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Language:
English
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Published:
2026-01-25
Words:
758
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
24
Kudos:
124
Bookmarks:
16
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309

14 lines from love letters or suicide notes

Summary:

1. Don’t freak out.

Notes:

based on the spoken word poem by doc luben

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

  1. Don’t freak out.
  2. We both know this has been coming for a long time.
  3. I’ve been staying awake at night, wondering if I should tell you.
  4. I bought more Dunpor cream for your sweetmilk; it’s in the icebox in the lab. The one for food, not lab components, I remembered this time.
  5. Now that we finished the Hexgates, I do not know what else to do next.
  6. I always imagined this would happen without warning, like suddenly on a balcony, high above the city, or maybe at the top of the Hexgates. But this is the kind of thing where waiting for the time to be right would just mean waiting forever.
  7. I’ve just been too afraid for too long.
  8. You started signing your notes. I’ve noticed, now that I’ve had to comb through them to see if there’s any more insight to be gleaned into the Hexcore. But even you couldn’t have predicted this—a shell formed around your body, changing you from the outside in. You told me to destroy it, but your signature is on every page, every blueprint. Ego, you once called it. Do you understand it now? The desire to leave your mark on the world, knowing your time is finite? A ghost, trying to prove to the living that he is still there. There are two ghosts in this lab.
  9. I was eight when my mother brought us over the mountains. It was the wrong time of year, but we had no choice. My father was already in Piltover, it was our best chance at a life—a good life. I’d never seen snow before, and I lost my gloves playing in it on the way up the mountain. My mom scolded me but gave me her mittens. After everything, after the storm, and the mage, and when she was in the hospital with her hand wrapped in bandages—she apologized. “I’m sorry I yelled,” she said, while I stared at the space where her fingers had been. She said it again five years later, when I presented her with the new prosthetic fingers I’d just completed. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you for losing your gloves,” she said when I fitted the fingers on her hand, as if that were the only thing she remembered about that day. Maybe it was the only thing worth remembering to her—and the magic shouldn’t be talked about. Maybe that’s why she apologized for yelling, but never said she was sorry for her words to the Council, at my trial. Does she regret them now? I cannot imagine how we forgive ourselves for all the things we didn’t say until it was too late. Will you forgive me, I wonder?
  10. I keep imagining my books in your apartment.
  11. I think I’m going to throw up.
  12. I used to draw myself as a hero, when I was a kid. Surrounded by magical runes, with a big cape like heroic wizards are supposed to wear. I drew so many—my dad had a whole collection hanging in his office. I gave myself a hammer, just like him, but I refused to take over the family business. I wanted something greater. He used his hammers to build, I used mine to…to…I dreamed of saving the world with magic, of wielding that beautiful force to change things for the better. How can good intentions go so wrong? How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?
  13. I dream about you every night. Or as close to night as it gets here. I see your face in the fire, have to hold my hand to stop myself from reaching for you. Do you still dream, wherever you are? Or have I stolen that from you as well?
  14. I never had the courage to wear anything but my House colors. Reds and golds and browns—my entire closet, and of course with my name on everything. Ego, you always said and maybe it was but it was more a pretense, an imitation of the high Houses of the city, how the noble elites of Piltover are never seen in anything but their family colors. I thought that if I did the same, it would mean we’d finally made it. House Talis meant something. I tried to do the same to you, tried to convince myself it meant something when you wore a red tie, even though you always said red wasn’t your color. I bought a green shirt. I know you would like it.

Notes:

15. I’ll see you soon, V.