-II-

"Why does he not awaken?"

In some disturbing way, none of them wished to see the subsequent silence breached.

"His physical signs..." Hyuga volunteered quietly after a while, as if it might ensure an optimistic diagnosis, "seem to be perfect... his brain activity... there's even evidence of REM sleep."

He knelt beside the rickety cot, head bowed with a humility his human side was loath to accept, as Sigurd, Bart, Fei and Elly stared after him.

Oh, God. I should have seen this coming. I should have seen it back when we took him from Merkava...

But he had shut his eyes, chosen not to see the cold fire torturing the shadows behind his friend's gaze. And now... now, they might all pay the price in blood.

Almost hesitantly, he placed his hand over Kahr's, rubbed gently with his fingers. Like the wistful statues he had seen gracing the palace of Shevat before its fall from the heavens, the hand felt chill and immobile beneath his warm touch-- a sinking cold that sucked the warmth right out of Hyuga's fingertips and gave nothing in exchange.

"Don't try to move him; it'll do more harm than good." The Shevite sage Balthasar pushed his way between Sigurd and Fei and cast a long shadow over Ramsus in his stiff confining bed.

The burning light of the polar spring had all but evaporated the storms of the previous night; the citadel outside was flooded with light, and the pitiful shriveling plants had uncurled their rolled leaves a bit to bask in the warmth one last time. The bare light dangling from the ceiling swung back and forth in a cool breeze that had found its way through some chink in the shattered husk of the palace.

Inexplicably, Hyuga felt his sorrow transform to anger. Kahr, you damned idiot. Can't you see? Whether you live or die does matter to us, even if it doesn't to you. Couldn't you tell there was something left for even you in this world?

He stood aside, and the sage of Shevat moved into his stead to examine Ramsus.

"Is it the cold that did this to him?" Elhaym inquired calmly.

"Not the cold. You're lucky that your friend--" he nodded his head in the direction of Sigurd-- "found him soon enough before it got to him." Balthasar placed his hand, crinkled flesh pulled taut against the bones, over Ramsus's.

"Then why? He couldn't have just wanted to..."

"Indeed he could have." Hooking a single finger beneath one of Kahr's, Balthasar gave it a gentle tug; the muscles in the younger man's hand were clamped so tightly that the finger remained stubbornly immobile. "And if you believe it's not possible for a human to die of despair, then you've not seen enough in this world."

Elly blinked, unaccustomed to being so dismissed. "I know that much, but I didn't mean he wasn't..." Her words lapsed into discomforting silence. Ignoring her, the sage cleared his throat gently and got to his feet, tugging at his robes and stepping behind Hyuga once more.

"And that, I am afraid, is the extent of what I can do for him," Balthasar continued. "If your friend wants to walk in the realm of the living and conscious once more, he'll need his own reasons."

For the first time in his years of Guardianship, Hyuga gave an indeterminate cry of misery and lowered his head onto Kahr's chest, hair spilling over his friend in brown ribbons as he closed his eyes in a sorrow it sickened him to display.

Were there a God, I would beg him for mercy. Being so far removed from Kahr for so many years had made it bearable, at least, to live with the knowledge of the man's fated role in all of this. But to see it with his own eyes...

Not even the Guardian Angel of Solaris could remain placid in the face of such an utterly pathetic sight.

He could not cry, for all the tears that were in him, present and future, had frozen cold long ago and could no longer be shed. Somehow, this made it all the more unendurable, and he swallowed tensely, listening to the swampy sound of Kahr's heartbeat beneath the blankets. Each one was a moment that would never come again, a moment that might have been spent in far more pleasant relations with the commander... if only I had not shut my eyes to what I did not want to deal with.

And at once he cursed himself for being so damned human, for not being strong enough to destroy all emotions when his role in the fated Time of the Gospel certainly required it. For holding onto bonds that could not be dissolved at will, without even the slightest awareness that he was clinging to them so tenaciously. If those soft eyes of Kahr's were fated to never again open, there was nothing he or Sigurd or any other human being could do about it, and no reason for him to feel sorrow-- for Hyuga had long believed that no single man could unweave the destiny crafted by God.

And yet he could not stop mourning.

When he raised his head at last from Kahr's cold prone form, half expecting to see the eyes of his friends mocking his weakness, the Shevite sage was gone.

"Well, you can stay with him if you want..." Bart's voice, oddly detached, cut through the stillness.

"You sound as if you do not care," Sigurd offered, saving Hyuga the pain of having to find his voice once more.

"I don't care."

Hyuga felt something dark and cold stir in his chest. "Young one!"

"Why? Why should I care about him?" The youth tossed a disparaging gaze at the bed where Ramsus lay helplessly bound by cold oblivion. "Oh, it's easy for you to be nice and say you care about him from your little pedestal. You only know him as a friend--"

"Young one, that is not true--"

But for the first time he could recall, Hyuga found his words cut off by the younger man's. "Yeah? Maybe I can forgive him, Hyuga, for trying to kill us six times. Maybe I could forgive him for leaving Fei and Elly to die in the woods. Maybe I could forgive him for being such an arrogant little punk and always trying to prove that he was the best there was no matter whose toes he stepped on. Maybe I can even forgive the bastard for torpedoing my ship. But you want to know something? I can't forgive anyone who's such a coward that he would try to get at his enemy by attacking the people he loved! I don't know what kind of a nice guy he was before we knew him, but if he can do that to the people I care about, it makes no difference to me. If he's wallowing in guilt now, let him do it. He damn well got what he deserved!"

"What do you want, young one-- revenge? If that is what you desire, you are no better..." Hyuga found his own voice strangely cowed, and seethed with bitterness at the newfound weakness.

"No! I don't want revenge. But I don't want to feel sorry for him either, if that's what you want me to do. I couldn't even if I tried." Bart hung his head, broad length of blonde hair stirred by the breeze, his blue eye closed against the pale spectre of the man lying on the cot.

"Bart..." Fei's voice was underscored with hesitance. "Don't hate him on my account, because... I don't hate him. I got the worst of his rage, but even so, I have to admit... there was a reason for what he did. If you--"

The young man spun on his heel, glaring at Fei with an azure coldness that silenced him at once.

"Just don't... don't talk to me right now. I don't know what you want me to feel for him, but I can't do it."

And he was gone, trailed quickly by Fei and Elly, leaving Sigurd and Hyuga alone with Kahr in the room of hollow voices and cold light.

"I suppose his feelings are quite understandable..." Sigurd voiced after a time. He slid alongside the bed, knelt next to Hyuga. Detachedly, Hyuga watched as his friend wrapped an arm over Kahr: it was silly, of course, to think that a good snuggle might be enough to awaken-- as it were-- the young man. But it was preferable to feeling helpless, by far...

Hyuga mumbled distantly, "The tragedy of it is that they're more alike than either of them cares to admit..."

His friend nodded in silent consensus, and he let his gaze wander over Kahr in the bed; the commander's face seemed almost fixed in a pretty little blank expression. The skin was almost sickly pale; but even in its animated state the color was no different, and it seemed easy to entertain the notion that he might open his eyes at any time and gift them with a friendly little smile like in the old days.

"I'm sorry, my friend..." Hyuga whispered, wishing he knew if Ramsus was aware, in his distant little world, of the words spoken to his body so far away. "I'm so sorry. I should have listened..."

*******

Warm and dark... where is this place? I'm so alone... what's happening to me?

He sometimes slept in the darkness, and sometimes woke, but most of the time had floated past in a strange mixture of the two, neither clearly distinct from its opposite.

Like a great big cave. Am I dreaming?

His mind was murky, his thoughts indistinguishable from the gently twisted logic of a dream. It had not quite occurred to him to feel at all upset or afraid, merely confused and a bit curious. Memories were like mercury in his hands, slipping away and shattering into silvery drops as soon as he tried to grasp them firmly; after a while he had simply stopped trying.

He was not afraid of the endless darkness, as children are not frightened of the dark until taught to fear the night. He had simply lain here, curled up cozily in the warm soft blackness, troubled only occasionally by a strange emptiness, a craving he could not quite place a name to. After a while he was always able to place it far from his mind, and sleep, as it were, would come to hold him close and take him away into a pleasant nothingness and there would be gentle dreams of pure sensation: as it had been once, long ago, as it might always have been for all he could remember.

Every so often, somewhere far away would call to him.

It did not bother him particularly; he would merely turn away and snuggle himself into the warm darkness again and wait for it to stop, and then, when that was over, float away into dreams once more. The summons was wordless, soundless, yet in some way (and he cared little for whether or not he could explain it) he understood precisely what it meant when he thought of listening to it. But the call was unimportant; this warm mysterious place was home enough to him, and as long as memory remained out of reach, the thought of staying here forever pleased him perfectly.

*******

He dreamed every night when he slept in that little room beside Kahr, though none of the dreams were the same.

There were some which he could not recall as anything but mere images, vague flashes of warm sunlight happiness, where he and Kahr sat together under endless skies in wordless contentment, intoxicated with the joy of merely being alive. Others were a puzzle in retrospect, too jumbled to piece together events in any sort of coherent order; there were words exchanged, sometimes laughter, though the precise nature of the conversations which transpired had always been long forgotten by the time he awakened. Some were less refined, more fleshly: dreams of sensation and pleasure that left him laboring under a vague haze of guilt when he awakened the next morning.

But guilt or not, he would always, at once after awakening, sit up or incline his head to the side or whatever was required from his current position, and survey the bed beside him. And morning after morning, he found nothing but the cold silence of a life suspended, floating endlessly through its own nightmare. Not once from day to day did the position of repose change.

And sometimes, despairingly, Sigurd entertained the notion that the figure beside him had turned to a cold soulless vessel, its former occupant freed at last from his earthly existence and being allowed to taste now of a mysterious pleasant afterlife, something far nicer than his erstwhile friends in this world could ever have provided for him. Though Sigurd had left his faith in God somewhere in broken Solaris, the thought of oblivion for Kahr seemed too cruel to fathom now...

*******

He dreamed now, a dream of wilderness and empty skies. Free as a child, and blessed somehow with the sight of his blind eye, he stumbled through a grassy plain alongside a dry creekbed, trailed two steps behind by the inevitable presence which had followed him like a mischevious spirit through all the dreams.

They were looking for water, he knew, water to sate a thirst he had not yet felt acutely but knew he would soon be laboring under. Stumbling over rocks and parched sandbanks, he scrambled along the dry trail where water had once flowed. Behind him, Kahr stumbled and bent over a sun-baked rock: "Thirsty..." he whimpered quietly, a single word.

Wordlessly Sigurd wrapped his arms around Kahr's, helped him to his feet once again; and when that was done, the two continued along the dry stream, brushing past beds of dry reeds and yellowed grasses.

Kahr offered his hand, and he took it with a vague recollection of sorrow, distantly aware of the dream's illusory nature. Pushing away that mournful little thought, he gave the younger man's hand a gentle squeeze of strength, and together they ran the last ten meters or so up the creekbed, clambering over the rocks which had formed a waterfall long ago.

"Water, here..." whispered the voice at his side, and he nodded in wordless bliss.

At the top of the hill they stopped and stared.

The bed of what had once been a lake, stretching to the perimeter of the horizon in both directions, now lay barren and empty. Where water had once pooled there now lay only a deep valley of parched mud, dry cracked lifelessness from shore to shore. There was no cool water, only stifling heat, heat that now rippled in what had once been the chill blue depths of the lake.

It occurred to Sigurd, in that mercurial way of dream logic, that the lake had not so long ago-- not long ago, indeed-- been full and bottomless and brimming with water, water that stretched into forever like the sea.

And now, staring at the formerly unfathomable depths which were now laid bare, Kahr gave a soft despairing cry and fell to his knees, whimpering with the pain of thirst. "No..." Sigurd whispered, his mind angrily contesting the truth told by his eyes. "No."

But no matter how fervently he wished for his vision to clear and show him the lake intact, for a divine miracle to refill the dry earth with water, the truth would not be deterred. It was gone forever...

...and in that moment that empty reservoir became a vast ocean of fuzz, which cleared away bit by bit to reveal the nursing room of Shevat.

Sigurd rolled over in bed with a soft grunt of discomfort; the rickety cot had obviously seen extensive use, as it resembled sleeping on a plank of wood more than anything else.

A noisy plank of wood at that, he mused, as he sat up and the rusty springs responded with a sharp squeal. His body was not quite so young as it had once been, and night after night in the bed was beginning to leave him with back pains.

Though what it was doing to Kahr could certainly be no better.

At that thought he took a glance at the cot beside him, and was, rather bitterly, unsurprised.

It would have been at this point, he thought, far easier to simply abandon hope-- to simply accept that Kahr was gone, beyond the bounds of what mortal grasps could retrieve, and get on with his life. Indeed, it had occurred to him more than once that it would be far easier on Ramsus himself than trying to piece together the splinters of a ruined life would have been. Perhaps it would be best for all of them to simply let him go...

And yet, he could not discount one distressing possibility: what if somewhere inside there a spark of hope was trapped, fighting against the darkness which bound it? He let his single tearless eye gaze over Kahr; the elaborate readout device beside his bed showed a steady, unflagging rate of breath and heartbeat, a flow of life which continued in spite of having no assistance from without. Though the IV feed inserted in the younger man's forearm-- surrounded by a disturbing corona of purple bruises, bright against the ivory skin-- was the only thing keeping him from wasting away, the commander's body itself had not yet seen fit to shut down its functions.

Most tellingly of all, every so often-- if he stared closely-- he would glimpse a tiny flicker of the eyelids.

Rapid eye movement. REM sleep. He recalled it vaguely from a brief biology course at Jugend. Was Kahr dreaming through that dark slumber?

And in the absence of certainty, his mind had, much to his chagrin, made the decision to hold on to that flicker of hope.

*******

"Hyuga."

Half-startled from a pleasant reverie of reading, he looked up.

Elhaym stood in the cusp of the doorway, the placid demeanor which he had grown oddly accustomed to about her features. Fei peered into the room from beside her, eyes resonant with a childlike contentment that brought Hyuga wistful recollections of a more innocent time.

"Are you leaving?" Setting the open book down on the desk, he got to his feet.

"We thought we should do it now. We said our goodbyes last night, so we've decided to leave early... if everyone sees us leaving, it'll only delay us further." Her eyes shimmered a bit sadly.

Hyuga crossed the room, his face shadowed, unable to hold back a few drops of emotion for the two friends who had somehow bestowed upon him a knowledge surpassing all his years of study. "I see. Take care, then..."

"Please... don't be sad. I need to feel as if I'm doing something. Here, I only feel as if I'm hiding away from a world that needs hope..." Elly murmured. "There are enough people remaining here who can guide the survivors... but in other parts of the world, who do they have? Anybody? I can't let myself take that chance..."

"I see. I understand," was Hyuga's only reply.

In the shade of the lamp, he settled back into his chair and reached for his book once more.

"I'll be seeing you..." He looked up. Fei's smile was pained and hopeful at once. "Doc. Or Citan. Or even Hyuga, if you'd prefer that."

"It does not much matter to me." His voice was tightly guarded. "Names do not mean much to me any more..."

There was a gentle clicking of footsteps as the pair turned to leave, and then a voice.

"Wait."

Fei turned. The sage of Shevat stood against the darkness of the doorway, face creased in his perpetual expression of cynical contemplation.

"You are leaving?" The raspy voice had a tender note in it.

"Balthasar... didn't they tell you?" Hyuga glanced up from his reading. "There's a town being built now on the continent of Ignas, a village where the survivors from outside the cities are gathering. Fei and Elly... are going there to live."

"Salvation for the destitute. I see..." mused the sage.

"It's not quite like that," Elhaym volunteered quietly. "They're not... destitute. They're just humans who need a place to belong. That's what they need most-- to be among others." She pushed an apricot curl behind her shoulder. "And Fei and I-- we need a place where we feel we're helping. That's just how we are... I don't want anyone to think it's because I don't want to be here."

"Well, then. A noble ambition, I suppose..." A contemplative shine entered the old man's eyes.

Fei gave him an expectant glance. "Ol' man Bal... what is it?"

His words were careful, almost apologetic. "The young man in the nursing room... he, too, needs a place to belong. As much as any of your gathered masses..."

"Ramsus..." Elly murmured.

"Whatever his name is." Almost sheepishly, the sage cleared his throat. "I want to ask a favor of you. Take him with you."

Fei stood agape for a second, lips trying to form around a word of objection, and then seemed to think better of it.

Balthasar eyed him with bemusement. "In his current state, he can't help or hurt your cause. A place to belong, away from this cold hideaway... There is nothing we, here, can do for him. Perhaps in your village, he will find a home worth awakening to."

"I understand..." were Elly's only words. "We'll take him with us."

"But..." Fei's voice was tinted with an unease that suggested both fear and protest. "But... he probably never wants to see my face again..."

"Fei..." And when she turned to face him, her eyes were rimmed with wetness. "I know what you're going to say. I know what happened to him and how he feels. I saw it....." Her words faded into a thin echo. "It's all right, Fei. Ramsus needs a place to belong more than anyone else..."

"Elly... I don't hate Ramsus. I don't think I can hate anyone any more. But he... the feelings in his heart haven't changed. How do I know I won't wake up in the middle of the night with his sword at my throat, or even yours?"

"He can't fight any more, Fei. He can't. Didn't you see him... on that last night?" The words sounded peculiarly morbid, and she winced a bit, well aware of it. "All the fire in him is gone now. He couldn't hurt anyone if he tried."

"...If you think you can get through to him, take him along." A spark of bitterness kindled, sputtered and died in his eyes. "But... I don't want to be the one who takes care of him. If I ever fight him again, I want it to be as a fellow warrior and not as an enemy... but there's so much still burning between us that I don't even want to go near him. I'm sorry, Elly. "

"You don't have to be. You don't have to love him, Fei. But he needs someone who will..."

"Elly..." His eyes drifted half-shut. "I can't argue with you when you're like this. As long as someone else is there to watch over him... I'll bring him along."

Silently, her eyes heavy and wearied beyond the toll that two decades should have taken, she embraced him.

"Thank you..." Already turned to leave, Balthasar spared a quick glance at the two. "You can do more for him... than this old man ever will."

And in the shadowed corner of the guest room, Hyuga managed a guarded smile and returned to his reading.

to be continued...