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He looks like someone she could love, but she won't. Love is beneath him and it's beneath her, too, and so it's out of the question – so beyond consideration, that the word does not cross her mind without negation. It's unbecoming. He looks like someone she could love, if she were someone else, and if he were someone else, and if loving meant something else, as well. If she were to forget herself, and him, and the very bounds of definitions which make up the workings of the world – she could love him, then. In absence, bitterly – where is he? – where is who? – and without answer.
He looks like someone she could only love without an answer. From a distance. He looks like a mouse, sunbathing in the grass as a snake – that's her – approaches, or like a lone newborn lamb, cast from its herd and picked from between her fangs, flesh-fruity, berry-like, like spring. Reciprocation is a sin, in the sense that it would place them at the blasphemous crossroads where nature threatens mutual survival. He looks like he answers, even when he's silent, even when he lets their conversation, or her accidental slip-confessions, slide. He looks like someone who might have answered her, in earnest, given the time, given the guarantee of survival – and so could remains a could and not can, nor would, nor does.
She can admire him, and so she does: his ruthlessness, swiftness of action. Breath slow, slow, slow as it obscures a racing mind, so that it may catch a victim off her guard. His steady hands and cheerful manner, this certainty that all the gunk and gore he causes will just wash right off, because they do, they always do. He's slippery and clean and clever, and he wins at chess sometimes, and she doesn't even have to let him. He's not one to want her to go easy, and she admires that as well – though it has opened her to him beyond the line of comfort, and shown him more than either of them would have known to ask for. Still.
He looks like someone she might ask for. Late at night, face pressed against his chest, he looks like nothingness – pitch-black, dark, endless arms around her – and she pretends that she is sleeping. He says what he sometimes says when he thinks that she can't hear him: it must be nice to be this wanted, and Bodille could just kill him for this, the fool, fool, fool. What could he know of wanting? He looks like someone she could want, if she knew how to, if she knew that she would be allowed, or that she could do the not-permitted. It's unbecoming, to want, and so she wouldn't. Wanting is the Banite prayer. She has her own. For now, she has him too.
She has him toe the line to murder, like he has her – to possession. Though blasphemous, she sometimes thinks, it makes sense that their gods were once true allies – so natural it is to be pressed together, molten, wrought, two sides of the same coin. She's grateful Bane has brought him to her, but still, girlishly, she play-pretends, that the Tyrant somehow does not exist, that no Black Hand pulls strings tied to a lover, that it's her who truly owns him. It's the only thing that keeps hatred at bay: she must own him, have him be hers, even in delusion or delirium. Even in unholy overstep.
You cannot love without wanting more than you are due, and they already have their sentence signed: a lifetime lightened by a cellmate, skin-to-skin, and ended by a practised, steady hand. Her own prayer, her own altar, her own dagger, inscribed by someone else. He looks like someone she could leave for last, out of everyone, everyone who's lived, and so she will, she has decided. Is that enough? (He looks like someone, who inscribes his gifts.) Late at night, face pressed against his chest, it isn't. She does not know what is. He looks like someone who has never been enough and it is only fitting, she decides, that there will not be enough time, either. She looks like someone who could want more time, if she knew to want.
He looks like someone, who knows what comes after, so she asks him. The non-space between a Great Black Hand and un-becoming will await him, he replies. The realm of ultimate Authority, the honour or the shame (should he succeed or perish), but the borders of it, all the same. Bodille fears that in the night which follows, another should answer her dream-prayers, so close she's found herself to wanting. Instead, Father laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs, WANTING IS A FOOL'S PASTIME. WANTING IS CARE AND CARE SMOTHERS THE WILL FOR MURDER. WANT MURDER, AND YOU WILL BE SATIATED. WANT SOMETHING ELSE, and she wakes up, with Father's laughter ringing in her skull.
The Bhaalist vows afford a pair the luxury of death together, the embrace continued endlessly once in Father's domain. She is High Priestess and she is Chosen and she is First and Most Beloved, Favourite, yet she is denied what the lowest of nameless cultists take for granted. Asking for more would bind her to finding a reason, and she is unreasonable, she knows she is, she knows.
Bodille does not know to want, she does not know to ask, nor pray the heathen way: through words and asks and barters. She wants nothing, and so she certainly does not want to not kill him, of that much she is certain. He will die by her hand, as is his fate, and she revels in the fact so earnestly it blurs the lines of duty, right and whim. Is that enough? What use would there be in surviving to a rotting world, as its last pair of starving maggots? It would prolong their sentence, but keep its end unaltered, his wretched god plucking him from her hands; no – she has no interest in a life after their Mission. He looks like someone, who has no interest in it, either. He looks like someone, who thinks this is enough, at least she hopes he does.
The absence of contentment is a want as well, hope-Enver warns her. She disagrees, but she has no argument to offer. She has come too close to wanting. They spend days playing chess instead.
Or music, playing music! She can admire him for his technique, and so she does – and matches tempo, easier than anything has come. Her practice of scales irritates him, so he distracts her with infernal tunes, and she follows, because everything bores her in comparison. Everyone bores them in comparison. Is that enough? She leaves her violin encased beside his bed. For storage. Because it is safer there. The temple is humid. Her father, small-f, made it, and all luthiers are either dead, or will soon be. He keeps it.
Late at night, face pressed against his chest in the pitch-tar-black, she tries not to wet him, squeezes her eyes shut, tight, tight. Late at night, face pressed against his chest, she feels him stroke her cheek. Back-and-forth, light enough as to not wake her. Is that enough? Never, never, never. In the dark bed of her mind he looks like someone praying. He looks like someone who can pray, his breathing slow, slow, slow.
It takes a year before she dares to once again petition Father.
"When I succeed," YES, "when it happens," AS IT WILL, "and all life dies in Your name, and so do I," YOU DO. YOU WILL. YOU HAVE. "Father, may I ask," TO NOT RETURN TO ME. "An afterlife, unholy Father." YOU ARE MY FLESH. YOUR LIFE IS MINE, AS IS THE AFTER. "Will you consume me, then? So that I should stop existing?" WHAT ELSE IS THERE, BUT TO EXIST WITHIN ME, DAUGHTER, and she does not think, for He is inside her head and He would see it, she does not think, nor want, nor want, nor want, "that I may serve you, Father, as myself. Beyond this life, as I do now. That I may survive beyond my death and serve you." AND GO ASTRAY, AND WANDER BETWEEN MY DOMAIN AND OTHERS. I KNOW THE WAYS YOU SERVE. He is not scolding but her mouth seals shut. ALL GODS WILL STARVE, CHILD, AND ALL THEIR REALMS, AND ALL THEIR CHOSEN. WHEN YOU SUCCEED I WILL BE PROUD AND SO I WILL REWARD YOU, AND STARVE THE BLACK HAND FIRST.
Then it's morning again.
He says she looks like she knows of what comes after, and Bodille cannot want, but she can lie, and say she doesn't. Is that enough? His body loses tension and he grows silent in the way he will when— no, no, no, no, no. He looks like someone who is solving something. E4-e5. Trust a Banite, to always think there's a solution.