Hard work being a shape-shifter.

You feel the change start beneath your skin, and it is painful. A burn. Sharp. Scorching. The flames sear your flesh. You are alight with the agony. You never speak of it. You live through it. You live around it. You always do. It is what you are known for. Living through. Living around. But you are never not hurting.

You exist somewhere strange. A kind of in-between place where shadow meets light. Or maybe light meets shadow. No one else lives here. No one else is meant to live here. That's what they tell you. No one else is meant to live here. No one else could bear it like you can. That is what you are known for. Living through. Living around.

Your name is Merlin, sometimes. But it's not really your name. It's a toy you have outgrown. It is a shirt that is too small. You pull it out and put it on, but it doesn't fit right. You are a servant, so you polish armor and you sharpen swords and you shine boots. You make beds. You dust shelves. You are clumsy, so you make sure to trip and fall. You make sure to stagger and stumble and drop things. You are cowardly, and you are weak, and you are helpless. You are an idiot.

Your name is Emrys, sometimes. But it's not really your name. It is weight. On your shoulders. You can't walk straight. In your shoes. You can barely lift your feet. You take Merlin and you fold him up and you put him deep in the back of your wardrobe where no one will ever find him or think to look for him. He cannot come with you anymore. You are a warlock here, and you speak flawlessly in languages you have never learned. You cast magic you did not even know you could. They fear you. They worship you. They do not know you, and they never, ever will. Power spills from your every pore. Your veins are aglow with radiant gold. You move mountains. You call forth tempests. You are ruthless. You are unconquerable. Your name is Emrys, and you are a god draped in human skin.

At the end of the day, you tear off your face. You'll think you can breathe, but it's a lie, it's all a lie. And you'll put it back on again in the morning. You won't have a choice. You never have a choice. You lay in darkness. You try not to think about it. The city falls asleep around you. You don't think you remember what it's like to sleep anymore. Really sleep.

You are a murderer. You have killed, and you cannot forget their faces. Terrified and tearstained, sometimes. Sneering and defiant, at others. It does not matter. You have killed them all without hesitation and without mercy, and you would kill them all again, from the charging bandit whose name you never knew to the smirking, swaggering sorceress so unshakably confident in her victory.

Sometimes you are Merlin and sometimes you are Emrys, but you are always always always a liar. You are not kind. You are a killer. You are not honest. You are not good. You know this. You are a liar and you have always been a liar and you have forgotten what the truth tastes like on your tongue. There can be no place for it inside your mouth.

You are not really Merlin. You are not really Emrys. In the darkest hour of the night, when the world outside your window has gone quiet, and there is nothing to distract you from you, you will know this. You are a shape-shifter. You are not a person. Not really. You don't know how to be a person. Take away Merlin. Take away Emrys. Take away the lies you've told and the secrets you've kept and you are nothing at all.

You are a shape-shifter. You shed your skin like a snake. You carry on. No matter what form you take, destiny walks in your shadow and sits heavy on your shoulders. You live through it and you live around it and you never speak of it.

It is what you are known for.

You are what they need you to be.

And you are nothing else.

Notes: an experiment in perspective, I guess? Never written in second-person before, and I wanted to try it out. it was definitely an experience, if nothing else. Don't think I'll be doing it again though.