Special:

You know me better than anyone else ever has.

My heart jumps into my throat when I see you.
It's been that way since the first day I met you;
four years and counting later since that day, it hasn't changed.

I look at you and wish that I were blind
I hear your voice, and wish I couldn't hear
I train you to fight, and wish that I were lame.

It is an agony
to love someone this much.

My frail heart, so lion-hearted for my other worlds
for my friends, my others
kills me
when I see you.

I don't want it to stop.


My hands on your hands, searching for weakness.

The truth,
"I won't hurt you."

A deep breath.

The shaking stops.

I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

I have to.

I can't let you be an endangerment to my people
I can't let you hurt me like that.

I can't. I just can't.

I have to know that I can fight you
that if I have to hurt you to make my people safe I can
because I always have put them before me, I have lived for it
bled for it with real wounds, cried for it with real tears,
shouted with real anger

and even if the rest of the world ignores it
it's there, it's real, I've felt it

and I need to know, I have to know
that my weakness--
the only one that the Roses have ever truly had against me--
cannot harm them.

Not only that.

I don't want you to see me this way.
I don't want to use the Roses as an excuse for what I want
what you don't and never will.

I have to know that you can hurt me
because that way maybe I can get over this
maybe I can walk away from the best thing I've
almost-had.

I have to know that I can heal
and if the best of me cannot walk away from you
then how could the worst of me
with which the world is so familiar?

Damn it,
I love you.

When you leave things at my house I put them in a little pile
on my long, wooden counter
and stare at them, play hearts and feel like a piece of you is there
and the hope, the hope like lights up through my heart
the hope that tears away my mask---

You know me.
I trust you completely,
I'd give you anything and have,
risk anything and have,
I love you
and you....

Want me safe.


Smash a stone upon my heart
crush me, smother me, rip open my other shoulder
until I am screaming in pain
and then perhaps
I can ignore
the Love that I don't want to die
the Love that will not go away
the Love that I have given to you.


.....I don't know what to do.


But I love you.