Deimos
THE RESURRECTED SWORD
How did you survive? they ask
How long did you suffer?
how dark did they tint your dreams?Doubt was clarity, doubt safeguarded him from falling into cracks and crag of blinding, binding faith; hardly capable of believing in kismet, in providence, in whatever clauses those with fair fortune had managed to muster. He’d only ever claimed convictions in himself – not the gods, not the celestial beings, not the ones he’d seen constantly flawed and skewed as the rest of them, nearly as human, marking their mistakes with shrugs and indifference. Deimos had carved his own paths and left them bloodstained, reeling, damaged, torn, never a smooth course, never lined with perfection and adornments; chaos and predilection a line in his touch, mayhem and bedlam never far away. He soaked his zeal and fervency into violence and abhorrence, had assured the world he wasn’t its plaything, but a weapon, a means to an end time and time and time again, carving up the insides of other men to ensure he and his comrades faced another day. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t kind. It wasn’t anything Amalia was made up of – and he wondered if she just didn’t want to see the broken wiles and the scattered errors, the constant fault lines along his back, curving along his spine, spinning their webs in his coldblooded machinations, or if they were gone, and he never noticed, never realized, never thought they could billow away.
He couldn’t sing it back because he didn’t know the words, the harmonies, the inflections – maybe once, as a boy, yelling and hollering and thinking nothing of swords and blades and the thunder of war.
The light was glaring and he didn’t want to see it, yearned to pull away because he couldn’t handle another stretch of denial, one more wasted effort twisting and gnarling away at his form - not enough they would murmur upon his flesh and bone again, and then what? Then what would become of him, firmly rejected, resounding in the pendulums of the damned? Would he be the same, just a little more torn, a little more worn, a little more consigned to oblivion?
One day she’d see it, one day she’d realize, and then she’d be gone too.
I do not deserve it was on his tongue and rattling against his teeth, but her eyes kept hold of his and he couldn’t resound the words in the strength of her confidence. His was absent, fleeting and maimed, frayed and split apart, wanting to take shelter in the roots of his darkness, where he was safe, where the decadence was familiar, where treacheries were something he could fathom and understand. But she wouldn’t let him, and he thought about fracturing there, declining everything before it could do the same to him. But the beast stilled in her grasp, striving to take her belief, and terrified to place himself in its breadth and breath, constantly circling the abyss, the refuge in shadows. “And if they do not?” He whispered, it shook on his lungs and was a mercurial thing in his heart, a storm brewing, preparing himself for the inevitable; then he wouldn’t be so hurt, wouldn’t be so scarred, wouldn’t be so brutalized again.
She offered to go with him and he was adamant in that refusal, because he didn’t long for anyone else to see him fracture once more, because he’d rather sink into the void than turn around to witness her disappointment, to reel in his savage abandonment again. I told you so he could say, one more siege upon his form in a barrage, a multitude of others, nothing more, everything less. “I can go on my own,” he nodded, and it would only prolong the agony, give him time to tell her, when the dismissal and spurning was complete. Then she’d understand, be one more witness, to how he was merited naught. He’d beat the war drums of his own defeat; he wouldn’t set her up as a bystander, to watch her gods ignore and desolate, place their isolation on his shoulders.
Deimos wanted to fly and wanted to bask and wanted to do so much more, didn’t dare to hope. “I will try once,” he swallowed, because it was all he was going to be able to take, this close to fraying in her touch, in her grasp, fingers squeezing when he had no other lifelines.
He couldn’t sing it back because he didn’t know the words, the harmonies, the inflections – maybe once, as a boy, yelling and hollering and thinking nothing of swords and blades and the thunder of war.
The light was glaring and he didn’t want to see it, yearned to pull away because he couldn’t handle another stretch of denial, one more wasted effort twisting and gnarling away at his form - not enough they would murmur upon his flesh and bone again, and then what? Then what would become of him, firmly rejected, resounding in the pendulums of the damned? Would he be the same, just a little more torn, a little more worn, a little more consigned to oblivion?
One day she’d see it, one day she’d realize, and then she’d be gone too.
I do not deserve it was on his tongue and rattling against his teeth, but her eyes kept hold of his and he couldn’t resound the words in the strength of her confidence. His was absent, fleeting and maimed, frayed and split apart, wanting to take shelter in the roots of his darkness, where he was safe, where the decadence was familiar, where treacheries were something he could fathom and understand. But she wouldn’t let him, and he thought about fracturing there, declining everything before it could do the same to him. But the beast stilled in her grasp, striving to take her belief, and terrified to place himself in its breadth and breath, constantly circling the abyss, the refuge in shadows. “And if they do not?” He whispered, it shook on his lungs and was a mercurial thing in his heart, a storm brewing, preparing himself for the inevitable; then he wouldn’t be so hurt, wouldn’t be so scarred, wouldn’t be so brutalized again.
She offered to go with him and he was adamant in that refusal, because he didn’t long for anyone else to see him fracture once more, because he’d rather sink into the void than turn around to witness her disappointment, to reel in his savage abandonment again. I told you so he could say, one more siege upon his form in a barrage, a multitude of others, nothing more, everything less. “I can go on my own,” he nodded, and it would only prolong the agony, give him time to tell her, when the dismissal and spurning was complete. Then she’d understand, be one more witness, to how he was merited naught. He’d beat the war drums of his own defeat; he wouldn’t set her up as a bystander, to watch her gods ignore and desolate, place their isolation on his shoulders.
Deimos wanted to fly and wanted to bask and wanted to do so much more, didn’t dare to hope. “I will try once,” he swallowed, because it was all he was going to be able to take, this close to fraying in her touch, in her grasp, fingers squeezing when he had no other lifelines.
- until you had blood glistening on your teeth
- until your suffering paled in comparison to their own
- until you learned to enjoy the sounds of screams
