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They leave you to rot in the dark, the Boy still clinging to your side.
You can no longer hear his cries—high and wordless, like the gurgling of a dying animal before the hunter sinks the knife into its flesh—nor can you feel his hands, grabbing your rigid body in a poor attempt to keep you close, almost childlike in his blatant desperation. You used to cling to your mother like that too, in her final moments.
(And afterward, when her body had already lost its warmth. You grabbed her cold hands between yours and cried until no more tears were left.)
“Is this the first time it happened?” Asks the Prince—the King—from the light outside the cell, disapproval evident in his voice.
“We think so, Your Grace,” the guard rubs his hands nervously, not daring to raise his eyes from the floor.
“Why did you put the body in the cell with him?” the Giant at his side asks, looking down at the King with a frown.
(The body. That’s all you are now. A body with maggots growing from your eyes and a boy at your side eating them one by one to rid your corpse of them.)
“He kept calling for him—it was the only way to calm him down,” the King replies. “Mayhaps it was a mistake. Askeladd should’ve had a proper funeral instead of… this,” the King’s mouth purses, disgust clear on his face as he looks toward the cell.
“You can’t give him a proper funeral. He died a traitor,” the Giant says. You didn’t agree with him often when you were alive, but you’d think he was speaking sense if you could hear him now.
(You can’t hear anything, not even your own thoughts. You'd wonder if you still could: can you truly exist at all, when not even your consciousness remains?)
“I know,” the King sighs. “A burial, at least. A private one. We can’t leave him here; he’s starting to smell. It’ll make Thorfinn ill.”
“You should execute Thorfinn too, you know,” the Giant says, scratching the patch that covers his lost eye. “He attacked you.”
It’s another sensible piece of advice, but even in your mindless state—even when you can’t hear them—something still living inside you rebels against the thought of your boy’s death.
(What does that make you, exactly? If you can’t even think anymore—reduced to nothingness, with only faint traces of your soul left in a dead body—yet you still find yourself capable of worrying for that boy from your nonexistent state? The Boy you used and pushed around and mistreated. The Boy you didn’t care for until it was too late.)
“He was… emotionally compromised at the time,” the King says. “It’s fine. I’ll find a suitable punishment for him. Askeladd gave us our victory, and he wouldn’t want Thorfinn dead.”
You’d laugh if you had heard that and could still produce any sound at all. Ridiculous, isn’t it? You’ve never cared for that boy. You made it plainly clear to anyone, especially him. You didn't care about his life, so why should you care about his death?
(And yet, you ordered him not to get closer while you danced toward your end. You asked him to venture beyond the world he saw—to become a true warrior. Your last words to him were kind. The only kindness you ever offered him. And perhaps your worst cruelty too.)
“Do what you want,” the Giant shrugs. “But killing him would be a mercy at this point.”
The King walks forward, coming closer to the darkness in your cell. “Thorfinn? Can you hear me?”
The Boy doesn’t answer, but he clings harder to you—to what’s left of you, an empty carcass with nothing inside—sinking his short nails into your chest, breathing in the putrid stench of your neck, entwining his legs with yours as if he were your lover instead of your enemy. As if afraid they’re going to take you away from him again.
“He still refuses to speak, Your Grace.”
“Are you feeding him?”
“As you ordered. We have to hold him down and force it into him.”
“This is sick,” the Giant grimaces. “You can’t force him to live. He should be put down. He’s nothing more than a wild dog without a master.”
“Thank you for your input, Thorkell,” the King says coldly. “Don’t you care at all for him? I thought he was your nephew.”
The Giant approaches the darkness too, peering through the bars in disgust at the obscene scene that your naked bodies paint.
“He’s obviously gone nuts,” he declares. “A quick death will be more merciful than whatever this is.”
“Why didn’t you do anything to stop him?” the King demands of the men guarding your cell, the dark place the Boy and your body now inhabit.
“We didn’t realize, Your Grace. We didn’t know something like this was happening.”
“He’s always making weird noises anyway,” mutters another of the guards.
The King regards them icily. “I ordered you here with a purpose. What kind of guards don’t realize their prisoner is desecrating a corpse?”
“We apologize, Your Grace. We have no excuse.” They bow their heads, properly cowed, but the King’s glare remains cold, unappeased.
“I’ll deal with you later,” he warns, then he walks away from your cell, toward the light that comes from outside. “Come, Thorkell.”
“Your Grace?” One of the guards calls. “What are we to do with… the corpse?”
“Leave it there for now. Stay at your posts. Don’t let anyone see.”
“Are you really going to leave him like that?” the Giant asks after him, incredulity clear in his voice.
“At least Thorfinn has calmed down,” the King’s steps echo against the stone. “I’ll get rid of Askeladd’s body tomorrow. Let them be together one last night.”
You don’t hear the Giant reply, as you didn’t hear any of the conversation. You can’t hear at all. Or see, or touch, or smell, or talk, or move, or think. There’s nothing left of you, except a corpse and a boy who refuses to let you go.
(And yet, in the nothingness you’ve become, the presence of the Boy lingers.)
You can’t feel the heat of his body against yours, or his seed cooling against your skin. You can’t feel anything at all.
(And yet, he lingers. As if the only thing from you that has carried on after death is the bond you used to share with him. As if the only things allowed to exist in the nothingness of death are your regrets.)
The Boy hugs your body closer. A guard coughs awkwardly from outside your cell. And you keep rotting.