Of Gods and Monsters

[malefics]

Title: Of Gods and Monsters
Author: Malefics
Pairing: Godric/Salazar
Rating: R to NC-17 for sexual content and violence
A/N: Compilation inspired by loveneverdead. Dedicated to the film of the same name.

"If the thrice-be-damned cock crows," said Godric Gryffindor, face muffled in the dark waves of Salazar Slytherin's hair, "it'll be for last time." The sky was already silvered with the first flush of dawn, but the two entangled bodies were neither wearied nor replenished.

"That's what snakes are for," said Salazar. "Best worry more about Helga crowing, and make your hours spend themselves."



When this silver dawn was a grey twilight, Salazar was sitting in the garden. The late-blooming roses were great round things: almost scented globes, pale in the moonlight. The surface of the pool beside him shimmered silver and drifted with sudden shadows of fish.

Salazar had the blueprints spread over a makeshift table. He made notes here and there with his stylus upon damp, circular tablets of wax he had placed here and there over the new vellum. A tap of the wand would transform suggestion into reality, but despite Salazar's dislike of sharing authority, the castle was a group effort. They all had their areas of expertise and... apparently Godric's was walking around shirtless.

Salazar had never seen anyone do it quite like that. He'd seen men and women, pale and dark, but never the beauty of bronzed muscles, the tops slightly sunburned from Godric's maile, a few scratches along the ribs, and that sheen of fresh sweat and old oil that glistens upon the darkness like a visual caress. Never the planes and curves of a man, the way a man should have planes and curves, where muscle ridges and retreats and defines itself to such aggressive masculinity that the light need only hide in the hollows and allow that pure, natural beauty to introduce itself. That trail of reddish gold hair disappearing from the center of the stomach down under the worn leather of his warrior's kilt... a master's work. It made Salazar's mouth dry.

Godric's hair was wet at the edges. Curls teased his eyes and his shoulders. They left trails of sweat and well-water on the edges of a neck something between that of a bull and a Roman statue. A neck strong enough to beg for two hands and sweet, unending, sensuous bites.

He was smiling that smile that lit up the world, so that the darkness of the garden was like noon. Salazar smiled back, helplessly.

"Still working?" Godric flopped down carelessly on one of the benches that made up the makeshift table. A wax tablet flipped and skittered as the board shifted under him.

Salazar caught it without looking. His hand was a long white flash.

"'Sblood, you're fast." Godric grinned. "I still say you ought to try your hand at a blade. You'd be a terror."

"I still say," Salazar replied lazily, watching a bead of sweat roll along the side of Godric's neck, "that fighting with weapons is a barbaric Muggle pursuit and I would not demean my hands with it. Name me a single swordsman I could not terrorize with wand alone."

Godric raised an eyebrow, turned his head and scratched at his beard. Smiling wickedly, he finally murmured, "Me." His brown eyes sparkled.

Salazar stared at him. He would probably be expected to get angry, but all he could feel was amusement and a meltingly warm, slow sensation like falling through thick water as he stared at Godric. "I think that was a challenge."

"I find myself suitable attired."

"What do you mean, you fool, you haven't even got a wand on--" Salazar stopped. A slow, soft smile curved his thin lips. "I begin to understand," he purred.

Godric's smile neither widened or shifted in any way, but its heat intensified. Salazar wondered that the rosebushes did not catch fire.

Salazar stood, carefully. His spine was very straight. He did not want to betray how strongly he reacted to this vision spread out before him. His shadow danced over the surface of the lake: tall and gaunt, with long, long hair. He placed one hand upon the damp smoothness of Godric's shoulder. His thumb moved among the grit of sand, the texture of the oil and sweat. Small scars stood out beneath his fingers. He placed his other hand on the opposite shoulder.

Godric stared up at him. His smile faded, lost in a look of utter openness and heat like that of Vulcan's forge.

Salazar leaned down. Fractional distance dissipated with every second. Salazar's brown hair slid over his robed ribs and shoulders and hissed over Godric's kilt. It screened their faces, and then, lips finally touched. Salazar's closed over Godric's, and the world upended itself. Godric's strong hands clamped around his shoulders. The kiss became thirsty and frank and full of an eldritch blend of curiosity and obsession. Their tastes got into each others' mouths and mingled.

Salazar slid forward, forcing Godric's head back, till his legs touched Godric's knees. Godric's hand swept beneath him, under his thigh, and Godric rose then, lifting him as easily as a bit of wood, or as a woman. Salazar drew back, eyes narrowed.

Godric said, "Allow me to take you to my room."

Such diplomatic phrasing. Slytherin kissed the side of his mouth, his bruised lips scratched by the beard, and allowed it.

A sharp twist and pop through the strained nothingness of the Worlds That Are, and they were there.

The room had Moorish influences. It was draped in red and gold, mostly red save for bits of Godric's famous heraldry. The rest of the designs were geometric patterns. There were few books, but they were well cared for, kept neatly in a corner unless they had been recently used: these were sprawled amid the floor-cushions. The floor was marble under the many rugs. The bed was high and wide and piled with silks and furs.

They ended upon it. There was no incense here, nothing to appall Slytherin's nose. There was only the smells of Godric's sweat, steel and its polish, silk and old furs. Salazar's robes joined the puddle of conflicting materials upon the straw mattress. Their bare bodies rubbed together, fitted like silken pieces of the same puzzle box. They were kissing, rough and gentle and everywhere. Godric was the stronger, and he rolled and lifted Salazar where he wanted him, which failed to be irritating within the wash of passion in which any position could be one of power when lips and tongue and teeth could draw sweet sounds of bliss or soft, disbelieving oaths, and nails could rake tenderly, leaving more phrases in the red lines upon Godric's bronzed skin.

Salazar, very white against him, hissed at bruises or occasionally whispered "yes," but mostly kept silent through his pleasure, and kept his eyes closed to hide how utterly undone he was, how utterly in love. Once Godric had seen that, and Salazar thought by the slowing of his caresses and kisses, that it had unnerved him a little.

He let him see it only when the friction of their hardened penises finally brought him to the edge of nothingness, the edge of that abyss where the body shakes and surrenders to blind ecstasy. They were there together, could see how lost each other was, and held hands as they leapt together within that chasm. Godric let out a low moan as he came. Salazar was silent.

And that was not an end to it. Again and again, as the moon rose and set, their bodies rose and set in similar ascendancy, and ways of pleasure were tried and loved and shared. Exhausted, tangled together in muscle and long wet-slick hair, they breathed contently and cursed the cock that might dare to crow.

+

The ocean is a great womb. Within it, there is order and destruction, life and death. There is the hand of God, moving with the grace of a jellyfish or the severe sweep of a shark. In the tidal pools, there is beauty and putrescence. Godric smiled and smeared it with his hand: just so.

Salazar shuddered.

"It feels like leather, this one," Godric said. He knelt upon the pleated rock. His robes had been left near the coves, and he wore only a simple warrior's kilt of reinforced linen. The sun had already burned his bronze shoulders faintly pink. The sea spray dappled bits of his reddish-gold hair, so that he smelled of its salt.

Salazar looked at the slimy brownish thing he was stroking, and shook his head. Salazar, Godric realized, could never understand the electric jolt of understanding. He could never understand the gentle curiosity of touching a totally alien living thing, the pleasure of learning the ways of an alien culture. He could appreciate the ocean for its majesty and its destructive power, but for nothing else.

Was that what he saw in Godric? The power of him? The destructive potential of mind and body honed to greatness in whatever it attempted? Godric frowned, thinking of this.

Salazar fascinated him. He had to admit the fascination lay in the danger, for in Salazar there was nothing else. Slytherin was the blood that billowed from the teeth of the shark. Salazar was the darkness at the depths of its heart. Salazar was creation when creation was a double-edged sword. Salazar was the mortuary of the waters. Salazar was the never looking back.

He saw Godric watching him and gave him a measuring look. The horizon was echoed in his dark grey eyes. Godric tried to smile and felt it falter in the face of his intensity. What was it Salazar really wanted from him?

He tried to let it go. He turned back to the tidal pool. His fingers brushed the tentacle tips of a shaded purple sea-anemone, which contracted as his hand drew away. A bit of mud and mess shifted in the ripple he caused. He watched it swirl in the water until it was golden, until it vanished. The water never quite became clear.

What do I want him to want? He thought to himself, rubbing a bit of silt that clung to his big fingers. Do I want him to say that he loves me? Godric almost shuddered at the thought. There was something about Salazar that was like an abyss stretching into nothingness. A mouth that could easily devour him. Godric could smile at anyone speaking of love, anyone but Salazar... He wanted Salazar to love him, as long as he never precisely knew.

As long as he was never required to stretch to cover the gaping hole, to cover the cruelty, to cover the loneliness, to cover everything that Salazar was that Godric could never accept.

He looked up in the sunlight and could not smile until Salazar carefully slipped the tips of his elegant fingers into the murky water. "You feel like a muddy little boy," he said, staring, and curled his hand into Gryffindor's, as if he had sensed the drawing-away in Godric's mind.

+

Salazar wanted immortality. Not immortality in books or in memory, or in the love left behind them (though there was a sweet, dark longing in his soul for one and one alone) but true immortality. He couldn't live in the moment, wild and fierce, like Godric did.

He'd made a Horcrux, long before, out of a slender chain to which two bracelets were attached. The bracelets depicted delicate serpents biting their own tails. It could not bind anyone, it was meant as an adornment. A sign of ownership, a sign of love. He'd given it to Godric, but could not imagine Godric ever wearing it. It was hard to imagine something so fine, shimmering silver against Godric's strong tanned wrist.

So that night, out in the garden, he looped the chain over a cherry bough. The slight pressure as he pulled down sent a shower of pale blossoms dancing around him. He clasped each tail in mouth about his own, slender wrists and waited, hands carefully lifted and crossed, knowing that to break the chain was to break the Horcrux.

His gift to Godric.

Perfect self-control.

The wind caressed him. It was warm and gentle. Then there were Godric's big, callused hands, and an impossible ecstasy. Salazar swayed but could not allow himself to fall. To break the binding of his own soul he'd placed upon himself.

He left the bracelet as a souvenir. When he saw Godric clasp it with extra chains, a knightly collar to wear above his arm, his heart burst into singing flame.

+

Godric glittered. He was a small sun, orbited by gaggles of admiring women and sycophantic men. It made Salazar sick to look at him. This was Salazar's idea of the ninth circle of Hell. Certainly, he had his own admirers, though they generally arrayed themselves wherever Salazar was enthroned. They were as gaudy and as shameless as Godric's... followers, but at least they would never have the audacity to claim that they were Slytherin's friends.

Godric would accept and adopt the lot of them. He never saw the disgusting way their eyes lit up as they watched him, never for a second suspected the calculation that hid behind their breathless compliments...

Salazar ground his teeth. When someone offered him another goblet of some rich ruby liquid, he accepted, and fantasized briefly that it was the blood of those sheep.

It does no good to continue to watch him. He will be at this all night. They love him. He loves to be loved.

Slytherin turned back toward his ring of hangers-ons. His sharp-featured, gaunt face caught the light. Grey eyes glinted coldly. Conversation faltered under his expression, then shifted tack and began again. Salazar held court in glacial silence.

+

Godric Gryffindor wasn't as drunk as he wanted to be. The candlelight danced over his bronze skin, marred with a thousand tiny pale scars. He watched some of them wink in the light, dotting the back of his big fist. He watched the light glide over the engraved surface of his goblet.

The buzz in his veins felt marvelous. The laughter and the jokes of his comrades at the party made him feel good. If that had been enough to still the cold fear in the pit of his stomach, he might have enjoyed that evening. But laughter couldn't cut the fear and wine couldn't drown it.

He felt his gaze dragged to Salazar, again and again, that evening. Salazar's gaunt figure, in its heavy black robes, his brown hair gleaming like some treasured bolt of silk. Salazar pale and moody. Salazar's jealousy.

He could feel the waves of Salazar's pain and anger like the undertow of a black ocean. If he let them catch him, he would never escape the yawning chasm of the man's love. There was no laughter there, no wine, only exquisite things that did not suit Godric, only perversions and prejudices and motheaten threads of abandoned hope.

The girl tried to laugh through her tears when he knelt by her in the garden. She smiled at him and was, in that instant, so inexpressibly lovely, torn between her pain and her laughter. She tried in a way Salazar would never try.

Godric brushed the tears away from her face, murmured another joke to make her laugh. Then, without knowing why or how, he was kissing her. She was soft against his mouth, pliant, sweet.

They laughed and they kissed and they made love there among the roses, with the roar of the party in their ears. Afterward, they lay back, and he stroked her dark hair from her shoulder... Honoria... and then he felt sick because he saw himself as a great betrayer. A betrayer of Salazar. A betrayer of Honoria, whom he had only bedded to escape Salazar's binding moods.

How could he find himself back into the light? What was the honorable thing to do? He couldn't find it, and so he made Honoria happy until she returned to her home, and he drank unceasingly until the candles dimmed.

When he found Salazar again, his stomach clenched in his chest, his skin went to ice. He knew he'd have to pay for it, and worse, he knew there was no escaping the deep-buried love that scared him so badly.

+

The scent of beeswax and burnt cotton was thick in the air. The candles had dimmed and guttered. The party had stretched long, and most of its machinery long-since returned to the warmth of their beds,- or somebody else's.

Godric Gryffindor, disheveled and laughing, wove his way through the velvets and upended goblets of the vanished festivities. His golden hair,transformed to the finest amber by the radiant reddish glow of the candles, swept his broad shoulders. His beard perfectly suited the strong square jaw and the smiling mouth. He had a face to melt the heart of angels... and he smelled of someone else.

Salazar Slytherin had a good sense of smell, but it would not have taken an expert to recognize the scent of women. His lip curled. He should have known. He sipped more wine, enjoying the crisp bite upon his tongue and the heavy coldness of the jeweled metal against his mouth. He stared at the pattern of tiles upon the floor and tried not to breathe in the cloying, mixed smells of Godric and that woman.

It made him hurt.

"Did you enjoy yourself, Salazar?"

The man was talking to him. The besotted, overly-innocent, heroic slut was talking to him. Was he too drunk to read the signs? Was he masochistic? But that voice was warm and deep and sent Salazar's blood to a frenzy.

"Did I enjoy myself? You touched someone else tonight."

He'd spoken Parseltongue. It was a velvet whip, a verbal laceration. He turned and stared coldly into Godric's golden eyes as he said it. Gryffindor did not understand, but he flinched anyway. Salazar liked it. He rose to his feet like a silk-robed shark approaching through bloodied water.

"If it's about Honoria--"

"Was that her name?"

Godric's brows drew together. His voice deepened, on the brink of danger. "I don't like it when you use the past tense like that, Salazar. I wonder what you're planning."

"As if your sword-blade mind could possibly comprehend my plans!"

"Honoria just needed some comfort. Her father is sick--"

"Did she tell you that?"

"Do you think I read it off her like a map?"

"It is a possibility, certainly. Godric, you are impossibly naive."

"Not everyone is as twisted as you are, Salazar."

Those words hung in the air. They sizzled, they danced. The two men stared at each other. They were of a height: Godric broad and muscular, Salazar thin as a rail.

Salazar smiled. His smile was slow and started at the corner of his lips. It spread like blood from a wound, incarnated into something rare and cruel.

+

"You know I didn't mean that." In the darkness of his room, Godric's hair sparked like treasure in a cavern. He laid his large hand against Salazar's cheek. The palm was broad, warm and callused. Salazar allowed the touch, and allowed the kiss that followed. The kiss was as strong and as wild as everything was about Gryffindor, but it was also apologetic.

And inside, Slytherin burned with cold fury.

He bit Godric's lower lip sharply.

"S'blood!" Gryffindor pulled away, touching his fingertips to his mouth. They came away dark with something. Salazar licked his lips.

"I said I was sorry. I didn't mean it."

"Perhaps," said Salazar, "it only matters to me that you said it. And don't compound your lie with a third utterance. It is hardly chivalric."

Godric stared at him quietly. The moonlight danced in his large brown eyes. "Is there an apology you will accept?"

Salazar stared at him, then gently smoothed a finger over Godric's cut lip. "Go and wash the scent of that woman off you. Return. Lie down with me."

"Yes, Salazar, of course I will--"

Slytherin closed his fist in Godric's golden hair and pulled him back, just as the larger man had begun to rise. "Tonight you will call me Lord Slytherin... until you have earned back the privelege of my given name. And Godric..."

"Yes?" There was a tension in that sentence, a low growl. Godric despised it when Salazar was cruel.

"I will not be gentle."

+

Most people saw Helga Hufflepuff as a harmless, sweet woman. She was heavyset but soft as satin, and her red hair was usually coiled up behind her head in a pattern of windblown braids. Helga had large, clear, milky blue eyes. They saw far and they saw much, but the way she smiled, cheeks reddened from rides on the broomstick and a healthy love of ale, meant that few people really recognized quite how much she noticed. Few realized how much Helga designed and how much she really accomplished.

She spoke quietly and always thought of others. Even when, within her heart of heart, she was forced to think rather severely.

It was late in the evening, on a sparkling star-strewn night when the wind was full of voices. The two men had the blueprints tumbled over a chair, and were using the table to compare various colors and types of stone. As far as the external castle was concerned, the ladies had made it quite clear they had no preference. This left Godric and Salazar plenty of time to argue over whether or not the traditional methods of defense for a castle were quite necessary in a school filled to the brim with wizards, and also whether or not gold-shot white marble was flashy and effeminate.

It was during this last, furious go-round that Helga slipped in, carrying a tray of goblets and a warm ceramic pitcher. She laid the tray down carefully, sliding aside a few bits of broken stone, and handed two of the goblets, and the pitcher, among the men. "I'm sure your mouths are getting dry from all that sneering," she said with a wink. "Hot spiced wine is just what you'll need, on a night like this, to come to a good decision."

She kissed them both on the forehead (which both endured, since it was Helga, and Godric even smiled and retaliated with a beard-scratchy smooch to the chin) and then bustled out in the direction of Rowena's tower, carrying the remaining two goblets and the tray.

"Mm, flour," Godric commented, brushing a bit of it from his mouth as he lifted the goblet. "No, this is better."

Salazar raised an eyebrow at him. He sipped his own wine in between comments that brutally shot down any concept of 'unnecessary' crenellations, murderholes, arrow slits, or anything even moderately resembling gold-shot white marble (unless Godric wanted it inside, in one of the areas he'd been delegated).

This continued through the first round of wine. By that time, the air had chilled significantly, and they began to drink a bit faster for warmth. Salazar had also lit a fire, but its waves of heat had not yet filled the drafty old room.

Godric poured more wine. They took a few sips in easy silence.

"You're really unconscionably traditional, Sal--" Godric stopped and swallowed. "Salazar," he continued carefully, "Do you even bed women at all?"

"What?" Salazar gazed at him in silence for a long stretch of silence. The fire popped and scattered bright ashes along the hearth. Godric had begun to despair that he would ever answer, when Salazar said, "A long time ago. I imagine the woman's dead. Why do you ask?"

"Because you seem to, well, you only seem to want to bed me."

"Yes, that is the truth. While you would cheerfully tumble any of us four or indeed, half the city of London, for a night's pleasure."

Godric shrugged. "There's nothing wrong with a man amusing himself, if he's not married nor is his lover."

"What if I wanted to consider us married? What if the thought of you pressed against another body hurts me?"

"I know it does," Godric confessed, "but Salazar--"

Grey eyes flashed. "But Salazar what? You knew all this time? And still you-- you decided to hurt me? To indulge yourself?"

"You frighten me. Your jealousy. Men are supposed to be shield-mates, Salazar, not husbands and wives. I'm not built to be your bride and live in a bower away from other eyes. I don't see why you should always make the rules, or why you should be happy with me in a cage."

"I never asked you to live in a bower or a cage. I accept most of your little peccadilloes. How can I not be jealous, Godric? All I have of you is your body. You do not love me."

"Of course I love you, Salazar. You are my greatest friend."

"And what else?"

"I'd accept you as my liege, if not for..."

"What?"

"Your ideology is dark. We can never agree on some things. Better to be friends and differ."

"What if I will settle for nothing less than everything?"

"I won't bend or sully my ideals for anyone. Even someone I love."

"I don't believe that you do love me. I don't believe you can. I am no soft, perfumed woman. I cannot giggle and stroke your beard. I frighten you."

"Sophistry was never my style. I won't argue. I'll... show you."

The wine cups, forgotten, cooled upon the table, showing no hint of the content with which they'd been laced. Two shadows stretched and entwined, sweetly, before the fire. Godric regretted, the next day, some of the truth he had spoken that night, but never the silent truth of two strong, fierce bodies sharing an unforgiving love.

Helga winced a bit as the first chair crashed over with a terrific noise. "Oh dear," she murmured, "you had told me it was a bad idea. I do hope they don't hurt each other."

+

Godric's godlike in the reddish threads of dawn light. Naked, golden, pure. Salazar places one long white hand to either side of his strong neck (half Greek hero and half bull) and lowers his head for a deep, sweet, unending bite. His lips veil the hardness of the teeth, the sweet suction of his tongue curling back into his mouth. It then flickers, serpentine, over the sweat-salted skin. The sweet musk of Godric's hair fills his nostrils.

His, all his.

"You're glorious," Salazar whispers, tracing the red mark he has left.

"I know." Godric's smile makes the room as bright as midday in the arctic. It reflects off everything and cannot be confined.

Salazar chuckles, a whispery sound. He whispers in Parseltongue, "You're mine, you vainglorious brat."

Godric almost purrs at the sound. There's something so eerie and dark and curiously seductive about it. "What did you say?"

"I said you're mine, you vainglorious brat."

Godric laughs softly. His own laughter is rich and deep as loamy earth. "You wish, you horse's ass?"

Salazar gave him a cold look, which the slightest tilt of his head made playful. "I think someone needs a whipping."

"No, please, Lord Slytherin, anything but that!" Godric can't beg without snickering.

It makes Salazar smile slowly. "Is that any way to behave? Come now, take your punishment like a man."

+

Salazar sat in the dark boat. It glided across the surface of the lake, enigmatic as a nightmare. He was alone. His heart was heavy as rock in his chest. He was concentrating very hard on feeling nothing, but the hurt and anger blossomed underneath, blossomed until the heart of its evil flower was a chasm too deep to contemplate.

He hated Godric. Godric had denied him.

The women had done so as well, but he could not hate them. There was a tenderness in him for Helga, with her bright hair and her frothy curves. He enjoyed her soft voice, her company, her need to feed and warm and comfort others. He understood that she could not have turned anyone away from the great cauldron of her heart. But that was her foolishness.

As for Rowena, if it mattered at all to her, shuttered away in her Tower, whether they had students at all, he could hardly tell from her attitude. Of course, to Rowena, the brightest were the best. If she could not understand the power of the blood, the passion of the pure to continue their own purity... well, foreign women had their own strange ideas, and the best benefit of too much education were more of these.

But Godric... Godric denied and repudiated his own aristocratic blood. Godric had turned red and bellowed, and finally offered to fight, in defense of these abominations that sprung from the loins of creatures little better than animals. Godric loved them, whom he had never seen, with an expansive openness he'd never offered Salazar.

Salazar had left the Monster only for that. Only for Godric's selfishness. To punish it, and whatever legacy Godric left.

But the boat was empty, and it hurt him. He wanted Godric there, to support his head and massage it with the sweet big fingers, which, of all things in creation were the only things that ever soothed Salazar. To kiss him with the bearded mouth that was the only thing that had ever made Salazar happy.

He kept seeing phantom bones in the boat. Bitterly, he imagined them Godric's, but the thought made his eyes burn and the muscles at his spine ache.

I'll get you back one day. You'll beg for my forgiveness. Eventually, I'll give it. Eventually. These bones will be those of the victims of Slytherin's Monster.

What a pretty thing it is.

+

Slytherin felt the soft scrape of the shoreline under the boat as it hit the shallows. He leapt out gingerly, a splash of water dancing up over his heels and ankles and wetting the hem of his robes. He was too immured in his own fury to notice he was not alone, until the moonlight ran a wet line along the steel of Gryffindor's sword, its tip pointed steadily at Salazar's heart.

Salazar's wand was in his hand, pointed, in the distance between a breath.

"How the devil can you do this to us?" Godric growled. In the darkness, golden eyes met grey, and both burned. The lights of the distant makeshift town reflected smeared fire on the lake.

"Do what to you?" Salazar sneered.

"You've betrayed us in word and deed. You've left us."

"I have not betrayed anyone," Salazar hissed. "I am the one of us who can say that. You, who love those abominations more than you ever loved me-"

"Enough, Salazar." Godric's voice was a roar of thunder. "I will not let you twist this until it is you and me. We were ended when this new treachery began."

"We will never be ended," Salazar said softly. He turned away. The edge of Godric's sword pressed resolutely against the front of his robes, holding him in place. He glanced down at it. "Put your thrice-be-damned sword away before I hex you to the arms of God, you insolent brat." He said it levelly, without any inflection at all beyond that of exhaustion.

Godric knew, then, that the man was pushed back all limits, and he quickly lowered his blade. "I thought perhaps I could beat some sense into you."

"How noble," Salazar sneered, "but then, your recommendation was only for boldness and bravery, and threatening Salazar Slytherin is a certain sign of both."

"Salazar..." Godric's voice softened. He slipped his heavy blade back into its scabbard upon his back, and carefully reached out.

Salazar slapped his hand away so hard that Godric's palm stung.

Growling, Godric grasped the slender white wrist of his former lover, yanked him forward and kissed him. The kiss was hard and dark, full of anger and unspoken dissensions. Salazar kissed him back, with a ferocity that left their lips shimmering with red.

He licked his lips as they pulled away. "Was that a goodbye kiss among animals?"

"Salazar, s'Blood! Will you cease spitting poison for only a moment?" Godric paused and stared over the lake. "If I must say goodbye to you, I will not have it this way."

"You will not have--" Salazar's face twisted, but then he caught sight of Godric's expression. There was utter unhappiness there, crumpling the raw, wild beauty into something hollow and defeated. Salazar's heart felt pierced with sharp stones.

He leaned forward, sliding his arms around Godric's chest and leaning his head against Godric's broad shoulder. The wind caught his hair and made it a warm, silken cloak for both of them.

"I can't forgive you," he whispered, "I can't return. But come with me to the boat, my love. Lie with me on the shore. Let the night bless us. Let us make love... like animals."

+

Rowena Ravenclaw had skin like radiant moonstone. Her hair was black and flowing, but hidden as of late beneath a veil of black Moorish lace. The sharp features of her face framed in the folds of lace, appeared queerly ageless. Hypnotic. It was not conventionally beautiful, but contained an almost hostile loveliness.

"What is that you wish me to divine for you, Godric?" She asked in her clipped, precise voice. The hint of an indefinable accent clung to the edges of her words. She laid aside a book with so old and worn a cover that Godric could make out nothing of its title, if it had ever possessed one.

"Will we ever see Salazar again?" He asked. His voice seemed too great a thing, too deep for Rowena's tower, which was a place of whispers and intangible smoke.

"Ah," Godric saw Rowena's lips tighten, and sorrow moved for a moment beneath her green eyes. "Well, let us begin with some tea."

He could tell by its rich scent that this blend came from somewhere distant, along the Silk Road. She had apparently set it brewing before he'd climbed the stairs, and now she poured it (ruby red in color) into two cups she retrieved from a small cabinet at her left hand.

Godric took the cup in his hand. It felt inexpressibly delicate there, and he was very careful as he lifted it, sipping for politeness' sake since he had never developed much of a taste for the stuff.

The fumes of the tea lifted and shifted in the air. Godric wondered if it was his high-strung imagination, somewhat uneasy in Rowena's presence, that caused him to see strange visions of hooded shapes and mysterious meetings, formed and at once dissolved, things composed of the pale fog of the steaming tea.

Rowena said, "It is not your imagination." Godric gritted his teeth. He hated it when she did that. But Rowena only smiled gently.

She had finished her tea, and swirled the dregs briefly. Gazing down into the reddish liquid and its drained leaves, she went momentarily still.

"You'll meet Salazar again," she said, finally. Her lips moved slightly, as if whispering something her breath had no desire to elucidate. Staring at the shadowy contours of her bookshelves, her veil hiding all of her expression from Godric's view, she finished: "Do not speak to him. It is imperative that you do not."

And no matter how Godric asked her, afterward, she never said more on the subject.

+

This is the nothing, Salazar thinks. The foul water, full of mud and bracken and waving tendrils of some sea-slime. This fen full of the faces of dead women. Bugs crawl in their eyes. Sometimes he sees a face he recognizes.

He knows this is a place of his own creation. Though he is hypnotized by the stagnant water and its filthy treasure, he feels no stirring in his stomach of nausea or disgust. He feels curiously at peace, next to the dead.

That one, with her open mouth and long black hair moving as though some unseeable tide flickered in the depths, that one is the Moorish witch he killed to make his Horcrux. He can see it, delicate and silver, upon her wrists, the chains mired with algae.

I can live with the nothing, Salazar thinks, for here I need nothing. Here I live alone with the consequences I have wrought.

Salazar Slytherin has a deep belief in consequences.

But that one, there, is his daughter... Those are her glassy grey eyes staring up through the tarn. He shudders, and is drifting there, the oily water in his throat. A suicide awakened.

There is nothing there in the water. Nothing but muddied swirls.

He turns and retches on the shore, his hair still wet from the almost drowning.

If I can't die, Gryffindor, then you will.

+

The sky was smeared with destruction-colours. The pale slender silhouettes of the trees nothing but black skeletons against that brilliant glow. The sunset had a wild, untameable beauty.

He was frozen before it, feeling suddenly as if great hands had lifted him and plucked him off the world. He could see far, farther than ever before. His eyes there, reflecting the sky. Bits of reddish or brilliant rose reflected off his golden hair, his golden beard.

He turned on the battlements of the half constructed castle, began his long descent.

A broom could be easily called, but he needed to walk for a while, needed to let his thoughts settle and coil about each other, until they could be properly perused. Godric was not usually a cautious man, but he remembered Rowena's warning, and he remembered how dangerous Salazar could be.

He had no desire to fight Salazar. No desire to kill or be killed. But stretching himself out through these beautiful sunsets alone was beyond him. Beauty could be a desolate, lonely thing.

Salazar's knife left ruby echoes, ink-like red over the pale canvas of secured skin. He ignored the glassy, staring eyes, the sounds of breath hissing ragged through the lungs. The woman was dead. She could not have been breathing.

He touched the mirror with her blood, touched it with his breath. A figure, a face, began to swim into focus. When he recognized the handsome face, he threw the mirror down. It shattered into sharp fragments, glistening with dull red rainbows.

Godric paused halfway down the stairs and clutched at his heart. When the pain faded, he leaned against the wall, closed his eyes for a short time, then went on.

+

Godric found him at the end of the world. It was some cheap hovel of an inn, filthy and decayed. The broken boards made the windows look like gouged-out eyes. The bedding was infested with vermin.

There were dead women stacked like cordwood in a corner, their bodies in various stages of deterioration. Skin opened like mouths where runes had been cut into their flesh. Godric gagged at the smell and covered his mouth with a cloth.

He moved deeper into the room, his bulk causing the boards to creak beneath him. There were books scattered everywhere, amid dark artifacts and bloodied daggers.

The faintest shriek of old hinges caused him to whirl, wand drawn: Salazar stood in the doorway. Salazar did not look like himself, in any regard Godric had ever imagined him. His long hair was matted and filthy, his skin flaked with dirt and old blood. He reeked of death and vomit, and his eyes were widened, staring, monstrous things- as though the glorious silver of them had faded to a blind fish-belly patina, the eyes of a thing long dead.

Godric could not speak. He felt as though he had stepped unceremoniously into the darkest pit of hell. His heart beat at his chest wildly, screaming for mercy, for an end to this madness, to be granted some sort of respite or proof that this was nothing but a dream.

Salazar sighed softly, and stepped softly across the room. He leaned in, wrapping his thin arms around Godric's waist. Tears ran down Godric's cheeks and tangled in his beard. He gently moved to hold Salazar. He could do nothing else. His heart was crying now that it would die of this torture.

"I love you," Salazar whispered. There was more truth and power in those three whispered words than in any spell or sermon Godric had ever heard in his life. Yet his mind was stuffed full of horrors, whirling with the naked evil he saw in that room. He found himself saying, helplessly, in a leaden voice:

"How could you do this?"

And knew, at that moment, as Salazar's arms clenched around him with unimaginable force, that he had doomed them both.

He tried to raise his wand, but it was too late. The words of the Killing Curse burned in the air, a harsh sound that hissed somehow as deep and twisted as the words of Salazar's snake-tongue, and Salazar's wide, stricken, incandescent eyes were the last things in a world abruptly truncated.

Salazar stared numbly at Godric's body, lying so beautiful, so desperately wild amid the dust and the dead women. He saw the golden light that had filled Gryffindor fade into nothing. He saw the fierce joy of life, the warm and vibrant emotion, the powerful indomitable thirst for life, slink away like ghosts, leaving only a hollow shell behind them which lacked even Godric's colors.

He saw the delicate serpents that still held Godric's cloak.

Bitterness burned in Salazar's eyes, threatened to spill over cold features which had never known the benediction of tears. He snarled, dropped furiously down to straddle Godric's body. His strong, cruel hands gripped each bracelet cuff and ripped...

The chain shattered. Salazar felt something nebulous and dark fall away into meaningless ashes.

He drew Godric's sword. The blade made a hiss against its scabbard that might have been a snake saying, you are a fool. Salazar watched the patterns the filthy light made upon the steel. He reversed the blade, his jaw clenched and drawn back so that the muscles popped.

The tip of the blade fit perfectly under his ribcage. Salazar knew everything that killed.

Salazar pulled him forward, even as the siren song of the pain vied desperately for his attention. It screamed in every sinew and bone like a spoiled child. But there was nothing in the world but the carcass that had been Godric Gryffindor. The carcass bereft of beauty, which could never hear the last, desperate wet words Salazar uttered:

"I'm lost for you. I'll follow you to the ends of all that is.

"I love you."

+

It arrived, a bit ragged, a fortnight after Godric had left them. It was a beautiful thing, the size of a large eagle, with feathers of red and gold, setting off sparks and gypsy veils of flame behind its bright pinions.

Helga fed it, and now it sat by her chair near the kitchens, singing softly to itself as she stroked the lovely head. The music was rich and deep and soulful, and it stung her eyes even as it healed some dark cold part inside her that she'd abandoned and ignored for decades. The part of her that felt jealousy, that felt hurt, could now at last be burned away.

She took the phoenix as a sign of hope, a sign that one day the men would return to their completed castle. She closed her ears with stubborn wisps of long-forgotten fairy stories when Rowena said that it was rather a sign that Godric Gryffindor was dead.