Ira Deorum

richard siken | @contemptim

I will come back from the dead for you.

He has never lied to her, and as they gaze at each other unbroken — he, looking up, having knelt and sunken his weight down further onto his heel to rest; while she stands, amber eyes fixed down on him — she feels the pressing weight of its truth.

Her hand steals into his hair, cupping the back of his skull before her fingers tighten and curl into the strands. Softly she pulls downward, a gentle but firm motion, using his hair as leverage to tilt back until his chin is raised and throat exposed like a prey animal's submission. He offers no resistance to the motion, and she presents no guile. The grief on her face is raw and unconcealed, something she wants him to see. The scar there has healed but she remembers when it was fresh. She remembers. She had mourned.

I will come back from the dead for you.

The truth of this statement is written on his body with that wound as surely as any language and her free hand ghosts over the scarred flesh. It is coarse under her fingertips and she remembers the haunting rapture on his face before he had drawn the blade on himself. She remembers how the flowers were stained, and likewise her hands, with her helplessness and inability to heal him. Hardly either of their finest moments. Death is the most bitter failure. And yet he had persisted beyond.

"My dearest old friend, it is not returning to the star that I would have you defy," she breathes, tearing her gaze away from his neck and back to his inscrutable blue eyes. Perhaps his words had been meant as reassurance, to assert the unbreakable nature of their bond. But they are not enough. Not even with their sincerity, for this is not an offering that could satisfy her. She cannot go through this or its like, again.

Bethany lets go of her grip on his hair, relieving that pressure, choosing instead to cup his face with a tenderness. Light kisses are pressed to his cheek before she continues. "Do not return from death for me. I would have you not die at all. Refuse to be parted from me. Live." Perhaps there should be vulnerability in such candor but here in this moment they share, openness feels as natural as breathing. A desire to be laid bare runs though her, and she is uninclined to refuse it. A kiss to his other cheek. "Everything you have to offer, I want it all and in return I give you everything of me."

Perhaps it could be as simple as that.

Moments pass, measured in heartbeats. A steadfast organ offering proof of life in its steady rhythm. Her arms wind around his neck in a loose embrace and hang there, fingers brushing idly through his hair now, unlike the purposeful grip from earlier. "Sometimes, I think we were both born for destruction. We understand it, we wield it, it's in our blood. But you can't destroy me, and I won't destroy you, and within that I find a kind of… peace."

Such a thing may sound nonsensical, but a force can only be canceled out by its equal and opposite reaction. Counterparts that harmonize. She has faith that he comprehends.

Their shared artificial echoes resonate for a moment, granting him access to her inner world. It is unbidden but she allows it. A memory. The two of them in the royal gardens, seated on a blanket beneath the sunflowers she had planted - as far away from the foreboding Morbol enclosure as possible, of course - their thick unswaying stalks providing a veil from the outside. After all, children do love hiding places. They are seated together, her head on his arm as they quietly read. Or at least, Bethany reads in bursts in between peering out through the flowers for any errant servants seeking their missing prince. A simple moment that stayed with her fondly, though why it would be recalled at this time she cannot say. Other than, perhaps, proof there has always been so much more to them both than the violence they were shaped by.

The connection closes, though sweet nostalgia lingers. She can almost still smell those flowers.