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-1Thank you for your reviews!

I made a few very small alterations to the prologue and decided to rewrite Chapter 4. Prologue was just a matter of a phrase I didn't much like. Chapter four I scrapped because it didn't seem… right, you know? I've kept some small parts of the original, but after having three weeks or so with no decent inspiration from it I decided that a rewrite was the best option. Oh, and I also renamed the chapters. Don't ask why, I can't tell you the answer because I just do not know!

I've read far too much slash over the past few weeks, and am now fully infected with it's wonderful addiction.

Somebody tell me if this is too fast or slow or whatever. ;) I'm wondering about the speed.

Also I'd really appreciate if somebody could tell me how to achieve a line separator rather than having to use rows of x's!

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Chapter 4: In Dreams

Most of the day passed with very little event of note or value. Murtagh found, somewhat to his hidden pleasure and somewhat to his deep dismay, that Tornac did not consider snow to be a worthy reason for cancelling a sparring lesson. Somehow his trainer had known that Murtagh was going to be less than cooperative about the prospect of sparring in the cold, and so had parked himself outside Murtagh's door, refused to move, and had knocked on Murtagh's door incessantly until he finally surrendered and opened it. Tornac had told him dryly that in the time it had taken him to stop pretending that he was not there and could not hear the noise he had been making on the door, he had fallen a full hour late for his lesson - which Murtagh had taken to mean as he would not have a full lesson. Instead it meant sparring even after the sky was going a dusky purple and was getting hard to see.

Murtagh returned to his room sore, shivering, and covered in bruises from where Tornac's blows had continually been far too fast for him to parry. Tornac seemed able to retain a child-like joy for the entire training session, beaming every time he managed to get a hit on Murtagh - rather more often than Murtagh would have liked - and even more when Murtagh finally managed to hit him - which a was pathetically uncommon occurrence. Murtagh however struggled to keep up even his less than convincing appearance of being excited over losing sparring match after sparring match in the freezing cold. He stuck his finger in his mouth to try and regain some sort of feeling, and kicked off his boots tiredly, collapsing onto his bed, wincing slightly. He could not decide why he was still completely incapable of hating the man who trained him this hard. His previous trainer had been cruel, brutal certainly - but Tornac was just relentless in his lessons, never seeming to tire and clearly expecting the same of Murtagh.

His back ached… he had trained too hard. Slowly he tugged off his shirt, and wincing, traced his fingers along the scar, remembering with shocking clarity how it had felt. Remembered, even now, the dull collapse of his thoughts around him as he had blacked out: the way that sleep had seemed so tempting to sink down into; the explosion down his spine that he could not comprehend; the groggy downfall into a pain-induced hell; waking to more pain than he had ever imagined possible. A memory that, no matter how hard he tried to forget, continued to push itself up to the surface in defiance.

He collapsed onto his bed with a soft tired hiss between gritted teeth, rubbing his hand over his face roughly. His fascination with Tornac was starting to burn in his chest again. The memory of such beautiful silver eyes, the slight mournful edge to his smile that made it nothing short of - he forced himself to admit - irresistible. Was it wrong to think his trainer so irresistible? Murtagh sighed to himself, and decided that the cold had quite gone to his head.

From Tornac's room was the faint sound of violin playing, a haunting little melody that enraptured his mind with its beauty. He was caught in its entrancing web, trapped and fully aware of the fact. Something in the music made him shiver uncomfortably, and yet at the same time it calmed him and allowed him to relax blissfully against the soft fabric of the bed-cover. Now here was a pleasurable feeling… a warmth not unlike being covered over with unimaginably soft blankets that spread right up his spine, easing an utterly weary Murtagh down into floating lacy dreams. As he fell asleep he registered the violin carrying on into the night.

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He was younger again, running down a tall corridor that to his inexperienced eyes seemed to stretch high into the realms of clouds that his father's dragon roamed. The dragon, in fact, was the reason he was here, he knew as he knew vague instincts, a fuzzy certainty of why he was here. He wanted to see the dragon again - for although he terrified the servants who scuttled past, Murtagh doted on him, loved to reach out and touch his red scales and feel the resounding growl that travelled right along his arm. He had seen it land in the courtyard late into the night, when logic stated that children of such a young age should be sleeping, but Murtagh rarely slept. People always remarked quietly among themselves that there was something uncanny about the understanding of the world in the boy, something uncanny about the brown eyes that peered out form shadows, fastidiously comprehending what adults seemed to fail to grasp. Perhaps that was why, now, he raced outside to see the growling form of the dragon, knowing somehow that it would not hurt him.

But the dragon was not there. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach, a feeling of gut disappointment, but one that quickly faded with the realisation that the dragon would be hunting and would return in the beautiful hues of the evening. He was usually in a more playful mood after he had devoured some small meal, and so Murtagh supposed to himself that it would make better sense to see him in the evening. His father would be drinking by then, naturally. How blissfully well fate worked out for Murtagh, he thought to himself, and resolved to visit the dragon later.

With a quiet restrained excitement, Murtagh hurtled back into the corridor, expecting to be able to dash straight back to the safety of his room, but instead to his surprise colliding with a shivering wreck in curled in the middle of the floor. With some form of twisted recognition, Murtagh stared in surprise to see his father, curled into a tight ball, a strange sobbing sound emitting from him. Thinking to comfort him, Murtagh reached out affectionately but was viciously slapped away.

Hurt, his brown eyes fixed on his father's tired, melancholy green ones, searching for an answer or apology but receiving none. A shiver of unknown apprehension ran up his spine as the man got to his feet, shaking, eyes showing a clouded picture of Morzan's grasp at alcohol to make some of the stresses of life fade. Already knowing the outcome inside his mind, and powerless to change it, Murtagh turned to run back to his room.

No!…

The shout came from both Murtagh's older, more experienced mind, knowing precisely the pattern that fate took, and from his father, a combined command that rang in Murtagh's mind anyway as he hurried back to the safety of his mother. Trapped inside his own mind, Murtagh took a deep breath of apprehension.

He knew even before he felt it hacking into flesh across his back that Morzan's sword would be tossed at him. Knew of the pain that would erupt, hot and sticky like the blood he knew all too well would be dripping, dripping, dripping onto the floor. Knew that next to him, he would fuzzily hear the sound of Morzan picking up his sword, oblivious to what act he had just committed. Inside his own thoughts he counted the footsteps until the pain was going to come.

His vision exploded white, a scream escaping from both his own voice and that of a much younger Murtagh, who collapsed onto the floor. There was the cool slam of stone against him as he reeled and pounded into the flagstones hard, the blood trickling past his eyes as his head began to spin. The pain was unbelievable, ripping him apart, not able to be released in a scream but yet he continued his futile attempt at externalising it. Inside his head, Murtagh counted down the precise number of seconds until he lost consciousness - an agonising 26 seconds of unendurable torture that he knew all too well - delirious from the pain. Each second came with a desperate ragged gasp for air, dragging on until Murtagh thought his mind might shatter before it ended. He counted the last eight seconds until his fragile trail of thoughts would all but collapse into darkness…

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Waking abruptly, Murtagh gasped shallowly at air, eyes looking around him in fear, whines of screams fading as they caught in his throat. Fingers shaking, he brushed his hair out of his eyes, still panting for air, the feeling of cool sweat uncomfortable down his back. Brown eyes still wide with fear, he curled up into himself in the darkness, waiting for his heart to stop shuddering adrenaline around his body, breathing too hard. Trembling, he reached to his shoulder, brushing his fingertips against the place where the tip of the sword had impacted heavily into moments before the rest of the metal had sliced across him. He had relived that dream too many times for his liking.

After what seemed a horrific eternity he could breathe again, remembrance of pain fading from his back, left to stare around him in the dark, the only sounds his own calming heartbeat in his ears and the sound of his breathing. By then Murtagh was too terrified to re-enter sleep and stayed stubbornly awake, refusing to allow himself to be dragged into repetition of his nightmare and instead sat emptily considering nothing. His thoughts smouldered around him, distant shadows of ideas that burned just out of his reach. Not that this bothered him. In Murtagh's eyes the more he thought, the worse his situation seemed, and so as a rule he did not allow himself to overly contemplate matters.

He waited until the sun was breaching the horizon to drag himself out of bed and, grabbing up his shirt, went to wash some of the cold sweat away, exhausted from the night of almost no rest but knowing that his only option was to get through the day. Wearily, Murtagh splashed water over himself, knowing that there would be a long day ahead of him.

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Tornac waited patiently for Murtagh to join him in the courtyard. He had, of course, arrived scrupously promptly, and had been waiting ever since for the arrival of his pupil, who it seemed did not consider the idea of sparring in the snow quite as exiting as Tornac in his childish happiness did. Finally the door opened and Murtagh tumbled out, brown eyes weary and not really seeming to be in a fit mood to spar. This meant relatively little to Tornac however, who beamed at his appearance - albeit a rather disgruntled and tired one - and watched as Murtagh positioned himself to fight.

Smiling with excitement, Tornac launched himself at his young companion, feeling the shock from his blade impacting with Murtagh's in a rush of pleasurable pain shooting up his arm from the force of contact. Murtagh visibly gritted his teeth and pushed him back forcibly, sending his light frame skittering across the snow only to run back with renewed energy to attack again. Murtagh hit out hard, frustration rising to an almost unbearable level until finally Tornac decided that he had toyed with him quite long enough and joyfully drove in for the kill, backing Murtagh into a wall and raising his sword to his neck.

"Dead!" Tornac grinned. Murtagh made some mutter of tired acknowledgement, rolled his brown eyes in defeat. "But now, to teach! I don't approve of your previous trainer's technique at all." Tornac frowned, a small childish dissatisfaction that was playful behind its criticism. "For a start that isn't the right way to hold a sword in my method... Dear me there is just too much to do with you, Murtagh…"

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Murtagh glanced down to his right hand in a mild confusion, before Tornac laid down his weapon and made to show him how he considered best to hold one. Murtagh had expected him to be rough, but instead found to his somewhat pleasant surprise that Tornac was wonderfully gentle, prying his sword from his grip softly before cautiously slowly moving his fingers back to a new hold, all the while his silver eyes fixed on Murtagh's own for approval. The light caress of his fingers against his made his pupil shiver slightly, noticing how beautifully caring Tornac's touch was.

"That's better…" Tornac muttered to himself, letting his fingers loose so that Murtagh was holding the sword himself and stepping back to assess the result with a perfected precision. "Let's try again shall we?" He swung at Murtagh experimentally, allowing his pupil time to contemplate this foreign way of holding his sword, before cautiously the second blade rose to meet his own. Murtagh was wordlessly amazed at how very natural this felt, how much simpler than before, and soon settled into the rhythm of fighting Tornac, confidence starting to show behind today's tired meekness. Tornac encouraged every rise in esteem until a rare smile started to break at the corner of Murtagh's face, a smile of confidence and comfort despite his fighting being more than inferior to his trainer's.

There was something magical about the way the violent beauty of the swords brought their bodies closer together, something fascinatingly distraction about fighting somebody so perfect. Murtagh thought hazily through concentrated sparring that, if only Tornac had been a woman, this wouldn't have dragged on so long. He would be his by now. He would have made the most beautiful woman he had ever set eyes upon; not that he had ever felt like this about women… He smiled.

A smile that his trainer did not know, could not know, was reserved for his beautiful silver eyes alone, a smile that nobody else had ever had the pleasure to witness, save for perhaps Annette on occasion. But with Tornac Murtagh began to feel a security, a safety in being with the man that he found nowhere else, and he found himself taking more and more pleasure in it. Tornac won with predictable repetition, but seemed so delighted with both himself and his pupil that Murtagh almost began to wonder if he was actually allowing him to win just to see this amazing joy that spread across Tornac's face as he routinely declared with glee that Murtagh was -

"Dead!" Murtagh groaned in mock upset, tired and bruised but still somehow enjoying himself wonderfully, and lifted his eyes to see Tornac releasing his thin sword from across Murtagh's chest and pushing it back into its scabbard with a flourish. "I think that's enough for today."

"No!" Murtagh gasped, perhaps just a little too firmly, because Tornac fixed him with a look that was as unreadable as it was disturbing.

"No?" he parroted quietly, head cocking to one side in interest.

"Just once more?" Murtagh muttered. "It's still light." he indicated the horizon.

Tornac began to laugh, such a sweet little laugh that Murtagh started to laugh along with him until there was the clang of metal and he returned to his sense with a jolt to parry away the hit. "You just don't know when you've had enough do you Murtagh?" he grinned, whirling. Murtagh fought back silently, struggling to keep his focus.

"Well you know, Murtagh?" He span, but was caught off guard by Tornac's sword slicing air mere centimetres from his arm and stumbled backwards, only just keeping his balance, but in the process having his sword stolen with a vivid flick of his trainer's wrist. There was the cold kiss of metal against his neck in an instant.

"I like that." Tornac whispered, smiling as he stepped away, turned on his heel and walked back inside, sheathing his sword instinctively. Murtagh panted for breath in the cold, brown eyes empty but his heart pounding with excitement as he repeated softly

"I like that…"

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Hohum. I just got hold of the HINDER album along with piles of slash ficlets, so that was hugely enjoyable to write.

And yes, I'm aware that other than looking at each other they haven't actually got to do anything yet. So sue me. XD I'm a romantic, I take things slowly, but I think something might happen soon-ish, so stay tuned. '

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