Epiloguing

A little something for the old Kult group...


Dreaming came easier to Gideon than it once had, but there were still the unpleasant locked doors in his mind. They cramped his dreams, and sometimes an ugly smear of vision would creep out from under them to violently stain his sleep. Slapping paint across his new work, Gideon considered that he did the same thing to his canvases on a regular basis.

Pausing to sit down and stare at his canvas, Gideon picked up his green tea and had a sip. He was working on a portrait commission, something that trickled down from his obnoxious but effective agent, and it had a pleasant Francis Bacon-esque flavor. Knitting his brows together, considering his next steps, he was pleased with the progress so far, but this was not really what he wanted to paint.

Lara preferred it, certainly.

He knew she wouldn't outright forbid him to paint anything. She knew the bleeding could make him dizzy, but it would stop after a while, and it didn't actually open any wounds. So, she was patient, far more patient than he could ever be with himself, and she helped with the bandages.
The look at the corner of her eyes, though, made him uncomfortable. I don't understand why you do this to yourself, she was silently saying. I don't understand why you have to paint this.

Gideon got up again, a mote of frustration insisting on movement. It rankled at him sometimes that Lara was still bothered by the stigmata he suffered; after all they had been through, he thought she'd be a little more accepting. Stalking into the open kitchen, he poured himself more tea from the little clay pot that Lara's mentor Tomo had gifted them with.

“Please remember, even though she does not show it as you do, that Lara also has been deeply affected,” Tomo had told him, serene but quietly concerned. “Kenichiro is a poisoned bodhisattva, and she has been caught in his delusions. It will be very hard for you both; patience will save you.”

Patience had never been a virtue of Gideon's, but stubbornness was. Just as Lara struggled with Gideon's carefully controlled rage and obsession with painting that which made him literally bleed, he had to helplessly watch her wrestle with a wildly teetering pessimism and aggression. She never talked about all that happened with her when she was lost in Kenichiro's madness, but he expected that she couldn't remember a lot of it.

It was irrational, but he envied her about that sometimes.

Skirting his work area, Gideon went to the window and looked down at the city streets below. Rain was creeping down the glass, distorting the gray view, and he tried to let it distract him. Now that he'd begun, his mind was already spinning back towards a dream that brought blood out from his palms and his brow, a dream that he'd been unable to escape or purge.

A pueblo village, utterly empty. A sky with a merciless sun edging around dreadful storm clouds, and the young mestizo woman with her wild eyes and proud chin and long, long black hair tickling at her ankles. She has a rosary around her neck, she wears a pretty linen dress Gideon finds well suited for gathering flowers or sitting next to a slow cool river on a hot day. But there is no peace or mercy in her eyes, and her lips part to a crowd-scream of a voice, a woman's voice that breaks like thunder.

“THIS IS THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB.”

And then he must watch as her body is scourged, beaten, broken, violated, torn by a hundred silent, invisible assailants.

She stands there, and her eyes defy him. They promise him. They squeeze his heart until he has to wake up.

Lara knows better than to try and console him with words after waking from such a dream. She lets him know that she is all right, that he is with her, that he is not locked in a hot box in the Mexican village of a fanatical madwoman. She does that with a touch, and she is understanding of it.

But one day, he tried to paint the dream, and it was very difficult for him. Worse, it was difficult for her to look at it, even unfinished.

It is only fair, he thought bitterly. I don't like to think about Kenichiro either.

Sighing, he turned briskly away from the window and sat back down in front of the portraiture. Picking up his brush again, he started swiftly painting, locking away thoughts for another time. Mind set, Gideon knew he loved Lara, but he wished deeply that for once in his life, the past would leave him alone.

Part of him wondered if his painting would be as good, though.