i hate dreaming of being alone

AmaLIa

shield of safrin

Button by button, stitch by stitch, she takes of his clothing and shows the carapace below. Scarred and chafed as any armor, his body is stone and water, fluid undulations over the solid musculature, all of it crisscrossed in silver and brown. With new eyes and new awareness she stares at them all now, wondering where they come from, what they cost. Who had to die so he could live? Whose blood was on his body, his hands?

Does she hate them? "Yes," Amalia answers softly, biting her lip, swallowing the bile, her hands on her side, the shirt fallen away. Yes, she hates them for what they represent. She hates that he was born to a bloodthirsty world. She hates that he found it so easy to fit into that role. She hates that she knows this about him.

But she doesn't hate him.

Slowly she raises a quivering hand, laying it over a particularly stark scar that rests upon his chest. Her fingers splay, breezing over gently until her thumb is left to trace the width of it. "But I love them, too." Her voice is even quieter now, scarcely over a whisper; she turns her dark eyes up to him, large and damp in the dim light of the bathroom. "They mean you lived. And they brought you here. To me."

you can't choose what stays
and what fades away