When I was small enough that I was still bright eyed and new to the ways of the world, never would anyone who knew me have dreamed that I would grow into the man I became. My sisters wouldn't have believed you if you tried to describe the vast brutality with which I subjected my victims to. My mother would have shook her head when you told her I, too, had surrendered my autonomy to a physical substance. The light of my life, the love of my life... She might have agreed with you, acknowledged the savage I portrayed. Instead of accepting this, though, she would have told you to look past the exterior, that there was a little boy who was sitting outside his house, wishing the vacancy it stood there with was bustling with enthusiasm and warmth that only a family could give. Instead, she would have told you that I wasn't the sentinel I put forth; no, I was a whirlwind of intensity, the wind I created painted with hundreds of hues that couldn't possibly begin to show you who I truly was. Time and time again I failed her grandiose notion of who I was, thrusting the blame onto my experiences and onto my enemies that had found and fought me in the form of violence. In the form of exploitation of the power I didn't know I had when I was much younger, and in the form of puppeteers so malevolent yet talented they sculpted what was a perfect soldier out of a scared, guilty little boy. Any possible futures I had begun the path towards crumbled like the yellow brick road had the tornado that sent Dorothy to Oz destructed the fantasy world itself. Maybe it was Oz I needed to visit in order to find a future that wasn't riddled with self destruction, my world crumbling in a filter of vignette and impending shadow. Happiness and contentment were the first possibilities to fall as the road crumbled, leaving me trembling in despair in the darkness that befell me before amber light muted the din and illuminated the darkness.

Before I realized that I merely traded one horror for the shackles of another, binding myself to a need that I didn't believe I was worthy of overcoming.

Instead of boarding a train that would take me to solace, I boarded one that would take me to solitude and depravity. In my train car, I would find a viral vice that would become executive commander of the path of life I took. Please, why wouldn't someone crash this train?

It would seem I had taken the opportunity that Serafina's ghostly prowess had offered as an opening for my train wreck. Though the sweet, dulcet, impossible tones of Serena's voice drifted through my dreams and even through the flat light that was my consciousness, the effervescence it had left me with faded away into silence and I could no longer feel the fleeting joy that the encounter had given me. It had been time to say goodbye... why hadn't I felt better? Instead of sorrow and loneliness, I felt a guilty relief that her bones and flesh had disintegrated into dust and ash and floated on the wind to a heaven I would never reach. A paradise lost, at least to me... And as I turned, recognizing that same painstaking loss in the azure eyes that so reminded me of my own, somehow the guilt I felt in the pleasure that goodbye had given me evaporated and I was left with a miserable mist of discomfort but... Somehow... Somehow, the discomfort was shared in that misery wrapped her long, cold arms around both Isolt and I.

I might have expected to be greeted with pity, but in her soft eyes I only found a sadness I knew too well. Was the woman truly worried she would let me down, and watch me fall further? Though I wasn't entirely sure my instincts or intuition would be correct, especially now, I felt myself slip into an autopilot mode as my eyes shut and a sigh left my lips. The place I found behind my eyes was not peaceful, and it instead encouraged me to open my eyes and meet her's once more, strengthened with some kind of internal force I didn't recognize.

In an instant that would surprise both her and I, this internal force encouraged me to lift a hand to touch her porcelain cheek, the tips of my slender and deceivingly smooth fingertips brushing any trace of crimson from the pale perfection of her cheeks. My fingers returned to my lips though one hand remained gently resting on her cheek to catch any future tears â€" accepting the fate the blood teas would bring to my hazardous body. Immediately I could feel the effects of the magical substance attacking the flu-like rabid infection that had plagued my body and I could feel the heat begin to dissipate. Quietly, I gently brushed the rest of the tears from her cheeks as a last ditch effort to keep the emotion from my own eyes.

Misery, the wretched thing, loves company and we fit so comfortably under the same blanket.

"It is incredibly kind of you to attempt to make excuses for my behavior," I began to say, trying to offer her a hint of a smile as her words touched me with an emotion far from pity that I originally believed. "I ... thought I was doing what was right. I wasn't innocent of crimes far worse than you could imagine in the depths of your worst nightmares. Your brother may have said terrible things to you, but I ... " With a sigh did I offer her my palms. "What do you see, here?" I asked gently, the tone of my voice far more raw than intended. "Hands, yeah?" The accent was terribly strong. "They look like artist's hands when instead, I have done more malicious things with my hands than I have created good, all because of a strange world I'm from. That I still live in, sometimes. Your brother might have been addicted to a substance, Isolt, but mine was never to the drug. It was always to the way I could inflict the pain I felt in how lost I was on someone else... So they'd know me for just a little while. It was always to the way I could assert dominance in as little as a blink of my eyes. I never had that kind of power over the -... " My voice wavered. "I just wanted to know that if I could go back, I would have been able to protect my sister. That's all I ever wanted."

Elenore.

With a gulp of air and a rising tide of passion did the tears begin in my own eyes as words I had never spoken escaped my lips.

"I should have done more. She was so young, so young and... I don't know why men have always thought they were entitled to the bodies and minds of women who were never strong enough to insist their independence. My little sister was only four when it happened the first time, and yet she's had to carry me since the night I waited in the hospital for my sister to explain to me that we couldn't report the rape to anyone because it would only hurt my little sister more. How could a man - ... " My voice was softer, broken by a silence as I shut my eyes for a moment to try to find composure.


"It was I that should have done more. I should have wrapped her in my arms and protected her, instead of trying to protect myself with guilt and losing myself in my own hatred. I failed her so many times Isolt, that I wouldn't want to be anyone's anything."

I'd be better off without the help, even though I desperately wanted someone to protect me the way I longed to ride my white horse in as their knight.