[ct] 62.4 - THE PRESTIGE quote
“I love you.”
“…you mean it today.”
On a bluff he stood with her, wrapped in the howling ocean wind and the warmth of a woman he could never have imagined. In his dreams, his brightest and his darkest fantasies he’d dreamed of someone who could fulfill him completely.
She was not his wife…too pale, too bleak a vision compared to the reality of what he held now, what he felt. The power coursing through his veins, filling him with wonderment and awe at every little thing he beheld only enriched the heat of love that made him ache with its overwhelming power.
“I have been stripped of my godhood, but they cannot strip me of my soul. Not even the gods can unmake the first of us all.” He breathed, taking Pandora’s face between his hands. “Hear me, wife: I have forsaken Elysium this day for a greater paradise than Hades can offer. That eternal rest is the weary task you face. To see it through beside you, every waking moment…my damnation is my greatest eternal reward.”
As she smiled up at him and leaned up for a kiss that pushed back the winds buffeting around them, Epimetheus made the words a vow in his mind and in his heart.
Reward in servitude. Serve the power. Defy the gods. In my defiance, serve the Power.
* * * * * * * * * *
“I love you!”
“Oh my…you really mean that today, don’t you?”
Laughing, he swept her into his arms again and held her aloft as he waltzed her around the room. “A thousand times over and a thousand times again, my baby darling!” he chuckled, setting her on her feet again to relish the bright flush that now adorned her cheeks.
She smiled then, and his heart sang louder than even the crowd could make it croon. His dear sweet little angel, so delicate and uplifting with her unerring faith and simple beauty…better women, stronger and more beautiful women were his to have and always had been, yet this one called him like no other ever had.
Maybe it was magic, he never could resist the lure of the real stuff…and his sweet girl had magic of her own to spare.
Sighing, he took her face between his hands and drew Bess forward. Kissing her forehead warmly, another laugh bubbled out of him like the effervescence of champagne. “My sweet Rosabelle, if love were an ocean I doubt I could swim across it. Locked and shackled, your waters hold me a happy prisoner. The Mirror will reward me soon, and this day will live in infamy as the day Houdini beat his greatest foe yet.”
Watching her beam at him was his greatest reward as she gently took his hands. “Those handcuffs did such damage, Harry…shall I clean them for you?”
“Yes, you clean while I heal.” he agreed, shutting his eyes with a sigh. “Playacting for the masses is as hard as an actual escape, I think…but the energy will see me through. Hope springs eternal, my darling. Never forget that.”
“Yes, Harry. I will remember.”
* * * * * * * * * *
“I love you.”
“You better mean it today.”
He had to smile at that as he leaned in and kissed her, knowing she had reason to doubt. They all did. Since his creation, he’d always been unfaithful to his women. Cheating with his own sense of foolish pride, his infatuation with magic and his love of the vows he’d sworn.
They would always come first, and though she questioned like all the rest, Ziyah was the first to truly understand that.
“Loving you means that I will mean it. Every day.”
“I’m…not sure I get it.”
Grinning, Tommy framed her face between his hands and felt a strong ocean breeze caress his skin. Beneath his fingers, her cheeks were warm but bore no sign of a flush…echoes of the past reminding him that love was the boldest of Hope’s faces. It drove him, and others, to unspeakable heights where anything was possible. It didn’t allow for lies or exaggeration: it demanded everything and was too irresistible to be denied.
Leaning in, he stole a kiss, warm even as he stood waist-high in a barrel of water about to be hung twelve stories up.
“You will.” He promised in a whisper. “Love doesn’t forgive, doesn’t forget, and doesn’t allow for lies. Remember that.”
As he drew back, she smiled…and Tommy knew that no matter how many lives he was destined to live, the smile borne of love was the most beautiful he would ever have the joy of knowing.
Muse: Tommy Karras
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 786
Partner: Pandora (Mythology), Bess Houdini (Historical), Ziyah Ambrogio (zee_ali) {Highlander OC}