[Rough Draft] Sardoc's Past

[nauticaas]

Your memory starts in the snow, and that sits well with you.

There is a life before then, of course; it clings to the fringes of your mind like light, or pale, ancient dust. Sweet moments and honeyed touches are your knowledge, your whole world, as small and secret as it is, with more colors than those of a rainbow and a . When there is only one and two and you, walking across an island so beautiful under all the snow and ice (maybe because of this), it doesn’t seem like anything less than perfect. This is enough.

...it’s enough.

It’s enough as you claw at the snow and ice that you love so much, digging your nails into the frozen dirt underneath. Choking and wheezing and gagging on air, with saltwater on your cheeks and bitter poison on your tongue, it’s enough. Heart pounding like fading footsteps, it’s enough; throat aching like something is crawling down into it, enough. Enough, enough, enough.

Why? How is this enough? What could possibly make this alright?

...it’s in the way she holds your head up like when you were a baby, and how he takes your grimy hands, grasping and clinging, and mutters soft nothings like you’re just going to sleep. You believe every word because that is all you know, and all you ever think you’ll know. Just a bit of bittersweet in a sweet dream and the taste of poison on your lips as you tremble and plead, is it almost over? You don’t mind waiting for what you think will be the first and last time, closure. An ending. And you are wrong.

The first time is tragic, the second a shame, and by the time you’re on a bed like ice too many years later, held down by countless vice-like grips, you know that the looks of pity are well earned. You can almost hear the whispers every time you turn your head

patheticmiserablewretched

and you cannot help but agree with them. There is no shame in the truth, and what greater truth exists than that of a fool who knows he is being used? You relish the truth, even as that bitter pill is shoved down your throat. For a moment, you are afraid that you won’t be able to swallow, whether out of fear or selfishness. But then you catch the briefest of glimpses out of the corner of your eye, a blur of white and red amidst all the cool steel of this prison, and you are reminded as to why you came this far. Why you’re flat on your back once more with another bitter dose of “truth” in your mouth and the realization that no, some things never change. Funnily enough, the thought brings a bit of courage back into you.

Lie back and think of Paris, you say to yourself deliriously, and the thought brings a chuckle to your poisoned lips. That insufferable bastard, who took your dignity, what was left of it, and your arm, however much it may still be attached to you. Paris who you ran through with a stolen sword and then traded your life for in a misguided end to your existence, a story which began once upon a time in the snow.

And that sits fine with you.