Arc VI

Chapter LV

The Road Not Taken

"I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say."

T.S. Eliot

He came back home during the brief moments between complete darkness and the first symptoms of sunlight. Rested his hat on his nightstand and sat on the bed before kicking off his boots and taking a deep breath. In the quiet hours of solitude and desperation, the brothel looked like a haunted house no-one cared to visit anymore; a forgotten symbol of festivity destined to remember the glory days that were long gone.

Barely washed in the weak light coming from the window, the mercenary watched as his wife left the small bathroom. But she stood right in place. His tired smile was not enough to bring her any closer.

"Both the uncle and the father are behind bars, they found enough poison in the house to kill the entire population of Outworld," he let out, a mixture of pride and exhaustion was dominating his diction. Yet the woman didn't move. "That's some big news, Alex, bright up a little, won't ya?"

Only then she moved. Languid footsteps dragged her closer to the bed but still, she seemed to be completely out of his reach somehow.

"I have some big news for you as well," she began, without making eye contact. "I think it was a message for us, Earthrealmers. The main ingredient of the poison they used to assassinate Rosario is hemlock; it's the same type of poison the Greeks used in order to kill Socrates. It's a long shot, I know, but this is a story that only us, Earthrealmers, know. I never knew violence could be this poetic, though,"

"Son of a bitch," he cursed through clenched teeth as his hands rolled into fists. "Edenians can't be trusted."

"Are you really gonna blame Yvo, Black?" the doctor asked. "After everything he's done for us, are you really going to be that man? Why didn't you tell me that Nathan's company is the one fabricating the poison? Were you ever gonna tell me?"

He raised both his hands in a defensive stance, but his mouth remained in silence.

"I can take it, Black," she said. "I can take it."

"First of all, we don't know if Nathan's been compromised," Black began, trying to sound as calm as humanly possible. "The bottles have his firm's label, but we don't know how those bottles ended up this side of the portal; maybe he's not involved. Maybe the bottles were stolen. From what you told me, there's no reason to believe he could have been compromised."

"I can take it," she repeated, moving closer to her husband and finally sitting down on the bed right next to him. "Whether he's been compromised or not, Erron, I can handle this pain." She cupped his hands with hers, soft digits drawing circles on his skin. "When Aalem died, you told me he was an Edenian; you said he was older than he looked but that wasn't true. Even if he wasn't as young as he looked, he was still a child and you didn't want me to witness something as devastating as a child's death. Your lie was only trying to protect me, you were only trying to lessen the pain," she stared into his eyes as her hands held onto him tighter than before: "This is exactly the same, Black. You were trying to lessen the pain but I'm not that frightened girl anymore. I appreciate what you tried to do for me, but I can take it."

He kissed her softly on the lips, still overwhelmed by her words.

"I need you to see me as a woman, Black," she whispered against his mouth, "not as a child. If we're going to fight this fight, you're gonna have to trust me on this."

"Will you ever look at me and see past the mercenary?" he asked, and she grinned softly at him.

"I know who you are," she said, "you're one of the very few, selected individuals in the whole universe that's entirely capable of making me feel loved. Just don't ruin it," the doctor smiled and patted his shoulder lightly. "Tell me what happened tonight, I don't want to go to sleep without knowing."

"Well, the Garrison found the rest of the poison hidden in the Eré house and many neighbors were out in the street, watching the whole thing, so I bet the rumors about the Syndicate getting weaker are already traveling fast all across the city," Black said. "Azul, his father, and his uncle, all of them are in jail now since the Officers connected the dots pretty quickly. The Syndicate has lost one of its biggest instigators tonight – and don't forget that one of them is also a member of El Club de los Amantes, so…"

"You did good tonight, Erron," the woman acknowledged, and the cowboy nodded his head, quietly accepting the compliment.

"So did you," he admitted as she rested her back on his torso, "discovering the components in the poison is just as big as imprisoning two key members of the Syndicate. Can you synthesize an antidote, then? Even if the Garrison confiscated the poison, we can't be sure those bottles are the Syndicate's entire supply."

"I guess I can try," she whispered, "now that the main component has been isolated, I can try to find an antidote, but hemlock is quite deadly, Erron, and this is Outworld – my medical inventory is rather poor."

"There's… there's just one thing, in the back of my mind," the man let out as he stretched his legs and put his arms around the doctor's stomach. "What you said about this message… I don't think the Syndicate would care for poetical vengeance."

"That's why I said it was a long shot," Alex offered simply. "Their strategies have always been pretty straightforward: they use poison and bombs; they steal and smuggle…"

"But what if that's what they want us to think?"

The doctor shifted inside his arms and eyed him speculatively.

"What if they want us to believe they would never do such an intricate thing?" Black asked. "After all, it's only natural for an Earthrealmer to think about Socrates the second they hear hemlock, right?"

She nodded her head once.

"But only an Earhrealmer could craft that sort of message," the doctor said.

"Etienne is an Eathrealmer," Black remembered. "He's the only Earthrealmer in El Club de los Amantes."

The doctor nodded once more, but her eyes were shrouded in doubt.

"Why would a pharmaceutical firm fabricate poison?" she asked, and his hands squeezed her shoulders with renewed care and affection.

"Alex, we have no reason to believe your ex-boyfriend could have been compromised," Black said. "Maybe they branched out, and now they produce different things? I don't know the different uses this poison can have… I hear most fertilizers are shit."

"Hemlock, Black."

As she rested her head in the soft spot between his head and his shoulder, the man exhaled loudly and closed his eyes. The auburn lights of a new day were already washing the city rooftops in the bright incandescence that precedes a sunny day.

When the sun reached its peak in the sky and the voices reached their peak on the ground, the mercenary opened his eyes and exhaled loudly the second he realized they had company. A bunch of girls had gathered around the bed, but the look in their eyes seemed far from curious.

"Boundaries, ladies," he mumbled as he rubbed the sleep off his eyes, "remind me to tell ya a few words on that later." Although his words were parsimoniously slow, his clumsy movements were enough to wake up his wife who, bewildered by the presence of an unexpected audience, opted to cover her face with her hands.

"I know the brothel is momentarily closed," Black went on as he finally abandoned the bed and got dressed, "I know there's not much for you ladies to do around here, but this is creepy as fuck."

"More than creepy," the doctor added, "this is unacceptable! Two people have died here, and you decide to come over to our bedroom and stare at us while we're asleep? What about our privacy? We could have been naked; we could have been… you know… we're a married couple."

Black rolled his eyes.

"Nah, married people don't it that often, or so I heard."

"Excuse us," one of the girls said, saving the cowboy from his wife's cold stare. "There's a visitor waiting for you downstairs."

"A visitor?" Black inquired. "I'm not expecting any visitors today. I had a terrible night, tell them to come back some other time."

He should have seen the shadow towering near the window. Should have heard the footsteps as they approached the door.

"Maybe you can do an exception, Erron," the Emperor said as he leaned his body on the doorframe, "for old times' sake."

For the first time in the history of Outworld, an Emperor had walked through the door and glanced at the lives of those who existed only in the confines of a land that stretched far beyond the castle walls and barricades. For the first time in the history of Outworld, an Emperor had chosen to visit the Oppressed ones.

Small, and secluded behind the Emperor's imponent shadow, Yvo stood solemnly. As Black froze in place, the Edenian barrister ordered the girls to leave the brothel and watched in silence as one by one they marched downstairs and out into the streets where the curious crowd had already begun to gather. But the real repercussions of Kotal's presence there; what it actually meant for the Emperor to be standing tall inside the House of Pleasure was irrevocably written all over the doctor's face.

"I'll give you a moment for you to get ready," Kotal said, "I'll be waiting downstairs."

Yvo followed his superior as fast as his damaged, old knees allowed the man to and the doctor got out of bed and put on the first dress that came into view as Black waited for her by the doorframe.

"Social visit?" The woman asked, measuring Black's reaction with a suspicious eyebrow, but the man shook his head and took her hand in his, guiding her downstairs and near the bar where the representatives of the Palace were waiting for them.

"Can I offer you a drink?" Black asked but both the Emperor and the barrister refused. The Osh-Tekk's eyes wandered the room with petulant apprehension until the sight of Alexandra softened the view with a sense of beauty that simply did not belong in such a place as The House of Pleasure.

"Congratulations on your marriage," the Emperor said as he offered his hand to Alexandra. "Why a beautiful woman like you would ever want to spend the rest of her life with a man like Erron is simply beyond me – but I wish the best for the both of you, from the bottom of my heart."

Taken aback by words she had never expected to hear from Kotal Kahn himself, the woman nodded her head in silent reverence and took a seat beside her husband.

"So, what brings you to The House of Pleasure, Emperor?" Black asked immediately, finishing what seemed to be a fabricated aura of pleasantries and comradery. "Last night we captured three members of the Syndicate, two of them are also active members of their inner circle, El Club de los Amantes and today you woke up and just decided it was time for a social visit?"

The Emperor laughed at the cowboy's words. If anything, he had missed Black's twisted sense of humor.

"I wanted to congratulate you in person," the highest authority of Outworld offered. "What you did last night deserves some recognition. Plus, I really wanted to meet your wife, Erron. When Yvo told me you had gotten married again I couldn't believe it but here you are – from prisoner in the maximum-security pavilion to officer in a Garrison, and from the Garrison to manager of this peculiar place, married to this exceptionally beautiful woman. Forgive my skepticism but I had to see it with my own eyes."

"Also, the boy talked earlier today," Yvo intervened as soon as he sensed the storm gathering inside the gunslinger. "Azul confirmed that it was El-A the one who killed Rosario. It's clear now that the Syndicate was not expecting this lady to return, least of all married to you, boy."

"And none of them could anticipate Rosario's last will and testament," the Emperor added, "their greed blinded them all: with you gone, the power they sook finally seemed within reach but the moment you returned, that poor girl became a liability."

"Well, it's nice to see the emperor so invested, for a change," Black sentenced coldly. "You were the one responsible for the creation of the Rebel-Seekers but when things got ugly, you simply turned the other cheek. The Syndicate is different – they don't starve, they have money and resources… I can understand your concern, Kotal."

With a somber grin, the Emperor of Outworld stared at Black, even when his words were aimed for someone else.

"Yvo, it's a lovely day outside," Kotal said. "Why don't you take this beautiful lady out for a walk?"

Yvo rose from his chair but the doctor did not; her hands landed on Black's but her husband's eyes were already begging her to leave the room. Nodding her head once as a sign of silent acceptance, the doctor finally joined the barrister, leaving the Emperor and his former enforcer alone for the first time in years.

"And they say I have a way with ladies…" Black's ironic sense of humor tried to mitigate the concern that was written all over Alexandra's face, but the Emperor remained silent until both the doctor and the barrister had left the building.

"Here is what you don't know, Black: Rosario came to see me some days before she died," Kotal began. "She told me she was going to give you this power, she said she was going to make you the manager of this place and I agreed, I thought it was a good idea: Rosario was a very wise woman, but she was also old and fragile. I could see in her eyes that she was afraid – she knew the Syndicate would try to take control over the brothel, so she chose to protect the heirs. When I offered her protection, she refused to accept it," the Emperor confessed. "She said your wife was the only one that needed protection, but she also said that as long as she was with you, she would be alright."

"Rosario was a survivor," Black remembered fondly. "But in the end, she chose to protect someone other than herself, that takes courage."

He had known that woman ever since she was a teenager striving for a better life. From protégé to Queen of the Oppressed, her life had been an accumulation of bitter fights against an invisible monster. But the tough lady he still remembered from those days of warm afternoons and sweaty bedsheets had vanished once the doctor entered the scene: Alexandra was the daughter Rosario had chosen not to have, a tough lady in her twenties, striving for a better life, a mother mourning the children she had chosen not to have.

Kotal nodded his head. Rosario had never been a true adversary to the crown. If anything, her mere figure was enough for the Palace to acknowledge that there were others out there, living far beyond the fortress of power and corruption.

"When she told me about her last will and testament, she didn't mention this marriage, though," the Emperor said. "If there's one thing I've always admired about Rosario was her ability to always keep an ace up her sleeve, no matter the circumstances… just like you, Erron. I assume that in order to validate her last will and testament she forced you two to get married, sounds like something she would have done," he smiled quietly, "but the sooner you cooperate with me, the sooner you can leave this whole thing behind, Erron: this filthy place, a fake marriage that is the equivalent to a business contract…"

She had resurrected the dead. She had uncovered his past. She had seen and analyzed and deconstructed every single one of his sins and she had stayed. A decade had gone by.

And still there she was. By his side.

"I love that woman."

He was honest. The feeling he had just exposed had little to do with the womanizer the Emperor remembered; it seemed genuine and sincere.

"In that case, Erron, do it for her," the Osh-Tekk said. "Your exaggerated longevity has provided you with a remarkable sense of patience. You think before you speak, you consider your chances before you decide to act. A man as cautious as you would never dare to act so boldly unless he has an ace up his sleeve," he crossed his arms over his chest, expecting a reaction, "Rosario has taught you well, Black: you always have an ace up your sleeve, no matter the circumstances."

"You want me to cooperate with you? You want me to work for you again?" The cowboy asked. "Seems convenient for you to make such an offer now – maybe you want to control this "power" Rosario has given me, Kotal. I know you; you are just like us: you too know how to save an ace up your sleeve."

"I know you're hiding something, Erron."

The gunslinger tried his best to masquerade his surprise but failed miserably. Of course he was hiding something: his wife was not the woman Kotal thought she was. The doctor hadn't died that night in the cabin, she had endured a decade on her own, refusing to join the census and concealing her true nature. They had both crossed the portal, and they had managed to cross it again and make it back home. An entire decade had gone by, but little had changed: she still was a prisoner of her own story.

"Something not even your wife knows you have in your possession," Kotal added, dissipating the panic written all over the gunslinger's face. "In fact, I wonder if she knows this item even exists… seems to me that both you and Rosario have been busy keeping things from her. I wonder how she will manage to rule this place when there's so much she doesn't know… Is keeping her in the dark the wisest way to protect her?"

Black's hands balled into tight fists, but he knew he was in no position to negotiate with Kotal.

"Rosario was afraid of the possibility that the two of you would never return," the Emperor said. "She feared that, by letting you go, you would be able to start anew in some other place, far from this war."

"Because then her last will and testament would become as useful as a broken toy gun."

"Precisely," Kotal nodded. "She told me there was a journal; her personal journal with enough names and information to take down the Syndicate and El Club de los Amantes but she didn't give me this journal – she kept it, as leverage. Give me the journal, Erron. Cooperate with me; we can take them down for good."

"And what do you think I've been trying to do all this time?" An enraged Black asked.

"You are but one man, Erron. I have an entire army," Kotal sentenced. "Give me Rosario's journal and allow me to finish this conflict. I can offer you more money than you can imagine – and you're going to need it: with the Syndicate gone, El Club de los Amantes will no longer fund the brothel."

"We'll manage," the cowboy fought back, resolute. "The Syndicate has always been the pebble in your shoe, Kotal. The connection is there, although I know you're never gonna come clean about this: your so-called benevolence has allowed both the Syndicate and the Black Dragon to move all sorts of items across the portals; your silent connivance has done that much for the realm you swore to protect and when things got out of hand, you used your own people and created the Rebel-Seekers initiative."

"You should know better than anyone, Erron," Kotal retorted. "You were once a member of the Black Dragon organization."

Kotal's calm demeanor let him know that he hadn't come to the brothel to simply ask for cooperation.

"You knew?"

The Emperor grinned softly at the confused cowboy.

"All this time," Kotal finally confessed. "Every time an Emperor rises or falls, the Black Dragon is involved one way or another – but you were the bridge connecting both sides: I was fighting for the throne from the resistance and your name kept getting bigger and bigger."

"Dexitis was the best political activist I ever met," Black remembered. "He helped me back then, when I tried to get close to you."

"A blacksmith, Erron," Kotal said. "He was a blacksmith. You may think he was a wonderful politician, but you were the one who did all the work – you never needed anyone to get what you want, why would you need a blacksmith? You were just trying to indulge your friend in his political fantasies, Erron; he had let you in and you had betrayed him, you slept with his wife, got her murdered and then you left because you couldn't bear to look inside the boy's eyes. That's what the Black Dragon truly offered you: a chance to walk away from all the shame and the disgrace you yourself had brought upon your own family." He paused and took a deep breath. "You may not know this, but I've been to Earthrealm a long time ago – I know more about you than you can possibly imagine."

For a brief moment, Black covered his face with his hands as a million questions inside his head struggled to reach the outside.

"Why did you let me become an enforcer when you knew, all this time, that I had been a member of the Black Dragon in the past?" He finally managed to ask his former employer.

"Because you picked a side, Erron," the Emperor said. "The right side – but even so, every once in a while the effects of your days with the Black Dragon show, and you become clumsy and reckless, like the time you decided to go against Kano all on your own, and you nearly ended up dead, remember?"

"How could I ever forget?" Black asked sarcastically. "I nearly died, but I also ended up spending a whole decade behind bars. I was only trying to eliminate someone whose sole purpose is to create chaos and instability, but you thought I was abusing my power."

"You went after Kano alone because you were hotheaded: you knew the man, you had worked with him in the past, you thought you could beat him. That's not the reason why I sent you to prison, Erron. If I had thought you were abusing your power, you would have been executed like the poor bastard that attacked you and your late wife. The people needed a resolution, the Rebel-Seekers needed you to disappear and I needed you to stop being so stubborn," Kotal confessed. "A decade behind bars is a reasonable amount of time for a man like you to think things through and gain a new, different perspective."

"Oh," the cowboy placed both his hands over his heart, "thank you."

"Any debts from the past I should know of, Erron?" Kotal asked, dismissing the irony that Black had thrown his way. "Once we take down the Syndicate, the Black Dragon is going to mourn a very precious ally – some sort of retribution is to be expected in the future, I'm afraid."

The gunslinger shook his head.

"No. I always pay my debts – and I pay them myself, I don't go around making other people pay for my shortcomings."

"I'm not so sure about that," the Emperor retorted.

"Come on, Kotal," the gunman smiled sardonically, "the attacks, the indiscriminate recruiting of young citizens, the piles of corpses spread all across the city? The Syndicate has crossed all lines here but someone in your position cannot finish them – you need someone to do the hard, dirty work, don't ya? You need someone to fight your battles, you need someone to point you in the "right direction" and, let's say, provide you with enough names and information to finally take down the Syndicate and El Club de los Amantes. You're in my territory now, Kotal – tread carefully."

"Your territory? The way I see things, you have yet to be accepted by these people… Don't just stand in the way of justice so casually, Erron. Do it for her," Kotal insisted. "I have come to admire this gentle touch of sentimentalism in you: you did it for your first wife, now you can do it for your second wife – provide her with a better life. She's the legal owner of this place but without the money that only the Syndicate can provide, she's going to be living in the streets in no time. Accept my offer, Erron: give me the journal and I'll fund the House of Pleasure for as long as you need." Noticing Black's dubitative expression, the Emperor pressed on: "I know you are loyal towards those you truly care about, Black. I know that, when you first arrived here, Dexitis' friends helped you infiltrate Shao Kahn's ranks. You pretended to work for Shao Kahn, you even romanced Skarlet to get exactly what you wanted from her. That first taste of power must have been delicious for someone like you; many people doubted you back then: we were fighting in the streets, getting our hands dirty, but all your battles were fought in the comfort of a bed. Your friendship with the blacksmith compelled you to do the right thing in the end – when you betrayed Tanya you chose to abandon Mileena and help the resistance. I know, Erron. I too keep several aces up my sleeve."

The gunslinger cleared his throat as he tried his best to summon the memories of a time that seemed alien and completely lost.

"If you become the primary funder of the brothel," Black said, "I need to know we'll still be in charge."

"You have my word," Kotal assured. "I won't interfere with your business."

Black lowered his head and went back upstairs. In a couple of minutes, he was back, carrying the precious journal in his hands. El Club de los Amantes was on borrowed time, and Kotal was about to take all credit for taking down the Syndicate. His power, stable and strong once again, had survived yet another war.

"Nobody can know I have this journal in my possession, Black – I need your discretion," Kotal required. "We'll act fast; they'll never see us coming."

"And then what?" The cowboy asked as he finally let go of Rosario's personal journal.

"Then this nightmare will be finally over."

In just a couple of days, his entire strategy had collapsed all around him. He wandered the deserted brothel looking for something to do but now, dispossessed of a clear goal, the cowboy's footsteps had become languid and lazy. For the first time in ages, he was finally free to sit back and relax but the fighter in him had completely forgotten how to do such things.

The news had traveled fast: the Emperor himself had been the leader of the army that had rallied the city and finally captured the members of El Club de los Amantes. The Syndicate was no more. The war was finally over.

He should have felt relieved. He should have finally allowed himself to breathe. But the aftertaste of their struggle was unexpectedly sour.

"Looking good, Black," Alexandra whispered in his ear as the man got ready for the big event of the evening. Public executions had never been something he enjoyed but the Royal invitation had his name on it, and Black knew he was in no position to refuse.

"Please, come with me," he begged, even when he already knew the answer.

The doctor shook her head and kissed him softly on his shoulder. As his hat rested on his hands, the man turned around and faced his wife.

"You don't look happy," she said.

"That's because I'm not. I feel empty-handed. Taking down the Syndicate was our plan and now somebody else's taking all the credit," he let out downheartedly. "Those people they killed, the ones we loved and lost – they were our friends, Alex. Avenging them was supposed to be our job, not a political strategy."

"Does it really matter who ended this war?" she asked. "Does it really matter who did what? We all did what we had to do, Erron. We lost many friends along the way, but I doubt they would have wanted us to spill more blood in their names."

He planted a soft kiss on her hand and tipped his hat at her.

"Maybe you're right," he whispered as a bittersweet grin took over his face. Then he went downstairs and exited the brothel, quickly joining the multitude of nameless faces walking down the streets.

Nothing like a public execution to catch everyone's attention. They were ending a war that had broken down the pillars of the city, burying friends and loved ones underneath concrete and stone. Their blood had dried on their hands; the yellow candles that had once burned in their honor were nothing but faded memories now.

Outworld worked that way, he remembered as he walked past the Palace gates and reentered a scenario he knew like the back of his own hand. Symbolisms of a retrograde kind of grandeur came to greet him with every step he took. Faces he hadn't seen in a very long time; smells he hadn't smelled in more than a decade. But now the familiarity of this environment seemed eerie and distant. Those voices clamoring for blood were but an echo carried by the wind. Their song and their message were there, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not decode their meaning.

They were exultant. Triumphant in their agony. The Coliseum had that kind of power over them. They weren't mad at the bunch of people that were about to be executed. They weren't angry. They did not feel the need to ask them why they had robbed them of the chance to spend their lives with the ones they loved.

They were victorious. They were insanely happy.

Yvo found him in the crowd, absorbed in the hurricane of conflicting emotions and nearly disarmed by the realization that all those people were actually celebrating death. The barrister called out his name and the cowboy followed him through the endless labyrinth of sweat and muscle that stretched endlessly before his eyes; up the stairs, past all guards and right into Kotal's balcony.

The Emperor had saved a seat just for him. At his right.

Just like old times.

One by one, the members of El Club de los Amantes entered the arena and the crowd went wild, throwing all sorts of objects at them, fervently waiting for their blood to kiss the ground. Their silhouettes stood still in the arena for everyone to finally take a look at their faces and learn the parts they had played in the war: Del' L Agua-Ribbay, the woman who had provided free shelter to the Rebel-Seekers when they needed a place to hide; Rhú Zed, the facilitator that had made an art out of establishing connections inside the Royal Palace and the members of the Eré family, who had been in charge of convincing young citizens to join their cause, training and fully indoctrinating them: Ala-m Eré, Sirg-kún Eré and Azul Eré,

"Etienne is missing," Black said as he finally sat down next to the Emperor, but the Osh-Tekk shrugged his shoulders.

"We couldn't find any information about him or his whereabouts in Rosario's journal, the man's a complete mystery," he said. "But people don't know that, Black. They didn't even know El Club existed until we destroyed it. This is our victory, Erron – yours and mine. It is okay for you to enjoy it. Besides, if this man is as clever as his friends say he is, he'll find his way back to Earthrealm."

"Where he'll find his Black Dragon associates, who will, by then, be seeking retribution." Black retorted.

"As I said, Black, some sort of retribution is to be expected."

"So much for closure," the cowboy offered. "It's just… I can't believe this is all over, I can't believe it was that simple: I give you a journal and suddenly all of our problems are gone…"

"Sometimes, Erron, you have to trust the system," Kotal said, proudly. "And, thanks to your enormous contribution, the system welcomes you back."

Heads rolled in the evening and blood painted the sand red. Euphoric throats roared under the dying sun for the entire universe to admire Outworld's thirst.

"What?"

The question burned in his mouth but there was no room for doubt in the hour of resolutions.

"When we captured these people, I changed my mind, Erron," Kotal said as he stood up and clapped his hands vehemently. "What you did for us was noble and disinterested – funding the brothel suddenly seemed cheap; you don't need my charity. Be one of my enforcers again, Erron, you earned it."

The cowboy stood up as well, but he didn't clap his hands. He didn't join the choir of happiness.

"You know we were counting on that money!" he yelled and his voice struggled, carried by a symphony of mad songs of blood and death.

"And you know that an enforcer's job comes with a rather generous paycheck."

"You asked me to do this for her," Black fought back. "Being an enforcer is a full-time job and you know it, Kotal. What do you expect me to do? Move back to the Palace and leave her alone in the brothel?"

"Bring her over," the Emperor suggested as he smiled and waved his hands at the people chanting his name. "She can move in with you; let some other girl run the place so you both can act as managers from here."

"That way you can make sure I don't rise as the new leader of the Oppressed; that way you can finally have all the power."

Kotal turned around and stared at Black with incredulous eyes.

"Power? This was never about power, Erron," he said. "I'm offering you the job you want; I'm offering you the chance to return to the Palace and manage the brothel, I'm even telling you to bring your wife with you, what more can you possibly want from me?"

"What I want, the only thing I truly need is for you to keep your promises." He sat back down, the only saddened soul in the entire Coliseum. "We can't just move to the Palace and direct things from there, Kotal. We can't leave all those girls alone, we can't do that. The House of Pleasure has always been a dumpster for people to come over and discard their "broken women" – we gotta change that, we gotta give them an actual chance in this life to be the ones they truly want to be… and we won't be able to do that from the comfortable bedrooms you have here."

The Emperor turned his back on him but, still, his voice resounded all over him.

"Whores will be whores, Erron," he said, "I'm afraid there's not much you can do to change that fact."

"In my time, the girls that worked at the saloon were not whores. They were singers, and waitresses, they were entertainers," he paused as the memory of his own mother visited his tormented mind. "And they were mothers, and sisters, and girlfriends, and daughters. They weren't broken figurines for men to toy with."

"This is not your time, Erron," Kotal sentenced, finally turning around and facing the cowboy, "that brothel is not your saloon; memories are memories, Black. The past will always be the past."

As the crowd shared songs of victory in the name of their Emperor, the lonely gunslinger stood up, tipped his hat at Kotal, and abandoned the balcony. Still, immersed in the powerful might of a joyful multitude, the old Edenian barrister witnessed the departure of a man that had had the entire world in his hand and had refused to accept it.

The barrister lowered his head, disheartened but certain: both Earthrealm and Outworld had destroyed and rejected that man so many times in the past that now neither Earthrealm nor Outworld truly deserved to be held by his hands.

The empty brothel welcomed his tired bones as he closed the door and went back upstairs. His life, ever since moving to the House of Pleasure had become a never-ending concatenation of stressful hours, leaving no room for neither night nor day to exist on their own. The doctor was waiting for him in the bedroom, alone and just as tired as he was.

"I gave the girls the night off," she whispered as he stepped inside, "I bet some of them are still in the Coliseum celebrating the end of a war they didn't even know was taking place around them."

He nodded his head once in silence. As a matter of fact, he had crossed paths with at least a dozen girls as he left the Coliseum. He took off his hat and sat down on the bed.

"So, how did it go?"

Biting his lower lip, the man shook his head.

"There's no money," his voice was a mere whisper, "he says I don't need his charity." He took a long breath and lowered his head. "He played me, Alex - he wants to have it all."

The woman approached him and kneeled on the floor before him, between his legs.

"He is an Emperor, Erron," she whispered back, placing her hands on his cheeks. "Of course he wants to have it all." She rose from her place and grabbed his hat – this broken man had little to do with the fearsome mercenary she had met oh so many years ago. "We'll do," she assured him, sitting down right next to him and gently patting his knee. "We'll manage like we always do, you'll see."

When the doctor rested her head on the soft spot between his neck and his shoulder, the man finally opened up.

"He offered me my old job as an enforcer," he said.

"So… back to square one?"

Her words made him smile, although his eyes remained vacant.

"He said you can move in with me, can you imagine that? Both of us, living at the Palace?" he tried to joke, but his sense of humor was clearly extinguished. "I said no."

She tilted her head to the side, unsure of the words she had just heard.

"I have always thought you'd want to go back to the Palace someday," she said and the man shrugged his shoulders innocently at her: if he had to be honest with himself, he hadn't thought about going back to the Palace in a very long time now.

"He wants us to direct the brothel from the Palace, and let one of the girls run the place – how are we supposed to do that?" He stared right into her eyes. "How can we live a life of opulence while the girls struggle? The girls and us, all of us, we've endured for so long, we've been through so much we can't just leave them – and you," he grabbed her by the shoulders, bringing her closer to him. "I know what the Palace does to people, I can talk from experience: that place corrupts people…"

He had transfixed the face of the man she had loved back then; in a life she could no longer call her own. He had overlapped his seasoned features countless times for her not to feel so all alone. He had fooled both time and distance. He had endured her most personal battles. More than a decade had gone by and still, he had waited.

He had found her.

"I love you."

Her words, simple but immensely eloquent, rendered him speechless.

"This is it," she said, "this man, right here, this is the man I love."

With infinite patience, the woman removed his leather jacket and unbuttoned his shirt as she sat on his lap and trapped his lower lip between her teeth. He was tired and exhausted and would have given everything he had for a decent amount of sleeping hours, but his skin reacted to her touch, slowly at first, gaining symptoms of desperation as moments went by. How long her mouth stayed on his mouth became a notion placed way beyond him.

"I would say it back, you know?" he managed to say, fighting for air, "but you once told me it's not my style."

Her smile collided against his face, but he didn't mind. Then her lips explored his neck and his shoulders, then his torso and his stomach; he laid on his back and closed his eyes for a moment, welcoming a sense of intimacy that was finally theirs and theirs alone. No ghosts were allowed on that bed. No tales from the past. No broken memories could find them now.

When she took off her dress, he admired a body that, just like his, had been punished by life and violence but, for the first time, all those symptoms of injustice looked like distant markers of the ones they had once been. None of those marks were enough to define them now. Her broken nipple, the brand on his shoulder, the number tattooed on her ankle, every single one of the tally marks on his forearms – they were but decoys in a path they both had been forced to walk, but none of those things were enough to define who they were, or what they meant to each other.

With one of his arms around her waist and his tongue dancing around her nipples, the man removed her underwear as clumsily as an inexperienced teenager, but the woman smiled and removed her hair from his face, her hands finally reaching for his jeans. They were in a hurry, even when they had the entire night ahead of them. They were desperate and urgent, even when they had the place all to themselves. The doctor and the enforcer. The fugitive and the mercenary. The cowboy and the whore. The owner and the manager. Their dichotomies exploded like a supernova – white, and bright; nearly blinding.

Their clothes on the floor and the sticky mess of sweaty skin were milestones in a night that felt like a thousand nights. Their hands explored, and touched, and roamed, and squeezed and pinched and brushed as their mouths licked and tasted and savored and devoured and sucked. They could not afford to stop now; there was not a single moment to be wasted: they were learning, their senses were learning. Every reaction, every movement, every nearly imperceptible change needed to be admired and treasured; every gesture was measured with almost mathematical precision – the whore that had slept with a thousand men and the cowboy that had lived for a thousand years had finally merged inside a single spark.

But his love was not historical.

And her passion was not professional.

Hey there! As some of you know, I took several months to revisit the whole story and though I'm tired and I'm hungry and I just wanna go to bed, I'm happy to inform you that I'm all caught up and from this point on, updates will be posted regularly (sorta) until the story is all finished. For those who are reading the story now for the first time, here, have a new chapter! For those who have been here since the beginning, but don't really want to go back and re-read the whole thing because, let's face it, who has that kinda time? Don't worry, I only changed a few details here and there, but I didn't change anything plot-wise.

Last but not least, they finally made it, hurray! I had a much longer and more detailed scene in mind, but this was such a crucial chapter; a lot of things (important things) happened in this chapter and I didn't want to eclipse any of those things by adding an excessively long, detailed smut scene. One of those is coming in a couple chapters, rest assure!

Thank you all so much for reading, reviewing, writing to me, and basically being awesome.

See you next time.