I Want You

I Want You (She's So Heavy) // Across the Universe Original Soundtrack

3:44

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Metal on metal, metal on flesh. The only sounds they know, from birth, from childhood, from adulthood at fourteen when they kill their first wolf. They stand back to back, the hordes coming at them in waves, scythed down before their swords as they whirl in a tarantella of death.

Ariston feels Nabis's shoulder blades writhing against his. Nabis is breathing easily, no more heavily than when they spar against one another in the blood-spattered sands at the center of the city. Certainly not as heavily as when those same sands are spattered with their passion, darkness hiding their sin from even the gods.

Nabis cries out as the tip of a blade finds his bicep, and Ariston cringes in empathy, feels the pain in that cry. The hesitation slashes his concentration long enough for an arrow to fly past his uplifted shield, embedding in Nabis's back.

Only a soft grunt betrays the killing shot. Then Nabis slumps against Ariston, his weight heavier than it should be, because it is the death of something more than a fellow Spartan, a comrade in arms. Nabis's hand reaches for Ariston's ankle, brushes it with fingers calloused by war.

His lover's soul and strength flows into Ariston in that final caress. There is nothing to lose now. Ariston hefts his shield and takes a step backwards, protecting the body from mutilation by the hungry, naked animal-men surging to fill the gap Nabis's fallen sword has vacated.

Ariston roars, and Nabis's voice joins his from the River, and the howl of the wolf echoes in their warcry. The barbarians hesitate, but there are too many of them to succumb to a collective cowardice, and so they charge all at once.

Sparta appears, then, the test complete. The strongest has proven himself. The warriors can step into the midst of the startled horde, decapitated heads tumbling in their wake.

And Ariston can fall to his knees at Nabis's side, clutching the lifeless corpse to his chest, the borrowed soul flowing back out of him to cross into the afterlife.