(Rose)
Who am I?
Or rather, what am I?
I can feel that I'm missing a part of my mind. A part of my soul. I'm not the same as before but it happened suddenly.
Some memories are gone too.
I hear this terrifying part of myself telling me... Telling me that I should have died.
That I'm not Rose... That I'm just a flawed copy pretending to be her...
My identity is crushed between these cold hands in my minds, in my nightmare.
I'm not Rose... Rose died of old age hundreds of years ago...
And even the Rose I thought I was, died again violently a few months ago.
I'm just another flawed copy of an identity that never made it this far into the world.
I'm not Rose, I'm not myself, who I thought I was... I never were... I nerver was Rose...
I'm just a monster whom happened to share some of her old memories. What have I done with it?
Pretending them to be mine. Spilling blood. Refusing to die... Refusing other monsters to live...
I'm a fraud. I'm a liar. I'm a monster.
I wished so much to actually be Rose. I dreamt of being her...
I have nothing left for me but shattered dreams and memories of a false identity...
Wishing to be her. Trying to be her.
Even remembering her past. Perhaps it was never sufficient to become her.
I'm just... Nothing. Who am I really? No one. I never had any identity beside that false one. I'm just this monster's creation again... I'm her toy at playing humans. Human dolls.
This new copy I am... Is even more flawed than the previous one.
I don't remember half my life nor half my thoughts. I've lost half my intelligence, half of that lie I was.
And nothing came to fill that hollow but bitterness.
Why am I still alive? To please that monster's whim?
I feel so bad and so wrong in these times of night terrors.
And to know another monster wants my death, again, I wonder who's in the wrong.
I don't recall quite what happened when I died. I just feel somewhat imprisoned since I returned. Prisoner of this fight, of this life, of this fake identity...
A prison that started nice, but that is all I truly ever known in this life truthfully.
I'm truly lost... I want to die.
I want an end for this nightmare I cannot escape from.
There's nothing beside that Rose I'm meant to be...
And I'm supposed to fight a powerful monster now... I never was a hero, was I? At best, a murderer...
How could I prevail... I'm lost and I've lost half of myself in the dark. No matter how precious what I lost feels to me, it's still naught but another part of the lie.
My existence since forever has been built up of lie upon lie upon lie. I'm so tired of it...
I never reached any freedom in any world, have I? Another life and an enemy won't change that my very being is a pointless lie. I probably should have remained dead because now I feel worse than ever, even though I'm now alive...
When will this sad journey end? It's been too long.
~
I wake up in tears and cold sweat in the middle of the night.
I try to catch my breath back. It's painful. I feel awful, lean on the side and vomit everything I held. It hurts.
I begin to cry meanwhile. My head hurts, my eyes do too because of the vomiting straining my face muscles. I feel her hands on my shoulders as she's trying to comfort me.
I yell at her to get away from me.
Don't touch me! You disgust me...
I taunt her violently.
I stand up and run away, dizzy.
I'm lost anyway. Be it there or a mile further won't make a difference. My mind is breaking down.
She caught up to me and grabs my hand. I panic and brush her off. I yell. I attack her. I punch her down and smack her repeatedly. I can't stand the look of her face anymore.
R - It's all your fault! Since the first day it's been your fault! I hate you!
My heart bleeds hearing me say it, but my mind is gone right now.
I punch her head with my two hands repeatedly, until I hear her skull breaking against the ground. I get scared suddenly. I stand up, breathing heavily, trembling.
I turn around and run away aimlessly.
Don't think. Don't think about what you have just done.
Don't think about the fact that usually she was good to comfort you after a bad dream...
Don't think Rose...
I'm crying. My heart hurts so much. I'm running in the dark and end up falling in a ditch a few minutes later.
I slide and fall inside a basement that was along the road I think. I scratched myself all over and hurt my shoulder badly during the fall. It was a long slip and fall along a crevice.
I moan. I'm hurt everywhere.
I can't stand up anymore. I just cry.
Blume had a plan for us to survive the upcoming threat and then live freely together.
I have forgotten what I live for.
I crawl, maybe two metres in pain and tears. I then lie there, until I pass out.
No one will ever sooth me anymore when I wake up after a bad dream.
~
I wake up from a dreamless sleep. I probably passed out more than I slept.
I'm feeling sore. It hurts. Am I even wounded? No, I'm hurt rather. I bled a little where my skin was scratched, but that's about it. My mind however is still broken.
Had I still my essential goal from a previous life, I would brush it all aside and stand up...
I could face the whole world for my love... For my past life love... Did I? I'm still lost inside.
What about this life real love?
That flower... I remember attacking her the previous night. I was still halfway buried in a nightmarish delirium and panic...
Did I kill her?
No... Goodness... What have I done?
I fear I destroyed the one true thing that was good to me in this life, no matter what my real or false identity was...
I think she once told me, that she loves me no matter who I am. She loves me, not the Rose I thought I was...
I'm afraid I've just committed a tragic mistake and casted aside the only thing that made sense in my life...
I crawl out. I'm in pain. I'm hungry, I'm dirty. I'm suffering a lot inside.
Blume might not have ever been the dream companion to me, but she was... A lot of it.
My balance has shifted since I awoke within her flesh... I have to find my balance. I have to find her...
I crawl through the hole and reach the outside air. Morning light. Some mist. Clear and cold skies. I walk toward our camp just a little further. I pushed her off somewhere around there on the way. Please be alright. Please hear me apologise...
I can't find her.
Neither dead nor alive. She's gone.
I do find stains of blood where I most likely hit her repeatedly.
She's not there...
At the camp, my clothes remain abandoned. Hers, are gone.
My heart swells in ways I rarely felt and I tear up.
She left...
Blume left me.
~
I dressed myself in a now accusatory silence. I'm feeling sad and guilty. At least I know these feelings are really mine and mine alone...
I return in the city alone and lonely. I had seen something I now want for some reason...
Because since Blume chose to disappear, I believe she also chose to go ahead without me, rather than truly abandoning me. I think she understood she should leave me alone for a while. I don't believe... What I did was sufficient to make her turn her back on me for good.
That said and believed, this also shows how selfish I am. I hate myself...
Anyway... I think she went on ahead, and therefore I know what she's planing to do and where, approximatively.
She thought, I think, she'd better take care of the Ogre by herself. Even though that was never the plan, I think I know her well enough to assume that's what she chose to do.
She let me run away and plans to face the evil all by herself.
I screamed loudly when I realised that. This was me!
I was the one running up front toward the danger when the other was too scared to react. I used to be the one able to face everything by myself while she trembled.
Now, it's her... She faced my death. She faced her own. She survived. She returned. She pulled me out from oblivion. And now she's walking toward the fight to come, alone...
She became alike me whom she loved and admired... While I remained ill from resurrection and slipped down into the decay of my mind.
I'm gritting my teeth. How could I forget that I love her so much?
I have an enemy inside my brain...
How can I overcome that?
I went back into the depths of the museum. There was a cabinet with swords in the basement. I fracture it open and pick up one.
Having a sword in hand brings back painful memories...
But I will probably have a use for it sooner than later however, so I pack it up and leave.
~
Blume... Where did you go?
I'm so sorry...
I'm scared. I was so scared of what I am, and so sad of what I'm not, of what I'll never be...
I'm so sorry Blume.
~
The sun rises again. I'm alone.
In the distance, I can guess something happening.
Blume understood that I felt trapped, not in control of my life anymore.
She will try to free me by defeating the monster that is after us...
Being controlled, by destiny, by responsibilities for my actions... It participated in my breakdown.
Finding everything suddenly different around me and even within me. It participated in my breakdown.
The experimental process of safeguarding my memory and persona, in order to resurrect me after a violent death. The step for a new life we envisioned.
It was obviously not a flawless procedure. How much of me was lost or corrupted in some way along this?
It participated in my breakdown.
The pieces of memories from right before I was killed... They're a trauma that I can't fully recall. It participated too. What the Ogre did to me at that time, it bore influences upon what I am today I just now begin to grasp.
She poisoned my soul in a way. I'm just only realising the consequences of these events I don't remember upon myself.
Ogre destroyed not only my body, but also parts of my soul.
That, I can tell.
This awful wound. It lingers still...
Ogre poisoned my mind... She's not the only reason why I came to rapidly feel so bad lately, but she's one of them.
Dear past sister in heavens...
I'm very anxious about my identity in a broad meaning of it. To some degree, I have no right to call you as sister...
To many degrees, I have no right to assume the name of Rosemary Herson.
Truth matters. Choices too. A part of being human is living with paradoxes, and they bring pain.
Rose I've never truly know, since I came long after your time.
Rose that recently died.
You two, I'm not quite. In a way as I'm not quite who I was yesterday.
But I share a lot of your memories and history, so I chose to keep the same name you bore all your lives. I chose to live as Rose, who is a continuation of you both who came before.
Like beings-like-her, whom can die and return now. Or like roses that return each year. We have sufficient common ground to be all one and a same kind now.
I don't want to be anyone else but you. I am Rose and that will be the end of it.
I won't deny the truth of your deaths however.
Your lives are mine now. I will grow from you as Rose.
Blume... It's me...
~