Work Text:
Arsonists Lullaby
~
Don't you ever tame your demons
Always keep them on a leash
~
When I was a child, my parents were murdered; gutted – gloriously – before me as my village burned around them.
That was the first time I saw it – the depth and magnificence in the arcing paths of crimson, the ferocity and ecstasy in the flickering orange – the extravagant beauty in destruction. It was exquisite, and all too soon it was swallowed by the blackness of night and forgotten in the monotony of human existence. And then, so was I – tugged along through the blackness and lost among the choreographed patterns of an average life.
I aged and blended, becoming the same as the rest of them – weak and indolent, waking and working and fucking and repeating in the stagnant haze of humanity.
But through it all, the sight haunted me.
I would see it again and again in the fires at night. Every campfire and flickering hearth recalled the images of carnage, each gust of wind carried the echoed cries of the dying, and the moans of the bereft. It mesmerized me, it whispered beckoning words and aroused in me some long buried warmth that spread with needy fingers to grip my heart; only to be shuffled away into the darker recesses of my mind come morning.
It wasn’t until the second raid, years later, that I finally gave in to the whispered call that had nagged me for years.
The faceless woman I had wed was killed, and there it was again – the extravagance, the magnificence, the crimson beauty. The fire.
The whisper grew to a howl, then a frenzied, cacophonous cry.
When I struck the first man- when I felt the resistance of his flesh and muscle and bone, when the hot spray of his blood splashed my face and I saw the life leave him- I felt it for the first time; joy.
I left that night. Left the embers of my house, the warm corpse of my bride, and the name that tied me to them all. I rode out with the bandits, and as the fires swallowed the village behind me, I took my first breath. From those ashes, I was born anew.
Years passed in a heady blur of crimson and orange, a macabre dance to a symphony of wails. Raiding, raping, killing, burning - it was euphoric. And then, it ended.
I was betrayed - set aflame and left for dead by a cowardly wretch I had wronged. Still, I persisted. Burnt and broken, I lay forgotten for more time than I know- a seething, festering wound of wrath and hatred, clinging to life by the thought of vengeance alone.
That was when she found me - that foolish woman.
Kind yet distant, she dedicated her hours to my care. In feeding and cleaning me, she showed me a cold sort of comfort I had never before known, and in her eyes I saw something resplendent, something I had forgotten in my dark, damp cave. A fire - a flickering, burning beauty, restrained by the confines of her pious life, but one that set the dying embers in my own soul ablaze.
I had hated her, but in time I began to crave her biting words and acerbic tongue. I grew to covet her. We were so similar - alone in our own rights and burning with an intensity too great for this pathetic world we were shackled to. I filled my waking hours with fantasies of her. I wanted to claim her as mine, foster the flame within her and together we would turn it into a blaze that would consume everything around us.
I became obsessed, and soon, the whispered voice was back. Now, beseeching me to take her and all that she had. It hissed at me in the darkness, it’s words wrapping around my mind and sinking into my fetid soul. It brought me back to the days of crimson and orange and joy, to the feeling that spread through me at every wail. She was that feeling given form, and I would take her, as I took all that I wanted those years ago – no matter the cost.
For her, I would give it all again, what little I had left to give this time around. I would give this broken body, this heinous past, this wretched life and the name that tied me to them. And in return, I would be born anew with her as my own.