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In a space that is as limitless as the one in control of it. As safe as a dream or as dangerous as a lighthouse in the middle of a storm that had never been charted on a map and will never be written in fingers that have not tasted the path of Divinity.
Smudged blood, bandaged hands, injured hearts that never linger after the shell of humanity had been torn.
In a place covered in fog that has weathered in the legend of its appearance the madness of Gods and the games of those who try to reach even higher.
In a- place- that is n o t a place. In a castle that is the holding space of a Lord who was kind and kind and kind. And lost-
Lost something?
There rests a table of empty seats that the fog will never cover.
Age echoes off the wood like steps in a museum you can only see in half remembered dreams.
And yet.
And yet-rust does not touch. Wood does not wither.
The symbols on the chairs do not change.
And every what day was it again- one can forget so much when remembrance tastes of smoke and dirt against your fingernails as you smell the wetness of tears on the recently set ground. Every day that to say from a not human throat- the time, the name of something so known-tastes like a betrayal, shape shifting, world shattering.
Like the sound of glass breaking when you know you will have to dance on bare feet on the blooded marble floor.
Still, a conversation holds. Picks up like coins taken from between the pages of a half finished book. Or a poem that will be read for eternity and yet not read again by its own creator even as the nights fall with their gentle bloodless gloom.
Picked up from a soul that died in service of a God that wished only for him to survive.
Picked up from a room- that was never never meant to not have music in its hopes and laughter in its alcoves.
Still, the one who has picked all those coins up and has placed them on their respective seats speaks.
And the Lord of this place can only listen.
A dance falls in the space of absence and it rings of truth that has hollowed out Madness into something soft and cold and still.
What is the shape of absence. What is the sound of sacrifice. What is hope that rings against the chest and claws? More than memory, more than a reading of thoughts, a control that colors itself over the shape of reminiscence.
What is it like to walk the earth besides them? To take a million faces and see their laughter and play games- acting again and again- shaping a stage that does not require blood to be shed. But can only know the holding of a breath in how it makes a child laugh and a passerby flee in fear... You had known some of those shapes so well my Lord.
I knOW.
Then why ask my Lord? Why ask of me who is so small, so inconsequential in comparison to your greatness. Limited.
Asking is what humans do when they want to begin a conversation that will last. To grant their conversation partner an opening, an opportunity to exchange knowledge through question after question. And tHis space has been used for mAnY conversations before.
Thank you my Lord for this- but.. Have you considered calling them- calling them here again.
Those chairs are already full Gehrman.
…
Forgive me, my Lord.
In a space below them, the passage of time is only marked by death.
A field, an endless ever flowing field of flowers- that will never be found in any place outside of this land of fog- that had only existed in memory until the Lord of this place crafted them for those who died first under His ever watchful gaze- rests like a theater that must not be spoken of.
Because to speak of it means that its real.
At rare times, believers wake up in the Fool's cathedral, with flowers on their lips and a mindlessness that is more restful than any good nights' sleep, any mother's embrace as she tries to keep Her child close for just one moment longer as blood fills the ground- any silent corner where books gain the sentience of dream like dolls in the mind of the reader and just for one afternoon grand reprieve from existence with a tale of a land without tears and Magicians with a million wishes for those kind enough to ask not for themselves but for each other- never could compare to.
And yet that is not the strangest thing about the field.
The strangest thing about the field is that every person in it is dead.
They stand like facsimiles of existence. Like mirrors of life- the wounds that had killed them taking the shape of half growing flowers that drag, stand against their flesh stark and raised and burrowing, like children's paint on a white wall. Light blue and yellow and violet and black.
Any colour other than red, as they stand in rows that can only be seen from up above. Order that looks as scattered as birds in a web of airy strings, when half of the ones migrating have died in the journey- their absence only able to be told in abstract pictures of before and after.[only on him is the blood red]
Old and young. Smiling and those who still have tears in their faces.
The ones who cry with it sounding like an ask for help that not even the stars can ignore from so high up above- if there had ever been stars in the sky in this place. The ones who cry with nothing to show it but their tears falling on flowers like a soft rainfall, salt mixing into the crafted earth in a hopeless attempt to destroy all that stands upon it that is always doomed to fail.
And on the front of this all-
On the front a man stands with no visible flowers to stich His existence together. With a hat adorned with feathers that change with every turning of an unseen clock. White and black and blue feathers shifting with the lives that rot, crafting a kaleidoscope of change in a space that seems eternal.
His eyes cannot be seen and yet all who look at Him know that He is blind. Some untold whisper that calls upon sacrifices like glass calls upon light to forge it into a polychromic vision, telling them that He was made in this way to serve them. To serve a function that only exists because they exist in this field.
And yet- in His hands there is a sheet of paper. A drop of white against the black of His clothes. An anchor. A duty.
He calls upon a Name.
Have you seen their faces my Lord? After the flowers where crafted- not those first ones but the ones that followed.
I know their faces. I know their voices. I know their hopes and dreams and deaths. There is no need to walk when that time can be used recovering.
I know some of them. I was some of them. Those who walked the path of madness and rested within the marbled of your sanctuary, knew holiness as distant care and duty that doesn't answer. Knew your Grace by the sound of the prayer on my lips. By kindness told, heavy as a rain in a day where the sun shines of brilliance hidden.
Now you are not. You are you.
But I was- I was and I had walked their stone cities and looked at the forgotten remains of a start that none of them will live long enough to be able to hear and not think of history, the statues are still the same my Lord. Would you grant me leave to give you this vision from my eyes.
Say that you will return. Promise it with your actions, not just your bones.
I will always return. As long as You have need of me my Lord.
You may go.
The man that is not a man. The judge that is not a judge. Only a puppet calling out names on an sheet of paper that never never never ends.
That man- walks.
His steps don't make a sound. As distance is covered in the space of what is countless days and yet parallels the movement of the crowd. Parallels the space of a breath, the hint of a laugh- trapped in a final moment of happiness before the agony sets in like the soft raving of devastating reality. Parallels the desperate attempts of some of the residents to claw the flowers out and out and out.
The man never stops moving- and yet He is always motionless when eyes turn to observe that aren't already marked by endless fog. Always stands at the front.
At what front of what exactly?
How do you define the beginning when there is no ending? How do you define the ending when all but one great endings have already been revealed- attempts for them to be forgotten falling apart. Memory the greatest curse when immortality itself can look you in the eye and see recognition that has lost weight. Been stripped of all that follows.
He steps through the fields as if walking through a sea that He doesn't need a map for. Always where He is needed.
The ground below Him has blood that will never be real.
They are quotas, graphs, statistics. Proof kept only for the sake of a myth that HE had crafted to give them something to continue fighting when not even fake memories would have kept them holding on against THEM.
Echoes of a sacrifice to grant your followers salvation. Hope. A kinder thought that spiraled because of lack of time for anything but desperation.
Representations coded within the matrix of a false reality that grant Us stability.
But look at them. Look at what they represent my Lord. Look at the echoes, at the reminders of a life once lived that now is drained in a never ending nightmare.
There is blood here. Accounted for. Prayers whispered met with a moment more before eternity takes hold, a final gift to those who follow a dying god. A gift. This is a g i f t. A suggestion followed made by them.
…
Where my eyes worthy of your presence when that self decomposed into everything then? Where they sustenance enough for just a flicker of your thoughts my Lord?
The names are called.
Anticipation fueled by that strange sensation of something not being real. Not being right. Not being alive- makes the waiting taste of-
Mourning is done when dirt has already brushed against bluish lips, against hollow skin. When the fire has reached the earrings once worn until cheap metal merged with flesh in a mockery of love. Left behind for one moment longer, like a gravestones hastily crafted out of piles and piles of bones.
The names are called.
Everyone knows what the name that is held within the heart of each person that is a flower that is a dream being called means- when they hear the first call. Even if it is not for their own rot.
Everyone knows. Dread taking hold within life-like bodies, crafting a tomb to trap any other thought, crystallizing any other feeling but that awful sickening-
The names are called.
Screams cannot be heard if the thing screaming had never been human right?
And yet it echoes, echoes echoes. Even as time loses meaning- it has never held it when it matters, and it always holds meaning when it does and-
T i m e c r a w l s.
The worms that had never been worms that had always been worms dig into the earth. Mix with the dirt. Become one with the domain of Their Lord as they should have been and had been and always will be from the start.
Blood feeds the earth, mixing with the flowers before eyes look at it- and then the flowers bend with bones that are just leaves and petals that hold no freshly shed half decaying skin turn once more human.
As dirt fills the space left behind by death and death and the realization that the stitches that hold your existence together pull inside themselves to become one with Their creator. As flowers bloom, fed by the illusion of an existence that will never again be. That is only known as a name and the aftermath of a gift given and a prayer that was choice that cannot be removed from the never ending list.
They are people. They where people my Lord.
They where never born as you are my dear Hunter.
My Lord please-
they are only agony, all consuming dread. No sadness, no happiness. No longing. Nothing but vessels of the realization that life has an end. There is no need for that to be-
They are disposable. Within parameters- flawed enough from what is real and knows it that their worth does not press against the scale of equivalence harsh enough for the self that is Not to disagree with the current calculations.
What about if there where no more sacrifices of half measures? What if you could feel something else again my Lord. Anything but this.
The man that is not a man looks at the sky above.
There is no difference between Him and every other passerby in this field- nothing except that He was the one to suggest this. Nothing but the way He now lies down for once in His entire existence. Flowers covering His clothes even as the paper He still holds in His hand lengthens without anyone to read- covers Him in sheets and sheet and sheets as everything stops. Without eyes to call upon His duty.
The man does not know how a smile should taste like except in distant parts of a mind that is now so so so so forgotten, useless. Worthless like His body as those around Him dance.
Its not an action recognized by a dance by anyone other than the humans themselves. Strings are cut, but then they are not cut as they had never been there. Eyes are closed as colors sprout from where their skin was held in place. Blues lilies covering the back of a child that had died before she even knew what the word impalement was, like wings that will never fly away. Sun flowers growing from the throat of a Clown that had perished not from the fire that still strains their never decaying flesh but from the smoke inhaled as They saw despair turn into disbelief.
Irises mix with the blood of a man that holds only a strand of realization in his eyes as his attempts to claw his chest now show how soft unraveling can be.
And yet the blood continues flowing. The flowers shifting in an untold wind. In the pages of a story still half written. Crimson bathing the field in tones of life that cannot be returned.
And yet below the worms return as if this had never been. All of it a bad, terrible dream.
Would you plead their case for them then, my Humanity? Would you kneel and feel their pain- to grant the same sacrifice in my name. Taking the space where before there had been what you refer to as agony?
Yes.
…
"Why?" the Lord of the Mysteries that had long since become used to pain as the only available reprieve from nothingness and calculation asks. And does it count as becoming used to something when its the only thing you can feel?
There is a space where a million answers can be spoken. Where a million petitions can be formed. Where a million facsimiles of experience and existence can be drawn upon in an attempt to fit as well with the name 'Humanity' as is possible for someone who had not even been born human, not truly.
Not since He was resurrected.
And yet, Gehrman rests at the feet of His Lord and does not look. Cannot bear to look and see only a copy of previous feelings, an attempt at humoring that looks perfect, looks as life-like as a mask made from skin that is not skin wearing the face of memories. An attempt rooted in a life that has been lived so long ago as to make it almost void- if it was not His Lord making it, if it was not as precious as the existence of everything that has ever lived when He looks in days filled with the void of absence that has stood for longer than presence had- and sees a smile that is directed only at Him.
Everything else rendered worthless.
He has been given a question by His Lord.
And yet, in this day Gehrman cannot bear to look as he opens his mouth and-
"Because," He had known the words resting at the apex of His mind, known them as well as the sound of His steps in a cathedral that is build inside His heart from marble and death granted in reverence and yet to pull them to His lips now burns, "you may have stopped caring about what they are in this state my Lord-"
And He tries to continue. He tries-
His hand reaches to clasp against the coin still remaining in His pocket, a weapon preparing for its destruction as His head touches upon the floor, feeling the fog swirl out of familiarity and honor rather than love once more.
One last time.
Gehrman's lips open, and yet a hand carefully- echoing of a tenderness that has not been anything but a mirror of a care that most have never witness- reaches to His thoughts. Reaches at His hair, cradling it as softly as a long forgotten poem- as words don't come out of His blue lips.
His Lord had not done this in so long.
The thought is softly whispered from His mind, and yet it rings like a bell as He continues in His own mind. Knowing that His Lord will listen as carefully as He has every single moment of His existence.
'You may have stopped caring about what they are, but they are also you my Lord.'
Gehrman's body remains still as no words are shared back. As no questions are asked. As understanding does not press like lightning strikes upon His bowing body.
And then- something shifts.
"Very well."
The hand still in His hair moves to the back of His neck. A gentle motion trapped in hands that have not destroyed Him even in the throes of His act of sacrilege. The pressure of a butterfly at the back of His ear, as if searching for a flower that is not there. The ghost of a touch that stays there and become real in doing so- ordering Him to look up.
He moves with the specter, the constant that is His Lord as His only lighthouse.
And His eyes are met not with a smile. Not with a face trapped in a moment that is as familiar as the space around them- but with something blank and motionless and hollow- lacking the usual attempts to be as close to what His Lord had chosen as His appearance at the start, at the middle. At the end of His existence in this form. As if His Lord had once more been reminded of how sacrifice had tasted when there was more blood than stardust in His veins and wished to not burden Gehrman with a facsimile of a lie.
Then, His Lord says something. Something that echoes in the space around them. Echoes like birds falling to the sea, like blood falling to a field of flowers. Echoes of change- of rebirth, of time that has passed with the quickness of a breath when it should have been the heartbeat of a universe. When it should have lasted.
But Gehrman is forced to miss those words in yet another act of uselessness as His Lord's hand brushes against His eyes akin to closing the eyes of a still breathing corpse. And then pain bursts behind His eyelids.
The hand moves. And He can only focus on that movement as He sees what happens. As red red red flowers burst from His hands like poor approximations of something else, something flying, something that His mind cannot find as they consume His flesh that is not, burrowing deeper and deeper. Weaving through His organs that are only organs for this moment moment moment in time. Blood spilling in the gaps of their existence akin to an attempt to fill a tapestry of red with even more life giving crimson.
As they spill to the floor below Him in waves of bright never-ending agony.
This is for His Lord- this is for His Lord.
This is for His Lord and His Lord has been in agony for so much time already.
He reaches blindly as His sight is consumed by petals, vines spreading further and further until blackness is the only thing that greets Him.
And time loses meaning as- he breaths.
Breaths through the pain- breaths through the feeling of unraveling, breaths and takes hold of the heart that has been beating only in the service of His Lord and tries to anchor on that echo. On that half there half not desperation for His Lord to feel something else. Anything else.
Even as time digs against eternity like a blade that cannot be pulled without leaving the wound under it to fester and bleed and rot. Even as His body is moved by fingers that He can almost mistake for more and more of the flowers, if not for how kind, how painless they are.
But a sound makes its way to His ears. Finds the gap between the pain and the non existence and the nothingness of His unraveled form.
And for just a moment He laughs. Laughts with a mouth that is not there, with a mind that is as distant as His screams. Laughts as tears that are not His own fall down His face that is not there. A never-ending pile of worms greeting them with the elation of broken blood veins and death that cannot become true and bones that are more unstable than mist.
Then- just as quickly as it started- the pain stops. Quiets down to a whisper as Gehrman opens His eyes and is greeted by His Lord's face that is now whole.
Gehrman finds Himself in the arms of His Lord as His hand slowly pierces together. As fog cradles His eyelashes with longing that is new and is old and is an echo of His own.
"There flowers where not perhaps the best choice for this," His Lord moves His hand to His face but Gehrman cannot stop Himself from looking at the way His lips are pulled into a smile. Small in comparison to all His past attempts. Almost invincible if one is not also a Faceless. The smallest change.
The smallest victory.
And yet it makes something bloom in Gehrman's recently reconstructed ribcage. Something small and fragile, a door that had not been there before in the cathedral of His mind. In the temple of His devotion.
What is hope that rings against the chest and claws?
He doesn't know how to answer that question yet. But He will find it.
And even if His Lord does not stay that way for long. Even if the emotions He has borrowed from Gehrman's own are not enough to give Him solace- Gehrman will be here to answer.
Again and again.
As many times as it is necessary to bring His Lord here.
As many times as it is needed to bring His Lord home.
Even as He knows that will never be possible for His Lord to reach the home of His own heart.
Then those hands reach once more to touch His eyes and He stills in His Lord's embrace. Waits for His Lord's action. Waits for the pain to begin again or for something else. Anything to stay here a moment longer rather than leave His Lord alone.
But that hand just rests upon His eyes, painless. An anchor holding as much weight as His breathing, as the hold of His Lord against His being.
"Equivalent exchange," the words are whispered as His Lord holds Him even closer, coldness in the shape of salvation, of arms cradling Gehrman in the still motion of safety like a statue that has gained just enough knowledge to know how life blooms when a room lingers in silence.
It is not a question- and yet as a hand moves to pet Gehrman's hair He tries to find some way to answer. Some way to give His Lord something back.
But His Lord continues.
"Stop me if you wish to my dear Hunter."
Gehrman does not even consider that possibility but still nods in agreement as He sees the almost hesitation in His Lord's eyes.
Before He is pulled gently, with the care of a candle lit in prayer, from where His Lord had allowed Him the honor of laying Him in His arms, upwards, but still within the stability of His Lord's presence as His head is brought so that He stands breaths away from His Lord's face.
He looks at those eyes that are bright. Bright as nothing else could possible be in the entire making of creation. Brighter than gold. Brighter than sunlight.
Blood falls down His chin from where the flowers had sprouted what felt like years and simultaneously like moments ago, staining His Lord's hands as they reach for His chin, almost making Gehrman flinch back to not taint His Lord further.
But He cannot bear to pull back.
And then His Lord's lips move, slow enough that even if Gehrman had been a human, even if He had been nothing more powerful than a speck of dust, falling to the wind, He would have been able to move away from Him.
His Lord kisses Him on the cheek, blood mixing with His lips as He does as easily as rain mixes with the sea, with something endless and fathomless and eternal. Allowing something so small to stain His being in order to be so close to Gehrman that He can hear the sound of His faith, of His heartbeat- as divinity is marred by feelings for the first time in an entire painful existence.
If not for the fact that He can feel His Lord's uneeded breath in His own, Gehrman may have mistaken His Lord's expression for something else.
Elation and embarrassment mix like the most awaited for sunrise. And finally, Gehrman finds His answer.
"Hope," His lips taste of blood and pain and memories of death that had cut out His Lord into pieces, but all that pales now that He can see into His Lord's eyes and see what he distantly remembers as love. "Hope is a thing with wings."
"Hope is to try again and again knowing that the answer may be the same, but daring the universe to change in the face of your persistence," His Lord continues, a song often said, a poem there to finish in the sharing of breaths and possibilities unfolding as Gehrman is held.
But He has a new line to add now.
"Hope is," He notes the surprise in those eyes and the wild clawing thing in His chest laughs," Hope is being here. Staying here. Crafting a place for someone else to be able to rest when everything seems lost."
"Crafting a home in a world that tries to steal emotions and safety and doing it again and again- until the one you are waiting for finds the space and is reminded of a home that had always been there."
"Will you return to me always too my dear Gehrman?"
"Let my bones rest in your arms only when the universe itself has died."