When I first tried to write Bible fanfiction, I was pretty much a heretic. Mysteriously, a huge load of abysmal luck got dumped on me. This is my second time, and this time it's when I'm pretty much a Jesus freak. I deeply apologize if any of these seem offensive, it's not meant to be.

Delilah

"You are my sweetest downfall." - Samson, Regina Spektor

In the end, when all the ashy bitter lies are flicked away, it remains that she loved him, loves him still.

Even if she'd feared it at first – being as self-involved as she was - this thing that bore too close a resemblance to love: fluttery at times, deep at others, and so very debilitating thoughout. She'd tried hard not to marvel at everything he was. His integrity. His goodness. The faith that seemed like silvery truth shining in his eyes, impervious to doubt, untouchable by malice. How nimble his fingers were when he'd spun a crown of wildflowers around her head, when they capable of ill-famed strength.

Fall in love, rend your heart, this is what Delilah believed in and lives by. But how could she not fall in love when, despite her gentile heritage, he'd loved her entirely, without guile and without a splinter of hesitation. They hadn't warned her enough of how the good things and the good people always pull you in with elemental force, no matter the level and hue of your reluctance.

~.~

Delilah thinks they look upon her with disdain as she gather the unblinking coins – eleven shekels of silver for his hair – in her shawl, deception like a dark and slippery sheath snaking circles around her soul. Despite however much she helped them, she was still a treacherous, faithless woman.

She wonders if they knew she loved him (he knew; he'd whispered an accusing you've fallen in love with me close to her ear, aghast, as if it were the greater crime) and she wonders if they damned her twice for that.

~.~

She sits surrounded by rulers and hedonists and cowards, the richest banquet before them, paid for in full by the life and dignity of a man beyond reproach, and Delilah cannot eat. She looks instead where they chain Samson to be presented, laughed at and mocked, his hair dangling in sweat-slicked tendril like arteries cropped short. Her face falls when she sees his eyes gouged out, her heart breaks with the fiercest of guilt. Between ivory pillars high as heaven, his figure stands as if reaching bodily towards a glorious vista far above, crowned by light. His lips move in a fervent prayer to the air.

He shouts his final words - sealing the fate of three thousand people, hers, and his own - the timbre of his voice carried by slashes of quaking earth, and Delilah's feet refuse to move as Philistines run and furniture upends and the world turns to chaos around her. She looks to Samson's face, would've met his gaze, and stands still as if buoyed, an odd sense of peace settling on her.

She should've known someone would hold her accountable. She's even grateful for it.

There are no more exits and the roof falls in like an arch of sky falling. Samson is lost in the glittering debris.

Delilah knows his god will save him. She wonders if her own would be so kind.