A/N: Don't ask. I honestlydon't think I could tell you.

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then she draws the knife carefully out of his side, the fleshy part below his ribs where he'd shivered to be touched and his skin is softest. Was softest. Is still, though the man can't be talked about that way anymore, is not, does not. His parts still are, still do, his blood still wells. They aren't his, are they, though, the idea of him now obsolete - they're maybe their own, maybe themselves. Maybe they're hers - she set them free, did she not? She thinks all this as she presses the flat of the blade, now red, hard against his (the) (her) jean-clad thigh and drags it slowly lengthwise, back and forth. She bends her wrist, lifts her hand, feels the weight of the knife in her palm, the warm metal against the warm skin as it shifts and turns over, and now the other side, the other thigh. Perfect symmetry now, two corresponding lines, dark and glinting wetly inches below the waistband that stopped fitting like it should around those hips too long ago, and started needing a belt, black leather, that now circles his (the) (her) neck, fitting exactly like it should. The skin is soft there, too, always was though often bruised, dark blue and purple smudges that thrummed with the pumping blood, the obstinate pulse that would dig into the palm of her hand, warm skin against warm skin. No longer, and she sighs in contentment. She stretches forward over the body below her, leaving the knife behind to soak in a slowly settling red pool of cold blood, and as she moves she lets her hands and deft fingers drift over the hard plane of the stomach, the ridges of the ribcage, the smooth chest, the dip of the collarbone. All the precious details that tortured the ancient sculptors as they slaved over their gods and young men wrested from white marble, hard and cold and beautifully still, beautifully lifelike, and she sees ghost-fingers calloused from the chisel close over hers and stroke the bare shoulders, glide down the firm arms, rest on the insides of the wrists. She marvels at the stillness she finds there, no erratic stuttering tremors to shake the flesh and show it weak, now firm, and she pushes lightly at it with fingertips that dance back upwards tracing the line of gaping red that she drew with her knife as she traced the line of pale blue. She feels her way across expanses of cold skin until her fingers catch on stiff hard leather wrapped around stiff hard flesh, and she smooths her hands over it until it warms, until she can loosen its buckle and see the belt fall away in a fluid collapse, dark blue and purple smudges left in its wake. She cradles the column of unyielding flesh in her fingers and palms, feeling it swollen, the skin distended, gently pushing at random to test its resilience, its cold strength. She closes her eyes, breathes a sigh, gives a smile. She leans down, down, and presses her lips to the mouth of her David, the mouth of Apollo, carved from the hard cold marble, slick with the paint and stained with the ink of an artist who had never loved softess and heat and pure bright white