Title: Serial Killer Holy Men
Characters/Pairings: Lancia, Mukuro
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for violent imagery, religious metaphors and well, you know, Mukuro
Word Count: 1600
Prompt/Theme: #23 "learn from yesterday, live for today and hope for tomorrow" at prompt_in_a_box's Round 19 (Albert Einstein Quotes) & #1 "I believe that if you believe hard enough you will soon enough be saved." (Arkaye Kierulf - Horses) at mission_insane's Inpired By Poetry table
Summary: Once in a while, Lancia needs to be alone and pray.
Notes: Title taken from an Otep song
Shattered skulls & broken limbs & crushed bones, bodies torn to pieces, mangled & defiled, blood, blood, everywhere: on his hands & brows & clothes, the floor & walls, on those horrified expression, where the faces still sparked recognition, fear & pain & death, the shock of betrayal, accusation.
Rain is hitting like needles, a welcome sensation to escape (accompany) the slaughterhouse images; run, run or you'll never get away.
(Try as you may, you cannot run and you'll never get away.)
He finds sanctuary beneath the indulgent smile of the Madonna and for a brief moment he can truly believe that Mukuro won't follow, that he can't enter the sacred haven of the pious, shut out like the devil that he is. But it's only an illusion, a trick of the mind, for Mukuro is always there, in a special corner of his mind and all Lancia's got is a muted buzzing in his head, a sense of confinement, displacement, as though this body is not his own anymore but belongs to someone else (which it does) and he's merely borrowing it for the while, like a coat or conviction.
It's quiet here, the silence of the grave, where only the dead will speak to you and the ghosts that haunt you will hush to let them. He listens to the story of pain and anger and disappointment that he knows by heart; they keep blaming him, cursing him, asking why, an answer he cannot give them, because he cannot remember. He only remembers the stench when he woke up to that brutal nightmare, in the midst of their remains, entrails, gutted like fish, and thought he had gone insane, scratching at his eye to erase the image he would wake up to night after night.
His hands are folded now, fingers blue and white from the cold, clenching, clinging, and his lips are moving silently: a prayer, a mantra or a spell to ban Mukuro, exorcize him; words that lost all meaning, hollow syllables that do nothing to appease a troubled soul.
"You're foolish to think that He will listen." The buzzing is back, stronger; it startles him, the voice of the Messiah speaking from forbidden stratospheres. Mukuro's presence is brushing against the shell of his mind, like a caress, a pat on the head, both fond and possessive.
He knows that only the Holy, the righteous, the martyrs, will rise, not him (not in this life or the next; paradise lost and never regained), heaven is closed for sinners. Yet he prays for absolution, a small sliver of redemption, as though it was a morsel of food he would receive if he begged and pleaded and groveled enough to convince he had earned it, a pathetic show of desperation for Mukuro's amusement; no one else pays him any mind.
"He never has."
Lancia looks up, startled yet again. Only a few candles flicker like lost souls at the feet of the Virgin Mother, scorch her like a witch on a stake, disturb the blanket darkness and yet he sees. Mukuro is there, solid and real in front of him, tangible, not a mirage.
"How did you get here?" Lancia did not hear the footsteps echoing down the aisle.
Mukuro smiles his devil-smile, but it lacks its usual menace. Something was off. Replaying it in his mind, Lancia hears a seasoning of something indefinite, unintelligible in Mukuro's monotone, some bitter aftertaste.
Injection & infections, those death-bringing needles, pinpricks become gunshot wounds & whimpers howls for mercy: God help him, what has he ever done but live, caged, strapped-down & sedated, vulnerable, eviscerated; agony his only companion & death the only way out; fear & loathing wriggled like a snake, it grew inside of him & he grew with it, would spread it like a disease, the same pain, the same death, rise & become the perfect soldier, killing machine, we give you the power to kill us all, rise & lead us to salvation, child of the damned.
Did this bitterness fester from the feeling of being disregarded, forgotten, left behind in a den of inhuman cruelty, with others who could not save themselves, too harrowed (weak) to try?
God did listen and God granted him the power to overcome and lead his army out of the darkness to introduce darkness to the world.
That's what they believed, that's what they still believe: that Mukuro is their savior, their Messiah, their God who will lead them through the dark toward enlightenment, a new tomorrow for the world, the time of preservation has gone on too long; it's time for destruction, the cycle of the universe. He wants the ensueing chaos, the anarchy, wants to rule it, consume it.
Lancia isn't sure if he can agree with the idealism of this grand future plan, the Jihad of the serpent God, holy war, a holocaust, the annihilation of an entire race, long overdue. It is time for a new creation to climb from the mud and ashes.
"It doesn't matter how I got here," Mukuro says and kneels beside him on the wooden pew, takes his folded hands in his own gloved ones, a theatrical act that makes him seem almost saintly. "All that matters is that I am. With you."
He kisses the icy fingers and Lancia's breath catches. With his lids closed and those atrocious eyes conceiled, Mukuro resembles the little boy Lancia used to know, used to carry on his back and play games with, used to love like his own brother. It must be an illusion, another of his manipulations, or else he possesses the boy, has done so for years to fool him, bind him in the hopes of seeing that boy again.
He knows he won't, knows it's his own fault: He's too weak to break away, the attachment too strong, a ritual dagger that wedges in his chest, a mark of faith. In his puny human mind he cannot understand the workings of the Gods; he only knows the moral ideals they have instilled into him, in the times when he was blind and free, because that's what they fed him: a curse that blinds you to the truth, so you won't see or question and continue to be of use to those who take advantage of everything you've got to offer. And you give, gladly, happily, smiling like you've been granted something sacred, a gift from the Gods, because they took you in and allowed you to call them family, because wasn't that what you've always wanted?
Their deaths were your liberation, he used to whisper in his ears at night, to soothe the guilt that Lancia was choking on. Mukuro looked after his puppets; insanity was harder to control, a lunatic harder to possess, a kite in high wind.
So Lancia fell asleep and killed again, the tamed beast.
Part of him even liked it, the screams of pain and the short moment of resistance before his spiked iron ball crushed his victim and blood flowed out. It was the same childish cruelty Mukuro never grew out of, that bloomed into a flower of malice, do you remember the times when you used to throw rocks at small, leashed dogs or catch butterflies only to pluck their wings, drown them?
Lancia shakes his head. He's not like that, not the inhuman monster Mukuro wants him to be, unquestioning and conscienceless likes his other followers. They never ask if they can forgive themselves for the sins they commit in his name, they've suffered much worse, but Lancia does and the question never leaves him; he clings to it, like a priced possession, a lifeline.
He tells himself there is a deeper meaning behind all this, divine calling, something too grand and all-encompassing for him to understand and so he will not stray from this path, chosen or no. It would feel like betrayal if he did and Lancia wanted nothing less than to betray them again, the ones who had taken him in, his new famiglia.
Besides, what else is there? He has nowhere to go, not when people recognize him as a murderer. There is no safe haven, there is no life without Mukuro. He made sure of that.
"Why do you follow me? I'm not going to run away." Because there is now way to escape, Mukuro will always find him. He's not likely to let him go so soon, he can still make use of Lancia.
"I know you will not leave me," he whispers in Lancia's ear and it sink in like a needle. He would live to regret it if he left. "So I cannot leave you all alone either, not when you need someone to listen, to share your pain."
His hand sneaks under Lancia's coat, stills on his chest, above his heart, as if the hopelessness and resignation Lancia feels somehow resonated with Mukuro. "I want to be alone. That's why I came here and not to you." Needless to say that he didn't expect Mukuro to understand.
"You poor little soul." Mukuro winds his arms around Lancia's shoulders like the snake winds around the tree of knowledge. "Did no one ever tell you that God doesn't listen to the likes of us? We're not worth to be saved anymore. There's no place for us in heaven."
His words are poison, smelling sweetly, tasting vile and Lancia doesn't want to swallow. "You don't really believe that we're going to hell."
The demon child looks up, smiles his serpent smile. "No, I believe we're already there."