Work Text:
Love is a noose, and I won't be party to it.
The person I was is gone— gone— gone again, vanishing with the tick of the clock, crushed just like the flowers beneath Snezhnaya's first tundral judgement.
I am too great to fall. I did not step into the shoes nailed to my feet. (The question: whose? whose? whose are these? singing through my head. The answer's decisive walls boxing it in: you do not know, but it ceases to matter; you are here. Now dance.)
I must not waver, for my principles are absolute. Harm to others is a regretful thing, and yet my empire's necessary evil. (The question: is it? is it? is it a lie you swallow too readily? The answer, Anastasya: blood follows you like a bridal train.)
Who else could decline to answer themselves as anything but concept? Who better to rise to the occasion, when even the presence of one's shadow is so fleeting?
She will steal mine and hoard it, should she get the chance. Her own, doubled, writhes in disaffected agony. (The question, acrid like the tang of gunpowder in the room: what stories will they write of you? The answer, sharp as a broken bassinet: you cannot trust the wagging tongues of others.
Do you concern yourself with how they speak of you out of curiosity?
Or do you hope to discover yourself there,
Like running your fingers through a lightless pool?)
In lands once called Snezhnayan, now kissed by the Moon Goddess, I hear tell of the Water Imps. They exist in spirit only; they are said to sit upon the miller's water wheel, bringing all grinding to a halt. To look upon their faces invites the kiss of death.
(The question: what do they see there? And the answer: A mirror.)
A glimpse shatters their maidenhood and turns their hair the green of rusted copper. Thusly, the Prima Donna of the Korolevskiy Troupe. I have, in meeting her gaze, seen the exiled fae. I have heard her tragic rage.
Love is a noose which she hands to me. (The question: who, then? Who does she intend to see dead?
The answer: you couldn't say. When you saw her face, perhaps you saw the vanished Tsaritsa.)
I am party to decisions I did not make, that I do not understand.
Still they look to me for guidance. I am not what they longed for, but I must rise to the occasion.
(On your back, a heavy weight— fear, and hunger, and no memory of the gods who once held that authority.
You must accept sin as a natural consequence of your being. Without regret. Features idyllic in repose.
The question: is this not the way of things? If you remember nothing, then you are guilty of everything.)
Then why do I yearn? To see this world annihilated beneath Ronova's parting touch.
(The question: who are you beneath the Love you are shackled to?)
The answer:
My face, an unbroken mirror.