Work Text:
You should know what it’s like to be on one heart. Life sharpens into ultra-clarity. Every outline and every color bleeds watercolor paint. You put your hand down on a quartz wall and you can touch the universe itself. You look at your nails, you think about what they’d look like with blood and dirt crusted beneath them, stiffening with rigor mortis. Maybe there’s nothing, even. You could die with clean nails.
You would do it now. You’re not on one heart—you have more than one—but there is only one heart that matters to you, the one that makes your chest skip when you’re happy and pang when you’re sad, and that one’s imploding. The sharpening of life dangles its blade at your throat. Some things are brighter than others—a red scarf, ends snapping at air; a dry voice meandering along like dead leaves. You chase them sometimes with a complete lack of whimsy. Catching them is holding fire; you feel like Prometheus stealing away with a flickering scrap cradled against him. You’ll be caught eventually. You hinge yourself on borrowed time, give your freedom for that little twist of warmth.
You lean forward. All the things bright and beautiful in the world, all the bleeding watercolor paint colors dim before you. What you seek is beyond them; what you value most is outside them.
Prometheus palms the fire to a man with dry timber. There is no wavering when the fire reaches for a new home. Fire doesn’t remember where it comes from—only what it is now, only what it needs to survive.
You wonder if he was tired, if he felt like you do now when you look into the face of a young god. If he felt like the sharpness of life had scraped him open with ashes.
The chains, the mountain, the eagle at dawn. You wanted to go with your nails clean, so you don’t scrape at the bedrock. Your palms rest on the walls with dusty finality. The air constricts in your throat like a dull bruise, all of it stale and rigid. You wait, you wait, for the eagle to drive his golden beak through your chest. You think of red scarves and witty voices, then of Prometheus again.
Here is where the comparison can end; here is where you escape while Prometheus remains chained. Godhood was only a failure on your shoulders, after all. It left you tired.
Briefly, you wish you had one more day with a red scarf dropped around your cold, aching shoulders. One more day standing in a red-soaked sunset, soft breeze on your skin. But the tiredness was always there, sitting quietly in your bones, reminding you that the warmth was never yours to keep.
The eagle opens its beak. You lean forward, if only to make it a little faster.