the heart i know i'm breaking (is my own)

3

We gather stones
Never knowing what they'll mean

It had been beautiful. The days spent, the whispers shared. The world which had been straightforward and exciting. It had been beautiful and now... now it tasted of the bitterness of his betrayal. He had been my confidant and I'd been his. We had always just done our job. Respected the duty that came with power.

We hadn't known what it meant. Never guessed just how much magic those jewels we had to collect could unleash.

Fu had made it seem like they were harmless little stones.

Some to throw

It hurts to say 'we' now. Who knew two youngsters fooling around in love would end up on the opposite sides of a battle neither wanted? There hadn't been any signal. No warnings. War had come on silent cat feet and swept my world off balance.

That bastard had come, strolling in with the Butterfly Miraculous, powerful in his knowledge, demanding our jewels like he believed himself to be the puppeteer of our strings.

(I'd thought it would be easy to say no.)

Some to make a diamond ring.

But nothing is ever easy. I'd learnt that long before becoming a hero. I know it now, as I see even the ones who'd fought against me gain a glassy sheen in their eyes. My mother knows too, I suspect, as she allows them to come forward to pay me their respects. He doesn't move from his place, though. His gaze never leaves my body, but he does not take a single step towards where it is laid. I guess even he realizes it, acknowledges it. That nothing ever is easy.

But we were. (We had been.)

It had been easy to reveal my identity, easy to know his. It was so easy to bare every inch of my soul to him, the strengths and the flaws. Easy to be lovers, to spend our nights on peaceful rooftops, supported by the other's arms, guarding our beloved city.

It's easy now to look at him and take in his face, to trail my eyes down his figure and rest them on the rings on his fingers. It's easy to recognize them, the little jewels we so earnestly gathered, now dull like the stones we thought they were.

It's anything but easy to push back the urge to scream at the sight.

I suppose that's why we couldn't have lasted. The universe does not allow easy things.

You know I didn't want to
Have to haunt you

There is no substance to me, which is obvious, considering I'm... well, a ghost. But it's hard, being a soul without a body. I'm nothing if not emotions left over, and they churn inside me like a brewing storm. I do not know the reason for my existence. I hardly even know the purpose. But damn me, because in spite of being hurt and abandoned, I desperately do not want to have to haunt him. He has enough phantoms of his own, enough nightmares lingering that he does not need me as one of them.

This must be the love I still foolishly nurture taking over my being.

But unfortunately for him, quite a few other emotions have been left too.

But what a ghostly scene

Grief unlike any other hits me as I watch my mother's hands swipe harshly at her cheeks. My being urges me to go nearer, to approach her, but I will it into stillness. There is nothing to be gained from doing so, no comfort this form of mine will be able to give her. She has lost her daughter in every way that matters. So I let the shame in, let it show me just how much I deserve this pain, after putting her through so much.

Then comes the guilt.

It creeps up, catching me unaware as my best friend comes forward with flowers in her hand for my grave. Taunts me when more tears fall and soft sniffles start, when the people I called - call - my friends shake with sorrow.

The priest calls for my casket to be brought. They all have gathered in the garden beside the cemetery, where my body is to be buried. It's surreal, overwhelming, but something inside me refuses to miss even a second of this. And so, along with the rest, I turn to greet my own dead body.

Cold shock takes over me.

You wear the same jewels
That I gave you

He is one of the people carrying my casket. Face blank, unreadable, meeting no one's eyes. A shiver - an action of the living - breaks through me as his ring-adorned fingers slowly pull away and he turns, looking down at my body. The old anger arrives, bringing unease and agony with it. Tearing my gaze away from him, my eyes drift over to my own self.

The reality of all of this comes crashing.

Terror breaks through every pore of my being. It is a storm, leaving tatters in its wake, tearing me apart. The world distorts, rushing around me as I watch the love of my life brush his fingers against my lifeless ones, pulling back to support the coffin once more, as he gently, slowly, lowers it to the ground.

As you bury me...

The casket is shut closed. Ladybug is dead and gone.

Buried.