SUPERNOVA

tw: Implied references to a canonical rape/sexual assault

Aurens was like the sun. He burned from the inside out, fearsome, unstoppable. He came across the desert, its bastard child - not from here and yet, not from anywhere else. He was his own creation and own life-bringer. He thought he was giving them sustenance and vitality, but really, they did not have a choice. They were trapped in his orbit. Any further away and they would fade into cold darkness. But any closer and they would be set ablaze in his violent fires.

Ali had seen him perform miracles. He had defied the unforgiving womb of the Anvil. He had returned to her and taken away another of her fallen orphans - Gasim, whose fate was sealed to a waterless demise. He ignored that too. Nothing is written, he said. As if by mere words, he could change everything they had believed for myriad years. Yet then they rode through the town of Aqaba - no longer smelling of the ocean and heady flowers, but flowing blood and scorched flesh - and for an instant, on that perfumed beach, Ali thought his mind may be changed. Nothing is impossible, Aurens insisted.

Anything could look beautiful in the spectral haze of the sun. Ali's memories of Aurens were cloaked in its rays. The way it surrounded him like a halo when he dressed in his white robes for the first time. The way it set behind him upon the waves at Aqaba. The way it illuminated him as a phantom atop the train. But that was all he was, truly. A phantom. He was a ghostly shell, and they could pour whatever they wanted into him. He had a million lives, a million identities. And yet not enough to know who he really was, beneath the miracles and the promises and the false idolatry.

Something so fierce and bright, and yet so fractured and torn, could never last. Months on and they were sat in the caves outside Dera'a. Aurens' sun had set and all was cold and gloomy in the eclipse. That was what his followers saw now. Was it the truth, or just another lie? Whatever face Aurens put on those days, he could not hold his men together. They saw the cracks in the facade, the collapse of their core star.

Ali wondered why he stayed. It was not pleasant to be the moon, isolated in Aurens' shadow. But, like the rest, he was trapped. Though for different reasons. It was not only miracles and Aurens' insistence of hope that kept him there. Something else.

It was a cruel irony now that Ali once dressed Aurens in wedding robes. It was a cruel irony now that he threw flowers at his feet at Aqaba. Everything was a cruel irony. That bright white fabric had turned to brown and black, holes torn in it, unclean, impure. Those beautiful red petals had turned to blood stains. Lawrence had dropped them in the sand once. Ali remembered starkly the way the horses and camels trampled them to pieces, bloody scarlet spreading over the desert sand. He had picked them up bit by bit after the raid. It had taken precious time. But maybe he thought if he could force them together again, they could go back to that peaceful, distant beach.

He wished he could do the same to Aurens. He was broken now. Every mask, every lie, every persona, smashed to shards. Ali sat at his side after Dera'a, dared to put his hand on his shoulder. He was not burned.

"Come back to me, Aurens," he whispered. Come back from where? I never really knew you, he thought.

All he knew was that the light his men had once worshipped was gone. It had been extinguished at Dera'a. Ali had heard it happen - made himself listen to Aurens' pain. He could have stopped the soldiers. But after so long in the shadows, he didn't think he could come out. And they could have done worse if he had tried to help.

No. What could be worse than this? This - desolation. This distance. This nothingness.

Ali laid down carefully behind Aurens. His wounds had been bound a hundred times, and yet they still bled. Maybe Aurens was letting them. He had spilt much in his whirlwind across Arabia, now it was his own that flowed. "Let me help you," Ali begged once more. Aurens did not reply.

The golden immortal's mortality had suddenly been displayed in front of him. There was no lie to hide behind this time. Ali could only deal with what had been left.

He would stay at Aurens' side for as long as Aurens could stand, or as long as his own heart could bear. Many had already had their share, taking a slice of what Aurens had given of himself. He was scattered across Arabia - the country he claimed to love and yet had driven into chaos. Was that how he told them he loved them? Or was it because he vowed to see them through that destruction?

Ali was a hypocrite. He had let Aurens destroy himself, just like this land, and yet... "I love you," he whispered one night. "No matter who you are."

Aurens stayed frozen. Ali thought he hadn't heard - almost hoped that was the case. But then, as he laid down in the darkness again, Aurens' voice, cracked and unused, said: "That is impossible."

And Ali realised how far they had come from those golden days in Aqaba. The flowers were dead. The sea was filled with blood. The fires had gone out and only ashes remained. Their fate had been written. Miracles were impossible.

A/N: So I haven't written any Lawrence of Arabia fanfiction for ages, but my pal Cat suggested a prompt to me on Tumblr which was: 'Muse 1 comforts Muse 2 during a breakdown' and as she's just rewatched LoA (our friendship basically started because of that movie haha), she thought it might suit that prompt well. I really enjoyed going back into this fandom and settling back into that angsty style (which creeps into my original fiction a lot as well). I love these two characters a lot, and their dynamic is one of my favourite relationships in a movie. In my opinion, it comes across as a romantic one, maybe one-sided. As David Lean said about it: "We thought we were being very daring at the time". Anyway, I could talk for ages about the nuances of their interactions and relationship, but it would end up longer than the actual fanfic so I'll stop XD Hope you enjoyed this, feedback always appreciated :) Oh, and if you want this, just longer, I have another similar fanfic called 'Brighter than the Sun'.