a/n: this is kind of ... haha, i don't know what it is. but i hope you like it.

Disclaimer: lyrics are from "Vindicated" by Dashboard Confessional. i don't own it - unfortunately.

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hope dangles on a string/

When I'm supposed to be asleep on my bed, but I can't get to that place and I'm trapped here in this world fading in and out of reality and everything flickers back and forth and back and forth, there's something that always brings back you. It's the worst thing in the world, to be caught in the middle, because then you're everywhere but you're not truly anywhere and you're not right or left, right or wrong. It's those times, the times in-between, that are the worst of them all. Not the downs, not the ups. Just the waiting time.

And sometimes, some nights, everything becomes so overwhelming, and it's all I can do to not break down.

I don't always win every battle.

When I walk down the street and you're still beside me but you can't see where we're going anymore and you can't reach out and touch my arm anymore just to remind me that I'm not alone, that's when I lose.

I'm lying on my bed staring up at the windows near the ceiling watching the street lamps go out in the hour before dawn, and it's never been so dark, so lonely.

I don't want to be here.

Maybe I'm just living in my mind; living in the last month, trying to forget everything that happened by throwing myself into doing what I've always done. Maybe today is nothing more than an escape from yesterday.

That's all it's become to me.

And this never happened, this never happened, this never happened...

This is never going to happen, never going to happen, never going to happen...

like slow spinning redemption/

A shadow flickers, catching my eye, and I look over my shoulder and watch it all replay like a horrible flashback, like a horror movie I saw as a child that still makes me scream and keeps me up at night that I can’t forget seeing no matter how hard I try to. I watch you walk through the door and I watch myself raise my head and try and smile at you and I watch you as your mouth moves, watch you as your breath goes in and out and in and out to the rhythm we once had together, watch you flicker ... and fade...

and die away.

Can you hold me close to your heart, so close I can hear it beating, so close I can feel you breathing, so close I can see you fading, so close I can smell you burning, so close I can reach out and touch you...

and ignore everything else that's fluctuating emissions of chaos and instability...

ignore all the virulent rainbow-coloured haze in my head...

and shut it all out, shut them all out...

winding in and winding out/

and breathe you in and nothing else, and focus on nothing else, think of nothing else...

and count the number of times our hearts pulse in a minute, then two - three - five ... the number of times we breathe in and out in an hour, then two - three - five...

and give me something tangible...

and linger with me in this languid hour before daybreak, in the peaceful far-away hum of the cars roaring down my street outside, in this white-washed room filled with nothing but silence that catches and flickers and pounds in and out and in and out...

and never let me go?

Hold me and never, ever let me go...

never...

never...

never...

the shine of it has caught my eye/
and roped me in/

Can you sit here with me and rest your cheek on my head and watch me tempt Fate and spar Luck and fiddle with Chance? I'm spiralling down towards my own destruction. I'm stumbling forward in the darkness with one hand on the wall, but nothing lasts forever and soon this wall is going to end and I'll pitch headfirst into a pit of night and I'll circle and circle and circle and turn and turn and turn and I'll be-

lost.

Lean your chin on your hands and watch me write my own epitaph, and when I look at you and smile happily, the light that can only come from being absolutely deluded gleaming in my eyes, nod your head a little and smile back at me.

Smile back at me, no matter how dark the world becomes to you, no matter how much everything suddenly plays in slow motion on a side-scrolling screen that's moving too fast and too slow all at once, no matter how painful it is.

Smile and pretend that everything's all right, just like I am, and that you're happy with all of this and everything will be okay someday.

Even if it's a total, utter lie.

Even if it breaks you to do it.

Because I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

I'm running straight into my desecration, and I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

For once I want you to lie to me. It’s the only time I’m going to ask you to lie to me this blatantly, so obviously it’s nearly insulting.

I want you to lie to yourself.

I want you to watch me holding the steering wheel steady, the rain slanting off my windshield, the sound of thunder and rain and skidding wheels and blasting horns penetrating the dull repeating thud of your footsteps haunting the path I took to get to my car, my head high and my face set in determination, my gaze locked straight ahead.

Lie to yourself, and pretend you don't know, you don't know, you don't know.

so mesmerizing, so hypnotizing/
i am captivated/
i am…

The road turns right, but I don't want to go right, I don't want to be right. I have a destination, and I don't want to get there. I don't want to finish what I started.

Straight ahead, there's an edge and a cliff and an end.

Straight ahead, there's a premonition of sirens shrieking and silent screaming that wavers and blurs and slips away like I've had too much to drink.

Straight ahead is my forever.

They always tell you to look and steer smoothly in the direction you want to go.

We don't know, we don't know, we don't know.

Please don't let yourself know. Please don't let me know. Just let me drive. Let me look straight ahead, in the direction I want to go, and let me press the pedal to the floor. Bite your tongue and taste your own blood, clench your fists hard, close your eyes, do anything. But hold yourself back. Don’t stop me. Because if you say anything, do anything, you’ll make me hesitate. And if I hesitate, I won’t be able to see this through. And that will be the worst crime you could ever commit against me.

Stay here with me.

Don't leave me, please.

Please.

Don't leave me until I leave you first. Don’t leave me alone.

Just stay here, alone…

And play along with me, because this is clarity and this is sanity and this is necessity, and don't you say anything other than what I want to hear.

(Play along...)

Rift it up an octave here, because things sound so pretty when they're high. Prettier when they get too high and go through the sound barrier and shatter everything.

And prettiest when they break.

(... and pretend...)

Don't sing. You can't take my solo away from me. This is - my turn. You had your chance. This is not your shot to call.

Listen to me. It's my green light.

(... we're not pretending/)

vindicated/

There's nothing tangible here anymore, nothing but an illusion that’s trickling like sand through our desperate, grasping fingers, nothing but the sinking remnants of a future that couldn't retain the sunlight and is now sinking below the blood-red waves leaving nothing but a dying imitation of the moon on the ocean’s surface as it descends.

Reflect the light through your prism and bend the spectrum into all the colours of the night and watch the shades colour the rain.

And then everything won't be so clear.

And everything will be coloured, and tainted.

Look down from your vantage point of omniscience suspended on a throne over the vortex, and then look across the dust that’s gathered over the years on the face of the horizon and walk, walk, walk.

Stars explode in your wake like fireworks, like Armageddon.

And in another life, another time, you're smiling - just like you smiled back at me.

Because you don't know.

i am selfish, i am wrong/

But they tell you all your life – and now I know it personally, too – about how a person can't live their entire life running from reality.

They can't spend every ounce of their energy to block everyone out every moment.

It all catches up sooner or later.

Something breaks through.

Nothing is infallible.

But it doesn't matter if you can or can't. It never matters, not until the point when everything comes crashing down. All of this – it all only ever applies to everyone else. But even the simplest habits become so impossible to break when it comes down to you, to us.

And maybe it's the sheer impossibility of it, the delusional epitome of stupidity threaded into it that keeps me playing the card.

i am right, i swear i’m right/
swear i knew it all along/

I wanted to know what everyone talked about and wrote about because I didn't understand it and I never knew anyone who did. People just talked. But they didn't know.

I wanted to be able to listen to you and know you were talking about me while everyone else dreamed it was about them and comprehend it because I had lived it and I wanted to be able to breathe in and paste a smile on my face and not mean it because that's what all the stories were about and that - what you said to me, what you talked about, what you knew about – that was what everyone sang about.

I wanted to be a part of that.

I was so stupid.

I don't want you to talk about me, write about me, sing about me, think about me.

You never happened.

I live for this to reveal itself to be a chimera, live for this to give me a space to breathe that only exists in my head.

I live for a dream that I fell in love with before I realized how much of my survival would one day depend on those dreams, before I understood what dreaming meant and how it's not all about getting something and leaving life behind but also how much you have to give up when you dream and how much it can end up costing you.

You make your mark willingly, not knowing that you’ve just signed your life away, just signed your own death warrant. You’re unaware that you’ve fallen into the age-old trap that’s caught the very person sitting across from you watching you sign your name.

No one ever reads you the fine print. No one draws you aside and points out the string attached.

They just hand you the pen and the contract, and point out the dotted line.

so turn up the corners of your lips/

They don’t want to be alone, don’t want to be the only fool. They want someone to do more than merely empathize. They don’t want to have to bear the pain alone, even though bearing it alongside someone else does nothing at all to appease it. It’s simple, simple when you don’t look at it carefully or turn it upside-down, simple when you don’t focus on the consequences, simple when you don’t think about anyone else.

If they go down, then they have to take someone else with them.

And they did.

So now if I go down, then you’re coming with me. Now’s the time to listen, to trust, to obey mindlessly and not think about the future and the lies and the deceptions. Now’s the time to dream with me.

Close your eyes...

Can you see me?

Take my hand...

Can you feel me?

part them and feel my fingertips/

And don't you wake up.

Don't you let go.

You're all that's grounding me, all that's linking me to this world and this dimension and this existence.

And I examine the moment soberly as it stretches, a drop of water just barely hanging onto the edge, clinging to hope and reason and semblance, perfect in formation, blazing its imprint into my mind as it reflects the fire from the artificial light of the streetlamps, watch it slip just a little too much, watch it slide just a little too far, watch it fall...

fall...

fall...

fall.

There's an irrational moment of calmed peace in the final moments as it plummets, an imprudent exhalation of sweet relief, and maybe a hint of insanity that pushes my lips up and drives me to balance another circular, iridescent droplet on the tip of my fingers.

Just to let it roll off.

It condenses and gathers and enlarges, shimmering and wavering. And it taunts me, waiting, waiting, waiting. Holding on the same way I'm holding on, fighting against gravity, against the trembling of my hand.

Not quite yet...

not quite...

almost...

nearly there...

-now.

When everything's about to end, it all becomes so much more beautiful.

But by then – it's always too late to save it.

trace the moment, fall forever/

Dive.

Are you willing to?

Can you swim down here with me while the light beckons tantalizingly overhead, pulsating in a blurring grid of salvation that cuts straight through the water and flickers over the bottom of the surface of the lake?

Hold your breath.

No, don't you dare breathe.

It's a delicate balance, this fight for survival, this drive to take each breath. Make one mistake, stand on one side of the scale for too long, and that’s – it. You're finished.

And I’m sorry, but I can't deal with that weight, that pressure.

defence is paper thin/

Don't breathe, because I'm not breathing.

And it won't balance.

And then everything will come undone.

just one touch and i’ll be in/

Understand why I'm doing this, why I'm not turning the wheel right.

You weren't meant to flounder and drift in the undertow, watching through a wall of water as Life walks by without you above the sea. And I can't ask you to hold your breath forever.

Give me one moment, and don't leave.

And then, when you can’t take it any longer and you do breathe-

it won't matter.

too deep now to ever swim against the current/

Because then you'll be alone on the fulcrum, alone with the cosmos just out of your reach spinning lazily to their own perfect timing over your head, alone with the air kissing your lips and breathing its promises into your ears for you alone, only you alone.

And I won't have to pretend.

I won’t be pretending anymore.

And you won't have to lie.

You won’t be lying anymore.

And what I was writing on the tombstone will be branded onto the lone torn banner over my ruined city built on the knife edge of night...

and the match you light and hold up to the kerosene tank will combust and throw me into an eternal cistern of liquid fire that incinerates me, until it manages to run my whole world into comatose rivets of molten metal that hardens into a blackened uneven picture that’s half melted off the sheet…

and this poison you inject will seep through your veins and its taint will be spread by the scarlet rivers under your skin as they ebb and flow and their waves wash it up along the shorelines, until it clouds the very air you breathe out and begins to blacken my lungs…

and then it'll be me smiling.

so let me slip away…

Because I didn't know.