Work Text:
Cecil should really sleep on his back. His body would hurt in the morning, hips and back and neck aching; he couldn't sleep like this at his age without consequences. But he lay facing the nightstand and reaching with his fingertips.
The spikes of the metal cilice were warm from his thigh. He pressed them hard enough to hurt and leave dents, not quite hard enough to break his skin.
Right now his staff were breaking their bones.
Even at this hour, the GDA fought against threats against humanity. How could he sleep, knowing they were in danger? People were out there in the field: the Guardians, not the Guardians he allowed to die but the ones who still lived; his human forces, the guards and soldiers and agents under his control; the volunteers and part-time heroes who dropped everything to save lives when called -- how could he lie on his back and dream peacefully while they suffered, fought, and perhaps were killed?
Here, pressing his object of worship with his fingertips, Cecil felt a minuscule fraction of the pain they went through. He felt close to them. He could feel the pain even when he couldn't see the fight.
But sleep was not optional for a man as tired as Cecil. He drifted off, his hand slipping from the nightstand. The spikes of the cilice cooled until cold.
Tomorrow he would wake, painful and cursing himself for sleeping on his side, and then he would remind himself that many would count aches as lucky. He would take the cilice from the nightstand and attach it to his scarred thigh, tie it tight -- the spikes would sink in hard but probably not draw his blood today. He would dress and wear the band beneath his clothes to work.
Few knew of his cilice, fewer still understood it. He would be aware, every second of the day, of the irritating metal on his thigh. Most wore a cilice for mere hours, content to savour Christ's pain and be cleansed; he would not go a minute without it. He did not feel cleansed when he felt those spikes. He did not feel absolved of any sin or responsibility when he pressed so hard on his thigh that redness leaked through his slacks and onto his fingers. He wore it to know what pain his staff went through and to feel it, every second of it. To punish himself for their deaths.
His place in those fights was outside and looking in; he hadn't been a field agent in many years, and though he'd taken his licks in those days, it wasn't enough. Cecil shouldn't get to be free from the violence he watched onscreen. From the violence his staff scrubbed off the streets. From the violence he called in, caused, failed to cure. He deserved to feel the spikes dig in against his heartbeat while he gambled with their lives.
Tomorrow he would watch his heroes fight and a fraction of their pain would pierce his body like a droplet of water into a desert of selfishness.
For now he slept and felt nothing at all.