𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 | 𝐉𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐊𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧

𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐈𝐈 : 𝐍𝐨 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬

Villainous. You were villainous.

You were not clever but conniving. Not generous but greedy. Not self-assured but self-obsessed. You used to be good. Niccolo once called you kind and diligent, but you had grown resentful. Volatile. Hateful. Lost.

Villainous, yet so very lost.

You lost control of your world, of your temper, of yourself. After spending an entire life keeping lips sealed whenever emotion threatened to trickle through, you scalded the ones you loved most once anger finally boiled out and over due to how lost you had become. Fiery acrimony reached Jean first, then spread to Niccolo, and blistering bitterness leaked far enough to flood even Sasha's grave. Who was next? Who did you intend to ignite in ire's hellfire until your entire world was reduced to ash?

Wicked. Ruthless. Monsterous.

Had your true reflection finally bubbled to the surface? Were you still you? If you stepped in front of the mirror, would you recognize yourself?

Maybe you had every right to become a villain, you reframed the situation to better suit your need for peace. Your body had been battered until your features were unrecognizable; your mind had been picked apart and tossed to the birds like grain; your heart had been stomped upon over and over until your chest contained only cracked ribs, a pair of deflated lungs, and nothing else. You earned the right to be as terrible as you needed in order to protect yourself from losing what little bit of light still existed in a graying, decaying soul. Niccolo was only another unfortunate recipient of years of fear coagulating into hardened hatred.

But all this wrath–this destruction–was done for the sake of love, was it not? A love for Jean where you would torch your home to keep him warm. A love for yourself where you would burn almost anything to finally keep someone you held dear. A love for a future that you were so desperate to see glowing red in love's vicious yet brilliant embers.

Just about every feeling a person can feel is love wearing different coats, but the way you wore love was hideous. Twisted. Too ill-fitting to ever be compared to something as beautiful as love. You tore apart one coat to heal the holes in another but ended up with mismatched, gnarled fabric. Pain did not give you the right to rip into others' seams as Fate had ripped into yours. You could spend years wasting away in your room, trying to convince yourself that you were entitled to fracture apart and use your self-made shards as weapons, but that belief could never be made true, no matter how sharp you became.

And through all of this internal agony, rivers surged. Liquid fire refused to evaporate within stinging ducts and burned wildfires over your cheeks. Waterfalls would not wash away your evils. They would not pull the tides of Niccolo's mind. They would not steer Jean's course back to you. They only stabbed at your throat and throbbed in your skull until each heartbeat pounded behind your eyes. Sunlight grew intolerable, breaths became sharp, and a girl became a shell.

Unmoving. Unfeeling. Uncaring.

Numb.

The water receded once numbness set with the sun, and there was comfort in the darkening emptiness. Although the headache brought on by hot puddles was painful, the throbbing dulled the splitting of your heart.

There were gentle knocks at your door, whispers regarding what was cooked for dinner, and clicks of a plate and cup being set outside your cell. Niccolo's voice reached you–more tired and shaky than you had ever heard it. His shoes waited, unmoving, in the orange sliver under your door for so long. You entertained the idea of getting up and inviting him in, but what would you say? You devoted so much time toward mourning yourself and lost love that not once had you spared a second toward putting together a decent apology. Because while you spent precious hours behind a locked door–spearing yourself with realizations of inadequacy–a shadow waited eagerly behind a wooden wall for any glimpse of your being. Eventually, sadness tore through in another riptide as Niccolo's shade slunk off, and candlelight flickered in an undisturbed line yet again.