King of Mercy
- O -
(thanks to R Amythest for beta'ing)
- O -
In the dark, in the darkness of the candlelight, they sit together, alone in their silence. She feels his eyes upon her and cannot bring herself to turn away. In the room, the small room, the shades are drawn over the black windowpanes. The chairs are each overturned, the candle's wick near snuffed. The sounds of dripping, dripping, dripping.
She tries to weep but cannot. She tries to call to him but the words catch in her throat, die on her tongue. She murmurs words of nonsense and thinks, thinks frantically, fevered, fighting for life, fighting her weakness.
No, nonono, not forever, foreverforeverforever, no, never, can't!
In her hands, cold steel. Smooth, comforting under her fingertips. In unsteady beats, her hot breath. Beneath her skin, a desperate thrum. On her cheeks, in her lungs, the red of fire, consuming, raging, consuming, consuming, unbearable. Her eyes meet his; his eyes are burning.
In this dark place she writhes and her head finds her hands to make it stop. But it burns. And it stings. And the noises will not stop! And in her head she hears him scream and nothing, nothing she does can kill the sound the sound the sound.
But this is her world! Dirt and jars and thin cobwebs and broken glass on anthills; she is king and she is country. For days, and still, her dark cottage ever always remains her prison, her ward, her hospice. For days, and still, she sits and dotes on him and kisses him jealously and longs for him and with her sword bleeds him and bleeds him until he sleeps and sighs, and then she kisses him more until he wakes and murmurs her name and she bleeds him again. Now and forever, his pain is her own.
He lies silent now, red arm, red hair, pale skin, cold in the white moonlight. On his face, pallor; in his eyes, an empty betrayal.
In her hand, a sword, a doctor's blade, alive with blood. At her feet, she overturns the basin with a misplaced toe and falls ungracefully to the earth in a shower of red, sword piercing her wrist, jutting deep.
In the dirt she waits, a hundred years, a hundred more, and still she cannot abide his mortality. She longs, silent, for the power to sway life and death—she laughs, then, and breathes blood, and suddenly his stillness becomes her joy. Enraptured, suffering, she crawls towards him in the dark and reaches for his red hand. The scent of pain and iron. Now the taste of pain and iron. His pain.
Never never ever no, brother brother deardear ever never not whywhywhy forgiveiveive mercymer—cy vict—ory?
Victory.
She lies with him on the ground, dust caressing her cheek. In her world, she is king and her conquest mercy, and her blade a misericorde. In breathlessness, she forgets her failure as ward, and all she feels is mercy, sweet mercy.
On her lips, a bloody word.
Victory.