ZEDD - A COUPLE DAYS LATER
I'm finally feeling well enough to get out of bed. Thomas has already gotten up and thankfully, they've decided that I don't need constant watching anymore. Not that I protested their attention too much given the fact I could barely feed myself the first day or two, but after realizing I wasn't about to be given any time alone, or allowed to see how badly I was injured their hovering got a bit tiresome.
"Still itch damn it." I rise slowly and move to the mirror, still displeased to see the faint but thankfully fading traces of the rash they insisted was due to my fever. Though I still find it odd given I've never had fever rashes before that itched like this one did or that was splotched across my entire body.
I stretch after a quick inspection and dress. Once my fever came down far enough, I asked them what happened. Oddly, all they'd tell me was that they found me, got me out and home and my fever started climbing after that. Nobody's said so but I'm fairly certain that Thomas and the bond is the only reason that I'm alive right now.
Which brings my thoughts back to something else. I know that it's not necessary but I want to give Thomas something for, well, saving me. I've been trying to think of something appropriate but what do you give someone who saved your life? Especially when he knows that I'd already give him pretty much anything he'd ask for in reason for no greater reason than that he'd ask. He likes books, but I don't have many that aren't in Eltarian and while he is progressing in speaking it, verbal and written language are two different things and I'm not certain how far he's come in reading it. He has little use for credits right now, or gems and metals of worth. He doesn't seem to care much for jewelry either as I told him he was free to wear what he wanted of mine. So what the hell would he be interested in? Suddenly, I know. Before I go to the kitchen, I head down to the storage areas.
After a bit of searching, I find what I'm after. It fascinated me when I was a child and I have no doubt that, with Thomas' field of study, it'll fascinate him just as much. I tuck the item in my pocket and make my way back toward the stairs. Before I get there, I hear Dar laugh quietly accompanied by Pina's soft giggle. I find a shadow near the corner and slip into it even as they come around the corner. I'm now a little confused as they were coming from the dungeons of all places.
What were they doing down there? Some kind of sex thing? Pina does seem unusually giddy, and I'm not positive but I do believe that is a bullwhip of some sort in Goldar's hand. Before that thought runs away with me, a small noise catches my attention sending me slipping into the area they'd just left. There it is again. A rattling, almost like…chains? What the hell is that? I head down the hall, noting that all the doors are slightly ajar - except one. I grab the nearby keys and open the door.
I can barely smother my gasp at what I see. Annwyl, hanging from the ceiling and looking as if he's been beaten more than half to death. Slowly, he raises his head. "Zedd. Have you come to beat on me too?"
I allow my irritation to seep into my voice. "No, but then again, I didn't know you were down here either." I can see hope creep into his eyes - what I can see of them at least, as swollen as they are. "I think I need to have a chat with my mate and the rest of my family."
His hope changes to smugness. "Oh I didn't realize you were speaking to your parents again."
"Oh, I'm not" I answer, my tone matching his. "I was referring to my family upstairs."
"Oh. Well in that case, perhaps you can get them to let me down and free - particularly since you seem so irritated that they've treated me this way."
"Quite frankly, Annwyl, considering how you treated me, I couldn't care less how they're treating you. My annoyance comes from the fact that they didn't tell me you were down here, not from how you've been treated. Considering what you put me, my mate, Goldar and Scorpina through, I'm fairly certain when I say that I couldn't possibly care less."
His tone is begging. "Zedd, please, you weren't supposed to die, just get a bit ill so I could care for you. Please, Tercinta, forgive me."
I level a cold look at him. "First, I told you not to call me that. Second, how could you possibly think that I'd break that easily? Do you truly know me at all? You've hurt me twice now and I've no doubt that my mate has made it clear that there won't be a third time."
"I do know you, that's why I thought it would help get through to you if you were a bit ill and needed to rely on someone. I always took care of you when you were sick remember? Beloved please, you know I would never try to kill you."
"Spare me Annwyl, I'm not stupid, I'm well aware you didn't mean to almost kill me. I may not recall exactly what occurred, but I recall enough to remember what you instructed your servants to do to me. I know torture given for the sake of breaking a pet, and I, you moronic son of a bitch, am no one's pet. Neither is my mate."
He sighs tiredly. "Everyone has made it more than clear that he's your mate, not your pet as I thought, and that you two are bonded."
"Even if he wasn't, even if he was damaged past repair when I rescued him and I kept him as a pet to protect him, you should have listened the first time around when I told you we would never be mates again. What he is doesn't matter anymore as far as you and I are concerned, I told you I had no desire to be with you again, that alone should have been enough."
"Zedd, please. Let me go. I won't bother you and your mate anymore."
I consider this for less than half a second, but I remain silent for a minute, letting him think that I'm considering it. I study him, remembering our past together. Once upon a time, he was everything to me. I curtailed much of my rebellious behavior for him, not realizing that he was throwing me to the wolves so to speak. Now, as I look at the man before me, I realize that there is nothing really left of the boy that I'd loved so much and that saddens me. Even if I weren't with Thomas now, I don't really like the man that Annwyl's become. Not to mention that what I have with Thomas is much more powerful than what we'd had, especially given that I could never see Thomas resorting to the extreme of actually harming me just to get his way.
"What if they hadn't come?"
"What?"
"What if Thomas, Goldar, and Scorpina hadn't found me? For arguments sake let's say I did just become ill, then what? We both know I would never let myself be forced into a bond, so what would you have done when you finally got some thought back into your head and realized that?"
Remaining quiet for a good stretch of time and I know working out possible answers in his head, he finally gives what I feel is a somewhat honest response. "You would have still made a good pet."
Shaking my head, oddly not very bothered by this as I was expecting as much, my response is calm. "No, I really wouldn't have." I turn for the door. "I have to confer with the others."
"Zedd, please, I'm begging you."
"It's not only my decision to make, Annwyl. What you did - it affected us all and I'll not take that away from them. I may be the boss around here, but as they are my family as well as my employees, I need to talk to them first."
I leave the room, still hearing him beg for his freedom and then his life. Slowly, I head upstairs, debating what I'll say when I see them.
I move toward the kitchen, the sounds of the laughter of the three of them covering my approach. After a good minute, they all settle down. Thomas speaks first. "Do you think he'll be well enough to tell today, Pina?"
"Unless he's relapsed since you've left the room, it should be fine."
He sighs. "Now I just have to figure out how to tell him. I mean, anytime I say that we need to talk about something, he immediately braces himself for the worst."
"Well given the last few serious talks you've both had together I can in a way see why" Dar states.
"Yeah, so can I, but I don't want him all tense and working himself up to where we're going to have a misunderstanding again. I worry about his temper sometimes. Not that he'd ever do anything to hurt me, but that he's going to end up accidentally hurting himself one of these days." Crap, I knew I should have addressed my reaction to our last argument better. However while I was recovering, it just never seemed to work out as when I'd start to apologize he'd keep insisting it was fine and just a miscommunication on both our parts. "On the other hand, I can't just slip it in the middle of something either. Then it looks like I'm trying to, well, sneak it past him which would be even worse."
"What?" Goldar asks.
"I can't just say something like, 'Hey, how are you feeling? We'll put off practices until tomorrow. I have your ex-mate in the dungeon as my prisoner. Oh and by the way, I was thinking about pork chops for dinner, what do you think?'. See?" I do like pork chops.
"Easiest way is to just come out and say it" Dar says. "As I said, I very seriously doubt that he'll be that upset that Annwyl's down there. He'll definitely be more upset if you don't tell him and he happens to find out for himself. Besides, you never know, he might want to get in a few hits of his own with what happened."
"Maybe" Thomas answers back doubtfully. "He hasn't seemed to have much fight in him since his fever broke."
"He's been ill, he never has much fight in him when that's the case" Pina argues. "Give him another day or two to get his strength back up and he'll be back to normal."
"I guess I'll just have to play it by ear when he gets up. Not to mention that I'm going to have to figure out how to tell him that I have to kill the little bastard."
I wait another minute or two and talk changes to something else so I decide that it's time. I push open the door and head in. Immediately, Thomas smiles at me. "Morning, mate."
"Morning, love." I slip into the seat next to him and steal a quick kiss.
"If you'd waited another few minutes, I would have brought breakfast up to you."
"It's all right, I wanted to get up and eat with you all. Besides, I think I might be less hideous today." Somehow, I'm not all that surprised when he rolls his eyes. Dar slides me a cup of coffee even as Pina reaches over to check me for a fever. "I'm just grateful that I don't need to be hovered over any more."
Thomas frowns slightly. "Hmm. Considering that when you're sick you can barely hold a tissue for yourself, I don't see that we have any choice if we wanted you to live through it."
"As I may have mentioned before, I don't handle being ill very well."
"So you've said, and so I've seen" Thomas agrees. "It's okay though, I like getting to take care of you once in a while."
"I like it too, to be honest, once in a while that is. So what have I missed?"
"Not much, Dar got your last two orders delivered for you. Did some laundry, oh I accidentally let a tac into the palace. Sorry about that. I thought it was hurt with how it was meowing at the door so I brought it in to check on it and apparently it wasn't hurt so much as hungry." Oh lovely.
"We got it back outside, Zedd" Pina assures me.
"Is that why you were checking under the bed the other day?" Recalling all three looking rather haggard and Pina crawling through my room as if looking for something, though insisting she wasn't at the time, I realize this must have been what the reason had been.
"Yeah, took us forever to find it" Thomas says with a sigh. "That aside though, not much has been happening. Oh, by the way, I have a prisoner in the dungeon."
"You have a prisoner?"
He takes a breath and continues. "Yeah. We - I was waiting until you were better so that if you were stressed, it wouldn't delay you getting better."
I raise an eyebrow at him. "Why would you having a prisoner in the dungeon stress me, Thomas?"
Unfortunately, I think he catches something in my voice and he looks at me sharply for a long moment. "Crap. You already know" he accuses. "I swear I wasn't trying to hide it from you Zedd. I really did just want to wait until you'd recovered enough."
"Given the condition I was in and how close I think I actually did come to death I can understand that."
"How did you find out?"
"I went down to the storage areas to find something. I was on my way back out when I heard and then saw Dar and Pina leaving the dungeon area. Being my naturally curious self, I wondered what the hell they'd been doing down there."
"You thought we were mating" Dar accuses with a smirk.
"It crossed my mind" I agree. "That is until I heard a noise and went to investigate. You shouldn't hit him in the face so much by the way, you keep catching his eyes in your strikes and he's not going to be able to see what you're doing pretty soon until the swelling goes down. Just a tip."
The other three exchange looks and it's almost amusing. Finally, my mate speaks again. "Well, that went better than I thought. You aren't mad then? Or upset?"
"I was a bit at first over the fact you'd neglected to tell me he was there, but I do understand your reasoning for waiting as I said. So as long as you aren't planning on killing him, I don't really care what you do with him."
I'm not at all surprised when his gaze drops to his plate. "About that- um, yeah, I kind of am."
"About that- um I'd kind of prefer you'd not." At his surprised and then hurt look, it doesn't take me long to figure out where his hurt is stemming from. "And it's not for the reason that I know is going through your head right now. Thomas I don't care about him, but I do care about you and I very honestly don't wish to see his death on your hands. I know you don't think much of it now, but trust me, it will bother you some day - a lot."
Heaving a sigh, he is clearly not pleased by this. "I don't think there's really a choice. After all, Zedd, if we let him go, he's just going to come back once he's healed and comes up with a new plan and I know we're all going to get tired of looking over our shoulders for him. I'd rather end his life than wind up watching him end yours."
"There are other ways to keep him out of our proverbial hair, Thomas, without you having to commit murder. I don't want you doing something like that when it isn't necessary."
He's silent for a minute. "What do you suggest?"
"Well, I'm fairly sure that Trey would be happy to lock him in a cell for the rest of his days for you. We could dump him on an uninhabited planet with minimal supplies. Oh, how about selling him to someone as a pet? Why not Rita, they're both obsessed over how amazingly stunning I am, they'll have something in common."
Looking at me, unamused it seems, Thomas shakes his head. "You're clearly feeling better."
"I'm just saying there are people who would pay a good price for him, or just take him off our hands to help us out. He didn't mean to almost kill me, Thomas. He's an idiot and a bastard, but I don't think he would have gone through so much trouble if he'd just wanted to kill me off. It would have been a waste of time and effort on his part if he had."
Thomas looks at me strangely. "Trying to kill you or not, he still tortured you and infected you with something that was deadly to you. So that in mind, why would we do that? Make him a pet I mean? A prisoner fine. Dumping him off on a dangerous planet to fend for his life, okay we'll assume he won't be rescued and hopefully be eaten by a bear. But a pet? I've learned enough over the years associating with Rangers on other worlds, I know Trey himself has what you would call 'pets' that are treated like royalty. True they have to do what he asks of them, but they have a fairly good life and seem pretty content. Quite frankly, that almost seems to be the nicest of the three and a copout."
"Not necessarily. While you're right in that Trey and others like him treat their pets rather well, I think you saw how he allows his own pets to be used and treated when they are no longer his favorites."
"Yeah, I was hoping those were prisoners, but according to Dar and Pina that wasn't the case."
"Listen, Thomas I'd like to say that how he treats those he has is due to the dark power he holds or evil in him that wasn't purged, but I don't find that to be the case. I still have as much if not more power and evil left in me than he does and I couldn't really bring myself to treat any pets I would acquire as he does. This might be the best solution, love. What do you call it - karma?"
Seeming to be thinking on this, when he finally speaks again it takes me a bit by surprise. "Why would you acquire pets?"
"I wouldn't, but…" Looking to the others for help, Dar is the first to pipe in.
"He means you."
"What?" Thanks so much Dar. Looking stunned and then more than a tad miffed, his voice is restrained. "Explain. Now."
"Listen, Thomas, when we found out you were injured, we didn't know how badly and if you would recover. I felt I owed you at the time, and so one of the solutions we'd come up with if you were beyond help and recovery was to keep you with us. Not to be used as a bedroom pet, but just to stay here where you'd be safe and taken care of, as it was fairly clear those children couldn't keep you safe and like hell if I trusted Rita or Zordon to. This was before I even rescued you, love. It was just a plan in case. You know hope for the best, plan for the worst?"
Taking a breath and looking somewhat calm, he finally gives a slow nod. "Okay, I suppose I can understand that. However I'm still not seeing exactly how making him a pet for someone else, even someone like him, would be karma given you weren't his pet but his prisoner."
"Well his secondary plan, had you not saved me and I survived the illness, was to make me into a pet so why not do the same to him?"
Thomas freezes for a minute. His voice is strangled when he does speak. "He was going to make you into a pet?" Why do I feel like I just said something I shouldn't have.
"Well I asked him what he would have done assuming I hadn't died and he realized I still wouldn't have willingly given in to him and he said I would have still made a good pet."
"Oh he did, did he." He stands abruptly and heads for the door. Maybe I shouldn't have told him that. Quickly I rise and we all follow him.
