Disclaimer: Mirage of Blaze is the property of Kuwabara Mizuna and all other entities involved, among which I am NOT included.

Warning: What is my excuse? It's a long weekend, so I think I went a little berserk. Hence, here is an impulsive, rather long-winded, rather haphazard, painfully cliched rambling from an over-imaginative knuckle-head. Blame the heat on the desert summer, but the mushiness is all mine.

Acknowledgment: Dedicated to erah_haruna205 and the rest of the MOB Community, with much gratitude. This was also inspired by the piece That's an Order by EmptyWord. A sort of reply, perhaps? The title is based on a passage in John Milton's Paradise Lost.

My Dark Materials

I despise you.

You alone can speak to me with coldness and bring such pain. You who can inflict such wounds by your mere silence. You who can declare love and hatred with a single breath.

You draw me near as a moth to a flame, but your eyes hold secrets beyond my grasp. And when I reach for you, I would find the barriers of your pride and contempt, barriers so strong that for all my power, I could never breach. You never allow me to.

It is you who forces me to look into myself, and see all that I have become and what I have failed to be. The filth and the grime, the lies and the cruelty, the weakness and defeat. You remind me of all that I wish to forget about myself, my existence and my eventual damnation. The gods have judged the sinner, and you are the horde that bears witness to my execution.

Yet it is with each wound that I am awakened. Only with each thunderbolt from you hands will my spirit revive. Only with you that I am alive.

You look at me with those eyes, and say things that I cannot accept... Amadeus...Master... Beloved... not because I detest them, but because I detest myself for my own yearning to become, what I am not, but what you believe me to be.

Each day, I see myself reflected in your eyes, and I am shamed by the need to feed upon your strength, your hunger and your sorrows to nourish my own self-worth, so that you, above all, will not find me lacking. Your wish to surpass me drives me to turn away from you, and run harder, desperate to hide the truth that I could run no further.

My hatred is my only shield from your disdain, from your rejection. From your pity.

I am afraid of you.

If I am the one that threatens you, why is it that I am the one trembling in fear? That one day you will awaken with the illusions struck from your eyes, and you will realize what I truly am. So easily, you can dispose of me and choose from among the many who desire you. The far more worthy who willingly throw themselves at your feet and openly declare their love for you. As I... could not.

Who was it that said you are responsible for the one you tamed? I have chosen to be responsible for so many others. You, however, chose me, and so easily you can choose otherwise.

What then is a man without his faithful dog? Can he still be called Master? And yet you, the noble beast, remain as you are even as you stand alone. Proud, glorious, powerful, beautiful. Desirable.

Do you not realize it yet?

Your desire is my own addiction. The fire in your eyes ignite an answering blaze within me, searing into every fiber of my being. It is your touch, your very scent that I seek even in every moment we are together, and what I despair for when we are apart. It is your presence that I hope I would find beside me whether I am at my strongest or when the darkness enfolds me. I yearn for your warmth, your tenderness, that hidden promise in your voice every time you try to soothe me. In every dream, in every nightmare, it is your name that I call out to the heavens.

And it is because of this that I despise you the most. You are my greatest inspiration and my worst temptation. My redeemer and my traitor. I am shamed by my own greed, shamed by my own lust, shamed by my own desire to drown myself within you and damn all else - honor, pride, duty - to the nether regions of hell. Your embrace is a siren's call that I wish to surrender myself into, forever to be locked within your protection, never to fear that you will be taken away from me again.

But you, more than anyone, know that my soul has been bargained and my very life is forfeit. My fate has been cast, and so was yours.

I dare you.

I challenge you at every turn. I want to burn and scorch you, to leave the marks that will show the world that you are mine. Just as the wounds you have inflicted will forever mark me. I willingly hurt and scar you, longing to hear you cry out for mercy. To cry out for me.

I drag you to the very limits of your resistance. And I dare you to break the chains I have lashed around you. In a fleeting moment of sanity, I would wonder why I do this to you. Why you even allow me to. Why I desire for you to unleash that latent strength, that wild, visceral creature that you hide beneath your stolid, obedient veneer.

For I know, with burning certainty, that in that moment of release, you would devour me, draw my blood, feed on my flesh, destroy every last inch of me. Your flames will engulf me, until not even the charred ashes remain. Knowing that when I awaken (and we both know that I will), I shall be your own creation, shaped by your own hands, borne of your will and your desires. And if I do not, with my final breath, there will only be that insane joy and one final moment of gratitude, that it was you, and none other, who had brought me to this.

And then, there would be nothing.

That is why I would resist. That is why I would throw upon you the very last weapons remaining in my sorely depleted arsenal to save the the very last dregs of myself. The fires that illuminate are the same that bring destruction. And beyond that there is nothing.

I have created this maze around me, this indomitable fortress that I myself am lost within, a prisoner of my own madness. And it is you alone, my beloved loyal beast, who can find me. You always could. I care no more if the gods fail to heed my pleas, because you would. From every abyss and every void, you have brought me back. Call into the night and my blood responds. Call my name and I will answer. Lead me away from here, on to heaven or hell and you know I will follow.

Which of us then is truly master and slave?

I have sworn never to forgive you.

I refuse to forgive you, because with forgiveness comes freedom, yours and mine. This bondage is all I have known. My one remaining constant. It is all that I trust to hold you to me. I have yet to believe in my own salvation. I have yet to forgive... myself. I have yet to believe that my love is enough.

I long for you to understand, even as I fail to.

Because I know you could.

And I know that you do.

-END-

Author's Note: I'm also not sure "who" exactly is talking in this piece, but I hope I have done "him" justice. Like I said, I went a bit nuts again. Now, PLEASE feel free to knock some sense into me... Thanks!