I'm all the days that you choose to ignore

Love's the funeral of hearts
And an ode for cruelty
When angels cry blood
On flowers of evil in bloom...

I swear, I only left for a moment.

Was it longer? Was I gone long enough for neglect to set in like rust? Was I gone long enough for a mutiny to happen? Or was it the programmed course all along?

I saw the red glow from the cliff's edge and turned and ran for the last hairpin curve.

Growing heat, heat I've felt before, but this deeper, somehow, stronger...the train wreck wasn't on fire, I'd have seen flames. No, this was just...heat. Anger. Rage, melting the walls of the engine compartment down to skeletal struts.

My eyes dart around, but putting out coal fires is tricky enough. This is...sourceless. How do I put out a fire without flame? How do I put out something hot enough to melt the steel?

He tells me I wouldn't hide things from him. He tells me I wouldn't lie to him. He tells me I'm open. Oh, how the hell does he know what I would do, who I am?

I close my eyes and climb aboard, at the nearest safe place. The heat still sears my hands but I hang on. It's my train, after all.

The funeral of hearts
And a plea for mercy
When love is a gun...

We're off the tracks now, and headed for the coast. Such promise when I stood there.

I'm not at the engine controls, I don't even know if they still exist. I smell smoke and molten metal, feel pain and loss, and I wasn't gone that long, I wasn't!

I wrap both hands around the nearest support, warping from the heat, hissing at the pain of it. We're heading down to sea and the wind whips through my mane. Maybe the cold water will help.

I'm sure the crash won't kill me, and obscurely, as we head in, that makes it all the worse...

The water closes over my head and all I can hear is hissing, all I see are bubbles and roiling dark water and for a moment, I'm too shocked by it even to grow gills and breathe properly. Winter waters, ice melt, snow made fluid, now vaporizing to steam with the heat of the engine.

He feels ashamed. I feel lost. Where will we end up, this time?

And the ocean floor gets closer. I close my eyes, inhaling deeply, shifting in instants, survival a powerful motivator. I exhale slowly through pearlescent gills, wondering how sturdy seahorses are...

Just before our love got lost, you said
I am as constant as a northern star
And I said, constant in the darkness
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar...

(First two stanzas are from HIM's "Funeral of Hearts". Last stanza is from Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You".)