I assure you I cannot be hurt so easily—you must try harder next time. And you are not from common stock, are you, Vercingtorix?
Clever boy—but, if he is so clever, does he not recognise in Vercingtorix turquoise eyes that he does not hurt in one fair cleft, but in innumerable small wounds? “What makes you assume I want to hurt you?” Vercingtorix asks. He has given more to Adonai already than he has to most in Novus—his full name.
And even as Adonai admits it—we are already of a class—the admission comes with the acknowledgement that, even so, they belong to different ones. Vercingtorix recognises royalty. He wonders if Adonai recognises the well-bred, professional soldier—a man who had been bred for war, raised for it, baptised in it. A man who’s only deity had been death, suffering, plight.
“Even so,” Vercingtorix says quietly, his smile telling in and of itself. “You know we belong to different sides of the same coin.” The elite are nothing without their military professionals, and vice versa.
What he does not say is that his favorite affair had been a politician’s son. There were no princes in Oresziah; only the powerful, only the wealthy, and this had been a young man who had never been touched by war. Torix had first thought he was attracted to him as a saviour; that perhaps he could save Torix from the sins of war. But it had been the opposite. Torix had learned whatever lovely thing he touched was destined to be ruined.
Do you want me to ruin you?
His smile is a blade. His smile is every sinful thing that has ever happened in a bedroom. His smile is the union of innocence and corruption, love and hate, the indescribable curiosity for the things that will ruin us.
Adonai is staring, now, at the sharp spire. Vercingtorix assumes—even as they speak in rhetoricals—that it is his home. I believe what you do. But I do wonder if the price to break a curse is worth the cost?”
He confesses more, and more. Vercingtorix listens with polite intrigue. Why me he begins to wonder. Why ask me?
And yet, it becomes more apparent.
It is the scars.
It is belonging to two sides, of the same coin. Wealth, and power. Need, and violence. I was raised to believe that the martyr is revered because he accepts his curse and dies suffering, that there is even beauty, somehow, in suffering.
He might be the most interesting man Torix has ever met.
Should he pay the price Adonai asks. And kill someone very dear to him?
“I know suffering” Torix says, at last. He does not say it vainly. It is the first time he has offered pure seriousness the entire time. If Adonai’s voice is light incarnate, his is darkness. “And I know, also, that the only suffering close to martyrdom is to suffer for a cause. So perhaps this prince should ask himself whether his suffering is worthy, if its for the betterment of many, or only the betterment of one. The only way to romanticise tragedy is if it is larger than yourself.”
Torix’s voice is nearly analytic, now; hard; pragmatic.
It does not convey how many times he has seen men die for others. It does not convey how many times he has laid awake at night, suffering, for those no longer left.
Revenge.
Vercingtorix thinks of turning Boudika in; of the long walk to his father’s office in the capitol, the way the words Bondike is a woman, her father disguised her long ago had emerged with all of hell’s wrath. And after, how he had felt empty. After, her betrayal did not seem so large while his became enormous. “If I were to advice the prince, I would say martyrdom doesn’t matter. Only justice does; and even an ugly truth is more beautiful than a tragic lie.”
His mind is full of crimson eyes; the shadow of a laugh; the way he dreamt and dreamt of closing the distance between them, of pressing a kiss behind the small of his ear; the way his body craved to know intimacy; the way his heart ached and ached and ached; and the way the truth emerged from the story of their lives like a monster, and when it wrecked him, it awoke something terrible within him, something vaster than a black pit, than a dead star.
No, Vercingtorix things.
Revenge is never sweet.
Revenge is salt and blood, and going to sleep at night with a slideshow of things he regrets.
“Forgiveness is for saints, martyrdom for fools.” At last, he is done with this story. Torix presses close abruptly; they are chest to chest, the side of his cheek pressed very nearly to Adonai’s. His mouth is at the pegasus’s ear; his lips brushing the fine hair there. “And you do not strike me as a fool.”
The broken find the broken.
The broken break others.
And the pain, fresh like a wound, makes him feel alive. He wants to sink his teeth into this story. He wants to play god; vengeance; justice. He wants to save the Fair Prince and play at love.
He wants to be the hero and the monster.
“speech” || @Adonai || setting inspired by this image
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fearless child, broken boy, tell me what it's like to burn  A D O N A I  — “W hat makes you assume I want to hurt you?”His voice is so sincere that I almost want to believe him. Pilate had never said this: what makes you assume I want to hurt you? because he didn’t have to; we both had each other’s answers memorised. Mine would be you do, and his would be I do. And then I would say, of course, I will hurt you back. Even as children, we were always hurting each other back. A thousand sharp needles: in the front, in the back, in the side. Never enough to kill, only enough to sting—to remind the other, I exist. Just as much as you. If I didn’t have Miriam, and Pilate didn’t have Hagar, would we have gotten along better? Would we merely dream of death and violence instead of acting it out like theatre? Would we have chosen a different path? “Force of habit,” I say finally, my voice low and drawling. “Politics. Succession. Sibling rivalries.” My voice is just theatrical enough to be trivial; I drag out my words with care. Though, curious, I eventually level a glance back at him. “Even if we are different sides of the same coin, it must be the same for you, no?” Quietly, I wonder if he is getting tired of me. Of my constant volleying between solemnity and banter, seriousness and mock theatre. Of meaning something until I don’t, of metaphors on metaphors on metaphors. Is he familiar with the ways of the politician? Of the ways of the fallen prince, in a sea of bright-eyed heirs? This is how we survive, Vercingtorix. To us, this is essential. Though to others, it is only tiring. By the time I turn back to look at him, really look at him, the smile he wears has changed. A shiver trails down my spine, though it is not, I think, unpleasant. I have never thought of myself as weak, even now—especially now—yet there is something about Torix’s expression that is predatory. Wanting. A lion, a lamb. I am not weak. But isn’t that what weak things tell themselves, over and over and over? Because the message never seems to sink in. “I know suffering,” he says softly, and I swallow. Not because I am surprised, but because I have never managed to kill the instinct in me that tenses when a wall is crumbling. When a boundary loosens—when the game ceases to be just a game. I have bared a part of myself to Vercingtorix because I am the drowning prince gasping for air, and when you are that desperate it is really not anything, at all, to give whole parts of yourself away. Yet in return—he is allowing me to glimpse something that I know very few have seen. I am flattered. I am intrigued. And I am hesitant, afraid to savour it. “If I were to advise the prince, I would say martyrdom doesn’t matter. Only justice does; and even an ugly truth is more beautiful than a tragic lie.” I am about to say something yet immediately lose all semblance of it when he presses close to me, his mouth at my ear, his cheek just shy of mine. I still. “Forgiveness is for saints, martyrdom for fools.” There is only the sound of my breathing, and I hate how it softly rattles. “And you do not strike me as a fool.” I hate how even this—standing prone besides him, the effort of staying still, the fight against giving in—drains me away to nothing. “I am not,” I murmur, my breath tousling strands of his pale silken hair. “I think.” And then I sigh. He is warm, and I am always cold. I wish to stay—yet I have always been the best of my siblings at denying myself from what I really want. Miriam, perhaps, is just a little bit better, but dearest Miriam is always better. “Vercingtorix.” I press briefly against him, a ghost of a touch, before stepping away and coughing. When I look at him, I am almost apologetic. “I am growing tired. Not of your company. Just—” I look back towards the ivory tower, and hate how beautiful I still find it. How beautiful I will always find it. “—tired.” Hollowly I laugh, and fall silent as the last of my pride empties away to dregs. “I will regain my strength with some refreshments.” I say this drily yet I do not know why I bother at this point. After the coughing and the water and the way that he looks at me. “Consider this the start of your evening, then. A few hours before true sunset—the Solterran way.” The cursed prince must return to his cursed tower. When I step back onto the path I came down, I catch my reflection in the skin of water left in the bucket. I do not linger upon it. I know I will hate what I see. The words boil out of me, coil after coil of sinuous possibility. The cosmos unravel from my mouth, all fullness, all vacancy. 
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?) ♦︎♔♦︎ fearless child, broken boy, tell me what it's like to burn Force of habit, the prince answers. |
