your masterpiece beautiful
#1
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Misery had been suffocating. The overwhelming fear of air pulled from her lungs, leaving her vulnerable had pulled her out of the dark comfort sleep held, and she'd awoken, a scream on her lips. But she'd bitten it back, choked it down, and would not scream. The devil would not have that prize. For all her weakness and her uselessness, she rarely screamed in fear. Rage made her voice strong, rarely did the petty feeling of terror. Her whole life was a terror. Her bright eyes had searched the cabin, before she had taken off into the darkness.


The air pulling in and out of her lungs was bitterly cold, and it made her shudder and twitch like a horse as she ran. Her body was moving and the muscles pulling and bringing her onto the brink of terrible pain as she went, lost in her desire. The moonlight made her body seem ghostly, as if God had already taken her into his cold and loveless arms and declared her unworthy, sending her crashing back onto the earth. Her wings would melt, she would one day fly too close to that sun. The cane had been left in the ramshackle home Ahren had arranged, and some vague part of her that held no desire for death or for sweet oblivion, some vaguely rational part of her mind cried out for her to stop. But that part was not needed now. She was lost in the ecstasy one could only find in agony.



Pleasure rarely lasted long. From the land of fog and sorrow she had ran, into the bare bones of desolation. Ghosts were calling from the darkness all around, and in a flash she could have sworn she saw eyes that haunted her, eyes that would have been a beautiful blue if not for the milky cataracts that coated them. Her mind had struggled to process the impossibility of Meth's eyes shining out of the darkness, so real that she was terribly certain it was no delusion. A choking sound escaped her as she looked back in the moonlight, certain she would see the eyes again, certain the dark God of the Depths had come to take her. The broken branch of a tree, one she had long ago been fond of curling under, not that the tree was familiar to her caught between her legs as she ran, and she went down hard, the bad leg buckling, the leg she knew she shouldn't run on, the one that screamed with the pain of it all betrayed her, and she landed hard on that shoulder, her momentum sending her skidding, pulling back flesh and fur.



A sharp and wicked noise in the night as she crawled unto hand and knee, shoving herself back into a sitting position, hands grasping and feeling at the wound, spitting blood from the traitorous tongue she had bitten so sharply down upon. A sense of foolishness was looming over her, she should not have run, she knew it, but God had sent his demons after her heel. Misery could not have been still for anything in the world. The flesh had been rubbed away violently off of her shoulder, leaving a nasty looking would from which she pulled out a large chunk of wood that had been firmly pushed in. Chimera was in her veins, now, and the very thought made her laugh in a slightly unhinged, bitter way. Looking around as she sat there, waiting for the biting pain to fade some, waiting for it to subside as she spit bloody foam.


"I can see you." Her voice snapped out in the darkness. Misery's voice was as young as ever, slightly deep, and very beautiful. Like her eyes. Her body was a waste, always too thin and rangy, now coated in a bright whiteness that made her tremble with the horror of it, but thankfully stained with black, like blood on sheets that once housed a virgin. A quiet sin wrapped in a package that seemed so frail. The triskele on her shoulder, the scars on her palms, the shaggy black and white mane of hair. Eyes so bright they seemed impossible. Ribs and a spine that seemed destined to always peek out. A soft sound escaped her, a quiet and utterly hopeless kind of moan. This much she knew was not a reality, but it was terrifying all the same. Meth, Rift, Jude, all waking on the peripheral of her vision, so close and lucid she could have touched them if she let herself fall into her delusions. But she willed it away, grasping at her mane of hair, pulling so tightly beads of blood formed where she was pulling it out without realizing, eyes staring at Chimera's soil, tongue forming a dark prayer to her God, in the guttural and harsh tongue of her ancestors. Perhaps God would hear her prayers, but it seemed so much more likely the Devil would have her. Such was life.


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#2
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indent She had been gone too long. That much he knew, knew in his secret heart. She was sick in the mind, sick in the soul. Even in her sleep, she spoke to people who weren’t there. Even awake, she spoke to people who weren’t there. For a rational being, this would be signs of madness. Misery was mad; Misery was hysterical. Ahren had known that for years. It changed nothing. He was bound to her and she to him. This was why he had been trailing her for over an hour, walking circles as she ran haphazardly in the midnight hour.

indent No trail in this part of the wood was strange to him. Each footstep he took was certain, cat-like in the dark. A long time ago, he had run these forests as a child. That little boy had died a long time ago. Ahren didn’t remember him; he barely remembered the man he had once been. One of the fundamental problems of being an addict lies in the blackouts. Enough sunspots clouded his memory so he was left with gaping holes that meant nothing and left so much up to question.

indent He had questioned. He had also let go. It was all that could be done after everything that had happened. Three women who had loved him and left, each with children at their heels. Orphaned, exiled, uncompromising. Ahren de le Poer was a monster of a philosopher, one who manipulated life to suit his means. He did not believe in changing for others, and he had not.

indent A clear spoken, familiar voice pulled him. Catching snowflakes in his mass of dreadlocked hair, he trailed the noise until he found her. Huddled over, pulling her hair, praying. He knew the words. It had been the first language he had learned. “Get up,” he said coldly, unable (though not unwilling) to allow her to freeze to death.





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#3
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Her thin neck moved in a slight and fluid way, and she bared her teeth at him in an angry, animal snarl. Black lips, yellowing, aging teeth, and mad eyes that knew God was very real, and that he was a cold hearted bastard with a fondness for pulling the wings off of flies stared at him with a cold and vicious hatred. For a moment his face had been a terrible thing to behold, a strange mix of Salvaged Eternity and Hearse, things of death, and of pain that a woman should not have known. Her vision cleared, as unreliable of a thing as it was, and she drew back the snarl, choking it down, forcing it down into her dark heart, and looked away. Thin hands slid bonelessly from her hair, falling to her sides in a careless way, as she stared around. It was cold and snow was turning the streaks of black on her to chalky white, making her body more and more of a lie. White was the color of salvation, and she was the Devil's whore.


Her blood was turning the ground around her bright red, a color she found strangely hypnotic as she looked around, unwilling for the moment to meet his eyes, unwilling to do as he wanted. A thought, some strange knowledge of the blood hit her, and another laugh, sharp and wholly cruel in the darkness passed her lips. A mad grin, the grin of a Jester who would soon serve their King syntax error'd glass escaped her. Oh, things would be getting better soon. Peace drove her mad. Soon, the shape of God's most wicked thing would come. A wanton woman. The smile stayed on her face then, and she slowly pushed herself to stand. Obeying him.


Ahren was a handsome thing. A Prince who would break a million hearts, who loved a Gypsy of the sea. It was a strange thing, what passed between the pair. Something that filled her with envy. They were both alive, young, and beautiful. She could smell sickness on her own breath. It might have just been paranoia, she had the luck of a sinner. It seemed at times Misery would outlive them all. The show wasn't over yet, and she knew it. They were sisters, weren't they? Ahren could never really be rid of his misery, no matter how much he wanted to. She shook her rangy body, and grinned over at him, in a secret, sick way.

"She's coming."


How she knew Matinee was on a boat that would soon land on the shores of Bleeding Souls, an accidental landing, a chance of fate, was a mystery. Just how Misery was so damn certain that an unlucky, fated wind would blow Matinee off the course she had wrongly believed would take her to the lands where she had met Ahren was illogical. But sometimes God whispered things that were truths. An enigmatic and wholly maddening smile stayed on her face. This would be good. Her wounds were forgotten as she had something else to lose herself in. In Ahren's tragedy and the song that his heart would soon sing. Misery hoped it was a requiem.

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#4
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indent A second deeper darkness lived in his eyes. Once it had a name. His mother, in her madness, had lost it. Her holy books were gone, torn to shreds in his own blackouts. There was no second person, no conscious thought. Id, ego, and superego alone stood. Each were parts of the other, all parts of the whole. In him lived a blind demon, a dead boy, a laughing fool. He was so many things and yet he could only say I am. Nothing else mattered, nothing else meant anything.

indent Ragged things they were, one on the outside, the other in his mind. They were the four horsemen, this strange, fucked up family. Damian, long dead; War, who had loved Pestilence, his pale mother that carried sickness in her blood. Their son Conquest studied the aging figure below him, regarded Death as she was. And she smiled. Smiled her hideous smile and spoke. The words hit him like the cold, but he was numb and could no longer feel. His eyes darkened, and behind them, a shadow began to twist. It knew her game. It wanted to tear her apart.

indent “Get up,” he said again, mechanical, wholly sober. She was coming. She was coming. But he knew that, didn’t he? He had known that the moment he had dreamt of her face. They were bound, and they would always be bound. It was more then just the ring on his finger that held him to her—and it would take more then a hollow promise from a sick woman to drive him to hysterics.





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#5
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Love was a sickness that so easily pierced the veil of the flesh. It dug deep into the marrow and infected the entire system. Love warped the mind. Love was the only sickness that could really grab the soul. Turning every bit of one person into another. Love corrupted independence. Love twisted the souls into one terribly beautiful thing. Her bright eyes gleamed as she studied him, and laughter was in her smile. But she didn't let a sound slip out, her silence was thick and heavy. White hands, so lovely pushed herself up as she swayed for a moment, her ruined leg trembling with the effort. In the days to come, she would curse her madness.



"Think she even remembers you?" Quiet, curious. In no particular way malicious, but maybe just raring for a good fight. Pain was beautiful.

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#6
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indentHer eyes were roaring laughter. Ahren hated her sometimes, hated the fact she knew him for what he was, that she was the only woman who could dare as she dared. Once he had struck her—and once, she had called him by his father’s name. Because of that, he would never hit her again. He could not bear to see Damian in her eyes when she looked at him. His jaw tightened as she spoke, teeth clamped together so tight he imagined he might crush them. It took physical effort to release, to relax the muscles, to finally speak with ice on his tongue. “Do you think those kids you left in Europe remember you?”





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