A Tale As Old As Time | Belle Jaune [Death Post]

Beauty is a fickle thing. A scarlet rose blesses the nostrils as it pricks the finger. While most men see twenty-four kids, scared for their lives; another man sees souls with an impossible to resist hunger for life.

We are all wolves, but the sheep’s clothing has long been stripped.

I always thought I understood Adam’s trinkets. He said, they waste away on people who don’t appreciate them. I always thought he meant that they didn’t know their value. But maybe he meant that they only had value because he gave it to them. Otherwise they were merely collections of plastic and dust.

Life only has meaning when death is considered.

Death only has meaning when fear is involved.

Fear only holds weight when we let it consume us.

I didn’t kill Langely, but I am sorry to Revan for losing myself on him. A desire to win is a sin we both share.

I didn’t kill Grim and Sutton, but I am sorry to Kyler for faulting him because of grief. Losing someone you love is a feeling I’m all too familiar with.

I didn’t kill Fridae, but I am sorry to Lorraine for making her vulnerable. The inability to remain who you are in the face of tragedy is human. 

I didn’t kill Coach or Benedict, but I am sorry to them both. Dying in the arms of someone who hasn’t earned their life is an unsettling finale that shouldn’t be written.

I didn’t kill Syd Scoria, but I am sorry to him. I was too afraid the beast inside me would make choices I couldn’t live with, so I blamed it on a hate for someone who did nothing but not die. 

I killed Sin Mortuus, and I’m sorry I didn’t own up to my victory. You, above all others, deserved a slayer who wasn’t faux-ashamed of walking out alive. Maybe you deserved someone like Lenox.

Lenox. That’s her name. I remember it only as my eyes fall, sealed in death and she becomes a painting of the last sight I ever get to see.

I didn’t kill Belle Jaune, but my deepest regret goes to Adam. Falling in love is a dumb and dangerous, yet exciting and euphoric thing. It’s an experience inexplicable to anyone other than the one you go through it with. Adam memorized me like a beautiful prose. He could appreciate me when I was a rough draft. And helped to craft what become the true Belle Jaune.

And I tore that narrative to pieces. Becoming everything I’m not, so I could one day see him again. Turns out, I became something that I’d be too ashamed to show him anyways.

And for what? I became a detestable beast, all so I could die and never get to say sorry. All so the last Belle that Adam ever gets to see is a monster. My failure is the reason he’ll never get closure, and I’m the reason he needed it at all.

Im dying a beast.

Im dying a coward.

Im dying a murderer.

I’m dying sorry, but sorry doesn’t cut it.

And what’s worst if all, is I’m dying a scarlet rose.

And as Lenox LeChance watches the last of my petals wilt away, I die as nothing more than a stem of thorns.