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Mask of Sorrow
Bring Me To Life
a companion piece by Delilah deSora (pagan_)
NOTE: My friend Delilah wrote this little piece for me after having read most of the actual fic (as much as I had typed at the time). Thanks a lot, dearest! *smooches and snuggles* For anyone complaining that Andrys is OOC: maybe he is, maybe he isn't! It's her personal perception of the character and I like it as it is. I welcome any comments on this topic, as well as the fic.
The song lyrics in italics are “Bring me to Life” by Evanescence. I don’t own it.
How can you see into my eyes
Like open doors?
Leading you down into my core
Where I've become so numb
I wonder if you know I still watched you from the shadows, even after the time when you attacked me. I wonder if you suspected with your warrior instincts that the mad prince dogged your every step. You frightened me, this dark haired prince from a war-darkened land. I had felt your strength and your fury. I had felt you hands upon my body that time and I had lived through the tempest of memories it woke within me. It was the first time I had felt another’s arms about since my life was ripped from me and despite my fear I couldn’t stop myself from trying again. From following you like a tattered shadow as you walked steadily towards the light that marked your path.
Yet I had seen something else within you other than that anger. Something that I did not fear. Something that stirred my fearful heart. I had seen the clear bright soul you possess that resides in the center of all that strength. Like a single bright rose covered in thorns, a little worn, perhaps, from the violent turn your life had taken but still bright. Still strong.
I have watched you since the whispers that a prince left without a family and without a land reached my ears. How could I resist such whispers? How could a broken prince who has also lost his land and a measure of his own family not seek out another?
When I first drifted through the dark halls I had expected to find another broken spirit like myself. How wrong I was! From the first moment I laid eyes upon you I realized we were not the same.
Where I had been left broken and alone, your cursed fate had left you strong and angry. Where I had lost the strength to face my doom you had rallied. Where I bow meekly to my fate you fight! You take all the pain and disappointment in your life and you use it to fuel your spirit. You refuse to be dragged down. You refuse to lie down and die.
Not like I have.
Without a soul
My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it
Back home.
And here you were, my warrior prince, your eyes keen and your course set while I… I could only watch your strength from the shadows. A mere ghost of what I used to be. You embrace people who are strangers to you while I pull away from even my own father’s touch. You have had more contact with Alexander, my own brother, these last few weeks than I have had in the last eight years.
I watched you laugh with him and I see the way he smiles. He used to smile at me like that. Not anymore. Not since I pushed him away. I saw you there with him and I felt like the ghost you once thought I was. I felt as though I had been replaced with a prince who acted as I should have acted. A prince who overcame the challenge that fate rested before him.
Even now I shudder to think of it. When such thoughts come over me I have to reach out to touch a nearby object, just to make sure I am still real. To make sure I haven’t faded away.
Do you have any idea, Demian? Do you know how hard it has been for me to shut myself away like this?
I love my family. I long for their comforting embrace. You asked me once why I sculpted them. I couldn’t answer you for I feared the look of horror on your face if you knew the truth. If you knew that I sculpted them so that I could be close to them. When my fears made touching their flesh impossible marble and cold stone served as a morbid substitute.
When the nightmares wake me in the middle of the night and I long for someone’s touch I go out among my statues. Sometimes I lie at my father’s false feet. Sometimes I curl up beside the sleeping likeness of my brother as he used to do with me when I was a child.
And there I sleep.
A dying prince among cold likenesses of his family.
A dead man among dead things.
Wake me up.
Wake me up inside.
I can't wake up.
Wake me up inside.
Save me.
Call my name and save me from the dark.
But you came to this place and I longed for a bit of your light to come touch my cold world.
Poor Alexander.
He was so insistent against my request to bring you to me. He feared for me. He feared that your intrusion would make even this small space uninhabitable for me. He feared that you would say something that would take the only activity I partake in. He feared that having someone come witness this silent mausoleum would truly be the end of me.
Naturally he did not say such things to me but I saw it. I saw it in his eyes. I saw it in the stiffness of his body when I asked. I heard it in his voice when he asked if I was sure. Oh how I wanted to take my words back then! I was so very frightened.
But I feared the alternative even more.
You were my only chance. I knew that fate would bring no one else to me. If I did not reach out to you there would never be another to reach out to again. For all their love of me neither my father nor my brother can free me from this nightmare. Without your light I would be left alone in my misery. I would be left in my nightmare. I would forever be left reaching out in my dreams but never able to connect with anyone in the waking world.
When you came and I saw you studying my world I was struck with such a paralyzing fear! What if you did not understand? What if you turned your back on me? What if you passed me by as if I were just another of my sculptures?
As that final question came to me I realized suddenly what it was I was becoming. An insensible thing only imitating life. A cold, fearful thing living behind a mask. A creature more statue than man.
Wake me up.
Bid my blood to run.
I can't wake up.
Before I come undone.
Save me.
Save me from the nothing I've become.
It may seem strange to you, Demian, but I never realized just how far I had fallen until you came. I knew that something vital had been taken from me all those years ago but I did not know that I had done myself an even greater sin. By turning away from those who would have helped me I had left that wound open to fester and grow until I could no longer bear the touch of anyone. Most days I couldn’t even bear the touch of my own family.
My attackers had taken away my innocence and a measure of my confidence but I had taken away my own life. I had taken away everything I had once loved and left myself with nothing. In my fear I had convinced myself that there had been no other way. I had convinced myself that solitude had been the only course left open to me.
How wrong I was!
I realize that now. I realized it the moment I saw you, the moment I saw the pain in your eyes at the loss of your family. There is such pain in you, the same rendering pain I feel yet you did not let it drag you down as I had. You used it to fuel your soul. You used it to give you strength and conviction. Instead of shutting yourself away from people whom might cause you harm you pull them to you and embrace them as brothers. You don’t flinch away from their touch. You don’t jump at every shadow fearing a blade in the dark even though your life is still in danger.
Do you have any idea how much that revelation took out of me? Do you know what bitter tears I cried when I realized that the person who had harmed me the most was not those men from my past but rather myself? I stole away my life! I stole away my own family. I stole away my kingdom and my people.
When you answered my call I feared you would look at what I had become and turn from me in disgust. I feared you would call me weak and a fool. I feared you would be disgusted with me. I feared you would leave me alone in my nightmare. I feared the only person with whom I could connect, the only person I could approach through my nightmare, would turn from me and leave me damned to the nothingness I had created for myself.
Now that I know what I'm without
You can't just leave me.
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life.
But you did not turn from me! Instead you reached out to me and though I pulled away at first you did not take it as a final truth as had my brother and my father. You understood my fear but you did not bow to it. Instead you championed me against it. You tore down those walls and offered yourself to me again and again though I always refused your overtures of friendship.
I wanted to sculpt you. I wanted a reminder of the prince who had risen above fate where I had fallen. Perhaps I wanted to try to take strength from your memory or perhaps I just wanted to prick myself with the reminder of my failures. I do not know and it no longer matters.
You gave me more than just a statue. You gave me yourself, though it was a gift I refused. How many times did you smile softly at me only to have those smiles turned aside? How many compliments slipped off your lips only to be met with silence? How many times did you try to reach out to me only to have me turn my back on you?
But even as I pulled away from you I longed for you to touch me. I longed for you to snatch me from the dark world I had regulated myself to and take me with you back into the light. I longed to live through you.
Frozen inside without your touch,
Without your love, darling.
Only you are the life among the dead.
Even though I only wanted you for one sitting I realized that I needed to have your presence again. I had not realized how oppressive the silence was until you were gone and I was alone once more. I had turned to stare at the dead statues around me and they were horrible to me. I could not bare their cold stares so I fled.
I fled to the shadows where I could be the ghost prince staring out at the court he was once a part of just so I could hear their voices. Ah but even that was thwarted for when you came into the room yours was the only voice I heard. Yours was the only face I saw.
Everyone else faded until you were the only solid thing there. You still are, Demian. You are the only person I see clearly anymore.
All of this time
I can't believe I couldn't see
Kept in the dark
But you were there in front of me
I've been sleeping a 1000 years it seems.
I've got to open my eyes to everything.
But now you come to me in the night and speak words that freeze my soul.
How can it be that you are leaving? It is true that I have always known this moment would come but... so soon? I realize that you will leave me alone in my prison and I know that it is something I cannot abide.
I feel your lips on mine and the realization hits me.
It has to be now.
If I am ever to be free, if I am ever to break through this nightmare, if I am ever to remove this mask I hide behind I must do it now.
I feel you pulling away and I hear you speaking parting words. I protest and before fear can hold me back...
I take my fate in my own hands and open my eyes with a kiss.
Without a thought
Without a voice
Without a soul
It always amazes me that the most important moment of our lives, the moment when the soul takes flight on passion’s wings, is also the most inarticulate moment we experience. I feel you all around me; I feel your hands on my body and your desire in my body. I feel your breath on my skin and I know that I am awake. I know that somehow we are about to smash through the nightmare that had enveloped my life.
With a cry too primal for words you give my tattered soul wings.
Don't let me die here
There must be something wrong.
Bring me to life.
The rooms are cold and silent around me. The scent of our love is the only thing present to tell me that it all wasn’t some cruel dream sent to remind me of all that I have shut myself away from.
Alexander and Francis are gone.
You are gone.
In a few hours this night of rebirth will be over.
There is much for me to do.
Bring me to life.
I've been living a lie
There's nothing inside.
I stride across the shattered remains of my prison. Walls that had once seemed my only protection against the world outside are now suffocating me. The ring of my solitary footsteps against the stone floor now sounds hollow and empty to my ears. The statues that surround me, my greatest works of art that have dominated my life for eight years are now pale shadows to my eyes.
I’m tired of living alone.
I’m tired of being afraid.
I’m tired of lying to myself.
I’m tired of being nothing more than an empty shell haunting the palace of my forefathers.
I will no longer let my fear shackle me. I will no longer let myself be shut away from those that love me. I will no longer hide in my brother’s shadow.
I have had a taste of a different life. I have seen a new path. I have seen the prince I should have become a long time ago. I will help you return to your rightful place, Demian. I will be there to see the prince come to life as the king he was born to be. The failed prince will shadow the other to make sure he is victorious.
And perhaps you will teach me how to live again.
With a steady hand I reach out to push open the door to my prison and step forth from the darkness into the light.
Bring me to life
