A/N: Hey there, welcome to arc four!

Little heads-up about this chapter: sensitive subjects had been mentioned and some of the images of this chapter can be hard to take in. Even if this is nothing but an introductory chapter, like every time I inaugurate a new arc, it still can get very dark so caution is advised.

Moving on to your reviews:

Poe's daughter: (I still can't believe you read this whole work in like what? One week, less than that? That's amazing!) Last chapter was more of a pact between reader-writer: I don't intend for Black to ever find out about his family – it would be nearly impossible for him to do so because by the time Harriet was adopted (and also considering that they even changed her name) it was already too hard to track them down: Amanda had given the ladies a false identity and she had never mentioned him so she kind of erased the possibility for new generations to find them. I imagine, should these new descendants choose to recreate their genealogy; they should come to a halt preventing them to know the truth about Erron and Amanda.

Now about politics, Erron doesn't care about politics, politicians, bureaucracy… not only because he's meant to watch every possible regime fade away in time thus limiting his possible loyalty due to his own exaggerated longevity but also because as a man molded and constituted in a time that's never coming back, all those ideals, his own moral compass… he has become his own moral compass in a way, he has learnt to be loyal to himself and to money – he doesn't care about Outworld politics, not now, not even back then when he helped Dexitis.

These concepts are intimately connected to the very concept of aging you mentioned in your review and we will be visiting and exploring those concepts and the origin of it all – his deal with Shang Tsung, throughout this arc.

Thank you so much for reading and reviewing!

RaeC: You're 100% right, just like I said paragraphs ago: the most tragic thing about his family is not that he grew up and outlived them – it's that he is never going to find out about them. And that could have sufficed to change his whole story: he accepted the deal the sorcerer had to offer because he had no-one. But he still had the greatest love of his life, still out there, looking for him – and their daughter. I don't think he would have accepted Shang Tsung's eternal youth if he had known about them… Thank you for r/r!

Guest – ErronFan - Westcoast Witchdoctor: Thank you, guys!

Looksforthelight: [evocative mode on] Sometimes there are loves that, no matter how brief or fleeting, change you and that's it, there's nothing you can do about it. Sometimes time itself does not suffice to define the feeling, sometimes the feeling defines itself. [evocative mode off] Oh, well… thank you so much, dear!

Chapter XXXIII

Life in Bottomless Pits

"Proposition one: time is a man, space is a woman."

Angela Carter — The passion of New Eve

The old lady quickly understood the message sent by Black and embodied by that client tumbling down the stairs. She took out the trash, as expected, then made her way upstairs, as slowly as her ancient bones would allow her to; her rhythm and her pace demarcated by her own age. Rosario wanted to make sure everything was alright in her precious House of Pleasure: she had seen the girl and her grandfather leave the establishment but Black was still inside and, if her suspicions were correct, he had had everything to do with that unconscious man tumbling down the stairs only moments ago.

The manager cursed him under her breath: if only he knew they had other methods…

Determined to find the missing mercenary, the old Earthrealmer was already practicing inside her head the many different apologies she would have to offer to her clients for interrupting their private sessions. She would, of course, knock on every door but she knew that no matter how formal or polite her manners, they would still hate the unwanted intromission. It was inappropriate – she knew it for a fact; still remembering her own days as just another prostitute trying to make a living inside those very same bedrooms. Back then, when she was still young and attractive, according to Outworld's beauty standards. Back then, when she still was attractive enough to lure a man like Erron Black into visiting her bed. Now the tables had turned: she was no longer young, no longer attractive and no longer a prostitute – now she was the manager, and even if her grey, thin locks were showing that she wouldn't be in that position for much longer, her kind and modest ways had paid off and now she was undoubtedly respected and appreciated by her girls.

The mercenary who had entered the brothel only hours ago was not that insecure man she remembered from her youth; the one trying to find an escape from a complicated situation back home. Many things had changed since those shared, heated afternoons of theirs: he had been graced by power and wealth but now he had lost it all. Rosario was no stranger to those rumors saying that he had abused his power and that he had gotten involved in some shady business – yet she didn't care in the slightest. She knew, with the certainty of everything that is definitive, that the man invoked by those rumors could not be the same dubitative man from her youth.

That man and this man were not the same person.

Not anymore.

She allowed her back to rest against the wall before resuming her search, her legs were clearly not amused by the unexpected journey upstairs they had been forced to endure yet, against all her speculations, finding Black didn't turn out to be so difficult after all. The timid stream of light emanating from the half-opened door and illuminating a specific portion in that old corridor made him an easy prey for her. Rosario entered the room without asking for permission, yet her timid steps only got slower as she got closer to the scene: a weeping Black was holding one of her girls in his arms.

Eyeing him rather suspiciously, Rosario touched the girl's forehead: she was unconscious, just like that pig Black had sent her way right after Ard'ahain and her grandfather had left the place. The quiet mercenary returned the cold stare yet he raised a calculative eyebrow to prove the woman that the girl's current state was not his fault. He hadn't attacked her, he was just trying to help.

"What happened in here?" Rosario whispered, still unable to take her eyes off the bruised woman he was holding in his arms so tenderly.

"I heard the screams," Black began, his voice was low and suddenly cold, as if his elocution could only retrieve the factual side of the story instead of the thousand hidden layers underneath the unexpected encounter. "The man was being rude to her; she was begging him to stop."

"And then?" Rosario kneeled, against her better judgment.

"Then the bastard pushed her, and her head hit the wall. I took care of him, as you already noticed."

She had noticed, indeed. But now her curious chestnut eyes were noticing something else entirely.

"Why are you crying, Black?" She asked as she rested her hands on his knees, looking for balance and a brand new sense of stability that could ease the growing pain starting in her hips. Given his history and his reputation, there was no way for that woman to believe his emotions had been compromised by the mere spectacle of gratuitous violence; that watching that woman getting attacked so brutally had somehow awoken his softer side.

"She's the daughter of an old friend of mine," he lied. "I thought I would never see her again," he added, then, trying to embellish his diction with sincerity as a way to compensate for the effects of his untruthful statement.

Rosario smirked bitterly then stood up and placed her hands at the sides of her minuscule waist: "What is her name?" The woman asked, testing him; the most pragmatic side of her had clearly decided not to buy his version of the story.

The mercenary remembered, instinctively, then closed his eyes and took a leap of faith: "Dakota."

The elderly lady rolled her eyes, amused yet intrigued. "Lucky bastard…" she spat through clenched teeth.

"Don't you have clients to entertain, Ros?" Black retorted rather disdainfully but his tone had been adorned with the petulance of an unexpected triumph. "Go. I got this."

Still muttering her bitter remarks, a defeated Rosario promptly left the room – not only she knew that trying to interfere in Black's business would get her nowhere, but she also had left a bunch of very demanding clients downstairs and her experience was advising her not to let her own business unattended. As soon as the old woman left the room, the mercenary laid the doctor on her back and stood up. Like that morning, over a decade ago, he took his time to examine the room where he was now: the big bed was placed in the center of the chamber, with just a little bedside table at its left. A few steps to his right he found the only window in the room and just a few more steps away from the window there was a gorgeous balcony offering an impeccable view of the building's inner courtyard. Behind his back, there was a mirrored wall: the opulence of such an expensive symbol of status was contrasting the otherwise austere-looking room but the cowboy understood that its presence was merely figurative; it was nothing but a recognition beacon placed there to remind everyone – the girl and her many clients – where they were: that room was not a house, that room was no sanctuary and it definitely was not a home; it was just a transactional shelter for business to take place.

A service would be offered and money would be exchanged in return.

The mirrored wall was hiding a rather small door behind overlapping walls, connecting the fantasy world of made-up Cinderellas to the rather simpler reality of those girls working their youths off in the brothel: behind the door there was a small bathroom and a petite, wooden wardrobe for them to save the few personal items or possessions some of them might still have.

As tempting as it was for the mercenary to explore the depths of that wardrobe, he refrained from doing so. He went back to the woman still resting on the bed and carried her to the bathroom. He filled the large, rectangular bathtub with tepid water and submerged her body in it – a part of him was finding it interesting to acknowledge the fact that Rosario had decided to invest in their girls' hygiene rather than to let them simply wash away the sweat and dirt using nothing but the little, impractical washbasins like they had done for so long, like Rosario herself had done for so long, poorly concealing the ministrations of one lover before moving on to the next one.

The many scars and bruises scattered all over her skin reminded him of that other woman he had met over a decade ago when the time for strange rooms and even stranger company had only just begun. The woman fidgeted under his touch, even with her eyes still closed, perhaps trying to indicate him to be more careful, to be gentler with that sponge he had found resting by the sink. Black got the message promptly, understanding that even if the unconscious woman was unable to communicate with him, her punished body was still able to somehow, speak to him. Now more delicately than before, the mercenary began to acknowledge what those years away from each other had decided to imprint all over her skin: beyond the recent crimes handwritten on her body by the irascible fists of her assailant, there were other crimes, older crimes.

The brand on her shoulder, the souvenir of her initiation, was the scorching welcome she had been forced to endure in order to become one of Rosario's girls. The shape; two concentric circles recreating a snake-like creature with two heads was talking about a ritual, a ritual that the doctor had accepted. Her legs were adorned by a colorful collection of bruises; brown, green and purple taking over the sad palette. Her back had been whipped – many whimsical patterns had been traced across her skin; juxtaposed lines recreating all sorts of geometrical forms. But even if those old sketches were far from the unparalleled terror of public punishments, they were still talking about customers that had found their twisted delight in her agonizing pain. Other singular bruises were covering her stomach, the kind of bruises that only enraged belt-buckles can imprint on someone else's skin.

The mark that hurt the most was the one in her left nipple.

Of course, there was no way for Black to tell if such a peculiar mark was new or if maybe she already had it back then, during their brief time together in the cabin. Yet something was telling him that it was new, that the unfortunate scarring on her nipple had been the result of her interactions with her clients. Rosario had told him while they were young; things like these he could never forget: some men can only find their pleasure in other's pain. The woman had even shown him back then, the permanent results of the torturous ministrations of those whose thirsts couldn't be easily quenched.

"Not everyone is looking for release; not everyone is looking for pleasure. Some come thriving for dominance, and the only way to prove that they had succeeded is for them to leave their marks on you. Not red fingers painted across your cheeks, not blackened bruises that will fade in time – but something permanent; something that will always remind you that they have subjugated you, that their dominance over you will accompany you to your grave."

Rosario's mark was placed in the nape of her neck – two small holes; caused by a mouth that had tried to steal a part of her, and it had succeeded, those small holes still claiming her whole today.

"Why don't you just leave?" Black had asked back then.

"It drags you down."

It took him some time to fully embrace those concepts she had been trying to conceal under her intriguing answer: they couldn't leave because there was nowhere else they could go – most of them had ended up there because their loved ones had mercilessly handed them over to the final stages of a system that had already rejected them.

Just like Ard'ahain's so-called boyfriend had tried to do.

Just like Dexitis and his wife would have done to Zarrabayeusse hadn't it been for Black himself.

The House of Pleasure was a bottomless pit for all those women who didn't belong anywhere else. The anesthetic nature of the deal would hide the atrocities they would be forced to do under a much-needed structure of never-ending protection. Learning that the limits of that protection were carefully demarcated by the doors to each one of their rooms was something they would never tell them, only allowing the girls to find out that inside the limits of each private world they were on their own.

They weren't paid for their services, not with money.

Their currency was translated into walls and clothes and food. Medical supplies, if necessary.

Rosario's shoulders, for them to cry on, were the last bastions of a laconic sense of familiarity still refusing to abandon them.

"It drags you down," Rosario repeated as she leaned her body on the doorframe. Her voice, embittered by the experience, had little to do with the reminiscences of a saddened youth – the same saddened youth that had whispered those words to that very same man, looking exactly as old as he did now, nearly a lifetime ago.

Oblivious to her presence, Black dared to brush his index finger along that broken nipple – the rosy bud had been torn in two; the gruesome groove running along the summit of her breast was inadvertently separating the surface, creating two small hemispheres in her now-fractured geography. In the communion of their pains, they were evened now by their branded shoulders and their lashed backs. Yet that broken nipple was affecting him way beyond the limits of his knowledge: the pain she must have endured, the unparalleled malice that had clashed upon her, corrupting her with such suffocating hunger. This new ire, this new rancor, this new vicious spite was as unclear as it was ancestrally cunning – who was he truly mad at? Himself, for having abandoned that woman? Or her, the transfixed image of a past that was no more – not even her own past was there for him to collect now – how could she, a woman like her, a professional, a doctor… how could she?

How could she ever abandon herself in such a way? How was it that such a resourceful woman could not simply find another way?

"It drags you down," Rosario repeated once again, noticing his rigid jawline and his uneven respiration. The old woman handed him a clean towel but Black let it fall down to the ground – with the utmost care, he took the unconscious doctor in his arms again, as a curtain of water fell from her body, back to the tub. Rosario cursed through clenched teeth, her hips and knees aching, but she finally managed to pick up the discarded towel and enveloped Alexandra's body in it. As the gunman walked back to the bed, where he allowed her now-clean body to rest once more, Rosario followed them in silence. Black sat on the edge of the bed and tried to remove the towel but the older woman prevented him from doing so – even if she could easily understand that the look in those sad eyes of his had nothing to do with lust or sexual desire, still she preferred to take care of the doctor herself.

Rosario ordered Black to get her another towel and the mercenary obliged swiftly. Only then the manager of the House of Pleasure allowed the first towel to leave the scene, brushing the second towel on Alexandra's skin as delicately as possible.

"Who gave her up?" Black asked, his baritone voice cruising the room and shortening the distance between them.

"No one," Rosario replied softly as she discarded the towel. "She came here on her own."

The old woman stood up and walked to the doctor's wardrobe. She picked up a simple, green dress for her. Only then she asked for his help: as Black gently maneuvered the dormant body, Rosario dressed her up again. He rested her head on the pillow as the elderly woman covered her body with two white blankets. He had seen all of her scars, all of her wounds… even her number, tattooed on her right ankle; the same identification number Rosario herself had tattooed on her ankle.

Rosario had been girl number 672.

Alexandra was now girl number 834.

Yet, still underneath the torment of that life that had encountered her; underneath her hardened, punished exterior, the irrevocable sings of her aging had irreversibly started to show. That woman, still resting in a seemingly peaceful way, had little to do with the immaculate girl from his memories, the one he had been trying to find for so long. This new woman he had found was older than that girl; this new woman was possibly reaching her forties – but even now, when his whimsical sight was telling him that they finally looked about the same age, even so, she was still eternally younger than he was.

He had paused his life for an entire decade, becoming content with only dreaming about finding her – yet he never thought that in that unexpected, artificial equality of their physical maturities finally echoing and mirroring each other he would find the most tormenting of thoughts: even if they both looked about the same age now, only one of them was perennial. The eclipse was only meant to be short: the brief parenthesis in time, the subtle draw molding their looks now was nothing but an empty glory, it was the mother of all blasphemies - she was not his equal, not now, not ever.

His evergreen youth, forced to watch her wither and die, could not be reached by her decaying beauty.

There was really no way to reach him.

He had spent so much time trying to find her that he never actually stopped to think about the effects of all that time – how it was supposed to change her; the beginning of an end that was already in motion. Unlike his, her aging was not going to stop, her receding youth wouldn't be there for much longer, and the thought was as unsettling as it was heartbreaking.

He sank on the bed right next to her, completely oblivious to Rosario's presence, as the obvious truth found him: he had wasted her best years – that bright collection of joviality and youth, lost to the fires of his own conflicted emotions.

Even this reunion differed from the one he had imagined, night after night in that filthy cell he had called home for over a decade. He had created so many different versions of that moment inside his head yet none of them had ever encompassed such a crude reality like the one he had encountered.

This reality was far worse than his worst nightmares.

"It's really peculiar… the way you always seem to get yourself entangled in the way of power," Rosario's voice brought him back to reality but the only thing left for the cowboy to offer her was a confused expression. "Just like I once was somebody else's protégé, this woman is now my protégé. This place will be hers once I'm gone," she explained.

"Why her?" Was all he could ask.

"Like me, she was once somebody. I want to give her the opportunity to become someone again. Someone respected; someone that actually matters." She searched the pockets of her dress until she found a pack of smokes and trapped a cigar between her chapped, thin lips but as soon as she lit it up, she started to cough. Black eyed her in silence, his intense eyebrows anticipating the words that were about to leave his mouth.

"You shouldn't smoke."

With a bitter half-smile adorning her old, Peruvian face, Rosario patted his shoulder lightly as she exhaled, the dense smoke instantly venturing the room.

"Thanks for the advice – though it pains me to know that perhaps if you had said those words about fifty years ago, it would have actually meant something."

The mercenary shrugged rather carelessly, realizing he had missed her bitter sense of humor.

"What this woman has done for this place…" the manager tried to go on but the lump in her throat prevented her mouth from freeing the words she wanted to say. Absorbed, the gunman stared at her in silence as her fingers began to trace the many creases adorning her mauve dress – the same ones mirrored in the skin covering her ancient face now. It took her a while to find the strength to go on; the cigarette became history as her own yesteryears got summoned by her raspy voice.

"She was ovulating that night, and she had already been through curettage. She didn't want to work that night; she had been very vocal about it – she didn't want to go through that ever again. But I didn't let her, I ordered her to go to work. I advised her to be careful, to take precautions if necessary, but I saw no reason for her not to work that night," she began, darkness engulfing her visage suddenly. "The man hurt her when she tried to stop him. I heard the screams and ran upstairs but I was too late: she ended up with her nipple torn in two; it only took him a lighter and a coin to brand her in such a way. Curettage, again... That was her second and last time. When she recovered, she implemented a system of rotating shifts to make sure none of the girls would have to work while ovulating. She didn't ask for my permission, but I knew it was necessary so I let her take control over the situation. The change was very simple, but it was very effective – unprecedentedly successful. Even today, every single one of the girls working here needs to inform her of every single alteration in their menstrual cycle."

"You know those schedules are not infallible," Black chimed in, his body still petrified by the story he had just heard. The words "it only took him a lighter and a coin" echoing inside his head: it had only taken him two coins to ruin her life.

Rosario nodded gracefully, turning around to see him.

"We know. But she gave them more than dates and instructions for them to avoid getting pregnant." The woman slid her hands to brush her fingers softly, traveling the length of Alexandra´s nearest forearm. "She made them understand that they have the right to choose – she gave them a consciousness, she made them realize that their bodies belong to them; not to me, not to their clients. Most of all, she made them pay attention. She made them see that protecting their bodies is a full-time job; that the damage can be permanent, that having a healthy body or a damaged body is simply not the same."

"In the end, you all won something from it," the mercenary whispered as he scratched his chin pensively.

"We all did," Rosario confided. "Dakota felt useful again, the girls protected their bodies. The business was safe: it was cheaper to let them rest five days a month than to pay for the procedure and wait until they were fully recovered." Warm tears filled her eyes as the old woman remembered: "Some of them never recovered at all… Before that night, she had already done a lot for this place but what she did for us, for all of us after that night, it was fundamental."

Black stood up and walked towards the door; he opened it and waited for Rosario to leave the room – it didn't take long for the woman to understand he needed time to process everything he had just heard.

"Guilt," he murmured as she walked past him. The woman froze in place, yet she didn't dare to look over her shoulder, she couldn't allow those coffee-colored eyes of his to destroy her once again with their imperturbable, defying indifference. "You're giving her this place because you feel guilty about what happened that night."

Rosario didn't answer. She lowered her head and went back to the bar downstairs.

He stayed in the room for a few more hours, noticing the subtle changes in her breathing – her chest rising and falling, her body shifting from time to time almost as if every pleasant dream was being chased by a terrorizing nightmare only to find relief in the following nice dream; the cycle stretching the very notion of time, even for a man like him.

Black looked out the window and noticed the sunset already washing the outskirts of the city in golden incandescence. The doctor had yet to open her eyes and he knew, he was certain: he could not bring himself to forsake her once again, he needed to be there when she opened her eyes. He needed her to see him there, waiting for her; he needed her to acknowledge him, to remember him.

He quickly went downstairs and searched for Rosario. The woman was busy behind the bar, counting bottles and revising the schedule for the night.

"I'll be staying the night," he informed her, but before he could turn around and leave, the manager reached out for him and forced him to stay.

"That'll cost you."

Black offered her a puzzled look as he cocked his head slightly, unable to believe she was actually willing to charge him for staying.

"You stay, you pay," she said, simply.

"I'm looking after her," He retorted, visibly offended by her lack of sensitivity.

"I know, my dear, but I don't do charity," Rosario added, shrugging her shoulders.

"I won't fuck her!" The mercenary yelled, his baritone voice cruising the place and causing all eyes around them to focus on him. "I won't even touch her," he barely whispered then, calmer this time, trying to talk some sense into that imperturbable woman staring right back at him. "It's not like she will be losing any clients, you know she still can't work like that." His voice was nothing but a weak sound caressing her ears.

"Some other girl could be using the room," she explained. "Business is business."

Black searched his pockets but before giving up his money, he tried one more time: "You can't be serious," he said, conciliatory.

But Rosario rolled her eyes and placed her forearms on the counter. She exhaled, loudly, as if trying to make it even clearer to him that she was upset.

"Pay up, Erron. It's the least you can do. Guess who is going to have to pay now for what you did to that man?"

"He was attacking her – I defended her; I stood up for her," his whispers followed hers; their fight was being quieted by the ever-constant possibility of being heard by the wrong audience.

"We have our own methods," she whispered back, rather energetically. "Subtler methods. When these things happen, we write their names in our books and when they come back – for they always come back – we inform them that our rates had been adjusted. Suddenly they realize they can't even afford a whore anymore and they leave, feeling low and negligible, just like the pieces of shit that they are." Her fist colliding against the bar was reason enough for all eyes to look in their direction once again yet her candid smile, suffocating all possible threats and dangers, was reason enough for them all to accept there was no reason to worry. "Ours is a silent punishment but no, you just had to beat the shit out of him. What you did… there will be repercussions, and I will be the one dealing with them."

"The garrisons can protect you," Black said, only causing the old lady to laugh out loud.

"It's really hard to come up with a solution when you're part of the problem," she retorted as she patted his shoulder lightly, letting him now that the last thing the garrisons could do for her was to help her.

The mercenary looked down as he exhaled loudly, his hand finally producing the money that had been resting inside his pocket.

"This is all I have now," he said as he watched his salary getting lost behind the bar. He was ready to leave when Rosario tugged the edge of his jacket, forcing him to turn around once again.

"The daughter of an old friend is no different than your best friend's wife," she implored, her tone more amicable now. "Do not make the same mistakes again." In her eyes, the memory of her own youth: a younger Black, even if he already looked as old as he did now, had confided in her. He was having trouble back home, the affaire was about to contaminate the entire family. She had tried to persuade him back then; she had tried to talk him out of it. Yet his weaknesses had prevailed, and they had ultimately erased the sacred nature behind the term family.

He looked down as those bitter memories finally reached him.

"I abandoned her once. I won't do that again."

Rosario grinned softly as she watched him in silence, his ancient body already going upstairs.

"Guilt," she whispered, causing Black's hands to create tight fists at the sides of his body. But far from violence, those fists were expressing all his bottled-up helplessness. The mercenary quickened his pace yet the meaning of her unspoken words reached him all the same. He went back to the room and glued his back to the door - there was no escaping his own demons now.

She was panting, sweat was covering her forehead and temples. It looked like a fervent fever, only he knew it wasn't that. It was yet another nightmare, enveloping her whole figure once again. He reached out for her, allowing his fingers to caress the soft skin of her cheeks – the woman turned and tossed, eyelids fluttered; the rich blue of those eyes of hers slowly swimming into focus.

No.

"Hey." Black welcomed her as he moved closer; making sure the doctor was alright.

No.

Her head was spinning yet her sight had already found an anchor in that ancient face of his – those coffee-colored eyes, she remembered. She remembered them all too well. That face, that hair… his appearance had changed but he still was the same old man who had forsaken her in the mountains, a lifetime ago.

No.

She curled her body against the pillow as she covered her face with her hands – he had found her. Legs pressed hard against her stomach and the feeling; the fabric, the soft caress of that fabric against her body… the last thing she remembered had little to do with the scene she was immersed in: she was naked and with another man.

No.

She looked under the covers only to find that she was wearing a dress. He had covered her. He had dressed her up. He had seen her naked – completely naked, he had seen her receding youth, the laconic symbols of violence scattered all over her. He had seen it all – the number tattooed on her ankle, her broken nipple, the merciless lashes on her back.

He had seen it all.

Panting harder, and with fistfuls of her own dress, the woman panicked under his endearing gaze. He extended his hands but did not dare to touch her – his voice, calm and simple, tried to reach for her.

"It's alright, you're alright," he said. She looked like a frightened animal, cornered and desolated. "A man attacked you, but he's gone now. I cleaned you up and dressed you. You hit your head against the wall but you're alright now," he whispered, peacefully, trying his best to sound reassuring for her.

He finally allowed one of his hands to tenderly touch her temples and tug her rebel black locks behind her ears. The doctor eyed him suspiciously, shivering under his touch as her silent tension finally traveled from one body to the other, causing his adventurous fingers to tremble as well. The mercenary moved even nearer yet she pushed him aside and jumped off the bed. Determined, she walked towards the door and opened it, then she turned around with eyes as cold as ice, and yelled: "Every time you save me you end up abandoning me, and every time you abandon me, my life gets a little bit more ruined, a little bit more fucked up than before," she began, her tight fists falling at the sides of her shivering body. Tears in her eyes, her voice ricocheted through the room: "You abandoned me in my own house, but I followed you. Then you abandoned me in that corridor, so I ended up living in your crystal case, waiting for the Rebel-Seekers to come after me. When they came after me, you abandoned me there too. So I won't be your lap dog anymore; this time I am abandoning you. Just go. Just leave me be."

Like a ray of light determined to extinguish the distance between them, Black sprinted towards the door and closed it abruptly, imprisoning her body against it. The stronghold of his arms contained her, for the very first time in what felt like an eternity. She fought the embrace for as long as she could but gave up eventually, her face getting lost in his broad chest. He turned around, his back now glued against the door, and let his legs fall down to the ground, carrying her in his arms.

"I'm sorry," he whispered wholeheartedly, his arms tightening the embrace.

"If you wanted to show me that my life without you could get a million times worse than my life with you… congratulations."

Her colorless voice showed no affection, it was lacking all possible, real emotion. Her very own personal paradox was holding her in his arms: she couldn't live with him, but she couldn't live without him either and even now, far beyond the limits of her every expectation, he was still the incarnated, bittersweet memory of a time that was long gone.

A time when going back home was still an illusion guiding her through the dark, driving her and fueling her every move. And even if it was true, even if he had shredded her hopes and dreams to pieces by abandoning her, she still had no choice but to admit that, as surprising as it was, she had missed him all the same.