Sympathy for Iscariot - Quinton and Matteo
He knows what he has to do.
In the moment, everything for him had a complete and startling clarity. He could perceive everything in hyper saturation, the color and texture of the wood paneling in his office aching at his eyes, the soft susurrus of footsteps carving away at his ears, the mirror etching back a pale, frightened image that he scarcely recognized. Pale fingertips reaching out to touch the cool surface of the mirror, fingertips brushing fingertips of the boy – for that was what he was in that moment, despite any posturing, a boy not a man – dark eyes meeting dark eyes and recognizing the hollows that had built up at his temples, the shadows under his eyes, the hunted look in every line of his body.
He doesn’t know if it is safe, or if anywhere is particularly safe.
With characteristic meticulousness, he has searched for any bugs that might be placed in his office, none of his important conversations had been mentioned or referenced, so he was hopeful, but there was still the potentiality that he had missed something. That they hadn’t missed something – that he hadn’t hidden to satisfaction that way that his hands seem to tremble a little more these days, how they are less flippant in their coverance of blood, how sacrifices are much more unwillingly given with a shade of mutiny impeding like a thunderstorm on the horizon. All of these things, all of these clues, are a weakness that he has long hoped to conceal – worked to conceal with a diligence befitting his nature – but the men he worked with and for are skilled at detecting weakness in the ranks, even from the dark-eyed specter, even from a boy. Like wolves, they can sense the first instance of lameness, and can hone upon it with dreadful accuracy.
He has one visible weakness that he finds difficult to hide, and it is so much harder to hide a weakness when that weakness has a beating heart, when that weakness can trigger irrationality and confusion and all the symptoms of reckless madness that Matteo would so easily condemn in others. Perhaps it is true that every criminal has his line, and should that line be found, it might be the end of him. It is also true that if a history is painstakingly pulled apart, that a line can always be found – and then there comes not a formal proclamation, nothing as grand or as inelegant as a death sentence spoken by a self-appointed judge, no, simply a chorus of whispers. A ‘word of the street’ issues forth and builds as predictably and as menacingly as a hurricane – words of doubt, words of bitterness, words of rage. Like blind insects that climb from woodwork when it is peeled away, only with looking and with patience can one then peel away the veneer of civilization to reveal the festering corruption that lurks within – to realize how may enemies one has who will only chance you at your weakest for they would not dare you at your strength.
He knows what he has to do.
Even as he prepares for it, he feels in his heart of hearts a greater resistance that he believed imaginable, and perhaps some of it was for selfish reasons. He does not want his brother to look at him with anything but that pure and honest love that emanates from him openly and without any hesitation. He warms him like winter sunlight in bursts of fractious color let into a room that has long been boarded up. He makes him remember what it is to be outside of a pageantry that had turned much closer to truth over long years. He remembers from their childhood the first time that Quinton had smiled at him, and it was the first true smile that he could remember.
With painful and painstaking reconstruction of those memories, he can remember the differences between that true smile and that hiding smiles of others. He can remember the first night after he had run away that he was not hungry, and that he was not cold. He could remember the loyalty that had formed, quiet and unshowy and wordless, between them, for him. The anger that had risen when Quinton was in danger. The colors of emotions bursting forth after so long only feeling the undercurrent of fear – and he doesn’t want him to be afraid of him, doesn’t want him to ever think him a monster. He knows what he looks like when he is a little afraid of him, and he never wants him to look like that again, because he doesn’t want to be that boy, and he doesn’t want to be that man. He doesn’t like to acknowledge the intensity of his emotions and so, he controls them, and he wields control over them as a man might over beasts that could devour him. He is the sovereign over his own heart, but he is not alone, and so his heart is split – given to others in its pieces and weakened in the process, these sore spots, these targets, these people.
He knows what he has to do, he just doesn’t know if he has the strength to do it.
He doesn’t want to die because the Mafia questions his loyalty. He doesn’t want the people he loves to die, and he does love them, in his own way, in a way that is incoherent of reason, painful with a brightness that is like an alien sun, disorienting and dangerous. He doesn’t want Quinton to be afraid of him, but he knows that this may be the only compromise that he can orchestrate between them, and so he does. He plans to the best of his ability and attempts to reassure himself the best he can, as he sets the pieces in motion, that this was the only way to keep them both safe.
He hopes, as he is buzzed into the building, and climbs the stairs to his brother’s apartment, specialized side arm carefully tucked out of sight beneath his jacket, that he will understand that this was the right decision, no matter how painful it might have been in the moment. His brother’s apartment and hallway have already been bugged with cameras, placed there by his associates in order to fully capture the apparent act that is to take place, and he is hyper-aware of them as he steps out of the elevator to pad silently to the door. Pale knuckles hesitate before they rap gently against wood in a soft pattern of sound, and he realizes that he is trembling. He does not come to his brother in any formality, not in suits or accompanied by an entourage. He comes alone, in T-shirt, jeans, and baggy jacket – looking vulnerable, and a little afraid. That, at least, is not an illusion. He is afraid. He is afraid of the risks. He is afraid of the chance of failure, even minimal, he is afraid.
When they told him that he would have to kill an associate of the police, no one told him that it would have to be his brother.
When the door opens, he does not smile.
ellievsbear
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
2087
theartofmadeline
annaxmalina
titsay
