subversion. (drabble)
cw for gore, dissociation, water
The dark has smothered all but the barest embers of him, left clinging to his bones in the way torn banners linger on bent poles, shoved into the impromptu graveyards of battlefields. It has carved so much of him away, leaving the writhing body that remains dancing to a chorus of screaming voices the knight - the thing, the embers - cannot comprehend. He is not sure how long he has lingered here, on that silvery border between the river and shore, some long-withered sense of self still grasping so, so tightly to the waving grass. He could not will himself to let go if he wanted to. There is not enough consciousness left for something so monumental, so thoroughly alien as a decision.
Even less of his capacity for true emotion remains. The ghosts of anger, and pain linger so near that he can almost make our their faces; they are clearer in the act of unmaking, when some living thing has ventured too near to the dark for the latter's comfort. When he watches his body roar and surge and lunge and tear itself asunder in the pursuit of combat, he can glimpse old vestiges of himself. They invariably fall before him - well, it. The dark. He has nothing to do with the matter, save for the dim awareness of pain on the edges of his fragmented understanding. He may well have nothing to do with it, but in a way, in his hubris, he handed the dark his sword and all else besides. How many have died now? How many have come searching, to end the End?
And yet he will not fade. The knight lingers in his own bones, haunting himself. In the hours, days, years between errant adventurers put to the sword, sometimes he emerges long enough to grasp the horror of his own dissociation, and in so doing, dissociates again, as though he's trying to take mercy on himself. Brief spates of consciousness that only serve to silhouette his grave, grave errors. How could he have done this? How could he have fallen? How could have thrown himself into this, and hurt her? Her? Her…? An echo of someone far off and desperately precious rattles him through. There along the wall of the coliseum, he drags a gauntlet across his tarnished chest, as though searching for some missing core beneath the armor.
No, mutters the dark. You are mine. Mine. Mine. Your heart is mine, mine, mine. The arm goes still.
More adventurers. More visitors. More dead. None of them seem capable of besting him. None last very long at all. The ghosts of anger and pain loom closer every time, their faces gleaming in the bloody gloom. Sometimes they are so close as to show him himself in the reflections of their staring eyes, to give him back his sense of self for one horrifying instant - and all he can do is plead, choking on his own atrophied throat - for forgiveness.
He begs to be forgiven. He has availed them nothing. The corpses do not reply. The ghosts do not, either. He is submerged again, back into blessed unawareness. It is, in some way, a mercy.
The mercy is not to last - nor is the dark. There stands before him now a knight, a human, of uncommon skill - where many had already fallen, minutes into the battle the knight is still standing. His puppeted body struggles to haul itself after the warrior, as cut and ragged as it has become beneath the attentions of the knight's sword. Wounds refuse the dark's most fearsome attempts to wrench his body into compliance - sheer structural compromise has made a ruin of him.
The river is rushing faster, he thinks. He can think. He is aware. The dark is slipping. The river is rushing faster, and I - I - blessed I, I - can let go. I can let go. Let go. Let go, Artorias. It is the first time his name has crossed his awareness in decades. Let go. Let go.
The knight raises their weapon, speaks a prayer - something low and growled, desperate, and the embers tremble before it in anticipation. Tear the banner free. Let go. Sink into the river. Let go. Be washed away, Artorias. Let go. The weapon descends. The rotted silver helmet parts. Something important gives and cracks. Blood and something darker bubble up and out of him. The dark cannot hold - the corpse is too ruined to use. The hold is slipping. Let go. Into the river, Artorias. Into. The. River.
Everything, blessedly, finally, goes black. It stays that way for years, and years, and years.
And then he chokes on water rushing into remade lungs, and begins struggling his way toward the surface.