|
|
Fic by Author Era Pairing Rating Title
Title: Love is the Altar
Author: Nyxie
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Home is the place that when you go there, it opens the door and swallows
you whole.
There is a place inside us where hatred goes to live. A deep and silent place where evil never closes its eyes and anger never rests its head. These things slip between the cracks of our souls, between the gritted teeth of our smiles, and we - being human, wanting to be loved - we put our masks into place and we step out onto the avenue in our designer boots with our facile friends and happy chatter, and try to forget.
But you never forget where you live. Home is the place that we hang our hat and fill with modern miracles and pretty trinkets to distract us. But the soul is the place where we truly live, and that place is furnished with pain and rage, paint peeling like the tattered masks we wear.
It slips between the cracks, and we try to forget, but if we forget that part of us, then we would cease to exist. And so we carry it with us everywhere we go. We wrap it up in bright, patterned paper and tie it off with a pretty ribbon, a Trojan horse of a gift; so beautiful and carefully crafted, while inside, destruction waits with eager plans, growing stronger with every denial, growing malignant with each feigned smile.
It waits, and knows that its time will come.
Home is the place that when you go there, it opens the door and swallows you whole.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
February 9th, 2004, Downtown LA, The Offices of Wolfram & Hart
It's the week after Cordelia has died, and Fred steps into my office. I notice immediately what she's wearing, the same way I notice everything; short skirt, button up shirt, knee-high boots, and just the faintest hint of a flowery perfume whose name I knew by heart once. There are daffodils in that scent, and I remember a young Polynesian Princess... the way her blood tasted as it mingled with the scent of delicate yellow flowers whose name she didn't know and whose color she would never see.
When Cordelia was alive, before she shut me out, I was aware of her every move, her every breath, her every heartbeat. I knew all her moods, all her colors, all her scents, every outfit she owned and which ones she hated and which ones she loved. I even knew which shoes matched best with each one, and where the best women's shoe store in downtown LA resided - information I'll never have the occasion to put to use. I knew how she breathed, the way her heart skipped a beat when she was excited, the way her mouth twisted just the slightest bit at the corner when she'd lost herself deep in thought.
We go through every day loving and knowing the people around us right down to the most intimate details, and they never know exactly how we see them. Vampires see more, smell more, sense more than any human ever will, and while she was alive, I treasured that knowledge. But now that she's gone, I wish more than anything that I'd never known... that I could forget.
But lamenting memory will have to wait, because Fred is waiting in her flowered shirt and sassy skirt, growing more cautious and concerned with my lengthy silence. I look up and feign a smile as if nothing were wrong. The expression feels cracked and worn against my countenance, and I wonder if she can see me the way I see her. I wonder if she knows that I see right through her, right past those womanly clothes and carefree perfume, straight to her warm, girlish heart. I think of the days that have passed in grieving solitude, the others cutting me a wide berth in which to anchor my sorrow, and I wonder if she's come at last to lavish me with condolences and flowery sentences peppered with cute, trademarked Fred-babble. I wonder if she knows that I love her.
But of course she doesn't, and she never will, because I'll never tell her. My silence is the blessing that keeps me sane and the curse that keeps me alone.
I tell myself that it's better this way. That I'm happier this way.
Cordelia didn't know I loved her, either.
"Angel?" she asks, and the way her brow rises with uncertainty, the way her shoulder comes up just slightly, it all passes through my eyes and right to my predator brain, where the tension and discomfort mingle into a thrumming, primitive message that screams "prey".
I love Fred. Angelus loves her too. He'd love to drink up her pure, sweet blood and suck the innocence from her marrow.
When I don't immediately respond, she continues, her bright sunshiny tones filled with more life than any light that's ever fallen through my window. Sometimes I hate her for that.
"They've already started the conference with Bengyani demons, and they're asking for you."
The Bengyani meeting. Ancient customs and clan wars, sacred rituals and sacrifices of lamb's blood. I'll hear their claims. I'll mediate the peace treaties so their clans will unite and they'll still hunt humans within the boundaries of their reservations. I'll sit down at my desk in Wolfram & Hart and try to convince myself that I'm doing the right thing being here. The law firm version of the hokey-pokey. Nothing changes. Nothing ever changes.
But I nod as if this is of great importance, because Fred is still looking at me. I hold her eyes for a moment, and then my gaze drifts toward the window, where below, a world away, people sit and talk and laugh in the sunshine, as if everything were just fine.
"Do you think it gets any better than this?" I ask her, and though the thought is idle, I find myself suddenly quite interested in her answer, as if perhaps all the secrets of the universe might linger in it.
"Better... than... what?" she asks, hesitant and careful, slightly confused by my segue into non sequitor territory. And then, in typical Fred spirit, she takes a breath that expands the tiny roses on her shirt, and plunders on. "Well, of course things can always get better, right? I mean, the calculations for 'better' can't be measured in mathematical terms, of course--well, actually they can, just not past the second decimal place, and scientific theorem doesn't support the proof of such findings anyway since it's pure happenstance and not based on anything we can tangibly study or predict--but that means probability is left open to interpretation and the odds are incalculable so there's always room for..." She trails off and gives me a penetrating look. "Angel? Are you all right?"
"Fine," I say and stand, forcing another smile. This one seems to take, and I see her smile back, reassured that her boss is not losing his mind after all.
We go to the meeting, and the only thing I can think about while the Bengyani's blather on about the loss of their tradition and the sanctity of their heritage is how Fred couldn't answer my question. She tried, but even with all her knowledge, she couldn't.
And I wonder what that means.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The Bengyani's are gone, their treaties signed and their case relegated back to filing status. And alone, I sit in my thousand-dollar leather, high-backed chair, purse my lips and set my chin upon my hands. The sun pours through the windows and warms my skin, but I cannot feel its heat.
I feel as if I haven't seen the sun in months. It shines through the carefully pressed, magically enchanted window panes of my office every day, and dances on my skin like tiny prisms, alive and beautiful in a way I once dreamed I'd never tire of. But now the light falls colder, flatter, stripped of life. The promises it held are only echoes now, and the hope that carried them has drifted away to happier places.
Hope had a name once. It has changed over time, burbling along like a merry stream to the foot of the bank where I sit in silent contemplation and hold my vigil. But now the streams have dried; empty beds of packed mud, cracked and worn with time and the heat of a sun that I cannot touch or face.
Buffy. Cordelia. Connor. Those names dance now only on the stream of memory, their vitality waning, their messages distorted and lost to my ears. With each passing day I hear the ocean more clearly, its roar a hungry bellow of rage that is never satisfied, no matter how many times it breaks against the shore. It slowly devours the land that holds it captive, and one day it will break free.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
February 10th, 2004, The Offices of Wolfram & Hart
The moon is low in the sky, and night is just beginning. I watch the swell of its pale belly scrape against the edge of the horizon with the familiarity of a lifetime spent doing such things, and wait for it to rise a little higher.
"Angel... you've got to let this go." Wesley's voice is low, calm, but I can hear the deep breaths he takes, just a little quicker and heavier than normal. I can sense the pounding of his blood as he stands not ten feet away on the other side of my desk, and I can tell he is concerned.
He should be.
"It's not that simple," I grumble and spin my chair to face the windows, showing him my profile. Such an old game; block, thrust, parry. I could do this in my sleep.
"Angel..." Wesley's face goes through a number of conflicting emotions as he tries to find the words. "I loved her, too," he says quietly, and the tone of his voice tells me that although he does not dare to compare his love for Cordelia to mine, he loved her all the same. "But she came back one last time to make sure that you found your path again. To make sure you'd go on saving people."
I sit and think on this, and I know that he's right, of course. Wesley is seldom wrong about anything - except for when he puts my son's infant life in the hands of my most persistent and vengeful foe. But that's all water under the bridge now, isn't it?
I made sure of that.
"Angel, please. No one expects you to jump right back in, but you're catatonic." He hesitates, and I can feel him finger the verbal ace tucked away up his sleeve, wondering if it's time for him to throw it yet. "You have to let her go."
Not the ace - not yet, anyway.
I sigh and give a gruff shake of my head. "It's not about Cordelia." And that's a lie. But it's also the truth. It's not about Cordelia alone. It's about everything, all of this.
Wesley blinks, confused for a moment, as if this possibility has never occurred to him. "Then what is it, Angel?" So concerned, so steadfast, so willing and wanting to help. Wesley has his own tangled ball of issues that keep him drawn taut, but he's always willing to put them aside for the good of the group. For his friends. Or maybe that's just how he doesn't deal with his own problems. Whatever the reason, I love him for it. But he can't help me. I don't think anyone can.
When I don't answer, he throws his ace at last, heartfelt and spoken from the depths of the passionate soul he hides so well beneath that tight, English demeanor.
"We can't do this without you."
And I can't do this anymore.
Wesley waits in hopeful, terse silence, and I stare out the window, hands pressed beneath my chin, saying nothing. A dark stripe separates the moon from the edge of the world now, and with its liberation, I feel the need to free myself. I rise from my chair abruptly and turn away, towards the elevator.
"I have to go," I say, and my voice sounds lame even to my own ears, churlish and surly.
"Angel!" Wesley calls, and the question, the doubt in his voice nearly stays my feet. But no matter how great my love for Wesley, no matter how great the love I bear for all of them, my will is stronger. It always has been.
I've always hated that about myself.
A swirl of blustering trench coat later the elevator doors swish closed around me, and Wesley's voice calls after, accusing, angry and sad all at once.
"You can't go on like this!"
And once again, he's right.
That's why I have to leave.
* * * * * * * * * * *
My feet carry me down streets I have too long been apart from, and the familiar feel of them beneath me soothes the ache in my soul.
The moon is high now, and I don't think of where I'm going; I simply let my feet carry me on, pretending all the while that I'm wandering aimlessly.
I stop before a neon sign that proclaims its name for all to see, harkening to those lost in the night, offering shelter and mock comfort to those who have nothing else in their lives. I know these places well, have known them intimately since I was human. I don't bother to read the name. It doesn't matter anyway. These places are all the same.
The club is dark, but noisy, and painted with streaks of psychedelic light. Bodies move on the dance floor in a single, sinuous rhythm, and from all around is the smell of smoke, alcohol, and sadness. The decay of life seems faster here, as if those who enter are desperate to lose themselves in the rhythm of frantic music, and there is nothing of happiness save the few moments snatched by those who have drunk enough to forget their lives for a brief while.
I want to be drunk.
I don't want to be here, but Cordelia is dead and Buffy is just as gone, and my life is a deal I made with the devil to save the one thing left in the world I care about.
I have to know, have to see.
His face is thinner than I remember it, but just as starkly pale. Beatific, angelic features that he must have inherited from his mother curl with the familiar weight of sorrow, and I despair to see the poem of madness and confusion that writes deep lines in his brow, the meter of their unknown words carried by the distrustful flicker of his eyes.
I wonder what could have happened, how it could have all gone so wrong.
But now I know.
Even with my greatest sacrifice I have failed to vanquish the demons in my son.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
February 24th, 2004, The Offices of Wolfram & Hart
There is nothing else I can do, nothing left for me to hold on to, and so I go back to work; an empty, hollow-eyed thing who nods in the right places and signs in the right spots.
Days have passed with filtered sunlight and hated darkness, endless meetings and eternal menial tasks, and I hold court in the calm eye of the storm. One step from danger and destruction, balanced on the edge of a razorblade.
Angelus was a sadist of the highest order, but I am a masochist. I carefully carve the tools of my own destruction, and dissect myself with malicious glee at leisure.
All my anchors, all the things I believed in have been taken from me one by one, like some cosmic game of poker where the house stacks the cards and the players go on, never realizing just how calculated and screwed they really are.
And I, I go to the counter and buy more chips.
My past holds nothing. I am a man who doesn't know how to begin. My foundations destroyed and nothing but the rubble is left to tell the tale.
I don't know how to begin, but I know where it ended. The fall of a knife, the slash of a throat, blood spilled onto the uncaring carpet of a nameless department store. The people of old sacrificed their children to Gods who no longer have face or name, with a fervent hope that perhaps the Gods would torment them no longer.
I know now that those who reside in power beyond this mortal coil care nothing for those who serve them.
I wonder how I ever thought that peace could be made with blood.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"You've been watching me all night," the boy says. His eyes slide over me in a manner that warns of predator, but his face is still angelic and innocent, and the messages in my mind still scream "prey" though my forebrain knows far better.
I am wordless. Lost in the stormy sea of his eyes that once stared up at me with such innocence and hope and love, and I wonder how it could have got so far, how all that purity could have been so utterly and completely destroyed.
I haven't been watching him all night. I've been watching him for weeks.
"Would you like to go somewhere else?" Connor asks, and tilts his head. Hair that is too long falls forward over his eyes, and my heart aches with the familiarity of it.
Unable to speak, I simply nod. My son has guessed the heart of my intent, and although I want Connor more than I could ever begin to explain, I do not want him in the way he seems to think.
Empty and bereft, crushed and left bleeding on the rocks of my internal shores, I seek only comfort. And I will take whatever I can get.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The apartment is dull, dingy, nearly derelict with its shabby, paint-flecked walls and ancient appliances that growl and purr like electric lions. It is stripped bare and gutted, like the child himself once was, and only the souvenirs of loneliness and pain remain in the shells of empty beer bottles and fast-food wrappers.
Questions like fire burn on the tip of my tongue, and yet I cannot bring myself to ask. I have no right.
I sit on a dying couch, and stuffing falls from it in spurious, foamy waves. Connor sits beside me, and I turn to meet those eyes - those furious, angry eyes that burn with a hatred so strong that it is entity unto itself - and then there are hands on my body, touching me, caressing me with trembling inexperience.
And this could be beautiful. It could be solace. It could be a joining unlike any I have ever imagined; a true expression of love in a world where such things are often given with the speed and thought of breathing.
Innocent lips against mine, the shiver of butterfly wings, and for an instant it is majestic, it is perfect, it is everything of passion and love and joy that we've never been able to share or express with meager words. My hands find their way to the almost girlishly smooth skin of his jaw, and for a moment, there is only this; only love.
Sometimes I think heaven exists only as a mockery of life, and sometimes, like now, it seems an ever expanding horizon that carries me on the crest of the rising sun.
I am no stranger to sin. For more than a hundred years, it was my constant companion, the only thing I truly trusted or confided in.
And for slightly less than that, I have hated myself for every moment of it.
Being a parent means to have a piece of yourself living outside your body. It means to wear your heart on the outside, and find it crushed at every turn as their hopes and dreams die one by one and loves fades like lackluster paint. It means to watch as that piece of yourself contracts the disease of pain and begins to rot with the hard truths of the world.
The others wouldn't understand what I'm doing here now. Even I don't understand.
All I know is that, for a moment, that dark center of my soul seems to lighten with the touch of his mouth. His arms around me, I know what hope can be, and I know that I can do anything - anything at all, if only he loves me. Even with the knowledge lost between us, even with the blood spilt between us, even though he does not know that he is my son, he inspires me, charges me; makes me believe I can be a better man.
But the truth is a knife that cuts on both sides, and my wounds run deep with the blood of my child.
Peace has never lasted, and it is no different now.
"No," I say, and push my son away. My mind aches and my skin crawls, and I want more than anything to pull him back to me, to love him like he needs to be loved, to answer the howling wolves in the center of his hollow soul. My son is broken, my heart is broken, and there is no conviction behind the word. If he touches me now, I am lost, and I wonder if he sees the tremble of my hand, if he knows the traitor in my heart.
Anger flashes, brilliant diamonds in his eyes, and I feel their sharp edges cut into me with a heavier heart than he will hopefully ever know.
"Fine," Connor says and stands. There is still anger there, but there is something more in the shadow of his face. Something that speaks of longing and a need to be loved; a voice nearly lost beneath the waves of belligerence and angst that radiate from him.
Lord help me, I am weak. My fingers shake on the verge of reaching out, of touching his face and -
And then, like a saving grace, Connor stalks down the hall and disappears, leaving me alone to stare at the pieces of his broken world.
I can't decide if I'm angry or relieved - but I do decide that it's a good thing I never got a therapist, because if I confessed this to them I'd probably give them more issues than I have.
Sooner than I'm ready for, my son returns from the bathroom and sits next to me on the couch again. Father and son; two strangers brought by even stranger circumstance to this moment. I cannot find the words to bridge the gap between us, and he is not even aware of how much binds us together, how much separates us. Blood, fist and bone, twin images perched on the edge of twilight waiting for a dawn that will never come.
"Maybe we need to loosen up a little, first," Connor says, and I turn my head at the sly note.
Connor moves his hand, plucks the vein in his forearm, and the world seems to go slow and gray to my eyes. The needle makes a tiny hole in Connor's skin - soft, baby skin that I used to nuzzle once when it was new and still smelled like the gates to Heaven itself.
"No," I say again, and this time I find the conviction to back the word. My hand grabs the syringe, holding fast over my son's, and I stare deep into angry eyes. Storm clouds gather there in a dangerous swell of grey-blue, and I think of rain.
"You don't need that, Connor," I say, and there is such desperation and hope in my voice, so plaintive that I wonder how he couldn't know how much I love him, that I wonder how I could have ever given him up. Maybe I can still save him... maybe there's still time...
"I know..." Connor says and twists his arm, pulling from my grasp. "Dad."
One word. A single word. It's ridiculous, how much power we give to words. We allow them to define us, to shape us in ways that we would never do did the words not exist. The moment Connor calls me by that name, the floor falls out from under my feet and I can only stare, stupefied by how easily he has played me, how simply he has tricked me.
He knows. He has known for a long time. And he has been planning this.
I feel the needle dig deep into my flesh, fluid filling my veins with a sudden rush that feels like vengeance.
The world spins away, and Connor's face fades away with it until all that is left are twin fires of blue that stare down the curving spiral staircase of my mind.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
When I wake, there is pain.
Connor's face is a vicious grin slashed into the fabric of reality that twists and bends at the edges of my vision.
There is the weight of iron bonds on my hands and feet, and I can feel how they bind me to this metal chair that seems bolted to the floor. But even if it were not bolted down, even if I were not so bound, something wicked burns and sings in my veins, weakening me with insidious glee. I barely have the strength to move, much less free myself. Terror begins its frantic call within my breast, but its sound is unimportant and faraway.
"I knew you would come," Connor says. The knife dips into my flesh as he toys with the hilt, spinning it in a small circle. "Once I remembered everything, I knew all I had to do was wait and you'd come right to me." He draws a long, thin line down the length of my forearm, and watches with satisfaction as the blood spills free.
And more, so much more than the pain in my body is the pain in my heart. This is my son. This hateful, hurting thing is my son.
"It wasn't enough that you let me get taken from you, wasn't enough that you never loved me. You had to kill me and then send me away to some pretty fantasy life so you wouldn't have to deal with me." Connor's voice is ragged with hatred, and the knife runs a rhythm with its time, dips and slides as it follows the flow of his words, parting flesh and dripping blood.
I would speak now, but it is all I can do to remain conscious. The drug eagerly consumes my body, nipping at the connections of my mind, and the knife fills the center of me with a dull, roaring pain above which no thoughts can be heard. And it's too late anyway, far too late. It was too late the moment Holtz leaped through that portal. I understand that now. I understand so many things.
He ends the cut between the web of my forefinger and thumb, severing skin and tendon.
"Connor... I love you..." and my voice is thin with despair, rugged with a hurt so deep that it gives voice to flesh and bone and soul. It is a feeling that has no name, a sound that cannot find a safe, happy corner of description to lessen its visceral rawness. It is all I can manage, and it's not nearly enough to call back across the years of pain and distance between us. My mouth cannot move, but my mind goes on with the words, and I'm sorry, oh God, I'm so sorry. And not because I'm afraid I'm about to die, but because you're so heartsick... so broken.
My baby. My son. My beautiful boy.
"Shut up!" Connor hisses, and slashes the knife across my mouth.
The moment passes and blood flows in a hazy blur of exquisite pain, and I think my son is sobbing now, the sound like jagged glass as the fragments of his broken heart cut away at him.
"All I ever wanted was for you to love me, and you never did. Not when I tried to be good, or when I tried to be a warrior, or even when I tried to touch you on the couch a little while ago. What makes you happy Dad? Isn't anything ever enough for you?"
"Ove... ooo..." the words trickle from my throat like sand and shrapnel, the best I can manage through my mangled mouth. The only words that are important, now.
Connor stabs me again and again, penance for my words, and I receive each one on the altar of my masochism, bearing their ragged marks with the resignation of a true martyr.
"You don't love me," he cries, and I cannot bear the pain in his voice, or the tears on his face. I want to hug him, want to hold him, want to tell him that everything will be all right. Want to tell him that he can kill me if he has to; anything if only he will be happy.
My boy.
"You did this to me Dad!" he screams, furious and trembling. "YOU! You made my life like this, and I hate you for it!"
The rage subsides in him, and in the momentary silence I drift among the ghosts of those I've killed and betrayed, and their faces are all Connor as they rise up to swallow me.
"But no more," Connor says, and his voice is a leash that just barely holds his straining emotions in check. "I have the guts to do what you didn't. What you would have done if you weren't so soft and stupid."
He holds another syringe up before my eyes, and this one is filled with a bright yellow-green liquid that looks as toxic as it does strangely cheery.
Orpheus, I remember, and I know what will follow.
Pain screams in my veins again, and the world falls away bit by bit, shadows claimed by blackness, faint light of dawn fading.
Strange dreams rise up to claim my mind, and I am lost to them. At their center looms my son, standing tall above me, angelic, beautiful face covered in blood, angels of madness dancing in his eyes. With great ceremony, Connor holds up his hand and drags the knife down his inner forearm, cutting so deep that the shocking white of bone shows for a split second before blood rushes to fill the void. Violent red pumps and spills to the carpet in a waterfall of ebbing life, and I would scream if I could, but my throat is locked and far away and words belong to someone else.
I watch, helpless and torn, and with a slow, deliberate ease, Connor draws the knife down his other forearm. Blood rushes from a fount so deep and full that it takes my breath away to see it. I know the quantity of blood in a human body - I've measured it time and time again with glorious glee to figure out how long I could prolong a person's life for greater torture, and I know my son has only seconds left to live. With a gasping breath he turns his arms over for me to witness his work.
"See Dad? It was always... that... simple." His voice runs out with his life, and his eyes fix and still on some distant point beyond the world. Bent, bloodied and broken, his strings cut, Connor collapses to the floor like a fragile, porcelain doll, his limbs twisted beneath him, cooling blood pooling in a circle all around him.
Numb shock spreads like the poison in my veins, and I am left wordless, gasping on the edge of a chair slick with my own blood over the body of my son.
My boy. My beautiful boy.
His eyes are open, slack and dazed, lifeless as two dull coins, and all I can think is how much I want to close them, how I wish I could lay my lips against those fragile lids and say my goodbyes.
Even tears cannot come, yet. For the first time, I'm glad that he drugged me, because the screaming anguish in my soul would be unbearable if I could hear it clearly. My only solace is that I know I will follow soon.
He'd only wanted to feel loved. I had only wanted him to be happy. The people of old had sacrificed their children to the Gods in the name of worship. I thought I'd done better because I sacrificed my son in the name of love.
Love is the altar on which we sacrifice everything.
We push it down, try to forget about it, pretty it up and serve it up to those around us on silver platters with garnish and wedges of lemon. We do everything except admit that at our core, we are all lost. All in despair. All alone. We sacrifice ourselves, never speaking the words that move us in the name of wanting to be loved and accepted, and we hate ourselves for it. And we go on, pretending it doesn't matter, that we're not hiding; feign another smile and tell another joke.
But there is a place inside us where hatred goes to live. A deep and silent place where evil never closes its eyes and anger never rests its head. It slips through the cracks of our grinning, desperate skulls with every careless word people spill upon us, and we push it down until it poisons the jewel boxes of our mind, penetrates the sacred chambers of our hearts, and changes us until the lie becomes the truth. Until there is nothing left but a pretty Trojan horse filled with confusion and hatred for the world. It creeps in and it owns us until it destroys us, and we never understand how different it might have been had we simply dared to speak the truth.
Connor... Maybe if we had simply spoken across the gulfs that separated us, if we had been able to fully express our anger, our love for each other, it would have made the difference. But we both wasted away inside ourselves, never speaking, hoping our actions might speak loud enough, and now I find the truth in the hollow points of his eyes.
All these years of hiding, stifling the hurts and the hate and even my love. Terrified to show my true self or give my heart completely for fear that the beast inside me might break free. I've spent all this time thinking that the limitations I forced upon myself were there for the safety of others. I thought that I was unique in my pain. But maybe I'm just a magnified version of the same plague that claims everyone eventually.
We talk without speaking, hear without listening. We beg a thousand, silent different ways for people to love us, and yet we give nothing of ourselves to be loved because we live in fear that they will hate us if they could see inside our hearts. It's a paradox, an endless, useless cycling circle; the human condition.
The soul is where we live, and home is the place that when you go there, it opens the door and swallows you whole.