Discharge day. As if that was something to celebrate. He located a pair of jeans, a white cotton shirt, and a loose, thick linen jacket in his favorite color. Red. Odd, considering everyone associated him with blue.

Anyone who cared to associate him with a color, anyway. And there wasn't one who cared enough to know that his color was red since Julia, and she was long gone. Vicious never talked to him long enough to ask. Oh well. He rose from yanking on a pair of scuffed red leather boots, stretched as he hadn't in months, and drew the pristine cotton over his shoulders, slender fingers pushing each button through its hole. His mind always registered a little twinge of shock at the extra pull of the fabric over his chest, and he looked down. Maybe one day he'd indulge himself in an outfit that exploited the curves, rather than bound and hid them. Or not. He supposed it was his choice, now.

"Wonder what the nurses had to say about me during pre-op," he murmured, a half smile reflected in the mirror below carefully scrutinizing blue eyes, "bet they were surprised."

"Not as surprised as I was." There was that alto-sax again, thrumming from the open door. Gren didn't turn. He didn't have to. "Surely you've seen stranger things, haven't you, Vicious? You've been around a lot more than I have." He laughed, bitterly.

Even though he couldn't see the other man directly, Gren detected a flinch.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Easy, take it easy." Gren replied softly, "All I meant was that you've been out. Seen things. Done things." His voice caught, but he forced himself to sit, using the movement as an excuse for the falter. He bent, leaning on his knees, white hands dangling uselessly between his thighs. "I spent so much time in solitary…with two decisions…have nightmares, or have withdrawals." Dismal shadows curtained his face, as the watery institutional lighting left blue highlights in the drape of mane. The doctors hadn't stripped him of it, and so it was as long as ever, loose around his shoulders. "I chose the nightmares a lot. That's why I am the way I am."

"The way you are." Vicious echoed, confusion cracking his otherwise still mask. Gren's head shot up from its study of the floor.  Backlit blue eyes inflamed with anger. "I'm a woman, damnit! No…I…am not even that. Not really." He sighed, fury passing rapidly.

It was enough. His companion took an involuntary step backward, as though struck. That's right, Gren's thoughts turned acid, run away. Run away because I'm not the same person you knew then. I'm not the same man, to be used and tossed aside.

"Spend the rest of your life pitying yourself, Eckener." The gentle slur disappeared, as a tiger unvelveted his claws.

"I don't pity myself."

"Good."

"I blame you."

"I know."

"And…?"

"You should."

"What?" Gren retorted in disbelief, rising from the edge of the mattress. "No denial? No insincere apology? Where's your soul? The least you could do is make a halfass attempt to comfort the person you've been torturing since the Titan wars ended."

Vicious turned, his back to the room as one powerful hand rested on the doorframe. "And the least you could do is admit that what happened did more than just improve your sarcasm."

The musician's elfin chin dropped in shock, and snapped up again, etched into a mockery of a gentle smile. "I understand. You want to see my tears. It wasn't enough to know that you betrayed me, that your betrayal made me go crazy…made them dope me with chemicals, made me into this…!" He gestured wildly to the swelled line of his chest, just visible beneath his labored breathing.

"You don't—"

"And. And, after I escaped from prison, your testimony forced me to live in a frozen hellhole. I had nobody until Julia came…and then you had the gall to take her away from me too. Without so much as a goddamned goodbye. Just waited until she was alone in our apartment…and took her."

"I had no—"

"Like hell you had no choice." Gren's cut him off, pushed past the breaking point by years of suppression. He snarled. "Orders can be obeyed, or disobeyed. I found that out. Just like trust can be made…and broken." Deep sapphire eyes smoldered as Gren stared the paler man down. Vicious flinched again.

"And after all that, you couldn't even let me die the way I wanted. Still wasn't enough. After you rescue me, you want to see me break, too."

"I won't ask your forgiveness. I don't want it." Vicious' low voice rasped into the hall. The other man stared at his unmoving back. Sighed. Then, he moved closer, irresistibly drawn by the same attraction that had moved him for years…driven him insane with loneliness. "Want it or not, you have it, you unfeeling bastard."

He shoved past the broad black shoulder of the syndicate agent's duster, few belongings tucked in a plastic bag and dangling from three fingers. In a few more steps, he was whistling.

-

Don't let him go.

This is what I want.

Don't let him leave.

It's better this way…

"I'm not an unfeeling bastard."