Disclaimer: I own nothing.
AN: I like to think it's possible :)
Heat Haze
by Lolita Cake
My brother loved her first, so I could not.
I take a modicum of comfort in the fact that I saw her before he did, dancing in the dreams of lost Babylon. Her movements were steeped in grace and fire, eyes blazing, long hair whipping around her slender figure, sometimes obscuring her face.
I did not love her then, because I sensed that her affections were a dangerous thing. And I was correct.
Throughout the centuries, I watched as those she loved wasted away, their hearts consumed by her flames, madness and her taste running through their dreams like undercurrents. Her love was destruction. Her love was who he was.
Perhaps that is why they got along so well.
I first saw them together in one of her temples, locked in a tight embrace, shadows and torchlight flickering over their entwined forms. Something inside me was moved. Something inside me regretted having held back.
From that moment on, whenever our paths crossed, I would act distant and cold. I refused to acknowledge her existence. It was rude of me, but I told myself it was for the best. Any mode of interaction with her, even the smallest of intimacies, would have led to my doom. And I could not have betrayed my brother like that.
But…
Watching her dance, even in dreams, was like dying, or what I imagined dying would feel like. Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if I had acted sooner, before it was too late. I consoled myself with the reasoning that I would have gone the way of her other dead lovers, reduced to a burnt-out wreck by the fierceness of her passion. I told myself I had no use for fickle women, and she was as capricious as a summer breeze. I would only have gotten hurt in the end.
I did my best to quell the stirrings at the back of my mind, the whispers that told me she would have been worth it.
No matter. She is gone now, taking with her the memories of temples and incense and lust haze, the blood of black lambs and the dying eyes of the Sacred King.
I could have loved her. Perhaps I did.
END
