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tampered2006-09-26 11:56 pm
one-of-heaven.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2006-09-26 11:56 pm
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When: September 25
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Katan ::![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angelic_nothing :: Rosiel :: one_of_heaven
Summary: promises and lies and chaos everywhere. Katan's arrival as the Herald of Bloodshed.
Log:
Holy water quenched every thirst, but fingers broke over the rosary, however rich, however blessed. It is in the making of the beads – and Rosiel had such a perfect, concrete, sensationally bland, rather alternative and therefore contradictory precision in waging war with the great beast of mythic Recollection. Learning is memory, or asphyxiation of knowledge, perception.
When he recalled Katan, it was to a near piety that rendered small, timid, mundane imperfections to grotesque proportions and a longing for purification, or interdiction. Blood – he could smell it. Blood. Darkness dissolved into a suite of the candles of Truth in disarray; revelation, light.
When he knew, saw Katan again, it was in a wantonly immaculate Cathedral upon which he had shed cleaning, much cleaning, ablution over ablution, without, within, reminiscing – and there was incense to the prie-dieu, the sweet fragrance of muscadine and time lost and time gained and time forgotten. More Recollection: children and children’s faces during Mass, the words scattered between wanton sighs, and oh, when is the dreary praying over? I want it to reach its end?
Katan had never served as an end; Katan was always his beginning.
Now, the incidence. The candles were weary and the wax bit the hand and banished the touch, the light was so poor and so dim, and Rosiel’s knees were a living, waking bruise from prayer. Nonetheless, he had mastered enough sleights of hand to arrest movement in such a manner that he could catch his Katan rather unaware in front of that same abominable prie-dieu, wrap pale arms around that far too familiar waist and sink his forehead pleasantly against - damn him for it – ever so tall a back.
“It’s from all the praying,” he said in an end, when the ghost of the smell pestered him again. Willing it believed, willing it true, thankful that he did not have to look Katan in the eye as he lied and lied and lied again, “It’s from the rosary.”
A kind deception; there would always be blood between them.
-
As pale eyes befell the immaculate ruins of the cathedral, His cathedral, the Children’s refuge, the Madonna smiled at him with her plastic lips and false gaze of hope, eliciting a shiver that steadily unraveled him. Cool, but hot. And a sigh of false delusion slipped from his mouth, fingers lacking sheath skimming the chilly surface of marble, familiarizing and full of sorrow in one breath.
Abhorrence so strong…
For hidden away in this place, a treasure of the chastest rarity walked, moved, traipsed in the shadows, lighting them with brilliance, a splendour Katan had longed to stand before again. To hear those idle words draped in finery, clipped with an elegance so eagerly worshipped brought the strangest longing to his invisible, yet damned soul. It was as though he envied the very building that housed them, the god He was and the deserter he’d become.
The greatest of comforts could not soothe the ache of wanting to see that pearled skin, the charming depths of hunted eyes. Oh, how he truly missed…
And then, slender arms were around him, drawing him out of his memorised allusion. So warm, so familiar. Like liquid fire, and Katan sighed again, let loose the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He could smell the incense, bittersweet and dancing on the tip of his tongue, but the hint of something darker, sharper and just as dangerous accompanied it. Katan knew it, remembered the recollection too well despite the haze, and yet…
Yet, he spoke not a word of it as a hand lifted to touch porcelain skin, skimmed the outline of fragile fingers before withdrawing. Too much, not allowed…
Throw it away,” he murmured, uttering a blasphemy so strong it torched his flesh. “Toss it out.”
He spoke as though they’d never been separated, bound before and always, like the sins of man drenched in worldly lies, and Katan stood a pillar of service. Resilient, quiet, longing. And when he lifted his face, the Virgin’s eyes bled jealousy.
-
“I can’t.” I tried. I tried so fiercely. “It’s a part of me. I can’t. It won’t let me.” I shall not let myself. Sin and sin and sin again. This anger, this pride, this war – and the blood, the blood on his fingers. Unseen and unsought and unwanted, but he could feel it, breathe it, pernicious, clawing, hungering, tearing at the bone like a living, sickly thing.
He fancied it a sudden amnesia when he let that foreign touch rest, when he dug his fingers in Katan’s-always-and-forever-tidied uniform, when he blinked and blinked and opened wide, cadaver-cold eyes. An amnesia of all the artefacts hosted by the inauspicious museum of etiquette, daunting propriety, the very Done Thing. “You’ve strayed from home for far too long, Cherubim Katan.” Then he pressed oh-so-still lips on that back, his back, his flesh, his blood, his, all of Katan, his. There were hours and minutes and the abortions of seconds in between, when he played pretend and connived his own opium, or perhaps absinthe-induced Sacre-Coeur - a Church of inner, thought-woven union, and he did not dare think, on such a plane, where his aura ended, and Katan’s began, and Alexiel’s too, when it did not exhaust his patience to summon her image.
“Things change, Sleeping Beauty,” he whispered, with another kiss. They had told him so many versions of the tale in this City, after all. So many, and the end yet perpetually vicious. “Allegiances as well.” Have yours? A question unrequited, but nonetheless standing. He let go rather abruptly – cage cage CAGE- as if the touch burned him, then soothed the fingers on that same warmth-beneath-the-cloth, parted with it anew.
There were candles on his pre-dieu, and he picked one, there, that’s it, so remarkable, so pretty – and it had shed a sparkle of wax and then its fire over that cursed hand of his long before Rosiel could gasp, quite stricken. Pain, he had forgotten this too. He let it burn, however, the tip of the finger, feeding off the smell of heated flesh, banishing the blood. Katan must not know. Katan must not smell it. Katan…
Then he laughed between a sob of pain, and the second, laughed and laughed. “Hah…Katan…if I gave you eternity…what would you do with it?”
-
The asphyxia drew his lungs taut, a cold fist of perdition encompassing his heart as that gracious mouth pressed to his clothes once, twice over. Searing repeatedly in a wave of uncertain cold, a forbidden temptation. But Katan did not move or flinch, as solid as stone, the perfect soldier in the eyes so desperately drilling through him from behind. For he did not lust but loved, and therein desired Him all the same.
But such unclean hands were not meant to purge one of Heaven.
And as Rosiel whispered of alliances, of the frailties of a loyalty Katan had never questioned, he closed his eyes to the world of golden candlelight. Traitor, it breathed. Liar. Liar. He became drunk on the whispers, believing them and bleeding a deceit woven with the fine threads of sorrow, a grand tapestry hung in shame, and Katan swayed a little. Reality hissed as he stared forward, watching Him dance and twirl and coax his beautiful fingers through blistering wax.
The smell. So strong. Even then, he could still taste it, breathed it, and the pained laughing pained Katan to the core.
I‘d save You, his human-turned mind whispered, ripe with grief, the throbbing that broke him. And blinking found him within that divine presence, hovering, leaning, imposing and wonderfully intimidating. Their skin touched, cold fire against melted isolation. To pacify, comfort, but he wasn’t a healer. Could only remember the destruction and lies.
“Whatever you asked of me, Rosiel.” So elegant, even when missing the honorific, and Katan wanted the other to look at him. Desired, whimpered, pleaded, ached.
I’d save You from Yourself…
-
“And if I should ask nothing, you fool? Must I ask and ask and ask for everything, like a beggar or some despot?” A prodigal son to charitable furies - he slapped this cruel monster, this creature, this cherubim over what part of the face, cheek he could reach, roughly, and with the back of the hand - the snapped, short-timed manoeuvre befitting, and just this once lacking the riding crop. A vicarious gesture, though no regret with it; he almost expected, fancied a retort, some reason to hit and tear and rip and shatter. “Can’t you think for yourself?!”
Fine – fine. If Katan did nothing, nothing to spare himself the inconvenience – and El, but he begrudged him this choice, this distinction- then Rosiel would only push him on and on and forward. “I was very much there when someone died today.” A pause, so Katan could savour the revelation to its fullest. “Life’s blood is very…very warm. Warmer than this.”
His burned hand shone in this feigned light of all glories, the wax giving it a shine – the scorched skin beneath positively riveting. He had such a poor, lukewarm and deserting tolerance for it, but beauty – real beauty, and this he had been told, time and time anew – Beauty is pain.
“We lived. We died.” This much he knew, this much he Recalled. “You will want to know, Lieutenant, that you damned yourself by coming here.” He could see the smear of blood and ash and wax on Katan’s face, redder still than the hand print, and knew it to be from his own his hand, knew he had made them one flesh and one body again. Master and Commander, was this the game? Very well, he knew the style of it.
“You will want to know, ser, that there is no estimable escape out of our lovely present residence, and that to engage in such a pursuit would likely lead to catastrophe, or at the very least a number of distinctly undesirable consequences. You will want to know that this City summons the living and the dead, with no manner of merit for their origin or volition, and that the tick you are likely to have noticed heralds the End of the World and is occasioned by an apocalyptic Carousel. “ And it’s hastened, and soon this’ll be all over. It’s made haste, and I shall make haste with it and destroy them all, for it is my nature, my caprice, my deception. “You will want to know there are Curse days, namely hours upon which the laws of nature, man, El or wit will be subservient to the whims of an assortment of self-styled City Gods – these occasions, you will notice, are not particularly gratifying. Most of all, you will want to know that I intend to end with these City Gods, for their mockery of El, for their impudence, malice, supercilious fashion and… and for waking me to…this-this…” He looked away, then up again, then away, hand still up, shine no longer. The crust of an imperfect regeneration, the revealing of the rotting within as the flesh sewed itself. It’d be skin again, and soon, and pretty, but now it was black and wrong and sin. “…this! “
He let it fall against him rather numbly, a wing giving it shelter, his determination casually consigning it to oblivion. “These are our premises, Lieutenant….but this is no Atziluth. By right, you are no longer pledged to my service. I only ask of you what you will do.”
And as if nothing, rather nothing, because he could not let it be both blood to part them and silence, because he could never quite look away – he took to a cautious step, neared him serenely, like more of a child in game than tantrum. And he rose on his toes again, silently, gently, then brushed lips with that stricken area of skin-meet-sting-red, covered it in small kissed, whispered, “Never let anyone else ever do this to you. It’s unseemly.”
-
Cruelty welcomed him with the vengeance of the Furies, hard and swift, the rush of words, of actions burning the column of his skin. Consuming him with desperation. Tepid, deceased, like a praise to the damned. And Katan sunk into himself, the subservient in him wishing to fall, down and down, kiss Rosiel’s feet with lips chapped by apprehension, of a knowing so profound he willed himself to bury it.
Lost. Lost. It burns. He found no retribution in standing still, barely there in self when his precious world pivoted and crumbled and reclaimed dignity in his eyes. Tossed aside in syllable, in an action he felt only in the planes of his nonexistent heart. And just as quickly accepted.
The strings of delicacy, his Rosiel. A saint, a martyr bleeding for love, want, need, acceptance. His love, Hers, every one of them who challenged such beauty with a suicidal kiss. And Katan dared, lifting his face from its fallen position, tendrils of hair sliding, slipping, hiding eyes brimmed with adoration, protection, a simple affection easily misrepresented. His lips were supple, chilled porcelain to the hellfire burning his face.
And if he had no commitment, free of loyalties and silent oaths in solitude, it meant he had to stay. Must stay. I’ll pull you from Darkness, just as you did me. Besides, what Curse, what sway of swirling metronome in the shadows compared to the breaking of Heaven?
Katan rested silent, simply drawn in by the other, a delicacy overturned beneath the cathedral’s ceiling, in the faded candlelight before those artificial eyes of piety. It was as though the Madonna screamed when he brushed Rosiel’s face, the strands of lovely silk curling over shoulders, over ears. Wailed for her children, His children, all of them, but Katan held fast. Watched and prayed for an End.
Lieutenant, ser. Call me Katan.
The smell of the world lingered, thick on word-stilled tongues, and a thumb brushed the edge of that child’s mouth. Softly, softer.
-
Silence.
He did not take to it, because he could not interpret it; he could not interpret it, and so he could not control it; could not control it, therefore could not…devour it. A paradox, then: words best left unsaid, or courted? Indiscipline. Immature. Trivial. Bothersome. Provocative.
He laughed. “Well, well, ser.” There would be no mistaking the quality of the education that one as kindly devoted to academics as Katan should ever choose to appropriate: dissect the form, profane the fleshy shell of meaning, extricate the marrow of intent, then delve to extirpate the malign cancer of whatever affection behind even that. Reason, sheer reason – and reason demanded that whatever weapon Rosiel gave him, Katan would hone. Had Rosiel himself not asked for thought, rather than mere execution of a given command? He was certainly reaping the fruit of his work, to be sure – hardly the more thankful to Katan as he would be for it. “And well met.”
“I have a few…benefactors,” he began tentatively, still whispered intimately in his lieutenant’s ear, still oh-so-soft. “They bring me oranges.” And more, much more, though I pay them the fair coin of their liking for it. Blood especially, or souls, on occasion – my own too, by that matter, and however shall I tell you that particular tale? He left his head hang, arms laced neatly around the puppet’s neck – so tired, so very, very tired, though never of games. “Other things too. To think, one of them has achieved quite the mastery in polishing my feathers. Rather overly pretty of them all, wouldn’t you say? And didn’t you like them…“ A kiss to that fading red spot yet again. “…oranges?”
-
Oh, but Katan did not want. And yet, the envy seared through him as a dull knife in flesh, twisting, gouging. Hurting. But beneath it all, there was the irritation of losing status. Cast off, pushed aside. Rejected. It settled in the pit of his stomach, already twisting at the warmth of being pressed so close. The weight of clothing and arms around his neck…
Iniquitous.
His stoic form fitted as a wall for Rosiel’s possessive cling, motionless and calm, but Katan could not relax the rigidity of his spine, how he internally cringed as he was spoken to, left to wonder. Tormented. Only his eyes reflected the regression, his conscience sinking backwards and beneath the sands of time. Should he disappear… Would you need me to care for you still?
“They’re sweet,” his voice, gentle, murmured from trembling lips. But lifeless, glorious. And Katan knew he was mocking himself, unjustly, playing with the throes of which should never have been soothed. Certainly his studies had taught him so, but…
“May I?” Leave, run, hide. I‘m falling. Katan did not want to taste the fruits of blood, bought and paid for with the amity of Rosiel‘s Grace, a solace unto himself, but bask in it. Draw it away, disregard how everything clung to them and soiled him. A shield.
Still, Katan did not stir, gaze settled on the flicker of light upon the wick.
-
“May you?” He tilted his head, much as the position allowed for it, cursed Katan’s height again, considered. “Oh, ser, but you always could.”
Ambiguity, fatigue, a touch of stirred curiosity. He could work with such incense, knew the drunkenness of this holy wine.
“A pretty puppet gave me a lollypop… do you know why such sweets are so vicious, Lieutenant?” A prettier part for Beli ya’al, or some other Satan, though Rosiel himself was hardly estranged to the blatant commodities of intrigue. “It’s because the sugar will permeate through the wrapping and stick to the cloth of the pocket, and through that stain…eat …the stitches.” Half-lidded stolen glances, the shiny glitter of any performance. “Very nice, for a sweet, if cherry – I don’t much mind the taste, usually – but cherries, Lieutenant, of all things – and the sugar, do you know, the sugar just wrapped and wrapped around those offering fingers.”
Briefly parted lips, he licked them. This too, he recalled, however more timid the actual occurrence, however meaningless. All tales served, at the very least once.
“I don’t like cherries, ser, but I rather… fancy sugar.” It was not that he would have Katan reason a way out of his doings, merely that he would rather have had him accede of own accord. In absence of such, a persuasion of sorts was quite imperative. More laughter, then a pout. “Hmmm. But you’re being so prim and proper and vile. Wager you haven’t brought me anything sweet at all.”
-
Lips paled, thinned, and twisted into the masque of a pretentious smile, offset amidst the planes of Katan’s previously cool face. Unnatural, Rosiel’s expression taking refuge upon him, in him, and for the briefest moment in eternity, Katan recalled the Void as It was. And then that voice taking shape, forming him, pulling and stretching deeply. Breathing, blinking, and taking in the Light.
Rosiel was in him always.
But the dissuasion of others and more -more and more and beyond- held him fast to whatever reality had become here. The ache, having begun low, an impossible sting, spread, an abnormal twitch of his fingers as he lifted them to skim the creamy perfection of beauty, cheekbones and cheek and semi-turned mouth. Permission, resolute and granted but never simple. I don’t know what I ask.
“Would you have given me but another name,” he purred, eyes finally focusing on the form before, below him. Lead. Shall I show you? But there was nothing of the sort in Katan’s blood. Not with Him. Never, never.
And quietly, tenderly this time. Fragile. “I bring what you desire most in this place, Rosiel.”
Oh, the sacrilege he whispered. True and brilliant. Unforgiving and possessed with the demons this neglect brought. Stop! But his hand did not listen.
-
“What…I…desire?”
Theta, nihil, Void. He sought death so willingly, so despairingly, that he’d long forgotten the taste, and he stood there, transfixed, hunting down the Recollection – in reason, heart, the back of his mouth, a foul, oily, slippery thing. His tongue swirled, and lavished, and took the whole of it in, too shyly, far too shyly.
The taste repelled him, made him sick to the stomach.
It delighted him, part bliss and part pitch-black tumour, and he took a moment to know it for blood.
“Blood…” Stricken, tainted; blood in his mouth and soothing his teeth and spawned so vile and unclean from some gash on his tongue – and when – If at all - had he? But he must have bitten it; the knowledge so foreign, though not without a hint of Recollection, that first gasp and cry when the wax and fire had met skin.
Pain. Such a weak, prejudiced temptation. I shall will it away, and it will be forgotten. He would have it go astray, and the thought, the implicit command will suffice. I have no memory. Blood is a privilege, a nuisance. I have no memory.
What was not Recollection was temporary, perception, illusory, Relative.
His prie-dieu was Relative, the wood deep-black-deep and the rock so pale, and Rosiel’s limbs a living, pious wound from its flagellation. Time would claim it. A Relative. His Furies were Relative, satiated as easily as the gluttony was born.
But Katan…Katan was his and Absolute, and so he clutched to him despondently, then avoided that cheek altogether. “I desire compensation. I desire their blood. I desire…”
Your peace.
And if there ever was a kiss, for that one, singular second of unknown, then it was blood-born and blood-baptized and blood-forsaken, and lips oh-so-close even in parting.
“Give me that...can you?”
-
So lovely. And the illusion slipped with his mouth empty of feeling, the glass shattering on cool, pious floors. Echoing, churning, and pulling him into the greedy embrace of the desperate beauty already wrapped around him, eternally within him. It was a desolate compensation, so empty, so frigid in hands capable of all the right sins, and Katan’s composure broke so fervently. A tidal wave of hellish despair in fear of promising and trying and failing.
A rebirth could set him free should he choose it, but hands stained so carelessly refused to take such a simple exit.
“Yours.” Oh, and his heart burned as he spoke the word, finalized the contract, stamped and sealed in his created essence. It exploded into an agonizing flood of flames, growing higher, higher. So that he leaned over, sheltering and protecting. Cupping Rosiel to him with the gentility of Mother to Child. Ironic, the roles so reversed.
“All of it will be yours.” Such filth to pledge, lies, and Katan loathed himself for it, knowing he would try, succeed, fail, and win all in a solitary breath, a single motion. I am yours also. But Rosiel could rise from those inflicted ashes in all splendour, without a lock out of place, brilliant and wonderful. Katan wanted to protect that. Let me…
His selfishness, adolescence, pristine disposition. The anger and hatred, loathing and self-affliction. All of it. His words, the temper and fragile psyche. Katan would guard everything, no matter the price it brought.
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Katan ::
angelic_nothing :: Rosiel :: one_of_heaven Summary: promises and lies and chaos everywhere. Katan's arrival as the Herald of Bloodshed.
Log:
Holy water quenched every thirst, but fingers broke over the rosary, however rich, however blessed. It is in the making of the beads – and Rosiel had such a perfect, concrete, sensationally bland, rather alternative and therefore contradictory precision in waging war with the great beast of mythic Recollection. Learning is memory, or asphyxiation of knowledge, perception.
When he recalled Katan, it was to a near piety that rendered small, timid, mundane imperfections to grotesque proportions and a longing for purification, or interdiction. Blood – he could smell it. Blood. Darkness dissolved into a suite of the candles of Truth in disarray; revelation, light.
When he knew, saw Katan again, it was in a wantonly immaculate Cathedral upon which he had shed cleaning, much cleaning, ablution over ablution, without, within, reminiscing – and there was incense to the prie-dieu, the sweet fragrance of muscadine and time lost and time gained and time forgotten. More Recollection: children and children’s faces during Mass, the words scattered between wanton sighs, and oh, when is the dreary praying over? I want it to reach its end?
Katan had never served as an end; Katan was always his beginning.
Now, the incidence. The candles were weary and the wax bit the hand and banished the touch, the light was so poor and so dim, and Rosiel’s knees were a living, waking bruise from prayer. Nonetheless, he had mastered enough sleights of hand to arrest movement in such a manner that he could catch his Katan rather unaware in front of that same abominable prie-dieu, wrap pale arms around that far too familiar waist and sink his forehead pleasantly against - damn him for it – ever so tall a back.
“It’s from all the praying,” he said in an end, when the ghost of the smell pestered him again. Willing it believed, willing it true, thankful that he did not have to look Katan in the eye as he lied and lied and lied again, “It’s from the rosary.”
A kind deception; there would always be blood between them.
As pale eyes befell the immaculate ruins of the cathedral, His cathedral, the Children’s refuge, the Madonna smiled at him with her plastic lips and false gaze of hope, eliciting a shiver that steadily unraveled him. Cool, but hot. And a sigh of false delusion slipped from his mouth, fingers lacking sheath skimming the chilly surface of marble, familiarizing and full of sorrow in one breath.
Abhorrence so strong…
For hidden away in this place, a treasure of the chastest rarity walked, moved, traipsed in the shadows, lighting them with brilliance, a splendour Katan had longed to stand before again. To hear those idle words draped in finery, clipped with an elegance so eagerly worshipped brought the strangest longing to his invisible, yet damned soul. It was as though he envied the very building that housed them, the god He was and the deserter he’d become.
The greatest of comforts could not soothe the ache of wanting to see that pearled skin, the charming depths of hunted eyes. Oh, how he truly missed…
And then, slender arms were around him, drawing him out of his memorised allusion. So warm, so familiar. Like liquid fire, and Katan sighed again, let loose the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He could smell the incense, bittersweet and dancing on the tip of his tongue, but the hint of something darker, sharper and just as dangerous accompanied it. Katan knew it, remembered the recollection too well despite the haze, and yet…
Yet, he spoke not a word of it as a hand lifted to touch porcelain skin, skimmed the outline of fragile fingers before withdrawing. Too much, not allowed…
Throw it away,” he murmured, uttering a blasphemy so strong it torched his flesh. “Toss it out.”
He spoke as though they’d never been separated, bound before and always, like the sins of man drenched in worldly lies, and Katan stood a pillar of service. Resilient, quiet, longing. And when he lifted his face, the Virgin’s eyes bled jealousy.
“I can’t.” I tried. I tried so fiercely. “It’s a part of me. I can’t. It won’t let me.” I shall not let myself. Sin and sin and sin again. This anger, this pride, this war – and the blood, the blood on his fingers. Unseen and unsought and unwanted, but he could feel it, breathe it, pernicious, clawing, hungering, tearing at the bone like a living, sickly thing.
He fancied it a sudden amnesia when he let that foreign touch rest, when he dug his fingers in Katan’s-always-and-forever-tidied uniform, when he blinked and blinked and opened wide, cadaver-cold eyes. An amnesia of all the artefacts hosted by the inauspicious museum of etiquette, daunting propriety, the very Done Thing. “You’ve strayed from home for far too long, Cherubim Katan.” Then he pressed oh-so-still lips on that back, his back, his flesh, his blood, his, all of Katan, his. There were hours and minutes and the abortions of seconds in between, when he played pretend and connived his own opium, or perhaps absinthe-induced Sacre-Coeur - a Church of inner, thought-woven union, and he did not dare think, on such a plane, where his aura ended, and Katan’s began, and Alexiel’s too, when it did not exhaust his patience to summon her image.
“Things change, Sleeping Beauty,” he whispered, with another kiss. They had told him so many versions of the tale in this City, after all. So many, and the end yet perpetually vicious. “Allegiances as well.” Have yours? A question unrequited, but nonetheless standing. He let go rather abruptly – cage cage CAGE- as if the touch burned him, then soothed the fingers on that same warmth-beneath-the-cloth, parted with it anew.
There were candles on his pre-dieu, and he picked one, there, that’s it, so remarkable, so pretty – and it had shed a sparkle of wax and then its fire over that cursed hand of his long before Rosiel could gasp, quite stricken. Pain, he had forgotten this too. He let it burn, however, the tip of the finger, feeding off the smell of heated flesh, banishing the blood. Katan must not know. Katan must not smell it. Katan…
Then he laughed between a sob of pain, and the second, laughed and laughed. “Hah…Katan…if I gave you eternity…what would you do with it?”
The asphyxia drew his lungs taut, a cold fist of perdition encompassing his heart as that gracious mouth pressed to his clothes once, twice over. Searing repeatedly in a wave of uncertain cold, a forbidden temptation. But Katan did not move or flinch, as solid as stone, the perfect soldier in the eyes so desperately drilling through him from behind. For he did not lust but loved, and therein desired Him all the same.
But such unclean hands were not meant to purge one of Heaven.
And as Rosiel whispered of alliances, of the frailties of a loyalty Katan had never questioned, he closed his eyes to the world of golden candlelight. Traitor, it breathed. Liar. Liar. He became drunk on the whispers, believing them and bleeding a deceit woven with the fine threads of sorrow, a grand tapestry hung in shame, and Katan swayed a little. Reality hissed as he stared forward, watching Him dance and twirl and coax his beautiful fingers through blistering wax.
The smell. So strong. Even then, he could still taste it, breathed it, and the pained laughing pained Katan to the core.
I‘d save You, his human-turned mind whispered, ripe with grief, the throbbing that broke him. And blinking found him within that divine presence, hovering, leaning, imposing and wonderfully intimidating. Their skin touched, cold fire against melted isolation. To pacify, comfort, but he wasn’t a healer. Could only remember the destruction and lies.
“Whatever you asked of me, Rosiel.” So elegant, even when missing the honorific, and Katan wanted the other to look at him. Desired, whimpered, pleaded, ached.
I’d save You from Yourself…
“And if I should ask nothing, you fool? Must I ask and ask and ask for everything, like a beggar or some despot?” A prodigal son to charitable furies - he slapped this cruel monster, this creature, this cherubim over what part of the face, cheek he could reach, roughly, and with the back of the hand - the snapped, short-timed manoeuvre befitting, and just this once lacking the riding crop. A vicarious gesture, though no regret with it; he almost expected, fancied a retort, some reason to hit and tear and rip and shatter. “Can’t you think for yourself?!”
Fine – fine. If Katan did nothing, nothing to spare himself the inconvenience – and El, but he begrudged him this choice, this distinction- then Rosiel would only push him on and on and forward. “I was very much there when someone died today.” A pause, so Katan could savour the revelation to its fullest. “Life’s blood is very…very warm. Warmer than this.”
His burned hand shone in this feigned light of all glories, the wax giving it a shine – the scorched skin beneath positively riveting. He had such a poor, lukewarm and deserting tolerance for it, but beauty – real beauty, and this he had been told, time and time anew – Beauty is pain.
“We lived. We died.” This much he knew, this much he Recalled. “You will want to know, Lieutenant, that you damned yourself by coming here.” He could see the smear of blood and ash and wax on Katan’s face, redder still than the hand print, and knew it to be from his own his hand, knew he had made them one flesh and one body again. Master and Commander, was this the game? Very well, he knew the style of it.
“You will want to know, ser, that there is no estimable escape out of our lovely present residence, and that to engage in such a pursuit would likely lead to catastrophe, or at the very least a number of distinctly undesirable consequences. You will want to know that this City summons the living and the dead, with no manner of merit for their origin or volition, and that the tick you are likely to have noticed heralds the End of the World and is occasioned by an apocalyptic Carousel. “ And it’s hastened, and soon this’ll be all over. It’s made haste, and I shall make haste with it and destroy them all, for it is my nature, my caprice, my deception. “You will want to know there are Curse days, namely hours upon which the laws of nature, man, El or wit will be subservient to the whims of an assortment of self-styled City Gods – these occasions, you will notice, are not particularly gratifying. Most of all, you will want to know that I intend to end with these City Gods, for their mockery of El, for their impudence, malice, supercilious fashion and… and for waking me to…this-this…” He looked away, then up again, then away, hand still up, shine no longer. The crust of an imperfect regeneration, the revealing of the rotting within as the flesh sewed itself. It’d be skin again, and soon, and pretty, but now it was black and wrong and sin. “…this! “
He let it fall against him rather numbly, a wing giving it shelter, his determination casually consigning it to oblivion. “These are our premises, Lieutenant….but this is no Atziluth. By right, you are no longer pledged to my service. I only ask of you what you will do.”
And as if nothing, rather nothing, because he could not let it be both blood to part them and silence, because he could never quite look away – he took to a cautious step, neared him serenely, like more of a child in game than tantrum. And he rose on his toes again, silently, gently, then brushed lips with that stricken area of skin-meet-sting-red, covered it in small kissed, whispered, “Never let anyone else ever do this to you. It’s unseemly.”
Cruelty welcomed him with the vengeance of the Furies, hard and swift, the rush of words, of actions burning the column of his skin. Consuming him with desperation. Tepid, deceased, like a praise to the damned. And Katan sunk into himself, the subservient in him wishing to fall, down and down, kiss Rosiel’s feet with lips chapped by apprehension, of a knowing so profound he willed himself to bury it.
Lost. Lost. It burns. He found no retribution in standing still, barely there in self when his precious world pivoted and crumbled and reclaimed dignity in his eyes. Tossed aside in syllable, in an action he felt only in the planes of his nonexistent heart. And just as quickly accepted.
The strings of delicacy, his Rosiel. A saint, a martyr bleeding for love, want, need, acceptance. His love, Hers, every one of them who challenged such beauty with a suicidal kiss. And Katan dared, lifting his face from its fallen position, tendrils of hair sliding, slipping, hiding eyes brimmed with adoration, protection, a simple affection easily misrepresented. His lips were supple, chilled porcelain to the hellfire burning his face.
And if he had no commitment, free of loyalties and silent oaths in solitude, it meant he had to stay. Must stay. I’ll pull you from Darkness, just as you did me. Besides, what Curse, what sway of swirling metronome in the shadows compared to the breaking of Heaven?
Katan rested silent, simply drawn in by the other, a delicacy overturned beneath the cathedral’s ceiling, in the faded candlelight before those artificial eyes of piety. It was as though the Madonna screamed when he brushed Rosiel’s face, the strands of lovely silk curling over shoulders, over ears. Wailed for her children, His children, all of them, but Katan held fast. Watched and prayed for an End.
Lieutenant, ser. Call me Katan.
The smell of the world lingered, thick on word-stilled tongues, and a thumb brushed the edge of that child’s mouth. Softly, softer.
Silence.
He did not take to it, because he could not interpret it; he could not interpret it, and so he could not control it; could not control it, therefore could not…devour it. A paradox, then: words best left unsaid, or courted? Indiscipline. Immature. Trivial. Bothersome. Provocative.
He laughed. “Well, well, ser.” There would be no mistaking the quality of the education that one as kindly devoted to academics as Katan should ever choose to appropriate: dissect the form, profane the fleshy shell of meaning, extricate the marrow of intent, then delve to extirpate the malign cancer of whatever affection behind even that. Reason, sheer reason – and reason demanded that whatever weapon Rosiel gave him, Katan would hone. Had Rosiel himself not asked for thought, rather than mere execution of a given command? He was certainly reaping the fruit of his work, to be sure – hardly the more thankful to Katan as he would be for it. “And well met.”
“I have a few…benefactors,” he began tentatively, still whispered intimately in his lieutenant’s ear, still oh-so-soft. “They bring me oranges.” And more, much more, though I pay them the fair coin of their liking for it. Blood especially, or souls, on occasion – my own too, by that matter, and however shall I tell you that particular tale? He left his head hang, arms laced neatly around the puppet’s neck – so tired, so very, very tired, though never of games. “Other things too. To think, one of them has achieved quite the mastery in polishing my feathers. Rather overly pretty of them all, wouldn’t you say? And didn’t you like them…“ A kiss to that fading red spot yet again. “…oranges?”
Oh, but Katan did not want. And yet, the envy seared through him as a dull knife in flesh, twisting, gouging. Hurting. But beneath it all, there was the irritation of losing status. Cast off, pushed aside. Rejected. It settled in the pit of his stomach, already twisting at the warmth of being pressed so close. The weight of clothing and arms around his neck…
Iniquitous.
His stoic form fitted as a wall for Rosiel’s possessive cling, motionless and calm, but Katan could not relax the rigidity of his spine, how he internally cringed as he was spoken to, left to wonder. Tormented. Only his eyes reflected the regression, his conscience sinking backwards and beneath the sands of time. Should he disappear… Would you need me to care for you still?
“They’re sweet,” his voice, gentle, murmured from trembling lips. But lifeless, glorious. And Katan knew he was mocking himself, unjustly, playing with the throes of which should never have been soothed. Certainly his studies had taught him so, but…
“May I?” Leave, run, hide. I‘m falling. Katan did not want to taste the fruits of blood, bought and paid for with the amity of Rosiel‘s Grace, a solace unto himself, but bask in it. Draw it away, disregard how everything clung to them and soiled him. A shield.
Still, Katan did not stir, gaze settled on the flicker of light upon the wick.
“May you?” He tilted his head, much as the position allowed for it, cursed Katan’s height again, considered. “Oh, ser, but you always could.”
Ambiguity, fatigue, a touch of stirred curiosity. He could work with such incense, knew the drunkenness of this holy wine.
“A pretty puppet gave me a lollypop… do you know why such sweets are so vicious, Lieutenant?” A prettier part for Beli ya’al, or some other Satan, though Rosiel himself was hardly estranged to the blatant commodities of intrigue. “It’s because the sugar will permeate through the wrapping and stick to the cloth of the pocket, and through that stain…eat …the stitches.” Half-lidded stolen glances, the shiny glitter of any performance. “Very nice, for a sweet, if cherry – I don’t much mind the taste, usually – but cherries, Lieutenant, of all things – and the sugar, do you know, the sugar just wrapped and wrapped around those offering fingers.”
Briefly parted lips, he licked them. This too, he recalled, however more timid the actual occurrence, however meaningless. All tales served, at the very least once.
“I don’t like cherries, ser, but I rather… fancy sugar.” It was not that he would have Katan reason a way out of his doings, merely that he would rather have had him accede of own accord. In absence of such, a persuasion of sorts was quite imperative. More laughter, then a pout. “Hmmm. But you’re being so prim and proper and vile. Wager you haven’t brought me anything sweet at all.”
Lips paled, thinned, and twisted into the masque of a pretentious smile, offset amidst the planes of Katan’s previously cool face. Unnatural, Rosiel’s expression taking refuge upon him, in him, and for the briefest moment in eternity, Katan recalled the Void as It was. And then that voice taking shape, forming him, pulling and stretching deeply. Breathing, blinking, and taking in the Light.
Rosiel was in him always.
But the dissuasion of others and more -more and more and beyond- held him fast to whatever reality had become here. The ache, having begun low, an impossible sting, spread, an abnormal twitch of his fingers as he lifted them to skim the creamy perfection of beauty, cheekbones and cheek and semi-turned mouth. Permission, resolute and granted but never simple. I don’t know what I ask.
“Would you have given me but another name,” he purred, eyes finally focusing on the form before, below him. Lead. Shall I show you? But there was nothing of the sort in Katan’s blood. Not with Him. Never, never.
And quietly, tenderly this time. Fragile. “I bring what you desire most in this place, Rosiel.”
Oh, the sacrilege he whispered. True and brilliant. Unforgiving and possessed with the demons this neglect brought. Stop! But his hand did not listen.
“What…I…desire?”
Theta, nihil, Void. He sought death so willingly, so despairingly, that he’d long forgotten the taste, and he stood there, transfixed, hunting down the Recollection – in reason, heart, the back of his mouth, a foul, oily, slippery thing. His tongue swirled, and lavished, and took the whole of it in, too shyly, far too shyly.
The taste repelled him, made him sick to the stomach.
It delighted him, part bliss and part pitch-black tumour, and he took a moment to know it for blood.
“Blood…” Stricken, tainted; blood in his mouth and soothing his teeth and spawned so vile and unclean from some gash on his tongue – and when – If at all - had he? But he must have bitten it; the knowledge so foreign, though not without a hint of Recollection, that first gasp and cry when the wax and fire had met skin.
Pain. Such a weak, prejudiced temptation. I shall will it away, and it will be forgotten. He would have it go astray, and the thought, the implicit command will suffice. I have no memory. Blood is a privilege, a nuisance. I have no memory.
What was not Recollection was temporary, perception, illusory, Relative.
His prie-dieu was Relative, the wood deep-black-deep and the rock so pale, and Rosiel’s limbs a living, pious wound from its flagellation. Time would claim it. A Relative. His Furies were Relative, satiated as easily as the gluttony was born.
But Katan…Katan was his and Absolute, and so he clutched to him despondently, then avoided that cheek altogether. “I desire compensation. I desire their blood. I desire…”
Your peace.
And if there ever was a kiss, for that one, singular second of unknown, then it was blood-born and blood-baptized and blood-forsaken, and lips oh-so-close even in parting.
“Give me that...can you?”
So lovely. And the illusion slipped with his mouth empty of feeling, the glass shattering on cool, pious floors. Echoing, churning, and pulling him into the greedy embrace of the desperate beauty already wrapped around him, eternally within him. It was a desolate compensation, so empty, so frigid in hands capable of all the right sins, and Katan’s composure broke so fervently. A tidal wave of hellish despair in fear of promising and trying and failing.
A rebirth could set him free should he choose it, but hands stained so carelessly refused to take such a simple exit.
“Yours.” Oh, and his heart burned as he spoke the word, finalized the contract, stamped and sealed in his created essence. It exploded into an agonizing flood of flames, growing higher, higher. So that he leaned over, sheltering and protecting. Cupping Rosiel to him with the gentility of Mother to Child. Ironic, the roles so reversed.
“All of it will be yours.” Such filth to pledge, lies, and Katan loathed himself for it, knowing he would try, succeed, fail, and win all in a solitary breath, a single motion. I am yours also. But Rosiel could rise from those inflicted ashes in all splendour, without a lock out of place, brilliant and wonderful. Katan wanted to protect that. Let me…
His selfishness, adolescence, pristine disposition. The anger and hatred, loathing and self-affliction. All of it. His words, the temper and fragile psyche. Katan would guard everything, no matter the price it brought.