A/N: This site is not optimised for poetry, so please excuse the lack of formatting in the second part.

He's told his mother he went to Rome to study medicine. It is almost entirely a lie.

But only almost.

Micheletto Corella understands human anatomy not in terms of Latin annotations on an artist's figure study nor from the careful dissection of an unwitting cadaver, but he knows where to place a blade on a living throat—where the blood runs hot, skin thin, arteries pulsing to meet the edge. He knows how to press upon the neck to end a life; between which ribs to plunge a knife to pierce the heart.

And he knows which veins to slit in the wrists, so that the victim will bleed until their eyes close never to open again.

In Rome, Micheletto learned how to twist the blade to destroy the heart completely.

In that same city, in an empty room with an empty body in his arms and a word he cannot read inscribed upon the floor, he learns how it feels when he does.

You hold him as the blood pours down. As his body grows

weak…

heavy…

trembling...

and you sink to your knees.

Before God. Not for the first time. Knees bruised on creaking floorboards on happier, headier nights. Nor the last. He shudders in your arms and you

h a t e.

Loathe him for his betrayal. Pour your contempt into the blade that slit his veins and

still

it isn't

enough.

You would beg the Devil for punishment were you not so wretched in your absolution, to curse and bless the crimson masking the clarity of your tears. Your confessor, whose name is Borgia. Your master one and the same. Already you are

damned...

wicked...

forgiven.

And you love.

"Pascal…"

His name a prayer, grieving, rejoicing. So tightly you hold him, and wonder that he should have grown so heavy, if not for the weight of your own sin.

He's grown cold now. His breath but a whisper, and you feel…

the final beats of his heart, to put to rest at last the myth that you lack one of your own.

Because you feel it

breaking.