Hoi Polloi/Morphine
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
The sheets were cold. Hoi curled her legs up under the blankets, her wings held tight to her body to conserve body heat. The bed was expansive and empty, her warm companion having not yet returned home for the evening. The room was dark, despite the slight blue glow coming from the large underwater windows. It was still outside, motionless, the movement of the water barely perceptible in the faded light.
She couldn't sleep. Her eyes fixated on one of her sentries that had perched itself on the wall a few feet from her. The spider sat immobile, seemingly lifeless, if not for the steady stream of chatter it fed to its mistress. It had nothing pressing to report.
She closed her eyes, and buried her face in his pillow, taking a deep breath, and letting it slowly out again. She breathed in the manner Blackstar had taught her... cleansing, deliberate and soothing. The past few weeks had taken their toll on her mind as well as her body. The normally cynical and paranoid woman driven at times to the brink, near losing herself to the madness that haunts her every waking moment. Her fingers curled themselves tight into the blanket, drawing them up and over her shoulder, half hiding her face from her insect onlookers. She sighed.
Thoughts of the argument between them ran in a repeating loop through her noise-filled head. He accused her of using him, of taking what she wanted from him, and discarding the most important part: his heart. She had lost her temper, and screamed at him like a madwoman, telling him she wanted all the parts of himself that he had been trying to hide from the world, reprimanding him for not living life with reckless abandon. She wanted him to stop denying himself for the sake of others, and reminded him that she is unable to love.
Hoi cast her vision to the sentries in the room, their multi-faceted gaze falling on family photos, smiling faces staring out of silver frames, hands joined, hugging, or at the very least, connected if only by their mutual joy. She met their faces with a cold and unsympathetic eye. Had she ever been filled with a similar feeling, it was only found at the unforgiving touch of a needle, filling her veins with a luscious heat. The haze spreading over her mind, it satiated her and completed her, if only for a little while, until the hunger grew inside her again with vicious sharpened teeth.
She closed the connection to her insect minion, and settled herself back into the soft pillows. Her thoughts strayed to the one man riot, lying awake next to her at night, his body not needing to succumb to the vulnerability of sleep that plagued the small insect woman. She could almost feel his fingers running through the tousled mess of her hair, his lips running lightly over the skin of her neck. That craving grew inside her at the simple memory of it. Her longing grew fangs and talons, a hunger gnawing at her insides with tooth and nail, filled with a pure physical need. Her body ached from his distance.
He was a drug unlike any other, and she had a desperate addiction that needed to be fed. Morphine, however, can't abandon you, or cast you aside for something better. Demerol won't get frustrated at you, impatient with not understanding your mind or your heart. She couldn't bear to lose him to another, and she refused to let him go.
She sighed, settling into the blankets, her thoughts becoming concrete, and dangerously lucid.
I will make him live life without regrets.
I will complete him.
He will complete me.
And god help any motherfucker who tries to come between us.
