{Savage} My love is as a fever.
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th’uncertain sickly appetite to please.
The night wind gently caressed his skin with a velvetine embrace, like sliding satin across silk. Unmarred, perfectly white skin, a creature of the night long before she'd come into his life. Before he'd piqued her interest by trying to use her as he'd used so many others. Before he survived the inevitable crucible and became her firstborn. Before he drank the last of Father Michel, watching the light leave his eyes in the midst of the burning church...his only childhood sanctuary from the family he loved too well...the family that had been driving him into an early grave.
The wicked, beautiful Savage smiled as he remembered those moments, his first after rebirth. A few crimson tears slid down his face, their tracks down his porcelain face telling the lie of curved lips, illuminating the truth that dead white eyes concealed with ease.
All of them, so long gone, the family he had prized above all things...even above himself. He had driven himself to despair and back for them, becoming a whore, a liar, and a thief to keep them fed, warm, and schooled. His mother, gone into her early grave to follow his father whom she'd loved too well, had left them all as his wards. Left them in his care and fled this world for love of a man.
Left them to him. Trusted him to care for them as she could not, in her weakness. Trusted him because he was Eldest.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desp’rate now approve
Desire is death, which physik did except;
Trust. Leviticus...his favored sin.
He lifted a hand to his face, smiling bitterly at the wetness of tears and sighed as he tangled a hand in the length of hair he hadn't bothered to trim since waking. Bitterness, the echo of the sadness that lingered, basking in the pale shadow of love; it was all that remained to him. Disappointment and bitterness, far sharper and more real than any love or passion he'd once felt, yet even those things were bare illusions of what they once were.
Love for a family long in their graves because of her hand, testing him for worthiness. Robbing him of everything he had and loved, watching to see if he would fracture under the pressure, before she could give him aught else. Watching to see if he was worthy of the family she would present. Smiling as he left the crumbling, blazing cathedral with his father's blood still on his lips.
And still he had loved her, as best he could. He trusted her implicitly and often bent his will to hers though she preferred that he be strong of will and bearer of his own mind and heart. So great was his striving toward the washed out sun of love for her, that he would test himself and break himself against the shards of his own monstrosity, because she had found him worthy and given him new life.
A new family.
Salvatore.
Past cure am I, now reason is past cure
and frantic-mad with evermore unrest
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are;
At random from the truth vainly express’d
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
New tears streaked his face, crimson regret unheeded as before. The wind rose, a mountain chill driving the last vestiges of warmth from him as he stared down at the city below him.
'Where are you from, again Beau? Why is it that I do not hear of you in proper circles?'
Ahhh Salvatore...his favorite sin. Why hadn't he heard? Because the events were too new. Because the game being played is subtle and far from public. Because the game was not yet done and premature revelation would spoil it all. The danger had not yet passed, and so the spider waited still for it's prey to stop thrashing.
'Why haven't you heard, my dearest, sweet Uncle? Brother of my heart?'
Why indeed. The answer was simple enough, if one but recognized to whom they were speaking.
'Because I did not want you to.'
Not for the first time, he recalled the first time he had laid eyes on Salvatore, not so different then from how he was now...full of beauty, pride, and the sort of lascivious sin that few have perfected so well as L'Italien born. He recalled their youth, together, Salvatore a step ahead of him because he had been made twenty years prior and how his beloved Uncle had never let him forget it...even when Beau finally got the best of him. When they'd first quarreled, oh how Salvatore had shouted at him...and him never raising his voice above a whisper.
The smile curved his lips again, even as he wept. How glorious that had been.
"Mon Oncle, Salvatore, Leviticus...my love. I cannot take your place from you, it is given to you by your blood. I cannot take anything from you except that which you give to me freely because you are too blind to see what you are handing to me. If you believe I have taken something from you, or attempted to usurp something, you have forgotten how much I love you and it saddens my heart.
As I love you, I will test you. I will test all of my blood, because I love them. Because I respect them enough to keep them strong, and show them their weaknesses. I do not fear to die for them, even if it is at their hands, because I love them as I have always loved my family...before and after my crucible."
He swallowed heavily and unnecessarily, turning away from the precipice and walking back down into the brush, the last few words of his private plea trailing off softly into the silence of night surrounding him.
"It will break my heart to destroy you, but for what you have done to my mother...."
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th’uncertain sickly appetite to please.
The night wind gently caressed his skin with a velvetine embrace, like sliding satin across silk. Unmarred, perfectly white skin, a creature of the night long before she'd come into his life. Before he'd piqued her interest by trying to use her as he'd used so many others. Before he survived the inevitable crucible and became her firstborn. Before he drank the last of Father Michel, watching the light leave his eyes in the midst of the burning church...his only childhood sanctuary from the family he loved too well...the family that had been driving him into an early grave.
The wicked, beautiful Savage smiled as he remembered those moments, his first after rebirth. A few crimson tears slid down his face, their tracks down his porcelain face telling the lie of curved lips, illuminating the truth that dead white eyes concealed with ease.
All of them, so long gone, the family he had prized above all things...even above himself. He had driven himself to despair and back for them, becoming a whore, a liar, and a thief to keep them fed, warm, and schooled. His mother, gone into her early grave to follow his father whom she'd loved too well, had left them all as his wards. Left them in his care and fled this world for love of a man.
Left them to him. Trusted him to care for them as she could not, in her weakness. Trusted him because he was Eldest.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desp’rate now approve
Desire is death, which physik did except;
Trust. Leviticus...his favored sin.
He lifted a hand to his face, smiling bitterly at the wetness of tears and sighed as he tangled a hand in the length of hair he hadn't bothered to trim since waking. Bitterness, the echo of the sadness that lingered, basking in the pale shadow of love; it was all that remained to him. Disappointment and bitterness, far sharper and more real than any love or passion he'd once felt, yet even those things were bare illusions of what they once were.
Love for a family long in their graves because of her hand, testing him for worthiness. Robbing him of everything he had and loved, watching to see if he would fracture under the pressure, before she could give him aught else. Watching to see if he was worthy of the family she would present. Smiling as he left the crumbling, blazing cathedral with his father's blood still on his lips.
And still he had loved her, as best he could. He trusted her implicitly and often bent his will to hers though she preferred that he be strong of will and bearer of his own mind and heart. So great was his striving toward the washed out sun of love for her, that he would test himself and break himself against the shards of his own monstrosity, because she had found him worthy and given him new life.
A new family.
Salvatore.
Past cure am I, now reason is past cure
and frantic-mad with evermore unrest
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are;
At random from the truth vainly express’d
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
New tears streaked his face, crimson regret unheeded as before. The wind rose, a mountain chill driving the last vestiges of warmth from him as he stared down at the city below him.
'Where are you from, again Beau? Why is it that I do not hear of you in proper circles?'
Ahhh Salvatore...his favorite sin. Why hadn't he heard? Because the events were too new. Because the game being played is subtle and far from public. Because the game was not yet done and premature revelation would spoil it all. The danger had not yet passed, and so the spider waited still for it's prey to stop thrashing.
'Why haven't you heard, my dearest, sweet Uncle? Brother of my heart?'
Why indeed. The answer was simple enough, if one but recognized to whom they were speaking.
'Because I did not want you to.'
Not for the first time, he recalled the first time he had laid eyes on Salvatore, not so different then from how he was now...full of beauty, pride, and the sort of lascivious sin that few have perfected so well as L'Italien born. He recalled their youth, together, Salvatore a step ahead of him because he had been made twenty years prior and how his beloved Uncle had never let him forget it...even when Beau finally got the best of him. When they'd first quarreled, oh how Salvatore had shouted at him...and him never raising his voice above a whisper.
The smile curved his lips again, even as he wept. How glorious that had been.
"Mon Oncle, Salvatore, Leviticus...my love. I cannot take your place from you, it is given to you by your blood. I cannot take anything from you except that which you give to me freely because you are too blind to see what you are handing to me. If you believe I have taken something from you, or attempted to usurp something, you have forgotten how much I love you and it saddens my heart.
As I love you, I will test you. I will test all of my blood, because I love them. Because I respect them enough to keep them strong, and show them their weaknesses. I do not fear to die for them, even if it is at their hands, because I love them as I have always loved my family...before and after my crucible."
He swallowed heavily and unnecessarily, turning away from the precipice and walking back down into the brush, the last few words of his private plea trailing off softly into the silence of night surrounding him.
"It will break my heart to destroy you, but for what you have done to my mother...."