I was feeling a little down when I wrote this, so it is a bit depressing, and it was more to practice my description. Merlin seemed the appropriate voice to take on, so here goes...

Becky, don't think I'm stupid... please...

Merlin Monologue

The amount of times a person can sit and think only of one single thing, soon becomes uncountable. And I did soon run out of numbers. As if numbers can begin to compare and explain the wordless death that my head has brought. If I were, with distance, to rate my desolate misery on a scale of 1 to 25, 26 would be too low.

After 17 years of playing, relying on cause and effect to propel my simple life forwards, I have begun to realise. Cause and effect play no part in depression, if anything, it is their lack of existence that forces it upon you, and smothers, and gags, and straps you to the floor with pointed, metal wires. The adjournment. It brings no sadness, but with nothing, it cannot hope to bring joy.

Emptiness and loneliness are born of the same fruit. To be lonely, will no doubt impend the emptiness. Like a metropolis constructed around my core, with skin-scraping, slimed, grey buildings, my lungs fill with polluted air and the light doesn't reach my vision. As if the sun will not grace me with warmth and home, it casts its light by my sides and uses my face to keep its shadows. To help the others. To use me as a gutter.

Sitting and watching a person sleep should bring some peaceful serenity, that is, watching anyone but Arthur, watching anyone I loved less. For someone to sparkle in the daylight, and to glow under the moon, is truly nothing something ordinary can commit. But the external radiance is not enough to define a shining man. To astound does not run skin-deep, but requires every fibre of the body to pull together, making every movement with grace, and taking every breath with calm. Flooding every corner with a dim, quiet glow of a candle, but still having the potential to be that supernova. The burning that, at first, I felt when he looked at me, now ceases to leave, tearing at my organs, my skin, my blood, my life, my body. The agony tempers my judgement and halts the coherency of my communication. It had cut me off from anything I could have hoped for before. In too deep, past the happy medium and into the deep grief of an inescapable prison.

I wonder if it's natural, to find worn-out skin so irresistibly soft, to find arrogance and pride so endearing, and for my heart to flutter in time with his unconscious eyelashes. But when his eyes are dreaming, my heart can only bleed. My mother never let me take anything that was not mine, nor did she let others take something of my own. But Arthur has already taken my heart, and I don't remember him asking. However, I fail to see the wrong. If I could take his... There should be no right in that.

This was no goodbye, not as it sounds. I couldn't bring myself to leave, even knowing how much more effortless his life would be, without my maniacal longing clouding the air that stands thick between us. Love should have brought selflessness... But I hear in my thoughts, solitary greed.

"Merlin..." A single word would flip my aching heart, and always did. Just to hear that name, my name, spoken by a voice such as his. I would lose my breath. But when the reality sweeps the glitter from my unseeing eyes, the next breath rips my throat and lets it bleed fresh pain and blood.

They always said that love leads to craziness, but this rhythmic beating is nothing short of insanity. That love makes you stupid, although, since falling, I have never seen so much truth. And I always thought that love would bring happiness... But I might have died and seldom felt anything.

I begin to wonder if this hurting is really love at all.