FAITHFUL
(this writing takes place sometime roughly concurrent with Miller's 'death' at the holiday party several years ago)
I never know what to feel when Void City’s skyline comes into view in the distance.
I hate the city for what it is and what it inspires in the people who live there. But I come back over and over because she’s here. And I love Void because Gray is here.
Gray has always been my undoing, though I’ll never admit it to her for fear of confirming the worries I know she holds close. I never expected to fall head over heels in love with her--certainly not within a few scant days of arriving here for the first time--and I didn’t expect falling into bed together to turn into the strange relationship we have now. But then, who could ever predict Fate’s plans? I may be the Reaper, but I’m not exempt from my lord’s whims.
I fully admit that Gray probably… well, certainly isn’t good for me. I worry my love for her distracts me from my duties, and to be honest with myself I know that it has more than once. But for all her flaws, and for all the flaws I know she brings out in me, she soothes a part of my soul in a way that nobody else truly can.
Being the Reaper is difficult. I’ve had years now to come to terms with it, but there are times when it still weighs heavily on me the things I do in the name of my god. There are good things to being what I am; the tradeoff has always been having the power to keep Genesis safe, and I’m glad for the good I’ve been able to do. I’ve had the good fortune to see magic and wonder that I would have lived my whole life never knowing existed, and I’m beyond grateful for that. But it’s also made me a killer when that’s never something I expected or wanted for myself. And part of wearing black, part of bearing my necklace and mask and blade, is that nobody ever really forgets what I am. The people of Genesis respect what I am, and many of them appreciate what I do, but they always remember that Fate takes no sides and one day they might be at the other end of my dagger. And whether they mean it or not, I’ve always been able to feel their instinctual fear in the face of death.
I’ve only ever really known two people to be an exception to that. One is Darius, and well… It’s Darius. I’d joke that he’s too stubborn to give a fuck about death, but our history together is long enough and complicated enough that he’s seen the worst of what I can be and accepted it because he knows I’ve seen the worst of him too. Darius’s lack of fear comes from understanding what I am and accepting the risks that come with it, because we both know we have our own demons buried way deep down and our lives consist of being better than that part of ourselves.
Gray, though, doesn’t understand and accept fear of what I am so much as she’s never seemed to take the time to consider that perhaps she should be afraid. Gray would delight in dancing with every single one of my demons and never think less of me for them. I love her, and I love the feel of our bodies together, but above all else I love her complete acceptance of every part of me, light and dark. She loves the part of me that’s the Reaper as much as she loves the part of me that’s Hunter, not one in spite of the other, and that’s something I’ve never been able to say about anyone else. When I’m around her, I’m at peace in a way I don’t think I’ve ever really felt before.
And that’s why it hurt so much to find out she’s been sleeping with someone else.
I’m at a loss for what to think. Realistically, I should have seen it coming. Gray is a creature of emotion and impulsivity, chasing whatever high lets her feel connected to the world around her; I know that’s part of what brought us together, so I can’t fault her for it (even if it drives me mad sometimes, like the first time or three I had to heal her back from the brink of death because she picked a fight she couldn’t hope to win). She’s certainly, uh, secure in her body. I’ve gotten a lot of text messages from various acquaintances in Void about her, and seeing familiar parts of Gray’s anatomy in a text from someone else is more than a little disconcerting. I’ve known she’s a tease, an exhibitionist, a voyeur, doing just about anything for a thrill. Fate knows I’ve been a party to that against my better judgement more times than I can count.
I hate the city for what it is and what it inspires in the people who live there. But I come back over and over because she’s here. And I love Void because Gray is here.
Gray has always been my undoing, though I’ll never admit it to her for fear of confirming the worries I know she holds close. I never expected to fall head over heels in love with her--certainly not within a few scant days of arriving here for the first time--and I didn’t expect falling into bed together to turn into the strange relationship we have now. But then, who could ever predict Fate’s plans? I may be the Reaper, but I’m not exempt from my lord’s whims.
I fully admit that Gray probably… well, certainly isn’t good for me. I worry my love for her distracts me from my duties, and to be honest with myself I know that it has more than once. But for all her flaws, and for all the flaws I know she brings out in me, she soothes a part of my soul in a way that nobody else truly can.
Being the Reaper is difficult. I’ve had years now to come to terms with it, but there are times when it still weighs heavily on me the things I do in the name of my god. There are good things to being what I am; the tradeoff has always been having the power to keep Genesis safe, and I’m glad for the good I’ve been able to do. I’ve had the good fortune to see magic and wonder that I would have lived my whole life never knowing existed, and I’m beyond grateful for that. But it’s also made me a killer when that’s never something I expected or wanted for myself. And part of wearing black, part of bearing my necklace and mask and blade, is that nobody ever really forgets what I am. The people of Genesis respect what I am, and many of them appreciate what I do, but they always remember that Fate takes no sides and one day they might be at the other end of my dagger. And whether they mean it or not, I’ve always been able to feel their instinctual fear in the face of death.
I’ve only ever really known two people to be an exception to that. One is Darius, and well… It’s Darius. I’d joke that he’s too stubborn to give a fuck about death, but our history together is long enough and complicated enough that he’s seen the worst of what I can be and accepted it because he knows I’ve seen the worst of him too. Darius’s lack of fear comes from understanding what I am and accepting the risks that come with it, because we both know we have our own demons buried way deep down and our lives consist of being better than that part of ourselves.
Gray, though, doesn’t understand and accept fear of what I am so much as she’s never seemed to take the time to consider that perhaps she should be afraid. Gray would delight in dancing with every single one of my demons and never think less of me for them. I love her, and I love the feel of our bodies together, but above all else I love her complete acceptance of every part of me, light and dark. She loves the part of me that’s the Reaper as much as she loves the part of me that’s Hunter, not one in spite of the other, and that’s something I’ve never been able to say about anyone else. When I’m around her, I’m at peace in a way I don’t think I’ve ever really felt before.
And that’s why it hurt so much to find out she’s been sleeping with someone else.
I’m at a loss for what to think. Realistically, I should have seen it coming. Gray is a creature of emotion and impulsivity, chasing whatever high lets her feel connected to the world around her; I know that’s part of what brought us together, so I can’t fault her for it (even if it drives me mad sometimes, like the first time or three I had to heal her back from the brink of death because she picked a fight she couldn’t hope to win). She’s certainly, uh, secure in her body. I’ve gotten a lot of text messages from various acquaintances in Void about her, and seeing familiar parts of Gray’s anatomy in a text from someone else is more than a little disconcerting. I’ve known she’s a tease, an exhibitionist, a voyeur, doing just about anything for a thrill. Fate knows I’ve been a party to that against my better judgement more times than I can count.
But for some reason, I didn’t think she’d take that final leap to sleeping with someone. I knew something strange had been going on, but hadn’t realized that’s what it was. When we’re together--and on a few specific occasions that weren’t sexual--our minds tend to overlap a little. I’m not sure if Gray’s aware of it, but it’s one of my natural abilities as Reaper and keeping control of it when we’re that intimately close is an easy thing to lose hold on; something I noticed at some point, though, was that there are places in her mind that are… sterile.
It’s the strangest thing, as though they’ve been scraped clean with a scalpel. I’d never encountered anything like it before, and considering the number of rare, dangerous things that call Void City home it scared the hell out of me. Asking around didn’t give me much in the way of possibilities, but one of the few that I heard whispers about was regarding Miller and his rumored ability to consume memory.
I’m not certain what Miller is, and I’m not sure I want to find out; I've been close enough to him at parties, in passing, to see that he does have fate lines, but they’re… strange, not quite like I’ve ever seen before, tangled as though he’s several people knotted together. But whatever they are, there are enough woven between him and Gray for me to know. Fate lines can mean many things, but somehow this time I knew.
And I don’t know what to think.
I mean, I wanted to kill him, and part of me still does. That was the kneejerk reaction, when the shock of realization threw me enough for the Skinwalker’s Gift inside me to voice that it wanted to rip his flesh from his bones because Gray was MINE. Obviously that’s not what ended up happening, but I left Void City abruptly that night because I was seething inside and didn’t trust myself to keep it calmly leashed.
I went home, back to Darius. I raged. I cried. He had some extremely unkind things to say about Gray and my own poor judgement and I was pretty short with him as well. And eventually, once my shock and anger had faded a bit, we sat together and got very drunk and slowly talked most of the hurt away.
I didn’t go back to Void for a long time. It wasn’t entirely because of this--though it played a role--but I legitimately had my duties to attend to and might have avoided the city more than I normally would have. It wasn’t the best way to deal with things, but I didn’t know how exactly I SHOULD deal with things. I still don’t, if I’m being honest with myself.
Despite not knowing the specifics, I’m quite certain it was consensual. The fact that she doesn’t seem to know that it happened would worry me if it weren’t for the fact that I know Gray is damnably hard to get ahold of when she doesn’t care to be; she has a habit of walking right through a wall if an argument isn’t to her liking, so I trust her to be able to take care of herself when it comes to things of a sexual nature. So I don’t think Miller raped her (or I WOULD kill him, whatever his true nature might be). But… why doesn’t she know about it?
Once I’d calmed down enough to think, I’ve found myself more confused than anything. I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights--and not sleepless in the way I prefer sleepless nights involving Gray to be--thinking about it all. I have an unfaithful lover who, as far as I can tell, has no idea that she's been unfaithful. Without knowing the circumstances, it’s... complicated... to be mad at her for that. So I’m left with a sort of weird, aimless sense of hurt… and a sense of inevitability, and a sort of resignation about the whole thing.
As a Reaper, having a longterm partnership with anyone is discouraged. It’s not any sort of formal rule, since my role is pretty much above the authority of anyone but Fate, but it’s a bad idea (and part of why Andrea and I went our separate ways once we realized that I couldn’t keep splitting my life consistently between my world and hers, though I suppose here I am again in the same mess for the second time).
On the one hand, the changes a Reaper’s body undergoes to take on a god’s power changed me on a fairly fundamental level. Despite her own beliefs about being a ghost, Gray is a human with a habit of throwing herself headlong into danger. Saying that she’ll live to forty or fifty seems optimistic, and my full natural lifespan is probably close to three or four times that. But on the other hand, I’m the Reaper. My life is full of danger too.
One day, I probably won’t come back.
What will happen to Gray, if/when I die somewhere far from home, and far from Void City?
Every time I leave could be the last time. Maybe she knows it, but I doubt she accepts it yet. But I have. And so somehow, my frustration and hurt at the idea of Gray with someone else has brought me to the reminder of my own mortality, and the realization that I don’t want her to be alone.
She’s been with someone else. But she doesn’t know it. Is that a kindness, that she chooses not to remember her infidelity? Or an even deeper hurt, that she chooses to go to him over and over despite not knowing she’s already slipped in the past, every time the first great betrayal?
Whether that’s by her design or not, whether it’s foolish of me or not, I’ll choose to take the fact those memories are gone as a sign that I’m the person she chooses to remember as her lover. I’ll believe in what we have. And I’ll be happy in the times that we’re together, rather than letting myself obsess over what-ifs and questions about her and Miller. I think I’d rather that than the alternative. Maybe that makes me a fool, but I would rather we be happy in the time that we have with one another.
Our relationship has always been doomed. I know that, and so does she. But I’ll hold onto it for as long as we have.
---ARH
But for some reason, I didn’t think she’d take that final leap to sleeping with someone. I knew something strange had been going on, but hadn’t realized that’s what it was. When we’re together--and on a few specific occasions that weren’t sexual--our minds tend to overlap a little. I’m not sure if Gray’s aware of it, but it’s one of my natural abilities as Reaper and keeping control of it when we’re that intimately close is an easy thing to lose hold on; something I noticed at some point, though, was that there are places in her mind that are… sterile.
It’s the strangest thing, as though they’ve been scraped clean with a scalpel. I’d never encountered anything like it before, and considering the number of rare, dangerous things that call Void City home it scared the hell out of me. Asking around didn’t give me much in the way of possibilities, but one of the few that I heard whispers about was regarding Miller and his rumored ability to consume memory.
I’m not certain what Miller is, and I’m not sure I want to find out; I've been close enough to him at parties, in passing, to see that he does have fate lines, but they’re… strange, not quite like I’ve ever seen before, tangled as though he’s several people knotted together. But whatever they are, there are enough woven between him and Gray for me to know. Fate lines can mean many things, but somehow this time I knew.
And I don’t know what to think.
I mean, I wanted to kill him, and part of me still does. That was the kneejerk reaction, when the shock of realization threw me enough for the Skinwalker’s Gift inside me to voice that it wanted to rip his flesh from his bones because Gray was MINE. Obviously that’s not what ended up happening, but I left Void City abruptly that night because I was seething inside and didn’t trust myself to keep it calmly leashed.
I went home, back to Darius. I raged. I cried. He had some extremely unkind things to say about Gray and my own poor judgement and I was pretty short with him as well. And eventually, once my shock and anger had faded a bit, we sat together and got very drunk and slowly talked most of the hurt away.
I didn’t go back to Void for a long time. It wasn’t entirely because of this--though it played a role--but I legitimately had my duties to attend to and might have avoided the city more than I normally would have. It wasn’t the best way to deal with things, but I didn’t know how exactly I SHOULD deal with things. I still don’t, if I’m being honest with myself.
Despite not knowing the specifics, I’m quite certain it was consensual. The fact that she doesn’t seem to know that it happened would worry me if it weren’t for the fact that I know Gray is damnably hard to get ahold of when she doesn’t care to be; she has a habit of walking right through a wall if an argument isn’t to her liking, so I trust her to be able to take care of herself when it comes to things of a sexual nature. So I don’t think Miller raped her (or I WOULD kill him, whatever his true nature might be). But… why doesn’t she know about it?
Once I’d calmed down enough to think, I’ve found myself more confused than anything. I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights--and not sleepless in the way I prefer sleepless nights involving Gray to be--thinking about it all. I have an unfaithful lover who, as far as I can tell, has no idea that she's been unfaithful. Without knowing the circumstances, it’s... complicated... to be mad at her for that. So I’m left with a sort of weird, aimless sense of hurt… and a sense of inevitability, and a sort of resignation about the whole thing.
As a Reaper, having a longterm partnership with anyone is discouraged. It’s not any sort of formal rule, since my role is pretty much above the authority of anyone but Fate, but it’s a bad idea (and part of why Andrea and I went our separate ways once we realized that I couldn’t keep splitting my life consistently between my world and hers, though I suppose here I am again in the same mess for the second time).
On the one hand, the changes a Reaper’s body undergoes to take on a god’s power changed me on a fairly fundamental level. Despite her own beliefs about being a ghost, Gray is a human with a habit of throwing herself headlong into danger. Saying that she’ll live to forty or fifty seems optimistic, and my full natural lifespan is probably close to three or four times that. But on the other hand, I’m the Reaper. My life is full of danger too.
One day, I probably won’t come back.
What will happen to Gray, if/when I die somewhere far from home, and far from Void City?
Every time I leave could be the last time. Maybe she knows it, but I doubt she accepts it yet. But I have. And so somehow, my frustration and hurt at the idea of Gray with someone else has brought me to the reminder of my own mortality, and the realization that I don’t want her to be alone.
She’s been with someone else. But she doesn’t know it. Is that a kindness, that she chooses not to remember her infidelity? Or an even deeper hurt, that she chooses to go to him over and over despite not knowing she’s already slipped in the past, every time the first great betrayal?
Whether that’s by her design or not, whether it’s foolish of me or not, I’ll choose to take the fact those memories are gone as a sign that I’m the person she chooses to remember as her lover. I’ll believe in what we have. And I’ll be happy in the times that we’re together, rather than letting myself obsess over what-ifs and questions about her and Miller. I think I’d rather that than the alternative. Maybe that makes me a fool, but I would rather we be happy in the time that we have with one another.
Our relationship has always been doomed. I know that, and so does she. But I’ll hold onto it for as long as we have.
---ARH