Halo and Horns

    She wore a halo.
    Her eyes were golden like the sun. When she smiled at me, the light would light up her entire face. This divine, ethereal blush that made her shine. She was radiant, and beautiful, and light. Everything that someone should be. Everything that is beautiful.
    Before we met, she would go to picnics in the park. She would sit with her group of friends at lunch, all just as perfect and beautiful as she was. The light she had about her was one of someone who never knew pain, or heartbreak, or darkness. Her life was filled with light. She could do any sport that she wished. She volunteered at her church every other day. And she was happy.
    And then I came along.
    I...I didn’t have a halo. Maybe I had one once. But it was so long ago that I was happy and light and carefree, and by that point my halo had cracked into evil, snarled horns.
    She came into my life.
    She pitied me.
    She gave me attention in the way that only someone as light and beautiful as her could show to someone as dark as me. She sat at my table at lunch. She sat on my bed in my home that had torn me apart. She sat on the phone with me everyday, trying to shine some light on my world.
    She tried so hard to put me back together.
    It doesn’t exactly work that way.
    People like me, we can’t exactly be put back together. Once a halo becomes horns, and the angel’s wings are torn away, you can’t bring that light back.
    But oh, she was so hopeful. I could see it everyday. I knew that she didn’t love me. How could she? She was angelic and beautiful and radiant in the way that I never could be. She didn’t love me, she loved what she saw in me. What she thought I could become with her help. What she wanted me to be.
    Stupid fucking white knight complex.
    I don’t know when she realized that it wouldn’t work. That her efforts had been in vain. That I was far, far too broken to be stitched together. Whenever she realized it, though, it was already too late. 
    I’m still not sure what it was that kept her there. It couldn’t have been love, at least not love for me. Possibly love for who she thought I was. Maybe it was because she was lost, after having spent so long trying to repair me, that she wasn’t quite sure what she’d do without it. Maybe she was starting to break even then.
    Whatever the reason, she stayed, and I watched her halo crumble. I tried to get her to leave, I really did, but she didn’t budge. Angels were always too stubborn for their own good. 
    She fell apart. Her light dimmed. It started in her body, slowly moving inward, until it faded from even her eyes. No longer golden, they stayed a dull, lifeless gray. Then her wings started to moult, more and more feathers falling off every day. Her halo cracked and twisted and whirled until she wore horns like me.
    I dragged her down with me. I didn’t want to, but that’s how devils are made. She fell from light, and now her halo is gone. She wears horns like me.