Disclaimer: I don't own any of the names, characters, setting contained within. Bioware/Black Isle/Interplay does.
A/N: Themes contained within may disturb some readers. Reader discretion advised. (Occasional typos may also disturb some readers...)
I
Blue eyes regarded him.
"Gorion failed me..."
"Yes, Child of Bhaal, he did."
In his captor's clinical gaze, he saw his own reflected. A quiet admission, one he had begun to realise long ago. Lowering his own eyes, he found himself drawn back to the masked one, losing himself in their icy depths. Their owner said nothing.
How had it started? He questioned, as he lost himself in memories… dreams of memories. The knife had not lifted, the scalpel he knew so well, learned from hours, days, months of its caress. His captor's magic had become so familiar it was like his own, searing pain, agony, counted in breathes. Endless breathes. The pain was only passing… those words, always dictated in that same dispassionate lecture were right. He had survived the process.
The first time he had been caged, suspending from a chain he could not see, cramped in darkness, alone. He had not understood. Now he did. Awaking to a table, strapped by leather, he struggled uselessly, then paralysed with fear as his master loomed. His captor was his master; that had taken time to admit. He had resisted, fought against it, but in the end, he had come to realise how futile it was.
No straps held him now; bare-foot, in a loose tunic, ripped and torn, he stood before the masked one. For a moment, he studied the crinkled mask, its veneer in mimicry of a face, capped by metal to cover the ears. Had they been surgically removed, or simply concealed? In their place were two ovals, one for each, pulsing slowly. Wonderingly, he traced each of the creases in his mind, the set of the lips, the shadows, those eyes, always those eyes.
"I'm ready."