TITLE: AFTERMATH (TRAS LA DESGRACIA)
AUTHOR: kali
RATING: T/PG-13. possibly pushing M/R for hints of sexuality and language
SUMMARY: He never says anything.
NOTES: A sort of follow up to
Godless. Will probably make Godless clearer. Which might ruin it
all. Oh well. You should probably read Godless before this.
DISCLAIMER: Queen of Swords belongs to Paramount/Fireworks. The plot and word order is mine.
He only drinks on bad days, when
servant owner with the pretty eyes isn't around to talk to him and
distract him with how bad he wants to taste. And that makes
him feel like shit. Who is he to move on and get over it
when she was fucking DEAD?
No one. A dead beat, a drunk, a loser, a slave.
Pretty eyes hits him when he says things like that. She says self-pity is a waste of everything but his life. Pretty eyes talks to the padre and to God and thinks by herself a lot. Pretty eyes drinks a hell of a lot of cheap wine.
Pretty eyes also breaks down for a week when the father kills himself in the second storm. She thinks he doesn't feel bad but he does. He gets grief and gets how sometimes screaming, blinding rage helps with it. He left the father alone. Gave him space. Should've known better than to leave him alone. Emphasizing the loss like some cheap shit.
Pretty eyes blames it on herself. They're both stupid. And neglectful. He doesn't say it and she flips out around apples. Sometimes, he just wants old fashioned pie. He doesn't say it.
He and pretty eyes make out in the third storm, hiding from small children and apples and trying to escape the rain by crawling into each other.
Which they do later that night after the rain with wet hair and wet limbs and wetness everywhere. Pretty eyes is smart and doesn't call it love, and through her wet and tangled hair whispers for him to fuck her. After he's already done so. Thrice.
Everyone else calls it a sinful way to cope with grief and he likes that. Sinful. They're sinful, sinners, killers, fucking maniacs. Emphasis on the fucking, comma, frequent.
But one day they both break a little bit and they talk like they used to, openly and quietly with all the little code words. He remembers so much and is surprised, expected to remember nothing but the way she smells like woman and how her skin tingles under his tongue and how those pretty eyes soften up once every three hundred glances.
Well, she reminds him pretty damn well. That she wanted children before the accident. That part of her wants them again. That a decade is a long time to be without anyone.
He wants to tell her that yeah, it is, and she doesn't have a damn clue about it. And that it's nowhere near as long as the six minutes it took for black water to swallow up blonde hair and snake into Gypsy lungs. That ten years is nothing compared to the three hours riding back with two dead bodies nestled inside each other. Nothing compared to the four seconds it took to say "She's dead" twice or the four months it took to realize it.
He doesn't say it and instead thinks about small children with pretty eyes and a safe home. About waking up to rose hips and peppermint and oranges. About falling asleep with her soft body curled against his between cool linen sheets. About being not alone.
He instead tells her about how he's learning to cope with the concept of a God and buries himself in her scent and her taste and her softness. A decade is nothing. He can't say it.
He has been to two weddings in the past six months and starred in one of his own. It was pretty. His bride smiled all day for the first time in nineteen months. He realized she has the prettiest eyes he's ever seen.
He stood and mourned at the funeral of a bad man he betrayed. The betrayal wasn't intentional. He just liked having sex with the bad man's wife—and yes, he can say it now, he let her die. And the bad man forgave him and the bad man wasn't such a bad man, after all, just made a few mistakes that led to more mistakes. He knows how that goes.
He has ended his suicidal lifestyle and now wakes with the sun instead of before it. He will, hopefully, never get accidentally shot again. He knows he will be stabbed again, but only because sometimes he's too lazy to get out of the way. He has never felt more rested.
He has a wife and she has a fortune. He lets her pretend that dressing him up in rich people clothes will make him a rich person. All of her friends look down on her for marrying such a deadbeat like him. They all proposition him when she's out of the room. Eventually, they get the picture and leave him alone. They tell her that he's reticent and rude and he'll be the ruin of her. Then they say, with bruises on their faces, that she's so lucky to have a good man like him. He listens to her quiet agreement and focuses on nothing but the curve of her lips and her thighs and the new curve of her stomach and the arcs of gold in her eyes.
He thinks he loves her more than air. She knows it, even if he's never actually said it.