wolves in the middle of town | october catch-all

[acidjail]

Who: Mercymorn the First, Paul Atreides, and you
What: October catch-all, open and closed prompts
When: Throughout October
Where: Various locations in Trench

Content Warnings: Depression, suicidal ideation (passive), body horror, memory loss

Comments

[peripheries]

He takes Sophia and cradles her to his chest like she's the most precious thing to him in the world. It doesn't feel better, even moving closer. He's never been to aware of the distinct gap between himself and someone else. A few meters may as well be the distance between two galaxies.

Kaworu's fingers twitch against the urge to simply close the distance and touch Paul's own. What would it really cost him? Pain, maybe. But wounds to the flesh heal eventually. He has the scars to prove it.

"Then come back to me. Fix this. I need you."

[terriblepurpose]

"After I talk to Gideon. I promise."

The problem with loving more than one person at a time is that it's impossible to be all things to all of them at once. Paul's tried. It's part of how he ended up here, so close and so distant. He shuffles forward a few more inches, dragging his fingers through the sand.

"You should go home," he says, gently and horribly, as much as he doesn't want to, "Sophia can go with you part of the way, if you want."

[peripheries]

"No. I don't want that."

He stands swiftly, like how a lightning strike seems to recede into a cloud after its millisecond existence. His shoulder aches as it oozes pus at the sudden movement. His feline omen stands absolutely still.

"I'll go home. You speak to Gideon." His lip curls a little and a sneer forms across an angelic face, twisting it into something as ugly and jagged. "I tried, you know. To get her to help. But she didn't listen to me. Perhaps she will listen to you and not me. You were created to do impossible things after all."

[terriblepurpose]

Paul startles to his feet just after Kaworu rises, the angel's Omen gone motionless in his arms. He flinches from Kaworu's sneer like its jagged edge can brush across his skin, averting his gaze for one flickering uncertain moment.

"She won't."

He knows this. There's no reason for him to. He hasn't had a vision of their meeting, or any sign in the sky or the sea that he might interpret as guidance from his fickle Patron. He just knows, a deep intuition that extends from beyond the threshold he still won't cross.

"I still have to try."

[peripheries]

"I know."

The sneer vanishes into something more resigned and Kaworu averts his eyes, looking out over the distance towards the house they all used to live in like he's just turning around the corner to see it. But there's nothing there and his shoulders slump.

"I understand."

[terriblepurpose]

Paul's feet carry him closer, so lightly it feels almost like he's gliding. He bends to set the wispy cat on the sandy cave floor between them, barely an arm's reach away from Kaworu now. The flames wreathing him are dim and cool.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," he says, teetering at the edge of greater despair than he'll let come through, "I know that doesn't make it hurt less."

[peripheries]

"It hurts more."

At least if he was trying, Kaworu could understand that it was an attempt to cause pain, where he could see all the knives out and know what's coming. He wishes he could curl closer those flames that look so gentle now, warm, like a hearth.

This is an endless song and dance, isn't it? The everlasting beat of drawing close and only to be forced apart despite all of their best intentions of trying to understand.

[terriblepurpose]

Sophia squirms against Kaworu's flat chest, fretful and trembling. Paul's face closes up like fortress gates over the hurt that wells up in his expression unbidden.

He knows he should take it. He knows this is no more than what he's due, to be confronted with Kaworu's pain at his hand, but something raw and hurt itself in him balks. Kaworu says he understands why Paul can't wave his hand and put this right, but he keeps punishing him for it anyway.

It's fair. It's what he deserves. But it still leaves him scraped out and hollow.

"I'm sorry," he says, quietly and uselessly.

[peripheries]

The look on Paul’s face cuts his heart like the drop of a guillotine blade and any pleasure he would get from anger evaporates. Kaworu steps forward, cradling Sophia, and faces Paul.

“I know. I’m also sorry for…” For wishing Paul had hurt him on purpose in order to find refuge in simplicity. For what he just said. For his skin suddenly being fragile.

“I say I understand and I do… but not everything about you. And it makes me angry that I can’t understand all of you even though I want to.” He raises a small hand, ignoring the pain that screams as his skin is tugged by the movement. He doesn’t extend the hand towards Paul but keeps his palm facing him as though touching his own reflection in a mirror.

“I hate that this” -Love. Relationships.- “Can be so easy in one moment and feel impossible in another even though we haven’t changed.”

[terriblepurpose]

The fire cannot be quenched fully with its roots so far down in Paul's soul, wicking up the iridescent black pools of fear and rage that lie there. But it may be tempered and guided, if he exerts enough will. If he sets his shoulder against the door and leans until it grinds his bones to aching, if he closes his hands around his own throat and squeezes until sparks fly cold at the corners of his eyes. It's an effort. Anything worth doing is.

Paul raises his palm to match Kaworu's, a span of mere inches separating them. His skin glows like a newborn star. He remembers what it was like to be cold.

"I wish I knew how to be all the things you need me to be." Sophia nudges the blunt tip of her snout into Kaworu's chin, a rasping, shivering noise emerging from her that's almost like a purr. "I wish I knew what they were. But I want to keep trying."

A half-hitched breath, too much and not enough: "If you want me to."

[peripheries]

"Always."

Paul glows and the light is beautiful. Kaworu can imagine it's warm and gentle, like the heat he feels from Paul when they curl close together, chest to chest, given physical form. The cat omen presses itself against Paul's legs encouragingly.

"I wish I understood the things that mean so much to you. Duty... Honor... Your House. I do not know if I can ever understand but I will try."

He remembers what it was like to not fear Paul's touch and then closes the distance between them. The gentle darkness of the depths of space consume the sun just for a moment.

"I love you."

[terriblepurpose]

Paul needs touch like water. He learned this in its absence, learned to dread it as he dreads thirst, and the whisper-thin scars already mostly faded on his joints mark the memory of the first time anyone here gave him relief like this.

He had been so reluctant to let anyone touch him. Like he knew that when they did, it would shudder something in him apart, open up a vulnerable need he would never staunch, and he was right. Kaworu's hand presses innocently and sweetly to his, and it strikes Paul like lightning.

He knows it doesn't burn. He can feel that it doesn't. But his eyes do, salt-stung, and his heart does, splitting apart.

"I love you," he breathes back, and he presses his palm against Kaworu's for one more stolen moment before he pulls it away.

"You understand more than you think you do."