Unrequited, Evermore

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I wanted you to ask me, why: Why had I killed your experiment, Westley, by setting your machine to fifty? I wanted you to ask me what I meant when I said to him, "You truly love each other, and so you might have been truly happy. Not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the storybooks say. And so I think no man in a century will suffer as greatly as you will." I wanted you to ask, but you never did.

That silly 'Princess' Buttercup, just before I came to your secret laboratory, had set me off, you see, with her last melodramatic bit of tripe, when I had said, "I would not say such things if I were you," and she replied, "Why not? You can't hurt me. Westley and I are joined by the bonds of love, and you cannot track that; not with a thousand bloodhounds. And you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords."

She insulted me, too, then, but it was not the insult that drove me to do what I did; that, I could have simply ignored as the rant of a lesser being. It was jealousy. Wanting. I wanted, exactly what she described, -what she had, and has still,- and yet, I knew I would have it not, for there are some things florins and titles can not buy. Some things simply can not be bought, no more than they can be tracked, or broken.

Jealousy, and desperate desire, hatred for what would never be mine, rang in every word I spoke to Westley before I set the machine to fifty, before his screams, for a few precious moments, drowned out the cries of anguish of my own heart. You never heard.

If you had asked, I would have told you, told you everything, then. I would have told you that if it had moved you to love me in return as I had loved you, only you, all these years, you might have toyed with ME on your machines. I would have denied you nothing, but you never saw.

I cannot fault your loyalty, your service to me, and yet, I do. I fault. I despise your loyalty, and your service, for those are the locks that bound the chains of iron around my silent heart. How could I speak to you of love, when I knew, too well, how you would respond? You would have registered, the first moment that I spoke it, perhaps the slightest surprise, the vaguest amusement. I would not have seen it touch the blankness behind your eyes. You would then have offered to comply with what so ever I desired, not knowing that to be pandered to in such a way by the man I loved would have broken me entirely.

You were ever the master torturer, my dear, beloved Count. Now, with your death, you make me suffer as no device could ever do. With your loyalty, your service, you flogged me raw. With your blindness to every look I gave you, you racked me. With your deafness to everything I truly MEANT in all that I said, you branded me. I should be used to your torments by now.

Silence, fools say, is golden. Nonsense. I tell you it is lead, a weight to press a man with until he breaks. Silence is lead, and you are dead, and I, I envy you that. The storybooks lie, they do, I know it well. This, too, I know: No man in a century will suffer as greatly as I do.

For me, for your Prince, there is no miracle pill, no 'happy ever after'. There is only burying you, my Rugen who was never mine, and my heart with you. There is only, now, still, as always, silence, and the only love I have ever known, unrequited, ever more.