The Black & White - Carnivàle, its scenarios and its characters, belong to Management (alias Dan Knauf) and HBO.
Sign the Waiver - Incestuous themes and aimless musing on symbolism abound, because I need a cigarette after Clancy Brown and Amy Madigan share so much as a conversation. Takes place sometime between The Road to Damascus and Lincoln Highway.

Mat' Rossiya
by Vorona

He'd hated having to choose between them only because it hadn't been a choice at all.

As if there had ever been any doubt. And Iris, though she had resigned herself to her fate, had not doubted him even then. If she had, the shock that had flickered like a startled bulb across her face, as they'd watched Tommy Dolan publically commit his name to her crimes, would never have registered. Oh, he knew his Iris in the face of scrutiny - she had always been the more careful one in matters of appearance (though he had always been more vain): her head would have dipped down rather than snapped up, her eyes would have closed in feigned anguish rather than widened with bright, sincere tears. No, she'd never doubted him for an instant. It wasn't in her to do anything less than believe in him.

He'd stolen her penance, she'd claimed - shouted at him when the house was tight and dark that night, crying at some morphing emotion that also fettered her voice, breaking it when she desired its cold power, making it shrill when she meant to hiss. She was leaping at some faraway fruit, grasping for the red orb of anger but managing only to knock her hands against the lower hanging relief, unripe frustration and half-rotted joy.

And oh, Iris, he'd breathed, his great voice gone little-boy-brittle, if only he'd had the strength not to betray you. . .

She'd looked at him then; he'd privately come to call that particular change in her eyes as Mother Russia. They grew unrelentingly cold, so that her body might become a warm blanket in which to wrap him.

The first touch, the back of her cracked hand across his face - almost a blow, but slowed and muffled to become a caress. He covered it with one of his own, ran his fingertips over her hand's familiar creases and calluses, her strange skin shiny and smooth and rough all at once. Hands that had been used in prayer and in toil and in love, and bore the marks of all things openly. The very essence of Iris pooled down from her twisted heart into her hands, each knuckle a knot tied in his name, fading into branch-like tendons and veins, into the freckled stalks of her forearms. How he loved being anchored in her arms, enfolded in her roots. So few truly understood the many meanings of a family tree.

The one etched into his hide had seemed to shiver, as if in wind, when Iris sighed against his throat. His skin prickled with gooseflesh, and the warm exhiliration that always accompanied his sister's embrace threatened to overwhelm him. The soft, simple heat of Iris (cold eyes closed) stirred within him a beast more blue- than black-eyed. It was always through a six-year-old's gaze that he saw her. Did she forget? his first murder had been done in her name, two taps against his palate forming the battle cry of a desperate orphan.

I will not be sacrificed!

Bittersweet Iris, no. Why couldn't she see? she was neither lamb nor virgin; she was the altar upon which they were bloodied, the goddess-shrine cast in pale gold, arms outstretched to receive the dark boon of his devotion.

Iris means 'messenger'.

So does 'angel'.

The elder sibling, she had descended first, and grown earthly strong enough to break his own fall, when his small soul-star had become dislodged from the heavens. Every time he fell upon her again he remembered the first. First born. First death. First deity. First love. First time.

I did it for you.

First priority.

Alpha.

And while he knew his sister well - sister, mother, lover; oh, Biblically well - in the awestruck manner of worship, a part of him still marvelled: how could she have possibly thought he would allow Tommy Dolan, no more than a tool not even conscious of its own purpose, to take her away from him?

How could he leave behind that which eternally came before him?

Trust, dear Iris. Faith. The Lord works in mysterious ways; was it any wonder he had begun to keep secrets? After all, his Lilith (first wife, slayer of children) had kept her own. He was not yet ready, she'd told him; Neither was she, he replied with his eyes to her searching gaze and hurt-pursed lips. But the time drew near.

He tried to imagine the expression of her revelation, whether it would flutter like the feathers he was certain had once adorned her back, like that night, in her anger-relief-frustration-joy. He pictured bright, sincere tears and the renewal of her divine veracity. The very thought of it was almost enough to compell him to drop to his knees before her now (she sat neatly in her parlor chair, the self-made thimbles of her callused fingertips embroidering some flora onto a canvas of stretched wool), to strip bare of his suddenly stifling clothes, to whisper Behold! I am the vine, ye are the branches!¹

But he remained still, save for the slight tightening of his fists around the newspaper he had ceased to read some time ago. The crinkling of the thin paper, though quiet, was enough to draw Iris's eyes from her needlepoint. Justin, his contemplations guiltless, returned her stare.

"Is something wrong?" she broke the silence. Already there was an edge of preparation in her voice. Expectant, always expectant; no strike against him was so painful as Iris's rare hesitations.

He studied the way her mouth formed the question, the way she seemed to kiss the air with the last word. The skin of and around her lips was lined from so many such kisses, always pressed off hard to seal in as much dedication as could fit them. Months had passed during which he had only felt those kisses in her breath or grazing along his cheek, and both keenly felt the heavy ache of abstinance, each denied touch a drip of lead upon their hearts, their bodies.

"No," he murmured. "Nothing." The smile that touched the corners of his mouth was at once soothing and sorrowful. Iris returned it in lieu of speaking further, her own smile one of domestic contentment she usually reserved for the company of strangers.

Justin, where are you?

Her face fell abruptly, her brow knitted in pain, and for an instant Justin wondered if he hadn't been lost enough in his thoughts to have grown lax in guarding them. His own eldritch nature aside - the one way in which she did not tempt him; he had never attempted to use his powers on or against her, and couldn't even be sure that she wasn't immune to them - the connection between them, of love and life and body, had gifted both with the ability to read the other in a way even Norman had termed uncanny.

You always knew what was inside me.

But his fears were unrealized, as Iris frowned down at her hand. Even from where he sat, five feet and cosmic worlds away, Justin could see the scarlet spot welling upon the pad of her left index finger. He moved without thinking, gliding from his chair to kneel before hers, and took her hand in his before she had a chance to suck the hurt away.

Iris watched him silently as he pressed his thumb near the tiny puncture, causing the small bead of blood to grow fat and heavy enough to roll off her finger. It hit her unfinished needlework with a quiet pat, darkening a section of green tree leaves to an autumnal maroon, but he didn't notice, concerned as he was with the stain on her skin.

In his dreams, he sometimes bled blue. Apprehension, like a flush of morphine through a syringe, coursed through him: what would it mean if he and his sister no longer bled the same color? the same blood? It was something he had never considered before. The thought of being so separate from her. . .if blood changed, why not flesh? Would it rend from their very bones? Oh, God, what of their bones. . .

"Justin. . .?"

No. He refused to accept that. He would not allow it. He would sooner sew their skins together with the dullest of needles - this needle, if need be.

"Alexi?"

The vulnerable eyes of a boy-child rose to meet hers, as he lifted her injured finger to his lips and darted out his tongue to rid her skin of its mocking prophecy. Would she taste the salt of his tattoo in an attempt to do the same, he wondered?

He could have his answer now, he knew, if he wished it. They would spend the evening, the night, even the dawn licking each other's wounds, bathing one another from within with the hot, tinny gustation of their shared blood, and it had been so long. . .

At first glance, she appeared stoical to his administrations, so still were her features. It wasn't until her chest rose and fell in a lengthy, silent sigh that Justin noticed his other hand had been creeping, kneading its way up one perfect, stockinged thigh, dragging the coffee-colored fabric of her dress up with it. Almost out of habit, his thumb began to move in slow arcs along the pale skin peeking out from betwixt silk and cotton. Her lips parted in time with her legs, responding to the gentle push of his arm against her right knee, and the steadiness of her breath began to falter. Her cold eyes lit with little sparks of hope, like the first rays of a blinding daybreak stretching sleepily across winter-whitened ground, and narrowed slightly as his hand dipped low, as his thumb brushed against her center.

Mother Russia.

Mother's dead!

She ran the knuckles of her free hand along his temple, and he flinched back as if the caress had been a blow.

Again the flutter (rage-confusion-torment-despair). Again the void.

". . .Goodnight, Justin," Sister Iris quietly bade him, and began to rise.

Irina!

His hand shot out to grip her wrist, so tightly he could feel her pulse beneath their skin.

Hers was cold. He knew that if he held her long enough, it would no longer be so, and had her expression not been anticipative, he did not doubt that he would have.

Not yet. Not yet.

He released her arm, and she lingered, waiting for him. Justin smiled, wondering if she was aware of the comfort to be found in her glassy surface of patience. Iris had always been his mirror: her first murders had been done in his name. Not yet. She would wait for him a bit longer; therefore he could, too.

"Pleasant dreams."

Her jaw tightened as she stepped around him. The brisk clicks of her shoes on the wooden floor echoed as she crossed the hallway, ascended the stairs.

Justin stood and sighed, running a hand over his face and back through his hair. No, not any sort of choice at all. It angered a part of him, more black- than blue-eyed, her enduring control over him. Even she didn't realize its depths, that he followed her lead in all things, from childish games to cruelty to unhinged idolatry. She who had first locked her tongue behind her teeth. She who had first christened their ministry with innocent blood. She who had first recognized his true potential, and she who had put that destiny first, had put him first, above all other matters. And he would show her, prove to her, that the stones with which she had paved his path had not been laid in vain. She was no less a half-god than he, for what other entity could so perfectly craft the fate of a man?

Wondrous Iris. Angel, now above him in her room.

He picked up her discarded needlepoint and studied it. Blood knew blood, knew the way of things. The heart knew, even when the mind did not. Taking up the loose end of the green thread from which the needle still swung like a hanged man, Justin extended his arm, and watched the tainted leaves unravel from the apple tree Iris had been stitching. There, he decided, nodding once in approval at the naked gnarled branches he'd unveiled; that was much better.

He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. Mother Russia, the country of his birth, the Eden of his blood and family Tree of Knowledge.

He would join her soon.

¹ I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. John 15:5

The Fine Print - Yes, I am aware that Justin has not been celibate, but celibacy and abstinance are two very different things. In this case I refer to his actions with Iris alone; Celeste and whomever else Justin might have had among the possibly rotating maids of the household, I don't think he interprets them as anything more than toys, and his inconsideration is thus noted (or not noted) in his total thoughtlessness towards them.