-1It's been a while since I updated, I know, but I'm struggling a lot with things at the moment, and apologies for that. My finger appears to have sorted itself out more or less, which is a huge relief. I can type with it today so I'm hoping that was just a temporary little thing. Hopefully I won't get that again, it was really unpleasant!

I also managed to get hold of a whole load of new music, mostly from the band sonata arctica, so this chapter has an underlying SA theme running through it, if you know the band you may pick up on occasional references!! ;) The chapter title is a tribute to these guys, I'm thinking of changing all of the titles to SA songs... They're finnish and they're power metal, I really do recommend them, they've become one of my very favourite bands and have cured many a case of the feared "block". With Sonata Arctica blasting in my ears I'm happy. Tony Kakko, you are my cure. Actually coincidentally Tony provided a key inspiration for my beloved Tornac, I just changed his sexuality a bit ;)… Kiitos Tony, minä rakastan sinua!

Speaking of whom, Tornac gets this chapter all to himself, more or less. FINALLY you get to see him through his own eyes rather than Murtagh's, and hopefully see him a little more truly because of it.


Please R n R, as I'm particularly interested in what people think of my baby in this one -huggles Tornac tightly-

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Chapter 6: Black Sheep

Tornac brushed strands of his black hair out of his eyes pensively, splashing water in his face and shivering as cold fat droplets ran down his neck, grabbing a shirt he had discarded the night before and quickly drying them away. Peering out of the window absently, he started to run his fingers through his hair. The sun was nearly risen, the sky tickling the ground a playful sunshine hue. Perfect light, and such a waste to allow it to slip away whilst he slept. It seemed a hideous shame to squander such beautiful hours on the menial task of sleeping when the time could be better used to further perfect his sword technique. If that was to mean spending the morning in the cold privacy of a solitude silence, then it was a sacrifice he would willingly make. Tornac really always had been one who favoured his own company over that of others. Or at least, save for very few special people. One of which he had spent his night dreaming hopelessly of.

His had been a large family, a close and tender family, but one that had been torn past more than its fair due of loss, and one somewhat less perfect than outward appearances seemed. He had always been the quietest one, the one who wondered to himself in such ways as were considered unhealthy to wonder. The one who pined for education, for books, for scholarly things that were beyond his grasp. The one who became the object of rather a lot of humour - albeit in a gentle kind fashion of playful mockery - among both older and younger siblings. Tornac had been the ninth of eleven and the fifth of six to manage to cope with the struggle of growing through infanthood. Though never the youngest there had always been a tendency to regard him as the child of the family, which his carefully nursed retained glimmer of immaturity did nothing to quell. Being made the little mysterious and yet humorous black sheep of his family by numerous older siblings however had not been anything that Tornac particularly disliked, and so his inner child had been held onto tightly and protected for its worth, for the way that it gave him some identity, some sense of being unique - which he treasured above much of the rest of his vivacious personality.

He smiled to himself as he ran strands of hair absently between his fingers. The childish excitement still remained even today, the capacity to become enchanted by such simple wondrous delightful things as snow, and winning, and lace, and to allow himself to become so wholly enraptured that he simply could not force his eyes away and would become obsessed with such ridiculous things. It had set him apart from a family that had been disfigured through lost to become, for the most part, a serious and restrained community where a calm and sensible maturity came over at the earliest possible egress from the silly naïve restraints of childhood. To Tornac, this meant relatively little. He valued childhood highly, and was particularly enraptured by the differences in the way the world could be seen through a child's eyes. Whether it was considering something enthralling or showing a little of his seemingly undying energy, Tornac was forever a younger man at heart.

The opportunity for some little money had arisen somewhat by accident and certainly to a murmur of jealousy from siblings. Tornac, being eager for learning and knowledge, had gone about trying to study better how to care for a broken world, a broken race, a broken person. But healing had never been a particularly successful occupation for a man who was always dreaming. He tired quickly of the continuous repetition of whiling away day after rainy day caring for people significantly older than he was, who were seldom polite and even less still grateful - and had a distaste for blood that allowed itself to become all too evident. He found that there was very little intellect to be found or indeed used in the wrapping of cuts or cleaning of blood, and for somebody so hungry for new things this was a disappointing boredom.

He could remember even now the way he would return home, finding even his own hands repulsive because they were coated in blood. Having always been unduly concerned to a point of being wildly obsessive about cleanliness, Tornac had found blood nothing short of disgusting and having his hands covered in it made him shudder at the sickening revulsion of it all. He wanted so desperately to clean the horrifying repulse of it away, wanted to scrub at it unrelentingly until no sign of nauseating crimson remained, which was made no easier by the fact that the stain was on his own skin. He would not want to think about how somebody else's blood was coating his fingers, not want to look at the sanguine water because it was such an abhorrence of his scrupulous habits. He grew to develop a removal from the situation so that he could distract his mind briefly whilst his hands frantically rubbed each other clean in the water, but never truly learned to control the fearful disgust of it.

Sparring was something altogether more pleasant as an experience. Tornac could recall the detached bliss of whirling, captivated in his own exclusive universe of bliss with his blade, oblivious to the world around him, happy just to continue this elaborate little dance he had been meticulously perfecting over the past weeks so that the routine of knowing when to twist and when to move became an automated response of his subconscious mind. With a violent little flourish he would finish, pausing for a minute to pant for breath, smiling to himself. The results of his long diligent hours of training slowly became apparent, and he was proud of the fact.

Why he was so keenly fond of violence, well, Tornac himself had never been quite certain. Perhaps it was the murderous grace of it, or perhaps the way that it worked as a perfect externalising of every emotion. Just as the painter meticulously worked on his creation as though it were his very being, so Tornac worked to perfect his sparring, considering it to be the purest art form that it was possible for a man to partake in. He would devote priceless hours into the careful honing of the technique of using the thin sword that came to be almost an extension of himself, such was its value and familiarity. He would while away hours of time in his own private little world, content with his own company and the friendship of his sword. The metal became his closest ally, his fickle little lover, stole the most important place in his heart so that there wasn't any space anymore for anything as false as love.

Ah, love. Love, for Tornac, had always been something a little unique. It was not simply the fact that, unlike his siblings, he at first showed very little interest in pursuing other people - fancying his own company far above that confusion of another's. Indeed, had it not been for what he saw now to be a rather silly unnecessary flourish in one of his sparring afternoons rendering his arm very much useless for some months - much to his sincerest mournful upset and deep frustration at the time - he might never have found the thrills of love at all. It was not even just that, when his passion for swords was allowed to be placed aside for long enough so that he finally did begin to show interests, they were blatant and poorly hidden - Tornac became so amazed by the idea of romance that he spent no time considering how his relentless watching of people was making his point painfully clear. No. The true difference was so wonderfully simple, and yet seemingly impossible to comprehend. Tornac was not sure at what point it had become so apparent that it was not just women he found beautifully attractive - it was a deep inside premonition, something that it seemed had constantly resided, unnoticed, at the back of his mind. Oh, women were beautiful, certainly. But to Tornac's eyes, so too were men. So beautiful that he would find himself sitting aimlessly dreaming of how it would feel to be wrapped in their arms, so warm and safe, or staring rather blatantly at somebody who caught his particular fancy in an unrelenting and not completely undisturbing manner that led some large number of people to start to murmur amongst themselves that too much sparring was quite clearly bad for the head, or else that it was not only his arm that needed to be healed, and that the man was ill.

Tornac smiled to himself, leaning on the window heavily and staring out, silver grey eyes intrigued as they followed the flight path of one hundred tiny pairs of starling wings, so breakable and fragile as they flitted through the clouds. He had been anything but ill - indeed he had been the happiest he had ever felt in his life. Save for perhaps the first time anybody had kissed him - the still vivid memory continued to give him such a warm comfortable feeling, an internal contentment that he did not suppose could ever quite be matched. His smile grew as he remembered how wonderful it had felt, how innocent and yet how sensual. And the feeling of being so very safe in somebody else's embrace, the feeling that the world was turning just perfectly. His first kiss had been with another man, unbeknown to his family. Even now he remembered very little of the details of how it had come about, but to his eyes it was of little consequence. More important was the warm hard feeling it induced inside of him, and how blissful it had been to make such pure contact with somebody, and the bliss in the ignorance of everything and everybody else.

Of course, despite how happy he had been, there was still a discontentment with the world he had been raised in. A discontentment in the arrangement for him to spend the rest of his years with a woman he felt nothing for instead of any number of the beautiful people he wished so desperately could be his for an eternity. Of course, had he suggested it, he had no doubt that his family would have been disgusted at the idea of his union to another man, or to a woman who had as little money and as much individuality as he possessed himself., despite that being his desire. And so the arguments began, a divide becoming daily more and more evident between himself and a world that wanted him to do against his will with a simple acceptance, and while out his days as a man who he knew he wasn't. The albescence from his sparring started to take its toll, and soon Tornac was pining for the beautiful aggression of sparring, making him nothing short of intensely irritable, and the arguing ran vicious and loud through the days of feeling hopelessly caged. At the earliest hint that he was regaining some feasible use of his injured arm, he hurried to the release of the outside world to reacquaint himself with his blade and fought away many fast, violent hours of contained agitation, but of course by then the discontent had long since gone beyond all healing.

Something in his ambitious personality had craved for something more, for something to fulfil his childish dreams of pursuing his sparring obsession to something on a level of a profession, to build his life out of the thing he adored more than anything else. He had never even regretted it, never regretted the innocent little lies he had woven to inform every friend or brother that he was going to fight in a war that he never for a single minute intended on partaking in. And so it had come about that Tornac began his trials to form the life that he wanted so very badly to live. The struggle to reach the most prestigious of training duties had by no means been easy, but such was his determination that he had persisted in battling himself to the places he wanted to be, to train the pupils he believed would be the strongest. And thus he had arrived at Murtagh. Ah, Murtagh. Now here was something special, something powerfully different and beautiful all at once.

He smiled, stifling a small yawn with an almost lupine quality about it, and moving sleekly away from the window to check himself briefly in a small polished mirror, his vanity being properly satisfied before he made for the door, a far away expression of happiness still remaining on his face. Perhaps it was through his childish playfulness or maybe that blissful memory of his first kiss that Tornac had retained an extremely tactile personality, being somebody who relied strongly on showing his affection for people through touch, and adored to be held and touched back in return. Tornac was a man who loved to be cuddled and petted in a way that did nothing but further show his child-like approach to love. Words were soft and beautiful, he knew, but to hold somebody meant so much more than words were ever capable of describing. Subconsciously, he pressed the door open, careful not to allow it to creak. The memory of somebody's unique and individual touch and by extension their feel when he touched them, had always remained special to him, each person having a special subtle difference to it, just as peoples appearances and scents were beautifully refreshingly different. And, as with scents and appearances, some were naturally much more pleasurable than others, drawing the attraction more powerfully until he was a helpless hopeless mass of devilish infatuation.

Tornac blinked in surprise to see that Murtagh's door remained a little ajar, resting slightly apart from the latch. Murtagh… a smile wavered into his eyes just thinking about his pupil. He was electrifying to touch without even touching Tornac back in return, a special little explosive hot thrill he could still feel running through his chest in the memory of his skin against his own. He had loved the excuse to be able to show some small affection to a man he was fast coming to privately adore. In a moment of rash decision, and against all sense in him, he cautiously nudged the door a little further from its frame so that he could slink inside. There was a warm comfort in Murtagh's room that he had noticed the night before - but now, as he saw it in a new morning light, he began to wonder if that was just because of the beautiful man who it belonged to.

He had known right from his first sight of his new pupil that he would be carefully nursing his desperate little infatuation for some time, an infatuation with those dark eyes and that proud, confused little expression. Tornac always had been subject to painfully obsessive longings for people, and here was simply his perfect match, somebody confident to contrast exhilaratingly from his childish playfulness, somebody dark to match his undying little shimmer of light. Somebody beautiful. Murtagh was sleeping quietly, curled up with his dark hair slightly matted. Tornac bit his nails wordlessly, wondering how it would feel to be allowed to comb it out between his fingers. He cocked his head to one side happily, watching as Murtagh slept and pondering to himself what his pupil was dreaming of, smiling to himself as his mind began to conjure images of what it would feel like to be the person to watch the man in front of him wake up every morning, to watch his beautiful dark eyes the last seconds before he fell asleep and his first waking moments too. Tornac knew very well what he himself dreamed of, what he had dreamed of ever since meeting the man he watched now. What would it feel, he wondered, for this to be any different so that Murtagh had belonged to a different society where the love of another man was not so widely forbidden and unspoken of. What would it feel for this man to be something other than simply a pupil and to become a friend. Or indeed a lover, he felt his heart chide devilishly.

Oh of course, he would never let any slight sign of his little obsession become evident. Tornac had trained himself in regimental self-control so that nobody would ever entirely know what thoughts he had of them, nobody could ever completely read his expression as he looked at them. Had things been any different, he knew that he would have fallen for this man hopelessly even just at the very first sight of him. But the pressing fact was that this was different, this was a profession and nothing more, and he scolded himself for even dreaming of it becoming otherwise. Dutifully, Tornac pulled himself away from Murtagh's room with an almost painful little flicker of longing, that was soon displaced by an enthusiasm for sparring.

He clicked open the door to the courtyard, and allowed himself a moment to close his eyes and simply breathe in the cold smell of the morning, the reassuring smells of rain and pine and life. Slowly, he began to fight with an imagined man, a smile of content taking over his face. A man with dark hair and confused yet beautiful brown eyes. A man who, unknown to Tornac, had somewhat of a little infatuation of his own as he woke up to peer out of his window at his trainer sparring his first hours away.

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Hmmmmm. This was a hard chapter to write. This stage of a relationship always seems the hardest to write for me, as I'm always worried over it being too slow or too fast. Please R n R, comments on how the pacing is working (or indeed, NOT working if that be the case!) would be very very much appreciated! I'm worried about controlling the characters so they don't become all ooc. Thank you. X