She speaks. Oh she speaks and she speaks and she speaks. She fills the space they are in with words, memories, a story that rips itself out of her heart. He feels it, he tastes it upon the air. Tenebrae tastes the rawness upon her voice.
Her words.
Her words… oh, she makes him feel young, foolish. He is, he is, but Boudika is being unfair. He listens to her story of the love Vercingtorix had for her, but how it was not enough for him to overcome her secret. Tenebrae thinks that he is nothing like that man, that love overcomes everything. Yet is he not the one who drowns himself too in Elena’s golden skin? Does he not declare that he will leave the Night Order for Boudika, even whilst he fills himself up on the love of another woman?
How has he gone so long without realising, without thinking how reckless, how cruel he is being? His heart thunders in his mouth. It is a wild thing. Gods. He turns from Boudika. Though she still talks, he cannot bear to be near her. He needs the space, the space of a man who is a fool, who carries his wicked sins.
She continues to speak and oh, every word is a nail into his skin. Every word makes him feel young and small and untried. His nape arches, the well-seasoned muscles along his nape arching. He feels the pain of her bites. Tenebrae thinks of them as she talks more and more and more. They drown him and he sinks, willingly beneath their waves. Stil he does not turn back to her, he feels the pain, the longing in her voice, but he looks out into the trees and feels as if this is no living world, but the Underworld. He expects spirits to move between the trees, to adorn her words with their sorrowful faces longing still to be alive. They wail and he hears them when she speaks of pomegranates and how he takes, takes, takes.
The monk does not know the ways Boudika feels he has taken and taken and taken. But he recognises how he has, in all the ways he has met with Elena and Boudika and wanted them and desperately wanted them to stop. Yet he returned to them over and over and over. He took and he took and he took from them.
Gods.
“There is another girl.” Tenebrae confesses, his voice low, wary, slow. This is worse than prostrating himself before Caligo’s shrine and whipping his back raw. It feels like nailing himself to his cross. Why has he not told her until now? Elena knows, why not Boudika? Why has he kept this from her so long?
The words hang, his back is still to her. This feels worse than war, war where he is trained to kill and do it efficiently and without feeling. He was made to compartmentalise. There is no compartmentalising this. The confession breaks him open. It is worse than when he told Elena. A strangled moan slips past his lips. He thinks of Elena’s hurt, how she split apart before him, banished him and yet, yet they still meet, still love.
He fears Boudika’s response more, he knows it now, now that the confession is out, now that he feels her presence behind him and thinks of her gone. She will be gone, he feels that knowing deep within him.
“Boudika. I do not know how to give you what you want. You are right, I have taken and taken and taken.” Now he turns, laying his confession out before her. Shame, draws his lips down, down, down. “I have taken from you and I have taken from her.” He drags in a breath, it cuts him down like a razor. Tenebrae dares not step towards her. His darkness peels back, the shadows crowding behind him, they dare not touch her, nor him, not now, not with such a terrible confession between them. “You kept a secret from Vercingtorix and this.. This is mine.” Torix turned from Boudika. It slayed her and yet she stands.
“The only love i knew was that which i shared with my brothers, Boudika. I am envious you had parental love at all.” He says, small, small. His eyes close, his sigil moon fading dark as his magic weakens with his remorse. “I have never known love like you speak of.” Not until now because maybe this searing, wild panic that is bubbling up within him, maybe that is something of what she speaks. He doesn’t tell her of it but he feels it how it grows frantic and rapid. It is a black hole of despair that is clawing outward moving as fast as an explosion. It wants him to right everything, to go back and change the hands of time.
Tenebrae fears the look of hurt upon her face. He fears her leaving more. “You said.” he breathes, though talking is painful. His voice trembles as that feeling grows wicked and wild. Don’t leave me Boudika. But maybe it is easier this way. If she pushes him away then it is easier to sink himself back into being a monk. There is nothing else for him outside the Night Order, outside of Caligo.
“You said you did not think i would leave the Order. That the love of my brothers is too much. You do not compare to them…” He breathes, he looks up to the skies, the passing moon the blinking stars and bend themselves low and weep for the fallen monk and how much further he has yet to fall. “I never said I would leave the Night Order for her.” He says it low and small and soft. He aches for Elena. The confession flays him open. The truth of it is earth shattering. Tenebrae condemns himself with his confession. He has told Elena he loves her. He has never said it to Boudika. Yet here he stands vowing to leave the Night Order for her. Tenebrae lays himself upon his own pyre. He stands and knows that the only thing left for him may be the Night Order. “You say I put my brothers above you. You told Vercingtorix the truth because you could not live a lie.” Tenebrae breathes. “Love is new to me Boudika. You are right. I have been a fool, let the idea of it intoxicate me.” That pain and despair, frantic and wild is still radiating out, out, out. “You said love is sacrifice and pain. I love her, I do. But I mean it when i told you I would leave the Night Order, turn my back upon Caligo. I will do it for you, if you ask.”
He looks to her, where she stands limned in moonlight. “I love you Boudika.” The monk breathes, the words rasping along his veins, his nerves. It worsens the despair, gods, he feels like screaming. He would bring the mountains to their knees for her if she would not walk away. Yet, though Tenebrae is young, he is no fool. “I am in love with you.” He laughs roughly, “You drive me crazy, but you are in my blood and deeper yet.” His emotions are harrowing, he does not think he will leave the woodland in one piece. He is shattering through the woodland, lost into darkness and moonlight. “The punishment for a monk having a relationship with a woman is blindness.”
Silence descends after his words. He says nothing as he drinks in every inch of her. Her ire, her sorrow, her ribbons, her paint. Tenebrae leaves no part of her untouched by his gaze. His eyes drink in her reds, the black of her tiger print, the arc of her horns, the wild tangle of her hair. He imprints the beautiful sight of her into his mind. The monk says nothing at all, but it is there in the silence, in the way he watches her. In knowing that there is no coming back from his confession.
Tenebrae will never see her again.
“I will pay it. For you.” It is another piece of him he will give her. His blood, his body, his sight, his heart, his soul - even if this love is an unrequited thing.
|| "Speech." || @Boudika
when is a monster not a monster?
oh, when you love it
