This chain – this chain is your hold on me. So fierce it binds me to everything you are. It burns me now. It tightens its grip and will never give in, never let up in its hold.
It binds me here in the past, binds me to ghosts that float around the shadows of my mind – to memories I never wanted and to nightmares that were never mine. Binds me to a love that will forever be one-sided and to a life of being forever a little kid, that little helpless deadly girl. The one you saved. The one you left on the doorstep for someone else to take care of.
You bound yourself tightly around my heart in a matter of days, in a mater of seconds, all with a simple act of acceptance. You saved me before I saved you. You cut through the self-imposed silence of a frightened runaway, making me take a risk, to utter a word, to warn you. You saved me again before I could even let slip more than a few sentences to cut through the silence of icy air. And you saved us all before I could even manage to catch my breath and you left as soon as I blinked. Leaving me behind, now bound to this place. Tethered here by your chains.
But you couldn't just leave, could you? You had to make me so many promises, too many promises. They were not even given the sugar treatment to go down easily, your words were just as they should be, very small, short, and sharp. You said it all with such a lack of pretense that I could almost find myself believing you.
You made me so many promises that day. So many promises that it was just understood that you could never truly keep them all. It was just too much too soon to have to do for a girl you had known for not even a week. I would have been fine with that all. I may be young but I understand the ways of the world, I understand the world far better than I would like to. My heart would have broken, I know, and I would have cried for what would seem like forever, but then it would have healed. I could have healed. But you couldn't just leave it at that, you couldn't be the heartless bastard this time. So you bound your promises up into a small little shining gift and shoved in into my hand.
And now your chain are my chains, binding my flesh to your memory, holding to me your memory and your promises. Keeping me from moving on, keeping me from growing, and keeping me from healing.
Clean breaks are always the easiest to deal with, the cleaner safer version of the many types of heartbreak, but also the hardest to get right. There is so much care involved, so much precision, and the bitter sting of honesty. The pain is intense at first but once you are healed it all goes away. But what you are doing, this steady quiet destruction is ever so slowly killing me. Making it harder and harder to breathe.
These chains of yours that I keep hidden under my sleeve burn and chafe my skin but I would never let them go, never give them up because they are all I have left of the only man that would ever touch me.
These chains of yours dare me to hope like I never would have dared before. Hope that I could mean so much more to you than I can even imagine at this moment. They dare me to believe that someone could love this girl, this little scared pathetic girl, the one with deadly skin, making her not that girl but your woman. They dare me to dream of a life of comfort and happiness, to dream of safety and love. They give me hope that maybe you will notice in me all the ways you could not seem to see before, to see the women and not the little girl.
They make me believe that maybe I will mean more to you than she ever did and your eyes will look at only me like that when I walk into the room. They let me hope that I can be the one that can tame the beast. That I could have this love that I have tasted only the beginning of and long so desperately for. They dare me to hope for all that I cannot hope for, for all that could tear apart my heart or all that could make it whole again.
I wait here, with my heart under my sleeve, my hands nervously pulling and tugging, smoothing and adjusting. I try to quiet my heart and steady its beat because you see everything I don't want you to see. My head pounding and my breath catching, I wait here for you.
So I wait here, with the only piece of what you so firmly implanted in my soul, waiting for an end to it all or for a beginning to all I have ever wanted. And as you walk up to me now my beauty disappears and my strength dissipates and I wither down into that little girl you left me as so long ago, the one that wanted nothing but your touch, your love.
Because I am bound to you, bound to you by your own hand.
By your chains.
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Story Notes:
This idea just sort of popped into my head when I was writing another story so lets just see where this goes. Bookoos thanks to my beta jblazer, without her I fear this story would make absolutely no sense.