Current mood:	creative
Entry tags:	duncan, logan, mutinousemuse, r, veronica

Fic: Some Strangle with the Hands of Lust, Some with the Hands of Gold (R) Duncan, Logan, Veronica
Title: Some Strangle with the Hands of Lust, Some with the Hands of Gold
Author: mutinousmuse
Pairing/Character: Duncan, Veronica, Logan
Rating: R for graphic violence
Length: 728
Summary: Duncan snaps.
Spoilers: Goes AU from 2x5.
Author’s Note: X-posted to veronicamarsfic. queen_haq is a superstar beta, and should be given flowers and candy and large sums of money.

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

— Oscar Wilde


The last thing she sees before everything goes black is icy blue. It’s not a color she cares for – it never has been – and she’d be glad to see it go, if it weren’t buried in the face of the person strangling her.

“Duncan.” Her voice chokes out through the vacuum of her throat. Pieces of him are lodged beneath her fingernails; something in the back of her mind registers this fact with distaste. She kicks his shins, hard, but he ignores her.

Duncan is nothing if not methodical. The same consistency that attracted her to him operates now, fingers contracting evenly across her neck, pressure exerted steadily. It reminds her of sex with him: repetitive, soundless. She lets herself sink into the blackness, melting into the neon paisley patterns burning behind her retinas.

Images bleed across her vision. Lilly’s head peels open before her eyes, skin unraveling in ribbons. Keith bursts into flames, and stands perfectly still, silent. His eyes beg her to do something, to move, but she is frozen as the skin on his face blisters away. Logan stands before her, holding out his wrists. Maroon rivulets pour down his hands; crosses mark his forearms.

“I couldn’t remember whether I was supposed to slice up or across... so I did both.”

She wants to vomit, but her throat is blocked. Bile swirls around her esophagus; she can feel liquid dripping down her chin, but it’s only saliva.

His hands must be getting wet. He hates it when his hands get wet.

And then the vomit spills out of her, down her shirt, and her head cracks against the pavement. The black recedes, and she can see again; the neon paisley print overlays everything in sight. Feet dance before her. Someone steps on her stomach, and she would retch again if she weren’t so fucking empty. She hears the sound of flesh connecting with flesh connecting with wall; again; again; too many times. She hears a crack that might be bone.

She inhales. She exhales. The sound continues, softer now, squelching into the concrete side of the building. Blood spatters the ground in front of her face. Something heavy and soft lands beside her.

Rough fingers suddenly wrap around her shoulders, and she kicks, punches, scrambles out of their grasp. She is crouched down, back pressed against the wall; her hands spread against it on either side of her. The fingers of her left hand brush against something sticky; she turns, and finds herself gazing into icy blue.

One of Duncan’s eyes blinks at her; the other is a bleeding hole.

The rough fingers return, accompanied by a low voice.

“Veronica...”

She looks up, and Logan’s eyes hold hers. His hands are dripping, but unlike her vision from moments before, the skin covering his wrists is intact.

She tries to speak, but only a rasping cough comes out. He picks her up as though she were a child, fingernails piercing her skin to form tiny crescents. He is holding her too tightly; it hurts, but she doesn’t mind.

She wants to ask him if Duncan is dead. She wants to tell him that she knows now, why Duncan just stopped talking to her – he doesn’t do break-ups well.

She realizes that Logan is talking to her, has been, and he’s saying things that she can’t process right now, words that make her throat clench up again, about hospitals and love and protection. He’s crying, and laughing, and setting her down gently across the back seat of his car. Seat belts fasten around her shoulders and hips, and before he moves away, his lips press into her hair. She can see his chest rapidly heaving, and his fingers twitching over the upholstery, afraid to touch her again.

A word struggles from between her lips, tearing at raw skin.

“Logan.”

He shushes her, hands fluttering about her head, smoothing her hair. The hands recede, and she is aware of the sound of the ignition turning.

The black returns, and she feels herself floating into it. This time, when she goes, there are no colors.

~fin

A/N: The poetry above is excerpted from Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” which can be found it its entirity here.