A/N: This is my first one shot for As Above, So Below. It's one take on the aftermath of the movie. It's rated T, because there's nothing that's exactly explicit, but it's a hard T, for a little bit of language (I think one bad word in total) and glossed over "adult" content. It's a bit of an introspection on Sin post-movie, centered from George's POV, despite being in 3rd person. Enjoy, R&R! Thanks! ~Mac
Disclaimer: I don't own As Above, So Below.
Our Sins Overflowing
It dawns on him, as he's sucking in his first breath of fresh night air, his eyes searching the skies for confirmation. They've been through hell and back. It should be enough to turn any sinner into a saint, but all it has done is make George want a drink. Covered in gore and muck, with his recent brush with death slathered all over him, as they travel the darkened streets of Paris, all he wants is to stumble into a bar and drink himself into a stupor.
He was craving the rich burn of liquor, anything really, to drown his frantic thoughts in. The only thing that keeps him from embarking on a quest to quench that thirst is Scarlett beside him. Her fingers laced with his. Her arms around him. Her face pressed into the crook of his neck. It makes him thirst for an entirely different kind of sin.
They're already damned, that's the thing of it. Whatever they do now is irrelevant, because they're never going to escape it. This is damnation. This feeling that they're still in that nightmare. Even though they've clawed their way out of the catacombs, it's hard not to feel like this was still a malicious trick. At some point, this second, this minute, this hour, eventually, they're going to blink and find themselves back in the depths of hell. If that's going to happen, George wants to be ignorant to it as long as possible.
Forgiving yourself can be the hardest thing to manage, because it means admitting failure. They may have laid bare their trespasses down in the pits, but that doesn't mean that there aren't still demons haunting them. They may have paid their dues for their past sins, but their indiscretions of the present are weighing heavy, a burden that isn't likely to dissipate. All that had happened would be with them forever. It has only been a few hours and its already too much to carry. It would be unbearable to carry alone. That dark thought takes him back to Turkish prison cells and reminds him that the woman beside him once abandoned him when he needed her most. It makes him tighten his grip on her, the reaction so immediate and instinctual, and he's sure his fingernails are biting into her skin. He eases back a bit, worried that she might pull away from him, which he could do without. He is fucked up enough without being rejected again.
He needs her. He can't lose her. Not again.
Scarlett doesn't pull away. She flexes her fingers and squeezes his hand back. She turns her head to meet his eyes, her stare saying more than her mouth could, despite how many tongues she is fluent in. They are in exactly the same place: this new hell, that looks and feels suspiciously like the real world. It is her and him against it, the only way they know how. He translates, she interprets, they act as one. Virtue or vice, it's them together.
They're lost without direction. It takes them hours to find their hotel even though they should know this city intimately—they've spent so much time inside it. It should be glued to the backs of their eyelids. They should be able to navigate it in their sleep. But this dream like state that they're in, has them turned around, flipped upside down and inside out.
His mouth is dry, his skin is on fire and he wants to collapse where he stands. She is the only thing holding him up. The only thing that pushes him forward. And they reach their destination—or the first of their destinations. The hotel is almost too civilized to tolerate.
He doesn't want to let her out of his sight, so she showers with the curtain open, while he sits beside the tub. When every inch of her has been rinsed clean of the evidence of their ordeal, they switch places. He can feel her eyes intense on him ans he scrubs his skin with futile roughness. If he could wash the memories down the drain with a little soap and water, he would. Once their bodies, if not their souls, are pristine, they tumble into the sheets of the over sized bed together. His muscles relax immediately, sinking into the mattress, as he is enveloped in cotton and feather down.
It's too easy. His body tenses, on guard again. He can't unknot his stomach. He can't turn off his brain, or the staticky buzz still ringing in his ears, or how his blood is like ice water in his veins. He can't convince himself that he's okay, but he has to be okay, somehow. Otherwise, what was the point?
She found everything she ever wanted, but as she twists her body to press against his, a desperate search for comfort that neither can find, he wonders if she thinks it was worth it. She had been obsessive and reckless and selfish, but she had been brilliant and brave and protective. She is all of those things, virtue and vice incarnate, so when she angles herself to fit her mouth over his, he is drowning in it.
George lets the sinfulness of Scarlett's body slide over his, lets her join them. It's familiar, yet nothing is the same. He is exhausted before they've even begun, but he'd rather do this than sleep. Because sleep means dreaming, and dreaming leaves him with no control. He has to have control, or the semblance of it. She is the one with most of the control and he is ready to follow her lead. He has always followed her lead. He would follow her into oblivion, a proven fact.
Scarlett moves with grace, but her eyes speak verses of lust in dead languages. He holds her too tight, grounds himself in her skin. She whispers "please" in every language she knows with her lips pressed over the spot where his pulse throbs in his neck. For one blissful moment, with their bodies exploding with sensation, they reach that peaceful ignorance. Eyes clenched shut, the room spins on its axis, and they collapse into each other. They take slow, even breaths that rock their intertwined limbs against each other.
And all the horror begins to creep back in: fear, guilt, grief.
They have lost too much to ever be truly satisfied by what they have gained.
That is the sad truth.
-fin-