London Grammar - Metal & Dust

The sky opened up sometime during the night and the clouds finally made good on their promise. The rain poured down, freezing rain that coated my world. It seemed oddly fitting. The drops felt like needles against my skin, each hit with a sting, but slowly turned numb from the cold. It felt like the Earth was mourning with me. The cold outside mirrored me within and the darkness mirrored my mind. It would have been almost a beautiful pairing if it hadn't hurt so badly. I never knew you could feel nothing at all and yet still be in so much pain. My mind replayed the night ceaselessly, turning over each excruciating detail, torturing myself with the gravity of who I was, what I was, what my Pair was. What my future was.

I remembered the fight in the woods when James told me I was going to become a monster, that he had seen it. I remembered the despair. I felt that again, except this time it was worse. I had tricked myself into whole-heartedly believing I was good, that I could fight back my nature, overcome it, just to have that perfect deception shattered. I had been tricked by the only person I ever truly believed in. I was the thing of legends, of nightmares, and there was nothing I could do about it. All the stories I had read, all the history of what Halflings were, what they had done, was me. I slowly realized more and more how everything I had ever wanted was gone, how everything I needed was gone. How I no longer had anything, anything at all.

I stayed in the cemetery for what seemed like hours, trying not to think, trying to still my mind, hoping it would make the pain fade, but it didn't. I could feel James there with me, sitting just as still as me, knelt on the grass catching the rain like me, but I didn't look up. I couldn't face him. I never wanted to see him again. And then in one moment that was both wonderful and horrid all at once, I couldn't feel him anymore. One second he was there, his mind tearing at my own, his despair, his rage, his horror and panic swirling within me, and then he was gone, like he no longer existed, like he never had. I remember looking up with blurred eyes, but I knew he wouldn't be there. I was alone, sitting in the dark just waiting for the pain to kill me, hoping it would.

Everything was silent apart from the hushed rain falling softly, and the stillness made me feel like I had been alone the whole time, but my mind ached from the memory of his. The edges of where our connection should have been felt raw and exposed, a lasting token of his parting. My knives disappeared along with James, no longer on the grass where I had left them. I knew he had taken them so I wouldn't kill myself, at least not right then, his version of insurance on my life. I let a cold laugh climb my throat, even his kindness was cruel. That's all he could be.

It took me a moment to comprehend what his absence really meant, like when you hurt yourself but your mind doesn't understand just how severely for a few seconds. Those seconds stretched on and on, but eventually, the shock shifted to something sharper, rougher, as my mind caught up with reality, as my body recognized this newest trauma. My connection with James was gone, and not like the other times, like I was merely blocked or it was dormant, this was different, something final, something total. This was like something had been ripped away. It was a small death in a way. I had an empty feeling in my mind, a hollowness that felt cold, numb, and then the pain hit.

He had cut every last part of himself from me, precise and brutal, and it left the edges tattered and bloody. A sob choked out of me as the pain in my mind slowly grew into something physical. My chest convulsed as I clutched at it, doubling over until I felt the dead grass pricking my forehead. It felt like my heart, my soul, or whatever things like me had in them, was trying to escape through my ribcage.

I was alone, I was abandoned. Something I wouldn't have cared about a few short months ago now seemed a fate worse than death. Worse than being abandoned by the Clan was being abandoned by James. Even though I wanted him gone, even though I couldn't bear feeling that traitor, that liar near me, I couldn't deny a part of me was missing, a part of me was dead. He might very well be the demon he had accused me of being, but he was still my Pair, something I couldn't ignore. And the pain grew. If my nature had stolen my soul, then this desertion, this betrayal had stolen my spirit, crushed my will. That's when I started walking. I couldn't stay there, in the cemetery where my life had unraveled. I had to leave, go anywhere, anywhere but where I was.

I stumbled to my feet and walked without a destination in mind. I had nowhere to go anyway. But even still, the pain followed, it met me at each crossroad, it stayed by my side down each alley. It was with me every step of the way, growing stronger, getting a tighter and tighter hold on me, digging its claws into me and compressing my chest, trying to squeeze the life from me. Sometimes I stopped, I had to, it hurt too much to keep going. I had to lean against whatever was near, close my eyes, and just breathe, just focus on the air entering and leaving my lungs and try to rid the unbearable pain from my mind. Once I heard James' voice in my head, when he had dryly suggested that maybe he should curl up in the gutter and die instead of go on, but thinking of that night only made the pain worse, the night I had sacrificed myself for him, taken his place in death.

Everything made the pain worse. Each step brought on more. No matter what direction I chose, I was walking into it, like a freezing wind cutting into me, finding my most vulnerable areas and burrowing into my skin, my mind, deeper and deeper. Soon, I couldn't take it anymore. I hated my emotions, I hated that I couldn't seem to bury them, to beat them, to kill them. I hated that they were stronger than me, that they were killing me. I was used to being able to control them, I had always been able to lock them away so well they hardly existed, but now, when I needed to the very most in my life, I couldn't. What a sick joke.

I was drowning in my emotions. I had never learned how to live with them, so now I was going to die by them. I couldn't even name what I was feeling, not accurately, not really, it just hurt. It burned. It cut. I just wanted the pain to go away, I needed it to. I just wanted to live my life, however short it would be, without these razors tearing at me, trying to skin me alive, ripping me apart slowly.

At some point during my wanderings, even my numbed mind realized I needed a plan, to decide on a way to eliminate the highest number of my problems in one sweeping motion, the most dangerous of them, and maybe even do some good along the way. I might be a monster, but I still had enough control to do good even if I wasn't, at least for a time. I still had enough of my humanity to make my life worth something before my nature overcame me, before I killed myself. I told myself that maybe if I did good, I would feel better, maybe it would lessen the pain, the fire. It was a selfish reason, but it was the best I could come up with. I just needed the means. I just needed the opportunity, the guidance, the power.

If I was a Half then I would use that to my highest advantage. I would kill as many others like me as I could, and when I finally met a foe I couldn't defeat, then my largest problem would be solved and I would die. If I began to turn before then, if I couldn't control my desires before I found a worthy opponent, then I would kill myself. I promised myself that. I had done it before, I could do it again. At the very first sign of my blood winning the battle, at the first glimpse of my humanity, whatever was left of it, crumbling, I would take my own life, but in the meantime, I would send as many others to Hell as I could.

I would begin a count, a keepsake of the evil I had slain. It would serve as a reminder to hold out against my nature for as long as I could. I saw a shattered bottle in one of the dim alleys I walked, its edge shone in an alluring way, calling to me. I grabbed a shard of it without thinking. I felt naked without my knives, at least the glass was something similar.

As I pondered my count, my tally, an idea came to me. I pulled the glass fragment from my pocket, testing its edge. It wasn't like my knives, but it would do. I carefully put the sharpest part to my skin, on the back of my hand, just above my knuckles...just like James had done all those years ago. I pulled the makeshift blade over my skin, but it only left an ugly red line. I tried again on the same spot and finally split the skin. It was strange how little it hurt. I had expected something more, but I still felt a sense of accomplishment; one down, one to go, one mark for each of the Darklings I had slain in the cemetery. They would be the start to my tally, the first marks on my body to show the number of damned I had sent home. I repeated the process right above the first, making a second line parallel to it.

My blood ran from the rain, but soon it lessened and then stopped as I continued my walk. Somehow even just the small plan I had in my mind, and the fact that I had already started, that my tally had already begun, made me feel a bit calmer. I had my plan, the next thing I needed was a direction. I didn't want to be controlled, I didn't want to be someone's weapon, but I needed to know where to begin, how to begin hunting others like me. And I needed power, I needed more than just training if I was going to be as deadly as I could be. I didn't have the time to find another Clan. I couldn't waste months training with a new group, hiding my bloodline, hoping they wouldn't ask where my old Clan was, why I was alone. I had no idea how long I could fight my nature, how long I had before I took myself out or lost my life to another, but I knew I didn't have time to play politics with a new Clan, or even search out one comparable. I had been with one of the best, and I couldn't go to something less now, I couldn't take that step backward.

Suddenly, I knew what the answer was, it came to me out of the darkened sky and all the pieces fit together perfectly. I knew what I had to do. I turned in the new direction.

The door opened and light splashed onto the front steps. I had been walking in the dark for hours and my eyes had adjusted, now the light burned me, blinding me. The dark silhouette before me stayed silent as I swallowed back the sick feeling, the bile, and bitterness that had made their home at the back of my tongue.

"I want to reconsider your offer."