characters: lucrezia borgia, cesare borgia
warnings: brother/sister incest, religious imagery, blasphemy, blood, breeding kink, sex near a corpse
summary: lucrezia is made naked and clean and bloodless again—and his.
a/n: baby’s first borgiacest 🙂↕️ cuz it’s 15 years later and s3 leaving off where it did is still a fucking CRIME. just a leetle snippet for tunglr but you can find the full thing on ao3 if ! ur nasty
tag list: @hybernian @the-darkestminds
Spilled blood stains the soul.
Buried amongst a gravebed of it, Lucrezia is overturned from the corpse of her husband to stare blankly up towards God. His silence descended some time ago, a condemnation of unbreathing lungs, an abjection of unpulsing veins. As she suffocates under the weight, the cherubs stillborn into the dried paint of her ceiling look beatifically down on her. She cannot see Father beyond them, nor Son, nor Spirit. Only this divine farce of heaven stretched thin above her.
Countless men have been struck dead by her affections and her contempt alike. Slaughtered, every one, by the sanguineous curse of her nativity: the unseen hands of fate and vengeance and tragedy, constant companions reaching out from her kin. Each life spattered itself on the hems of her fine skirts and soaked deep into her silken slippers as bone-burdens to bear and heart-griefs to nurture, yet there had been no need of confession in the after, no need of atonement.
Quietus is the birthright of a Borgia, and everyone knows it so.
But this death, snarling lamb on her shepherding hand—this death is different from the rest. She knew it with the final, stuttered chestfall. There is not repentance enough to absolve her of this mortal sin. She is sentenced to be bereft of His presence, for ever.
Without expectation, she says unto His silence: “I will never wash this blood away."
“Then I must," comes the reply, and Lucrezia stares not up towards God but into Cesare.
Her brother is here now, and he will take care of her. His hands are on her skin, cupping her face, grazing her throat. He lifts a sodden rag to her cheek, pink through with the water-thin wine of her husband’s blood. Though the muslin scrapes against her skin, she is insensate.
"You will be naked," he murmurs, his words fluttering her lashes shut, "and clean and bloodless again."
If only, she thinks. If only.
Low and graveled against her ear: "And mine."
On her temple, his dipped mouth feels like deliverance. Like green kisses practiced on a familiar mouth and shared giggles amongst the rolling grass. Like his body above her and below her and with her in spirit.
Then it is gone, and all goes quiet again.
Emptily, the cherubs smile.
Lucrezia shudders. "I want it," she breathes, shallow, "more than anything."
