Flesh and Fire

I was healing. Odd that I would think such, but I was happy, for once simply allowing myself the enjoyment of Aiden's company, along with this father. Trapped between two men, two so different, and yet, so alike. It had been a quite awhile since I'd seen Castor, so I decided to go to his room. I didn’t knock, but allowed myself entrance, hoping to surprise him.

"Kane?" I no longer called him Castor, for that name was but a layer to the man who wore it. I found him resting on his couch, apparently napping. "Are you .. " No, not dead.. ".. Awake?"

He turned when I touched him, blinking, then looking at me. "I thought you were going to say dead." He smiled at me. His smiles always touch me, I suppose because he doesn’t do it often. "Hmm, so you finally got lonely enough to come find me?"

"Dead. Well, I did think it, but we both know you're not ready to die. No more than I am." I shifted him over, taking a seat next to him, as much couch as he would allow. "I'm not lonely. I just wanted to see how you were doing. It's been quite some time since I saw you last. You've not called me, which leads me to believe I've been replaced in your life. Something I always knew would happen. Or have you merely been.. busy? Taking care of the pikes of Ar? Or maybe Helix has had your attention. Have you not missed me, lover?" I had missed him greatly. But then, I always do.

“Replaced... hardly, I was giving you time to acclimate, as well as spend time with Aiden and his mother. But I'd be lying if I didn't mention the pikes of AR have seen slower days.. Helix? Oh yeah.. " He laughed and leaned up to look at me. "You're not fucking that boy are you?" I never know if he’s joking or not. He pulled me down and ran his fingers through my hair. "Come closer and I will show you how much."

"No, I'm not fucking Helix. I've not even seen him of late." I shrugged and leaned down to kiss him. "But I'll bet you would like to watch if I did. I'm quite acclimated to my new world, though I will disappoint you in saying I've not yet decided on exactly what I want to do. I didn't realize you knew that Aiden’s mother was here. Has she contacted you?"

"Of course I do, very little in AR happens without my knowledge. I’ve been given some leave from duties. A boy is bringing my 10% solution and a case of cosian wine. You will stay with me and we will have a party what do you say?"

"Of course I will stay, you have only but to ask, you know that." I moved to straddle him, the palm of my hand on his chest. "I have missed you my Kane, missed you so much. Have you missed me as well? So maybe we should play a game, something sinful? Hmm. Let me think, what are you in the mood for tonight. A red headed temptress with a temper to match? Or perhaps I should find me a wig and play the part of a blonde bombshell, or maybe a dark haired woman that has all the answers. Or maybe tonight, I will be the evil one. Give you a respite from your days' work."

Someone knocked at the door and our revelry was put on hold, the box he had ordered earlier delivered.

Wine was poured, his special solution readied by way of injection. I asked him what it was. "You're going to inject in into yourself?"

"I was planning to injecting it into you. It's a 10% solution.. iociane, kanda, and wingfish poisons. It's very powerful shit." He stabbed the needle into his arm and released the drug into his system. His look was euphoric.

"What does it do to you?"

"I can not explain it other than.. it is what being alive ...true alive feels like. I can give you a small taste if you'd like it?"

I gave him consent by way of my arm thrust in his direction. Briefly, I wondered if it would.. kill me. It wasn't that I wanted to die, but that I wanted to feel as if I were on the edge. I have to admit I have never before felt anything like that.

"Oh Kings I need you so much Astraea." When I touched him I could see a blond woman pinned to wall, though I couldn’t quite make out her face. "Who is she?"

“Is it coming back slowly?" He held me as if I were a child. "I did something foolish Astraea. I just.. can't." He closed his eyes, the drug coursing through his veins. Through my veins. "Astraea... I have told you a great many things about myself. I have confided in you when I could not anyone else. I have killed people for knowing much less. I am so tired of this game Astraea. I am leaving Ar for good."

If he thought he was leaving without me, he had another thing coming. "Take me with you. Where ever you want to go, I would go with you. We need not stay in Ar, I don't care about that. But I can't be without you. Not today, or tomorrow, or ever."

"You will see what I did sooner or later. You will know. I was directed to separate you and Aiden. I did a great deal of the things I to you when we first met because I wanted him to stay way from you. But the band.. when you submitted.. When I... I fell in love with you Astraea. I can not be in love. Castor Minos Can not ...be in love.."

"I know. I've know all along that you were trying to separate Aiden and me. I knew it and I ignored it. Don't get me wrong, I love Aiden. He's a good person, and I would do most anything for him, but I don't love him as I love you. I don't care that you are Castor, creator of evils, perpetrator of crimes committed against those of.. whatever. I don't care, do you hear me? I want to be with you and I will do whatever I have to to make that happen. I submitted because I love you. Castor Minos does not have to love me.. But the man Kane, if he wishes it, can."

"Get dressed we are going to my house." Our gait was slow, simply enjoying the chance to be with each other without any outside interference. "Do you remember the first time I had you? Do you remember every time I'd had you? I thought at first I could get my jollies off on you while using you for you gift. That was why I did it. Do you remember that night I took you on the floor in bathroom? It made me realize how much I wanted to be with you. I needed to be close to you. I paced my room for ahn talking myself out coming to you."

"I hated you that first day I met you. I knew you were up to no good. I knew that you were going to use me for every thing you could, but as time passed, I found I didn't care. I fell in love with you, not by choice, but by chance. I am yours, no matter how you look at it."

"I want you.. flesh and fire." We bathed and talked and drank as the night wore on.

"Tell me Astraea, have you missed me?" He knew I had, but somehow I felt he needed to hear it. Even as he was injecting me again. "I did not realize it until tonight just how much I missed you, but I did miss you."

"Yes, I missed you. I always missed you, the one true man that makes me weep with pleasures wrought." It didn’t even cross my mind that it was a dangerous thing I played with. I was intoxicated, not only by the drug, but by the man himself.

"Where should we go? Bazi? Schendi? Thentis? Maybe Treve? If we travel can I put a collar on you and have you naked and at my feet?"

"Anywhere you like, I care not where we go, so long as you take me with you, be that by way of free woman, or slave. Either way, I will always be naked at your feet. Even now, though invisible, I wear your collar. And I always will."

"I love you Astraea."

I knew it to be true. I could see it when I touched him. In fact, I could see many things. It was as if a whole new world had opened up to me. My eyes revealed not the muddied color of lost sight, but a brilliant green, one that was almost fluorescent in hue. "I love you Kane, I love you." I'd given myself over to him long ago, obeyed his commands with little heed for myself, and kept his secrets, a price reaping greater than anything I’d ever allowed before. I felt a closeness with him, one I'd never felt before. One not only of hearts, but of souls.

I saw it all. The various misdeeds, rapes, murders, tortures, double dealings, things that were part of Castor. I saw Phelps and Kane’s hatred of the man he worked for and how Castor had hid that man's secrets. A holy man who raped and murderer for profit. How it had never sat well with him. He had grown stoic to protect the last piece of his heart from the monster he had become. It mind became a hallway of doors and I dared to open as many as I could, the succession of flashed images pulsing past my eyes, the gruesome as well as the benign. "Kane." My hand glided down over his side, my finger tracing the scar of 'loyalty', trying to glean the truth from it as well. "So much pain." I saw him as a very young man perhaps a few years old than Aiden now. He was speaking to someone a few years older then he, of the resistance about Castor Minos and the unique opportunity that Kane must take. He was carving an L into his chest, but it was Trevion who had finished the task, so that he would always remember, so he would never forget who he was.

I saw him sitting with a small group of children. He had been a scribe, a teacher when he lived in Amarna. I saw him on that warm spring day on the coastal land.. A red head woman beautiful and innocent staring at him from behind the corner of a building. When the lesson was over he would went to her. Lovers.. Aiden’s mother, she too so different. He was happy then. I watched the voyeaurous creation of their son, Aiden. So much to take in, so little time to decipher it all. I watched the scrapbook of visions parade past, trying to consume every bit of information.

Lovers, brothers, children and more, each holding their own private place in the catacombs of his mind. My finger moved from the word, upwards over the numbers that somehow had always seemed a symmetrical obsession with him. I wasn't even shocked by the fact that I was seeing into a man with a vision that had eluded me, one that I thought had been stolen by his son. The kisses that collapsed over flesh began to make me dizzy, my head turning to the side in order to stabilize the .. vision sea sickness. But still, I didn't want it to stop. I was seeing into a man who had never given his secrets up easily. The rhythm of bodies was kept, motion for motion. "More. More..." The greed of wanting to see into his past, to the truth was consuming me, but I knew I could not stop.

"Astraea..." I was already a part of him and had been since our very first encounter. I'd just not realized it then. Had he? I heard my name whispered, even as the first number was touched. Six, for the six high members of the brother's of light the men who had stolen children, killed, lied, destroyed cities. I felt an unnatural rage, one that was almost inhuman. Five, an ancient library in his mind's eye. I could hear his voice in my head reading the written word of a Scholar of the ancient city of Amarna. I felt a tear. The journal entry bespoke of a city made of glass that stood in the place where AR did now. A war or perhaps an attack, and the city was no more. Four, children sitting in a courtyard, suddenly seized by two men. I saw him, his head in his hands. The children were being taken upstairs to be raped by Phelps. When Phelps had finished, Castor was sent to kill the children to prove his loyalty. The children already close to death. He killed them quickly, small necks broken to end their pain. I watched as he sat on the floor that night weeping. Three was again the brother, a blond woman and another young man named Lir, now dead. Castor had killed him. Two. Aiden and his mother interlaced with a deep feeling of loss. One. This was the most frightening of all. It was Castor himself, how he saw himself. A fearsome monster, disgusting and violent.

Sensory overload was beginning to take its toll, on both body and mind. Rage, sorrow, pain, possession, all enormously equipped for the final emotional revolution. I cried out, the tears that fell from no where fusing with the outward seeping of my own. The plunder of my body commingled with small lost souls, the screaming overridden by first terror, then such a telling hatred I thought I would suffocate. The aura of despair was thick, like a ghostly fog I couldn't seem to pull myself out of, one that coiled and tethered me in wisps of regret. The aberration of abandonment. The hand that had caressed each of the numbers so carefully was pulled back as the last vision faded, the tips of my fingers feeling as if they had been burned. And indeed they had, the metaphysical of one universe coagulating with the impossibilities of another. I had not moved, at least not at first when he had pulled away from me, still reeling from all the honesties I had wrenched from him. My breathing was erratic, as was his, and my flesh had paled to an almost translucent hue, skin that caught the low light with fleeting iridescent glimmers of quicksilver, pinks and turquoises never seen before, the solution working its way through me in its oddly effecting way. When air once again was able to fill my lungs, I rose, though the stand was unsteady. "Kane." One hand reached out to him, fingers wavering slightly as if I was already touching him, the slight spectral glow pulsing just beneath my flesh. Lashes fluttered, intermittently revealing the strange color of eyes beneath, before I folded and fell to the floor near his feet. I had done something I'd never done before, I had fainted, and by the expression on my face, I was still trapped in his world of torment, all hope forsaken. His hell my prison.

No movement save the butterfly effect of dark lashes and the rapid eye movement that one always associated with dreams. I seemed to be cursed with a knowledge I couldn't depart, though slowly, the paleness waned and color began to fill my cheeks. I could see him, from above, a man distraught at what he had done, his head resting on my stomach, though I couldn't quite feel the touch. I was calling out to him, trying to reach him, trying to gain his attention by ways of another path, my body lost in the recesses of some odd coma like eclipse. I could hear him, I could feel his inner turmoil, but I could not break through the barrier that yet separated us. It was as if I were on the wrong side of a mirrored glass, where I could see in, but he couldn't see out. My fists pounded against the translucent wall, though my body made no such moves. I was trapped in time. His time.