the battle picked you

right now everything you want is wrong
& right now all your dreams are waking up

"Then it is all for nothing." The shard is suddenly vacant of eyes and everything else. A portrait whose subject has decided to vanish. "Was it going to be like this, from the start?" Were they doomed, from the first meeting?

Like butterfly wings that open to reveal a whole, there are suddenly green eyes looking into Finn's that are different in hard to parse ways. "If you find the center, maybe you can rest." The reflection suggests, though it isn't Remi's voice. As the landscape shifts and curls and day-old scruff replace long-lashed blue eyes, Remi just shakes his head. "You haven't, though. I think that is the problem."

It's the problem for them both. They haven't changed. Not fast enough. Too fast. In all the wrong and right ways, and it hasn't mattered. They're still here, making each other bleed across the sleepless smiles and bruises that grow between them.

"I brought something to catch the bad dreams, but I think I am too late. Did you leave your window open on purpose?"

The Lullaby