Damn you.

Damn every single thing about you. Dark hair, like mine. Pale skin, like mine. Indigo eyes, the same as mine. I damn you and curse you for the chaos that rages inside me.

And, by cursing you, I curse myself.

I curse myself because I seem to do something I shouldn’t be able to. Not with this darkness in place of a heart.

I love you. And I hate you, because you are all I used to treasure, and all that was taken from me, and all that I shouldn’t care about. I can’t care about you. I mustn’t.

To me, you are just a weakness.

You are half of me. You have my hair, my skin, my eyes, my powers. Half of the blood that lies still in your veins is mine. You are my flesh and bone, my child, my only child, the only one I would give my soul to save.

But half of you is her. I see her in you, in your face, when you smile, when you laugh. You act like her, the one I lost. You are my last link to her.

Sometimes I hate you for this. So much more of the time I love you for bringing a flicker of light to this darkness, just for being here.

What do I think of you? I don’t know. I know nothing, only that I wish to protect you. To shield you from the dangers. To watch you succeed.

But… I shouldn’t care.

But I do.

But I pretend not to. I look at you with only a mild curiosity, or with anger, not with affection. Forgive me for that. Old habits are hard to break. How long is it since I have acted like the father I should and shouldn’t be?

Not since she died. She died…

But she didn’t. Because you are so like her. I will not let anyone take you away from me so I can look at you, content, and feel that again. An echo of a memory of something that couldn’t have been real in the first place.

And yet it still hurts. And I treasure that pain, along with the pleasure, because it makes me feel almost human again.

Pain is better than emptiness.

Damn you. Why do you have to look so much like HER…?