Vercingtorix
—
T
he softness of him, the way he looks at me, it makes me want to hate him. Perhaps it is because I have never known comfort, or gentleness, in the way that most have. Perhaps it is because I have learned vulnerability kills, or that pain is the natural consequence of such gentle sentiments. Yes, I know. This will hurt. “Can you promise me something?” It was a promise I had asked him to make many times. How many nights had we been up on firewatch together? From the beginning at the academy, our freshman year, we had been bunkmates. Bondike flicks his eyes towards me; but then they return to the coastline, where we stand watch.
The sea beyond is roving, and dark, and restless. The waves toss angrily in the dark: roaring crashes and echoing booms. Even from a distance, the wind whips the spray into our faces.
There is a storm coming.
And the storm always brings unwanted guests.
“That depends,” he answers. “On what it is.” I can barely hear our voices above the turmoil of the sea beyond. He is shouting above the din, and lightening cracks somewhere far out on the horizon.
“Well--nevermind. I just… I saw my father earlier today, and he--”
”Acted the same? Even after your talk with him, about how he speaks to you?” Thunder follows, a loud, resounding boom.
“Yes. I just don’t think I’ll ever be enough for him.”
His eyes leave the coastline. They lock on mine, now. There are times I notice a difference in height; but it is only because, despite his smaller stature, he seems to tower over me. “Vercingtorix,” he says tiredly, wearily. “Your father is one of those men with a black hole inside of him. You will never be enough for him. No one ever will be. He will eat the entire world, if it lets him, and everyone in it. The trick is to decide to be enough for yourself.”
If I close my eyes, sometimes, I can place myself back in that memory. It tastes like rain and salt; but he had reached out and touched me, one of the few times he had done so. He had reached out and pulled me into the alcove of his chin, and held me there, as if a child.
Sometimes, like now, I can remember that warmth and pretend it never went away.
But when I open my eyes, it is Adonai, and Solterra, and flickering lamplight that pools in the Prince’s eyes like liquid gold. There is no storm here; only the echoing silence left when he says, You repent, if you must.
Some men might.
I never will.
Is it too late to tell him that it doesn’t matter? My confessions, bitter as they may be, have no true relevance or depth. They do not matter the way most men’s sins do. If I were quicker to drink, I might take less responsibility: if I were truly my father, narcissistic and apathetic, I may have seen myself as blameless. But I don’t. I have never been so innocent. We are each born into a lot, and this had been mine: I did not live through it with true nobility and sacrifice.
No. My father never came to terms with his black-hole-for-a-heart. But I have. I know the world, and everyone in it, will never be enough to fill me. He struggles to look at me straight; he struggles to field a smile that will stick.
And after--if he has something still to live for--I think its enough.
I had felt flickering resentment before: but it wanes and becomes something else. I am only tired. They are words that fit into fairytales of soldiers and princes going to the sea upon a dragon’s back: and I suppose I am to blame for them, in that right. I write the fable alongside him, ignoring the truths even as they glance at the edges of our warmth. Yes, the truth of me lurks around the warmth of our encounter, eyeing my vital points: all the things I am glare bright-eyed from the darkness, waiting. I still smile, an appreciative smile, regardless.
His voice is barely a breath when he says, Your father. I’m sorry. I am tired of words, suddenly. I am tired of all that they fail to convey. I want to say, I am not sorry. If it had not been me, who would it have been? I want more of his touches, I think; I want to feel more of his searing lips against my scars. With that, I do not have to think so deeply about other things. With that, I can forget my name for just a moment--his touches become feverish, impassioned. I cannot help the noise, low and desperate in my throat, that he evokes.
We are moving toward something, quickly, breakneck and blind. I can feel it in his subtle changes: in the way his eyes have fallen, and his words fold like parchment upon themselves. Yes, I know. We are moving toward the inevitable, the unavoidable. He accepts my invitation to the sea (and in it’s own way, that is a kind of penance) but then, unexpectedly: There is something you must know.
I cannot say, when he shares his truth, that I am surprised.
(Perhaps that makes me more monstrous; that I am not struck by sudden grief, or anger, or confusion). Yet, I hold him tighter: I relish the feel of him pressed against my chest, and think:
Poison.
I have always expected those I care about to die. Nothing has changed. This is no more tragic than those I have already lost--and for a moment, I cannot help but envy him. It was meant to be me, so long ago, when I had fallen from the cliffside. It was not a gift I had survived, but a curse. The silence stretches on as I debate whether I should reassure him. If I should state, matter-of-factly and with no hesitation, Everyone I have ever cared for could have died at any moment. How close has Bondike come, time and time again?
I am quiet, and still quiet, as I work over what to say; and that silence stretches out until it is just our breathing, and just our beating hearts. “Adonai, if it is poison, there must be a cure. Have you searched?” I remember our conversation on martyrdom. But even more importantly, I am thinking of the pegasus from the desert.
The pegasus with the magic blood.
The pegasus kept swathed in Damascus’s magic, in billowing clouds of illusions. The pegasus I am bleeding into vials for the black market. The pegasus that says she is a star. I do not yet know how magic works, nor do I trust it: but in the back of my mind an idea begins to form. Yes, I think, there must be a cure. His cough is wet, and tired, and terrible. It nearly makes me flinch but somehow I hold firm.
At last, I draw away. I know the words in my mouth, and already I begin to hate myself for them. (They are saltwater into wounds; they are bright, and burning, and volatile. How can I say something of such depth, a borderline promise, when I am who I am? When there is a void within me, and I am asking him with all his soft, golden light to fill it?). Yet when my words emerge aloud they lack any such sting; they are empathetic, and I meet his eyes with my own. “... and after… if he has something still to live for… I think it is enough.” I leave the question unasked. But it exists in the silence that follows: do you feel as if it is incurable, because you have no reason to live?
Abruptly, I reverse our roles. I do not fear breaking him. He is already broken.
Instead, I focus on tracing the imperceptible cracks. On filling them. On giving him a reason.
(Had I not done the same with Cillian? Is that not the very reason I had a child I did not love, with a woman I did not love? To fill my voids, and hers?)
I can give him reasons, if he wants them. I can make the world seem less monstrous. I can tell him, again and again, his brother is not striking but, instead, small and uninteresting. (And, by my standards, weak). I can find cures or promises; I can make each evening like this. And inside, I can always feel unfulfilled: I can always feel this resonant aching for more, more, more. There is a desperation to me, a sudden softness: I want to save him, yes, but there is the abrupt understanding that by saving him I preserve pieces of myself. I fill the black hole, the endless void.
My mouth finds his cheek; and rises to his ear; then his neck, and throat, and chest. I find his wings against and spend a moment on the long, striking feathers. How beautiful, I think, he would look in flight. “Adonai, I will ask one thing of you. I will not ask you to make me a promise, or even keep it. But my single request…” I pause, with my lips now against his shoulder. I glance sideways at him, and for the first time I cannot fully disguise the hunger in my gaze. “Please do not become a martyr.”
His kisses had been desperate, feverish; they focused on limited time. Mine are leisurely. Mine are consuming. I bite ever so tenderly at the nape of his neck and say, “There is one place I would like to see within your palace very much. Your bedroom.”
I should have rephrased.
If I were honest, I might have stated: I will only ask one thing of you, with my words.
Instead, I will ask for many things. Instead, I will ask him (again and again and again) to wear the edge of me down. I might ask him to play a role, to fill an empty corridor of my life: to be something I have no right having. But I will never ask outright; I will entice; I will draw it out from him as one draws poison from the wound.
If it were possible, I press even closer. I cannot quite discern where his limbs end and mine begin; we are shoulder-to-shoulder, my leonine tail entwined with his. There is a part of me that wishes to be brutal; that violence that never leaves me dances just beneath the surface, reflecting as firelight does in my eyes. But I surprise myself with my softness, with the way I trace the graceful, aristocratic arch of his neck and whisper in his ear, "If you want a cure, I will find one." And more quietly still, so that it is the same softness as a heartbeat, as a pulse, as a wingbeat in the air: "... and revenge, too."
i would take the spear and return the lyre,
hear you sing memories of two boys skipping stones
across the sea, of the sweet crunch of figs between our grinning teeth
of your faltering breath, kissing the shadows of my face
but i can only stare at your golden back
as you march off to war
