Sorcerer's Sleep
-Sunpies-
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, situations, or places contained herein.
A year. A year in the coffin; his body trapped in death. He couldn't feel, see, breathe (he knew they were there -burrowing and calling his name- but when he listened for them the way out wasn't there yet, was it?)
The Black God didn't come for him though he should have, Roger could see the god like a ghost in the peripheries of his mind. Maybe they both knew that by the end he would slavishly live and painfully die as his lust for power and death brought so many of the living away from the world of light.
The dead don't sleep, you know. Roger doesn't sleep. A year went by and he didn't sleep. He grew tired, weary, exhausted. But he didn't sleep, couldn't sleep, couldn't die. On the nights that he doesn't sleep he sits in Thom's room. His rescuer, his savior, his stooge; he'll watch Thom "sleep" and the boy will know (he always knows) but he's too busy dying and far too afraid to say anything.
Sometimes he imagines that Thom is Alan. Alanna… He used to think of her when he was dead. In his mind he played the moment over and over again as she killed him. In those split seconds before he died he had felt the gods on her like a cloak of fiery light and it hadn't mattered that she shouldn't have been able to touch them or her; for a few seconds the gods were touching them both and he could see that the two of them mattered.
When he couldn't sleep he dreamt that Jonathan was dead. Alanna looked on and couldn't cry out. He took her hand and she felt solid, real. Her tears and the heat of her hard body were a part of the reality, encroaching on his delusional death. Her heart that beat like a hammer against a drum worked for both of them; because gods know he doesn't have a heart.
That is still how he sees her, even when she's strong and resplendent in her royal garb; she cries for release and they dance and dance slow, waltzing bouts in the circles of his mind.
Perhaps she too would scream out for death by the end. He looks at Thom who plays Alanna and he wants her to yell for help, beg for the end, shriek for the Black God to descend in heavy robes to carry her away. They'll be there together then, she'll never get away.
When that time comes he'll make her scream for him.
Sorcerer's Sleep
-Sunpies-
Because Roger must have been insane by the end.