A short drabble for Guy and Marian, from the BBC adaptation.
Phoenix
His long fingers formed a diamond around the obscenity, not grotesque for its appearance but for its maker. And here was the author of this wound once more, fingers afflicting the flesh with the agony of pleasure and not mortal consequence. The blood seemed still to stain his hand, tendrils of that scarlet spilling between his knuckles. At the crevice of her pelvis, her husband lay. Repenting.
Amber flames seemed to lick the walls as the light wavered around them. Marian inhaled, trepidantly awaiting some vile act of lustful avarice. She had married her almost-assassin.
But all that came was a heart-rendingly soft brush of his lips on the waxy cicatrice. As a bride, she was new parchment and here she had been dreading the sharp stab of the nib; instead, the assuaging whisper of feathers, so to speak, dulcified further by her husband's heartbeat, which pulsed through her flesh as his fingers settled and then rearranged themselves almost imperceptibly. She thought she could perceive the labyrinths of his fingerprints and in her mind she hurried through those signature mazes.
But she felt it. She felt his obsessive concern, his rotting lust transcending to enslaved ardor as a malting, maggot-ridden feather is washed to a plume worthy of an angel's wing.
The Fallen Angel.
Her heart panicked, sweating and flustering in the blood of her chest.
When he had stabbed her, it had been in defence of his household, as a deterrent for The Night Watchman. She had done equally violent things.
His hands seemed tattooed to her flesh now. She dared to look down.
There he was. Her husband, onyx locks twisted over his forehead and behind his quite elfin ears. His azure eyes were misty, like fog over a lake in early morning.
"Myth tells of a bird whose tears can heal all wounds." His whispered words soaked into her skin and her eyes closed slowly. She swallowed.
"A Phoenix. They are reborn from their own funereal ashes." His eyes seemed to cling to this miraculous statement and he drowned himself in her gaze.
"Reborn from vice?" he asked, pleadingly. Her eyes slid open and she smiled.
"Maybe," she replied, hope resonating in her voice. He encircled her scar with his fingers once more and a tear slipped down the slope of his nose and dripped onto the area. His heart pounded achingly in his chest, the little hands and nails of a thousand demons gripping onto the edges of it; yanking; wrenching.
He went to move away, abhorring himself for these selfish tears, but her hand hindered him and stroked through his thick, warm hair. She guided his head to rest on her stomach. He felt his hands shake with nerves- how could he possibly deserve this?
He embraced her waist with his strong arms as his cheek lay over her tummy.
"I'm sorry," he spoke to her skin. Marian had never heard, nor would she ever hear again, such a veritable atonement. His truthful plea was the impetus for the forgiveness that languidly began to ebb over her heart.
"As am I," Marian responded, nervously running her fingers through her husband's hair, feeling secure with his muscled weight on her legs. "Let us be baby phoenixes."