Rating: PG-13 for angst and some adult references.

Characters: Well, that just ruins the effect!  You'll have to find out for yourself.

Notes: Everyone's heard of songfics before, right?  Well, what about poem-fics?  This idea first came to me while reading Robert Browning's My Last Duchess which reminded me strongly of the Duke from Moulin Rouge.  When I read one of his other poems, Porphyria's Lover, the urge to write a fanfiction based around it was too strong to resist.  I believe Ray Bradbury has a similar work, a short story in which he used a famous poem to set the mood.  I'm not comparing myself to Bradbury in any sense, but it's nice to take cues from famous authors once and a while.

Ownership Notes: I don't own Star Wars.  If I did, Hayden Christiensen would not be playing the role of Anakin, and Obi-Wan would probably have a nude scene and end up with Padme.  I don't own Porphyria's Lover either – I have no talents in the realms of poetry.  There are a few other literature references in here that the more well-read of you will recognize, and no, I don't own them either ;)

And finally… do not read ahead in the poem!  You have been warned.

The rain set in early to-night,

         The sullen wing was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite

         And did its worst to vex the lake

I listened with heart fit to break

         So terrible is the rage, terrible rage, it consumes all in its path.  Like a brush fire, said my master, when still he could risk his breath around me.  A brushfire, burning bright and awful to behold, but only for a short while.  A short while!  I will burn forever!  Not even the vicious rain can quench my hunger.  Though the wave-tops crash against my refuge and drown out this city-planet's distant noise, I fear it not.  She will come… she will come… hunger bites at my soul like a knife…

When in glided Porphyria; straight

         She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

         Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

Which done, she rose, and from her form

Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

         And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

Her hat and let the damp hair fall

         And, last, she sat down by my side

And called me…

         And at last my temptress came.  She knows my roost as well as she knows her own well-hidden den where lies her whelp and mine.  She did not bring that ill-begotten pup of my seed with her, because she knows I will not let him live.  So help me, if I find him, I will not let him live.

         Her attempts to brighten this forsaken hovel are laughable.  Does she really wish to see my face?  Why can't she remain in darkness and let the untruths remain?  I need nothing to see by – I touch her spirit in ways she can never know.  Pervasively, possessively I touch her, invading her like no other man can – no, would.  There is another who can touch her the same, but stinking self-righteous honor binds him.

         And still she knows, but does not know the way I caress her now.

         She looses the chocolate-colored lengths of her hair, soaked through from the rain.  They fall in waves down her back, coiled and knotted still from the complex ringlets she usually wears them in.  Of all the things I loved about her, those silky tresses tempt me the most.  Long and beautiful, twining about my fingers, blanketing my body, forever infused with the sweat and blood of our nighttime struggles.  As she approaches, wet hair dripping its last upon the stone, arousal wracks my ravaged body.  How can she still keep such power over me?  Her voice as she calls me is plaintive, pleading, begging my forgiveness.  How naïve is she to think love can call me back now!

…And when no voice replied

She put my arm about her waist,

         And made her smooth white shoulder bare

And all her yellow hair displaced,

         And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

And spread o'er all, her yellow hair

Murmuring how she loved me – she

         Too weak, for all her heart's endevour

To set its struggling passions free

         And from pride and vanity ties dissever,

And give herself to me forever.

         I did not answer.  She does not deserve the gift of my voice.  Let her suffer!

         In my silence she breaks and stoops, loose dress falling down to reveal her smooth shoulders.  I can smell the rain-washed purity of her body, a purity I long to taint until she cries for me, until she smells and tastes of me, until I am all she knows and all she has ever known.  The predator in me stills, waiting, as she presses my scarred cheek to her breast.  How she holds me!  Half a lover, half a mother, as if she in her new-found maternity can replace the soul-pieces I've lost, as if she can soothe the heart-deep wound.

         How hypocritical, the temptress!  Never could I hope to erase that purity from her.  No matter what I did she never gave herself entirely to me.  Her mind was always occupied somewhere else, and those cries of ecstasy were no more than facades to keep me satisfied.  Her monarch's pride would not let her give in to the pain as I had wished.  She submitted to it only until the game grew deadly.

         She loves me, she loves me, the chameleon cries!  Only to change her colors when she thinks she's stopped my swift descent into darkness.

But passion sometimes would prevail,

         Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain

A sudden thought for one so pale

         For love of her, and all in vain:

So, she was come through wind and rain.

         Oh yes, there were nights when I was certain the lust would drive us both two to madness.  On those nights she was taken so swiftly that there was no time for control, only the mindless passions so buried within our animal minds.  It was on one of those nights that I am certain the whelp was conceived.  I can smell him on her: a delicate psychic scent so alien to me that I can hardly decipher it. I inhale her scent deeply, wordlessly-

         And there.  There, there, buried deep among the odors of her body lies the maddening smell of another man.  Fiend!  Traitors, both!  The rain can not erase that masculine trace I know so well.  I sense his touch on her pale cheek and snarl within myself.  So!  She's found a one to give herself up to!

         But why is she here?  The answer is as clear as a dead dog's spit: she's come to me to save his life.  She's come because she knows I will discover their treachery, and she thinks this one act can save him.  Fool!  His love is all in vain, as his continuing breath is all in vain.

But sure I looked up at her eyes

         Happy and proud; at last I knew

Porphyria worshipped me; surprise

         Made my heart swell, and still it grew

While I debated what to do.

         And yet she caresses my scarred face with no hint of repulsion.  I'm certain my appearance would bring the horror right out of any pretenders, so this must be a sign that her love is true.  That bond we forged so long ago can never be broken, no matter what other man might touch her heart.  She is bound to me for eternity…

         But I want to be the only one to touch her.  Though I know she is mine, and though I know now I can have her completely, the thought of the affection for that other man lurking in her soul enrages me.  She will give herself up to me, because love will blind her to the truth, and she will believe that only by her submission can she bring me back – it is all a lie – but as long as she holds some feeling for him, my conquest will not be complete.  So what can I do with this temptress?  How will I ever capture her?

That moment she was, mine, fair,

         Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

         In one long yellow string I wound

Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her…

         Ah-h-h, it always came back to this one final act.  When all other courses of action failed, one was sure to be a success.  For a tainted soul like mine there were no penalties for the crime.  All remorse fled me the moment I took that final step into the shadows.

         There was no need for a word; still I hadn't spoken to her, and in this last moment my lips remained shut as if welded together.  I buried my hands into the thick tresses surrounding my face, adoring their silky dance as they slid through my fingers, and wound them imperceptibly around her throat.  She did not notice my aim until they pulled tight, constricting.  Vaguely I felt her struggle, but it seemed weak and half-hearted – no, she did not mind this at all.  To speed the process I clutched my hands around the insubstantial air and manipulated the very molecules around her until  it wasn't just her hair cutting off her breath.  The thrill of the kill sang through my veins as no other emotion now could, like a drug, like an addiction. 

         I didn't stop until long after her body went limp in my arms.

         …No pain felt she;

         I am quite sure she felt no pain.

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

         I warily opened her lids: again

Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And I untightened next the tress

         About her neckl her cheek once more

Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

         I propped her head up as before.

Only this time my shoulder bore

Her head, which droops upon it still:

         The smiling rosy little head,

So glad it has its utmost will,

         That all it scorned at once is fled,

And I, its love, am gained instead!

         I looked into that pale, perfect face - so like the face of my mother, only younger.  She had not been ravaged by time and sorrow.  She had lived what they call a charmed life… and she had died a charmed death.  I stared hungrily into those open, innocent eyes, still sparkling with… was it love?  I choose to call it love.  I choose to believe that she loved me to the last.  Overcome with triumph I can do no more than grace her swiftly-cooling cheek with a kiss, a caress, and I can see the blush – or is that blood? – coloring her skin.  To my shoulder I press her frozen body, holding her as once I did, long before the darkness took hold.  And now I can keep her forever!  No man may now touch her soul.  I can imagine a smile upon her death-mask – she is smiling because she and I are forever joined.  No longer can the touch of that man stray her from her eternal devotion.  She has all that she's ever wanted: me, for all eternity.

Porphyria's love: she guesses not how

         Her darling one wish would be heard.

And thus we sit together now.

         And all night long we have not stirred,

And yet God has not said a word!

         We remain in our immobile embrace until the rainstorm subsides and the whole world seems to silence around us, and still I have not spoken a single word to my beloved, my temptation, my downfall.