[ It's a choice, if a bad one. To live will mean submission; to die will mean flipping off the still and stricken boy watching at his side.
Lazarus chooses submission, or tries to. God will remember that.
The sad little fork tourniquet goes trembling to the ground, and God knows the hazy-eyed look of a body without much time left. This does not worry him. A slow death has very little power when he's in the room.
In acknowledgement of the effort, he reaches out. He touches plain and gentle fingers to the ragged edges of that bloody wrist, and when he pulls his hand outward from that stump, the flesh follows like molded clay. He draws out bone, first, which forms a wet red lattice of phalanges. He webs these with blood vessels, clothes them with tendons, strokes his thumb over the forming lines of metacarpals like a parent comforting a child. He turns Lazarus's half-formed hand in his and traces a thumb along the naked swell of palmar muscle as though admiring his own handiwork.
He isn't so petty as to make it agony. He isn't so gentle as to make it painless. It hurts in the way punishment should, all sting and shudder and wrenching vulnerability. All the while, he does the necessary work: flooding the system with fresh blood, strengthening the flagging heartbeat, wiping clean the clutter of that frantic endorphin high.
It will feel as it did on the beach. It's a phoenix-fire rebirth, a blaze of invisible scouring light, and it is over in an instant. Lazarus is left still bloodsoaked but whole, with his hand in God's hand. God is still looking at those pale and restored fingertips as he says, mildly: ]
I appreciate dedication to the bit, but I don't think the four days are meant to be cumulative.
no subject
Lazarus chooses submission, or tries to. God will remember that.
The sad little fork tourniquet goes trembling to the ground, and God knows the hazy-eyed look of a body without much time left. This does not worry him. A slow death has very little power when he's in the room.
In acknowledgement of the effort, he reaches out. He touches plain and gentle fingers to the ragged edges of that bloody wrist, and when he pulls his hand outward from that stump, the flesh follows like molded clay. He draws out bone, first, which forms a wet red lattice of phalanges. He webs these with blood vessels, clothes them with tendons, strokes his thumb over the forming lines of metacarpals like a parent comforting a child. He turns Lazarus's half-formed hand in his and traces a thumb along the naked swell of palmar muscle as though admiring his own handiwork.
He isn't so petty as to make it agony. He isn't so gentle as to make it painless. It hurts in the way punishment should, all sting and shudder and wrenching vulnerability. All the while, he does the necessary work: flooding the system with fresh blood, strengthening the flagging heartbeat, wiping clean the clutter of that frantic endorphin high.
It will feel as it did on the beach. It's a phoenix-fire rebirth, a blaze of invisible scouring light, and it is over in an instant. Lazarus is left still bloodsoaked but whole, with his hand in God's hand. God is still looking at those pale and restored fingertips as he says, mildly: ]
I appreciate dedication to the bit, but I don't think the four days are meant to be cumulative.
[ Or: consider dying less often. ]