His greatest concern is for his daughter never to find out she is blind.

Iolanta / Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Interview With The Vampire // The Glass Essay, Anne Carson // Salt, Nayyirah Waheed // Bite The Hand, Boygenius // Supernatural, Gabriel's Speech 5x08 // NBC Hannibal // Warsan Shire // Avatar // Rogue One

We weren't written in the stars, then?

The stars don't have a clue.

Laurel Starling is a singularity. She is constantly teetering on the edge of spacetime where she becomes infinite because she is a dreamer. And dreamers are to be classified as weapons. Laurel knows this because her mother told her. Not every mother tells her child they are something to feared. But Laurel doesn't want to be feared, she wants to be loved. She wants to be loved so badly that she would break her own heart to make it bigger. Her mother hates this facet of her. This need to be loved and held and told, We're all right, love. We're in the gold room and nothing can hurt us now. She resents this weakness in her daughter. Because people who love people are dead people. Because love cripples you and leaves you hollow and wanting and blackened. Because there is nothing worse than choosing, and in love, you always have to choose. Always. And that is weak. That is a betrayal. Because power should mean you get everything. Why take more than we need? Because we can. Because we are owed. Because our footprints should remain even if we fade. Most women don't get it, because they are too busy trying to free themselves from the cage. But you are already free, little starling, make the most of it. Teach the beasts how to fly. Because monsters are everywhere, and they are always waiting, always hungry. They can always, always hurt us. But what kind of monsters, Mom? 

Before her mother can tell her, she's dead. And eight-year-old Laurel is sent to live with her father in Mystic Falls. He never moved on from her mother. Eight years, and he still loves her. Laurel sees now how crippling love is. How messy. How painful. It hurts the eyes more than the heart because hearts can learn to be heavy after a while. But the eyes that she inherited from her father, they will never learn how to deceive. They are incapable. They are always too busy being fooled themselves to lie. They don't even know their twin sits a few inches to their side. How lonely. Just like love. Because what is love if not the one thing that you want and can never have. It eats you up. It's a monster. Maybe that is what her mother meant when she said monsters. So Laurel makes a list. 

Rule One: Love is a weakness.

Rule Two: Be invisible. Reminding the world that you were something alien was a good way of getting destroyed.

Rule Three: Do not tell anyone that you are a dreamer because people hate dreamers. They are all realists and worry about the fuel prices and the rent, and you can't just waltz in and tell them they should visit the Bahamas. They know they should, they've been wanting to for a long while, but the rent this month and the salary this year, the budget just doesn't cut it and they will have to tell themselves it's alright that they can't go one more time and it will be your fault. So just don't tell people what they want because they already know what they want, they just can't have it.

Just like love, Laurel thinks again.

Love. You dream it up, and you make up things that you would never say and you say them very quietly, and suddenly dragonflies everywhere. Or is it butterflies? Laurel can never get it right because she thinks real beauty isn't in the pretty colors but in the luminosity of self. Laurel had thought it would feel weak to love, hell it's rule number one, but she can feel hellfire lighting up her soul and there is peace. This isn't what she imagined love to be, not a landscape after cruelty, a lover saying Hold me tight and don't ever let go, the lawn drowned, the sky on fire, and the gold light falling backward.

I made this place for you. A place for you to love me.

I had a dream about you. This is the Moon. This is the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, so I said What do you want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me.

Snow And Dirty Rain / Richard Siken

He was another knife I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.

Circe / Madeline Miller

Zoey Deutch . . . . LAUREL STARLING

Do not try to take my regret from me.

Hayden Christensen . . . . KAZAMIR "KAZ" MIKAELSON

The grudges of gods are as deathless as their flesh.

All Others. / As Described.

My love for you is deathless.

© bonteris. 2022.

disclaimer.

i do not own tvd or to plotlines or characters. however anything original in this story belongs to me.

dedications.

cupidsrot medusatrance rdheartfield thedamsnackbar2021 Cat-light-92

warning.

this story contains graphic descriptions and mentions of blood, gore, self-harm, death, murder, abuse, and unideal family relations. read at your own risk.