The room was dark but its outlines were familiar to him by now. He had grown accustomed to the narrow bed, the faint gleam of the trophies on the shelf, and the hanging leather bags without necessarily understanding what they were. This room was somehow a more comforting place than the twisted and winding tower where he spent most of his waking time. That tower was always shifting and changing, and his visits there were never peaceful occasions. But perhaps that was as it should be; all he had ever been suited for was battle. It was peace that had always proven to be his enemy.
He regarded the face of the boy below him. This boy was really more of a young man by now, he supposed, already forced into a soldier's role in a war that was simultaneously very narrow and secretive and yet encompassing nothing less than the fate of the entire human race. He did not feel many emotions now, not like the wild passions that had once torn through him in his former life. But he recognized a very old feeling of protectiveness when he watched this boy, or answered his cry in the tower. He had once, very long ago, loved and adopted another boy, but that boy had betrayed him. These feelings he had must be the ghosts of those ancient emotions for Brutus...that was the first boy's name, he suddenly remembered. As quickly as he remembered the name he forgot it again, without noticing.
The young man below him was not alone, as Caesar was not alone. He had once, he seemed to remember vaguely, held the most desired and the most feared woman in all the world in his arms. But now the creature with him was neither woman nor man, nor beast. It was strange...alien, flickering and shifting against him at times almost like fire. Somehow it seemed familiar for all that. The likeness of a beautiful witch, like something from an old play (something by Euripides?) seemed to flit across the creature now and then. Other times, Caesar thought, it resembled the god Mercury. But always it retained the head of a beast, a great golden bird eternally clutching a jewel in its razor beak. Caesar glimpsed his face reflected in it a hundred times or a thousand, even in this darkness. The jewel seemed to burn with light no matter what.
He heard voices. The creature never spoke, any more than Caesar did. It was the boys, then.
"After tomorrow night...we won't remember any-"
"Shhh. Don't think about it." That was the voice of his young man, he realized.
"Are you kidding? I can't think of anything else...this sucks...dammit!" The other boy's voice was rough. He might have been crying.
Caesar listened for his boy to reply, but it was several minutes before Akihiko spoke. "Are you going to waste our time thinking about that?" The words were harsh but his voice, soft and quiet, didn't match them. "We should be focusing on each other. Nothing else. It doesn't matter what comes later...only tonight matters."
Junpei seemed to quiet down, and Caesar was left in comparative silence again. He lost interest in the boys moving beneath him and returned his attention to the strange creature. Was it looking back at him? Impossible to tell. Did the creature feel him...or anything at all? He wondered if the creature had heard the boys, and knew that soon they would be going back to sleep forever. One last fight, and then a return to that black ocean. He doubted that another boy would ever call him to the surface again. It was not something Caesar was particularly sad about. To be awake was to risk remembering old things, and he preferred to sleep. But perhaps this savage bird or witch or god beneath him was sad, and wished to stay awake. He touched its beak in a rare gesture of sympathy.
Junpei shuddered and dug his nails into Akihiko's back, so suddenly that the other boy gasped and opened his eyes. "What was that for...did I do something that hurt?"
"N-No...I just felt..." Junpei trailed off, not knowing what he felt.