Disclaimer: Carnivale and all its characters belong to HBO Productions, which belongs to Time Warner. No money was made from this piece of fiction, no harm was intended in its publication.
Author's Notes: This fic has been edited to lower its rating, the full version of this story is posted elsewhere.
Warnings: Contains mention of incest, and f/f. You have been warned.
In the After Days.
Sofie wanted what Justin had wanted, and Justin had wanted Iris. He had wanted other things too. He'd wanted power, destruction, pretty little blond girls, pretty little brunette girls, and Iris.
Poor, confused, abandoned, grieving Iris, who cried at night and smiled at the well wishers when they came, and who couldn't bring herself to even look at Sofie. While Sofie couldn't bring herself to stop looking at Iris.
In The After Nights
Iris lay in her bed, uncovered against the chilly night air, pillow pressed against her face to smother her sobs. It was wrong, all of it wrong. Justin was dead, she should be dead, and Sofie... Sofie shouldn't even be! He'd left her all alone. He'd taken Norman with him, or at least as far as they would walk together before going their separate ways. She had no illusions regarding Justin's fate, nor her own. There were days she wondered at this hell she called a life and wondered perhaps if she had already died, if this was her punishment, an eternity without Justin. An eternity with Sofie. The girl who looked at her like she wanted to eat her alive. The girl whose eyes wouldn't leave Iris alone, even here in her own bed, in the dark, with the pillow pressed against her face.
She remembered, years ago, decades ago, feeling these feelings. Having a similar pair of eyes follow her every movement. It was different then, she hadn't known what it meant to be looked at like that. She had been so young, the changes in her body only just beginning. Rose had taken her aside one day, closed the curtains and explained to Iris about womanhood, quietly and in a round about fashion that made Iris wonder what she was talking about until it actually happened.
Iris wondered if anyone had talked to Justin.
In the Before Time.
Rose and Norman sometimes commented on how easy Justin was. How he never asked for anything. However, Iris knew that it was because he never needed to. Justin always got what he wanted without asking. Always. When Timmy Housler, who had pushed Justin in the mud on their way to school once too often, died of the flu, it was Iris who had held Justin and told him that it wasn't his fault, though she suspected it was.
Iris wasn't sure whether or not she should have been surprised when he started developing an interest in girls that he started developing an interest in her as well. For good measure she was surprised, but only briefly. She could never, and would never, be able to bring herself to be afraid of Justin. So when he started sneaking into her bedroom at night all that was really left to feel was guilt. Justin didn't seem to feel it, didn't seem to think there was anything wrong crawling into his sister's bed and doing things to her that should only be done between a man and his wife. Then again perhaps he didn't see the difference between using Iris and using his own hand. After all, he controlled both just as easily. No, the guilt was left for Iris and the nights she spent alone, crying in the dark with a pillow pressed against her face.
In the After Nights.
Iris didn't even hear Sofie walking in. She wasn't sure how long the girl stood next to her bed before she noticed her. The sight of her of standing there, looking at her, only made Iris sob harder. Embarrassed, she turned away.
"Go away," she groaned, so Sophie did.
After.
She lay in the middle of the bed, on top of the sheets, sweat glistening on her forehead. She almost shook, but instead everything around her trembled slightly to the rhythm of her breathing. The flowers by the window gave off a green sour rotting smell, which waxed and waned with the breeze.
In the house, she felt her aunt avoiding her, outside she felt a sprouting seed breaking free of the soil that bound it. Angry and jealous, she willed it gone.
Near the white porch in a relatively bare piece of turf something small exploded, scaring the birds from the tree. Inside everything stopped trembling. Iris breathed a sigh of relief. She knew what Sofie wanted, relished the power of denying her, feared the confrontation she knew was coming. It never got this bad with Justin, but then again, Justin never had to ask.
Iris wasn't surprised when she heard the floorboards creek behind her. The air had suddenly gotten heavier, and the ticking of the clock louder and more ominous. She turned and looked at the flushed face and glazed eye impassively. She wondered if this would be the day she would not be allowed to say no.
The fruit in the bowl on Sofie's left ripened and rotted, while the wilting flowers on her right recovered their glory. It was a disturbing sight to behold, and added to the surrealism of Iris' reality; the reality in which her bastard niece begged with her eyes for her aunt to do for her what she had done for her father. Her father, the demon savior who had used Iris as if she were part of him all his life, and left her bereft with his deaths.
Yet this slip of a girl made all these things seem almost banal, simply by standing in front of her.
The gentle rhythmic shuddering returned, the clock warbled and stopped with a strange choking sound. Iris had to force herself not to tell the girl to stop being a brat. "Throwing tantrums will get you nowhere," she said, with more calm then she felt. Suddenly she was aware of how utterly quiet it was.
Sofie fell to her knees with all the force of a tree and a soft cry. Her hands reached out and held her for a moment, before collapsing under her weight, and Iris wasn't looking at a being of power standing in front of her, but a girl curled up on the hard floor who hurt because Iris refused her, and for whatever reason she would not, could not, force her.
Iris took a hesitant step forward, then another, and another until she stood next to her whimpering niece. "Why don't you just take it?" she whispered. The girl at her feet didn't answer. Iris knelt down next to Sofie, her dress tucked neatly under her knees.
Pity touched her heart, and the overwhelming need to prove her new-found power. Slowly, carefully, she reached out to the dark head.
Sofie stopped moving when she felt Iris lightly stroking her hair, afraid she'd scare her off. She sensed conditional surrender from the older woman, and she didn't want to upset the fragile balance.
Slowly she turned over, resting her head on Iris' lap, breathing in the smell of her clean dress, her soap, and beneath it all, the undeniable scent of Iris. She smelled like the flowers at her window.
"I don't know what to do." Iris admitted quietly.
Somewhat reluctantly, Sofie sat up. Her eyes, black on black when she had entered the room, were now back to normal and looked into Iris'. She leaned forward, stopping when Iris jerked back, and waited while she collected herself and returned.
Slowly, as to not startle her again, Sofie leaned forward until her lips neared Iris's ear. "Then we'll go slowly," she whispered, distracting Iris as she raised her hand to cup the older woman's cheek. "And do it until we get it right." Then, before Iris could think about it too much, she kissed her.
It wasn't hard not comparing Iris to Ben, or Libby, or that boy in that town. Her old life was practically non-existent. She'd killed it, along with Justin in the dead cornfield, after receiving his boon.
She could feel the heat traveling through her body, splitting at her spine and going to her hands and lips. Iris felt it too. She gasped and pulled away. Sofie took the opportunity to stand up. She reached down to Iris and pulled her to her feet, dazed and slightly flushed. She kissed her softly, almost chastely, if not for the heat that passed between them. "You'll burn me." Iris whispered, fear creeping in her voice. Sofie kissed her again, longer and nowhere near chaste, and pulled her up the stairs.
Iris followed feeling like a lamb going to the slaughter. 'So be it,' she thought to herself. 'At least I'll be with Justin.' Only somehow, that thought didn't seem very appealing anymore. They walked through a patch of sunlight. This seemed wrong to Iris. She stopped. Sofie turned around, curious. Iris opened her mouth, wanting to explain her sudden hesitancy, that what they were about to do should be done at night, in the dark, with the curtains drawn and the door closed. The words wouldn't come. Instead in the silence, she watched the dust float in the illuminated air. Sofie waited.
"It's wrong." Iris finally managed; saying what she never could to Justin, because Sofie couldn't, wouldn't, wasn't forcing her.
Sofie waited.
"It's against God's law!" Though it wasn't, not in the literal sense, and even if it was, she'd done worse, much worse. There might even be a redeeming value to this sin, because Sofie needed her.
As if she was reading her mind, and maybe she was, Sofie reached out to her, her hand open, palm up. An invitation, a request.
It didn't matter that it was wrong, that she was her niece, that she was a girl! Iris suddenly needed to do something good, and in the absence of any sort of direction, this would have to do.
She took the offered hand, and followed Sofie into her bedroom.
There, Iris was suddenly overcome with a sense of urgency. She wanted this over with, and she didn't want to think about it.
Sofie watched her fumble with the buttons on her dress for a moment before stepping forward and taking her hands in hers.
"Slowly," she reminded Iris. "Slowly." She moved in closer, so close their breaths mingled. The air almost crackled around them, and this time it was Iris that initiated the kiss.
As though a circuit was had been completed, Iris felt the heat from before flow through her. Only now, it filled her completely. It was the difference between a candle and the sun, a seedling and a forest, a drop of water and every ocean on earth.
Never take the Lord's name in vain but, oh God oh God this was not in vain, and why had no one ever told her it could be like this, and how could she be seeing stars during the day, and Sofie's eyes were black on black, and she was on fire but which she, and where was her body now?
Oh yes, that's right, she was in bed, in her house, with her niece, close to the field where her brother had died twice.
And as her breathing slowed and her vision cleared, she wondered why no one ever talked about the fires of heaven.
She slept.
Much After.
When she woke, the sun was lower in the sky and she was covered in a blanket. Sofie was spooned behind her, different somehow, calmer, cooler, like a fresh breeze.
"You're awake." The voice was soft, but cold. Something was coming to an end. Iris just nodded. "Thank you." With that she lifted the covers and eased out.
Iris shivered at the chill of her departure. "What about you?" she asked; what they had shared was somewhat one-sided.
"I got what I needed." The dress fell over her hand.
"Will you come back?" Suddenly it seemed very important that Sofie not leaver her life so completely.
"No, but we'll see each other again." It was enough, sort of.
"What will happen?"
Sofie stopped at the door. "Something brilliant, and terrible." Then she was gone.
Iris spent the rest of the day in bed. She fianlly got up, and looked around for something to do. The dying flowers in the window were the first thing that caught her attention, but when she came closer to them, she felt heat flow through her, different from before. Her vision darkened, and she felt dizzy. The next thing she knew she was sitting on the bed, and the flowers in the window were blooming against the sunset.