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“I wish I could have stayed a man for you.”
The tent air reeks of spice and sweat, the sharpening of crysknives filling the space between tense silence and wind.
You lie awake beside Paul. His shoulders tense, breath too even, his stillsuit already on. His eyes are wide, pupils blown, face half covered in the shadow. His voice is too calm.
The static in the air from the oncoming storm prickles the hair on the back of your neck.
“You were. For a moment.” You sit up, chest tightening as you watch him breathe in and out in the blue dawn. “You still can be.”
He looks at you, his pupils blown wide, his mouth set in a sharp line, jaw but a razor’s blade. Flecks of spice settle in his dark curls, cinnamon gold against deep brown. He hesitates. For just a fleeting moment you think that maybe, maybe, he’s still just human.
But deep blue eyes peer at you. “I have to do what must be done.” He looks down, a single curl brushing his high cheekbone. “There is only one narrow way.” His lips have been worn down by worry, his nails ringed in dark crescents.
The lantern burns low, haloing his silhouette against the ink blue filtering through the tent flaps. The desert wind whispers in a thousand voices. Everyone waits for Lisan al-Gaib and his movement. Revere his every breath.
But the shards of the man before you, laid bare before the altar of future sins he has yet to commit, tell a different story.
You reach for his face, cupping his cheek with your hand. He whispers your name as a prayer into your palm, lips brushing it like a feather. He’s not a prophet, not a Duke, not an Emperor here. Here he's just Paul. It might be the last time he ever is.
“I’m afraid.”
You wrap your arms around him, pulling him close, breathing in cedar and spice. His breath fans across the crook of your neck, your fingers smoothing his curls. He whispers the litany into your skin.
“I know.”
“Not of the fight.” He leans back and looks at you, hands cupping your cheek. “But of what’s to come.” His fingers brush a lock of your hair behind your ear. “When I succeed.”
He presses his forehead to yours, breathing out, his chest falling.
“What will you call me then?” he says.
“Paul.”
“The fool saint, the false messiah, the despot prophet.”
“Is that what you think you are?”
“It’s what I’ve made myself.”
His voice breaks. “You haven’t seen the things I have seen. You know not what’s to come.” You feel then, hot tears falling into your lap. Just two. You know what these tears cost in the desert of Arrakis.
“You will not stomach the sound of my name,” he chokes, looking up at you, eyes red against the blazing blue, “The atrocities committed in the name of my father.”
“You name is a litany on my lips, Paul.”
“But it will never bring you peace.”
“I knew that when I chose you.”
You kiss him, lips barely brushing his, still wet and salty from tears that left rivulets down his cheeks. He looks more like the boy you once knew than a false god amongst men.
His voice is barely a whisper. “Will you choose me still, when I take my path?”
“I will choose you in any lifetime, Paul Atreides.”
He leaves the tent as the sun breaks over a shimmer dune. In the stillness, you close your eyes and pray he forgets how to be holy.