Ling Long

by Albrecht Starkarm

The elegant tinkle of jade and the tender embrace of hearts and bodies in Shanghai.

13. Slave

"A-Ariadne?" That name, that impossible and torturous name that resounds and throbs with a heaving, tumultuous, aching grief; that name that shivers with a cruel abandonment; that name that shudders with a fear and anxiety that I was certain had flowed soundlessly into the distant, dark waters of memory, never again to well with such urgent and horrific intensity into my life. That name whispers from my lips as if the essence of some monstrous deity, resurgent in bestial triumph. Even with this surging tidal torrent of dread, even amid this resurrection of a dead and distant history, I struggle to deny it; to dissolve any sense of recognition of the deep, penetrating auburn that confronts me; of the voluminous fall of chestnut silk that plays along familiar, pale shoulders; the full and voluptuous femininity that I can barely reconcile with a vanished childhood.

My suddenly tortured and reeling mind forces itself to fixate upon that utter surreality; the singular impossibility of the creature of ribald and irrepressible sensuality before me, abundant curves and soaring beauty, being the girl that embraced me throughout those quaking evenings of subdued passion and fervent, repressed yearning, lips so torturously near as hearts drifted so close to a complete, syncopating union.

"Kimberly." Her reply at once shatters that armoring veneer of denial as if the frailest of crystal; it seems to tinkle with a hideous, fragile shriek of failure, lacerating shards rending at that desperately fortified doubt and rejection. Ariadne speaks to me in Russian; deeper, breathier, a sultry and almost exaggeratedly lurid sensuality permeating every syllable. Beneath that, however, lies an icy and brutal accusation; I realize that it is not the voice that I recall; it cannot be the Ariadne that I remember, even with a familiar timbre and rhythm of her elegant and patrician speech. "Kimberly Dmitriovna."

I wish to weep at that; to collapse to my knees, to claw at my chest, to wail and scream and recede into myself. I'm terrified; consumed by an abject and all-encompassing, awesome torment that gnaws at my very soul, that shreds through my mind with a demon's diseased talons.

"A-Ariadne." I repeat, again, though cruelly destitute of even the slightest lingering vestige of doubt. Innumerable thoughts rage through my mind: brief flickers of yearning, of peculiar and nebulous traces of warm and tender sentiments; a sense of raging, raw animosity that had seemingly forgotten me, that not once had she deigned to call upon me in Shanghai; a hate that she has returned, that such a powerful specter, continuing to tug upon those tortured threads of writhing emotion that remain, however brittle, fastened to my heart. At once, a quailing and panicked yearning for Xi Go overtakes me; I long to be beside her, for her to take me in her arms, to shelter me from this awful apparition.

She does not; perhaps she has heard even that low, gasping caress of her name. Perhaps she has sought to afford us a moment of reunion alone; perhaps she already doubts my sincerity in the face of this revenant. Perhaps she has not even noticed.

"Kimberly Dmitriovna." Rouged and voluptuous lips capture again that awful relic with a subdued fury. "Kimberly Dmitriovna." Startlingly, I realize that my hand remains fastened to hers; that I've yet to release those slim and graceful, delicate fingers amid this thrall of utter, agonized bewilderment; she refuses to relax her grip, and I find myself being tugged nearer and nearer to her suddenly frightful beauty. "I had never expected to see you in Shanghai." Spoken with a sudden welter of malice that convulses me with a quaking and irrational horror; the accumulated enormity of my power, of my cultivation, of this immortal's strength abandons me at once, and I am again Kimberly Dmitriovna, shivering in her arms in whimpering, infantile torment.

"A-Ariadne-"

"Do not say anything to me, Kimberly Dmitriovna." I do not understand the pure, molten hatred that consumes her voice; that renders it ferocious, ragged stone against which I feel as if my very spirit is being dashed, a tempest-tossed ship pulverized into hopeless shards. Tears prickle unaccountably at my eyes; a scalding, hissing mist that blurs the miserable and strained scowl that confronts me, that melds inseparably with the distant traces of memory that well irrepressibly from that which was Kimberly Dmitriovna. Full lips, dark with rouge, drift upon gentle, pink rosebuds; narrowed, accusing eyes intertwined with beauteous and tender oceans of delicate russet; a body budding into graceful blossom melds with the abundant flower of womanhood before me.

I wish to weep, and yet the cringing pressure upon my hand permits nothing but a low, keening mewl; a silent, pining prayer for liberation, for absolution, for release from this infernal suffering that has enveloped us as if the fires of perdition. This woman no longer seems Ariadne; a furious and superstitious sense that she's been possessed, or that a demon has claimed a terrible and cruel parody of her form, becomes a life preserver amid this babbling ocean of liquid torment. This cannot be the girl that I had... That I had adored; that was so passionately devoted to me, even with such a naïve and childish distance.

"Who is this, Kimberly?" As if the gilded rays of a divine host, the glorious and sonorous strains of Xi Go's voice pierce this whirling darkness that has begun to fasten further and further around us; a curtain of toxic and ghastly midnight dissolves beneath the luminous majesty of my love's arrival. Ariadne, however, refuses to relinquish her grasp upon my hand; a savage and crushing pressure of sleekly manicured nails raises fine, beading peaks of warmth that threaten to wring a gasp of anguish from my tautly pursed lips.

"S-Shego, this-"

"My name is Ariadne." She interrupts in typically flawless German, those words the leaden slab of a crypt thundering into place, sealing me within this shivering hell; they seethe with a barely restrained rage, a vicious and monstrous indignation at the rupture of this terrible trance into which she has thrust me.

"Ariadne? It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Shego." Despite this thrall, I cannot restrain the wondrous and beatific smile that such a glorious and intimate pronunciation of her exalted name invokes; it unfolds in tandem with the majestic, molten flower of warmth whose seething petals scour away the icy terror that has gripped my heart.

"Who are you, if I may ask?" Ariadne is transparently upset; a brief glance yields a raging anger boiling with her dark gaze, fulminating at the thought of having been interrupted in this truly predatory grasp, as if a lioness upon the brink of an unspeakable meal.

"Might I ask you the same?" Xi Go is furious; that certainty coruscates through the transcendental jade nexus that binds us. A molten relief, however, washes through me at the knowledge that she is not with me; that she will not abandon me for this unexpected and undesired reunion; that she will not scorn me for what felt so strongly of a terrible and unforgivable infidelity even in acknowledging this enduring memory.

"Should you not introduce yourself, Miss Shego?" Another irate, snapping retort, spitting my beloved's name as if the foulest insult.

"I am Kimberly's wife." A shivering delight coruscates through my very soul, even as a sudden and almost unreasoning terror overtakes me at the thought that Ariadne's parents may be in contact with my own; that this sublime revelation will sour into a nightmare exposure.

"Her wife? How intriguing; how very amusing. What a very interesting and perverse delusion, Miss Shego." Ariadne actually laughs; a bitter and penetrating rattle of ragged blades, scouring across every nerve. "How perfectly entertaining."

"Might I ask why this amuses you so immensely? And I would appreciate it if you would release Kimberly's hand if you are not dancing." A steely and unyielding patience, barely restraining a savage and lacerating edge that threatens to emerge at even the most innocuous provocation.

"Because you clearly cannot be; Kimberly is a proper and upstanding lady, is she not?" A vicious and terrible grin creases ruby lips; Ariadne's cheeks are drawn with a vicious tension, even as another low and mocking chuckle resounds from the very depths of her throat, harsh and biting. "That would be a terrible scandal. A true lady would never surrender to such sinful passions, would she?" I feel an awful accusation in that, her sudden glower lancing into my breast.

"I believe that you are mistaken, Ariadne."

"I think not. Perhaps you should leave and allow us to-"

"Release Kimberly's hand this instant, Ariadne. I do not know who you are, but-"

"Do not presume to order me, you disgusting oriental whore." And I feel my patience snapping; every trace of infantile reticence, of retiring and fragile girlishness, crumbles beneath the weight of those pernicious words.

"How dare you-"

"How dare you?" Ariadne interrupts Xi Go again, even as an unutterable wave of ferocious power begins to well from within my lover; her grip upon my hand has intensified further, though I barely perceive the relentless, grinding agony of bone upon bone amid this delirious and wrenching haze of vermillion rage. My lips work ineffectually, merely a pitiful and subdued wheeze emerging as an inner flame soars to a blistering pyre; stirring harsh and lashing winds into an irrepressible hurricane, it seems to raise my blood to a steaming boil, a straining and irresistible pressure forming within my limbs.

"How dare you speak to me in such a fashion, you slut? Do not think for a moment that another Chinese cunt will be missed if-" I do not understand why that awful and impermissible wave of evil has stilled, folding upon itself and dissolving into the malicious pool from which it springs that now lies within Ariadne, until I realize that my palm throbs with a rending agony; it feels as if blazed within a furnace, a shivering and prickling numbness beginning to overtake that scalding fury.

"Be silent." How can that voice be my own? Ariadne appears as incredulous as I as that epiphany strikes me; it does not tremble, as level and unwavering as Krupp steel, even as my mind convulses with a directionless and uncontrollable rage that threatens to spring from the outstretched hand that lingers beside Ariadne's reddening cheek. "Be silent, Ariadne; do not dare ever to insult her again."

"I hate you, Kimberly." Her own hand snaps upon my cheek; it phases me as acutely as a fly does a whale, even as I feel unremitting and remorseless blows rained upon me, before my fingers fasten around a suddenly brittle and tremulous wrist. "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." She weeps; a brittle facade shatters into feeble shards, enormous, bulging oceans of tears springing into vast and goggling eyes. I reel at that; those scalding tracts of liquid agony blaze through this iron shell as if acid.

"Why are you doing this?" It emerges as a plea, a desperate and pining exhortation for any explanation. I'm dazed, whirling with an utter, disoriented bafflement at the events of the past several minutes; it's as if time has dilated without notice, agonies and animosities burgeoning with unaccountable vastness with unheard insult.

"You have betrayed me, Kimberly. You... I hate you." I will not release her; Xi Go looms immensely in the fringes of my sight, the warmth and tenderness of her presence engulfing me with ungrudging encouragement. The awareness of some unfathomable grief overtakes me as reality abruptly lapses into gray relief, Ariadne consumed with a writhing and terrible, angry and tortured scarlet; fine, gauzy filaments of azure intertwined with that crimson core, and yet it does not feel as Maria's does. Liquid, rippling tendrils of pain, deeper and more unutterably awful than anything I could hope to envisage, throb and lash from the boiling core of her spirit; tears begin to mist across my own vision at the torture that pulsates through my breast, as if she has begun to inflict that raw and unendurable anguish upon me.

"Ariadne, I..." Words cannot begin to capture the nebulous and abstract awfulness of these impossible emotions; it's as if the voice of some terrible and alien creature streaks between us, upraised in a quailing howl of outrage and torture. "Please."

"Kimberly..." The dulcet loveliness of Xi Go's whisper is a trickle of luminous gold through that tormented darkness.

"Lemme go." Ariadne commands in Russian, fierce and suddenly ablaze with a vulgar, harsh fury. "Let go'a my fucking hand."

"A-Ariadne, please-"

"Get'cher fucking hand offa me, Kimberly." I start, finding myself frozen at the sudden and bewildering betrayal of every memory of her; it's as if she's a fallen angel, threadbare wings finally faltering completely. She begins to weep; bitter, miserable, unforgiving sobs that she stifles with a furious and straining effort. "Let go."

"No." I don't understand; I can't even begin to grasp why she now speaks in a manner that would horrify even Vasilevich, with a coarse and vicious savageness. "No. Not- not until you tell me what's-"

"Sometin' dee matta?" It's a familiar intonation, gruff and severe; Xi Go turns in the distant reaches of my sight, confronting our interlocutor with a palpable aggravation.

"Is anything the matter?" She speaks Wu; so convulsed am I by this manic disorientation that I cannot even muster the slightest shred of delight at that easy and effortless understanding.

"What're you doin' with one'a the girls, woman?" He's no better spoken in Chinese than he is English, I realize; he's no more polite, either, a raging welter of aggravation threatening to spring forth and consume him at his harsh bearing toward my lover.

"Excuse me?" Xi Go seems a bit perplexed, an uneasiness and incomprehension abundantly manifest in her beauteous tones and our link. "What do you mean?"

"Did I see that girl slappin' 'round one'a the madame's girls? You cain't do that out here, no matter who y'is."

"Pardon?" A growing ominousness that the hooligan overtly fails to perceive has begun to embrace each word with a molten sheath of steel.

"Chieftain Du'll forgive ya fer it, but ya cain't do it out here. You wanna get a private room with'er?" I don't quite understand; the whole of that laconic, alien cruelty simply seems to drift incomprehensibly through my senses, even as I feel my chest tighten with some fundamental understanding of its evil. Ariadne has begun to quiver with a hot and tortured misery; her eyes fall from my own, a ghastly vermillion staining features slack with a sudden anguish. Ariadne's shoulders have stooped; she stands as if a stricken animal, or a slave, bowed in a witless supplication.

"Kimberly..." Xi Go's voice shudders perilously in inquiry.

"Yes, we will." I finally answer; I barely even realize that I've spoken until the woman that I had once believed would be the center of my eternity fixes me with eyes awash in betrayal, crimson lips flaring horrifically against a desolate pallor.

"Kimberly?" Even Xi Go seems baffled.

"Yes, we will. I'd... We would like to have time alone with her."

"Go on upstairs, then." I finally turn, confronting the waiter; his dark features are contorted into a pernicious, unctuous sneer, his beady eyes glistening as he beholds Ariadne before us. "Don't getta lotta girls 'ere; maybe it'll be a break fer her." A nausea virtually indescribable overtakes me at the hideous laugh that spills from his repugnant, toothless grin; it's an agonizing struggle to restrain the angry welter of violence that suddenly twitches through every reach of my body. My arms strain with an inarticulate fury; images of death, of destruction, of horrific, unnatural contortions of mangled humanity well forth without relent. My power screams, pleads with wailing desperation, to be released; I merely offer him Xi Go's supremely disingenuous, hollow smile, even as I revolt at the sickly and diseased aura that pools around him, its taint yielding a shivering crawl of my suddenly chilled flesh.

"Very well." Ariadne has bowed again with an insufferable resignation, not offering the minutest resistance as she's drawn toward the expansive, sweeping staircase of elegantly hewn mahogany that curls with a languid grace from the balcony toward the floor. It's not obfuscated behind lurid scarlet curtains; no crimson lanterns blaze beside it. I realize that finely-adorned men and women alike traipse along its lustrous steps, similar beauties in tow; it's a terrible and vulgar epiphany, and yet I have committed myself to this, however repellent a pretension it may be.

"Kimberly, what are you doing?" Xi Go finally speaks, elegant and beauteous Chinese words alight with a palpable anxiety; it glimmers with a harsh sheen of some uncertain dread, as if she does not quite understand what I intend.

"Please, trust me, Shego." I implore. My horror at the pernicious splendor of The Red Dragon mounts with every shuffling step along the staircase; men and women alike are without shame to traipse along this wooden perdition, as if gleefully tumbling into hell's embrace with an illusory rise to a brief and sinful paradise. The vermillion banners now seem tributes to some abhorrent devil; the grandiose trappings of this decadent hall assuredly the temptations of the truly demonic. The upper floor is even more unashamed, I realize, than the liquor-flooded hall; its denizens drape themselves in stupors of repellent and smug satiety upon the wooden railings, seeming to test the forgiveness of the divine as they hover above the glistening marble that lies beneath us.

Elegant paneling and intricate scrollwork of luminous dragons in full, glorious flight join curious emerald pillars of a sickly parody of the luminous beacon of jade purity that gently rustles against my breast. I notice that not one patron averts their gaze from us; some favor us with stares alight with a salivating and inhuman lust, alighting at the image of beauty without any suggestion of humanity. Coarse words of sundry tongues bedevil us; other women, exaggerated, rictus smiles as if the leering grins of death masks, seek to entice without lust; they enjoin us our longing without desire of their own. A terrible and irrepressible nausea rises in a sickly haze throughout my mind and body alike; it stains my soul with a horrific and acid vulgarity, and I wish to retch, to pour forth the whole of these terrible thoughts, impressions, and sensations that I fear have begun to indelibly engrave themselves upon my mind.

I scream at myself why I must do this, why I should not merely flee without a further word; why my curiosity, why this lingering and tortured affection and fondness must impel me to subject Ariadne to further indignities. A door stands open before us, and I feel as if I should merely take flight, tears of unresolved tortures glistening eternally within these eyes, if need be.

"Are you certain about this?" Xi Go asks, a delicate and tentative murmur; the tender warmth of slender fingers has laced around my forearm, and I pivot to behold a beauteous and angelic visage wracked with a straining anxiety. Turning again, I discover what seems merely a pathetic and dismal shell of that flamboyant and beautiful apparition; dark eyes, hollow and expressionless, cast into the glinting perfection of well-varnished wood.

"Yes." A tortured instant that seems to endure for a silent eternity. "I'm sorry, Shego."

"Why?"

"Have you ever wished to ask Meilan, 'Why?'" A cringing recrimination swells into my breast at those horrendous and foolhardy words; they are unfair, and yet I cannot recall them.

"I understand." Perhaps she does; perhaps she does not. Nevertheless, the portal hammers closed behind us with a thunderous percussion that speaks of inescapable finality; the closure of a cave upon a desert father prepared for his final moments.

"I'm sorry." I do not know to whom those tortured words are whispered; they fill me with a sullen and tormented grief as intense as Ariadne's own. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Kimberly." I wish that we had departed; I realize, quite intensely, that I wish we had never visited this peculiar and awful place, this benighted realm of accursed and poisonous beauty; this land of unwholesome and diseased indulgences. "I understand."

The chamber that unfolds before us is not what I had expected; it is not the harvest of those nightmare images of decay and degradation that my forbidden perusal of Gorky had inspired. It is of a preposterous and vile stateliness, rife with European grandeur, as if drawn from a fine English manor home; soaring spires of a four-poster bed brandish the drooping satin vanity of pale ivory curtains in a warped and cruel parody of a demure bride's tenderest wedding night. A bedstand is rife with fine amenities; glimmering ampoules of liquor, crystalline tumblers, and water; heaps of refined handkerchiefs rustle upon a delicate breeze perfumed with the foul energy of Shanghai that has wholly soured before senses divested of any congenial delusion.

Without prompting, wrenching away with a pitiful strain from my now slackened hand, Ariadne settles upon the amply cushioned mattress; fine and lengthy, slim legs cross and uncross with worried anxiety, slender fingers straining upon downy sheets. Even as an irrepressible jumble of thoughts churns libidinously through my mind, not a single one seems suited for my lips, parched as if submerged in sand for eons; my throat quakes with an endless litany of questions, every one dying as it begins to well forth into the bestial reality that confronts me.

Finally, I manage a low, whispered, "Why?" A silent eternity unfolds, and I realize that she will not answer.

"Ariadne, why?" She does not stir upon her sullen and solitary perch. "Why? Please, Ariadne, tell me why. Why?" Every exhortation rises in urgency, in intensity, in utter and unendurable desperation; my voice has become a keening whimper, swelling to an almost shrill peak as I implore her again and again without success. Xi Go stands beside me, an unyieldingly devoted sentinel; the soothing warmth of her fingers interlaced with my own anchors me to this plane, restraining me in my increasing madness from simply relinquishing my grip upon this life entirely. If it were not for Xi Go, I realize, I would simply not be; if I had survived these interminable, agonizing days, this nightmare clash of the past and present, misshapen and tortured by the passage of time, I would cease to be in her stead.

"Ariadne, please. I- I need to know what has happened. Why are you here? Where is your family? Why did you not come to Paris with-"

"Shut up." A mild, whispering trickle of venom that seems to roar with the fury of a stricken tiger; it devours the words that linger upon my lips, shearing through this uneasy tranquility with a serrated cruelty. "Shut up, Kimberly. Kim." That wounds me perhaps more so than anything that could be said of me; invoking that despised diminutive with a conscious brutality that bruises more punishingly than a relentless rain of fists.

"Ariadne, I-"

"No. You wanted to hear what I have to say, didn't you?" Her voice has broken as she rages in German, shrill and hoarse with a manic and hysterical fury; every word flares with a blazing rage, unleashed at a relentless Maxim Gun cadence that shears through my very soul. "Perhaps your wife," Xi Go's most fervent efforts barely restrain a savage outpouring of this brittle and volatile power that palpitates through my breast as she wields that word as if a weapon, drenched with a poisonous contempt, "Should ask you why you're buying a whore for the evening. Or is she of your tastes, Kimberly?"

"I am not-"

"Don't dissemble, Lady Kimberly," a tortured and anguished parody of some awful, airy patrician chuckle. "Isn't that why you're paying for my company? Have you been wondering what a childhood friend tastes like?" I cannot believe the words that stream from her lips amid a haze of bitter and histrionic tears. "Have you been wondering how sweet it is, Kimberly? Do you want to take what you never could before? Do you want me to fuck you in front of your wife? Or is she really another one of your whores?" I reel at her madness, at that horrific and monstrous stream of obscenities that I barely even grasp; I do not understand this sudden outpouring of hatred, of directionless, eviscerating condemnation that hammers me like a cannonade.

"Won't you talk, Kimberly? Won't you hold me like you did; won't you kiss me, Kimberly? Is that what you always wanted? Or, do you want to be a happy family together, Kim?" I've begun to tremble uncontrollably, even in Xi Go's tender grasp; a furious welling of throbbing, raw, and angry emotions boils forth in terrible, writhing juxtaposition. A need to strike her, to silence her with an unremitting torrent of blows; to embrace her, to soothe her in this awful grief that floods the chamber with its livid enormity; to scream at her to understand; to return, for even the most ephemeral of moments, to the past with her, to quiet her as I had that terrible evening that found her wailing with unsuppressed anguish in my arms

"Well, Kim? Aren't you paying for this? Or, do you just want to watch me? Do you have that much money to waste on a filthy whore?" The serpentine caress of fine fingers, lengthy nails varnished a blazing scarlet that sears through my sight against the delicate and unblemished pallor of her skin, across her shoulders, taking hold of her gown in a ghoulish parody of a lover's caress, finally galvanizes me into action; I cannot endure a further instant of this.

I realize that I am no longer beside Xi Go as my arms fasten around her; an irresistible and intractable strength forces her against me, the tear-streaked warmth of her cheeks nestled against my breast as if a child's upon her mother's. I become aware of my own weeping only when the graceful lengths of Xi Go's slender fingers brush away the scalding torrents of anguished rivers across my cheeks, fastening me in her embrace as surely as I do Ariadne. Even as I rage against the agony that I know this must be inflicting upon Xi Go, I surrender to her patience; I sob with Ariadne, feeling her chest heave with the relentless, wracking wails that torment her.

Those terrible, ugly words; those bestial and cruel epithets; those loathsome thoughts and fears seem to dissolve amid this peculiar and improbable union. I know, cradling her in my arms, that my terrors of the past, of some terrible and enduring infidelity, are as trivial as sparrow's tears; I do love Ariadne, but not as I do Xi Go; I could not. It is not a love that rages with an infernal, roaring intensity, that consumes me utterly with a flaring and bewildering haze of rapture so complete that a single instant in its absence would destroy me; would encase me in an unyielding and impenetrable sheath of ice that would leave nothing but an arctic, soulless emptiness in its wake.

Ariadne, I realize, bears the love of a child; of a glorious and transcendental friendship, even bruised and mangled so horrendously by this ordeal. I do not desire to kiss her; even consumed with this intimacy, there is no sense of that heart-throbbing, pleading desire that riots through every reach of my being in Xi Go's presence.

"Kimberly, I... I..." That brittle, icy patina of hate has receded into distant memory; it seems to mingle with those peculiar, fragile vestiges of our past, another dreadful and tormented incarnation of that beautiful, budding girl that has blossomed into such a woeful and benighted flower. It is a peculiar duality of emotion, of thought; I barely recognize Ariadne, and yet it is as if we had been parted merely yesterday, that we are returning to the quiet, naïve shelter of Smolniy to resume our study of finery, etiquette, languages, and history; to huddle in a precious and eternal embrace against the leeching chill of our chambers.

"I am so sorry, Kimberly." A feeble, tearful whisper, rippling with a liquid grief, barely perceptible above my own quiet and strained sobs. "I am so sorry."

"For what?" I feign an innocent obliviousness, even as I do begin to sincerely wonder for what reason she should apologize. Amid this nightmare, her rage seems little more than the anguished whimper of a wounded animal; I cannot begrudge her that, regardless of how hurtful.

"For... For everything that I've said. Y-you must now truly hate me even more." That strangled sobbing continues to flood from between us, rising as if a scalding column of steam that wreathes me with a simmering agony. "You must hate me; you should hate me, Kimberly. I'm terrible; I'm disgusting." Her voice rises again to a miserable, hateful crescendo, every fiber of her being vibrating with a twanging loathing for herself. "Just go! I'm- I'm not worth anything; I don't even want you to see me like this.

"I can't bear it, Kimberly. You... You shouldn't remember me like this; not like this. Not like this. Please." That soaring, raw, rending misery plunges again to a whispering nadir of despair; I do not release her; I cannot abandon her; I can merely refuse her that selfish indulgence, cradling her in a shivering, wounded torment.

"Ariadne, I cannot; I will not." I finally affirm; it's a resounding vow, startling me with the enormity of conviction suddenly manifest in a frail pitch that continues to quaver with trepidation. "I will not abandon you. Not..." And it occurs to me as a sudden, savage epiphany; a tremendous, roaring and terrible realization that sends awful streams of woeful awareness sluicing through every reach of my soul. "Not again. I'm sorry." I do not know why I apologize; perhaps for being witness to this dreadful suffering that is her shame, that consumes her with this sorrow that flares in a pyre of self-immolation through her breast.

"You..." A deep and shuddering intake of breath that consumes both of us with a quaking tremor. "Why aren't you leaving?"

"I cannot, Ariadne. I... I do not know what has happened, but I can't bear the thought of being parted from you again."

"Does your wife feel the same?" No longer does she speak that as some preposterous and appalling affront to her very being. Her delicate and tremulous voice caresses it with the reverence that one would accord a distant and unreachable divinity; as a man adrift in the desert would the shimmering image of an oasis, praying for it not to be but a cruel, teasing mirage.

"Kimberly has told me of you, Ariadne; that is why I did not believe that you would behave so scornfully toward her." Even I flinch at the sternness of her words, though the quiet and contemplative murmur that follows it soothes that scalding blow. "But, I... I did not yet know of your plight, Ariadne; I'm so very sorry. I..." I can sense the taut and straining tension within my love; though the thoughts remain as murky as a turbid river with the fervent and furious struggle to suppress those distant, nightmare images, the crippling grief and shame and utter torment course in molten, searing torrents into my soul. "I can understand why you feel as you do."

"I- I somehow doubt that." A brief, desultory sniffle. "I very, very much doubt that."

"I cannot force you to believe me." An offering of gentle empathy; a mild, weary smile barely creases my lips as one of Xi Go's hands, slim fingers lacing around my own, joins mine upon the small of Ariadne's back.

"Why are you here, Ariadne?" However terrible it is to ask anything of her amidst this waking misery, I cannot restrain this furious and unflinching need for closure that overtakes me; it has gnawed at me for four years, pleading and screaming to a silent god for an answer of what had become of the friend that endowed my life with meaning. Now, I wish to wrest an understanding of what has become of her from that ethereal ineffability; why Ariadne, why anyone, should be forced to endure such suffering.

"Kimberly, I... Why does that matter now? I'm not worthy of your friendship, of your love; I'm not deserving of anything. You- you should just abandon me here; both you and your wife should pretend that we had never met." She's begun to babble; a manic, shuddering cadence of low, mournful whimpers that again raise stout and scalding beads of liquid agony before my sight. "I am cursed, Kimberly; I'm an accursed, useless wretch, and I've brought nothing but-"

"Be silent, Ariadne. Please." I cannot bear to endure this a moment further; my soul wails in terrible and insufferable syncopation with her grief. This love that pervades me truly is that for a sister; a bond of extraordinary power that eclipses mere fondness or familiarity; I do love her with a passion that throbs with a fierce and fiery intensity, consuming me with a yearning to comfort her, to soothe her in this thrall of unrelenting misery. "Please, do not say such terrible things. I want to know why you are here."

"Why?" A gurgling whimper, barely audible as it struggles from between lips that I feel trembling against my stomach. "Why do you even care?"

"Because I love you, Ariadne." I have never spoken those words with her; never before have I quite understood the jumbled, hot, and bewildering constellation of emotions that writhe in irrepressible tandem with them. No longer is it that relentless, blazing, anxious pressure within my chest, raking along every nerve with an urgent and almost mindless, inarticulate craving for her touch, to close a distance that I now understand would and could never be.

"K-Kimberly, you cannot possibly mean-"

"I do." I affirm, silencing any protest; lifting my gaze with a trepiditious unease toward Xi Go, a glorious chill soothes this searing uncertainty that continues to boil within my breast at the gnawing fear that she may not understand, despite this divine thread that unites us. The tenderest of smiles has claimed the full, rouged loveliness of her lips; an undeniable and wondrously heartening joy glimmering in a gaze of candid love and devotion. She does understand; I, at long last, do with equal intensity and conviction.

This endless, convulsive terror, this fear of being untrue, of ever having been untrue, to my love has receded into a distant and forgotten penumbra, not even the subtlest glint penetrating that all-enveloping shadow.

"I do love you, Ariadne." I repeat, voice swelling with a singular and glorious confidence.

"Not... Not as I love you." I start at that. "As I have always loved you, Kimberly." Those words seep from between clenched teeth as if some unutterable sin, an unforgivable incantation of wicked power that should never be granted life; a fervent, straining pressure upon my abdomen finally forces me away from her, and I confront Ariadne's lovely visage again, streaked with tears that have begun to geyser forth in massive, torrential floods. Soft alabaster cheeks glitter with molten sorrow; her deep auburn locks are disheveled, matted against her features with a damp misery.

"P-please, allow me to tell you this. Just- just once, even... Even though I know that you will never feel about me as I do you."

"Ariadne-"

"Please!" A brief and garbled wail recedes into a low and mournful whimper. "Please, Kimberly. I... I love you; I love you so much. I've loved you since the moment that we met at Smolniy; since the second that you were introduced to me, that you entrusted yourself to me. Even- even then, I knew that it wasn't the love that sisters or friends should feel; I knew that it was terrible, that it was sinful, that you would never, ever forgive me for something so awful.

"I... I know that it is a sin, but I feel so foolish, seeing you this way with... With your wife." A brief, tortured instant of pensive silence. "Your wife." Despite a desperate struggle to preserve a gentle neutrality, I can feel an angry welter of resentment and regret flare into her quaking tone. "Your wife. She- she is so beautiful; you are so beautiful. More... More than I could ever possibly have believed.

"I know that it is terribly selfish of me... It's terribly selfish to tell you this, Kimberly; especially now. I'm sure that you hate me; and I'm sure that your wife hates me all the more for this dreadful confession. You probably didn't even notice, but there were so many times, when I held you in my arms, that I wanted more; that I burned to take hold of you with a lover's passion, to close that tiny distance that would always linger between us and kiss you.

"And... And I cannot now. Throughout these four years, I've preserved myself with fantasies about being with you; visualizing myself always with you, in your arms, sheltered by your warmth in Smolniy, in Saint Petersburg, away from all of this. I have kept those thoughts alive because I always prayed, again and again, to god, no matter how sinful and wretched those prayers were, for us to be reunited; and I have found that... That it is meaningless, Kimberly.

"I am ruined; I'm nothing but a broken and useless thing, and you are so beautiful. You- you can even find the happiness of marriage with your wife in this land, and I could never even conjure the courage to tell you how deeply I cared for you. I wasted so much time, so many opportunities, because of that fear, and now my life is nothing but that. I know that it is horrible to say this, for someone like me... For- for anyone to rue this, to mourn this, in the presence of... Of..." Deep russet, misted with an almost impenetrable, gleaming haze of tears, flits to Xi Go; there is an unutterable anguish swimming within that blazing ocean, a grief and sorrow and regret and guilt that I feel resound even into my bride's soul. Ariadne cannot bear to speak that word; to acknowledge again, with such terrible and utter finality, the death of those dreams that have sustained her.

I have pondered often if I would feel any twinge of regret of my own if I were to hear this; if I would feel that my life could ever have been so complete as it is now with Xi Go in Ariadne's arms, or if it would merely be a terrible imposter; a pathetic and feeble imitation of that fulfillment and all-enveloping adoration. And I understand that it would not be; my thoughts, however cruel, do not drift to a whimsical and wistful sense of what could have been; I can think only of my eternity with Xi Go, and I know that I cannot speak those words to this tortured and woeful being before me.

"D-do not feel obligated to say anything. I... I know that you never felt for me as I did you." Perhaps I did; my security, my certainty, in the transcendental beauty of my love with Xi Go emboldens me to ponder that.

"I do love you, Ariadne." I finally conclude.

"That... That is not how I wished to hear that, Kimberly." And, as if the rupturing of a dam, Ariadne's tears pour forth in unimaginable profusion; she collapses with a cringing, shuddering explosion of irrepressible sorrow, swelling forth in wrenching waves of torment, writhing with a tangible and sanguine awfulness. "I'm sorry, but that's not how I'd wish to hear you... To hear you tell me that; not with the woman that you truly love; not with your future beside your distant past."

"I am sorry, Ariadne." My own whisper trembles with an unsuppressed grief. "I'm so sorry."

"D-don't apologize, Kimberly; don't insult me with an apology. You- you deserve to be happy; you didn't even... Didn't even know that I was alive. You didn't know what had become of me." Those awful, convulsive, wracking wails continue to swell to a hellish crescendo. Even clenching closed my eyes with the bitterest and most fervent effort, those terrible, angrily rippling tendrils of her suffering continue to lash through my soul as bestial, snapping apparitions of vermillion.

"I'm sorry." Again, I can but apologize. "I... I feel as if I'd abandoned you, Ariadne."

"You have not. I... I don't hate you; I could never hate you. I'm sorry, Kimberly; I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." Repeated as a dreadful and tortured mantra. "Seeing- seeing you, after so much time, I was afraid- so afraid. I... I felt like all of that love, at once, had been betrayed to glimpse you in- in a beautiful dress, without a single care, barely even recognizing me.

"In that second, I was terrified that you'd forgotten me, Kimberly; that I meant so little to you that life just continued without another thought. That- that you'd just become careless and frivolous, living here without a single worry; that every second that I had preserved our love was for nothing. I- I just became so angry, and... And I wanted to take you with me; to claim you; to make you sweep me away from all of this."

"I will." That is not a vow that lunges without thought or contemplation to my lips as some impetuous impulse; it is not a solemn promise spoken without concern for its repercussions. It is an iron, unyielding certainty that I must liberate my friend, my sister, a woman that I truly, deeply love from this waking nightmare. Even if I cannot deliver her from the wailing sorrow that convulses her, that will consume her as surely as... As such unspeakable loss had Xi Go with every unimaginable parting; even if I cannot free her from the grip of such misery, I will release these shackles of inhumanity. The mystic strength that suffuses me with a throbbing, palpitating fury grants me that certainty.

"That's ridiculous, Kimberly." Another dismal and pathetic snuffle, even as a sudden, twanging strain consumes her, as if a cord drawn taut. "Don't- don't say that. I can't bear to hear anything so cruel, even if... Even if you're trying to cheer me."

"I'm quite sincere, Ariadne." And I truly am. The conviction to free her from this dismal plight is all-consuming and without reservation. "Truly."

"How, Kimberly? How? D-do you even have the slightest inkling of what is happening here?" However intensely it should aggravate me, I don't begrudge her this condescending sense of my utter unworldliness and ignorance.

"I have, Ariadne; I have." Partially, in any event. Perhaps the words and abstract ideas elude my dazed and directionlessly groping mind, but the certain and terrible, wrenching sense of some dreadful evil is impossibly manifest; she weeps and sobs in the shackles of some indescribably vile bondage, and I will not abide it a moment further.

"Do you? I... I do not wish to call you simple, but-" I cannot bear the awful warring of some desperate, pleading hope and a crushing resignation of being beyond salvation within her quivering voice.

"I know that I am unworldly, Ariadne; I know this more intensely than anyone." I cringe at that notion, that sense of being eternally swaddled within the sheltering folds of some vacuous and uninterrupted childhood, isolated from the cruel and crushing reality of humanity. "Nevertheless, I know that this is wrong; that you do not belong here. Please, believe me, Ariadne." A beat as I offer a fervent, pleading gaze to Xi Go, eyes alight with a pining for her to intervene, to resolve the whole of this with some mystic incantation, some invocation of the ineffable and omnipotent. "Please."

"Kimberly is right." I know that it is a wrenching struggle for Xi Go; I know that, for her unfaltering certainty in our love, of my unyielding commitment, this is nevertheless a confrontation with the nightmarish; I know that, perhaps, I would not be so patient with Meilan. Nevertheless, with a true immortal's strength, she speaks with a fervent, iron conviction; her tone does not waver, and her dark, soulful stare does not once flicker from its purchase upon us.

"W-what? What are you talking about?"

"My name is Shego, Ariadne; please, call me that." Again, with a humanity that I could never demand of her amid this turmoil, Xi Go commands this with an aching, conciliatory tenderness.

"Why should you have any cause to help me, Miss Shego?"

"You cared for Kimberly; you love her, I think, as I do. I... I owe you a great deal more than I could possibly aspire to explain to you for caring for her, for sheltering her in her youth, when we did not yet know of one another. I cannot blame you for your love any more so than you can me." My love's words do not waver, and I understand with a renewed, blazing flame of passion why I adore her; why my reverence, my love, my unfailing commitment to her is as if divine worship.

"I..." Ariadne's eyes glimmer with a solemn and cruel mist, her fine features straining with a quaking tension as some terrible inner battle rages; benevolence, hatred, inhumanity, love, devotion, betrayal, rage, and tenderness... Those seem to flare in equal measure, mingling and intertwining, parting and clashing, within her anguished gaze; she finally speaks. "I do not think that I could say that to you, Miss Shego; I'm sorry. I... I know that I would not be so kind if I found myself in your place."

"I think that you would; I am because of this love. I know that this is torture for you, Ariadne, but I would like to help you; no one deserves this. This is... This is unforgivable." A low and pensive murmur, rising with a swelling conviction; my own heart soars with an extraordinary pride, a singular and overpowering delight, that Xi Go is my love, that she is my very life.

"I... Do you truly mean this? That you will protect me? What would you do?" She seems barely to even accept the notion, even as she grasps at the very prospect with a desperate ferocity.

"Why are you here, Ariadne?" Xi Go has settled beside her; I remain standing, her gaze drifting uneasily between us, as if surrounded by a pair of fearsome and terrible predators.

"W-what do you mean?"

"Why are you in Shanghai?" Xi Go seems to command an answer, even as Ariadne's gentle and tortured eyes flare with a liquid anguish at such a thought.

"W-why? I..."

"It's all right, Ariadne." My words barely seem to soothe her, as if the feeblest of mist struggling to extinguish a bonfire. "You- you don't need to tell us."

"I should tell you, Kimberly; I should. I... I want to tell you; I haven't even spoken to anyone since... Since..." Any further words dissolve into a gurgling agony; it seems as if she's been robbed of every trace of strength, buckling upon herself as though a shattered hulk, quiet, whimpering sobs erupting from the very depths of her soul. "Since I was brought here."

"There's no need, Ariadne; truly."

"You haven't even seen me for four years, and yet you act as if I'm still your friend from Smolniy, even as I've acted so horribly toward you." She whimpers, deep, wrenching gasps lurching into every word. "Why are you so kind to me?"

"Because, Ariadne... Because you are my friend; because a day has not passed when I haven't thought of you. I had never forgotten you; I missed you more terribly than I could believe those four years. I always feared for you, for what might have become of you and your family; I waited every hour of every day in Paris with a hope that you'd arrive, that everything would become normal again. I wept with our parting; I felt as if I'd lost some essential part of myself." Even if that Kimberly Dmitriovna has been consigned to the silent oblivion of some distant tomb, those emotions continue throb with a fierce and urgent intensity, as if merely a day has passed since our parting.

"I love Shego... I know that it is difficult for you to hear, but I love her more deeply than I could ever hope to describe; I am her wife; we will truly be married when I, at last, can be away from my own family. But, I love you, as well; it's a different sort of love, but love nevertheless, and it would torture me until the..." A harsh and severe, hitching intake of breath. "Until the end of time, Ariadne, if I were to leave you here. I... I do not even wish to know what-"

"I am a whore, Kimberly." An awful and wrenching, muted scream; the words linger as if some nightmare, malign mist. "I am a whore. You... You paid for me this evening, Kimberly, because- because that horrible beast owns me. I... I am ruined, destroyed; there is nothing left of me that you knew-"

"That's nonsense."

"I have been hurt so often that I cannot even feel the pain, Kimberly; I can't feel anything. I just look at that dreadful ceiling and think of you; I always hope that you will come for me, that you will be the one to hold me, to take me away from this. I could not even cry."

"How did this happen, Ariadne? How?" Her family was wealthier than my own; the regal enormity of their affluence was such that dukes and royalty craved her hand in marriage. She dwelt in finery so exquisite that our own manor was as if a hovel; her clothing rendered my own paltry rags.

"We did not leave, Kimberly; not when your family did. My... My parents would not dream of abandoning their factories, their properties, even when everything began to fall apart. There was so much violence; even if I did not see it, or even know of it, at first, it became terrible. There was daily fighting; rioting and bloodshed. I remember learning to know which ones were the Maxim Guns from our servants, and which were rifles; which were pistols; which were bombs; which ones could reach into our home, even through the walls." Unaccountably, horrifically, Ariadne's speech has become utterly bereft of the subtlest suggestion of expression, a level and sullen monotone; neither fear, nor torment, nor anguish, nor excitement, nor any suggestion of humanity seep through that impassive mask of complete and singular apathy that seems to consume her very soul. Terribly, even her eyes have become glazed with an icy cast, as if receding into the depths of some unspeakable past as she recounts this; as if devoured by a waking nightmare that has engulfed her spirit without relent.

"I... I don't understand, Ariadne."

"What don't you understand?" Still dazed, she nevertheless appears another woman entirely, snapped from that monstrous thrall.

"Why... Why your family did not depart; did my father not counsel yours to do so? My parents were not eager to leave, by any means, but we fled to France once the upheaval began; even with the peril of the war, it was still safer to escape to the west."

"Pride." That awful distance seems to dissolve into nothingness, a searing and acid bitterness leeching into the familiar, lovely strains of her voice. "Pride. Foolish, stupid, unreasoning pride; pride so strong that they would not leave, and would not compromise with the Provisional Government or the Bolsheviks or anyone else. My father would not pay the bribes at first; he would not act in his family's interest, because we were royalty.

"Royalty, Kimberly! As if that matters now. D-do you know what happened to royalty after the Revolution, Kimberly? They're dead; they were shot. 'Liquidated,'" an unaccountably mordant and cruel amusement swells for a moment, "As the Leninists said. And there's another war now, too."

"I know." A low and dismal sigh. "I know. I... I read the newspaper; I have until coming here, anyway. I- I always sought out your family's name; I wondered what had happened to you." With a harsh swallow of what feels a stream of ragged spines, I conjure the will to continue. "But, what had happened to your family? Why are you in Shanghai?"

"The war, Kimberly. The- the civil war, that is; the one that's tearing apart our country." It's been a seeming eternity since I have considered Russia 'my' country, and yet I nevertheless afford her a nod of acknowledgment. "It's a nightmare. Do... Do you have any idea what's happening there? People are starving; they're dying by the thousands and thousands every day; they're killing each other for kindling. For kindling! It's... It's impossible; everyone is a killer; everyone is a murderer.

"There is no one good left in our land, Kimberly. No one cares what happens to their neighbor, so long as they can steal their livelihood to survive. I... I know," a deep and tremulous, tortured intake of breath, "I know that people like our," I cringe at the accusation, but I cannot reject it, "Families are at fault; I know that it is the wealth and privilege that we took for granted. It was even having enough to eat while the people starved; and we did not even know it. Did... Did you know that there were poor people before the revolution began? Did you even know that's what the bible had meant?"

"No." I cannot but answer sincerely; I feel a fool, but that is nonetheless true. I could not even begin to envision then what poverty was; what even being of modest means had been. Guilt convulses me when I realize that I cannot struggle to imagine Xi Go's misery as a child.

"Do not blame yourself for your family's lot, Ariadne." Xi Go finally speaks again; a welter of astonishment floods through me at the tenderest of caresses of those fine, slender fingers across Ariadne's bare shoulder. "I was raised with unbelievable poverty, and I do not blame my family for that." It is obvious that she refuses to blame them for that alone as an irrepressible flare of hate flickers through her dark gaze. "I do not blame myself. I do not blame Kimberly for being wealthy."

"We were fools; stupid, stupid fools, Miss Shego. We may not be to blame for inheriting great wealth, but we were for enlarging it with the blood and sweat of men and women treated like slaves. We were at fault for hurting so many for a few more luxuries that we didn't even notice. I... I'm beginning to think that this torture is divine retribution for our sins."

"That's moronic." Xi Go's stern snarl rends through the agonizing silence as if a blade of jagged steel. "That is one of the stupidest things that I have ever heard. I, too, believed that the pain that I suffered once was punishment for some past wrongs, but that is nonsense. There... There is no justice that would hurt anyone so cruelly; there is no god that would be so bestial as to..." Without restraint, Xi Go claims Ariadne's hand, fastening it between her own with an almost crushing ferocity. "To take away something so precious from you, Ariadne."

"You understand, don't you?" A whisper of near-awe seeps from between her lips as auburn pools finally embrace deep and brooding sloe. "You... You've suffered like this, haven't you?"

"My parents sold me, as well, Ariadne; when I was only a young girl. I... I did not even know it until it was much, much too late."

"A-Ariadne, you..." I cannot even complete that thought, my words trickling into a sullen nothingness. I, foolishly, did not even ponder anything so unfathomably dreadful; it seems impossible that anyone, ever, could be of such bestial and loathsome cruelty.

"Yes." A hot, tortured whisper, rising to a mournful, keening cry. "Yes, Kimberly."

"How did this happen, Ariadne?"

"We fled from the war; it was much too late, but we still fled to the east. It... It was terrible, Kimberly." A shivering, unsteady whimper. "Just... Just, just so very, unutterably terrible. We left with so little. They- they came to our house one evening; most of our servants had abandoned us, and yet some had remained. They had started taking so much in bribes, but my father continued everyday to tell us that everything would be fine; that the Tsar would return, and that all would be well. The soldiers," she snarls, a sudden flaring of an unfamiliar hate untempered by anything so gentle as humanity, "They were brutes; they threatened us; they insulted us; they said terrible, unrepeatable things.

"Still, my father would not leave until that evening. The Red Guard- they called themselves that, but were only a gang of thugs- stormed through our gate; they shot two of our servants. They- they were drunk, but that had orders to seek out 'enemies of the people'. They... They beat my father. They- they did terrible things to us, Kimberly." She does not sob, even as awful, cruel tears bead upon quivering and sorrowful pools; her voice dips to an agonizing whisper. "They made my father and brothers watch when... When they..." I cannot bear it; I barely understand what words she speaks, but I cannot endure them a moment further, folding her into my arms as Xi Go continues to cling to her quaking hands. "It hurt so terribly, Kimberly; it was so painful. And- and they laughed at us; they laughed at me when I cried, when I wept, when I begged them to stop.

"They didn't. It... It was only when they were tired that they left. My mother told him that she would hang herself if they did not go, so we left, but it did not matter. Our servants had abandoned us with fear or this revolutionary hatred; my brothers were too young to fight, or too scared; Nikolai and Ilya had died at the front. We had gold, and money, and jewels; we would not leave anything else for those scavengers, so we burnt our manor to the ground. We shot the horses, or loosed them; we destroyed everything. I could do nothing but cry, Kimberly; I just watched all of this, everything that was my life, vanish. I... I couldn't even take mementos of you; it was all things that my father thought valuable.

"He said that we would escape to the east, to Vladivostok; he said that we should go there, to be where... Where he thought the Empire still lived. It was a nightmare; the trains were barely in existence. Even then, they were unheated, and they could be appropriated by these terrible bandits that called themselves Tsarists; they were just criminals. No one cared about royalty anymore; no one even knew who we were. We- we were just the enemy, if we were anyone; and I learned what it was to go hungry. I learned what eating horseflesh was, what it was to pick over spoiled grain that the farmers were selling from their planting stocks.

"It... It was unbearable, Kimberly; not the terrible food, not the cold, not the illness. It- it was listening to my parents bicker, every day of every hour. They didn't care about us any longer; they thought of nothing but resuming a life of luxury, of indulgence. He started beating her; almost every day, every hour; whenever he was upset, or found vodka, he would start to hit her until she could no longer scream and cry.

"He would beat us; he would hit my brothers, and kick them and punch them if they cried out. And..."

"Ariadne, you don't need to say any more." Perhaps Xi Go is as consumed with this horror as I am; this constant, waking agony that streams forth with a dreadful and wrenching monotone, whimpering torment periodically welling in fountaining anguish through those icy waters.

"I do. I can't bear to just hear my thoughts again and again in silence. I- I know that it's selfish to burden you with this, but-"

"It's not selfish, Ariadne." As I speak, I discover that I'm weeping more woefully than Ariadne; scalding, insufferable streaks of tears blaze along my cheeks in tortured currents; my words convulse with a quivering misery. "It's not."

"He would touch me, Kimberly; touch me as no father ever should his daughter. I... It became so that I wouldn't even scream, or protest, or do anything; he would hit me if I struggled, and my mother and brothers would do nothing. He... He forced himself upon me, and I could do nothing. He would call me a whore, and a useless, terrible daughter; he would laugh just like the soldiers, and I could not even cry any longer. I... I could do nothing.

"I did not want to live, Kimberly. When... When I no longer bled when I should, I- I thought that I should just end my life." She confesses this with a monstrous normality, even as her eyes scream with an anguish more torturous than her voice could ever capture. "Even when we arrived in Vladivostok, he would not stop; even when we found a home, when everything seemed almost ordinary, he would not end this cruelty. My- my mother knew that I was with child; she despised me, Kimberly. She treated me as a whore for what had been done to me, no matter how I pleaded and begged for her to show me even the slightest kernel of kindness.

"I thought of just throwing myself into the bay, or drowning myself in the bath; I even cut into my arm one day with my father's straight razor, but I could not continue. I... I realized that I had not forgotten you; I had not forgotten how deeply I loved you, how I craved to live my life with you." Again, Ariadne, my friend... The source of this peculiar and enduring love... Again, she collapses into awful, wracking wails, as if this is the greatest torment of the ordeals she has suffered; that the bestiality, the animal evil and cruelty that had been inflicted upon her mean nothing against this sudden desolation.

"You- I am sure that you never knew, Kimberly, but I would always fantasize about holding you nearer, about kissing you. I... I would... I would imagine us together, as if I were touching myself again when we were so young, just thinking about you... I would imagine that when my father, when he..." A horrid, cringing whimper. "When he would treat me like a whore; I would imagine that I could hear only your voice; I could still remember it.

"But, we... We could not remain in Vladivostok; the Bolsheviks were winning more and more, and my mother forced him to take us away. He still beat her, and yet she had started to focus his hatred upon me, as if I were some dreadful enemy to be despised. She forced him to bring us to Shanghai last year, to the French Concession; there are many Russians here, you know?" A musing of chillingly sudden normality, as if she has, for a flickering instant, taken leave of her senses, of this awful grief. "Most of them are even worse off. Most of them are the petty bourgeois that my parents hated, and they have nothing. I've... I've even met a few of them here; they're miserable, just like I am.

"I- I think that it was the opium that made everything even worse; I didn't even believe it was possible until those mad fits began. I... I was actually relieved," a dismal and bitter laugh that grates as if ragged stone upon my very soul, "That he was gone constantly; that he would no longer scream at me, insult me, that... That he'd no longer call me a whore at every second; that he would admonish me for being fat, even though I was heavy with child.

"But, I... I think almost of those nightmare moments as a relief when he came home from those hours or days away from us; gaunt, white, he would scream and cry and weep and vomit. He would brutalize my mother, and she would say nothing. And he... He would hurt me so badly, Kimberly." Her gaze falls from mine for a brief, torturous instant, as if pondering whether she can even continue; her jaw trembles; her hand blazes upon my back, nails piercing into my skin with a knifing ferocity.

"He beat me so terribly that I lost the child. I- I cannot believe how that devastated me. I dreaded the day as it approached, and yet... Seeing- seeing that small thing tumble from me, with so much pain, with so much blood, I thought that it was unfair. It was something growing inside of me, Kimberly; it had taken the harvest of so much hatred, and so much cruelty, and so much evil, and it had become something that was so beautiful that I finally cried for the first time in ages.

"I held it like a madwoman in the bath, sobbing and sobbing until I could no longer shed any tears. It was red, and small, and shriveled, but... But, it was actually alive. For... For the briefest of moments, it held my finger, and..." Her arm fastened around me seems nearly to shear through my body; I weep with her, not perceiving anything but that unutterable agony that boils forth as if suppressed beneath this terrible arctic shell for eons. "And it died. It died, Kimberly, while I held it; while I could do nothing but... But sing an old nursery rhyme to it. I think that I did lose my mind then. Everything- everything else is just a jumble until I saw you again.

"I've lived every day without feeling anything, without even knowing anything but that I must eat or they will beat me to death; that I must submit to these... To these evil men and their desires, or they will kill me without a second thought; they will... They will make me suffer unto death; they will tear apart my soul. And, while I would not care for myself, I have feared never again meeting you, even if you would reject me as a vile and revolting whore.

"My father sold me to this man for more opium; for a chest of it. He- he just told me that I was this devil's property, and that I would no longer be his daughter. That I was never his daughter; that I was only a burden, and he was glad to be rid of me. So, I have been forced to remain here; I am a slave, Kimberly. A slave... In- in a time when even we have no more serfs, I am a slave; forced to- to serve these dreadful men, to be some captive princess for them.

"I do not feel anything any longer; I am barren and dead. So, why do I long for escape? Why do I wish for you to sweep me away from this, even when I know that you will no longer love me? Why do I even bother, Kimberly? Why? Why?" An excruciating mantra that raises further, aching wails from me as I truly begin to sob in earnest.

I hold in my arms Ariadne; my enduring friend; a woman that I, in my girlish naïvete, believed would spend her life with me amid some patrician fantasy world of eternal childhood and comfort. I hold her as she weeps, as she shivers and howls and screams, at long last, the anguish that has festered and mounted within her soul as if some unimaginable malignancy. I hold a woman that I do love, even if it is not the adoration of a lover; not the devotion and craving desire of a wife. I feel my power rage and throb and blaze with an utter impotence; it is worthless to protect her now from the past. Everything that I have learned; the masteries of arcane techniques and alchemies that the love beside me has bestowed can achieve nothing in shredding away this pall of darkness.

Cringing tremors overtake me at that sudden and awful epiphany; that collision of the past and present in the form of Ariadne, confronting me with the awareness that I cannot simply cast away all that had been Kimberly Dmitriovna. While I may bear Bao Li's spirit, while Xi Go and I are destined eternally to be united in this glorious love... While our adoration is unshakable and absolute, I have nevertheless lived another life before this; it consumes me now, even as I sit with the awareness of another existence entirely. I do not know whether to surrender to the tears of Kimberly Dmitriovna, or to wield the savage fury of an immortal warrior; a crippling paralysis overtakes me as Ariadne and I share tears that we have not for years; Xi Go, too, weeps. Silent tears whisper across pale cheeks; her spirit screams through this bond with an anguish that resonates so horrifically with Ariadne's own.

"Kimberly, we will help Ariadne. We will do whatever we must." I do not start at Xi Go's affirmation; I can neither smile nor scowl. I merely remain convulsed with this unendurable sorrow.

"We will." Words, at long last, return to me as I echo her conviction. "We will."

"How will you, Kimberly? How? I... I could not ask you to spend a single-"

"We will free you, Ariadne. I promise you this. Money is no object; money is of no meaning, and no value."

"W-whatever do you mean?" Ariadne behaves as if Xi Go is mad, as though she has affronted some dreadful deity that dwells within those odious scraps of paper and gilded trinkets for which lives are so freely destroyed and exchanged.

"Money means nothing; it can be conjured as easily as a card from a magician's sleeve." And I, at once, understand the source of Xi Go's magical heap of pound notes.

"What are you talking about?" Ariadne still does not understand.

"Shego is... She is a magician, Ariadne." I sniffle miserably, still entwined with her.

"A magician? You'll trick them?"

"It's not a trick; reality is not so rigid as many would think in this time. If... If you will indulge me, Ariadne." Obligingly, grudgingly, she parts from me; that swollen, damp warmth that has encircled us, tears dampening my gown and staining my skin with a molten agony, lifts, an insufferable chill rising in its stead. Both of us focus upon Xi Go as if a prestidigitator; but there are no elaborate and diverting movements; no poetic legerdemain; no trick. At once, a heap of gold materializes in her grasp; gleaming with a dark and almost malevolent luster beneath the lamps that blaze vermillion within this hellish chamber, they trickle as if water from King Midas' hands, rattling across the floor with a leaden percussion that fills me with a sense of unfathomable, raging resentment and hate.

Hatred for those that would destroy and ruin for these pitiful trinkets; hatred for those that would value these above the life of my friend; hatred for the fact that we could not liberate her from this misery sooner; hatred for the very existence of so filthy a creation as this. Hatred, I realize, nearly for everything but those that lie beside me within this realm of nightmares; their love steels me against this pernicious world; it blankets me, swaddles me, in a cushioned cloak sheathed in iron fury.

It feels cruel to confront Ariadne with this, to invoke this power with such easy grace, and yet I can perceive relief welling into her eyes in a measure equivalent to the suffering that permeates her very being so palpably.

"You must be a goddess, Shego." She marvels, her voice dipping to a reverential whisper. Perhaps Ariadne does not understand how near she is to the truth.

"Not quite." My love demures. "Not quite, Ariadne."

"W-who are you, Miss Shego?" Despite this torture, Ariadne's dignity, her regal refinement, has not vanished; it seems virtually a miraculous perseverance.

"Whatever do you mean, Ariadne?"

"D-do not dissemble. Please." Ariadne's delicate and fragile voice continues to quaver and tremble. "I... You have shown me something impossible; you did not use sleight of hand, or anything that a mere magician would."

"Shego is an immortal." I feel a sudden shock of pure startlement writhe through our bond, though it lacks any sense of disapproval; a brief glance yields a pensive smile creasing her full lips, eyes darkened with tears. "She... I know that it must seem unbelievable, but she is truly an immortal; she is more powerful than anything in this world. She... She speaks with dragons and calls upon the gods at a whim." I had perhaps expected Ariadne to scoff, to react as perhaps anyone would to such an extraordinary claim; to behave as if I am a lunatic, or Xi Go a charlatan. There is nothing but silence.

"I... I do not understand." That patient, tentative whimper is perhaps the most startling of any. "I do not understand what you have told me, Kimberly."

"I... I know that it must sound terribly sacrilegious, but-"

"There is no god, Kimberly." Somehow, that tears through me as if a blazing lance; I feel a rigid tension shiver through me, a tortured heat seizing my stomach. Ariadne had been the most quietly pious girl whom I had ever met; she adored the thought of god, of salvation, of Christian charity. She was not of my mother's sensibilities; her devotion, however, was absolute. Even when I indifferently murmured through prayers, I could sense the faith flowing from her in palpable currents.

"W-what do you mean?"

"There is no god, Kimberly; it does not matter to me if what you say is sacrilegious. No god would ever allow his children to suffer as I have, as so many others have; no god would allow men to lord above other men as if deities themselves, elevated only by money and evil. No god would allow a child to be conceived with such cruelty, only to be taken away with equal cruelty; no god would allow a city, a place like this, to exist if he would wipe away Sodom and Gomorrah with a sweep of his fiery sword. No god would allow a war to happen." She has begun to sob again; a mad, unrelenting cadence of tortures, seemingly raised to the very ears of the divine in which neither of us can conjure faith.

"No god would allow children to be... To be so abused, to be tortured; to see them starve until their stomachs burst as fat men gorge themselves. I will not believe that any god would be so cruel, would be so thoughtless and indifferent. I no longer pray, Kimberly; I have not uttered a sincere prayer to god since the day that I arrived here and saw that my suffering was matched by so many others. That what I have endured is almost luxuriant against what so many others have. No god has offered me salvation, Kimberly; only you and your wife have."

"Let us go, Kimberly." I realize that, even with the dissolution of my faith, Ariadne's seems impossibly tragic, as if she has cast away any hope and trust in the humanity that god, or fate, or Tao, or anything has borne into existence; that she cannot even believe in anything but that seething grief that ripples and flares through her. "Kimberly, we should take away Ariadne now. Please." Xi Go exhorts, and I obey with a silent nod.

"Thank you, Shego." Any further, tormented contemplation of that halts as she rises with a weary and tremulous sigh, as if her infinite reservoirs of strength have been depleted by this agony. "Thank you."

"She is your friend, Kimberly; she is someone deeply important. And, I understand why she is." Silently, with that peculiar bodily legerdemain, Xi Go materializes beside the door; perhaps only I can perceive the deft, gliding strokes of her body, a curious and impressionistic sense of motion as if a Monet conjured into living form. Not once do her feet enter into contact with the befouled wood.

"Ariadne, we will leave. I promise you this; nothing will discourage us. I would sooner," the words arise within my throat without thought, even as I reel at that unearthly and uncanny fury, "Crush everyone here, burn down everything, than see you endure this for a moment further."

"Kimberly?" She does not seem aghast; merely as bewildered as I am by such violent conviction.

"Shego has trained me, Ariadne. I... I can fight; not even nearly so well as she, but I have learned to fight. I will protect you; we will protect you."

"You are certain?"

"Entirely." A vow without the slightest tremor, bereft of any doubt or uncertainty. "Come."

"All right." And we rise at once; words no longer seem possible as I guide her upon trembling legs toward the door. Even through this rising veil of steel, however, I feel a cringing and sickly trepidation throb; it grips my stomach with a torturous uneasiness as I begin to dread what will become of this. I will never permit Ariadne to return to this nightmare, and yet I fear desperately that they will not grant her leave, regardless of our persuasion.

"What are we to do, Shego?" I finally ask as we assemble before that innocuous, elegantly-hewn wooden portal that seems as ominous as a door into the netherworld.

"We will ask them permission to buy Ariadne. I know that this beastly Du is an indulgent wretch, a vile and greedy man who would part with his own wives for coin." And the door rattles open; at once, the blaring, bombastic strains of the band's music roils through this anxious haze. The thundering percussion and manic, squealing melody no longer ignite a visceral and writhing delight with my breast; no longer do I thrill at that forbidden splendor as if the blissful caress of the opium that has shattered Ariadne's life. It feels poisonous, tainted; the almost tangible depth and definition with which it throbbed seems utterly flattened, muted and reduced to nothing but the quailing screams of some vulgar beast of countless, babbling voices.

"To buy her?" A shiver of utter disgust flits through me at that notion, even pursued as subterfuge.

"I am his property, Kimberly, and-"

"You are no one's possession." I snarl, a liquid anger roiling through me; it fills me with a sudden swell of blistering fury, a caustic and malevolent steam that drives my limbs as if a locomotive. "You are no one's possession, Ariadne; no one is. This is not anything that I will hear from you ever again."

"Did you enjoy yourselves?" A disembodied voice ruptures my admonition, and I allow those furious strains to recede into silence; my sight flickers with an almost manic intensity about me until I realize that it has issued from behind us. Turning, my gaze falls upon an utterly dreadful spectacle; a woman, perhaps once a glorious beauty, now withered and shriveled with the accumulated evil that I sense streaming from her. Tentacles of some awful, gelid cruelty writhe and lash from the depths of a twisted and vile spirit; no density of pallid foundation can conceal this from my suddenly acute sight.

A full and voluptuous figure is clasped in a pernicious parody of the zanze that I adore; vermillion dragons in full flight stream along its raven silk, and I wish to conjure them into existence to stamp away her very life in a cauldron of flame. I know that this wretched being, graying locks bound into a taut bun, is one of this Du devil's trusted cronies.

The pernicious smile, unctuous and alight with a deplorable relish at the notion of our having tortured Ariadne as so many others have, conjures a curious and terrible epiphany that I desire her death as I have nothing before in my life. Through our jade bond, a furious and stifling command rages; my limbs are at once leaden, clasped in an arresting embrace of unyielding strength that refuses to grant outlet to these bestial yearnings.

"Yes, we did. Ariadne is very lovely." Xi Go's voice is consumed again with that arctic neutrality that belies a shivering and terrible revulsion that throbs so fiercely within her breast.

"Her name means nothing." This abhorrent woman corrects with a vicious sneer. "Animals have no need for a name." It is a nightmare struggle not to claim Ariadne's hand in my grasp, to soothe her with a lingering and tender caress in a furious effort to nullify the liquid evil that floods from this vulgar demon's warped spirit. "How careless of me; I have not even introduced myself to valued customers. I am Madame Zhu; I am responsible for these girls."

"We would wish to speak with Chieftain Du, Madame." Xi Go's disgust soars to ever more noxious heights with every instant that we are in the presence of this walking abomination.

"Whatever for? Were you not satisfied with this slut? We have many more girls, perhaps more to your choosing. There are very exotic ones. Perhaps your young friend would have a greater fondness for an Arabian; perhaps an African." I desire only her head; my warrior's spirit lusts only for her blood with a hammering, urgent need that I believe would be Bao Li's pride.

"It is not that. Ariadne," Xi Go accentuates that with a savage defiance, "Is wonderful. We would like to buy her." The madame does not appear fazed in the slightest; she truly is the malign, wretched parasite that she appears to be, entertaining a request with the utmost, solemn thoughtfulness.

"To buy her? This worthless thing? She is nothing; why would you want her? The only thing she's good for is as a taxi dancer, or enticing men with an affection for broken royalty. I hear that Chieftain Du bought her from a Russian count. Are you entertaining regal fantasies of your own, Madame?"

"Do not kill her, Kimberly." That thought scalds through me, a reticent rebuke that nevertheless thunders across my very soul with a commanding fury.

"I have my own reasons, Madame. I am willing to pay handsomely for her."

"I can see that you and your young friend are very wealthy." A less than cagey murmur, offering me a sidelong, appraising glance that renders it so very difficult to obey Xi Go's demand. "Very well; I will take you to see Chieftain Du. Be polite with him. He will be the most powerful man in Shanghai, maybe in all of China, someday."

"I understand." And we are guided to that abhorrent staircase again; that blighted conduit of accursed wood to vulgar and wicked indulgences that only the most vile could consider pleasures. Ariadne is silent beside us, head bowed in a supplication that I feel with a disgust for the whole of this pernicious race of man; she remains a slight pace behind us, as if unable to even ponder an existence as an equal any longer. She is broken, and buckled, but I will not permit her to fall wholly into this spell of evil; I will not. I will giddily ignore Xi Go's order if I must.

The creature that confronts us is indeed the monstrous, azure-streaked beast that I had glimpsed from our table upon that great floor; encircled by his dreadful, hollow-eyed harem, silent and woeful in their submission in his presence, he appears some wicked king of the underworld. Yen Lo Wang would be ashamed to even torture this abomination, I realize; even the worst of torment would not suffice to wring even a single grain of filth from this blackened soul. The men that flank him, eying us with cold and empty stares consumed solely with an unforgivable hunger, are indeed Russians; they pervert that tongue with their lascivious and repellent murmurs; they are lower than the foulest of Vory for their inhumanity.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of the most esteemed company of a woman of such high birth?" I am startled when he speaks; low, raspy, occasionally rising to a slightly reedy pitch, Du's voice is of an unfathomable noxiousness. Despite his almost exaggeratedly courtly and regal pretenses, he cannot conceal the fundamental fact that he is a monster cloaked in human flesh; he is a common and wretched criminal who has become consumed by a devil. The slender, gilded pipe that droops carelessly from shriveling fingers attests to this; putrid, cloying fumes boil in a sickly haze from it, the foulest of indulgences. I know that this must be what imprisons so many in its clutches.

"We would wish to purchase this girl." Xi Go speaks without the subtlest flicker of emotion; beneath that savage facade, I feel a rioting agony at the merest notion.

"Pardon me? I fear that, in my advancing age, I may be losing my hearing." Du is, however ragged and repulsive, not ancient; gaunt features are virtually unlined, and his hair is deepest raven.

"We would wish to purchase Ariadne. We would like to buy this slave."

"Why, if I may ask, would so distinguished a woman as yourself desire such a wretched and common bitch?"

"I have my own reasons." An impassive and cryptic retort. "I should think them beneath the interest of so powerful a man as Chieftain Du Yueshang."

"You know of me? I am most honored; but you have not introduced yourself." I sense a slightly harsh edge seep into his tone; Xi Go tenses at once, even as her body maintains its easy and effortless languor.

"My name is Go Xi." She does not lie; I am simply astounded to again confront such a seemingly surreal pronunciation of her exalted and beloved name.

"Select any girl that you would desire from amongst my whores, but not this one." He commands, with a sickeningly exaggerated geniality.

"Had you not said that she is of no worth? Why would you desire to retain a woman without value?"

"All women are without value." He spits this vile sentiment without reserve, his features at once contorted with a brutish savagery. "You are not to question my reasons. I would ask you to leave."

"I would wish to buy this girl, Chieftain Du. I will pay you in gold." Xi Go protests, a faint desperation welling into her sonorous voice.

"Begone." A command of singular pomp, as if he is an emperor.

"I will pay-"

"No."

"I will not hear 'no' from you, Chieftain Du; I do not understand this intransigence. I would like only to-"

"And I have told you to leave. Or, would you care to join this cunt?" The quiet groan of chairs signals the rise of his Russian bodyguards at such a dreadful signal, and I feel those iron bonds relax from my limbs, leaden restraints tumbling away as an unaccountable, blazing delight swells through my body. It is a raging fighting spirit; it boils through my limbs, fingers tensing into fists hardened to steel. "Perhaps I would like a taste of your young friend."

"That was a very poor decision, Yueshang." A bestial snarl contorts monstrous features at that insult, spoken with a truly palpable fury.

"Take them to the Madame's quarters; do with them as you will."

"Do not restrain yourself, Kimberly." My love orders, and I obey.