Project Faust
By irenadel
Chapter 1- Mephisto
"Who has choices need not choose
We must, who have none
We can love but what we lose-
What is gone is gone."
n Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
Dear brother,
Hi! Geesh, it's really been a long time since I last wrote, almost four years, right? Sorry but we've been really busy here. Icaro and me, we've been traveling in a fishing ship and I've barely got time enough to sleep. But now we'll be able to chat all you want. Poor Icaro, he died three days ago; there was a storm, you know. Now the authorities say that I stay in this stinking hole with this bunch of dorks or that I go to live with you at Sanctuary. Well, I'm writing because I really need you to send some money for the train ticket; anything is welcomed, I'll figure out how to get the rest.
Hugs,
Kanon
**********
Gemini Saga had come to expect of his temple a complete solitude. Abandoned, it had remained empty for many years since he...
Anyway he wasn't expecting anything or anyone, and he definitely wasn't expecting that boy lying on a divan in his old bedroom, legs crossed and delicate arms, stretched over the many cushions that adorned that piece of furniture in particular. There was something familiar in that pose, jaded and lascivious, something that reminded him of someone.
Mu would have kindly asked him to leave, Deathmask would have sent him back to whatever hell he'd come out from, Aiolia would simply crush him. But Gemini Saga wasn't any of them, and barely retained any semblance to them. Saga pushed the cape that hung elegantly from his shoulders with one move reveling tense and annoyed hand. Years of commanding armies of demigods had given him a rather imposing aura. And yet, the boy barely flinched. The same years spent in lies and deceits, sublime paranoia, had made him perceptive. And yet, he hadn't felt the boy in his temple.
"Who are you?" he demanded, standing taller than what he seemed able to "What are you doing here?"
He stood then and performed a theatrical bow (a jester! a mere jester!) to him.
"No demon, anywhere, in anytime has ever given his name freely" he recited, standing with the greatest slowness he could muster "Gemini Saga"
He had an oval face, with big and stylished eyes, vaguely Arab, vaguely Spaniard, for all its finesse. Hair longish bound up with great care in a low ponytail. Quite curious that hair, fine and silky; with a closer look it was silver with vague blue glitters, in spite of the bronze tint of his skin... and the eyes: scarlet.
"Who are you?" he demanded as he rose taller than imaginable. Majestic, would be the word. There wasn't strangeness in the apparition of this creature. Really, Saga asked himself why had it taken them so long to send him.
"Astarote, Beelzebu, Satan, Lucifer... Mephistopheles perhaps?" he gave as an answer to him, circling him slowly, his gaze never leaving his face. Saga found himself tied by those scarlet eyes that peered out like two bodies of violent waters. He fought against him, against the unyielding force that anchored him to those twin oceans. "I will be Sandalphon to you" Saga fought, he struggled... "Angel of dreams and illusions aborted, abandoned "... and lost "Lost"
He was free now, the dizziness of a few minutes ago was gone. He'd be more careful next time... with whatever was in his eyes.
"You have come for me then, " said Saga "I warn you that I will not leave without a fight."
There was a part of himself who refused to believe it, who refused to accept it, it couldn't stand the consequences of what he had been doing, because in a way it was innocent. Besides, he told himself, he was guilty only of searching for freedom...
"... and the loss of worthwhile human lives " commented the boy peeping from behind a folder he was contemplating with care "Athena is not the only goddess, as her philosophy is not the sole one. You've murdered Gemini Saga, and it doesn't matter if it has been done for a cause or in holy war... you are tainted Gemini, as are all your saints. Only angels may claim immunity to such a command; only them, and no one else. The blood dyes you in a visible tone, even for me. We who know the mark will recognize you under whatever guise you done."
You do not frighten me demon. Long ago I reached that conclusion, long ago I left it behind and decided to be free...
He is applauding...
"Very good. Now I know why you're on my list... and no Young Prometheus, I haven't come to take you with me, on the contrary really, I would like you to remain here as long as possible."
"You... "
"I too rebel Young Prometheus, but the difference is that I know what I'm doing."
Saga gazed at him, fascinated for a few seconds. No; he thought he reminded him of... but it was another, another quite different. Another on whom he thought more than the first...
"Young?" Saga managed to ask.
"YOUNG, too young, excessively young I would say" he answers, drawing closer to Saga, a sort of sicklly light animating the lines of his face "what are a few decades to us, US, who have measured our pain and loss in centuries. No Saga, you are still repulsively young."
Saga was losing his patience by the second, he was not used to taking concessions with anyone... still that had brought him to... no better forget that part of the story.
"What have you come for then?" Saga warned "And I want I fulfilling answer."
"Easy, my friend, I have come to offer you a..."
"And will you ask for my soul in exchange? Shall I sign, perhaps, a contract on my own blood? Or the blood of an incubus? Or perhaps a succubus?" Saga said, letting an ironic laughter escape him "No, friend, I do not think so."
Sandalphon limited himself to a laugh. It was a strange laugh, closed, rounded perhaps; the result, undoubtedly, of a private joke.
"No, Saga your soul is of little value to me," smiled Sandalphon, it seems so fake that smile, as if prefabricated, the smile of a mask... or a jester "especially considering that it will end up in our hands sooner or later."
It was then that Saga realized that he had another card to play now. This could be no mayor demon, hell's jester was the best they would give him. As long as he ignored that Saga knew that he had an advantage, however small it was. It wasn't like him to take such a remote possibilities as guarantees but on them he had depended the last four years. On the remote possibility that no one would notice the change in Kyoko, that it wouldn't come to mind to look for him in the Gemini temple, that Aiolos and his brat disappeared forever... and yet he wasn't too sure of the...
"What is the deal then?"
Again the strange smile.
"A wish" he said as he raised his index finger three millimeters away from his face "An only and, yet, unlimited wish in exchange of a favor "
"A favor?" answered Saga sarcastically. "What do you want from me?"
"You will not know until the day arrives, " says the demon quietly "think about it, Saga. I can give you your heart's desire, what you most long for - ambition, the term matters little - you can have."
"Why should I believe you?"
"Why not? I have not lied to you this whole time and would never do so."
"I cannot know that, demon, as you hide your aura from me"
Laughter again, only warmer this time.
"Touché, dear friend, touché. I you so wish to," he answers while stretching his arms in cross "Behold this tangle of thorns!"
His aura was strange at first look; pallid, hypnotic perhaps, of a bitter brown tinged with visionary yellows he had seen a few times - only on his brother if he recalled correctly - but he half glimpsed the blue and green tones of amorous obsession. If someone, sometime had taken the time to examine Gemini Saga's aura he would have found it spotted by that same color. But no one cared.
Saga only sighed in silent agreement.
"Think about it, Young Prometheus" he murmurs while dissolving in a shadowed corner " I can defeat Nike or bring back he who you banished once. It all depends on how you request it. I will not lie, but I follow the contract to a word." He makes a brief pause "Seven times seven days from now you will have to consider my offer. Use them well."
**********
There were many things he related to Saga, among them: the night, the clouds, insomnia, sweets and the last: Sunion Cape; the place were his brother had drowned. Mu sighed in silence, unsure of what to do now. He knew Saga wanted him to come and thus talk, the both of them, but an unpleasant air of disaster preceded this meeting.
"Ne Saga, if I tell you a secret... would you laugh at me?"
Better to put an end to this now. To walk to Saga and ask what was happening, even though he might not be able to help much. An outside perspective was always useful... not completely from the outside, he reminded himself...
"I feel people... I mean I feel what they feel and what the land feels as well..."
"Saga?"
"Mmm..."
That strange indifference ought to have disheartened him but Mu was always sure of what was right, even though he didn't do it right always.
"Why are you worried?"
There wasn't surprise in Saga's eyes when at last he deigned himself to turn to him; but there was a strange smile (bitter, jaded, tired... satisfied?... no, more like ressigned). They had danced this number so many times that each knew the ending. Question, answer, problem, solution... and on to eternity.
"This is where your brother died." Mu said after a few moments of waiting.
"Why didn't you ever read him like you read me?"
Strange question.
"Well... he was different... I could never reach him. When I tried I knew he was thinking on a level beyond me..."
No; that was not completely true. Saga was also capable... it was just that he had decided to stay and wait for him.
"I suppose so; I suppose he was always a step ahead of us all."
"Don't feel bad Saga. You were the one who got closest."
It was incredible how even now he could be surprised at how easy it was to read him. As if that mention of his brother's superiority didn't bother him. Brothers. Mu had many, stable in the mountains of Tibet; those brothers and sisters who had taken care of and encouraged him to what he was. Strange that he was the only saint unorphaned and unmiserable...
"So... what is worrying you?" he insisted; it wasn't easy to do it when he himself didn't want to hear the answer.
"Important decisions I cannot make..."
"One would say you were the Kyoko..." he smiled as he said it, to keep Saga from noticing the hesitant question he had been making during these two years. One of the few he had not yet found answer for.
"What are these decision, important enough to draw you from your duty as guardian of Gemini?"
"Decisions, decisions. About life and my future..." he cut there as if he'd been held up by the thread of his thoughts.
"Well," concluded Mu "Decisions about the future are easier when looking to the past."
Then he stood, with deliberate slowness, to give Saga time to add something more. He knew his friend was not yet done, but he believed he had, so he preferred to go without saying anything. He'd manage somehow...
Though he doubted it.
**********
January 22
The heat is suffocating; Saga and Kanon don't mind. Really, they use it as an excuse for doing nothing. They spend their day in the beach, swimming or fishing, once or twice trying their luck with the oysters. They haven't changed pants in three days and bathing them is impossible... Bathing them!, I can't even find them.
I don't know why I bother.
I don't know if it's only these two, or all five years old... well now almost six (can it be possible that they'll drop it as they grow up?). It isn't normal for two brothers to get along so well; I at least never had anything like that with the other five. I wonder if they can remember them, they were babies in arms when it happened. Maybe that's why they behave so; really, if I analyze it, they have no one, except themselves.
Though really it doesn't matter.
January 23
Heat's still unbearable. I haven't wanted to get up. Don't know where the brats are.
January 24
Yes, there has been too much heat this week.
It's all Saga's fault. I hit my head against the wall thinking on those two shitty idiots and they all nice and happy decide to leave. I've found them in the rift there is under our cliff. Those idiots were asleep, they'd taken off what little clothes they had left because of the heat and I've kicked them out of there.
Today there's a new game, it's called: Obey.
(Kanon worries me)
Saga turns the pages finding a day that draws his attention.
May 24
Today I went out to one of the nearby towns. Nothing changes here. Nobody does anything new and the heat is estatic. I asked for the fishing ships that leave soon. There was a strange man in the store. He seemed weird; he wasn't Greek, though his skin had the Mediterranean tone. Anyway nobody around here goes around so elegantly. Here in Greece everything's just fucking gross.
The sky promises a storm...
May 25
Today I hit Saga.
The kid has to learn that he cannot answer me thus... why do I try to deceive myself it's never because of that. Those things don't matter and we all know it here. There are little things in this world that matter, or that are worth the work you invest in them... but it doesn't matter how I look at it this one does.
I screamed at him. I reminded him he was five. Fi-ve. The same as Kanon. That I'm the big brother here. That they are twins. Of the same age and blood. That Kanon takes care of himself like him and me. That he is not a doll.
Kanon heard everything of course. In this family the only one who doesn't know everything is I. He was crying and he took Saga away. I don't know where they are.
There has to be a way to separate them without any of them ending as a martyr. This is enough already.
I hit him. I made him bleed... and he looked at me with blazing eyes. He looked at me.
There's no sign of the awaited storm.
May 26
Licencio did me the favor of bringing the two fools home. Licencio is my age and he lives in the self-styled Sanctuary of Athena. Saga came holding his hand and Kanon was sleeping in his arms (Saga had not wanted to wake up his "little brother"). He's from Italy, but has lived in Greece since he was six. He says Saga is a true angel... and I said he was more like a demon. He laughed (he is a man with a very sad laugh and a bearing rather poor for a saint of Athena). Then he said something more interesting. Something about the psychosomatic development of double personality derangements. He also said that I should keep an eye open if Saga and Kanon slept together.
(See Saga? One doesn't need to be your brother to realize what your problem is)
May 27
There's no time. The answer to my troubles appeared. I leave the brats with Licencio and go to look at the fishing ships.
(With a little luck everything's gonna get better Kanon)
The weather gets neither better nor worse. But it doesn't matter anymore.
May 29
I hate leaving the port. Really, I can't stand leaving the port. I wouldn't do it if it weren't unavoidable that I go from here. It's very hard to leave this air that still carries the smell of glory. But never more. Nothing matters to me anymore. Plus ne m'est rien.
Sometimes I ask myself if it was worth it... if that glint didn't end hurting me more than it should. After so many years, so many pseudonyms and failures, nothing matters to me anymore.
But now I will be free to go back. To go back to that blessed second. Free of responsibilities. Free of Kanon and his ingenuity; of Saga and his monstrosity.
Later...
It rains. It rains and I hear their voices in the rain. I see them dance in the white beach and Licencio watching them as I do. I see their olive skins against the clarity of the sand. Kanon embraces his twin; they are two extensions of the same body, made equal and beautiful to the image of a god that will turn his back on them. Oh god! Oh god! Children... no, monsters, disguised as infants, that writh in a pagan ritual to a goddess forgotten. My brother, my blood. Oh god! I must return, I must stop him, that abomination that calls itself my brother. It's horrendous, disgusting. Oh god, Kanon!
June 3
Today it rained too and I thought of you.
Saga never understood that entry in particular. He never understood much about Icaro anyway. Though there was irony in that desire for the port as it was that in the end what brought him back what he had taken away. It was then that the pain returned.
It wasn't fair really, that after so much pain that adored prize was destroyed by himself... and all for his rigidity. Licencio had warned him a long time ago, that the strength of Gemini was precisely that flexibility, that double view of reality... but Saga was very different from all those lost generations of saints.
But he was an extremist. Radical. Idealist. Passionate. Obssesive. To the point of not acknowledging the world around him.
Those first days with Licencio had been a miasma of the most uncertain feelings a child of six could possess. That constant of the pain that tormented him, as if they had pulled his arm off without bothering to treat the raw wound. He was a strong lad and survived, but the memory and the venom of hate would stay with him always.
How he had hated that older brother who separated them as children. He broke that embryo that united them without any regret. He destroyed all his chances of not hurting Kanon. If he had let him come with him, all would be different. Unfair, how he hated everything he had done. But he wouldn't let it happen again... Not in the name of any other god or goddess... not again... but bah! That didn't matter now... as would Icaro say...
Now to go on to those entries before they were born, the most eerie and cryptic...
December 23
Ah Clarimonde! White Clarimonde! So sweet, so beautiful, so honestly innocent! Give me a word, a smile... something, anything...
... and on it went until the 30th of may when Saga and Kanon are born and Icaro stops writing his journal to concentrate on an other thing of which he knows nothing... six months later he starts writing again and never again mentions any Clarimonde...
Saga and Kanon will never know who was Clarimonde, or who their parents were or why they lived by the sea alone with a brother only ten years older than they.
**********
The Gemini saint limited himself to observe with eyes full of sweet melancholy; that was how Licencio all over: fragile and serene to the point in which he stopped being the avatar of the goddess of wisdom to become the most conventional and likeable of all men. He would never tell anyone that he had taken the first week of his little apprentice to buy him clothes and shower him with gifts. Neither would he mention that Saga was indifferent to all his efforts and remained locked inside the room all day. Crying.
Licencio approached slowly, not wanting the child to note his presence until he spoke to him.
"Mmm... want to go to the carnival?"
Silence.
"Perhaps to eat?"
There is no answer.
"To the beach?"
The room simply burst in wails.
"Oh..."
It was the only thing Licencio dared let go before taking the child in his arms and finding that the initial resistance dissolved into a torrent of childish explanations followed by more crying.
"Perhaps a haircut?"
Silence again. Bingo.
"Ww... why?"
Licencio smiled before answering and began to pet his hand affectionately.
"Your little twin was letting his hair long so I thought that you would like to do the same..."
Now confusion.
"You need to give it shape first, and then it will grow correctly."
He nods deliberately.
Licencio limits himself to smile again.
**********
"Sometimes I ask myself, Sandalphon, if you yourself remember your true name..."
He remembers what it is to lay in this bed, it's such a little time since he did it; worse now it is only him and no one else, while before it was the heavy body of a warrior. That warm body, so gloriously warm, with the pungent aroma of live blood and that perfume of death and victory that tarnishes all heroes.
He remembers the pale aureole of sadness and of silent supplication that crowned the temple of the twins. And now it's empty, simply empty...
No. Not completely. What was that voice that he heard only a few seconds before? The voice of a boy it seems. Yes. That boy standing in the threshold of the door that he can see now that he has rose from the bedding so neared the floor. That boy is not normal; he cannot be. Of enormous hands, long and slender, and with the head too small, too rounded for the lofty and emaciated body.
The boy walks over the intricate drawings of the floor. That pictogram that has been ready almost ten years waiting to be used. Saga never occupied this room. He comes closer to him, that boy, and he-who-is-called-Sandalphon receives him with arms stretched, fallen, languid from so much weight. They have received him thus for almost a millenium ago; since a girl of eyes black and true asked of the suffering undeserved of this other infant of red eyes and charred skin.
"Now everything is in place..."
It's a declaration more that a question that is lodged not by the dry and back lips of the boy but by his red eyes that he observes with sweet tenderness. They lay on the bed; a luxurious bed, little stoic for a saint of Athena. The sheets are silk, gnawed time ago by the worms. Decadent. Decadent as is the cult of this Greek goddess... what have we left Licencio, if not to worship those who do not grow old because the pain keeps them young? I wish only for the end so that it may cleanse us of all ideological impurity and we may think only as ourselves and not as them...
He and his boy call for what was lost. The boy for his body, titanic, true, for a home that is kept forever and is given only once; and he for a king who drowned with the body there far away in Crete. All for that final fear.
The boy returns that affection as best as he can. His real body is far away, so far away. He feels how they come out of those protuberances of nerve and bone; how they grope him, explore him, taste him. But he's already used to it, and knows that these avatars of the plague that is to come are all the love that this child who exists since eons before the light that blinds us and lets us not see beyond offers him.
Even so he wishes that the caresses were others, another the source of the pleasure.
He remembers, a lie and a truth that were uttered only a few seconds ago, a few days, years...
The pain makes us stronger.
They open wider those green eyes.
The pain points us to the truth.
It stretches out that hand delicate and tremulous that only a few seconds ago held the sheet new and unpolluted.
Because without the scream in the night, nothing really matters.
He-who-is-called-Sandalphon smiles.
**********
Saga dodges the last blow with difficulty. It was a long time ago he refused to train with someone.
"If..." he made a pause to take air and he threw himself at Mu "you had a wish... what would it be?"
Mu was lighter, it always seemed that everything took him less effort, though it really wasn't like that. Besides Mu refused to talk while fighting which gave him the illusion of security and calm. He stopped his blow, using the force to throw him backwards. Saga fell on his feet of course.
"A wish?" Mu sat on the floor with his eyes closed in a parody of profound concentration, signaling the end of the session. After a few seconds he merely opened one of them and asks: "Ne, you have very strange questions lately... why do you think I have the answers?"
Saga knew that it was a mistake to ask so openly and that he sounded terribly childish, but there were only a couple of days left before the demon came to reclaim his prize. He had the impression that he ought to forget it, ignore it and go on with his life; that if he decided not to go to the Gemini temple the agreed day Sandalphon would let him be... why had he decided to go there in the first place? It was too long since he even looked towards his temple for that to have been a casual visit. The damned harlequin must have called him!
"Saga?"
"What?"
"I asked you a question..."
"... I don't believe you have them, I was only asking..."
Mu sighed in silence before answering...
"I don't know what I would wish for, I'm quite happy now, though maybe I would like to have a pupil..."
Saga looked at him without understanding really. He wanted to say something, but his tongue had dried up in his mouth. Mu knew perfectly well what a pupil meant and as much as he tried to find a reason Saga knew very well that Mu didn't want to die. It was like a kind of deal that the ones of the suicidal urges would always be him and Kanon. Perhaps Mu had decided he didn't want to be the strongest one anymore...
"Why?"
It was then when it really surprised him the softness of his tone, of his face, of each of his movements...
"Well... Licencio was very happy while he was training you, and besides it's the closest we can be to parenthood... I know not all treat them that way but that depends on me..."
It was not that, exactly, what bothered him, but the unconscious mention of his teacher. He'd been thinking so much about him that it was almost painful.
"That's how you love... without forgetting."
Once again as it always had the likeness between Licencio and Mu fascinated him. It was that same sweetness and calm, that warmth that formed a halo of apparent security around them... and still... the Aries saint lacked sadness, resentment, pain and hopelessness swimming below eyes greener than the foliage of the pines. Mu was of a warm blue, but Licencio was all grey rain.
There's crying. Someone cries. Someone screams. Why? Why now? The crying doesn't stop, doesn't want to stop. Not since it began, not until it drowns him... not until he flounders. Below the sea, the asphyxiating pressure of the sea. he cying of his brother... of Kanon. No, goddess. Shut up already! Now it seems a Christian lethany that clamors his name. He doesn't cry now but calls from the Sunion Cape. But he never cried there. No. He cried in the room when everyone was asleep, when he knew that he only had the brother lying by his side. He cried in silence, with a sob that would escape now and again. He cried when he believed Saga couldn't listen. He cried and Saga knew it and embraced him and spoke to him... and Kanon... Kanon kept crying. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Shake him, hit him, draw more sobs... oh goddess, shut up... it is not the same crying, now it is stronger, it is more hysterical, more trapped, less suppressed. The crying of a Saga with Licencio in his arms, a crying tainted red. This time Kanon doesn't cry, he can't because he understands not, knows not, because he would want to be the one that triumphs that day, so he can only look, slightly disgusted, without understanding what is going on. Without understanding there's a part of him that wants to slit his throat open. The rules, the horrid rules. Why are there always rules? He wants to break them, destroy them. Those that don't let him live, the rules of the gods.
Oh goddess! One wish doesn't work. He would need ten at least to righten everything.
I wish the crying to stop. I wish Licencio to live. Shion to live. Aiolos to live. I wish for Kanon to hug me. I wish they would let us be. That Nike wasn't invincible. That Athena and her rules rot. That Icaro had never existed.
He doesn't know what to wish for anymore.
You should stop crying...
Mu is looking at him. And doesn't speak.
We'll be all right now, Saga...
There's the sound of waves far away.
It's not worth crying...
Saga stands and said his farewell with a head movement.
We can do more than crying now...
He walks slowly, distancing himself little by little from there.
The only person who was worth crying died, remember? But it doesn't matter anymore because we're together.
**********
Seven paces to the door from the last step. Licencio counted each one of them along with the beats of his heart. Seven and open the door to enter his room where he was waiting. Licencio held unto the doorframe as he entered as if his strange verticality would collapse at any second. Yves doesn't look at him. He is crouched over the floor of the room. He watches the intricate designs of the half finished drawing, that stands mutilated on the marvel floor of Licencio's room.
He's worked day and night on it.
"Yves?"
He turns then, his eyes clouded dangerously angular now that they are exhausted; even that delicacy appears through every opened pore of his face. That shattering light that never vanishes and that tinges the cryptic blues and silvers of his hair. Licencio approaches three agonizing paces to him, he takes his face in his hands with infinite slowness and draws that unexpressive mouth closer to his.
"You called me."
A declaration.
"I don't like it like this. I don't want you to call me. I don't want to be with you. I don't want you."
Licencia lowers his head and rests his chin on Yves' shoulder. He sobs a little. And it is that these things don't matter to him anymore; now he ignores them and limits himself to be held by cold hands that descend and descend... and to feel the sweet pressure of the canines as they break skin.
"How hard you are. Hard and cold like a dream of stone."
Now he has his face between his hands and encloses him with the red pigment, resulted from having held his neck. He kisses his lips with eyes opened, hungry, but his closed without heeding the consequences...
Saga closes his eyes, and keeps rubbing with force until the skin becomes red and begins to hurt...
Brother?...
He wants to stop listening now, stop feeling...
You're so selfish!
Now the tears truly run down his cheeks scalping reddish paths on the dark skin.
You call me selfish, when it is truly you who never think about everyone else! You never think about me brother... about us... you don't want us to be happy! You are selfish, selfish! selfish! selfish!
He had forgotten how horrid he looked crying. The face swollen and the eyes reddened. His teacher had looked beautiful, fragile, charming...
He was also selfish. He made you kill him, remember? And he never told you why... I had to tell you; and only because I heard it from others. If it had been for him we'd have never known!
Saga looks at his reflection on the clear water; he sees how the surface is disturbed when he tilts his head a little and that one lock of grey hair falls on it... grey?... of course it is. It's olden grey because Saga can take it no longer, because the secrets are too many and the guilt weighs more than all the secrets put together.
Remember brother? Remember how happy we were when I came back? Because I did come back. Someone died then also. Remember that week? The day that rained?
Of course Saga remembers. The rocks that rose immutable and indifferent before the bliss of the two twelve year old boys that jumped between them. The ocean and the sky were vast and they were free.
Sitted on the rocks. A white shell. Red blood on white background. Kanon's hands over his own single one. His face shattering and ablaze. The lips parted...
Don't cry anymore brother. We'll be happy. I swear. We have an escape now. We always had. Remember...
The sea that sounded that deafened the sounds. The sea that drowns all. Hides all. Even them. Even that first sin.
But the laughter persists, sounds again and again in the beach that joins theirs while they run. Wet, enraptured, free at last. That same laughter that was heard in Licencio's room. Hollowed, cruel, sarcastic, indifferent.
I curse you Licencio, I curse you!
More laughter and terror.
I curse you to know, to know all the truth and keep living! Not even in madness will you find salvation! I curse you to know and be able to do nothing to prevent it! I tie you Gemini Licencio and I tie your tongue with you... forever.
Now the tears can stop because he remembers, but doesn't remember. Because now he feels on the skin, those heated hands like his; rigid boy palms that tour the forest green paths of his veins. He is still, immobile, conscious of the subtle blackmail of the patterns his brother's fingers trace on his skin. But that damned pride he has developed by carrying so much pain. Saga is a martyr in his own particular way. But he never begs not even when Kanon's weeping drowns considerations...
Saga... our time is so little, so short. It's always been like that. Let me trap you as I did before, surrender. You know it's the only way to our happiness. We're tired, so tired...
Eyes closed and a hand on his, Saga stands with tortuous care letting the nearly metallic sound of his hair's dripping escape... his grey hair. There's a little familiar pressure on the foundation of his throat. There is tension between his lungs, a tension that threatens to break the vocal cords that reside higher up. It's something that he almost forgot. Hate. These years with nothing to hate; with Icaro dead, Athena gone and the rules forgotten he'd almost forgot it. But now it is different.
I hate you Saga. For what you did to me. What you did to us. For your blind sense of justice, your fanaticism in every sense. But it's not your fault. They made you like this; capable of escaping from everyone but yourself... myself...
"Myself"
He looks at the reflection for one last time, the empty form of reason.
"But forgive me, Athena. I am mad."
Mad.
**********
Tic, toc, tic, toc, tic, toc... and the clock goes on.
Machazah crosses one leg and changes position over the stool...
The pentagram stretches across the whole room... its long claws reach the most hidden corners, below furniture and rugs. The pentagram is inscribed with names. Names of power. Names that must be written but never spoken. Names that have been forgotten and are more real precisely because of that.
Saga.
Wisdom.
**********
"It cheers me that you have decided to turn up."
Sandalphon was standing on the frame of a hidden door that led to the two twin bedrooms below the Gemini temple. One of them Saga and his brother had inhabited some years ago, but the other... the other was empty since a much longer time.
"So tell me, what will it be then? immortality? eternal youth? the love of your life?"
Saga sighed with gravity, as only the king would ages ago.
"What makes you think I will wish for that?"
He shrugs.
"They are the most requested."
Saga looks at the demon with something akin to the disdain that puckers his face in a copy of another one.
"Have you ever loved?" he replies with sarcasm.
Sandalphon's crimson look fixes itself on some point of the horizon that Saga cannot make out. Sad, absent, dampened with tears that are tinted red by those eyes.
"Once, in forgotten Chorazin. I loved her King, who rests now below the waters of Crete."
He took a breath before beginning. An infinitely human gesture.
"What will it be then, Young Prometheus?"
Nike, Nike, Nike...
Clouded sky, grey sea as far as the eye can reach...
Nike, Nike, Nike...
Red against white shell background...
Nike, Nike, Nike...
Kanon's carmin tinged lips...
Nike, Nike, Nike...
Sharp pain and the warm saliva...
Nike, Nike, Nike...
Moans between the rocks, crying in the bedroom...
Nike, Nike, our happiness belongs to us...
This night I can write, the saddest lines, Icaro's pen speaks to him...
"To love."
"Eh?"
"To love and be loved. That is my wish."
A brief pause.
"You are a wise man, Saga. Follow me please" ended Sandalphon with a lascivious smile that made it seem as if his eyes sunk more inside the eye sockets, giving him a spectral air a bit morbid. The boy descended the steps that led to the secret chambers of those catacombs.
"It's like sinking inside the subconsciense" Saga thought while he followed. He'd always thought it that way. The metaphor fitted Gemini better than any other.
In the half-light that dominated the vertiginous Gemini stair, Sandalphon does not bother to light a light. It wasn't that he needed it; having made this same journey uncountable times before, he knew each step and each crack of the wall.
Even when Licencio inhabited this place the walls were covered by a thick layer of dust. It was as if the saints that had resided here wished that whatever was below remained hidden.
According to what he'd heard told these catacombs in particular were even more ancient than the very Sanctuary. The complex of caves did not end with the two parallel bedrooms that he and his teacher had occupied. A few times Kanon and Saga had explored, as much as they dared, the intricated laberynth that was formed there. They used to play hide and seek with a pair of candles in the free times he managed to gather. Here underground, the sense of time was atrophied with ease.
Sandalphon walked before him without offering the slightest hesitance in his pace and with his hands, that natural equilibribriumof the body, tucked behind him. He wore an old-fashioned beig coat that hid his legs while it swung in rythmical temptation. Below it his black velvet shirt covered his neck. Curious, Saga did not remember what he had worn seven days ago. In these total darkness the only light came from his hair of bluish silver.
They didn't go to his old room as he had thought they would. No. Sandalphon went into the other, the one that had been...
A strange music as background. Licencio swirlls across the whole room with his arms stretched, his ebony hair slightly long dishevelled for once. He swillrs... and laughs.
"Forgive the disarray, but I had to be ready."
The room was in perfect state, truly as Licencio would have had it (Saga had been allowed in only once), but the floor was covered with strange drawings, made with pigments best left in anonymity.
"You see, there's one more thing tht must be done before granting the wish?"
Saga had eyes only for the pictograma that opened to him as a flower does to the sun. It showed him infinite shapes and words that were kept from mortals since eons ago.
"Yes?" he barely answers.
Sandalphon, who had moved away a few steps, comes closer now and for the first time Saga realizes how evilly beautiful he is. He is just infront of him. Saga hears something move below that so close body, something that is not precisely his heart. Sandalphon is smaller than him, his face fits perfectly on his left shoulder as he tilts his head to smell with greater ease the blood that bubbles below the skin. That skin, that Saga finds alarmingly thin now.
"We have to seal the deal now."
"Aha"
"This blood is of us both."
"Mmmmh..."
" This sacrament as well."
A sharp breath.
"As there, here."
Saga lifts his head as he feels canines penetrating skin.
Sandalphon bites his throat. Saga closes his eyes.
Disclaimer: Saint Seiya is property of Masami Kuramada and thus of Toei Animetion… ¬¬ besides if I wanted to steal it… I would have done it already muahahahahahahahahahaha… sorry.
Author's Note: Ha! You weren't expecting this… I translated one of my Spanish stories to English, and you know what? Expect more! I've got a mind to begin translations of not only mine but my friends' also… Be afraid, be very afraid. PS: Liked Sandalphon, ne? Well then go over and check my White-Wolf Inc. stories. He always manages to crop out there.