Reverence

You felt long, cold fingers trail across your skin. They stroked your face gently and weaved through your hair. They were the hands of your captor, or in his words, your liberator.

You had saved him, he breathed, and now he had the privilege of saving you.

Indeed you had. If you had known it was to lead to this though, you would have never done so. He was so far gone in his fantasy that he believed himself a hero come to rescue you from the world.

Your captor shared likenesses with a phantasm. He lurked in realms of darkness and illusions. He masqueraded around playing the monster from beneath the floorboards. Humans have a penchant to fear things they can't understand, he told you. It was something that threatened him, protected him, and amused him simultaneously.

Someone had once had the misfortune of snagging his attention, a pretty blonde thing.

Who else would care for and be as suited for a shadow-dweller as much as the sun herself? He fell for her in spite of himself. How could he not?

He was lenient though, he allowed her to be free of his grasp. She had long since gone.

You had decided to show compassion that day. Misery is contagious, and you could sense it swallowing the cloaked man whole. But light is also transmissible, and you intended to infect the miserable man with its warming glow. That was how you found yourself trapped in his grasp. It was how you ended up with his fingers entangling through your hair, how you found yourself tightly pressed to him. Compassion in the dire face of desperation thawed the icy front he worked so hard to build. Death from love was a painful affair, and the warmth of your compassion was intoxicating.

His touch was restrained as though handling a sacred object, but scarcely so. Passion leaked from behind the thin barrier of restraint. You could feel it from the tremor of his hands, the cold sweat on his fingertips.

You mean far more than you can imagine, he muttered, reverently.

His fingers trembled fervently as he dragged them through the length of your hair.

He moved his shaky fingers to stroke your eyelids and pressed his lips against the skin covering your eyes.

His lips were every bit as thin as the rest of him, and just as cold.

Your eyes simply remained closed though, it was an act of defiance: he couldn't control you.

But he knows you better than you know yourself; eventually, you will give up, he would remind you. You always were a bit stubborn.

He can steal you away, but he can't take your soul.

You cannot withhold yourself forever, he whispered in your ear.

The one thing he can not steal, you will not give him.

You would see, there was all the time now. Both of you could wait.

...

He was right. You didn't quite remember how, but the next moment, you could see him. His porcelain mask had been absently discarded beside him on the love-seat.

He gasps softly in surprise.

The shadows halt their lullabies and he halts his love song.

And then he cries.

He presses you to him; his body shakes. He cradles your head towards him, grasping the hair at your scalp desperately.

He kisses the skin of your face so tenderly yet so frenzied at once. Cold impressions of where he presses his lips ghost his movements.

When he eventually recovers from his fit of passion, he lifts you further from his lap and tilts your head with his spindly fingers, angling your eyes for him to admire.

He bares his face for your eyes to see, hesitation lingering in the action: a residue of old habit.

He kisses you again. You have given me my redemption, he tells you.

Perhaps he thinks you are his messiah, come to free him of the sins marred on his face. He is so well convinced with it that it may as well be the truth.

His eyes shine through the inky black, a striking yellow.

I love you,

I love you,

I love you, choruses from his mouth. He gently fondles your face.

His eyes burn so hot, you feel as though your flesh has started melting in large chunks, like candle wax from your body.

His grip was now constricting like a python.

He would be sure to never let you slip, ever. Not that he ever planned to in the first place.

Can't you see? He is so deeply lovestruck with you.

He crushes you so tight to him, you will surely fuse together.

In your ear, he serenades you, singing of songs gentle like the wafting spring air and of songs lustful and passionate. His favorite are those where he professes his adoration, his reverence for you.

He will surely sing them forever.

After all, time will pass, as it is apt to.

But his love transcends death, and even when you close your eyes to rest from life; he will hold you to himself and whisper lost and unspoken confessions of love in your ears, and drown your head with his songs so you can never forget. You have saved him, and he will follow you as a loyal disciple through the bliss of Heaven or the agony of Hell.

There is all the time in the world; he has made sure of that.

All you need to do is open your mind to him, just as you have unexpectedly infiltrated his.

He has been paying homage to you for a long time.

...

Won't you grant him your light?

---

Hello, lovely reader(s). This was the first fanfiction I ever wrote. It has been sitting on my computer for a year, so I gave it a fresh coat of paint.

Hope you liked it.