He mouthed his friend's name as his body began to quiver; his chest felt as if if it had been impaled with something as sharp and as burning cold as ice, and then the strength of his voice failed him.

Alone in the night, he wept.

I wish I were dead. I wish I were dead. I wish I were dead. The words seared a hot trail across his thoughts, repeated endlessly like a mantra. His body curled around a formless lump of despair, a palapable sickness that choked his lungs tight and filled his chest with nausea.

Don't be sad, he pleaded with himself internally. Don't cry. It's all right, Kahr. It's a dream, a bad dream, and like all dreams it will fade with the dawn. Just wait for the nightmare to end; wait and you can wake up and Sigurd will be there for you, and everything will be all right.

He drew in a breath and held it; his hand contracted to a twitching ball.

And now... you can wake up.

His long nails bit into the skin of his palm; his lungs burned with the strain of deprivation. His eyes opened.

At that moment, he would have sacrificed anything at all for the sake of finding himself tucked listlessly into a slightly berumpled bed, twitching with the pain of a fading nightmare. But the world remained all too resolutely real: he crouched fetally on the floor, face and uniform spattered with tears, alone in the room and Sigurd gone forever.

Too weak to manage even a curse of rage, he pressed his head against his knees.

The thought How could he... echoed in Ramsus's head.

Traitor. Deceiver. He does not deserve your loyalties.

And it sickened him, more than anything else, that he could not bring himself to hate Sigurd for doing it.

How very much more bearable it would have been if he could have hated the man who had professed his loyalty, his alliance-- even, for the love of God, his affection-- to be a calculated lie. Hate would have, at least, been a grain of power for him to feed off of-- but he could not, somehow, muster the will to feel even that little bit of fury. Was it because of his own weakness, or because of the despair in his heart siphoning away his strength to feel anything but sinking misery? Or... something else?

Drawing himself out of his huddled mess on the ground, he rolled over languidly and lay with arms and legs outstretched, facing the ceiling and unable to move, bound and crucified by his own despair.

Oh, God, I can't stand it. He wanted to curl up against something, to have something, someone, to latch over until the nightmare was over. So cold, so cold...

The ghosts of sensation began to wash over him. Sigurd's hand, gentle and supple as leather against his face, his neck, his shoulder. So cool on skin that burned with the exhaustion of exercise, of training...

Oh God... why am I thinking about this now? I mustn't... I mustn't torture myself by thinking of what will never be again...

Memories. He closed his eyes, and fire danced in his soul.

("...you look nice tonight, Kahr. That shirt suits your eyes.")

("...don't put yourself down that way. I like you quite a bit, and if that doesn't count for anything with you, I'll be very insulted.")

("...so tired... aren't you sore? Let me rub your shoulders...")

("Kahr...")

No one else had been so kind to him, ever. Not in the same way...

...that faintly magical sort of charm of his, that mysterious way of making Ramsus feel as if he were tasting sunlight and touching music. God, what a stupid, contemptible little boy he was. There was nothing special about Sigurd in particular; nothing he gave that could not be elicited from someone else. Common kindness, that was all it had been.

And yet... and yet...

And if Sigurd was to be believed, it had all been a farce. A lie.

A choked noise fought and clawed its way up his throat; rolling over, he began to pound his feet and fists against the unyielding floor. Half-breathless with sobs now, he attacked the floor haplessly, fingers raking over it until they were rubbed red and aching; still he continued to fight against he knew not what, until he had exhausted himself and curled at last into a quivering little ball, thinking only that if someone chanced to see him in this state right now, he would be too humiliated to live.

He could not heal it; he could not reconcile it. To think those sweet mysterious little drops of kindness, the hands that held and stroked him so gently were forever lost now-- oh, that was enough of a dreadful bitter thing, but to think it had all been a lie, all along...

How could it be possible? How could a lie have become so terribly important to him, and how it have gone on so long-- so long-- without his ever fathoming the truth?

Everything would be different, now, terribly different, and when he tried to comprehend the inescapable reality of this new life-- life without Sigurd-- the despair twisting at his insides began to transform into a cold whimpering emptiness.

Stop. Even as hot tears began to burn down his face, he drew in a breath sharply, tried to rationalize the situation. He was grieving over a lie, mourning as if the man was dead and not merely absent. What reason was there for him to think the lies of that traitor ought to have any bearing on his life? And yet, though it made perfect sense, his body refused to listen: his eyes continued to shed wet drops of despair while the nothingness grew in his chest.

There will be others. He wiped his tear-slick face clean with a halfhearted sweep of his arm. It's hardly as if he was the only one in the world to show you affection. There was still Hyuga. Hyuga, whose first loyalty had always been to Sigurd, even when Ramsus had used his power of influence to win his friend a position as an Element... who had been strangely silent in the wake of Sigurd's betrayal, as if it was something he had known all along, some knowledge denied to Ramsus.

No, Hyuga was not Sigurd, and his attentions were not the same... They were hardly unwelcome, to be sure, but they lacked that... same essence. That inexplicable thing that sparkled in Sigurd's eyes when he smiled, that aura of warmth which had kept Ramsus never far from his friend's side... that had prompted Ramsus to confide in him.

Sigurd. God... if I couldn't trust you, who in the world can I trust? No, there was no innate goodness in being human; their way was to deceive and connive, to take convenience over loyalty in the times when it came down to their own personal interests. He was fighting for the lot of a race of cowards and liars, and this had been his reward. There was no one left for him now; no one and nothing.

Oh, God, if I could only freeze the world and everything inside of me...

He remembered the endless nights of awakening, reeling, from dreams of whispered voices and cold laughter, of conversations that swam endlessly through the dark mires of his mind during waking hours...

(.....A living weapon..... an archetypal form to surpass all humans.....)

(.....A wasted experiment.... worthless..... garbage.)

Those shadowy mists of childhood memories, where ten years had transpired in what seemed like two or three-- what had been wrong with his memory, then? Where had he come from? He was still not entirely certain of the answer to that question... It had been easy, so very achingly long ago when those dreams needled at him night after night, to childishly fathom the idea that he was something slightly more, or slightly less, than human.

("....To be human is to feel, Kahr. If you close yourself off to your emotions, if you stop letting yourself feel, you resign your status as a human being... I learned that the hard way. Please, don't forget that.")

He had said that. When had it been? Back at the time when they first met, or not so very long ago? It no longer mattered, at any rate...

The tears had dried to a sticky film on his cheeks; his breath came out in soft sniffles.

Was this what it was... to be human? The essence Sigurd had sermonized so poetically over? This pain, this damned pain for which blood and darkness now seemed a minute price to pay for surcease? Was clinging to this his last chance to reckon himself among the members of the human race?

If someone tore the heart from my chest now, I would bless the ground he walked upon...

The sadness was gone; the fury was gone. He could no longer muster even a glimmer of regret over his apathy.

If this was being human...

If this pain was the price, he would gladly resign that coveted status. He would a thousand times rather cling to the identity of that superior being, he who was to be above all humans and their attendant pain and longings. He whose duty was to reclaim his birthright from the wretched son, the cursed one whose mere existence had brought him so much agony...

("...this thing is... useless.")

...That thought was just enough to dissuade him from reaching for the sword on his wall, to purge the pain from his very blood with that wicked blade.

Life would go on and so would he; but he knew, knew all too terribly well, that he would not be the same. The light was gone; the man whom Ramsus had once called friend had stolen away with it, and he had no choice now but to stumble for a glimmer in the blackness.

"You look sad..."

A brief heartbeat.

"Would you like a hug?"

He was silent.

Finally, an answer: "Yes... I think... I would..."

"Why, Kahr..." Concern shimmered in those indigo eyes. "You look so upset. What's the matter? Let me comfort you..."

"No. It's just that..."

"Just that?"

"No one... ever touches me."

"No one?" And the slender arms wrapped around him, and for the first time in so very long he felt the rhythm of another human being's heart, beating beside his own.

A memory, a flash... He shook it off.

"Not... for a long time."

Why... why won't you let yourself relax? This is just... Just what he did. You can have it back now... finally. You don't need to be... to be alone any more...

It's the same thing. The same feeling.

...Isn't it?

And the indigo hair fell, obscuring the face of the one who clasped him tight, so he could not possibly have seen the thin, knowing smile which creased her lips in the darkness.

~Fin.~