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#except from the pov of your shitty unreliable narrator ex
even-disco-baby · 2 years
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DOLORES DEI — “I don’t *understand* you, Harry. You aren’t dying, you’re just sad. Why is everything an apocalypse to you? People don’t die of sadness! I’m… I’m not trying to kill you, Harry…” Her holy gaze falls to her feet. “I never wanted to hurt you at all.”
DRAMA — She speaks the truth, sire. All she ever did was love you.
RHETORIC — No. Don’t let her control the narrative. She’s *wrong.* People die of sadness every day. Sadness the likes of which she has never and will never know. Tell her about the body on the boardwalk, his mouth full of chewing gum to mask the smell of disappointment. Tell her about René’s angry little heart full of barbs and spines that repelled all but one man. Tell her about Cuno’s father, wasting away and leaving nothing but a specter that will dog his son’s footsteps forever. Tell her about Ruby. Tell her about the Bad Day.
“I never wanted to hurt you, either. I just wanted you to understand *my* hurt.”
“Just because you can’t imagine something doesn’t mean that it isn’t real.”
DOLORES DEI — “But that’s not true, is it?” Her beautiful eyes are full of pain. “You *did* want to hurt me. You wanted me to be sad, too. And then you wanted me to leave you and prove that you were right about everything. About me, about life…”
She sighs, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “Well, you got what you wanted. I’m gone and I’m never coming back. Are you happy? Does it feel *good* to be right?”
INLAND EMPIRE — Nothing will ever feel good or right again. You have made certain of that.
RHETORIC — It feels better than the constant dread of being abandoned. It feels like vindication.
“I never wanted to hurt you, either. I just wanted you to understand *my* hurt.”
“Just because you can’t imagine something doesn’t mean that it isn’t real.”
DOLORES DEI — “This again!” She pinches the bridge of her nose, and the gesture makes her look strangely more human. “What do you want me to say? ‘I’m sorry for not being born poor?’ ‘I’m sorry for not being an alcoholic?’ ‘I’m sorry I don’t want to die?’ I’m not going to ruin my life just to understand where you’re coming from, Harry!”
And then, her expression softens. Like light passing through stained glass. “You’re not well, Harry. You don’t need to die. You just need help.”
EMPATHY — She genuinely wants you to be better. And she believes that you can be.
RHETORIC — But she fails to understand the difference between you two. Poverty, addiction, the pain wracking your bodymind… She can leave these realities behind. Go back home to her parents, start a new life on another isola and be a new person. And so she did, and so she is. But you? It’s too late for you. It was too late from the moment you were born, in the death throes of the revolution. It was her people that killed it.
VOLITION — Is any of that her fault? Is it wrong for her to save herself from you, just because you can’t? You can be sad and angry at this wedge the world drove between you, but why did you have to misplace that anger? You took it out on her just because you could. You made it impossible for her to stand by you without getting stabbed in the back. You even became a cop so you could take it out on other people, too. Stop this, Harry. No more cruelty.
“There is no helping me. The world isn’t built to help people like me. I realized that in Martinaise. None of us can just *leave.*”
“Fuck you. You don’t know what I need.”
“I want to get better. Would you love me again if I got better?”
DOLORES DEI — She smiles, and it’s tinged with pity. “Oh, Harry… You are what you are. I’ve already forgiven you for that. And you may not forgive me, but I am what I am.” She closes her eyes, head bowing just slightly, almost like a prayer. “But we cannot *be* together anymore. Don’t you see that? There is nothing good left that can come of it. It would just be… more of this.”
Her Innocence Dolores Dei opens her eyes and looks around her— at this strange set you have constructed to act out a million different conversations that all end the same way. “I can’t live in your nightmares, Harry. And neither can you.”
VOLITION — You don’t have to anymore. Let her go, Harry.
“See you tomorrow.”
“Goodbye, Dora.”
DOLORES DEI — She smiles that pitying smile again. It’s not going to be that simple. “See you around, Harry.”
INLAND EMPIRE — You can try to rid yourself of this place, this feeling… But it will come back to you eventually. What you build at low tide will be swallowed up again someday.
VOLITION — And then you’ll build it again. As long as you live. You can do it.
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