Prayer
by Siarade
All characters herein belong to Marvel. Well, except one, and that one doesn't belong to anybody. No profit is being made.
This is an attempt to break out of some writer's block. Thanks to Alicia, for the support, and to Matt Nute, who gave me something to think about.
This story has a lot of swearing in it. A lot. Graphically. Probably an overuse of a few specific words. But it's also got some anger-issues that could possibly offend someone. Please know that that is not my intention at all -- I'm not going after anyone's religion.
I hate you.
For years, I just didn't fucking believe you. You just march into my life, stomp around and destroy everything as if my emotions and relationships are just sand castles to you. And then you bounce right out again, and don't even pretend to exist for years.
Whenever I fucking need you, you're not there. All those dungeon-moments of my life, when loneliness crawls on me like cockroaches, you never bring me solace. You don't show up and put your hands on my face; you don't whisper my name in the dark. You don't even breathe across my neck.
Every time, I made it out without you. I didn't need you to bust through doors for me. You wouldn't have, anyway. I made it out. I'm still here -- I always made it out. You can't claim any of that. I bet you would, though.
So I stopped even thinking of you, stopped believing in you. How could I do anything else? You were a cipher in my life. It was easier to live without you.
And then you'd come back, again.
So here I am. Left in the aftermath of one of your damn interventions. In, and out you go. I don't have any say in it.
I can't forgive you. Christ, I can't even fucking look for you. There's nowhere to even go ask for you, and if by some dumbass luck I did, I would spit in your face. Then rip your goddamn throat out.
I had my head shaved. I had my brain cracked open and jammed with foreign objects. I had my age, my configuration, my bones and synapses re-wired. I had my soul stolen out of me and shoved inside a copycat, and she got to have my life for a while. Sometimes I feel like I still haven't gotten it back.
My husband died. But a thousand fucking husbands die a day, right, so that's not good enough for your omnipotent pity.
I don't know who I am. I can't remember my birthday, my parents, my childhood. I woke up one day and remembered 12 years of nothing. You should give me fucking credit for the rest -- I had nothing and I didn't hurt people, I didn't become a whore. Isn't stealing a worse sin? Worse than the people who passed me by and never even looked to see if my misery was something they could try to help? The leeches on the street, their bastard eyes and hands -- did you treat them better by giving them me?
And Nathan. We could have been happy. So much of that is my fault -- and his, ours. But there was a fucking "ours" in that and I'm not going to let you have any of the credit. We were something outside of you -- you gave him his goddamned demon, didn't you, and never gave him another moment's peace.
Why? Jesus Christ, why?! Why in the fuck would you do that to me -- to us? I expected and got the worst things in life. When happiness struck, I gloried in it until it was gone. Except for Nate -- you would have stolen him, anyway. You did steal him -- with this so-called blessing you blessed us with. Once it happened, there wasn't an evil in the world that could have torn us apart. Just you -- you and all your benevolence, ripping us apart like you ripped through me.
And it had to hurt -- along with that horrible tearing in my heart, you had to make the pain so bad that I would rather be trapped by Tolliver again than feel it. All I could do was hate my body, hate my failure, hate the fact that I _wanted_ it and was now losing it. Pain came up and grabbed me all of a sudden -- you reached up from the ground and pulled it right back into yourself. I was standing beside the kitchen counter, and Nathan wasn't home. All my life, all the life I can remember, I was nothing but bleeding, and when I finally stop you decide to cut me right back open.
But that's not why I hate you.
I don't hate you for the pain, or the loss, the thousand billion instances of fear or misery. I don't credit you for the happiness so I won't blame you for the hurt.
I hate you for making me want it.
Living things all have that inborn desire to survive. That genetic trick of a trait to live, to stay breathing at all odds, and we even overcame mortality by procreation. We fuck so we can live. I have been badass all my life. I lived under the simple understanding that belonging to anyone or anything makes you weak -- that wanting something is just a way to get killed.
I lived my life on the edges of modern femininity. My body is a weapon and fighting makes me money, sex makes me feel good. I'm a woman by virtue of my chromosomes, my tits and what's between my head as well as my legs. I'm not a woman by what I wear, by what I say or any other damn stereotype. I broke through the gender roles of my generation and gave the finger to chauvinists and feminists both.
But you. You brought me to this. That little grain of instinct got me in the end -- and just when I was almost out. I never thought I'd ever be so dumb, fuck up so bad...but you fucking changed the rules. I wasn't being careless; I didn't forget; I didn't screw up.
And I didn't regret it.
I couldn't -- I was happy, I was balls-out fucking ecstatic inside my warped little estrogen brain. There were and are a thousand reasons to be scared to Christ, and a million reasons for regret. But I didn't, not inside my head, and I know why. That damned instinct.
I _wanted_ to be a mother. I realized that at the best time, the perfect time, the unexpected time. God, I thought I was going into menopause! But no, not yet. You shoved it down my goddamned throat, you cocksucker.
Christ, didn't you have other people's lives to piss on? I almost got away with it, almost got away with thinking I wasn't just like everybody else.
I think you did it just to prove that in the end, loneliness wins. Isolation wins. I'm empty, and Nate's gone, because I chased him away. Like a rabid dog, I chased him until he couldn't fight me off anymore, until he was too tired to put up with my bullshit.
Bullshit.
I hate you, God I hate you, and I can't stop. I can't even be the littlest bit sorry.