i'm gonna give all my secrets away {sarwen!blitz}

There's moments in time that make everything in your life just stop and rewind to all the other moments you wish you could bury under memories, push them down so far into your brain that you forget them altogether. I don't want to let her words register in my head but when she gets up and walks across the room something is bad, something is wrong, and perhaps I should have seen it coming when I woke up different than before.

"I did a terrible thing," she begins. "I always do terrible things, Silas." I want to hug her and hold her and tower over her and whisper no, no, no Arwen, you don't mean them, you can't help it, why am I the only person in the world who can see that but she can't look me in the eye and all I can do is stare and let the memories of my Grandma slowly slipping away and the Peacekeepers finding me and the rain and the fire, so much fire and smoke and choking and tears and I'm dying she's dying nightmares everyone's dead graveyards fill my head and no make it stop don't say it-

"I was sad and I was lonely, and my head was filled with things I couldn't escape." Remember when I used to hold you Arwen, remember when you'd scream and shout and you thought you couldn't escape things in your head but I'd sit with you and hold you and sometimes you'd hurt me but I didn't care because we'd fight it off, you and me, we'd escape it all, you and me, you never need me anymore you never need me to scare them away. You needed me and I needed you and I wanted you to need me to but I gave you space and this is-

"I didn't do it to hurt you, I swear, Silas. I did it to hurt me."

(You're so selfish, you're always so damn selfish and everybody said so but I said no, Arwen, I fought for you and stood up for you and made myself look like a fool in front of all of them because I am too blinded to see through what I thought was love.)

"Your turn."

So I look at her, slowly, in a new light. She's not the girl I love, she's the girl who's selfish, but I'm selfish too and I thought that meant we were meant to be but I don't know what to think (she loves me, she loves me not, it plays around and around in my head all the time and now the last petal falls to the ground and I'm finally seeing the truth).

"I thought I loved a girl" I choke.:looking out of our (mine, it is my window, it is not hers, it was never hers, nothing of mine was never hers to begin with), I think of her there, in the field, underneath our the tree, with some blank-faced boy and I want to die. I have nothing left to live for. Nobody left to keep me breathing.

"But..."

But I think I was lying.

i can barely say your name
my love for you
was bulletproof
but you're the one
who shot me

I'm sure of lots of things. The truth is a harsh song to sing, even harder to hear, and love is just as fickle. Tears are silly and logic is sensible. Secrets hurt and nothing good ever lasts, not even for a day. Books are wonderful and winter is my favourite season. We all die, some sooner that others, and wherever I go doom seems to follow. These things I'm absolutely certain of. They are inked into my being, scribed into my subconscious.

Arwen, on the other hand, is a completely different story.

I don't think I can breathe. I've been plunged under water, tears spilling off of Arwen's cheeks and flooding our room until everything in front of me becomes a blue and my eyes sting from the salt she brings. It spills from her eyes and my head rings and my chest is screaming, exploding, emptying out its sorrows. Nothing will ever make me hate her, but damn, I'm getting close.

It's her turn to fumble over syllables and trip up over words left unspoken. "Silas, I-" Don't, I think. Don't you dare say you're sorry. It's always been me, always been me saying sorry, begging you for forgiveness even though I've done nothing wrong. Under the water I'm seeing things clearer now, seeing how I've undermined myself because of you, Arwen, and the things in your head.

But she says it anyway. There is nothing else for me to do but listen, and stare, just stare at the blank wall and let that become my train of thought. Nothing. I am nothing. I feel nothing at all.

"I thought I loved a boy. I thought I did, for the longest of times," (We're so alike now, I see it all. So alike yet so different, so similar, too similar to fit, and although I adore you with all my being this had pulled me to the bottom of the ocean and I wish that fire had stolen me away so you could know what trying to live without someone you love feels like.) "And then I knew."

She knows, she knows, she sees it, she hears me trying to love her, and asking to be loved back, and the hesitating because I don't dare tell her what to do. It is so hard to love someone you know so well. It is even harder to love someone who doesn't want to be loved in the first place. ("Your turn." )

I snap. "You knew?" Rising from the bed, my movements are sharp despite the thousands of gallons of tears that slosh around my head and weigh my body down and threaten to spill out of my eyes and ears and mouth. "You really know, Arwen? You think you knew? You think you knew that I... that I love you" (that hurts more than anything I've ever felt in my life, it hurts so much I almost collapse, and she's so close to me now and I don't know whether I want to kiss her or leave her there, it hurts too much to choose) "and I can't... I can't make you love me? I do everything, I've done everything I can. And I'm done, I'm done trying!"

And they spill, like my angry words, like the fury inside of me that I've fought with for so long, into the open air.

and god knows i'm not dying but i bleed now
and god knows it's the only way to heal now
with all the blood i lost with you
it drowns the love
i thought i knew

We are exhausting.

We are two sides of a rope, pulling and tugging and forcing ourselves to find the same answers - but we didn't know that. We are searching and searching, going around and around in circles to find a solution that's been right there all along - but we didn't know that. We are a battle, two armies that don't realise they are striving towards the same thing - but we didn't know that. We're both so tired of bouncing back and forth - (Do they love me? Do they not?) - and I think we know that in the end we're going to have to come to the middle and figure this out ourselves.

I'm fuming, my chest is heaving, and she's so quiet but her words are like earthquakes in my head. "No, Silas, please-" and I stop, of course, because we both know I'd do anything for her, "you don't get it. You don't need to try."

I don't need to try - why? Because she doesn't love me? Because I don't love her? (That's a lie - that's a lie and you know it better than anyone.) Because we've arrived at the middle like this, crying and yelling and further away that we've ever been. I know that.

Or do I?

"You don't need to try, Silas."

And I don't try.

I kiss her instead.

ransom notes
keep falling out your mouth
mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs
speak no feeling, no i don't believe you
you don't care a bit