Ah, it's been too long since I updated, I'm so sorry! I can only blame lack of inspiration, though sitting here now on this lovely summer evening with beautiful love songs playing, looking at the big picture of Murtagh and Tornac on my wall makes me wonder how I could ever be uninspired. I suppose it happens to everyone right?

Wow… I feel pretty content right now. Your reviews have made me smile so much. Also I know there is a happier moment coming in the next chapter and Nightwish and Negative mix is playing on the computer so I'm happy. ; Ah… the summer of (written) romance, art and good Finnish music. I'm happy.

Siren - thank you so much for your review, it means so much to me! And of course, I like to try and be a little unpredictable ;)

Vamp proxy - thank you very much for reviewing! It's so lovely to know who's reading and what they think, so a huge thank you to you! I hope you continue to enjoy it.

Hot4Garrett - Thanks for the review, and don't worry about it taking a while - I can't exactly claim to being the fastest person myself! ;)

Shaeldryn - wow. Just… wow! Thank you so very very much!

For all who didn't get my little riddle, I'll explain it out now. ;)

Tornac's age minus Murtagh's age, approximately, (28-23) give you an answer of 5. Which, multiplied by two, should give you an answer of chapter ten. And look which chapter we seem to be on… ;) Hope you enjoy.

This chapter is named after a kickass song. Oh how I love this song! I was sort of saving it for a later chapter, but then when titling this one it just sort of fitted, you know?

Chapter 10. Don't Say A Word

The spring was coming fast; melting the remnants of winter's icy grip along with Murtagh's heart. Tornac seemed to become more painfully beautiful every time he was caught in Murtagh's eyes; and at the same time so much more wonderfully fatal. To Murtagh's mind, Tornac was the most beautiful angel sent with the intention of granting death, the most shining silver star of a blade to end a life, the coldest romanticide of an eternal love in death, the sharpest ray of sunlight on the coldest day that sent a maze of tiny cracks running across the ice. Murtagh stood helplessly caught in the labyrinthine contradiction of Tornac, slowly becoming to be more and more longing for him, slowly becoming more amazed by the way somebody could be just so very beautiful.

So beautiful.

He was growing to be obsessed by him, obsessed by his beautiful looks or his somehow mournful little smile, obsessed by the way his accent sounded to his ears, obsessed by the fleeting music of his laugh. There was something undeniably attractive about him, something that made Murtagh desperately shy of him in a way that forced him to try his hardest to not make his blatant attraction obvious and at the very same time hoping with all his heart that Tornac would notice. There was a pining for some attention and at the same time a pressing, urgent fear of it. Idle dreaming was fast becoming a desperate longing in a chain that slipped too fast through his fingers for Murtagh to have a hope of grasping in order to make logic of his situation and simply watched as his desire unravelled before him in such a perfectly deadly contradiction.

There were occasions when in a fit of desperation for Tornac he would fancy catching a little glimmer of the same want in his trainer's eyes; when the violence of sparring would bring their bodies powerfully close against each other and there was a perfect little glint of want, of longing, in such a beautiful tiny moment of such perfect proximity to united intimacy before it was thrown apart again to ashes. There was the smallest spark that Murtagh almost thought that he could comprehend in his companion's glance when it caught his own. A little lonely wanting flicker that passed into the perfect silver grey before disappearing in a single blink and a pretty little feline smile that would find Murtagh smiling back though he never could know why. Somehow, around Tornac, smiling and happiness felt so peacefully natural and right for him.

There was something perfect in Tornac that Murtagh could find in nobody else, something that he could not see in any man or any woman but his trainer. Something kind and loving and so very wonderful. Love and lust entwined together.

"Dead."

Tornac stepped back from Murtagh with a blissful lupine smile illuminating his pretty face, brushing his dark hair back as he extended a hand to help his pupil to his feet, looking down to him. Murtagh thought privately that with the cold morning sunlight rays illuminating the sky behind him, Tornac looked like a dark angel of sorts, so beautiful in the most dangerous way, almost too fatal - but then one single glance to his eyes and how genuinely happy and beautiful they were stole anything else away. Tornac managed to capture happiness in an almost inhumanly simple way, to make it seem so very real. For one small moment, Murtagh's eyes met with his trainer's.

There was a perfect moment that ran electrifyingly through Murtagh's mind, his body, his entire being. Tornac's eyes were so perfectly silver-grey, so beautiful beyond any words that might have been used to describe them. For just that one moment, everything was peaceful and happy, the sun lighting Tornac's face in just the right way, the quiet in the courtyard so wonderful, the air not so cold and unwelcoming as it had been, everything just as he wanted it to be. Perfection born from ashes of a shattered world. For just that one moment, his trainer's eyes flickered with something, a little hint more compassion than Murtagh had seen before. Something that seemed just ever so slightly lonely and perhaps a little jealous of something he couldn't quite place. Something that looked so beautiful on him. Could anything not look beautiful on his trainer? Could he ever not be perfect?

Tornac looked away.

The moment broke like a thousand shards of shattered glass, gone long beyond memory. Murtagh quickly accepted his hand to hurriedly get up to his feet, looking away with a slight tinge of embarrassment. Regretfully, he let his hand free of his trainer's, and suddenly it was as if the moment had been a dream, so far from his remembrance. Any sadness that there might have been at this realisation however, was stolen away by fresh adrenaline of more fighting. Tornac was seemingly tireless when it came to sparring - and Murtagh knew that, very slowly, his own persistent energy was beginning to come to more of an echo of his trainer's. Somehow with Tornac he didn't even know he had been sparring long enough to know to feel tired - until after it had finished, when he would come to realise that his back hurt and that his body was utterly exhausted and would just fall asleep in his room into blissful dreams.

Sparring swords captured bursts of sunlight like sparks of flame in the courtyard, the sound filling the air with metallic music. Overhead, birds streaked over cloud powdered skies, black shadows on the most chaste canvas, a higher world that knew nothing of violence, or pain, or treachery… but neither did it know of love and passion, a regretfully empty mirror of the world below, where two people, temporarily blissfully ignorant of the strain that life placed onto them, whirled about in an explosive conflict of violence and love.

There were never any words spoken. That had halted and after that had been thrown aside as unnecessary. Words always seemed to break the mood, to break the perfection of enrapture with one another. Words seemed too harsh for such a graceful powerfully poignant union of swords in such tension of emotion. Words were abandoned for the precise feel of every different blow as it resounded through the sword into his body, of every little shock and touch that seemed as though they were running to his whole being. The little complexities of body language became more and more relied upon, which led to a deeper understanding of one another. There were no words.

Murtagh hit out, mind exploding into a rush of sharp elation and adrenaline, senses roaring into perfect clarity, stepping backwards to hold his balance, forced into backing against the wall, Tornac smiling as he saw his now clear advantage, mind quickly calculating and evaluating as adrenaline sparked just in time for him to instinctively return his weapon to his trainer's just above his head. Tornac's eyes caught his, and for one moment his concentration wavered, one silver grey moment of beautiful danger. His image reflected in a slight glimmer of want to mirror his own. One moment that made him dizzy, made the world so far away and irrelevant.

One moment of distraction.

It took long seconds to realise that neither of them had moved, and that they were both standing, each staring at the other, swords still poised for an attack. Panting softly, Tornac watched his pupil in silent frozen containment, as he lowered his sword arm to his side, silver eyes fixed on him in wary, mournfully desperate confusion. Murtagh stood, paralysed by enrapture with his trainer. His ears filled vaguely with the sound of his own heartbeat racing, his breath coming in shallow gasps. His fingers still clutched at his sword in agitated determination, alert and ready to fight; but it seemed heavy in his hand, seemed so foreign, so unnatural.

Tornac looked so powerfully beautiful, and it made all of his senses blur into graceful confusion. There was something almost vaguely angelic about him, in a darkened mysterious sense. He was more beautiful than anybody Murtagh had ever met, and yet he couldn't have said exactly what it was about him that made him so fatally wonderfully attractive. He was perfection incarnated into the most dangerous piece of elegance. So wonderfully tauntingly dangerous and beautiful all at once.

Slowly, Tornac's sword fell free of his fingers, and Murtagh's eyes glanced to it as it span to the floor. The movement seemed so slowed, graceful, each moment of it captured in his memory as the silver glimmered in a mirror to its owner's eyes. Eyes that never once left Murtagh.

A clatter echoed around the courtyard.

And yet neither moved, each transfixed by the other, each unwilling to break the silence. A bird shot through the clouds above them, shrieking across the sky, but neither one noticed, locked in a dark glimmer of harmonious fatal want. Murtagh's breathing started to calm in his ears. His heart continued to race, exhilarated by shivers of dangerous expectancy. Tornac's silver eyes had an unreadable expression in them, a flicker of fear crossing into their colour only to disappear to show something softer. The wind tickled through his dark hair, brushing it softly around his face, only serving to make him more beautiful to Murtagh's eyes. He didn't know whether there was silence or whether he was simply trying not to hear, but he knew that the moment was beautiful. If he had had any way of keeping it, of catching it like a butterfly and treasuring it forever he would willingly have given anything for it.

Tornac's eyes mirrored to him every time he had ever been happy, every smile he had ever had, every time he had felt so alive. In his companion's eyes, as the moment pressured into its climax, he could see everything that he was, everything that he would never be, everything about himself as he had never even paused for thought on before. Then he lost his focus, and visions of anything higher dissipated into the air around them.

"Murtagh?"

He didn't even recognise his name at first. It sounded so different, so beautifully detached from what he usually heard in it. For once it sounded something that he liked, something that he was proud to associate with himself, something romantic like his mother would have wanted for him. In one second every motive for his name seemed so perfectly clear; he could hear once again how it had sounded when his mother had said it, so quietly, so beautifully, when everything had been perfect and somebody had actually cared so much that they would have given anything for him. And suddenly everything was a mirror, and echo, a remembrance just beyond clarity.

"Murtagh?"

Tornac's eyes were still riveted on him, two perfect glimmers of silver, as he slowly stroked down the side of his pupil's face, his fingers trembling slightly. His eyes were so murderously beautifully calm, reassuring him, but frightened in such a simple instinctive fear at the same time. There was a comfort in the feel of such chaste contact, in something so pure and well meaning that he did not think he could possibly have done anything but be lulled into security by it, almost like a child would find such a peaceful contentment in the arms of a parent. He did not realise how very tense his body had been until he felt it start to relax, to put down every guard and surrender to anything. A small smile flickered onto his trainer's face, any fear in his eyes leaving as if by consoling Murtagh's apprehension he had destroyed his own.

Murtagh shivered, dizzily enchanted, eyes still refusing to leave his trainer's, tingling with the immensity of having contact, of seeing into his trainer's eyes so very intoxicatingly close and being able to see just a little deeper something he had thought was a dream. Tornac stared back, guardedly pensive and hesitant for a brief moment, calculating slowly, his fingers trailing to the side of Murtagh's neck and remaining there thoughtfully, his other hand resting innocently on his pupil's waist.

Gently, cautiously, Tornac nuzzled into the side of his neck teasingly. Murtagh mewled, and quickly bit his tongue to stop himself. His trainer moved back, and his eyes flickered to Murtagh's own, innocently, playfully amused. Two deadly little flashes of silver, fatally perfect, shining. Glancing to him for a last time, Murtagh finally broke their eye contact, too shy and too excited. Inside his chest he could feel his heart was pounding, his mind suddenly more awake than he had ever known it to be, woken by the warmth of Tornac's body so close to his own, of Tornac's heart beating in the same rhythm as his.

Very softly, Tornac caught back his pupil's attention.

Murtagh's eyes flickered closed as his trainer carefully, sensually kissed his neck.

If the world had frozen and nothing else had ever come to pass, Murtagh knew that he would die content, die so impeccably unbreakably content. Die happy. A prospect he had never even thought to contemplate on before, but now it seemed so close. Close enough to reach out and take, close enough to make it possibility. It was so chaste, so beautifully sweetly gentle and soft, and yet it made his entire consciousness explode into pleasure and fickle adrenaline and lust. It was just a whisper, a secretive tender little whisper. A tiny delicate shudder in his heartbeat that threw everything into confusion and all at once made everything perfect. An acute spark of fatalistic adrenaline that shot through his veins, a sharp violent rush of pure untainted bliss.

How could such a gentle single display of affection resound through his entire body so strongly? How could Tornac possess this much intoxicating venomous power over his senses, that drove every natural instinct away? How could such a dreamlike reality exist and not shatter him with its fatal perfection? Little did he know or care, only cared about Tornac and the elation of their two heartbeats, soaring higher.

He was burning and drowning all at once. He could barely breathe but he didn't want to if it would mean losing Tornac. This lust was too much for his heart, it was breaking him but he wanted to be broken, he wanted this feeling of being so alive. Tornac made him powerless to him, made it impossible for him to protect himself from his deadly beautiful charm, made it impossible for him to step back into pure sensibility in the light of exhilaration.

Somehow beside the overpowering numbing pleasure he felt so very calm and contented. Felt so safe, like he had never remembered feeling with anybody before, save for when he had been so small he could not possibly have appreciated the feeling for the value it had. To feel safe… the greatest most powerful emotion in the world. To be next to somebody and see into their eyes and know that they would never harm you because they felt so much pure love for you, love that would last until the end of the dimmed horizon and beyond that into the stars and into forever.

Forever.

Such a simple word to say, but so complex a concept. To love somebody through life and past death and to never stop the love that you felt for them because they gave your heart so much happiness just to see them happy. Their smile was your smile too, because for them to be satisfied was all that you ever wanted or needed. And they in turn loved you, and gave their everything for you because to them you were truly something of such great value, you were something unique, you were the brightest most beautiful star that could never be replaced. No matter what your scars or flaws or the very deepest imperfections, to each others eyes you would be perfect just for being who you were.

The only time he had felt the same true beautiful unrequited love had been wrapped up in his mother's arms. He had only ever known her to do that with one other person, his mirror, his echo, his father. She had held them in the same way, because she felt the same love. She had cared for them both…

"Murtagh…" Tornac pulled back and touched his forehead to Murtagh's, so that his fatally pretty silver eyes were so powerfully linked to the brown of his pupil's own. Murtagh shivered in anticipation, feeling himself trembling slightly from excited fear. Tornac's hand stroked his neck very softly, calming him, waiting for his heart to stop racing. Murtagh shyly surrendered to his trainer, to his face close to his own, to -

Thunder rolled loudly overhead, smashing the silence. Tornac jumped, startled, recoiling away from his pupil in shock, looking like a confused stunned child with his pretty silver eyes staring up at the sky in bemusement. Murtagh reached out to touch his arm gently, instinctively, to reassure him. Their eyes met again.

"Forgive me." Tornac's voice was quiet, rougher than normal, but still wonderfully laced with gloriously foreign accent.

Tornac broke away. For a moment, his eyes met Murtagh's own in a blazing smouldering look of confusion and lust and contentment. Love and lust were entwined. Murtagh's mind burned hot with a need for something just a little further, with a need for Tornac's warmth, with a need for the simple contradiction of Tornac. With a revelation that this was what made him come alive.

He watched his trainer gracefully reclaim his sword from the ground, never once daring to meet his eyes, and then as he turned to leave the courtyard.

"Murtagh?" Tornac's eyes caught his own again for a soft unbreakable moment. Any traces of sadness disappeared from his trainer's face in a slight shy smile. "Don't say a word of this… it's…" Murtagh smiled, and his trainer trailed off, reassured and relieved. It was understood. There were no more words. As the sound of the door closing echoed in the courtyard, Murtagh looked up to sky, letting his body calm from its exhilaration. Wondering what might have followed had there been the moment for it.

Murtagh lay listening to the sound of rain going on and on into the dark of the night outside the window, mind in a feverish blur of turbulent lust. If he closed his eyes he could see only Tornac, could see how beautiful he was, could see how kind and how purely innocently loving he was. He could see so much of the love his mother had given to him mirrored in Tornac, a twisted reflection that gave was to lust and love in such a contradiction.

Murtagh was not even aware he had fallen into turbulent sleep. And even less aware of how his trainer sat in his room, stared up at the stars, and felt contented, as he remembered how for one perfect moment nothing had even mattered. How for one perfect moment, they had been united and it had felt so right for him. Tornac slipped into dreams as a happy man.

Murtagh woke up only knowing that the warmth that had been there when he fell asleep had gone. He wriggled slightly, listening to the sound of rain outside, remembering how happy he had been when he had slipped into dreams in his mother's arms. How content he had been, how simply purely joyful. For that one night nothing could have been more perfect. He listened to the pattering of water on the shutters, remembering love. He had been sleeping in his mother's bed, the one that she usually shared with his father, but when he was gone with his dragon Murtagh liked to creep in and be cuddled and warmed until he fell asleep. Selena would hold Murtagh and whisper to him as he fell asleep, seeing so much of the man she loved echoed in her son.

There was another sound through the rain. A soft little sound, which he curiously turned his attention to. Starting to wake up further and become more aware of himself, Murtagh slipped out of bed and instantly shivered at the cold that assaulted him, but braced himself and padded to the open door towards the source of the sound. Putting his hand out against the wall to steady himself, he stumbled down the stairs until he reached the corridor.

Murtagh watched, silent from the stairway as his mother stood holding the sobbing mass of cold damp shivers that was his father, quieting him, kissing him, rocking him softly, easing away fear of something that wasn't even there. Morzan was slowly slowly breaking to himself, tearing himself up from the inside. Selena stroked along his neck tenderly, and his green eyes flickered to meet hers, each trying to rid themselves of their own fear by calming the fears of the other. Murtagh had always known that in Morzan's heart, he loved Selena more desperately than anything else, that part of his undoing had been in breaking to love and to needing somebody so very very much. His father had not been drinking tonight, Murtagh could tell. When he came back from drinking he just collapsed and cried. This was a different crying. This was so true and so emotional and so scared like Murtagh could never have imagined it possible for the man to feel so powerfully.

The crying slowly subsided to soft little sounds, and then was gone altogether. Murtagh watched as Morzan straightened up, shakily brushed Selena's hair from her eyes caringly and kissed her softly. Murtagh watched, too young to comprehend, but slowly slowly starting to realise the power and control of something so strong men broke for it, so beautiful that people left their ambitions and dreams to turn to rust for it, something so wonderful that it made everything else unimportant.

Not honour.

But love.

And he understood.

Hmmmn. I finished this one off this morning, sincerest apologies for making it so late!

Somebody just introduced me to the manga "FAKE" - why did nobody tell me of this wonder years ago? It's just great. So I've been reading that and getting a few little ideas for my pair. Don't worry, they will start to have some sort of a romance, I like to do things slowly… I really wanted them to go further in this chapter but when I wrote it it seemed… wrong somehow. But I've got some nice romantic little plans for them hehe…

FLUFF! I gave you a little bit of fluff, finally it seems! Not fluffy enough? Probably. I struggle to write real stuff fast enough, so their relationship is getting off to a slow start. Slow and steady though, slow and steady.

So, please please R n R! Every review will be very very much appreciated.