on fighting back

You know, I know what it is to be abused.

Maybe not physically. No, never physically. But to be jerked around mentally and emotionally, clinging to that one small scrap of hope that maybe, just maybe, you can eke out some happiness from this even though you’ve been battered into taking your abuser’s shit. It’s rough, isn’t it? You know when you’re away from them that you deserve better, but then they come around again, you’re suddenly hoping for something that won’t ever come. It doesn’t exist. Maybe it never existed.

For me, it was my sister. In myriad other worlds, we are diametrically opposed, and somehow, I can’t escape her. She knows how to twist her words enough to make me feel terrible even though she’s the one who ran out on me for trying to keep her alive. She forced me into taking the blood through words alone and damned me to the rest of my kind in one, and uses me as a battering ram for her assassination contracts in another. In another still, she lords her new form over me as elevated and evolved to my primitive birthright and still tells me she loves me. My only crime was ever loving her in the first place.

It’s amazing how they can do this. I know it, and you definitely know it. It takes a lot to fight back. But you know… before, you fought back, as little as you could. You had bite. You had fire.

But then when you were put to task, she twisted you. All of a sudden, you were worth her time, because she bent your arm into saying yes. Suddenly, you were made to disregard your life, your girlfriend, your father’s wishes. Gave you a name that wasn’t yours and pretended she gave a damn about you now that you’re not mortal.

Yeah, doesn’t that sound familiar.

I’m a bitter, tired wreck already. My son saw you. Now when he asks where you are, I’m not going to have an answer. I’ve had to hire my in-law because I can’t take care of five kids. Nine, when my sister needs to work, given her wives are disabled. Your girlfriend turned to assassin work because of what happened the day you left with that woman. She thinks she can hide it, but she doesn’t realize that I’ve noticed. She’s practicing for the day it’s time to commit regicide. The old sun guard calls her a wraith. Someone who was called back from nearly becoming a grudge, into a living body, ruled both by psyche and by shadow until the two can reconcile.

She has worked so hard, and gotten her hands so dirty. All for you. All to give you final freedom. Because she loves you. She never stopped loving you, even at her worst.

So, you say you wish more people would stop relying on her. You say they rely on you. When will you use that against her? When will you reignite that fire?

Or will you just keep leaving that poor dragon in the cold, because you just can’t fight back?