Chapter Text
In a Week, Hozier
Light hung low, in red orange sunset, the smoke of a faraway fire tinging the air with brimstone.
Silence prevailed, save soft wind and rustling trees, till slow footsteps grew louder through the brush, cautious, quiet.
A silhouette emerged from the trees, long hair in split tones of lilac and ivory, tailcoat flapping against thin legs. It stood, staring for a long time, head bowed and grimace tight at the mess on the ground. It stood, a monolith among the waving flowers, lit bronze and still.
A limp, curled hand, a pistol, gore new and old, spilled across the grass. A silver cross hung heavy around the place where the head and neck would have connected, a throat adorned in poor, ripped stitches, soft where it began to sink into the ground, a whitened braid coming apart, soiled feathers worked into the dirt around them.
It had been several days, with those bloody pale fingers twined around the rotted, maggot ridden mess. And it began to contaminate the other as well, their faces growing kindly similar, obscured in matted hair.
Do not look away, for your faces will all eventually reveal bone. I implore you to remember your humanity. This is not a cautionary tale, and neither is it a case study. It is a love story.
The figure remained only a crisp shadow, black against the burning sky. He kneeled, though he did not touch them, he did not want to touch them at least. But a cry came out, no matter to everything else, his head in his hands.
He came back. That was kind of him. He never truly left, only watched from the shadows, frozen in place. It is difficult to resist the call of worry, and he was right to worry, but even if he had never left, there was nothing he could have done to stop it.
It is a hard thing to watch, the delicate process of losing one’s mind. From the outside, at least, it may be comforting for the suffering thing to give it up. It is the reason for everything we did, in the Decay of Angels. The understanding of suffering, the easing of pain.
Tears caught the fading light as they fell, but not much else. He did not ever want this. There had never been anyone else to cling to, he realized, though who wanted to see it all fall apart?
Still, after some time, he stood, taking up once again the shovel that leaned against the tree. No one else would do it.
The dirt gave way, scoop by scoop, with burning muscles and aching conscience.
And eventually, it was time to lower them in, as carefully as he could, those sickly love-contaminated corpses, still, once it was over, falling to the grass and becoming sick.
The silhouette’s hair hung limp around his face, limbs weak, wiping his mouth and standing once again. He struggled to return the dirt to where it belonged, tediously covering the two bodies as the sun retired for the night. They were still entangled the same way they fell. They would not move again, of course.
Eventually, there was nothing left to do. The silhouette stood and left, carrying the gun with him. I did not hear it go off again, but he held it nonetheless. I wish him the best, whichever path he decided to take.
I returned to the grave then, and held my Kolya.