[ W e e p i n g   R o s e s ] by Lady Megami How many nights has it been, my love? Once again I stand in the midst of the moon’s gentle caresses of silver, my senses alert, my mind asking for anything but sleep. For I cannot rest, in the absence of your warmth. I cannot lay in silence, while all of my thoughts scream for you, and weep with sorrow and a never-ending spiral of guilt. When I am alone like this, when I am left to nothing but my own soul, I find myself deprived of anything but the truth, in its crude, naked entirety. This I cannot bear. So, like before, I stalk the nights in a vain search, holding onto the last trinket of your being that I can grasp- hope. Hope is a fool’s belief, but I no longer care what people may think. Let them think what they want. The night is mine, and should be mine alone- as was your heart, that which you rashly, carelessly threw to the man who fed off of it to satisfy his greed. You were blind, my love, and irrational- but I understand. I understand you completely; now that I too have suffered, now that I have danced along the ledges of sanity and almost let myself fall into the gaping abyss of desolation. No one will stop my hunt for you, and this craving hunger shall never cease to torment me. You were meant to be mine, and still you pushed me away, still you built up your little illusionary world where Hojo and Sephiroth appeared to be the angels, perverted Cupids, when their souls reflect the exact opposite; putrid and black, crumbling and tainted with the desire for absolution. Yet your blind eyes seemed to have skipped a chapter in the story. Was there not a time when you willingly offered the sweet innocence of your lips to me? Was there not a time when you would consider me as the missing half of your soul, as the final piece that would complete your heart? You ignored all of this, brushed me away, when you made that final, terrible decision. You hurt me in a way that I had not even thought possible. But I forgive you, for with all the suffering that you have endured, you need not something as vain as a lover’s grudge. You were lost in an ocean of storm, in the endless swirl of bitter confusion- you couldn’t have known if the wave you rode on would continue onward or collapse beneath your feet. I’m sure you don’t know how many times I have felt that way, too. In fact, as I leap from rooftop to sloping rooftop, I must admit that it has been a very long time indeed since any of us was truly sure of what we were doing. I offered you my heart, and you carefully embraced it, treasuring it as if it was the most precious of things, though you feared that it would shatter if you let it fall. You feared it was made of glass, of the most delicate crystal. I could’ve offered you my life, but this time you refused to take it. There had been many obstacles stripped down, so many intimacies shared; until he came and encaged you in an unbreakable barrier of ice. He imprisoned you. He offered you his own love, tightly wrapped by a sleek golden ribbon, though it was clearly too rich, too bright, too artificial. Did you not see this, my darling? Did you not see what was to come? He gave you a reason to exist, a reason to live up to your title- and you gladly took a step into it all, forgetting that in past times, you had surrendered yourself to me. You had not needed anything except my love to feel alive. You had died by our passion, reborn by the will to create a future for our precious story. This had been your reason to exist; this had been your own will! Your own desires! How could you just forget all of it, lock it all away along with the wail of my own, fragile heart? You stole me away, and refused to give me back. You were selfish and gluttonous, you acted by your own instincts and cared not to listen to as petty things as the opinions of others. You were fierce and stubborn at first- you enticed me by the flames of your raging spirit, the beauty of the violet blaze burning in your eyes. Yet while I could kindle your flame, he could consume it, he could merely blow to wipe its intense rage right out. And you let him, my love, you let him. Sometimes I wonder how brave a soul must be, if it is really possible for it to act against its own desires. Maybe I find comfort in thinking that you were with him out of fear, and out of awe for the chances he offered to you on a scratched silver platter. Maybe the truth was that you tired of me, and wanted to reach out and explore the world beyond- and your chances to become what you had always dreamed of becoming. They say that true love is an evanescent dream. That it is something ethereal and mystical, so fragile that just the faintest whisper could break it. A lot of people wish for it to be theirs, but when they find it, they don’t know of its presence. Maybe that’s why you stopped believing in romance when you left me. Maybe that’s why you thought that the dream that had been true love was just that; a dream. Something insubstantial, that would hastily dissipate whenever you tried to take a closer look. I could’ve lived for you, my love, but that was not what you wished. You never really expressed yourself beyond lustful desire, but I could see through your wanton desperation, that all you needed was a compatible soul that could reach out and grasp yours by the hand, forever in unison. Did he give that, beloved? Did he achieve what I apparently could not? You never told me. But the silence spoke for you. I could’ve lived for you, but you refused. So instead, I died. I gave myself away, just so that you would notice me, just so that you would know that I, at least, had not forgotten the flame that had arisen between us, and that not yet been snuffed out. I wonder if you ever had a second thought for me, when Hojo made me tragically ‘disappear’? I wonder if you even cried, perhaps, yearning for a body to warm you in the empty space of the mattress? No, that would be hoping for too much. I can just imagine you, standing with your satin strands of chestnut hair coiling around your neck and stroking the shoulders of your immaculate white lab coat, cocking your beautiful face to once side. Maybe you’d sigh as I wept to the obscurity of the Heavens, so many feet away from you, the distance as far as an ocean of tears. Maybe you’d have one of two wistful thoughts, as I desperately clawed at the sealed roof of my coffin, yelling to the sneering demons that infested the darkness, screaming in hope that you would hear my warning. But then you’d twist on your heel, graceful hand whipping out to steady you. Your shining hair would bounce around your neck, tumbling in a light cascade down your back, and your slender legs would continue on their brisk march toward ‘your’ scientist, heels echoing throughout the silence of the deserted corridor. If this is the reality that you sought, then I will abide by it. My existence is bound to yours- through love and passion, or the bleeding glares of hatred, we bear a timeless connection that even with your hardest efforts, you could never undo. Dying for you seemed to have no effect. The flames are flickering, my love, but they are immortal, and they shall wait- if I must sin to regain your attention, if my screams were mute to your ears, then perhaps the scream of others may drag a reaction from your dying senses. My life was not enough for your covetousness? Fine. Then I shall satisfy your need with more lives, if that is what you truly want. I lived for you. I died for you. Now I shall kill for you. There is nothing that I would refrain from doing if it is in your favour. I sneer in the delicate veils of the moon rays, a single blood-red drip leaping from house to house, listening to the silence ring with the absence of the Heavenly melody of your voice, peering into the grotesque darkness of the night that should’ve been alight with the shine of your beautiful eyes. You are consuming me, my beloved, more than anyone could ever imagine- there is a hole in my chest where you ripped out my heart, and now you gleefully gnaw on the edges of it, not caring for my pain, not noticing my desperation. So be it. I will bring you back to me, someday…somehow… there is no denying the fact that I will make you mine, the way we should’ve been a long, long time ago. I swing silently into the obscurity of a house. A smile whispers along my lips as I imagine you, waiting, laying on a glittering bed of multi-faceted crystals, a gruesome parody of Sleeping Beauty. Forever waiting to be awakened. And so you will be, my darling, and I shall send you the wails of despair that will snap you back to life in the way that mine never could. Torrents of blood, my love, and the sound of the air screeching to life with the screams of pain, as one feels his own life hopelessly ebb away… the shot of half a dozen bullets that I had carefully cleaned and polished for the very purpose; do you know what is carved along its gleaming, golden surface? Do you know why? Yes my darling, all of this is for you. It has always been for you, and it always will. Until your eyes open and your own heart tears and bleeds with desire, until you call my name to the Heavens and realize, after all this time, what your fault really was. I shall send rivers of crimson roses to you, and wrap a golden thread around the corpses just as Hojo crudely offered you a fake future. You will think that the blossoms hold a rare, exquisite beauty- until you realize that the sweet nectar they release are the tears that I shed for you, mingled with the blood that I spilt for your only purpose. And perhaps then, you will understand. Perhaps then will you kneel before the sea of weeping roses, and cry all that your shattered soul has to offer. That is the hope that drives me tonight, like every night. …How many nights has it been, my love?...