jamie
from the destruction, out of the flame
She moves to eradicate the space he’d wedged between them.
But the magic does not reach for him now, so he does not retreat further.
The question is simple, justified. She had offered him kindness and he had shirked it. He is not built to receive it, he knows, has always known. It is not a matter of morality – though he understands, even as young he is, that his own is questionable – but a matter of biology. He is a shadow thing, he is Darkness. No light – not even a light as potent as hers – will ever change that.
But this is not the explanation he offers. He shifts his weight to relieve some of the renewed aching in his knees. All that phantom pain, a constant companion. A thing on which he has heavily relied, it is ingrained into his DNA. He is not him without it. And perhaps he does not trust himself without it. It keeps him tame, the pain. He does not want to entertain the idea of what he might be capable of without it, not yet.
“I cannot afford to become addicted to the feeling,” he wheezes, tilts his peculiar head, flashes those shark teeth in a stilted kind of grin that reads more as a grimace with the way he averts his gaze. It is his burden, he has learned to live with it.
“Did my mother teach you that?” he asks and there is some edge to his tone. It comes out sounding almost like an accusation. It only compounds all that pain to think that his mother could have relieved it, could have saved him from it.
you need a villain, give me a name
