Work Text:
For all the things that the Lord had created, Rufius was most grateful for stone. With pumice, he was able to smooth the calluses from a day's work. With a small rocky disk, he could skip one a few times across the pond. With a stone tablet, he was able to write.
May God damn those stones, he thought. The stones with which Vergil had built a shop and made a home, the stones that Rufius would look at and hope that somebody—be it Yeshua, be it Vergil—would pelt him with, Golden Rule be damned.
It was late—no stars in sight, not that there ever had been in the city—even the light from Aurelia's tavern had been extinguished. It was this stillness Rufius found most frightening. There were no mundanities to distract from his thoughts and aches. It was this stillness where Rufius once again found himself lighting a torch and taking a chisel to a stone tablet.
"I find myself in the same situation as every other night; drank too much wine, Aurelia demanding more denarii than anybody here has—save Malleolus—no way out. Vergil came by the tavern today, Iulia too. Some commentary was made about Sappho of Lesbos, or was it Achilles and Patroclus? Had too much wine to remember. Not enough wine to forget Vergil seeing my—presumably very red—face and asking if I were okay, offering to walk with me to Lucretia's."
Rufius felt a twinge in his wrist.
"Perhaps he meant to lead me astray, but the offer was tempting, considering my joints were especially aching then. Maybe a test from God?"
Rufius cursed under his breath. He had been writing too long, his wrist was screaming at him. I really should go to Lucretia… he thought. Yes, it was late, but Lucretia never turned anyone away. Rufius picked up his torch, and began his trip.
The walk to Lucretia's was short, but was no help to aching joints. Halfway there, Rufius nearly tripped over a small rock. In retribution, Rufius kicked it the rest of the way there. A final, slightly stronger kick launched the rock against a wall. Rufius was just about to knock on Lucretia's door, but he noticed the rock left a brilliant auburn streak.
Rufius bent down and picked the rock up between his thumb and forefinger. It left an auburn powder on him. He stood there for thirty seconds or so, twiddling the rock between his aching fingers. He had barely even processed that he had left Lucretia's doorstop and walked across the street.
Rufius found himself holding his torch up near a wall, rubbing the stone against it to fully confirm his theory. Just as he suspected, it streaked, smooth as paint. So he drew another line, some loops, dashes, and he stepped back to admire his work; there, on the front wall of Vergil's workshop, lay the word "PECCATOR"—sinner—streaked in auburn and illuminated by torchlight.
Behold the sinner, it said. Behold the man who claims to be righteous and kind. Behold the man who preaches acceptance but plants doubt. Behold the man whose feelings are disgusting and sinful and who Rufius could never respect, let alone love. Behold "love" and the sins inherent to it. Behold Vergil, behold him, sculpted like an idol, a golden calf to the clueless Moshe atop Sinai. Behold.
But the only thing Rufius beheld was sheer pain. Pain in his wrists, pain in his elbows, his shoulders, his ankles, and knees and hips, and toes and fingers and oh God his fingers held the accursed auburn stone and he had just vandalized Vergil's home and it was dark and his joints ached and he needed to see Lucretia but if Lucretia saw his fingers she'd tell Vergil—
—Rufius dropped the stone on the ground and ran. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, as if he were feeling no pain at all and as if he were being mauled by a lion. He ran until he found a pumice stone and the bathhouse, and put his torch on the wall and stripped himself of his clothes and sunk into the bath.
The auburn dust on his fingers became a bloody cloud in the water. The water which soothed his aching joints, in which Rufius saw his reflection; a teary, red-faced man he barely recognized. A man even Yeshua wouldn't want to help, he thought.
Love the sinner, hate the sin—what good is that if all he ever did was sinful? He needed to be clean. Scrubbed anew with blood and light and ash, when all he had was auburn powder, torchlight, and pumice. Pumice with which he scrubbed away his calluses, torchlight whose warmth he basked in, and… blood rushing everywhere he didn't want it to. The cloud of blood had dissipated. The torch was starting to flicker. The pumice hurt his skin, rubbed raw from scrubbing. He would never be clean.
Returning to his home and chiseling over the words he'd already written, his notes were left obscured by words only he would know:
"As if it were the blood of a lamb, I have streaked auburn across a righteous man's doorpost. May the Angel of Death pass by Vergil, and visit me tonight."