(OOC: Collaboration between myself and Delahada, post-by-post. For clarity's sake, Delahada's posts will be done in dark red.)


Two Years Ago

He turns and sees the tatters of a ruined couch. He did that. He remembers tearing apart the furniture, the walls, everything within reach. The house is a mess. He remembers who the voice belonged to now. It was Sin. Sin brought him here. Another cage. A bigger cage. A cage with only one chance of escape. Escape required patience, as it did in the other cage. He turns to lay on his stomach and stare at the door. The door leads out, but out to nowhere. Only to a brick wall that even he can't break through. Bricks, bricks, and more bricks. Always bricks. He hates bricks. He'll destroy every brick he sees when he gets out. Not if. Oh no. When. He will get out. It's only a matter of time. Even if he has to kill Sin to do it. He will.

"I'll fucking kill you, asshole. You'll be the first." And he laughs again. He laughs delightedly at the notion, at the idea, at the images playing out in his head. Possibilities. Wood from the furniture. There's still some of that, pieces and slivers, just the right size. Weapons all around him made from fragments of the house. Oh yes. He'll be ready. But now he waits. He waits for the door to open. And it will. He knows it will...


Sin's eyes snapped open, but the memories still played in his head. Voices. Thoughts that were not his own, but belonged to another -- things he had only seen and read in a curious book. His gray eyes were still bleary with sleep as he slowly sat up from where he had fallen idle, pushing the sheets aside, as well as the cat which had occupied them.

The apartment was still this morning, quiet. Salvador was likely at his perch and Havoc was still within the confines of the House, healing -- or going insane. Sin found that the two often went hand in hand. He glanced down to his lap where an open book was resting, an old diary of a boy he once knew. A boy who, at this point, had become a man. He closed the book with care, running the pad of his thumb down its spine with a soft frown. So many memories. So much pain, hurt, and lies -- and love, too. Such a curious, broken boy..

His hand slipped away more than he pulled it away. Fell, landed against his own chest. "To have risen by love. To have fallen to death." And that, was the end of it. Relieved, emphasized by the sigh he let out. It was as if he had just needed to quote all that, in order to feel some relief. Somewhere. After a pause, he may have finally registered, again, who it was with him. "You found me."

"Don't I always?" Sin remained close to the boy, cradling him protectively. Always protective.

"Always." Repeated. Recalled. Processed. Recycled and reused. "Always broken. That's how you find me."

Sinjin pushed off of the bed and rolled to his feet with a leonine stretch. His body was battered and broken, but he felt refreshed. What was it the Catholics called it? Mortification of the flesh. Acestism. The sinner didn't consider himself pure enough to be counted among God's flock, but something about that concept always appealed to him. Maybe that's what drove him to the priests, the slayers and holy men, the past two evenings. Repaying his guilt blow for blow. There were other times of guilt where he had done similar, too. Two years ago, when he had ripped Salvador's heritage from his flesh: wings, spikes, and a demon made of shadow. A demon he let possess him, a mother he allowed to rip it from his flesh, and a lover who had toyed with his very lifelines. All of which he had accepted. Punishment for harming the boy he loved so very dearly.

Normally he'd toss up some pretty illusion to hide it all. Hawk-brown eyes, tan, unmarred flesh -- but not today. Today he was pale, broken, and gray eyed. Today he had no mind for lies. No -- today his thoughts were someplace else, on the words that had been playing over and over again since the previous evening.

"You've always protected me -- even from yourself."

It was with a heavy sigh that the sinner abandoned his restless attempts at sleep and drew away -- toward the balcony, where he would be able to feel the cooling fall air, the draw of winter's tide.

"All we are is our memories. Our dreams," he murmured softly, pausing. "Our nightmares." He looked out onto the balcony, where his gargoyle of a lover stood guard over their imperfect household. A sinner, a monster, and a spawn. Imperfect as it was, Sin wouldn't have changed it for anything. He drifted toward the boy, out into the cool air as he listened.

"Frightened." He chuckled hoarsely, stepping forward to lean his forearms on the railing. "No. Those times have passed." He looked down into the streets, watched the early morning hustle of bodies toward the marketplace; he could smell the teasing scent of fresh bread baking, meats roasting, and heavy spices. "Even if they still live again at night." The Spaniard looked aside to the boy he called his lover. Obsession..

I am married now, but there is a part of my heart that you alone hold, lover. Unlike the taste of Ireland, it is not a feeling I recall, but it is a feeling I give willingly. If we lose ourselves again in the comings and goings of our lives, find me. I am always your hand in the dark..

How strange was it that their roles had reversed. Two years of Sin fixing Salvador. Two years of collecting the pieces of his life, holding them together, cradling them with protection and nurture while Sin was broken himself. And then it was Salvador who was forced to collect the pieces again. To redeem the sinner's heart.

"Almost three years now since we met. Since I-- heh. Since I saw you fighting with Mesteno on the lawn and nearly impaled myself on your spikes." The sinner's morose nostalgia broke into a smile as he tipped his chin down. "Almost three years since we talked on the porch that first time. When I saw something important in you that I was drawn to. Still drawn." Always drawn, at this point.

"You poor bastard," says the man, sighing. "Need a ride somewhere?"

"No." Of that he is certain.

"Suit yourself, kid." The man stands and stretches. "I'm heading out. You ever want to talk, I'm usually around these parts."

"Ok." It's all he can think to say immediately. What else should he say? After what just happened... "Gracias." Yes. He thanks him. Not for that. No. But for talking to him. Certainly, for that, he is grateful. No one has ever spent that much time simply talking to him before. At least not about anything important.

"No worries. Ah ... my name's Sin by the way. I don't believe we were introduced." He can hear the grin in the man's voice as he walks toward the stairs.

Sin. Fitting name? Yes. A fitting name. "Sin," he says, repeating the name, placing it in his memory, his own memory, a true memory...

Death is but a horizon..

Ambrosia was burning -- burning again, in the dark waters of his dreams; a fire waiting to engulf him and he was all alone. Alone except for him. "I can't keep my promise this time-- I can't wait for you. I can't. Need to die. Fire." So close-- he could almost touch the bar now.

His eyes reflected the fire. Illuminated, his irises swallowed the flames and drank them deep into his retinas. When he turned to look back at Sin, his eyes were only fire. "Why not?" Salvador wasn't by any means an omniscient creature. He was bound to dreamscape and secluded from the world beyond the in between. Legitimate questions. "Why do you need to die, Tohias?" Still, he insisted on calling him by that name. "What is making you break now?"

The pressure was too great: he was flattened to the ground. He gave in; he would wait there for the flames to take him. None of Salvador's words made it past Sin's ears-- none but the same mantra that he had been repeated over and over: why, why, why. "..He is dead." And at those three words, the flames thickened and the building, Sin's very sanity, began to creak with
impending collapse.

Augustine..

"Known you. Resisted you, even though I knew something important was there. Lo siento, amante. I have not always been kind to you.." Perhaps that was why, so many years ago, Sin had been content to take the damage -- the hurt from Faye, Dimitri, and Rojo. Payment. "I didn't think this would ever happen, but at the same time.. I knew. I knew."

Sin expelled a quiet sigh, thoughtfully. "I liked listening to you. Speaking with you. You were different -- you were new and old, and you still had so much to learn. So much to see. It was.. refreshing. I wanted to show you what the world was like; what it could be like."

He paused and chuckled. "I don't know if I accomplished that. But I tried, and you grew. Grew into something.. beautiful." Yes -- the boy many people considered a monster, thought of as a travesty, Sin loved with all that he had to give. Thought of him as a work of art worth admiration; a thing of beauty.

Cold as the grave, yes. This had become his existence. What the hibernative metamorphosis was changing him into. Physically, there were great changes. His personality, on the other hand, was still the same. He was still Salvador Delahada in there somewhere. Underneath the layers of scaled sheets of ice and aura of winter frost. As such, he more than welcomed the kiss. Put his hands to either side of the sinner's face and held him to this moment of intimacy. Maybe it was enough, exactly what he needed, to have one landscape swallow another and replace Ambrosia with ocean waves.

It was. The scene melted away and they were back there again-- to the ocean, before his own grave, in sand instead of flames. He shivered, he let the tears flow, but ultimately.. he gave what was left of himself in to the hunter. His love, his sorrow, his hate, his joy. Everything he had left, until he tipped his forehead against the boy's and wrapped his arms around him as tightly as he could.

"And tomorrow I'll still be here," he added. Salvador reached an arm across and up to touch his fingers against the sinner's. A taunting, testing-the-waters approach. Barely a touch at all, but just enough to potentially be inviting.

Cold as the grave. With each passing day their similarities increased. Like his mother, he was carved of polar ice. The shape and feel of corpse flesh stuck in a freezer overnight. Death always had a price that needed paying in order to come back from it, twice. He paid a double toll. Sacrifices well worth making to return, to remain, to love and laugh and experience living.

"But no," he said, letting his hand fall away. It had been a fleeting touch and nothing more. Something to remind himself that Sin was really here, was a solid thing and not a ghost come to haunt him. He needed those little reminders. "Not the same."

"Love hurts," she said. "It is the most complicated emotion any mortal may ever know. To me ... it is a weakness. I am bound to Nature. My purpose forbids me from being capable of love, as it would distract me from doing what I was designed to do. But you, my son, are not bound to any natural law as I am. You are free to choose and free ... to love."

"I hate it," he said.

"The only pain I couldn't deal with," he murmured. Rust-colored eyes fell closed again. Reflections on the past. Nostalgia and old dreams. "Stab me. Shoot me. Break me. Burn me. I can handle all of that." And more. He was resilient. He was a killing machine. He was made to survive, to keep fighting, to mow down his enemies like a torrent, like the hand of God. "But love..."

Perhaps his greatest failing was with words. Salvador never could manage to explain precisely what he meant to say. Could never say what he wanted to say. Except, perhaps, when he put pen to paper and tried his hand at writing instead. Conjuring up the image of his own messy scrawl, he recited something he had written.

"I can't find the words to explain to you just how much it hurts to look at you now. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. All the colors swirl and flow as they should. Ribbons of light that spiral around and around. I see a purity in you now that makes me hurt when I look at it, and I don't know why. There's just so much ... you."

With eyes closed and voice a whisper, he kept the pose they made lasting. Foreheads touching together. Seas of memories written on paper with pens. Ink and parchment. Scripture.

Reality and illusion had such fine lines. What was real to one was false to another, but to the fae dreams were not too very far off from reality. Perhaps it was good fortune that Sin had such ties to a boy who was half fae. He opened his arms to the sinner and let him come. Ready and willing to embrace him, despite the cracked whisper of a name flooded with emotion. Joy and sadness blended into one. A name only Salvador dared speak and know the sinner as: "Tohias." He trudged through sand himself, to bridge the distance between. "The snow whispered to me, and it was you. Your voice. Reading scripture."

"My love is reserved for the broken things," he whispered, reciting more. "The imperfect things. The flawed things. I love the scattered pieces of the puzzles I touch. I love the way they feel when I sift my fingers through them." So long as he kept his eyes closed he could see the words and give them voice.

To sift. To feel. To touch. To know with certainty that what was near was real and not an imagined thing. Salvador lifted his hands to cup the sinner's face, to hold him and keep him near.

"I spoke to a whisper once. I held a memory in my hand. It was beautiful. It was light. It spoke to me as whispers do and for the first time I heard you laugh. Your laughter is beautiful, mi alma. I wish you could hear it."

"No." It was a single word that broke apart intimacy, shattered memories and latched little hooks into the present. The now. The here. Salvador's eyes snapped open. They were the purest flood of rust-colored iris. This was his time. Hours and days of healing. There were scars aplenty but no more pain, no more aches.

He looked the sinner in the eyes, then. Looked Tohias in the eyes and smiled the one true smile he kept reserved only for him. Not quite so feral. Not at all edged. Something that really belonged on the face of a human boy instead of the monster he truly was.

"No more waiting, mi alma." No more scripture. No more citations. No more written words given a voice so that they could be heard beyond reading. These words were knew. He could find them now. He could speak them.

"I love you," he said. "Te amo. Ti amo. Vos amo. Taim i' ngra leat. S' ayapo." In every language he knew, he spoke those most important words. Except for the one that did not translate the sentiment properly, and thinking on that made him chuckle a little. "S? . I love you, Tohias. Mi alma."

Sin had said himself that it was a sentiment that couldn't be said enough. Though he tried. He said it in as many ways as he knew how and sealed it with a kiss. Returning the favor by pressing lips to lips, but this one lasting longer than the first. Broken when he spoke again. "But no more waiting, hermano." He shook his head and smiled. "No more need to wait."

He was here now. He wasn't going anywhere any time soon. Only a week ago did we meet; only two days did I lose you to winter, and yesterday I got you back again. "And tomorrow I'll still be here," he repeated. "Siempre." Even though...

Tomorrow never comes.