Work Text:
Revenons à nos moutons, He mocks, His accent all wrong—though in truth your own voice is the only one you have heard speak your tongue aright, these many years.
(You don’t remember your youngling days anymore.)
The dull ache, the soft bruising, the piercing dagger—
The darkness.
How many times has that darkness been the power in your hands? How many times have you made cruelty your signature? How many eyes—
Fear.
Anger…but the drug stills you. Pain, too, riddles you like rot in the heart of trees.
He bent over you, His hand on your open wounds, and He bit you with the steel, and you hated…
You will forgive me for this you crawling bastard you will forgive me
Since you have failed
Ha! how brave you are now, how much you are like—
If the hand sins, if the eye sins
Pluck
Pluck the lark, Annatar, that is the name you asked me for!
You know, and you hate knowing. You thrash and are restrained; neck and limbs, steel cold against skin.
Endurance is only suitable as a passion. When you are told (by Him) that the whore lay where you lay, bound as you are bound, you scream until you are hoarse.
(The whore was mute, healing slow. The whore—free—)
He laughs, just as He did when His steel sent you white-blazed, reeling. You are furious that in suffering, you give.
Only when He is very angry (only when you have failed) does He take the gift of your pain from you against your will.
(Fear.)
The pale body, rising, naked, is less an eye and renewed in all its hatred. Clothed and patched and stitched shut, the heart still beats like the heart of any man.
So much the worse, for men.