Edo Phoenix was someone very special. He was calm, collected, and dignified, and cynical at those who were below him yet at the same time, fiery-hot and passionate, arrogant in a sense that was his true nature. He was beautiful and flawless from head to toe, pristine in every manner; every step he took, every movement he made was laced with indescribable grace to the point where he virtually breathed perfection. His hair shined with a silver brilliance that was only overshadowed by the fiery blaze of his eyes, clear as sapphires on a pendant. But he had one weakness. Ironically enough, that very weakness used to be his strength. What was that weakness?

Destiny.

Edo knew he'd go crazy if he heard the word 'destiny' one more time.

Saiou summoned him tonight. When he arrived, there was no formality or feigned polite greeting, just the door slamming shut behind him and a click signifying the lock being fastened into place. An unaffectionate nip to the ear caused Edo to shudder slightly. A rough, pink tongue traced the outline of his outer cavity with utmost delicacy; an emblem of fragile possession. Licking his lips, Saiou pushed the other boy away, making him stumble and then fall with a weak thud. Amethyst eyes light up with silent amusement. He chuckled heartily at the shivering figure at his mercy; softly at first, then eventually turning into full-fledged laughter. Finally, Saiou calmed down and attacked Edo's beautiful body, prying apart his suit and devouring the pale flesh underneath. Edo allowed him to do it before he interrupts with a question.

"Why? Why does it have to be this way?" Edo asked. He was posing this question rhetorically for both of them knew he was just trying to fill up this empty abyss with empty words.

He didn't expect Saiou to reply, mostly because he was trailing kisses down his slim naked torso at the moment. But to Edo's surprise, the sudden torrent of fevered kissing stopped and the long spindly arms wrapped around his waist loosen a bit. A long foreboding moment of silence hung in the atmosphere before it was broken with his voice.

"You already know the answer to your own question. Learn your place in this world, Edo Phoenix."

Edo nods. He thought this to be the finality of discussion for the remainder of the night. After all, Saiou had not quite learned the technique of multitasking. But like a bolt from the blue, his head rose from the sea of silver clothing and pale skin. Startling eyes of fine heliotrope stared up at him.

"Imagine you are given two paths to walk on. Do you know which trail leads into the light? Are you scared of what is coming out of the night?"

Edo had no strength to reply to this his riddle. It was taking all his energy to keep his eyes open and his mentality clear and wakeful because suddenly, his whole world was filled with light. There were stars exploding in front of his eyes and Edo didn't know whether or not they were supposed to be there. The warning signs in his mind flashed a bright red but they quickly faded away into a shade of maroon, and then dull silver, and then he couldn't see the signals anymore. The room was spinning. He began to feel lightheaded. Nothing made sense anymore. Edo just wanted to embrace the first thing that provided him warmth and that happened to be this strange and unusual light.

"You speak of this light to much that it's beginning to torment me," he remarked acerbically with a spark of his old brash personality. But that spark was so faint that he could barely feel his true self any more.

Saiou pressed his nose into the crook of Edo's neck and nuzzled him. "Ah, but that's no surprise. Everybody has something that torment them…everybody has things they want to make go away."

"What about you? Do you have things that torment you?" Edo retaliated fiercely as the overwhelming light engulfed his solitary existence.

Saiou removed his face from the comfortable spot in his neck and scrutinized his boy toy. How ferocious yet harmless Edo is, like a trapped tiger prowling around in his cage—the cage Saiou provided him with. Even if the tiger's teeth were daggers that could rip him into shreds, the cage prevented a single hair on the keeper's head from being harmed.

"Dear boy, I am no longer human. I have surpassed the human race and evolved from such scum. I am the pinnacle of human perfection." Fingers crawled up his chest. "Now. The real question is what torments you?"

His voice was so disgustingly confident that Edo wanted to push him off and punch him in the face for that kind of arrogance. But he couldn't. Instead, Edo gathered the stemming tendrils of his remaining energy and shot one last defiant glare at Saiou.

"Even at the pinnacle of human perfection, you are still human," he hissed. "And nothing torments me."

Then, Edo allowed his hazed mind wrap around this light. Saiou leaned forward and whispered a few chilling words.

"Not even me?"

And with those words, tendrils of blinding light shot out and surrounded the two figures, encasing them in a world full of illumination. It was nearly impossible to tell where the sky and ground separated. Perhaps it was because there was no longer a ground. Edo looked down and startled. He was standing on…nothing. White. Nothing. No.

He wasn't standing on white.

He was drowning in white.

He was drowning in waves upon waves of white, white, white light that engulfed his body and pulled him down but no matter how hard he tried, Edo couldn't break free. He struggled desperately against the lapping waters only to sink further into the endless vortex. He was going to die; he was going to be smothered in the waves of white light until his lungs ran out of oxygen. His pupils dilated. No, no, no. That couldn't happen! He couldn't die like this!

Soft, blue eyes rose beseechingly to the light that emitted gloriously from the open door that materialized from nowhere. Perhaps it could be his exit. The shadow of a silhouette stood in the doorframe and blocked out some of the luminosity, making it more bearable to perceive his surroundings. Edo knew that had it not been for that figure blocking some rays of the light he would have being blinded instantly. But maybe it was better to be unable to see.

"Otousan! Otousan!"

Upon hearing his name being called the figure opened his eyelids yet they were seemingly empty. Two cavernous sockets stared hollowly back at him where eyeballs should have been. His father was blind and this shocked him to the core. Edo gasped inaudibly and for a split second, he momentarily forgot the ensnarement consuming him.

"W-what happened to you, 'tousan?" he choked out as the waters gurgled ominously around him. Then the waves overwhelmed him once more and with a final ounce of energy, his right arm broke free and raised high into the air with his fingers unfurled and his palm exposed. Edo extended his hand in hopes that he would be pulled out. "…help me, 'tousan…" he whispered breathlessly to the figure in the doorway. "I'm going to drown."

Silence.

"I can't help you. Forgive me, my son."

His father turned around and walked through the doorway, never looking back even for a second. The last thing Edo remembered hearing was Saiou's roaring laughter of destiny—

—Edo woke in a flash.

Ceruleans snapped wide open only to be greeted with the darkness of his ceiling. Edo continued to stare up, the gears of his mind slowly turning again. It took a few moments for everything to finally catch up with him.

"…it was merely a dream…" he whispered to the ceiling, his lips barely moving.

With a slight grunt, Edo pushed himself into sitting position, not even bothering flicking on the light switch. Beads of sweat saturated his silver locks and dripped rapidly down his cheeks. It was a nightmare, he noted wryly, and a very bad one indeed. Then he realized that the liquid were his tears.

The professional duelist sat in the silence of darkness for a few moments; the only movement was his heart still beating rapidly. His hairs suddenly stood up. Edo scrutinized his surroundings with squinted eyes. Something didn't seem right. Something was out of order. He viewed his spacious room adorned with silk tassels and refined furnishings, the darkness merely adding on to its elegance. A fine wooden dresser rested by the corner and by the balcony stood a statue carved

Edo froze. It was as if the so-called statue heard his silent call because it suddenly acquired the ability of motion. It leapt off the plinth in a single bound and staggered in his direction. The waves of darkness trailed behind it so incongruously with each step, that Edo could only be reminded of a trenchcoat in the wind. The dark figure paused in front of his bed. Shoulders arched, head bowed down, and sharp-nailed hands clenched tightly to his sheets; the very shadows of its being radiating off waves of lust that made his spine shiver in fear.

Amethyst eyes snapped open, shining in the darkness. And that was how the night ended.

Edo didn't remember much the next morning. Even when sense filtered through his consciousness and he firmly detached himself from all threads of sleep, he only recalled a chain of disjointed memories. Dazzling luminosity blinded his sight. An endless arroyo of white. Touches so velvety soft in the vein of a butterfly wing fluttering against a rose bud. Kisses like a flitting ray of sunlight warming the skin on a mild summer morning.

But for nothing. Saiou had hissed the word 'destiny' in his ear over and over again throughout the entire night and no amount of soft kissing could ever compensate for that type of silent torture. Edo knew Saiou sought to drill the three syllables into the recesses of his mind until he could no longer breathe a breath without perceiving the utterance against his heartbeat. The cursed word rung through his hassled mind even up to this moment, threatening to destroy the thin line between his sanity and barking mad laughter.

Edo brushed a wayward strand of silver hair out of his eyes and swung his legs mechanically to the edge of the bed. He leaned down and removed his crumpled suit from the floor that had been carelessly discarded to the side amidst all the excitement of the previous night. He gingerly slipped his arms into the sleeves, pointedly deciding to ignore half the buttons had been ripped off. For a brief moment he mulled over the irony as to why Saiou was so gentle to his body yet harsh to his clothing. Then he fastened up the remaining buttons.

He ignored the assorted slashes and torn gaping holes in his shirt and pulled up his collar to hide the red marks on his neck from repeated sucking. He ignored the stiffness of his fingers as he fiddled with fixing his necktie. He ignored how frozen his muscles still were as he got off the bed and planted his feet onto the ground. But he couldn't ignore the whitewashed walls of the room whisper 'destiny' as he strode through the door. Physical damage could easily be repaired with a single phone call to the tailor on that orange cellphone of his but mental damage couldn't be healed as cleanly.

The word rung through his head.

Destiny.

Though eventually, he grew sick of all of it.

He hated it that Saiou couldn't find himself a new toy after all this time. It pissed him off that Saiou refused to change and insisted on keeping in the old, insisted on using him as the puppet on strings—as if Saiou didn't have enough of a selection already seeing as half of the academia was drawn to him like moths to a candle flame. In all ease, Saiou could have simply leaned back in his executive leather chair and point a perfectly manicured finger at the candidates he wished to use and those he wished to dispose of the same way a child would choose what type of candy they want in a candy store. He hated Saiou for this. He hated Saiou for a lot of things, but this one really took the cake.

They wouldn't mind being used. They would adore being used. They stormed the hallways in white throngs and sneered and leered at all the boys in red and yellow because all the boys in red and yellow were not part of the 'club'. They insisted bellowing Saiou's name in the hallways as if he was a holy savior of some sort, calling his name to the heavens as if everybody else were deaf and couldn't hear…but Edo was not part of them. Maybe the guy with the freakin' overhang hair and the babe with the domineering eyes and the freak who persisted on physically deforming himself white would like to play "Saiou-sama's" little mind games but he didn't turn that way, he didn't care—he just wanted his life back. Honestly.

And now being told he had no control over his own destiny, that Saiou had control over his destiny, that destiny had control over itself was beginning to make his head spin. He no longer wanted to think about the stupid magical word destiny. Saiou promised him the position of the time lord. "Believe in destiny and that is what I shall give you," he whispered seductively. But when that lack-lustered position fell out of place and he decided to avenge his father on his own, Saiou persevered on chaining him in bondage of fate and providence when he simply didn't care any fucking longer. He was sick and tired of being told what to and not to do, what was right and what was wrong because he wasn't a young, weepy child anymore—he wanted to discover life on his own rather than be sheltered from the bare truth. He wanted to get rid of the umbrella that hung over his head, get out of the shield and dance wildly in the rain. He didn't care if he got wet, either.

Edo just wanted to know how it felt to be alive again.

So that night when Saiou came to him and pinned him against the wall, grabbed his wrists and pulled them above his head, and when Saiou claimed his lips greedily and spanned an arm around his spindly waist, he merely bit the invading tongue in his mouth hard enough to draw blood so that Saiou broke the kiss and cried in pain, drew back, startled and confused and indignant, his liquid amethyst eyes spitting raw anger; but Edo didn't flinch, he didn't cower, all he did was glare up at the older man with a fringe of silver hair draped over an eye and uttered one defiant word—

"Stop."

Saiou blinked.

"I won't be used any longer."