Name Crisis {Lilith/Atlas blitz}

There's red weeping through the stitches along my bleeding heart - I will never be infinity.

Perfectionism; it's a shackle wrapped around my wrist and tension pulled across my throat and it tightens at the very mention at the concept of being finite. It was always incomprehensible to my conspicuous mother, the idea that I could bleed anything but golden ichor from the rivers of the god and hold anything but a spear to defy divinity. I won't dare hold anything less than the weight of the world- ('do you know why we named you Atlas son?') Nor admit to being anything but eager and well-prepared.

Anything less than infinity.

But when running on nothing but borrowed time and donated oxygen, time seems to pass as if it's never heard of the damn concept itself; perhaps that's why every second in the waiting room passes like an age. But when faced with the odds and endless possibilities stacked against me, I think I welcome the idea of time passing slowly so I can savor the fleeting feeling of my sister's palm against my cheek one more time. I need Aedan and I need more time but I will never be anything above finite.

The sound of fingertips against a wooden surface resumes, tap, tap, tapping against this surface as if I could ever make an impression on anything with something other than steel blades. Anything to drown out the deafening silence of borrowed time spiraling away into nothing. Into oblivion, nothing to be remembered by other than a gravestone marked 'here lies Atlas Lumiere' and to fade into nothing but a legend remembered by the remains of his hollow crown.

"It'll be okay." I whisper to myself and I swear, the words are like a tattoo - permanent.

I've repeated those words to alleviate the pressure of being polarized ever since I was fifteen, they still walk the grey boundary between an astral fantasy and the simply truth simply waiting to be embraced.

I pause, furious footsteps sounding closer, getting louder and-

(we become the past)

Stitches across my red heart threaten to break just at the sight of loose association; and yet I never so much as spoke to Asha Lumiere before he became a spark, a bright hope even, even in the face of attempts to snuff him out- ('please don't try and delegate your responsibility to our family name to a madman.') And yet even after watching his skeleton shatter and his flesh and mind split I still called him a better man than I could ever be.

I was meant to hold the weight of the world on my shoulders, why couldn't I ever be that strong?

I still inhale in surprise and practically fly off at the sight of dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin and the name Lumiere ingrained in the air between us; floating above her head like a label and a definition. In our brief encounter I immediately gathered that some people don't need to be polarized to become something reprehensible. And besides, I don't need Asha Lumiere's closest kin in the same room as me, it only serves as a reminder of what happens to those who dare presume to hold the skeleton's hand.

(we never reach infinity)

Red weeps from the crevices in the stitching across my heart and I don't need a phantom of last year's failure to remind me of that fact. "What do you want?" I ask, scowl tightened by the second.

There will forever be a natural fear that comes with the implications of being finite, even I feel it in my fleeting heartbeat.