“You say revenant as if it were some foul occurrence; but was it not Christ that rose to prove himself a soul undying – is he not revenant?” Needless to mention the rhetorical nature of the example, though the Holy things had long been anything but rhetorical in Mathias’ mind. Nevertheless the mood is kept ceremoniously dignified, in that manner of ceremony that has become their sharing of indescribable pains. Fondling over where he touches that man with decision to ignore the hateful spirit seething inside, to those eyes garbing themselves with deep ache he instead looks over with sympathy. All allowances to let the mind wander. All to let the warm, warm flow of himself to seep inside. Canting his head, rifling through what he must to pierce past those irises and peer into the soul beneath. “And were we not once made within his image?”
And at last he sees it: the core, or what could be understood as the core, being the opal-esque shimmer of myriad a thing inside, discernible only to his own uniquely mutated gaze. Edmond speaks his peace, polite as ever in his own damning way. “You are convinced you are rot for the sake of your furthering this method of survival, Edmond; you are posed to be a Gladiator, but my friend, there are no men among chariots to encircle you, and only lions that have not ate in years await you in their cold cages.”
Mathias stands to his feet, though half-knelt, invasive in that way which stirs the demon possessing his friend. The sheer energy alights his own eyes to shades of reds and blacks and grey, grey skies. A knee poised between the man’s legs, smoothing over the high of his prominent features before moving them downward. “You have found those rich with spirituality dissevered from the hands of cruel Gods. The beauty of humanity is that right to free will, the right to live and breathe bereft of the hands of a desperate ruler. In that, you need only rid yourself of your false paganism. You need a true God.”
His throat is cut. Consent vocally given is most raw when derived directly from the beating heart. So Edmond bleeds swiftly (coldly) into the palm of Mathias’ hand. A wound easily seal as it is made, and Mathias is no later standing and taking his stride away from him. “We both are unique in the manner we were made,” towards a table, moving all aside and overturning his hand, dripping the blood onto the surface, “-unlike you, I was wonderfully crafted to be a balm for humanity. Something to aid and salvage, while you, initially, were meant for nothing more than a life of hard labor at the sea, with your bride by the sea, and your years spent hardening the palms of your hands to something so callous, nothing but the kiss of your wife could soften.” A scalpel is taken from a drawstring in his sleeve. Unbuttoning his shirt, his vest so that he too may pierce his own heart directly. Guiding and manipulating the blood to covet Edmond’s, a ritual of union is begun. Mathias, for the time being, remains quietly focused.
“But,” as he breaks the silences after some time, “now you hold the capability to rewrite your own. Something Christ himself could not possess… so I must ask: what will you do with this chance?”
It is a danger to let him so near; the simplicity of that truth crawls upon him with a sordid reminder that he is possessed not of Mathias’ gentle hands, but the greed of something else entirely that hisses and revolts at touch so kind, so well-intentioned--so like an anchor for the one drowning to grasp upon that the demon all but shrieks inside the cold, dark spaces of Edmond’s mind. Till his ears rings. Till the eerie crystal of his frozen bones hum with pain. And he ignores it all no less. Indeed, forces it to quiet, remembering himself briefly as the man in control of it all, whatever the demon wishes or thinks or wants. Mathias’ hands are so deliciously warm in their offering of comfort--warmer even than his words as they fall over him like spring rain, stirring life thought never to be returned, stirring hope thought never to be returned. Edmond fears to cling to it, and clings anyway (finding it more comforting than the cold, cold hands of a monster hiding away inside the curtain of his flesh.) And so he is, for the longest time, speechless as Mathias looks him round and through, tilts his head to and fro, soaks him with the warmth of his skin that finds itself alien to flesh long poisoned with grief and change. Finds itself intoxicating to the parts of Edmond that are loneliness. The Count breathes deep, the sound tripping over the would-be strains of a sob that haven’t tears enough to become real. He clings to that arm, to these clothes, to this man. Like he has not clung to anything before.
“This is no godly picture, Mathias. The tomb is not sacred, nor the bones within it. If ever there was a man beloved by God’s eyes somewhere in its stones and dusts and dirt, he has ceased to be very long ago. What must you see when you look at me to imagine there is a thing so good and just and whole where a man as myself still sits? The lions, of every colour and kind, have eaten up my soul along with my body. Do I suppose I will get them back if I slit them loose of their treacherous lives? Do I...”
No. That cold stab of reality never hurts worse than it does in moments as these--where he says it out loud, knows it for the truth that it is, knows himself dying for a cause that will not bring him peace. Time isn’t much given to ponder his miseries though, which is another of Mathias’ many kindnesses. The man kneels in, closer than many dare, closer than perhaps even he should--and yet not close enough, for all Edmond wishes. He talks of Gods that come in truer colours--tells him he needs such a one. Edmond laughs, awkwardly quiet and painfully mirthless as his hands tangle away into the fabrics of the other man’s shirt. “A God like you, my friend? Am I to understand this to be your implication?”
His answer is a blade on his throat, clean and bright as it cuts him through and bleeds him out into cold, dark wells of red and bleeding him out too into the rough, hoarse scrape of a gasp as everything in him trembles. Not much with pain so much as with effort, to keep that which writhes beneath the surface quiet and still. The effort that ultimately distracts both from pain and from the fact the wound is gone as quickly as it were put there at all. Dizzy, His Excellency’s eyes follow Mathias to the table where the better part of his ritual is coaxed into life. Edmond finds it...performative. The gentleman bares himself to his scalpel in a way that is almost exquisite in its imagery of sacrifice, haunting in that it is one offered for Edmond himself. The union of their spoiled blood to make something that will brighten his pain to a sweeter feeling. Edmond blinks in his quiet awe, dazed almost to silence with it all, dazed by the question his dear friend poses most of all. “I...” Hesitance wrings his throat raw. “I wish to live again. Not as I do now. But as what I have since long ceased to be. A mere man. A fragile, ephemeral human.”