Yet another dark and angsty PWP. Not a cheerful fic, do not read if you want happy, happy, joy, joy fluff.
And here was me promising myself I wouldn't do anymore pointless PWPs. My excuse is that I do have a fic with a plotline in the works but I still need to write the epilogue and my beta working on the parts I've done has gone AWOL on me. *Sighs*

He doesn't love me.

That I know. I've always known that and have never expected anything more from him. I don't care in the least about it. Honestly, I don't. Love is just an ideal made up by hopeful romantics who ironically enough spend their lives alone

What does bother me is the fact that he doesn't know me.

I see him watching me sometimes. An intense, almost surreal glare in his eyes. But I know it isn't me he sees. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something there that makes me know that when he looks at me, it isn't even a man he sees.

I am a woman to him.

A god damned woman.

Sometimes it sickens me. It twists at my guts and turns my stomach. This man is living a fantasy. And I am the unwilling character. He's fashioned me into his past. I don't think he even knows he has, but since I've been with him, my tastes have changed. I've even altered the coffee I drink.

From being an espresso man, I've changed to cappuccino.

Sarah's drink.

His dead wife. I'm taking the shoes of a dead woman. Sometimes I curse her name, I curse her for dieing and I curse her for stealing his heart so completely.

And then I curse myself.

How dare I even utter those sacred words? How dare I even think of taking her place by his side? She was the first, his love, someone he will never forget.

But I still can't leave. I continue to feed his fantasies and I continue to allow him to change me and mould me into what I fear is a reanimation of his true love.

It's always the little things.

The way he touches me, both at night and in the day. The way he smiles or fondles my cheek as if my bones were small and delicate.

Like Sarah's.

I've seen pictures of her. They're all over his house. Like some fucked up altar. There's even one by his bedside.

I watched it last night. As we had sex, with him on top, he's always on top. I couldn't tear my eyes away from her smiling face. It watched the two of us and I imagined that delicate mouth twisting downwards into a fierce frown. I saw her fingers previously wrapped together, lift and point accusingly at me and she mouthed the words I knew only too well.

How could you?

How could I take advantage of this man? How could I use his vulnerability for my pleasure by ignoring his gaze and instead imagining it were actually me he loved?

How could I?

I am worthless. No more than an object. And if he were to ever remove the veils blinding his vision, he too would see that.

He's at my door again. I can tell it's him from the knock. Quiet, yet firm. He smiles at me as I beckon for him to enter but he remains on the doorstep and shakes his head.

"No." those words are soft. "Why don't you come back to the ranch?"

Come back? I can never do that. I can never come back, for I'm not Sarah. I never have been, and I never will be.

But he is blind to this.

Which is why I am prepared to spend my life pretending to be Sarah. As long as I remain quiet when he gasps her name in brief ecstasy. If I act like a good puppet and follow his unconscious rules, then I will never be alone.

As long as I can be like Sarah, I will be happy.

It is better to live the life of someone else, than to not live a life at all.

Isn't it?