Sonmi's Couples, Characters and Writing - Posting Welcome

[Toxi+Bbun]

Amazing stories! I love your work. :]

[Sonmi-451]

“Tess,” Xavier's surprised voice came as he looked up at her from the top of Dante's Inferno – he always did have a fondness for the classics, more than Kasena ever did – and his face broke out into a smile that Kasena knew ground Tess's heart into little pieces. He set his book down, very meticulously marking his place first, and rose to his feet to wrap little Tess – she wasn't particularly little, really, at five-eight, but she was little around here – in an embrace. “What are you doing here?” he questioned when he pulled back, his half-gold half-brown eyes on hers, and Kasena sighed internally at the underlying pain on Tess's face.
Kasena Elizabeth Lightning herself was sipping at a glass of Scotch – like the first of her namesakes – and reading Cloud Atlas – like the second of her namesakes – but the book was quickly set to the side in lieu of simply observing – while still drinking, of course. All six feet and one and a half inches of her tan, muscular frame were sprawled out on Xavier's second couch, which she took the whole of up lengthwise but didn't even cover half of widthwise, and her long black hair tumbled down and covered the pillow she was leaning against. Despite the fact that she had drunk nearly a fifth of Scotch in the last hour, her anomalous blue-green eyes – because her parents both had golden eyes – were sharp – she would have had to have drunk three fifths of Scotch in about five minutes to even get a buzz; her immortal metabolism worked too quickly for anything less to affect her – and they followed Tess's and Xavier's movements carefully.
Idly, as she had every time Xavier and Tess had been in the same room for the last two weeks, she wondered how on earth Xavier could be so blind to Tess's feelings for him. After all, even people who had devoted their whole existences to others couldn't be so ignorant of everyone besides the objects of their affections, right? With a small sigh and a little reminder to forget it, that it was Xavier's problem that a sixteen-year-old girl was in love him, she looked away and returned her attention to Cloud Atlas, but as soon as she opened the book back up she found herself being drawn away into Xavier's and Tess's conversation.
“Oh, Mom and Dad are just still on their vacation and Kas is out with his friends, so I just came over to hang out,” Tess responded, which was virtually the exact same excuse for coming over that she had used the last three days, and Kasena couldn't help but shake her head at how Xavier, while he didn't completely believe Tess's story, didn't see the underlying motive behind Tess spending so much time at his house. Kasena hung out at Xavier's house because he had lots of Scotch – there was even a whole pantry full of it with her name on the door – he was really the only person she could talk to about Selena, and because he was one of the only people her own age who had actually survived the last two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-five years with her. The fact that he was her cousin and in love with someone he could never have and therefore completely and utterly safe also had a lot to do with his house being one of her favorite places to spend an afternoon.
“Well, please make yourself at home then,” Xavier told Tess with a smile, gesturing around to his expansive and tastefully furnished home, and Tess returned the grin almost weakly as she took a seat in the chair to the right of Kasena.
Tessiendre Marja Huntsman had her father's gray-tan hair and mild golden eyes and beautiful features inherited from both of her parents that she tried her hardest to downplay by ignoring them completely. Makeup wasn't a term in her vocabulary, and neither was hair styling; her long hair hung straight down her back except when she put it up in a ponytail for running. She was naturally slim and shorter than the rest of her family – her mother Cassandra, who, with the shifting of names over the centuries, was Kasena's first namesake, was five-eleven, and her father Kellan was six-five and a half – so she didn't lift weights like her brother Kas and Kasena and Xavier, but she was an exceptionally good runner and probably could have outrun Kasena in a marathon, although Kasena was damn near unbeatable in a sprint. She was generally quiet, and she radiated a sort of peaceful innocence about her that was exceedingly reminiscent of her pater; in short, she was a lovely, sweet girl who could have had about any boy she wanted. Unfortunately, the only person she wanted was a man old enough to have nearly fifty generations on her and who was hopelessly and permanently in love with a woman he would never have, so Tess certainly had her own share of bad luck in the romance department.
When Tess had first latched onto Xavier, when she was six, Kasena had thought it was just an infatuation, that she was just following him around in the way little girls sometimes do with older, attractive men. However, throughout the years, Tess's attraction to Xavier had only grown stronger, so much so that Kasena had started to take it seriously, a sort of quazi-giving-herself-to-Xavier thing on Tess's part. Throughout those whole ten years, Xavier had been ignorant – perhaps blissfully so – and, no matter how downright obvious Tess made her feelings for him, he always failed to catch onto them. Now, Kasena didn't pretend to be a master of romance – up until last week, she had had gone twenty years without having a relationship or even a one-night stand – but she certainly fancied herself with a better pair of eyes for those sorts of things than Xavier had.
“So, has anything huge happened to you since yesterday?” Xavier asked politely, leaning towards Tess with an oblivious smile on his face, and Kasena suddenly found herself tired of watching love doomed to be forever unrequited and perhaps forever unknown and turned back to Cloud Atlas to read about a love that may have been doomed but at least was two-way.

“Do you think you'll be coming over here tomorrow again?” Xavier asked Tess, marking the end of her stay at his house for the day, and Kasena, who had been half-dozing after reading Cloud Atlas through and finding that her eidetic memory needed no brushing-up, jerked out of her trance to look at Xavier and Tess. Sure enough, Tess was near the door, her hands folded together as she gazed up at Xavier adoringly, and he was staring back down at her with a completely clueless smile on his face, the kind so full of warmth that a woman could lose herself in it. In other words, it was a very dangerous grin.
“Yes, I think so,” Tess replied, and Kasena sighed when she saw the glimmer of hope in Tess's eyes at Xavier finally asking. The fact that Tess knew about Xavier loving entirely the wrong person was always thrown out the window when he appeared to show even the tiniest bit of interest in her that could be obscurely interpreted as more than friendly.
“Good. I look forward to it,” Xavier told Tess with another one of those utterly charming, completely (unintentionally) misleading and totally ignorant smiles. Accompanied with his words – which were entirely honest but very easily misconstrued – the gesture was downright lethal.
Sure enough, Tess lunged for that accidental hook like it was a rope to pull her to safety and visibly swelled slightly as her golden gaze filled with hope and the first pain-free smile of the day crossed her face. “I look forward to it too,” she echoed eagerly, and Kasena sighed again. Normally Kasena didn't really care about other people's problems – if they were ------- up their lives, well, that was their prerogative – but she couldn't help but like Tess; Tess was just so young and innocent and good that she didn't deserve to have her heart crushed, which was the only possible outcome of her feelings for Xavier.
“I'll see you tomorrow then,” Tess said after a small, happy pause, and leaned forward to let Xavier embrace her in a gentle hug again. When they pulled apart, Tess added as an afterthought, “Bye Kasena,” and gave her a small wave, although her eyes never left Xavier.
Just as Kasena was returning the gesture, she saw an opportunity for clearing up this mess and jumped to her feet to ask Tess, “Are you walking home?”
“Well, Kas dropped me off and I don't think he's going to be back for a while, so yeah, I was planning on it,” Tess replied almost warily, and Kasena smiled to herself at her plan working out so perfectly.
“I'll drive you home, seeing as I was just on my way out,” Kasena told Tess, which prompted a surprised and partially dismayed – Xavier really did enjoy Kasena's company, even if she spent the majority of the time at his house drinking – question of, “You are?” from Xavier.
“Yeah,” Kasena responded before draining the rest of her glass of Scotch in one gulp. She then grabbed her book and car keys off of the coffee table and crossed the room to stand by Xavier and tell him, “Thanks for the Scotch and the couch space. You always were my second-favorite cousin,” – which truly was a compliment, seeing how much Kasena had cared for her favorite cousin, Selena – before leaning up to give him a kiss on the cheek.
With her familiar, infamous smile that bordered on a smirk, she said, “See you tomorrow, Xav,” before wordlessly herding Tess out of the house.

An utter silence had hung over the cab of Kasena's hydrogen-powered car – after Xavier's mother and Kasena's aunt and the second of her namesakes, Lizzie, was appointed Guardian of Earth when the offworld colonies were completed and Earth's population plummeted, Lizzie used her newfound power to destroy nearly all of civilization off the face of the planet and return it to its natural state; hence, all technology they used had to be eco-friendly, like Kasena's car – for about five minutes before Tess finally looked over at Kasena and asked, “Kasena, why did you offer to drive me home today?”
Xavier might have been blind, but Tess certainly wasn't. Kasena debated whether or not to start her talk now for a moment before deciding for the affirmative and looking over at Tess to tell her seriously, “Sweetheart, we need to have a talk about Xavier.”
Instantly a fierce defensiveness reminiscent of her mother came onto Tess's face – Tess knew exactly what Kasena was talking about and took no lengths to hide the worst-kept secret in the history of the planet – as she said, “I don't have to talk about anything to do with him to you.”
“You're right, you don't,” Kasena replied simply, and Tess was shocked into silence by that – which was so out of character for Kasena – long enough for Kasena to add, “But for your sake and his, you really should.”
Kasena found a wide spot to the side of the road and pulled over, being exceedingly careful with her rolling bomb like she always was, and turned off the ignition to look over at Tess expectantly.
Immediately, without Kasena having to say anything else, Tess burst out, “I know that it will never work out between him and me, that I'm just chasing after nothing and am only going to get myself burned, but I just can't help it! I mean, he deserves better than his own mother!”
Almost no one ever mentioned Xavier's problem, and Tess was one of those who would do just about anything to avoid talking about it, so Kasena knew she had hit something that really needed to be addressed if that was the first thing Tess said to her. “I know he does,” Kasena assured her, and for a moment she shared in Tess's lamentations. “Trust me, I really do. A good majority of my earliest memories have him in them, so I've definitely known him long enough to know that he is the last person on the planet who deserves to be hopelessly in love with his own mother.” Kasena had been one of the first people to learn about it after it happened – Xavier was fifteen at the time and completely helpless to the whims of his immortal heart and soul – and the fact that she hadn't told anyone until Xavier had been willing to make it common knowledge gave Xavier and her a sort of bond, one that was still intact nearly three thousand years later. “But Tess,” Kasena continued on a different vein, locking her gaze onto Tess's and not letting the girl look away, “nothing you do will make the slightest impact on who he loves, and he will never in the slightest be able to reciprocate your feelings for him. You're a girl with a stick fighting an Athenian drakon, sweetheart. You're not going to win, no matter what, and at worst you could get eaten alive.”
Tess simply stared over at Kasena for a few long seconds before finally shaking her head and muttering, “I don't believe you,” which Kasena would have thought was just an act of halfhearted denial if it weren't for the utter conviction in the girl's voice.
“Tess, you see how your father looks at your mother, right?” (Kellan, Tess's father, had given himself to her mother Cassandra about seven years before Kasena was born.) After a moment of silence, Tess was finally forced to – by the fact that she had already proven herself not to be blind – nod, at which point Kasena said, “Well, that's how Xavier looks at Lizzie.”
“No!” Tess burst out with a surprising amount of ferocity. “That can't be possible! A man can't love his own mother in that way!”
Tess's denial, then, was not of the act of giving oneself to another, but in the act of giving oneself to one's own mother. Kasena wasn't sure if there was anything she could do to get Tess to believe her on that point, short of calling up Lizzie and telling her what was going on and getting her and Xavier together for Tess to watch, which Kasena knew Tess wouldn't want because that would involve bringing someone else into the issue. Instead, Kasena simply responded, “Well Tess, I don't know what else to tell you to convince you, but I assure you, it is completely possible.”
Tess shook her head again, as if she could shake out Kasena's words and unhear them, and suddenly looked back up at Kasena with her mouth tight and her eyes sharp with blazing anger. “Besides, who are you to be lecturing me on love when you can't even deal with my brother loving you because you don't even like men?”
“What your brother feels for me has nothing to do with what you feel for Xavier,” Kasena replied in a tight voice, and Kasena could tell from the look in Tess's eyes that Tess knew she had crossed a line. “And let me let you in on a little secret, sweetheart: I consider myself a flaming heterosexual and, as of last week, am dating Sean Eragon. So trust me, I am far more qualified than you could ever imagine to be giving you advice on this sort of stuff.”
Tess looked like Kasena had punched her in the stomach. “You're... you're dating Sean?” she asked in a weak voice, suddenly paler than usual.
“Yes, I am, and I swear to God if you tell anyone about it I will tell Xavier about what you feel for him,” Kasena said as she remembered the nights she had spent with Sean – six out of the last seven, so far, and she was with him during the day for the other one - and Kasena knew that Tess knew from experience that Kasena didn't make idle threats and therefore was almost guaranteed to do as she was instructed.
Tess and Kasena sat in silence for a moment, Kasena watching Tess carefully and Tess staring down at the seat of Kasena's car, before Tess looked back up at Kasena, caught her gaze and questioned, “So what do we do now? I mean, I have Xavier to deal with, and you have my brother to deal with, so what are we supposed to do?”
Kasena thought for a moment before saying, “Tess, I'll make you a deal. If you tell Xavier how you feel and try your hardest to move on, then I'll tell your brother that I know how he feels and that he needs to try his hardest to move on. Capiche?”
“Alright,” Tess agreed with a small nod of her head, and, although the rest of the drive back to Tess's house was silent, there was a sort of understanding and a feel of resolution lingering in the quiet.

“Remember our deal, Tess,” Kasena reminded Tess as she stood in the front door, leaning on the doorframe and still having at least four inches on Tess. “It'll only work for both of us if we both hold up our ends of the bargain.”
“I know, and I will,” Tess responded, in a tone that made it completely clear that she was going to do as she said and nothing else or less, and Kasena didn't even have to read her mind or search her eyes to know that Tess was truly meaning those words.
“Good,” Kasena said, and she gazed down at Tess for a moment before adding, “Tomorrow we face our demons then,” and turning to go just as the back door opened and a very familiar – and certainly not welcome right now – voice called into the house, “Tess, I'm home.”
Kasena froze, debating whether or not she should bolt for the car or stand up tall and face those demons now, and it was only Tess's mutter of, “Looks like the demons are here right now,” that kept her from running like hell.
Kasena took a deep breath – giving advice was easy, but actually acting on that advice was incredibly hard – and turned around to exclaim as soon as her eyes fell upon him, “Kas, what the ---- did you do to your hair?”
Whereas Tess was her father's daughter completely, eighteen-year-old Kasten Isaak Huntsman was his mother's son the whole way. He was tall – around six-four – with blond hair and light blue eyes just like his mother and an outgoing, goofing personality inherited from his mater as well. However, like Tess was with her father, Kas wasn't totally his mother reborn; he could be remarkably thoughtful and philosophical at times, and he wasn't confrontational, unlike his mother, at all. He would much rather use words than fists to sort arguments out, a trait of his father's.
Currently, however, Kasten's usually golden-blond hair was jet-black, and the resulting combination of that color hair with the rest of his features was not a good one. “I dyed it,” he replied, staring over at Kasena in part confusion, part happiness, part longing and part worry.
“Why the hell did you do that?” Kasena questioned, finding herself feeling a little uncomfortable – like she always did – with Kas looking at her so intently.
“Because I thought I could use a change in coloring,” he answered, and suddenly Kasena remembered mentioning to him in passing last week that black hair and blue eyes were her favorite combination on a man.
With an internal sigh at the fact that he was willing to change his hair color and undoubtedly more just to impress her, Kasena told him, “Kas, you don't need a change in coloring. You look great blond-” – it was true; if he were older and she weren't with Sean, who didn't have black hair and blue eyes but had awesome eyes and hair regardless, she would certainly consider him as a potential relationship candidate – “-and right now, it looks like someone killed a raven and stuck it on your head. You really need to dye it back.”
“Oh, okay,” Kas said, and he was visibly deflated. Here he had thought he was going to do something that would impress her and instead she ended up telling him that it looked like he had a dead bird on his head.
Kasena actually felt kind of bad for him – she had never intended to hurt his feelings – and she didn't really want to do anything else to cause him pain for the day, but she knew that a clean break was always best and, if she didn't talk to him now, she might not find an opportunity to do so again, so Kas would hopefully take her rejection of him in style.
Very conscious of Tess's gaze on her, Kasena met Kas's gaze, hoping to imprint upon him the seriousness of the situation, as she said, “Kas, you and I need to talk.” With a glance over at Tess, who was waving her on to keep continuing, she added, “In private. Do you think maybe you have a place we could go to do that?”
Kas stared at her for a moment, unadulterated surprise plastering his expression. Then almost immediately his expression became unreadable, despite the fact that he looked her levelly in the eye and replied, “Sure. We can go up to my room, if that works for you.”
Kasena didn't like the sudden shutting-off of his facial features – she much preferred being able to predict what people would say before the words left their mouths instead of being left to wait for them to actually speak – but she still intended to talk to him, so she nodded in confirmation, and, with a gesture of her hand, told him, “Lead the way.”

Kas shut the door behind them, and Kasena turned around and began, “Kas, this attraction of yours to me-” only to be cut off by Kas's mouth on hers as his arms snaked their way around her and held her to him. He parted her lips with his, one hand on the back of her neck and one on her waist, and the hand on her waist had just started to try to work its way under the hem of her shirt when she finally got her wits about her and shoved hard on his chest, breaking his grip on her and moving him far enough away from her that he actually lightly hit the wall.
“Kasten Isaak Huntsman, what the ---- do you think you're doing?!” she exploded, her hands balling into fists in anger at his brashness and her lips curling up in a snarl.
“I thought... I thought this was what you meant when you said you wanted to talk to me in private,” Kasten replied, seeming as stunned by her rejection as she was by his advances.
“When I said I wanted to talk with you in private, I meant I wanted to talk to you about you getting the idea of doing stuff like this out of your head!” she shot back, and she knew from the look on his face that he was experiencing her at her scariest: blue-green eyes blazing and maybe even one glowing white and the other glowing black by now, because when she was incredibly angry her grip on her powers loosened a little. When she saw the confusion and hurt on his face, she sighed, her rage draining out of her and making her feel tired. “Look, Kas,” she began, in a milder tone, “you are incredibly good-looking and a very nice guy and you're going to make some girl very happy someday. I'm just not that girl.”
“But... why couldn't you be?” Kas had pulled himself off the wall and had closed the gap between them some, but he was smarter than to get within arm's length of her so shortly after he had made her terribly angry. “I mean, I know you find me attractive, and I know you like hanging out with me as just a friend, so maybe you'd like it even more if we were more than friends. And Kas...” Although other people sometimes called her Kas as well, Kas using his own name for her gave it a certain reverence that no one else uttering it ever could. “You're the most amazing woman I've ever met and think I ever will meet. You're beautiful – beautiful doesn't really cover it; there's really not a word in the English language that comes close to covering it – and you're brilliant and you're funny and you make me feel wonderful, like I'm on top of the world, when I'm around you, and you're broken, too.” Kasena froze at that, her eyes locked on his. “I know no one else sees it – everyone else just sees the crass, Scotch-drinking, witty, battle-hardened mask you put on every day – but I do, and I think that maybe, if you'd let me, I could make you, if not a little less broken, at least a little more comfortable with being broken.”
She simply stared at him for a few long, silent moments that seemed to span the entirety of the two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-five years she had been alive as she thought back to her seventy years of friendship with Selena and her death, and those countless nights she had spent alone, curled up with multiple bottles of Scotch as she clutched the picture of her and Selena, her fifteen and Selena fourteen, on the beach in Cabo, and she found herself swallowing back a lump in her throat as she told him quietly, “Kas, you're wrong.” A little clip, as if a movie was rolling, ran in her mind of Sean telling her the exact same thing seven nights ago, with his beautiful blue-green-gray eyes on hers, as she elaborated, “You're not the only one who knows I'm broken.”
Then, without another word, she brushed past him and exited his room, leaving him staring after her with a mixture of shock and disappointment and, above all, still-bleeding heartbreak.

“So I had a rather interesting day,” Kasena told Sean as she gazed over at him, pleasantly warm and relaxed as she laid with nearly every inch of her naked body pressed up against his.
“What adventures did you find yourself experiencing today?” he asked in a murmur as he propped himself up on one elbow and looked her in the eye, displaying the fact that he was listening attentively. That was one of the things she loved about him; he always listened to what she had to say, and often he gave wonderful insight and advice. Well, that and the fact that he was amazing in bed.
“I had a talk with Tess about Xavier, she called me a lesbian, Kas dyed his hair black in order to impress me and instead made it look like he was wearing a dead crow, and Kas kissed me,” she responded, recapping the day's most memorable events in chronological order, and Sean's eyebrows went up in surprise at how busy the last twelve hours had been for her.
Kasena noticed this and simply shrugged; all of her problems seemed so far away when she was lying next to him like this. “I think I broke Kas's heart too, but oh well. He wasn't going to give up if I didn't.”
“At some point he'll make some girl very happy,” Sean said, echoing Kasena's words so exactly that she couldn't help but smile, “but you are not that girl.”
“Exactly,” she agreed as she reached up to pull a piece of lint out of his rumpled medium-brown hair. “I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who sees why I don't want to be with him. I mean, he's very good-looking, and God knows he's smart, and he's got a great personality, but I've got forty-five generations on him and besides, I've got you.” She rested a hand on his chest, feeling the warmth and softness of his naturally-tan skin, and she leaned up to kiss him deeply, one hand entangling in his hair and the other remaining on his sternum.
There was a smile on his face when she pulled back, and, genuinely curious as she met his gaze and again found another object of wonder about his eyes – this time, the rings of gold around their pupils – she asked him, “What?”
“You know, I think the first time I realized I loved you, we were both six years old, and, after two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-nine years of loving you from afar, I can't believe that you're finally truly mine. Never in my wildest dreams were you ever this incredible; it is impossible to capture your entire essence in a fantasy, no matter how vivid, it seems.” He paused for a moment before ending simply, “You are just the most wonderful person I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, that's all.” He gave her a smile of pure love, the kind that Kasena had never known before, and this time he was the one to kiss her.

“So I have seen a few pictures of Selena in your home, and I remember her as Lizzie's daughter and Xavier's and Timothy's sister, yet I still have not been enlightened as to the nature of her relationship to you,” Sean said, looking Kasena evenly in the eye, and she could tell that he was simply curious about Selena because he wanted to know everything he could about the woman he loved.
Kasena regarded him for a moment, feeling the warmth of his skin against hers and the gentleness of his touch on the side of her face, and she finally responded, “Selena was all of that, yeah, but most importantly – for me, at least – she was my best friend and my blood-sister.”
“Blood-sister?” Sean's eyebrows rose in a question as he gazed over at her, his head propped up on his arm in a pose that emphasized the muscle tone in his arms and shoulders and chest. “Does that have anything to do with this-” – he reached around her and gently touched the spot directly between her shoulderblades where her yin-yang tattoo was – “-and what you can do?”
“Selena's being my blood-sister had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there is a war of opposing blood being fought inside of me,” Kasena told him as she shook her head. She then held up her left hand, displaying the thumb pad, and she watched Sean as he peered closer to read the letters carved into her skin, which were blood-red when Selena was alive and now were just silver scars, there.
“SMG,” he murmured as he read aloud, and he looked back up at her to ask, “Selena Marie Gates?”
Kasena nodded her head wordlessly before explaining, “The initial-carving – and therefore the blood-swapping – is the biggest part of the ceremony, because, with the right amount of channeling, your blood is taught to recognize the blood of the person you are trying to be blood-bonded to.”
“So you two were blood-bonded?” Sean questioned, and again Kasena nodded, rubbing her scarred thumb on the outside of her forefinger and feeling the letters carved into her flesh as she remembered things she had tried her hardest to forget.
“The blood-bonding makes you far closer than even sharing blood ever could, so much that a part of your consciousness becomes the other person's. I could always sense roughly how far away and in what direction from me Selena was, and I could feel her pain and her happiness, her love and her loss. It... it makes you far closer to that person than anything else ever can, than you can ever be to anything else,” Kasena finished quietly, her eyes distant as she flashed back to sensing the extreme happiness Selena felt – and which Kasena sensed by extension – when she got married and the incredible sorrow that followed thirty years later when her husband, Carl Magnus Salans, was killed.
“That explains your depression following her death,” Sean murmured, and Kasena nodded again, pursing her lips as painful memories surfaced for the first time in twenty-nine centuries.
“It... it was like a part of me had been ripped out, and I felt lost and alone. I guess that was when I first truly discovered the anesthetic properties of alcohol,” Kasena replied with a half-hearted smile that Sean didn't return because he could sense her lack of sincerity. After a moment, she added, gazing down at her thumb and reading the initials of the most important person in her three millennia of life, “I'm glad her initials didn't completely fade, so I still have something of hers on me at all times. If they had and I had lost her completely, I don't know what I would have done.”
Sean simply regarded her for a moment, his beautiful, sharp blue-green-gray eyes watching her thoughtfully, before finally asking, “Do you still keep in contact with any of Selena's descendents?”
“I do, actually,” Kasena replied, rather surprised by the question. Everyone else she had told about her and Selena had immediately jumped to apologizing for Selena's death, which was old the first time it happened, so it was refreshing to have someone take a different approach. “There are currently ninety-three generations between me and Selena's children,” she murmured after a second of silence, and her voice was as unsteady as she felt. “Ninety-three, ninety-three,” she repeated in a whisper, and, for the first time since she had talked to Selena about something sad, she didn't try to toughen up and blink the tears out of her eyes. “Selena was the one who deserved to live that long, not me. She was the one who deserved thirty centuries on this earth, not me. She was the one who deserved that much influence and life and wealth, not me. Not me.”
“Kasena, you cannot say you deserve life any less than she did. It is not your fault she was born mortal,” Sean told her, reaching a hand up to gently cup her cheek in what was supposed to be a comforting gesture, but it just made her feel more miserable and she pushed his hand away as she shook her head vigorously.
“But I do, Sean, I do!” she muttered fiercely, her eyes on his and tears blurring her vision as the lump in her throat makes it hard to breathe. After a moment of silent thinking, all of the fight suddenly went out of her, and she sighed as she finally wiped her eyes and said, “Selena was so much better of a person than I was. She was a wonderful best friend and wife and mother, and I was never any of that.” Kasena laughed slightly as she continued, “Still, she did keep me around for eighty-five years, seventy of which we were blood-sisters.” After a pause, she added, her eyes now clouded with remembrance instead of tears, “We had a good run, we really did. She and I, we were damn near unbeatable as a team. She had her bow and I had my twin swords and we both had knives, and we could take out a whole company in under five minutes without even having to channel or anything like that.”
“Well, after seeing how well you fight in one-on-one combat, I can imagine how incredibly lethal you and Selena must have been together,” Sean said, still staring over at her intently but not daring to touch her again.
“We were the best, man. The best.” Kasena shook her head at the memories before looking back up at him and adding, “Did you know that I was her sole bridesmaid as well as the last person to speak to her before she died?”
“No, I didn't,” Sean responded slowly, as Kasena knew he would. After all, she and Selena were the only two people who knew she was the last one to speak to Selena before Selena died.
“And do you know what she said to me, as she was lying there with her heartbeat slowing and her breath fading?” When Sean shook his head wordlessly, Kasena elaborated in a half-whisper, “She told me... she told me that it wasn't my fault, and that we would meet again, in another life, for we were blood-sisters for eternity.” Kasena paused for a second, regaining her composure, before explaining, “Selena believed in reincarnation, and so she believed that, at some point, she and I would meet again, that our bond couldn't be broken by such a temporary thing as death. Ever since then, I have been looking for her, looking for the part of me that was ripped out twenty-nine centuries ago, waiting for the moment when I would again feel my blood-sister in the same room as me and I would turn around and she'd be standing there, smiling at me.” Kasena's voice broke, and she forced herself to swallow before asking Sean desperately, “Have I not been looking hard enough? Have I done something wrong? Is it the fact that I'm immortal so I will never be reborn? Is it the fact that Selena's up there chilling with God and waiting for me in heaven? What went wrong, Sean? What took Selena away from me forever?”
Sean – wisely because there was nothing he could really say to console her – kept silent and simply held Kasena as she sobbed into his shoulder, twenty-nine centuries of heartwrenching agony pouring out of her.
After a long while – it could have been a half an hour or a millennium – Kasena finally quieted down, and Sean pulled back to give her a gentle smile as he raised a hand to touch her cheek. “Kasena, I believe that someday you will find Selena again, that someday you two will fight and laugh and cry and love together, but you just have to realize that perhaps that day is not here yet, that you may have to wait a little while longer for her. But you're in no hurry, Kasena; after all, you have all eternity, and I think, if you love her as much as you seem to, you owe it to yourself and Selena to be willing to wait that long for her.” He paused a moment before adding with another smile, “Time and love are both fickle things, but they both always come around eventually. For now, all you can do is honor her memory by living and loving like she would have wanted you to.”
Kasena was silent for a long moment as she considered his words and what truly obeying them would mean, and eventually she looked back up at him with a strange light in her eyes and said, “You know, that really is exactly what Selena would want me to do, especially the loving part. And it's because of that that I have to ask you this, however crazy it might seem because we've only been dating for eight days: Sean Lucas Eragon, will you marry me?”
Sean froze and stared over at her, not daring to breathe, for a second before he finally realized that this wasn't a joke or a prank, that she was completely serious, and a huge smile burst out across his face. “Kasena,” he murmured, “you don't even need to ask.”

Kasena sat gazing out across the lush green valley below her, the rock she was sitting on warm to the touch and a deep peacefulness hanging over the flourishing landscape before her. The engagement ring Sean had insisted upon giving her – it was a thin silver band that apparently had been his mother's and so was nearly three thousand years old – was cool on her finger, the metal gleaming in the sun, and an unconscious smile came across her face as she gazed down at the band and thought about the fierce love – both given and reciprocated – that it represented.
Kasena leaned back, closing her eyes and absorbing the sun's rays, and she had just idly begun to think about wedding plans – she knew Sean would agree with whatever she wanted, but she wanted him to like the wedding too – when an incredibly familiar, yet almost alien for its extreme age, feeling washed over her. It was a sense of comfort, the feeling that a part of her was near that meant she didn't have to worry about watching her back because someone else was doing it for her. Suddenly her hand pulsed, and she looked down to find the letters on her thumb, silver scars for twenty-nine centuries, blood-red as they had been when... Selena was alive.
Barely daring to breathe, Kasena rose unsteadily to her feet, conscious of the feeling of someone's amused gaze on her, and turned slowly around to find an impossibly well-known blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl – she had to be in her mid-to-late teens – standing there watching Kasena with a smile.
“Selena,” Kasena gasped, and it took all of her willpower to lock her knees and prevent them from collapsing.
“It's been a while, Kas,” Selena said, in that voice Kasena had longed to hear for so long she hadn't realized how strong the desire truly was, and then Kasena's knees really did give way as she reveled in the feeling that she was whole again.

[Lierre]

i love all of your stories. but my favorite is probably the one about Blade and Saber. it's so sweet!

[Olivia]

Wonderful stories <3

[Sonmi-451]

Reserved for other pieces of writing.

[Akl299]

This is so nice!

[Sonmi-451]

“I can't believe we're getting married,” Cassandra murmured as Kellan approached with plates of food – he insisted upon being the consummate gentleman, like always, and bringing dinner to her as well as making it – and she couldn't help but look down at her hand to find that there was in fact a ring on her finger. “Well, more specifically, I can't believe that a-”
“Person such as yourself is going to be marrying someone?” Kellan finished for her, and, even though Cassandra's planned statement involved a lot more curse words, she nodded in confirmation.
“I'd always thought I'd be the permanent bachelorette, you know? That I'd have one-night stands for all eternity and that would be how I kept the memories at bay,” Cassandra said, and she closed her eyes to fend off the flood of recollections of battlefields full of bodies, funeral pyres for hundreds of men, desolate wives and crying children who had lost their husbands and fathers because of her decisions.
“Well, fortunately for me you have decided to change that plan.” Kellan's voice brought her back into the present, and she looked up to find him giving her a smile as he settled down next to her with forks and knives and napkins in his hand.
“Would you perhaps like some silverware?” Kellan held out a fork, knife and napkin to her, and she grinned at him as she responded, “No, you know, I actually was thinking that just diving in face-first would be the best way to go about eating this.”
She gestured to the lasagna, salad and garlic bread on the plate in front of her – she had a weakness for genuine Italian food and Kellan was an incredible cook – and a smile was on his lips as well as he laughed a little and then leaned over to kiss her on the cheek.
After a moment, he pulled away only slightly, so that his face was still mere inches from hers, and then leaned in again to kiss her jawline this time, and then her neck, and then her mouth, and he seemed on the verge of pushing her down so that she lay on her back beneath him on the couch when she finally managed – a little unwillingly, because she wanted him just as much as he wanted her – to push him away and tell him firmly, holding his gaze, “Later. Right now I'm hungry.”
“Alright, my love,” he said with a smile that made his eyes light up like miniature golden-amber suns, and he gave her one last kiss on the cheek that served as a reminder for how much he couldn't wait till later before giving her the peace she needed to eat.

“That was an excellent dinner, Kellan,” Cassandra told him as he approached her and the couch after taking their empty plates and putting them in the dishwasher. “Although I wish you had let me do something to help clean up.”
Kellan shrugged wordlessly at that, but as he reclaimed his seat next to her he caught her eye and murmured, “You do know that when I do things for you, it is not because I think that you are weak or incapable of doing them yourself or that you need assistance but simply because I want to do something nice for the woman I love.”
“I know, I'm just being a stubborn-” Cassandra replied to have Kellan finish for her, “Woman?”
“You're censoring me,” Cassandra pointed out, as they both knew very well that that was not the word she was going to use, and he shrugged rather unapologetically as he gave her a small smile; he had been gently pushing for her to stop cursing so often, and as of late the pushing had not been nearly as gentle. Cassandra supposed she should have been annoyed at him for trying to control her, but she knew that he was only pushing her to curse less because he was concerned about how all of the swearwords coming out of her mouth might be affecting her and her disposition; he was so selfless and only thinking about her all of the time – finding yourself so in love with a person that you would devote your entire existence to them made you do that – that she just couldn't be angry at him, no matter what he did.
“Hey, I have been really good about not cursing so far tonight,” Cassandra told him, and that was actually true; for once she had been able to control the stream of swearwords out of her mouth without having to think about it consciously all the time. “I haven't slipped up once yet.”
“You are right, my love,” Kellan agreed with a smile that caught Cassandra's breath in her chest; he was so stunning, just about the most attractive man she had ever laid eyes on. “You have done incredibly well about not cursing so far.”
“Yeah, well, you know, a super-attractive fiance is kind of a pretty big motivator for me to maybe watch my words a little,” she said with a grin of her own, and he leaned in to kiss her at that, his arms working their way around her to hold her to him tightly.
After a second or two of bliss, he pulled back, alarming her some, but her concern that he was done with her already was more than alleviated when he leaned back in to kiss her on the jawline, the neck, the throat, and she was the one to pull him down on top of her and leave him on his hands and knees over her.
Cassandra slipped her hands underneath the hem of his basic black T-shirt – which looked wonderful on him even though it was so plain; hell, Kellan could make a burlap sack positively sexy – and she had just begun to trace the contours and grooves of his washboarded stomach as he kissed her more urgently when suddenly a pressing inquisition that just would not wait till later rose to the front of her mind and she found herself removing her hands and pulling away from him as she caught his gaze and asked, “Kellan, how did we get here?”
His eyes were more than a bit distracted and lustful for a moment after she broke off their embrace, but eventually they sharpened and came to focus on hers as he questioned in return, “What do you mean?”
“How did we get here, together, living in the same house, on the verge of getting married and spending the rest of eternity really and truly as a couple?” Cassandra inquired, and when she read Kellan's mind and found him going to give her a totally useless and unhelpful response, she said impatiently, “I know about everything that we did together, the last forty-six hundred years of being friends and there for each other when nothing or no one else ever was, but how... how did we end up like this, Kellan? Or why did we end up like this, you and me together? What do you think the bastard upstairs was thinking when he paired us up?”
“Well,” Kellan began, and he rolled off her to lay next to her on his side, prompting her to roll over onto her side so that she could keep looking him the eye, before continuing, “You and I are the consummate couple, Cassandra. We know each other better than any person alive ever has or ever will – we know each other better than perhaps any other two people alive know each other – and I very firmly believe that those forty-six hundred years of us just being friends, that that one night in Egypt where we went to bed together and then woke up in the morning to find us just even more sure of the fact that we were meant to be just friends, was preparation of sorts for us to be more, for us to be what we are now. While I have always believed in a God – I have been rather compelled to, I suppose, because it is undeniable that we would not be able to do what we do if not for some divine intervention however many thousands of years ago – I have never known that higher power to be benevolent until now, because up until now all of the actions of God I had to form my opinion of their doer upon were not particularly favorable: making me immortal so that I could perhaps suffer for all eternity, making me the sole survivor out of my family after the rest of them were massacred and then compelling me to go on a quest for revenge to get the justice my parents and siblings deserved, causing me to devote my existence to two women whom I lost very shortly afterwards. But the fact that he has given me you, that you, Cassandra Moore, Kasendra Mörlend, the most incredible woman I will ever meet, makes up for all of that. You make up for everything, Cassandra.”
His last words came out in a whisper, and there was a raw passion in his eyes that caught at her heart and made her be the one to lean in to kiss him, one hand resting on his chest and the other on the back of his neck, reaching up to entangle itself in his hair.
“You really believe that us being together is an act of God?” Cassandra questioned when she pulled back, her gaze on his, and he nodded without hesitation.
“What else could it be, Cassandra, when we fit so perfectly together, almost as if we were designed for one another?” he asked, returning her stare evenly. “Besides, it's not like I would have ever been able to get you on my own if it were not for a little divine intervention.”
Cassandra shook her head in disagreement, and she made sure that he was watching her carefully as she told him, “You're wrong there, Kellan. I think you probably had me from the moment I first laid eyes on you in Egypt.”
He regarded for a long silent moment, apparently trying to gauge the truthfulness of her statement, and when he found that she was totally and completely serious, a smile that lit up his face in a way that melted her heart came onto his expression and he murmured, “Well, then, let it be known how grateful I am for finally having the sense to come around and claim you.”
He leaned in and kissed her here, and as she reveled at the way their bodies fit together it occurred to her that maybe he was right, that maybe their coming and being together was an act of God, an apology of sorts from the big man for everything he had put her through these last five thousand and four years. And Kellan was right about another thing, too: the fact that he was finally hers, that Cassandra Moore and Kellan Huntsman finally came to realize that they were meant to be together, made up for everything.

[Sonmi-451]

“So have you heard about Gruffen and his new girl?” I question as I approach Luke, who is sitting on the couch reading Time magazine, and he looks up at me to have an instinctive smile cross his face when he sees that it's me.
“I haven't, actually,” he says, setting aside the magazine and gazing up at me with a twinkle in those sky-blue eyes I love so much, “so would you care to enlighten me?”
“Her name's Sarah Parker, and she has a girlfriend,” I tell him, and his eyebrows go up momentarily in surprise.
“Is it like Sally then?” he asks, referring to the time when my brother slept with and eventually fell in love with a bisexual woman twenty-one inches shorter than him and six years older than him, and I shake my head; for Gruffen's sake, I hope to dear God there's not another Sally in his future.
“No. Sarah's not interested in him as anything more than a friend in the slightest,” I respond, and he nods his head in understanding as he says, half-under his breath, “I see.”
Then, in a louder voice, he adds, “Your brother really does have terrible luck with the women he falls in love with, doesn't he?”
“Yeah, he really does,” I agree quietly, feeling a sudden stab of sympathy for my twenty-two-year-old, six-foot-eight-inch, totally unfairly gorgeous stud of a brother, who I usually can't empathize with because he's almost always the one doing the heartbreaking. The tables have definitely turned on him recently though, with the prophecy essentially dooming him to loneliness and then experiencing Sally and now Sarah.
“Thank God we don't have those sorts of problems,” Luke murmurs, and I can't help but laugh quietly; Luke and I are both flamingly heterosexual and incredibly attracted to one another.
However, the temptation to tease him about his comment is too strong for me to resist. “Are you sure you're not attracted to Sam? Not even the teeniest bit? Because that would be kind of hot.”
“Despite Sam's incredible good looks,” Luke begins in a diplomatic tone, making me grin almost involuntarily, “I am very confident in the fact that the only person I am attracted to is yourself.”
His eyes still on mine, he reaches out and gently places his hands on my upper calves, his touch making me shiver slightly, and I hesitate but a moment before bending over him, threading my fingers into his hair, and kissing him firmly, and I feel his fingers on the small of my back, holding me close to him and not allowing me to pull away. However, after a few seconds, he seems to recognize that I have something better for him still, and, my gaze locked on his, I pull my shirt off over my head and kneel down on the couch over him.
This time our kiss is more anticipatory and lustful, almost predatory on my part, and I smile against his mouth when I feel his hands on the bare skin of my waist.
However, after a moment, something seems to go wrong, and Luke groans in what seems to be exasperation as he pushes me away gently and tells me, his eyes large and serious on mine, “Lizzie, not right now.”
“What, do you not want me?” I question him, genuinely curious but still teasing as I gaze down at him. “Because I know you're lying if you say that.”
To get and/or make my proof, I bend down and kiss him lightly on the neck, smiling when I feel his pulse elevated under my lips.
“See, I knew you were lying,” I murmur when I pull back, and I lean in again, meaning to kiss him on the lips this time, only to be gently but firmly rebuffed by Luke again.
“Lizzie,” he begins, staring up at me like he doesn't know what else to say, and spares himself the trouble of having to utter another word by seeming to give up on the idea of articulation in favor of ducking his head and kissing me on the stomach, his fluffy hair tickling the skin right above my belly button.
After a moment, he pulls back to gaze up at me with a mixture of worry and guilt in his eyes that I hadn't noticed before, and I find myself compelled to ask him, now worried myself, “Luke, what's wrong?”
“I've been thinking about the agreement you and I made with Sam a lot lately,” he begins, and my heart sinks some as I'm forced to recall how much pain an agreement like that must cause Luke, “and I'm coming to realize that I really don't deserve you, in any fashion in the slightest.”
“You don't deserve me?” I ask in pure astonishment, wondering if Luke is actually listening to what he's saying.
“For us, to give us what I can't, you'd be willing to have children with Sam so that I may know what it is like to be a father,” he says, his tone bitter when he talks about how he can't give us what Sam can and referencing the fact that something about our adventures in alternate dimensions and getting burned alive has made him sterile, and I shake my head at his complete and total misinterpretation of my actions.
“You know, you have this uncanny habit of interpreting my selfishness as selflessness,” I tell him quietly as I lower myself down onto his lap so that I'm sitting instead of kneeling. “What you don't seem to understand is that I really didn't make that agreement for us. Sure, I want us to have kids we can call our own, and maybe I even want Sam to not die a virgin, but most of all I want kids for myself, for my benefit, to prove to myself that I'm not so scarred and ----- up by what I've chosen for myself that I can't love or be a good mother to a child. When I made that proposal to you and then finalized it with Sam I was only thinking about how this could help me, about how it could be good for me, so you really shouldn't give me credit I don't deserve.”
“But don't you see, Lizzie, you do deserve it,” he responds, stubbornly sticking to his disillusions, but unfortunately he continues too quickly for me to attempt to make him see reality again. “You did it for yourself, obviously, but you did it for me too, whether unconsciously or unintentionally.”
“If it's unconsciously or unintentionally it doesn't count,” I tell him to have him immediately reply, “I beg to differ.”
We sit in a sort of staring contest for a few moments until I realize that I'm not going to change his mind unless I hack into it, which I have no intention of doing, and I find myself capitulating as I sigh and mutter, “God, you're impossible sometimes.”
He smiles at that and then kisses my stomach again, his soft touch and the desire building back up in the room heightening my senses and causing me to be able to feel every contour of his lips.
When he pulls away after a moment, he says, his eyes on my bare abdomen before moving up to meet my gaze, “Any child that comes out of here is bound to have a wonderful mother.”
“And a wonderful father,” I add, making what I know is a far more accurate statement than Luke's; he loves children and so would absolutely adore any that are his, but I know myself to be, no matter what Luke says to the contrary, a wild card in the whole children situation.
I hold his stare for a long moment before he finally murmurs, “You know, you really should put a shirt on. It's starting to get distracting.”
“Yeah?” I question, arching an eyebrow at him as I deliberately shift my position in his lap. “Well, I think you should take yours off.”
I lean in and kiss him on the lips, my hands curling around the back of his head and holding his mouth to mine, and I can feel that he's on the verge of giving in when suddenly he pushes me away and looks at me with conflicted eyes as he says, “Lizzie, there's no point.”
“There's no point?” I question, more than a bit stunned and almost annoyed. How could he ever think that there's no point to having sex with the spouse you absolutely adore?
“Nothing will ever come out of it, Lizzie,” he tells me, and I can barely believe what I'm hearing. “There's no reason for it.”
“So you think that just because we can't have kids, we shouldn't have sex?” I ask, looking to confirm that I'm interpreting his hesitation correctly, and, when he looks up at me almost guiltily, I can tell that I've hit the nail on the head. For a moment I consider fulfilling what he says and waiting till he comes crawling to me to give him anything, but then I realize exactly how much I want him and resolve to have him here and now.
“Well, I can think of two very good reasons as to why we should,” I tell him, leaning in so that my eyes are locked on his and there's no way he can look away. “Number one, I want to, and number two, I want you. Now take your shirt off before I rip it off you.”
Luke hesitates for only a moment, long enough to realize that this is a fight he has absolutely no hope of winning, before doing as I've commanded and pulling his T-shirt off over his head, revealing his muscular torso that is just as scarred as mine.
“Now that's better,” I half-whisper with a smile as I place my hands on his chest, and he leans towards me for this kiss.
A few moments later, I find myself underneath him with him in the process of working my shorts off, and the last thought I have before shutting everything out of my mind except Luke is that I hope that no one is going to need me for anything important in the next few hours.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask Luke as I lay next to him, totally relaxed and contented, the entirety of my body pressed up against his under the blanket that covers us both and seals in our combined body heat.
“About how warm you are,” he responds with a smile, and the arm draped over me tightens on me for a moment to hold me closer to him. “You're like a furnace,” he murmurs in my ear, and I can't help but grin myself; producing an unnatural amount of body heat is just one of the many side effects of being a shapeshifting demigod immortal.
“Anything else?” I question, hoping to learn if and discuss what of anything else is bothering him. Communication is not always one of my strong suits but I'm working on it.
He pauses a moment before responding, “A certain twenty-three-year-old English composer with an infatuation with the Duchess of Bruges.”
“'We do not stay dead long. Such elegant certainties comfort me at this quiet hour,'” I quote Robert Frobisher's suicide letter, the conclusion to one of six stories in the novel Cloud Atlas, from memory, smiling slightly at Frobisher's eloquence and pedantry and arrogance and romanticism and all of the things that made me fall rather in love with his character and thereby made me wish I was a man.
“'People pontificate, 'Suicide is selfishness'. Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living. That could not be farther from the truth,'” Luke quotes quietly, his eyes becoming more distant with every murmured word, and he pauses a moment before meeting my gaze and speaking again. “Will I someday have to hear that from you? Will you someday send me a beautiful letter explaining why you had to die and who you had to die for and how you didn't come to say goodbye face-to-face because you didn't want me being an ass and blaming myself for not dissuading you? Are Sixsmith and Frobisher our future, Lizzie?” I vaguely notice how unnaturally shiny Luke's eyes are as he holds my gaze for a long, silent moment, and suddenly my infallible husband, the one who has been through hell and back for me and because of me and would undoubtedly do it all again without a second thought, bursts into tears and begins crying onto my shoulder.
I don't attempt to quiet him, nor does the thought ever even cross my mind that I should try to comfort him with words, because I know that nothing I can truthfully say right now would make him feel any better – those exact thoughts have crossed my mind on more than a few occasions, but for obvious reasons I haven't vocalized them – so I simply hold him to me and let him cry, every tear he sheds causing my heart to sink a little lower into my stomach and making me wonder even more if we're really meant to be together.
“Lizzie,” he begins when he pulls back an eternity later, his eyes blurred with tears that mat his long eyelashes together, “I don't want to lose you. I can't lose you because you're everything for me, and I wouldn't have anything without you, but I can't fight off the feeling that you're going to go before I will because you find something or someone worth dying for and end up finally being a real martyr.”
He pauses here, obviously collecting his thoughts, and I don't make any move to speak myself, no matter how much I want to deny what he's saying. He needs to get out what's on his mind, and I respect that. “Love can't defeat death, Lizzie,” he says, taking me by surprise. He had always shown nothing but the utmost belief in love's power before this. “It can transcend death and outlast death, but defeat it? Stop it? Never. Nothing can stop death, not even you.”
He takes a deep breath before continuing, “Love can't resurrect people, Lizzie, but I'm afraid that's what you're going to need if you continue down this path that you're on. I... I don't want to see you die, Lizzie.” He holds my gaze so tightly here that I know I couldn't look away if I tried. “I don't want to see you attend your own execution and actually get yourself hanged. I don't want to watch as you hang yourself up on a cross for the sake of an ideal or a people. I know that they are incredibly worthy causes, Lizzie, and that if you don't be the martyr no else probably will, but they're not worth you, not to any extent. You just don't seem to understand that, and I fear that your lack of understanding of how truly valuable you are and how much I really need you is going to find me a widower at age twenty. I don't want that to happen, Lizzie. You have no idea how much I don't want that to happen.”
The raw tone in his voice rubs my heart raw as well, and I contemplate him in silence for a few moments before finally speaking to defend myself and my sins.
“Luke, I don't go into some place thinking I'm going to hang myself up on a cross for the sake of taking down a tyrannical government. It just... happens, because I find myself getting to know the people and the society and suddenly I find myself openly challenging the norm and defying authority and I don't even know why I do it, besides the fact that I can't stand to not have the last laugh. But when I'm doing this, I never think about you or Sam or my parents or my brothers or all that I have to lose. It's like a compulsion that causes me to forget everything I could be leaving behind, and I really do hate it because I don't want to leave you either, but I can't control it no matter how hard I try. Luke, I can't guarantee you that you won't find yourself a widower at age twenty.”
He meets my gaze silently for a few long, terrible moments, and I'm on the verge of asking him if he has anything to say in response when he opens his mouth and answers my inquisition before I can even make it. “So what I am supposed to do then, Lizzie? I can't – I won't – just watch you die, so what do you expect me to do?”
“I don't... I don't know, Luke,” I respond, not wanting to articulate the painfully obvious answer that he should leave me.
“Lizzie, maybe... maybe we should take a little break from each other, to think about where we stand and reconsider our priorities,” he murmurs, his eyes on mine, and I inhale sharply, my heart catching in my throat, at the fact that Luke has effectively just told me he wants to leave me until I can truthfully tell him I'm not going to leave him a widower at age twenty, until I can actually control my compulsion towards martyrdom.
“Alright,” I say mechanically, and quickly I slide out from underneath the blanket to dress hurriedly, seized by a sudden desire to spend as little time as possible in the same room with Luke until I've had time to think about recent events.
Grabbing my phone and car keys and house keys, I stop at the front door to look over my shoulder and find Luke watching me – some part of my mind abstractedly notes that his gaze hasn't left me this entire time – as I tell him, “I'm going over to Sam's, if you want to talk and need to find me.”
Luke's face darkens in what I know to be jealousy at the mention of Sam – despite the fact that Luke is the only man I've ever wanted, there still is a rather large green monster of envy that looms over his shoulder at any reference to the twenty-five-year-old singer-songwriter ex-Hollister model totally and completely and permanently in love with me – but he nods in understanding as he watches me, and I hold his gaze for a moment longer before breaking eye contact and pushing my way out of the house, running like the fugitive from my mistakes that I am.

“I can do all of this ---- – I can topple governments and change millions of lives and win revolutions singlehandedly – and it doesn't matter because I can't save myself or even fix myself in the slightest. None of it matters because my husband doesn't want to be with me until he can be sure that I won't die and leave him alone by the time he's twenty years old, and I'm not sure if he's ever going to be able to be sure of that,” I say bitterly, looking up to have Sam meet my gaze with his stunning bi-colored brown one and give me a small, encouraging and empathetic smile.
“Lizzie, I can't tell you that everything's going to be okay, because I don't know that, but what I do know is that you can be amazingly single-minded when you set yourself a goal and so I know that – since you obviously want to be with Luke more than anything in the world – you'll find a way to stay with him, even if it involves fundamentally changing yourself. I know that you care about him that much.” Sam gives me another smile that is more than a little bit sad, and I feel my heart go out to him at the fact that he wants more than anything for his and Luke's positions to be switched, for him to be the one I would be willing to change myself to be with.
“Yeah, but what if Luke won't have me back? What if he doesn't want the risk and the pain associated with loving and being with a martyr? Maybe I've already lost him,” I murmur as I stare at the coffee table in Sam's living room, my heart sinking as a wave of terrible realization washes over me. “Or maybe I never really had him in the first place.”
“Lizzie.” Sam's voice and hand on my leg draw me out of my nightmarish visions and back into reality, and I look back up to have my eyes lock onto his. “From the first moment he laid eyes on you in eighth grade, you've always had Luke, and you haven't lost him yet by a mile. But if you don't find a way to see yourself as more than the spark of a rebellion whose destiny it is to be consumed by the flame it starts, you might; I can't promise you that you won't. But what I can promise you, because I know it from how I personally feel, is that Luke will do just about anything to stay with you, so if you give him even just the slightest bit of hope, the tiniest amount of possibility that you might change, that you might not find hanging yourself up on crosses to be a favorite pastime, then he will do everything possible to stay with you. He loves you so much that it would be a serious act of masochism for him to not to, because you are everything to him, and no matter how bent you are on hating yourself for what you've done and for what you maybe will do you know that as well as I do.”
The interminable sadness in Sam's eyes here is too much to bear – why do I always hurt people everywhere I go? - and I find myself rising to my feet, intending to leave, as I mutter the ultimate truth, “I shouldn't have come here.”
Sam rises with me, his expression a mixture of concern and hurt and confusion, and he meets my gaze as he stares down at me and asks with a worried tone, “Lizzie, why shouldn't you have? Did I do something wrong or-”
“No, Sam, you never do anything wrong. You always do too much right, really,” I tell him, and, when I realize that that provided absolutely no answers in the slightest, I proceed to clarify, “I know that being around me is painful for you, that it literally hurts you to spend time with me, especially when I come over to talk you about my problems with Luke, because, no matter what you try to make yourself feel, you want more than anything else for Luke's and your positions to be switched, for you to be my husband and the love of my life, and I don't want to hurt you, Sam; I don't want to hurt the people I love. But I'm doing that just by being here, so I think for both of our sakes I should go.”
I turn away, meaning to grab my keys and head for the door – not that I have a plan as to where to go when I leave here, of course – to have Sam catch me by the wrist and turn me back around and draw my gaze back onto his. “Lizzie, the thought that I wake up to and fall asleep to and that drives every day of my life is that, in seven years, I get to have you for my own, and you have no idea how happy that makes me.” His eyes are locked onto mine and his gaze is just about the most intense I've ever seen it; I couldn't look away if I tried. “Seven years, Lizzie, only seven years – that's millennia closer than I ever thought I'd be to being with you. You have no idea how happy that makes me, Lizzie – seven years and you are mine. I get to have a child with you – a son or a daughter that's ours! You have no idea how blessed you have made me, first to give me the sort of love that most people never even have the slightest taste of, and then to give me the opportunity to have a child with you – I could never ask for any more, Lizzie. And right now all I want is to be with you as friends until I can be with you as something more, no matter what sort of pain or jealousy I feel, because not seeing you at all is so much worse than seeing you with someone else.”
His grip on my wrist has loosened completely to the point where he's not even holding onto me anymore, but he doesn't need to; it is physically impossible for me to leave him now. “Sam,” I begin in a murmur, staring up at him for a long moment while trying to decide what to say, before simply throwing myself at him and hugging him fiercely, resting my head on his shoulder and feeling his heartbeat strong against me.
“I love you, Lizzie,” he whispers in my ear as his arms wrap around me and hold me gently but tightly, letting the incredible warmth his body produces work its way into me and maybe even warm my heart and soul.
“I know,” I murmur in response, finding myself utterly contented in a way I've only ever been with Luke and Sam, the two most important men in my life who hold major stakes in my heart, as I stand in Sam's arms. After a moment, I lift my head off Sam's shoulder to meet his gaze, give him a smile and echo, “I love you too.”
Sam answers my smile with one of his own, a gesture that lights up his eyes and reveals their true radiance – I hope to God that any child I have with him inherits that stunning bi-colored feature – and leans in to kiss me gently on the forehead, his lips leaving a sort of thermal imprint on my skin that I can feel even after he's pulled away.
Suddenly I find myself trying to stifle a yawn – I don't sleep very much usually, and dealing with everything with Luke has proven to be incredibly draining – and Sam observes, with a small, knowing smile on his face, “You're tired.”
He then grabs a blanket and motions to the couch with a quiet, “Come on Lizzie, let's go to bed,” and I don't hesitate a moment before slipping off my shoes and lying down on the sofa to then wait for Sam to join me. He gives me a smile as he slips off his shoes as well, and he drapes the blanket over both of us as he settles down next to me, his body heat immediately kicking in and warming me from head to toe.
Finding myself desiring human contact, someone to be there next to me and remind me that, no matter how hard I push people away, I'm not really ever alone, I snuggle up against Sam, marveling at the way our bodies fit together, his hard torso perfectly curved to fit against mine and my body the perfect length for me to be able to rest my head on his shoulder with no awkwardness in the slightest. Sam's arms coming around me and holding me to him complete the fit, and I doze off with a smile on my face because the last words I hear before I fall asleep are, “Goodnight, my love.”

“You are always welcome here, Lizzie, so if things don't work out, you always have a place here,” Sam tells me as he gives me a smile, leaning against the doorframe as he watches me.
After three days of recuperation at Sam's house in the form of serious physical exertion – weightlifting, distance runs, various sports – the itch to go back to Luke has gotten too strong for me to ignore any longer and so I find myself on my way back home. I can't truthfully tell Luke that I know that I've changed – hell, I can't even tell him truthfully that I know I have the ability to change – but I miss him too much to stay away any longer. If this is going to be resolved, it needs to be resolved soon, for my sanity's sake.
“Thanks, Sam,” I respond genuinely, answering his smile with one of my own, and he steps forward to embrace me in a silent hug for a few long moments before he finally releases me and meets my gaze again.
“If you need anything, anything at all, you know where I am,” he says, and I nod in confirmation as I watch him for a second longer, the cowardly part of me – which is far larger than I would care to admit – wanting very desperately to stay here nice and safe and aching but not bleeding with Sam.
However, the pragmatic part of me fortunately is larger than the cowardly part, and I give Sam one last smile as I tell him, “Bye, Sam,” before turning away and making my way out to the driveway, where my car is parked.
“Goodbye, my love,” he calls after me and waves when I start backing out, watching me pull away and not going inside until I'm all the way at the end of the driveway.
I don't turn on any music on the drive back over to Luke's and my house and so the car is totally silent, a perfectly quiet backdrop to the turmoil raging in my mind.
To be with Luke, I can't burn anymore. I can't champion rebellions, I can't put my face on banners, I can't allow myself to succumb to the temptation – for, as sick as it is, it is a very powerful temptation indeed – of martyrdom. I must stop finding pleasure in hanging from crosses, I must change the part of me that desires defiance to the end, I must quit needing so desperately to have the last laugh always. In short, in order to stay with the man I love and will love for as long as I live, no matter how many millennia or days longer that may be, I have to change a fundamental part of who I am.
I can't be the spark that gets consumed by its own flame, I can't be the hanged man who ties the noose around her own neck, and yet I know no other way. I understand how the concept of living to see the end of a rebellion is desirable, yet starting them, which I pride myself on doing, always seems to involve some sort of martyrdom. I see why people want to survive, why no one else ever wants to step up and be the one to start it all, but my vision on that subject goes completely blind when I actually get in a situation that could involve burning.
I don't know why I care so little about life, especially with everything I have to live for – Luke, Sam, my family and the life I haven't really even lived yet, to name a few. Being immortal, I have less of a sense of self-preservation than mortals do – it's an inherent trait of what I am – yet even for an immortal I am exceptionally indifferent on the subject of life or death.
Or perhaps it's not that I care so little about life, but rather that I care too much about certain ideals – freedom and independence and liberty, to name a few – concepts that always seem far more aided by martyrdom than any other method. I get so caught up in trying to forward these, in attempting to advance things I view worth dying for, that I forget what I could do if I lived, how much of an effect I could have if I survived to lead a rebellion instead of perish to start it.
That is what I need to do, then: I need to lead instead of start, command instead of champion, run instead of begin. I need to recognize that there are other options besides dying for a cause, which will be far easier said than done when I'm actually in a situation, but – even though I don't care for myself in the slightest – I love Luke enough to be able to do it. I have to be able to do it, if I expect to remain with Luke.
Suddenly I find myself pulling into my driveway – my body had been on autopilot to take me home the last few minutes – and I sit in the car for a few long moments, thinking over my recent revelations and deciding how best to word them to Luke, before taking a deep breath, climbing out, and making my way inside.

Luke is just sitting on the couch reading a magazine, almost like he was expecting me, when I open the door, and we simply regard each other silently for a few long moments, neither one of us sure what to say, before I break the silence by greeting awkwardly, “Hey.”
“How was it over at Sam's?” Luke asks, my heart aching to hear his tone so stiffly civil. He's my husband; he shouldn't be treating me like I'm a stranger!
“Sam was hospitable to a fault, like always,” I respond, and Luke nods his head in silent understanding as we hold each other's gazes for another second of quiet.
“Although it was interesting,” I add, finally daring to speak again. “He gave me a lot of wonderful advice about what I should do about us, but none of it really sunk in until I spent ten minutes in my own head driving back over here.”
“And what sort of advice did he give you that was so great?” Luke sets his magazine off to the side and meets my gaze, leaning towards me some, and I can tell that he hasn't taken these last few days very well either; there are marks of sleeplessness under his eyes and faint golden stubble along his jawline.
“He told me that, if I want to continue to be with you, I can't be a martyr anymore. I have to find other ways to cope with situations. But he also said that you love me enough that you'll be willing to do anything and everything to stay with me if I do even the slightest bit to stay with you,” I murmur, my eyes locked on his, and Luke's gaze softens for a moment as he contemplates me.
I take an uncertain step towards him, stopping after one when I can't really read his expression. “Luke, I know that if I want to keep you I can't be the spark anymore. I have to be willing to lead revolutions instead of start them by dying. I can't guarantee you that me making this change in myself, the shift from a martyr to a leader, is going to be easy in the slightest, but I can guarantee you that I will do my hardest to make it happen because I can't and won't lose you. I need you, Luke, and that is far more powerful than any compulsion I will ever have.”
I hold his gaze for a moment, one that seems like an eternity of waiting for Luke to either accept or reject my statement, the fact that I've changed, and I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding when a smile breaks out across Luke's face as he rises to his feet and crosses over me to embrace me.
I relax in his muscular arms, against his hard torso, as his familiar scent fills my nostrils and makes me feel at home like nothing else ever can and I smile when he murmurs in ear, “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” I tell him quietly, and he gives me a smile when he pulls back after a long, contented second.
He then leans in and kisses me, and I say with a smirk on my face when he pulls away again, “You need to shave.”
“For some reason I've found myself too distracted these last few days to really worry about my facial hair,” he responds, his eyes twinkling, and I can't help but smile myself as I stare up at him.
“Is that so?” I ask him as I arch an eyebrow at him, and he nods in confirmation as he gazes down at me.
“Mhm,” he murmurs in confirmation, and he regards me for a moment before adding quietly, “God, it's good to have you back.”
“It's good to be back,” I say, the most truthful I've probably ever been, and as he hugs me again and I let myself relax in his grip, I realize exactly why I can't be a martyr anymore: I'd miss moments like this too much.

[Tabuu]

Oooo, I want in! Fan club!

[Noctyrn]

Im in!