✞33 Days since my Last Confession✞

[13th_crusader]

[†]Ecclesiastes 11:9

You, O Lord, reign forever; your throne endures from generation to generation. Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us so long? Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may return; renew our days as of old. Unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure.[†]


'Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.'

[☨]In the comfort of his four-post fortress, his respite and single place of solace, Maxwell curled in his pristine white sheets and dozed as the afternoon light spilled in and gleaned off his thick lashes.

There was a whiny mewl as he rejected the sun, turning over and crushing the communicator with a downy pillow. The week prior had brought him nothing but emotional trauma the likes to rock his granite foundations and leave him rubble on the floor.

Sleep. It was all he wanted. If he could sleep forever without the prospect of Purgatory, Heaven, or Hell, meeting him as his eyes shut, perhaps then he could finally find his true repose.[☨]

Comments

[sanctus-cineris.livejournal.com]

[A pair of silver-framed glasses remained perched on the bridge of his nose, pressed into the ridge of skin so tightly that every time his light, soundless snore stirred his cheek from the sheets the red marks appeared practically grafted into his flesh. Moving onto his side part of his bare muscular torso unveiled from beneath the slipping sheet, his fair lashes slightly aquiver.

Grappling with the Devil had all but severed his soul from this plane, leaving him desolate and empty. Now, left to rest...At last...He wanted nothing more than that.

But the hand to awake him drew his exhausted eyelids up to peer directly into his chiel's, still caught blissfully unaware in that half-waking state.]

..Nn?

[13th-crusader.livejournal.com]

[So small. He felt so small and insignificant standing by that man's side. A familiarity that took him back some 20 years, where his younger self reach up on tiptoes and gasped for the sleeping priest on his squeaky mattress... and asked him if he could put his loving wings around him, and shield him from the night's fearsomeness.

There was never any need to beseech him. For his arms were always open and ready to receive him, should that raucous little boy ever return to him.

Thin brows twitched and knitted as his bleak heart constricted and squeezed out his weakness in the form of his childish tears welling. What a fool.

Such a fool.

Everything he had ever wanted and craved for was right in front of him. And his hatred and pride had damned him to be blind to it.]


Father...

[sanctus-cineris.livejournal.com]

Yer...Grace?

[A slight twinge of irony in his grainy sounding words, heavy-lidded hues of pristine jade questioning in their muted shade. He had sacrificed his heart for a shield of steel, but still his humanness would remain a fatal flaw. The good Father could no more guard against his silver-tongued leader now than he could the day they'd met.

But how could he speak truth when all that the Archbishop could see was his own..?

A steely-eyed silence fixed between them before he lowered his peridot gaze, fighting off the exhaustion that laid waste to his defenses. He was not Regenerator, nor Paladin. He was man.]

....Aye?

[13th-crusader.livejournal.com]

[Pernicious lips opened to speak, yet not even a respite left him. The weight of his regret smothered his withered form and rendered him without voice to lament.

With a graceful bow and a veil of untied tresses curtaining over them, his arms were quick to speak for him. An embrace laced about Anderson's form, cradling him so tightly and so strenuously, it was at if he knew not just how to have and hold another.

Willowy bends shuddered violently as he clutched to his knight's body, desperate to feel the shield of those loving wings again.]

[sanctus-cineris.livejournal.com]

[Like the pressure of a thousand buildings falling in upon him he too could barely lift his sore limbs to wind around the tiny frame of his superior, embracing that void into his doubting soul even when he began to fall apart.

Oh...oh Maxwell...

A deeply-lined tremor of his own before he could press his lips to the other's hair, automatically accepting and worshipful even if he couldn't bear the thought that for once this might genuine...For once he wouldn't have to think that this was pretend...]

E...en..rico...

[13th-crusader.livejournal.com]

[The caressing pressure that weaved it's way about his agonized soul, seemed to coax his vocals apart, and allow his quiet dulcet to quiver past imperturbable lips.]

Mi dispiace... Pater..

[Never had those words passed his teeth in sincerity or even begrudgingly. They were almost foreign on his tongue, yet spoken with such a chilling passion that it fit his demeanor like a sheathe.]

Mi dispiace tanto.

[Never. Never had he felt more sorry than he did the moment those church doors had slammed shut, closing off the last sight of his coveted protector. Leaving him to know that without him, he was truly alone in the world. And never had he wanted forgiveness for this grave trespass more than now.]

Ti ...prego ...perdonami.

[sanctus-cineris.livejournal.com]

[What more could he offer than the fulfillment of a child's love? What more could a Prince ask of him?

He held his thoughts adrift while the Italian words filtered in..Remorseful...Penitent. Dear Lord, how could he keep from letting the floodgates to his heart burst? How could he remain strong for this poor, lost lamb?]

...Ah luv ye. Canna trade...thaet fer all th' world, ye ken?

[His voice cracked and he had to swallow back a torrent of emotion, kissing his golden haired head with such worshipful lips.]

...Es...et..Sae mooch...

..O-o'...Course ah fergive ye...Ah joos'...Ah canna....Et's bin sae hard...

[13th-crusader.livejournal.com]

[And there were the words that assured him that his touch of empathy was true. Three simple words he had deafened himself to; refused to allow himself to hear them, refused to believe they had been said in any context that pertained to him. How could anyone love the demon that was he?

Sea-misted eyes flitted up through thick dampened lashes, reflecting in his shepherd's ever kind gaze.

'Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?'

'I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven!'

Maxwell was sure this much has been the seventy-seven-thousandth time... that Anderson had shown him forgiveness... And so easily, he would do it again and again. No more perfect and devout man was on this earth or upon any other. And how lucky he was to have him say those three tantamountal words.

I love you. Lord... if only my mouth knew how to return those words...

Teach me?]

Allow me.. Teacher.. to chasten my transgressions against you... Even if it takes me for the eternity we are in Purgatory together.

[And so his touch graced his shepherd's cheek, smoothing over thick stubble and a well weathered scar... before his lips, yearning to me taught, brushed a paramour's kiss across Judas's mouth.]

[sanctus-cineris.livejournal.com]

[To yearn...To pine...For years. Decades. He had wanted to hear some semblance of that acceptance, that mutuality in affection. But even as a man of God, even as the Right Hand of Judgment he had known that there'd been little hope for that dream, that it might as well have been foolishness on his part.

Yet he would've never stopped trying if it hadn't been for Maxwell's insatiable ambitions.

Yet all that...It hardly mattered. It...Nothing compared to this..This moment.]

M-maxwell...O'....A-ah joos'....C-ca—

[A hush as that pernicious mouth engulfed his own in a lover's embrace, his arms clutching so tightly around him he feared he might've crushed his near-skeletal frame if he'd been too vigorous.]