[Lost] February Challenge - Desire

[http://users.livejournal.com/_crimsonearth/]

This was written largely as a contrast to the Darcy piece. It's no coincidence, I think, that in a world where desire is stifled, repressed, unspoken of, a vampire might feel it all the more strongly - whilst in a world where it is expressed, encouraged, common, even, a changeling might feel that the real thing has been stripped away from them, and that it is all just a mask for the more painful consequences of a life of slavery and torture.


Desire.

Our society is filled with it. We pretend that we are making the most of life, seizing love, embracing passion; like we can get back what we had offered to us before without restraint or inhibition. Like we haven’t been changed irrevocably. But anyone who thinks desire is all theirs, unchanged or untainted by what was done to them there is fooling themselves.

I was made to be pleasing; to lure people into a vulnerable state. For me, sex was turned from a loving, gentle thing that I shared within a happy marriage to a weapon, a tool, a lie. Passion was merged inseparably with pain, aggression, deception. I was made into something utterly shameful, dishonouring my marriage vows day upon day and that was not the worst of it. I was built to desire it, to internalise it, to make it a part of me. I was made to be the most effective weapon I could be.

And then, spat back unceremoniously into a world I thought I had lost, guilty and ashamed of myself, finding that love and marriage and gentleness were no longer within my grasp while darkness and desire and hurt were more real to me, more tangible than the family I’d left behind – what was I to make of myself, of my life?

I was fed venom every night of my Durance. Soon, it became a part of me. Now, I feel it, constantly, in every breath and movement, burning in my chest. When I let someone get close to me, the venom spreads; I am made ready to strike because that's what I was built to do.

And it hurts.

I have had many lovers. And why not? What else am I worth? Piece by piece I am finding a place for myself in this world again, but I cannot change what I was made to be. And, being a Mirrorskin, I can be anything that anyone wishes me to be. All too often, the answer I get back, the right answer is that I am to be myself. The trouble is… I am nothing but what others want me to be. That’s all I know how to be. Every lover – and I have asked them all sooner or later – has told me to be me. If only I knew what that was.

So, yes, desire. Of course I feel desire. I want to be wanted – I am strong but I will submit myself willingly because I was made to, I will change because I was built to please others, not myself, I will subjugate myself to the whims of lovers because it helps me do my job. But sex for me is not fulfilment of desire. Pain is. It’s all I crave, all I understand. Pleasure is a way to harm or help others, to feel close to them, or get close to them. The only thing that feels real to me, that I desire, is the hurt, the damage, the darkness. And the deepest darkest desire I harbour is ultimately that one day it might be the end of me.

It’s the only thing I am capable of wanting.

We are not human. We can’t get back what was taken from us.

We are all broken, in one way or another.

That is what was done to me. To us.

Comments

[frothy-bunny.livejournal.com]

All we need now is an autumn courtier with the same background and we could have a set :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_crimsonearth/]

Who do we have in Spring?

And I don't think we really have the *same* background at all - or take on our condition - other than both being assassins with a predilection for pain - but we certainly have parts in common. :)

[blane-firewing.livejournal.com]

I _did_ have a Spring with that attitude, but she's dead ;)

[mionassmaster.livejournal.com]

Awesome.