A Price to Pay
"I am for wine, and the embrace of questionable women"
"We are truly free when we fight, or when we fuck"
There was but one woman for Gannicus who was more than the sum of her parts. The rest were only fragments.
The whores he fucked were thighs and hips and lips, small, grace-giving distractions alive to him only for as long as he could stave off his climax. They were ribcages that swelled and settled, the gleam of sweat on a sharp collar-bone, hair as gritty and tangled as his. They were beautiful while he held them and forgotten the moment he did not.
He liked women of ill repute, women who could swear and spit and swing a sword, or women at least who were flexible and would not pine for him when he was gone. And he loved every woman he lay with, in the knowledge that she loved him just the same and that their love was an exchange: of coin, of wine, sometimes of words and always of the sweat from his skin to hers and back again.
And always in his mind, as love passed like sweat from skin to skin, the understanding that it was no more than an illusion. Each woman was only real to him when he felt her body moving under his. She was but price and purchase, and when exchange was through their love was spent. He held as much respect for her as for anyone he met, because he knew they were all slaves to one master or another, but in truth, these women had meaning for him only for as long as their legs were spread.
In past lives there had been other women, he was certain of it. Now these figures were even less present than the whores: Gannicus' relatives were phantoms, trailing their fragments of meaning like shadows. Of his mother, he could recall little more than the smell of lavender, faded and musty like a scent wrested from clothes long unworn. Sometimes it came upon him in a market, wafting from a passing slave whose arms were laden with fragrant herbs. Other times it came in dreams. He no longer sought its drowsy notes upon the air; the smell brought a vague queasy longing to his heart that he found more potent in other remembrances.
A sister, too, still clung to remnants of memories he had tried to discard: she was elbows in ribs and the slap of bare feet on dusty roads, and a small hand that seemed to hang, disembodied, in the dark air above him when sleep was slow in coming, calloused like his with semicircles of grime beneath its short nails. He could not recall whether she was younger or older than he; neither could he recall a name.
There was but one woman for Gannicus who was more than just the sum of her parts, and only she was possessed of a name. Its round vowels rolled about his mouth like honeyed wine. He felt it sitting on the tip of his tongue whenever he was silent, and he laughed frequently so as to keep himself from speaking it aloud.
Melitta.
Melitta was more than thighs and hips and lips. Melitta was a whole beyond what her body made her. It stung him that he had realised this only in the most sordid of encounters; with strangers' eyes upon them, and her form so soft and yielding under his, he understood for the first time that she was more alive than any person he had known before.
She was calm reason in the face of adversity, and quick wit and a ready smile when occasion was glad. She was a gentle spirit and a fighter, as compassionate as she was determined, as tough as she was kind. She was a friend and an ally, and she was also loyal wife to Gannicus' most trusted brother. What little hope there was of a love between them, he had torn apart in the very moment he felt its spark begin to catch light. That had been the nature of their meeting that day: a slow and glorious awakening to a pain that stretched between them like a festering wound. And still they were drawn back to it again and again, curious children picking at a scab so that it could not heal.
It was the only real love he had ever known, and it hurt everyone it touched; it should have been a delicate thing in a hollow world but it drew suffering in its wake like the ragged cape of the reaper.
Oenomaus knew nothing of what had passed between his wife and his brother, but Gannicus felt the betrayal hanging heavy in the air around them and could no longer find the strength to meet his eyes. And when she died, her body in his arms so soft and so yielding, he knew that it was not the deadly wine but his own love which had seen her to the earth.
When she died, their love became an exchange. And, like every exchange in life, there was a price to be paid, not in coin, nor poisoned wine, nor the sweat of sex that might have been, but in blood, hers, smeared across his chest, and two words only: "Melitta, breathe."
Though she was gone she remained the only real thing to him in a world of phantoms and shadows and sordid encounters. It was her face behind his eyes as he lay to sleep and her voice that woke him every morning before the cock crowed. His thoughts alit so often on Melitta that he was in danger of becoming a pillar of salt, looking always to the past. And as sweet as the pleasure her memory gave him was, the agony it wrought in his heart was equally sour. Every moment spent thinking of her was a further betrayal of the honour of the brother he had lost, the man she held above all others.
And so he took to illusions, and he took to the beds of brothels with women whose names he did not ask.
He took to small distractions, in ribs and collar-bones and gritty hair, and found a form of grace in the fleeting moment when all thought faded to white.
He drank and swore and laughed and fucked and it seemed to people he met that he grasped life with both hands, but he hid the name of a love on the tip of his tongue, and found his freedom granted only to know that he walked always slave to his own memories, as did they all.
Reviews appreciated, as always.
A/N: The first quote I started with is probably my favourite Gannicus quote of the series (closely followed by "my cock rages on" haha. Basically everything he says deserves its own tribute). I just think his character is so multi-faceted. This is a bit of a depressing read, I'm sure, but I wanted to find the meaning behind those quotes, in a character who presents himself as this wine-soaked womaniser to hide the fact that there's a lot more going on. And hey, depressing is my forte.