Author's Note: This takes place sometime between episode 19 and 22 in the Tower of Rebirth. -Hott

Holding.

Though he was missing his tongue, he was also missing his sanity; when he spoke, he heard not the guttural moans that came from his emaciated throat, but the clear and steady cadences of his old voice.

At the moment, Griffith was speaking to the demon-rats. At least, he thought he was.

Nothing was certain anymore. He once knew that he was locked in this secret dungeon, approaching death by torture; he once knew that he was here because he'd been caught in the unforgivable act of bedding Charlotte; he once knew that such an act had come about because that morning he had made the worst mistake of his life.

He once knew that, after the last dual between he and his cavalry commander, he should have stood from the snow and followed Gatsu into the world. After all, after their first dual, hadn't the winner taken the other man's soul?

"I had him," said Griffith to the (imaginary?) demon-rats. "I had him, and then he got away. I couldn't hold him anymore. He was walking away, and against the sunrise on the snow, he was the darkest thing I'd ever seen. No—he was the brightest. You see?"

The demon rats, which may or not have been real, studied him with their glowing red eyes. Eyes like the color of holly berries on the bushes nearby, on the day the sun rose and turned the snow to pure light beneath his feet, and Gatsu a free man beyond his sword.

Gatsu hadn't even looked back.

And what of the day that had followed? What of Charlotte's body beneath Griffith's, as he tried so hard to maintain arousal he did not feel? And the expression of climax on her face—why had it made him feel so empty and false?

But what of anything? All that couldn't've happened, it was a lie, Gatsu owned him now, he hadn't abandoned Griffith in the snow, this tower was a bad dream—he was with Gatsu. And Gatsu was settling his large, rough hands on Griffith's sleek shoulders and whispering, "You are mine now," as his dark eyes smoldered.

Wasn't he?

"I have a poem," Griffith whispered to the demon-rats. "I made up a poem. I learned how to write poetry when I was at court. Did you know that? It's a sonnet."

If the demon-rats were upset that Griffith was about to recite his sonnet for the fifth time that day, they did not show it; whether out of politeness or apathy was anyone's guess.

An inarticulate moan began to grind out in the moldy slickness of the black stone dungeon, but in Griffith's mad ears, it sounded like this:

"To hold and own has always been the dream

"And since I slept so long, my dream was deep

"I dreamt I had an army, and it seems

"I horded all and more in lucid sleep.

"My holdings held the souls of restless men

"And cowards, weakened wills, and wicked need

"And with that rabble, yet not of their ken

"Was you—and your potential to be freed.

"How did you grow too big for me to hold?

"How did you slip this subtle pull on me?

"You know you're mine, since that's what you were told

"But how can I be yours so thoroughly?

"I held the world because it was so small.

"But you?"

Griffith's voice suddenly dropped to a bewildered murmur.

"I couldn't own you, after all."

The demon-rats stirred, and tiny red eyes winked out in the blackness. Griffith was left with nothing to hold him but the dark.

"Where are you, Gatsu? I'm yours. You're supposed to keep me. I don't belong to myself. You're supposed to hold me. Didn't you know that?

"Gatsu?

"Didn't you know that?"

-Hott

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