visiting hours are from 10 to 6 | lenox, day eight

Belle's body is on the ground. On my fingers, I count: one, two, three. Silk Le Roux, Syd Scoria, Belle Jaune. A collector, a crypt keeper, bodies filling the empty footsteps I leave in my wake. I have become all that I've ever feared but it has happened in the best way; I have bloomed from a wilting rose and grown into my thorns. Fearful into fearless into feared — I am no longer sorry.

There's just one person left, and it should be so easy to sink my teeth in, poke my claws out and wreck havoc once more, but I've seen this happen so many times. And I watched Diana's heart give up just when she needed it the most. I've lived with the guilt of that very moment; her death is what slashed my heart open and made me look at the wound in the mirror. I was forced to try and repair it though it was broken to a thousand tiny pieces, I was made to see the girl who saved my life shatter into just a memory, a ghostly figure that appears every now and again that has no way of making it back.

I'm no volunteer like her. I was running from this fate for so long, but still, it got me. And when I got reaped, there was nobody who wanted to save me. No more guilt to fall so deeply into that it blinded me, no more heaviness to add to the already impossible weight on my chest — there was none of that. There was just me, staring into the crowd and seeing her own sorry face reflected back at her. The reality I'd always hidden from, the very moment I'd tried to lock away for so goddamn long. Sink or swim — I didn't have a choice.

But it's not my fault. None of it is — it never was. I didn't choose. Lex told me that, and I haven't forgotten.

I'd tried so hard to pry fate's fingers from around my neck. I didn't want it to strangle me like it had strangled so many who came before me: Reese, Tobias, Diana, Kane, Fitz, Garrison, Kyler — I'm still convinced that fate has taken enough from me, from too many people to take again. Life is a cycle, it has duality and fate can't just keep on living so ruthlessly, so violently without facing the consequences. Fate has to die, too, at some point, and I feel so close to it, I feel so damn close. Fate is weakened, it's like I have kicked its knees out and am forcing it to kiss my ring. But surrender is not sacrifice and sacrifice is not survival — to bring fate to its knees is not the same as defying it, it's not the same as killing it completely.

I want to make it break, though. That's all I've ever really wanted, because the life I've been chasing is one that, by definition, defies fate. No more shadows, no more monsters, no more peace in the nightmares that could never compare to the sickness of my reality — no, none of that. Because life has always been so beautiful and majestic that even following after it gives me a taste of the gold, glitter on my tongue. And it's so good that it has turned me from broken to bent: I have killed in the name of Lenox LaChance.

And for some, I get it, that isn't a good enough reason. But for me — that's the only reason I've ever needed. Because my name holds so much legacy that it crumbles under its own weight. The pillars of LaChance have never been powerful and I've had to carry it on my back, all alone for the past few years — throw me into the murder games and it was always destined to fall. But that nothing has become my everything, because that nothing means there's everything to kill for. I don't have anyone to impress nor disappoint, there's nobody waiting for me back home, there's no tears to cry for a girl who has already been dead for the past six years.

To be nothing is powerful — to me, anyway. To be nothing means I've got tunnel vision on what I want. And there's no attachment to anyone anymore, there's no family, no allies, no friends — there's just life. And yeah, I'd kill to have that. I have killed for it, heck, I killed to have just one more day and I'll do it again. I'd do it again, and again, and again if it means I get to sit on a sad, dingy looking graveyard placing flowers at the graves of everyone who died before I realised that their death didn't have to be my own. Queen of the dead, cigarette in hand, yeah, I'd kill to remember them.

I'm not a legacy. I'm not a poster girl. I'm not a set of odds to bet on. I am nothing, and there's no thing that can convince me otherwise. Nothing to die for and everything to kill for — I'm insane, I know that, but innocence is not rewarded. I'd be six feet deep a long time ago if I didn't break those chains. I was a fool for ever being bound to them in the first place, dammit.

I sit on the ground and stare into the sky. I don't know peace. I never have. I don't think I ever will. But I know that whatever life lies ahead is worth living. Whatever it is, it's worth fighting for, no, killing for.

Reese, Tobias, Diana, Kane, Fitz, Garrison, Kyler — they've died enough times. I've died enough times too. Nah, no more.

No fucking more.

[ table by dars
title: lyrics from natalia kills controversy ]