Title: Murderer's Touch

Author: I_nv_u50

Rating: PG13

Disclaimer/Claimer: same old, same old…

Warning: Slash!! Whee!!

Author's Notes: Kinda in a rush, so no notes for this chapter. Just want to say thanks to everyone for reviewing, and there'll be a whole bunch of stuff next chapter, which, incidentally, is the last in this story. After that, I hope you keep an eye out for the sequel which should be up by Monday at the latest, taking into account that the next chapter for this part will be up by Friday O.o;;; If that made sense to you, congrats :D That said, I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but I'm not entirely sure what bugs me about it either. I guess I'm just too tired at the moment. I'll try and figure it out again tomorrow (later on today?) Oh well. Whichever. Hope you like the ending this time. O.o; Not really a cliffhanger XD read, enjoy, and please review!! ^^

On another quick side note thingy, there are some pictures available at so go check the characters out when you want to ^^;;

It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe. For a few minutes, Kylan wasn't even sure he was breathing, was sure that he hadn't been found in time and was, in fact, completely dead, finally gone beyond repair.

He didn't want to open his eyes. For one thing, he wasn't entirely sure his eyelids would let him move them, and for another, he didn't want to see anything at that moment.

He didn't want to be anyone at the moment. He didn't want to be alive at the moment.

From what he could vaguely comprehend, he was lying on his stomach, where the beatings hadn't hit him so much. Cool cotton sheets were pulled up to his hips. His back was on fire.

Fire. There had been a fire. He didn't want to examine that thought too closely either, but it kept coming back, nagging at him, refusing to let him drift. After what seemed like a few minutes but was probably, in reality, a few candlemarks, he heard someone enter the room.

Long trained muscles immediately tensed up defensively, and then screamed in protest when it hurt to much to even try tensing them up.

"Kylan? I know you're awake. I also know that you hurt quite a bit, so don't talk. I am your Healer, Healer Geria. You've been banged up quite a bit, but you should be fine by the time your body has recovered. There won't be any major physical remainders; merely a few scars maybe. Probably, I'd say."

Kylan didn't move, wishing the lady would just leave him in peace. The longer she talked, the longer he would stay awake, and he didn't want to be awake, was too tired to fight off recollections that insisted on coming anyway.

What felt like a finely boned hand rested lightly on his hair for a minute.

"The best thing for you to do now is sleep. When you wake up, there'll be someone to feed you."

Kylan had enough time to be enamored with the mere idea of food before he fell into a deep sleep.

When he woke up, there was another hand resting lightly on his lower thigh, just above the inside of his knee. This hand, however, felt different, and Kylan just knew, no matter how dazed and blurred his mind was, that it was Brynn sitting next to his bed.

"How are you feeling?" Brynn's question only confirmed what Kylan had suspected.

Kylan made an unintelligible noise into the pillow.

The hand squeezed lightly, then pulled away. "They said you weren't supposed to talk yet, so I'll talk to you. You were the only one we found in the fire; there was no one else around. That's probably my fault, since I was too preoccupied with worrying about you to even consider that your captors were probably getting away. By the time we realized that they had escaped, it was too late, and they had already gone."

Kylan blinked without moving his eyes, an action that he wondered briefly that it was possible. He found he didn't really care about that anyway.

What he wanted to know was, what had happened?

Brynn seemed to realize this. He sighed. "I'm not allowed to tell you the details yet," he said softly. "But basically, from what we've managed to piece together, they beat you until you lost consciousness. Devoni and I were already nearing the place by then, so we sped up. Nobody knows how they knew we were coming, but they knew it somehow, so they set the building alight and ran while I was getting you out."

Kylan felt a flash of guilt. "S'ry."

"What?" Brynn leant forward a bit.

"S'rry. 'S 'y faul'."

"Uh…" Brynn paused, thinking it over. Kylan distantly wondered if he really was that hard to understand.

Brynn, apparently figuring it out, stood up and hesitantly brushed Kylan's hair away from his forehead. "It's not your fault."

"'S." Kylan insisted, liking the feeling of Brynn's fingers lightly playing with his hair. It was comforting, in a way. And best of all, his hair didn't hurt when someone touched it. Which was more than could be said for Kylan's face.

When Brynn let his fingers linger too long on Kylan's forehead, Kylan growled out something vaguely insulting, managing to sound quite apologetic at the same time.

Brynn chuckled softly, and then his tone grew serious again, sincere. "It's not really your fault. All right, so you shouldn't have run away, but I shouldn't have hit your friend."

"N'uh." Kylan grumbled through painful lips.

And he could hear the slight smirk in Brynn's voice when the Herald answered. "Don't you be complaining to me," Brynn teased him cautiously. "You're the one that brought that incorrigible flirt into the grounds in the first place."

Kylan struggled to open his eyes at that; suddenly needing to see Brynn's expression, because there was no way that that resigned tone could be real. He gave up after a fruitless struggle, declaring war on his entire face, and attempting to burrow his head back into Brynn's hand because it somehow hurt a lot less when his bondmate was touching him somehow.

"Wh' hap'ed?" he managed to ask.

There was a short pause. "You'll see," was the perplexing answer, and Kylan wished he didn't hurt so much because he so longed to make a face at Brynn.

There was another short silence, Brynn's fingers still slowly and carefully playing with Kylan's hair. Suddenly it stopped. Kylan made a vague noise of protest, but Brynn shushed him and Kylan sensed movement.

When Brynn spoke next, he sounded close enough to kiss.

Kylan hoped he wasn't blushing, but the way the nerve endings in his cheeks screamed with pain; he guessed that the sudden inrushing blood had been too much for it to bear. And then he forgot about the pain, because Brynn was talking.

"I think we've gotten off on the wrong foot. That's quite an understatement, I know that. I still hate the fact that you killed my best friend. And you probably still hate the fact that I struck down one of your best friends. We aren't going to go from hate to love in a few days, anyone could tell you that… But… well, what do you say for trying to forget about all that? We won't forget about everything straight away, obviously, but –"

"Ne'd 'ch oth'r." Kylan mumbled.

He felt Brynn's relief.

"Yea," Brynn replied, his voice soft. "We need each other."

Kylan forced the corners of his mouth to twitch upwards the slightest bit, trying to project the fact that he was at least trying to smile along with Brynn.

Brynn's fingertips gently traced the outer edges of Kylan's ear. Kylan couldn't suppress an reflexive shiver, which hurt his muscles like hell, but the tingles from the simple touch were, Kylan decided uncertainly, definitely nice. Very nice.

He tried to say it, but even he could hear his words getting more slurred, and Brynn laughed again as he stood up.

"I have no idea what you just said," he told Kylan, who didn't hold it against him in the least. Lips brushed against his forehead before Kylan could do anything about it, and Brynn was away from the bed before Kylan could even think to react.

"But," Brynn called from somewhere at the opposite end of the room, "I'm glad it felt nice. I enjoyed it as well."

Kylan fell asleep before he could blush again.

His first disorientated thought when he woke up again concerned food. And the whereabouts thereof, especially since that Healer lady had promised him food.

"Yes, we have some food here. Unfortunately, it's not going to be easy to feed you. We'll find a way though. And afterwards, because you should be feeling more alert and awake by then, Herald Astral and Herald Brynn want to see you. We've told them they can as long as they don't upset you, so we'll hurry up and try and get some food into you. It'll make you feel a lot better."

A little while later, when Kylan did have some food inside of him, he had to admit that it did make him feel better. Quite a bit better. He still hurt, but the Healers had given him something that they had promised would work relatively quickly, and he trusted their word enough by now to believe them.

What was more to his surprise was the fact that he was almost looking forward to Brynn's arrival. He didn't want to let his thoughts linger too long on the arrival of the King's Own, but Brynn… He couldn't wait.

And while some distant part of him still flinched away from admitting it, a greater, slightly more dominant part of him flinched away from hiding it. Brynn was right. They could start again. And they'd both be happier when they did.

There was a soft knock at the door, and Kylan found himself completely helpless to hold back a still painful grin as Brynn stuck his head around the door and smiled on sight at his bondmate.

"Heyla," Brynn said softly, and came into the room, followed by the King's Own. Kylan's smile faltered and faded away. He had been warned sure, but that didn't mean he wanted to go on with the interview thing they obviously had planned.

"Can you talk now?" Brynn continued softly, offering the chair to Astral, who took it silently and started staring at Kylan.

"Bit," Kylan rasped. "Hurts."

Brynn glanced around, apparently looking for somewhere to sit, and when no place appeared to tempt him, merely sat down at the end of the bed. "I'm not surprised," the Herald said, a small smile playing across his face. "Astral wants to talk to you. I'm just going to let you talk, all right? I won't say a word."

Kylan shifted his gaze to the King's Own suspiciously, but didn't say anything.

Astral sighed. "All right. I realize we've done some things wrong. This is the first time a Herald's lifebonded to someone in your profession – that we know about. We could be wrong. We didn't sort out our priorities, and for that, I'm sorry. Other than that, is there anything in particular you'd like to tell us before I start asking specific questions?"

Kylan watched the Herald across from him for a moment more, still trying to determine the depths of honesty that the older man was offering. "I didn't lie to you."

Astral exchanged glances with Brynn. "We know that. You avoided the direct truth though, didn't you?"

"I guess," Kylan muttered softly, sullenly.

"Right. First question then. Who did this to you? And why did you work for them?"

Kylan stayed silent for a few more minutes, unable to decide whether he should tell or not. It would probably help the Heralds, but… he had been told for so long never to tell anyone, it would be similar to blasphemy, a sacrilege to everything they had beaten in to him. Beaten in. They'd do it again, if they ever caught him. He really was doomed to spending the rest of his days locked up in the palace grounds or kept under watch by Brynn.

He drew in a slightly shaky breath. "I can't tell you who they are exactly, because I don't know for sure. We, the underlings, I mean, only ever got to know about five of the top people, and I don't think they were the top of the top either. We had one major planner and recruiter, two weapons masters and fighting experts, one bookkeeper type guy, and a sadistical bastard. I'm not sure what his role is, but he usually enjoyed deciding punishments and watching them being carried out."

Brynn rested a comforting hand on his ankle, squeezing it lightly.

Astral nodded, fully intent on what Kylan was saying. "How often did you see them?"

"The bookkeeper, not often. I think he usually hung around the back parts of the main building. The other four I saw pretty regularly. I was trained by the two fighting instructors, and you never went near the planner without crossing the sadist's path first."

"Why would you want to talk to the planner so often?"

Kylan lowered his eyes for a second, then raised them to Astral's face again defiantly. "Because he was the one that gave out assignments."

There was a short pause. "Do you know how he decided who to kill?"

Kylan made a vague movement with his head, trying to shake it negatively, but it hurt too much. Eventually he just settled for answering verbally. "No. Never. We were told who to kill, how to kill, where to kill, when to kill, and we did it. We weren't allowed to ask questions. Asking questions got you into deeper trouble than doing anything wrong."

"How often were you beaten?" Astral asked, his face blank. Brynn's hand tightened momentarily on Kylan's ankle, letting the blonde know exactly what the Herald thought about the idea.

"They started to slow down once I was fifteen or so, I guess. I just started doing more things right. Learned by trial and error, I guess."

Astral nodded in what was almost an understanding way, but it wasn't. Kylan pondered this for a moment before realizing that Astral would never fully understand the horrors of that kind of life. Oh, they could all guess, but sometimes guessing just wasn't up to the full task of knowing the truth.

And it was the truth that wounded.

"Why did you kill Akseli?" Astral asked, bringing Kylan out of his reverie.

Kylan shut his eyes. "They told me to," he whispered. "I don't know why, really I don't."

Astral sighed again, heavily this time. "All right. Thank you for answering the questions honestly. I'm sure we'll think of some more, and we'll come to you when we do. Until then though, I hope you start feeling better…" The older man trailed off slightly, and stood up. "Good bye then."

Kylan mumbled something to the same effect and closed his eyes, half dreading and half anticipating the moment when Brynn sat down in the chair that Astral had just vacated.

After a while, when he could feel Brynn's eyes daring him to open his own, Kylan blinked his eyes open and smiled hesitantly. "Heyla."

Brynn smiled back, concern in his eyes warring with simple friendliness. "Hey there."

Kylan felt his lips stretch into a painful grin, but that was all right. It looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.