, I am pretty great. As we’ve established, you didn’t even have that. I wonder if you can remember any of those blissful few early days before you knew the truth, when you didn’t hate yourself so much it very nearly killed you.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am working on reframing the bullshit you put me through and I allow myself to acknowledge how fucked up it was, because I didn’t deserve that. Laughing it off and just moving forward would be dangerous as hell.
But you were also an ill, traumatized child who needed help she didn’t get, and I still can’t help but pity that girl.
I wish I could go back in time and extend a hand to you, say some cheesy bullshit like “I know what it feels like,” or “I won’t tell anyone you cried,” instead of being a petty child who continuously pours more gasoline onto the burning fire of your self-loathing. Maybe I’d kill your parents before they have the chance to tie their own nooses, and blast your awful great-aunts into the sun while I’m at it. You’d also most definitely get a hug, because hell, you’ve always needed several of those.
Can you imagine what life would’ve been like if our relationship hadn’t totally fucking sucked the whole time?
…yeah, me neither. Worthless contemplation anyway. We can’t change the past. We can only control where we go from here on out. (Which hey, that means I can still blast your ghastly great-aunts into the sun! I should get on that.)
…
Where was I?
Oh, right. Controlling where we go from here. That’s why I’m doing this whole reflection-thingy, after all. Got a tiny bit sidetracked there.
Anyways… I know where you want me to go, considering you like, tried to fire me and stuff. (I’m still laughing about that one. Shit, Nonagesimus, I can’t believe you actually thought that would work.)
And Harrow? Screw you. No offense. I don’t care how much you think you don’t deserve a second chance, because that’s not your choice to make. I’ll tell you this as many times as I need to for it to make it through your insanely thick skull. I know our history is messed up. Of course I do. I was, after all, there for all of it—and unlike you, I didn’t perform experimental brain surgery to give myself amnesia. But I also know you’ve changed a lot. That you’re working hard to change more. You apologize and apologize and apologize, without ever expecting forgiveness. You remind me to put myself first, and if you allow yourself to touch me at all, it’s always, always gently. You’re getting help and you’re getting better, and while it’s not my job to fix you, maybe I just want to hold your hand while you fix yourself. Maybe I just want you to hold mine as I do the same.
I’m pretty sure the healthy thing to do would be to put some distance between us for a while, but we’ve never been particularly good at doing healthy things. We never knew how. And even if we did—after everything, the thought of the other leaving our sight is still too scary. The painful loss is too recent, the wounds are still too fresh. Maybe once they’ve healed up a little, we can talk about the space thing… but not right now. Right now I need you closer.
Necessary as it is, distance between us has always been a scary thought, even when I was actively trying to leave the Ninth. (Not that I’d have admitted it over my dead body back then. Considering I died, well… this is still technically only admitting it over my dead body.) Maybe one day it’ll be less so, but I can’t imagine that being anytime soon. You were, after all, my whole world for many, many years. And we shared a body, for fucks sake. That’s not something I can just casually walk away from. I’m not a hit it and quit it kinda gal.
The thing is… when all is said and done, after some space and many, many open conversations, when we’ve both grown to be at least a tiny bit less messed up, I honestly believe that we’ll learn to love each other right. At our own pace. Maybe I’ll get that dance you promised. Maybe I’ll even swear to not spit in your face again if we ever actually get married—although I imagine nine year old me would be very offended about that one. Well, sometimes you’ve gotta cut your losses.