Lies or truth?

Is this all I am?  I think heavily to myself, slumping my body into Val's, no longer concerned with the effort of keeping myself either upright nor conscious. I just want to disappear, to become another grain of sand of the wind and drift thoughtlessly, aimlessly, through the abyss of nothing.

Then I would not have to deal with any of this. I would not have to have her in my head. But it is as Valerian wisely once said, running away from your problems is no way to get them solved- even if I am simply a puppet for a girl who should have died a long, long time ago.

"You are jumping to conclusions, chérie," Valerian chides softly in my ear, still not moving us anywhere, out of the coliseum or otherwise. Perhaps he fears as soon as he does that I will merely crumble beneath him, slip through his fingers into those fiery ashes that had engulfed me before in a whirlwind of emotions. Perhaps he fears that this time, it will not stop.