Work Text:
Penance.
Is what comes with daring to feel human Luka thinks, it writhes him, contorts his already broken heart that has broken and mended a thousand times.
The lights go out and his fear threatens to spill out, "so hard to contain, to forsake" would Heperu tell him during his seances of torture.
So, he counts to ten, let’s himself exhale as far as his frail body can allow him and rids himself of the minute piece of humanity that’s left in him.
He has killed in the face of his own survival, and performed in front of a wretched audience- Luka wonders how many time he has done this now, blood spills from his sickly hands, he wonders when it’s going to stop-, and he relishes in the fact that his heart reminds him that it is still beating against his will.
The darkness quietly settles like a warm blanket on a cold night. The only solace he can afford himself.
In the darkness that follows, he permits himself to think of her, even in the aftermath of something she loathes, -he wonders when she is going to show up and put an end to his misery once and for all-, he imagines her gray eyes that holds so much hatred in his presence, how it makes him feel so alive.
It’s the only form of love, punishment he allows himself to receive from her. Solitude, he think, so willing and so merciful at the sight of his sins, Luka repays it with not seeking her out, wallowing in the pain that comes with being apart from her. The yearning that it induces in him sits deliciously at the tip of his tongue and he wonders in delight, if hyuna yearns for him too, if it pains her that he weighs on her mind.
It’s the only punishment, form of love he can offer her.
Penance roots from love at its core after all.