I must stay in love with a dead girl.

In a few short hours it will be the one week Anniversary of my hearing about Keelyn's death.
It's been the most devastating event of my life, and that's saying something.

I've spent some part of every day crying in secret, then Falling back on dad's pseudo military training to lock back down my emotions. "ON YOUR FEET SOLDIER! MOVEIT!!! MOVEIT!!!!"
With grim determination I get up, I put on the face the world needs to see from me, and I go about my day.

But I am New Orleans with it's levees broken, and nothing but a single man national guard to bring order to the chaos of my soul.

In the past 5 days I've not only reconnected with her brother after 18 years, but we spent almost every night together. I was getting hopelessly battered by this tsunami and the torrents of these emotions, and he showed up with a rowboat giving me SOMETHING to hold on to. The mark of a great man, and a good friend. He could have just abandoned me to my sorrow, but he was willing to open up the old wounds, and came to help.

He's taken part of the brunt from the turmoil that the news plunged me into, and blocked some projectiles in the tide. But I'm afraid he's risked sinking himself again. It been 17 years since he lost his magical little sister. He bears a big brothers guilt for not protecting her from herself.
I'm just floating along side. With him around... there is less pain. All I have to do is shiver in the icey water and float. But I can't let my grief drag down a man that would just jump in to save some one he hasn't know in nearly two decades.

I call him brother now. Even if I don't say it out loud, I say it in my head.
...and every so often in my head, I add the hyphenated suffix, "-in law".

That's when I know how sick and damaged I am. I was never her lover. I just loved her.

I've kept a light on for her in the windows of my heart for all these years, hoping she would find her way home to me one day. Even if it was only to say goodbye.

Now I know I she's never coming home. I know it's time to turn the light off. But as I look around the cabin of my heart, I see it's the only light I have. When I put it out... I have nothing left but my darkness. More complete and more empty and more cold than I've ever had to deal with before.

It would be so nice to slip under the water of this tsunami. What am I trying to save if this is all I have left.

My Darkness hears my question.

I know what's coming. It's the armor my father forged in the fires of my youth, and quenched with my blood and tears. It doesn't need light. It doesn't need love. Like the Terminator, it doesn't feel fear, pity, remorse or pain. It's a machine that was grafted onto my soul. It doesn't even need the metaphoric air I'm struggling to breath. It is the personification of my duty.

Some how the deluge washed me out of it's embrace, but now the soulless leviathan is hunting me back down.

It is a fate which is worse than a cold empty heart. It was supposed to protect me, but was just my prison. It was supposed to keep me strong, but it just got between me and her. It was why I was never good enough. The secret burden of my warriors upbringing.
If it hadn't been in my way, I might have reached out to her. I might have saved her before she ever ended up in that dark place that made her take her life.

I want to go under. I want to let go. I want to drift away a man who can still feel this much pain rather than to return to being simply a component of that machine.

But I have a mother to care for. A friend to save from the mess I've dragged him into, and a Duty to wear as a burden.

So the armor will have me. It needs my soul to run. I needed her light to keep my faith.

I close my eyes, and memories of the times we shared play out of control. The shards and spikes of my armor sink into my flesh. Tears of anguish and pain stream down my face as my scream fizzles out and the armor takes control.

I close my eyes again... just so I can see her again.

The light in the window starts to flicker... it's fuel is almost spent.
I will forgive her. I will love her forever. I will keep this light on with no hope.

I ride in the Behemoth once again. The howling wind outside doesn't pierce it's inhuman quite. The icy waters of my loss seem warm in comparison to this vault. I wonder how long it will go with a soul that doesn't want to live anymore. I wonder if simply moving within it can pump some life back into me.

I must stay in love with a dead girl.