you never shine if you never burn [Neela DP]

It doesn't hurt.

I don't have it left in me... to feel pain.

And I think I've always known - it had to end this way;

(Did it?)

Too many patterns - too many split seconds - too many shattered fragments of different Neelas;

I could never put on the right identity, for the right person.

Especially when that person was myself.

I wish I'd had more time to figure that part out.

Yet this is fate - a curse, perhaps, stamped in statistics - and I can't change it;

(I can't change)

It wouldn't have made a difference, if I'd cut her down.

I suppose it's better, to leave the world without hands so bloodied -

(but didn't they deserve it?)

I never wanted to win.
Never willing enough to fight... or to make a kill;

I'd have fallen apart, wearing such a heavy crown -

Florence -

I hope you take it.
I hope you live.
I wanted to protect you -

(was it ever truly about her?)

I couldn't bear feeling awful letting an innocent die -

even if you kept trying to jump in front of me.

I wanted to leave the world knowing I'd done something.

To be seen as a hero.

(Is it better to be heroic selfishly, or to be villainous with noble intentions?)

Wigan asked me that, one summer day.

I didn't have an answer then - I still don't.

Maybe there isn't one.

Maybe life can never be about black and white - or good and evil - like in the fairytales;

And fate - fate's a fickle mistress.
As soon as you begin analyzing its patterns... they flicker away.

(some people call it regression to the mean)

I'm sad... that I'll never get to make my mark;

That the wheels of history will just keep turning - even when the yarns of our lives get all tangled up in them;

That I can't change my own fate.
And I'll never know if I've changed anyone else's.

I hope I haven't cursed you to die tomorrow.
But I think the template will be different this time - and you'll be saved.

It's time now - time to face the mirror.

There's a pair of icy hands grabbing my wrists - a pale, ghostly face emerging from the glass - trying to pull me over to the other side.

They say your ferryman is always the opposite of who you are;

Fire and ice, a grasp that pierces the veil like water.

(I think I'm scorching him)

I've been in this moment before, I feel - in a story, perhaps, in a different life;

The same void behind the rippling mirror, the same ghost;

So perhaps this end

is simply

a

return;