Yearn all you want. Plead all you want. Beg on your hands and knees for her to tell you who you are: you will get nothing from the Dark Dragon. She does not want a lover. She does not want a prop. She does not want an asset. She does not even want you to be silent. She towers above you, holding you without desire, without demand -

Without... indifference?

You have felt indifference before; the grey paintbrush of a closed door. There is too much contempt here for it to be indifference. She despises you, complex being that you are. You can feel it; she hates your fear, hates your hope, hates your desperation - hates everything about you except for what you are.

"Weak. Pathetic. What here is worth hiding?" she said, looking down through lashes set with stars.

Because she still has not broken you. Has not willed you to be a weak and desperate thing, crushed under her heel. She hates your actions. Hates your fear. Hates everything that you do and everyone that you pretend to be. But she does not hate this true, vulnerable thing that shivers beneath her claws. She only hates the shivering.

"Was that when I stopped hating Heron?" she said to herself. "When she stopped lying to herself? She made me so angry before. The hypocrisy. Fighting for a world that she didn't believe in. Fighting with a body she didn't fit in. Fighting for a romance she didn't feel. How could I not hate that? But bit by bit it changed. She changed. She started seeing beyond me. Stopped making excuses for what she was. Stopped feeling shy about walking into stranger's houses and breaking their vases, stopped pretending she was only wearing those dresses as part of stealth missions, stopped fucking thinking all the time. The last time I saw her I realized I wasn't seeing that bundle of lies and contradictions any more, I was only seeing the curious, explorative eye through which the universe saw itself. She wasn't pretending to hate me any more. She just wanted to see what I'd do next."

Her attention wheels back into focus. "But you are as bad as she used to be, as bad as all of these wretched Handmaidens, as bad as everyone else in this hideous world. You [i]know [/i]who you are: this thing of becoming, this yearning, transformative spark of potential, this water-man who takes the shape of anything he is poured into. And rather than simply be that, you wrap yourself up with a curse like a protective blanket! You are the ocean pretending to be a man, and I cannot respect anything that would lower itself such."

She whirled you away and stood alone, staring up at the moon that was breaking through clouds and stars and passing above. If there were rooftops in the way they wisely withdrew from the Dark Dragon's piercing stare.

"I hate you," she said thoughtfully. "Almost as much as I would hate a dragon who pretended to be the end of all things."