imagine you were born hungry. imagine you were born with a hole in your gut that can never be filled, that is always writhing.
you are a mirror. you were born a mirror, surrounded by mirrors. the first thing you ever know is that you are not human. the second thing is that you are not him. you are a reflection, with his face and his voice and the people who loved him. you can mimic him, pretend so well that you are not anything else, but you cannot escape the aching hunger in your stomach, in your mouth.
he cared for the other one, the you-but-not-you. you hear that you died in his arms once. you don't know how to feel about that; you don't know him, don't care (because you're not him even though you want).
nevertheless, you are drawn to him. maybe it's the way he looks at you, guilty and frustrated and awe-struck all at once, a complicated mixture of feelings that has you shying away and inching closer, bit by bit. you decide you like the way he looks when he's happy, though you'd never say it to his face.
that's probably why you don't say anything, when the world twists, soft graphite and watercolors. because you like seeing him happy.
this world is good enough. it doesn't matter if it isn't real, it can be good enough. you can be alive. he can love you like he loved him be happier here, without the pressure, without the fear. isn't that good? why can't it be good enough for him?
you know you don't matter to him, not like the real you. you know that when he looks at your face, all he sees is the other one. he doesn't understand. it's not fair. it's not fair. you want something for yourself for once.
he says he'd die, if that's what you wanted. standing on the precipice. his heels slip over the edge, hanging in space. you want. you do not want. you want, but not like this. you imagine his body below the city lights, arranged like he's sleeping, a halo of red seeping into his hair. you wonder what forever looks like with him, what it might look like without him. he would die for you. you have never been so afraid of that.
he pulls you over the edge, hands entangled.
you are the only one who can stop this. you are the only one who can save him.
(part of you doesn't want to. part of you is selfish, and aching, and hungry.)
(what would he have done?)
you catch him. save his life. it feels like the worst thing in the world. you hate yourself, just a little bit, for not wanting it. the hunger coils in your stomach.
you leave for a while (because of the severance). you don't want to talk about it. the far shore has waves that beat endlessly against the sand, and you fell apart and shivered back together- and you don't want to talk about it.
you tell him to take you somewhere. anywhere. somewhere nice.
(a nice place to die, you think. you're too much of a coward, too much of a monster, to say it.)
it's beautiful, and he's smiling, and there's a gaping emptiness in your gut. you feel yourself shaking apart, skin to bones.
you tell him you are hungry, the words ripped from your throat like the awful truth they are. and he just looks at you, the way he always does.
and then he kills for you. not human, not yet (you wonder if he would), but it still screams as it dies.
he holds the heart in his hands. you are hungry. from here, it just looks like meat. it drips, plip-plop-plip, black blood splatting on tile. you are hungry. he offers it to you.
(despite everything, you sort of want to be human. despite everything, you sort of want to be dead.)
you close your teeth around his fingers instead. like a feral dog. like somebody who is not (has never been) human. his blood is red, and you are terribly, painfully hungry.
you tell him you are a lost cause, a monster with a pretty face and nothing behind it. that he should give up, should leave you alone, should let you die (should kill you himself, really).
he cries, salty and miserable, shoulders shaking. he cries. for you. because of you. all you can do is stare.
the heart drips on the floor between you. you are hungry.
(he does not look like an angel, or an icarus, or a savior. he looks like a fourteen year old boy in love with a monster.)
you have always been selfish.
you have always been hungry.
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It's about like.
Willow fought to be seen as strong, because she is and for a very long time people not only convinced her that she wasn't, but that a lack of strength correlated to a lack of worth. And because of this past of having to prove herself and rediscover who she is and could be, Willow accidentally internalized the idea that others perception of her as strong is conditional on her always succeeding despite the obstacles, always staying in control and on top of things, always being the shoulder to cry on, etc etc.
And to an extent, she was right! Amity (unintentionally and well meaningly) refused to acknowledge willow's strength, leading to her having to prove herself, Boscha takes great pleasure in pointing out the chinks in willow's armour because Boscha feels better about herself when someone else is beneath her and she most often makes Willow that target. These are examples in which someone (correctly) paints Willow as pretending to be strong, but act like if they peeled back that facade, all you'd be left with is weak, half a witch willow. Whereas Hunter and Gus understand that even if you peel back willow's front of strength to see the more vulnerable side of her, there's still a strong foundation that takes little time in getting back into the swing of things once she's let it all out. Willow can be reliable and have debilitating anxiety. She can be whiney and needy and still be brave and powerful. Reliable people need someone to rely on too.
Willow's arc in labyrinth runners meant a lot to me because being consistently told that you are weak and need the help of people who love you but who struggle to understand you and see past their own need to protect you, by those people hit close to home and was incredibly validating to see. Somebody once compared the writing of those interactions to microaggressions, and intentional or not it resonated with me bc of that I think.
And now willow's arc in FTF completes this in a way that's very viscerally satisfying to me. Because proving your worth to people, no matter how successfully you do so, takes such a toll on your own mental well being and self perception. Bottling up your emotions so you don't drag others down is so difficult. And you deserve to cry like a big fucking baby if you've been doing this. Let it out!
For the future is an episode about being seen and heard, so to have Willow be so thoroughly seen and heard not just by the people who understand her best within the show, but also by the writers and consequently the audience is just.
It's what she deserves. And I love her very much
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