October 24, 2002
absolution [kaj'sha]

[wyrmpit]

(kaj'sha)
He hasn't been out of his room much these few weeks. Like Asher's own ritual seclusion, Kaj'sha had drawn into his pure(ly tainted) self, turned his back to the world and curled tight around the demons within. Memories have been difficult to cope with...thoughts and delusions. Striking is only the first part of the test, and the easiest.

But.

The door is open tonight. Glimpsed within, the room has been reordered. Rearranged. Remade. There is now no furniture. No furnishings. Nothing but white: pure. Untainted. Sterile.

And he wears nothing but white.
And he is still.

Flawless.

(asher)
Luna changed her face in the time it has been since the Galliard even thought to return to the Lab (home) all that he cared to accomplish (destroy) accumulated in series of phone calls and chance meetings.... but tonight, tonight something calls (craves) him to the familiar subterranean pathways

the Fang kin abandoned without explanation
without warning
without regard

a heavy silence had walked with him through the empty tunnels (silence his bedmate) to chambers uncared for in weeks
a shiver tightened newly scarred shoulders at how alone the Galliard felt

after the shower (steamed and scalded clean) ceased, only then did the young Dancer think to venture into the rest of the pit, hungry, searching, skin still warm from the water's (hissing) kiss, and curious (hoping) light sparking within mismatched eyes to see the door so long shut (against the world.... against him) one more...... cracked.....

(kaj'sha)
Cracked? The door, perhaps.
Kaj'sha? Never.

He is. Perfect. If he is skewed (...and he is...), he is perfectly so now, every last angle off, every line tilted, every curve bent. Everything. Matches. The whole is perfect. The whole is.

WRONG.

"And so," his voice is angels, sighing, "the prodigal son returns."

Behind Asher. Few moved with such effortless, silent grace as Kaj'sha. The beautiful youth's hands are laced behind his back; tall, slender, he regards Asher with a solemnity reminiscent of seraphim and saints. Archangel crowned in (.thorns.) golden locks, the Philodox steps around Asher without ever once brushing him and opens the door to his white room.

"Sian and I have missed you so." Words that could be cloying are grave on his tongue, simple and honest. The room is utterly immaculate; everything is white saved Kaj'sha, who is white and gold with only the faintest pink giving life to his perfection. Like the dawn, is he: like the Morning Star.

There is nowhere to sit but the ground, and Kaj'sha does so, cross-legged, back straight. Quiet, the question comes, "Where have you been?"

(Confess your sins, darkchild mine.)

(asher)
jaw twists towards (silver) scarred shoulder, turning towards the voice, the fallen angel, the devilric seraph that now grants the mortal muse audience, attention, bestowing perhaps the greatest of graces with idle smile (where. have. you. been.) quietly watching the circling (shark) that closes in to never strike

[do you speak of me, or yourself]
question writ in eyes that will never be seen

when the Alpha (god) moves, the Beta (child) follows

"As I have missed you."

one has stolen the angel's body
the other has stolen its voice

sinking to sit (supplicate) before the Philodox, the answer whispered silk (poison) against the air

"Hunting."

the bodies found (the bodies not yet found) the vengeance that shows in healing (healed) skin above a sorrowed (fractured) soul, lungs filling with scent so long withheld (never forgotten) in the silence that awaits judgement

[why did you leave me]

(kaj'sha)
He draws a breath...
...and he releases a breath.

Oxygen to carbon dioxide. Air to (sweetest) poison. Those who die of carbon monoxide poisoning are flushed and beautiful, as though they merely sleep after the rapture of true love.

Kaj'sha's lightless eyes search the blank ceiling of the blank room. Indeed, they are the only darkness here, save for Asher's clothes and the shadows pooled beneath them. He searches the ceiling as though he could find an answer there, not only to Asher's unspoken-heartbroken questions, but to every other. Why the seasons turn. Why leaves brown. Why angels fall.

I am not fallen. I don't care what they think. I am true.
I am perfect.
I am the vengeance that shall scourge the world.

"I have been..." pause, so effortless that it does not seem to be one, but merely a dilation of time. His eyes slip down; they pass over Asher, into Asher, and then to the ground. His lashes are long and curled and golden; he is as a martyr to the greatest cause of all: that has more truth than even Kaj'sha will ever know, until his fate comes upon him. But - no. Hush. Listen, "...hunting, myself. There were demons to slay."

A beat.

"Trust in me when I tell you this," ...said Jehovah after the Flood... "I will never abandon you again."

Another.

"But they are coming for you, soon."

(asher)
as if the Galliard knows his Alpha's thoughts, rhythms, and reasons, perhaps there is a smile that flickers (crawls like a newborn child realizing its chance at life) across his countenance (first breath) and begets sadistic energy once more through battered frame (first sin) the poisonous breath (sweetest taint) drawn and cradled as if it, then, were all that were required, as if it, then, were the oxygen that spawned twisted desire to truly (viciously) live

And that is why I.
Serve.
You.
My faith is still unshakeable.

the crystaline gaze drops (day and night plummeting to abyssmal darkness) to the pristine floor

"They have found me more than once."

so many layers in the all but unheard words

(kaj'sha)
"Then you have nothing to fear."

So simply does he slide two threads into one. Face to face with his Beta, the Philodox is slender and graceful, so beautiful as to be otherworldly. Abstract. Beyond. Trust in me, said Lucifer, son of the morning, and you shall fear nothing.

Asher's eyes drop. Kaj'sha reaches one slim and elegant hand forward. His fingers never brush Asher's chin, but the sheer opposed-magnets force of his absent touch is enough to raise the Galliard's eyes back to his. And his are black. Endlessly black. Look in, and be. Devoured.

"They come with all their might, but I will not let you"
Wonder, at the choice of his words.
"fall."

(asher)
the reaction to almost touch is instant (how he begs to delay) drawing the (uneven) gaze of the damned back to angel's (perfect) skin, to his eyes - what shakes the very foundations of all else that meet the dreaded gaze, the Galliard willingly casts himself to drown in the voids of eternal

without hesitation
without reserve
without another thought save he wants to be there
just as he threw himself into the Father's (frightening) arms
That. Is true faith.

palms flattening against the cool tiles (aching to curl close and reaffirm the dream is real) weight shifts (the semblance of genuflection's might) to speak the half-language of the Spiral
of mind (cracked), body (torn), and soul (twisted)
the closest move he dares

"Then I shall never fall."


(kaj'sha)
The Alpha.
Does not move back.
An inch.

And an inch.
Is the tantalizing distance.
Between.

"I have a question for you." It is barely more than a breath. Though Kaj'sha's eyes never leave Asher's, his hand moves; from the folds of his pristine white clothing, he draws a knife. Summersblade, still smelling of the sea after so long. The knife is held up beside Asher's face. Light dances along the uneven, serrated, seashell edge; light flickers in Asher's vision, at the corners of perception. "Did you kill her?"

And this, this is whispered:
"She loved you."

(asher)
the distance that makes strong frame tremble
close enough to taste.... but never touch
...... how it makes him ache

through he knows the blade could strike (he would let it) the Galliard doesn't flinch (faith) when it is raised, it's reflection brilliance in strange blue eyes (seashells against the ever-changing sea) that do not blink else the dream shatters

"Yes."

a breath between them (a breath shared) to span the silence, broken by a (silken) sigh

"She died thinking I loved her in return."

so twisted
his justice
her reward

(kajsha)
Absolution and condemnation are entwined in his eyes; absolution and condemnation are both absent.

Soundlessly, smoothly, and in a single motion, Kaj'sha rises to his feet. White in a room of white, all that is missing are the wings. But the only wings a Dancer could ever wear are black...leathery...hideous.

Wingless, then, he holds Asher's gaze. It is impossible to look away. It is impossible to look anywhere else but into the void, which is black as the darkest night, blacker.

"Rise to your knees, Grr'aack."
Quiet. as. falling. stars.
"Remove your shirt."

(asher)
there is nothing and everything hidden within the darkest voids (and that... is what allows reason to define) but curiosity glints in the seas of color trapped in the desert of (pure) white

fabric whispers across (newly) healed skin to be set aside
how many scars were not there before
how many would his Alpha never know where there at all
the twin ridges blessing his shoulder blades

he has the voice, perhaps he once had the wings, shorn away because he had no right to wear them
that makes two, that should, but never will

one deserves them (has them, in his Beta's eyes)
the other such deviance they could never remain had they existed

silent.... the Galliard waits

(kaj'sha)
For the space of an eternity, Kaj'sha does not move. does not speak. does not so much as blink.

Then: condemnation.

The knife sinks into flesh
"Shhh."
and burns like a kiss.

There is silver at its edge, and Asher can feel it. Sunk deep into the skin and muscle of his chest, right down to the bone, it seethes and throbs and scalds. Kaj'sha can see pain register in the set of Asher's bones, but he cannot see it in his eyes.

It did not matter.

Slowly, steadily, the Alpha opens his flesh in a circle, in a loop, in a spiral. Stigmata: the blade is so sharp that the cut cannot be seen; blood wells as though from unmarred skin, and blood echoes for one beaded second the pattern of the cut. The pattern of the Wyrm.

Then it pours. Blood sheets down Asher's skin, here diverting over an arch of bone, there a scar, and there again, a ridge of muscle. Blood soaks the waist of Asher's pants, and lower.

The first design is complete. It will scar: the Wyrm glyph sprawled lazy and perfect over Asher's breast. Another silence falls, and red blood spreads soundlessly at their feet. For once, Kaj'sha does not move back from it.

"So that you remember she loved you."

The knife plunges again. Sharp and fast, the pattern of the jagged whorls about the Wyrm's spiral. A carnivorous rose yawns open; the Wyrm's sign becomes the sign of the beast.

Black. Spiral. Dancer.

But the last spike remains incomplete. The blade remains sunken inches into flesh, and the tip of it - does Asher imagine it? - touches the black heart of the Galliard. It is a queer touch, the (ecstatic) quiver of silver entirely too deep inside, violating and sanctimonious at once. The beat of that heart rocks the hilt of the blade gently; the slightest of pushes would snuff out Asher's flame forever.

Trust me.

Kaj'sha speaks again.
"I should let you die thinking I loved you."

A beat of Asher's heart.

"But..."
Tension stretches forever.
"...I would rather you lived to know it."

Absolution.
The blade withdraws
and clatters to the ground.

Kaj'sha steps away.

((insert LENGTHY stunned silence by Wolf, Mike who was lurking, and everybody we told about it..... and.... forty-fucking-five minutes later:))

(asher)
when the blade sinks
the scream rises

silver buried deeply in the metis Dancer's flesh and muscle, nicking bone (scalding) as jaw clenches (to break) to strangle the plaintive wail as he was told (as he was so. silently. commanded) though the pain is maddening (fracturing, splintering, thinning the delicate threads of .....cracked.... mind)

deliciously tormenting
the madman's sick caress
mismatched eyes glazing in horrific pleasure

....... I killed her to save her greater pain......

whispered (so small against the wave of mindnumbing pain) deep in the recesses

but it does .not. matter.
he knows, without seeing, what it is his Alpha carves in willing flesh, quaking beneath the cruel (adoring) touch, low moan (purred, begging) welling behind the remnants of agony's howl, mixing to wash muted sigh on tainted (talented) tongue, the (sick) smile that curves his lips (blessed)

glazed eyes draw open to feel the pause, his heart beating (strong), mindless desperation (devotion) to creep closer to the ultimate touch even if it meant it would be the caress that ended it all (ecstacy's thrill in asphyxiation), irises wide enough to challenge the darkness in Kaj'sha's gaze, blue nearly extinct - the two Dancers (angels, devils) for this instant joined into a single (devastating) creature

in the pain that wells by one to the other
in the blood that spills to bridge one to the other

[I once told you...... I would give all you desired of me and more]

Aethera Inamorata - there is divinity in pleasure
The Spiral's Heart - there is divinity in pain

......I would never forget......

never
as final as the blade's clatter on floor so clean (perfect, that he was allowed to mar) ringing in the Galliard's ears
as final as the mark of his Alpha's hand that will remain with him, on him, in him
forever

Posted by asher at October 24, 2002 12:00 AM
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