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Because of the way I reached for your hand and you curled your fingers around mine; searing, desperate, squeezing my thumb like it was your last hold on reality, under sheets far too rich to be mine. And how you said nothing, shook your head vehemently when I asked if you were crying, the way you denied it even as your hot tears burned slickly down my chest like acid, tearing holes in my skin.
Because I couldn't mend you, even with my lips tangled against your hair and my hands soothing down your back, porcelain skin aflame with the agony of what you had become even as I begged every spell I ever knew to take away your pain, hollowly spinning incantations like crystal glass while you kissed the corner of my mouth and did your damnedest to break them.
Because you had no intention of going back; not for me, not for anyone. Not even when your lips found mine, alarmingly gentle enough to send my defences reeling because you never kissed like that, never sighed against my lips until I lost the war and let you in, warm tongue sliding into mine just long enough to forget that you hated me and I poisoned you and that the world we used to share died in the moment your heart stopped beating.
Because when you pushed yourself out of my arms just far enough to swipe through me with emerald eyes glittering black beneath the canopy of your bed I knew they wouldn't hold for long, even as you thrashed against your dead conscience like a wounded animal, beautiful and ruined in the snare of too many promises you couldn't keep.
Because your fingers were clutching my arm, my shoulder, nails digging into skin paler than your own and crushing your perfect mouth into mine, fighting even as I slid a hand down your cheek and whispered that I loved you while you wanted nothing more than to end every piece of me that had ever existed.
Because of the barest flash of golden that sealed my gaze before you could, because I couldn't let you win even as your teeth tore across my lips and left them raw, because you wanted me to hurt as blindly as you ever had, wanted me to suffer and break and shatter so I would finally understand.
Because I wanted to save you from yourself even as your fury flared ochre and I held you in place with a scattered handful of words into your mouth, pinning your hands between our sweaty chests as our hips rasped together in a dying rhythm, hating everything you'd become with a kiss.
Because I remembered you, before we were this.