I wrote this after seeing the movie again on TV one night.  Isn't romance/horror such a perfect genre? ^_~  Not my best work, but not my worst either.  I'm usually not so much for the introspective pieces, but I get inspired from time to time...

Disclaimer: I own nothing.  Nada.

.Rest.

Every night the wolves howl, and Jonathan stirs at my side, whimpers in his sleep.  As so much about him was a pleasure and a pain, I know the wolves are his.  I know they have come to let me know that he still loves me.  But the pain comes not from the fact that he still loves me, but from the knowledge that I still love him.

     The world was colder when I rose from the chapel floor, I remember thinking that.  Nothing had changed within it, but me.  I was a new person, if not so complete---a wounded phoenix clawing my way out of the ash.  And there, at my feet, seemed to die all the love in my heart.

     And I left it there.  I told myself I was going to take those steps that would lead me back to Jonathan, take Jonathan's love and make it my own.

     But how could I?  How could I touch him with these hands---hands that had been washed with my prince's blood, and in a sense...washed with Jonathan's?

     I wanted to keep them that way.  God help me, but I did.  Do.  To wake every day and see the same hands that had twisted the knife in his heart.  He opened my eyes to who I had been.  Who I still was.  His love had awakened me, and mine...my love had finally laid him to rest.

     The wolves howl.  Always so close, even on the streets of London.  They howl, and Jonathan cannot rest.

.Tainted Love.

     She emerged from those great doors and I cannot be certain that I breathed until that very moment.  Knowing that she had, in some dark corner of her heart, gone willingly into his arms did not make her any less beautiful.  Indeed, the true horror in me came from the fact that she seemed to be more beautiful because of this newly unveiled darkness.  Her hair hung loose and wild about her face, her eyes so wide and dark with emotions I had no words for.

     This was my wife, and I did not know her.  I saw in her fierceness each of the Count's brides, their voluptuous lips stained red with my blood.  I knew how close she had come to that seductive abyss, because I had teetered on its edge myself.  The same terrified desire spilled through my veins, and with it the helplessness and the self-disgust.  Her image mingled with those half-remembered nightmares.  I saw her hands pulling at my hair, heard her laugh purringly deep as I writhed beneath her experienced touch.  Her nails scoured my shoulders, her teeth scraped against my skin, and she laughed throatily.

     Mina had never laughed like that.  Mina would never laugh like that.  I stared at her with these horrible things in my eyes, and realized that she was staring back.  Knowingly, just as if I had whispered them out-loud.

     But she knew, she knew because the same horrible things were reflected in her eyes.

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~ Loki