Disclaimer: I own nothing of GS/GSD. R&R please.

Warning: Slightly mature content.

Her legs were urging her to move on, but she knew they were unstable, shaking slightly in her shock. And so she reached out for the nearest thing she could hold onto, a solid bar of steel, the railing that separated the dark foliage and distant lake from the empty roadside she was at, outside the bar from which she had fled.

Her hair was in her eyes and she brushed it away impatiently, angrily even.

What was the point of trying, trying so damn hard to not feel, to not feel so much, so damn much the minute she had seen him. All this ached in her like a sore that would never heal and close and allow its own mark to fade.

And why was she running away like this? A scornful thought grazed her, for Cagalli had done nothing wrong to warrant a criminal's behaviour, and yet, her features were marred with guilt, and she sat on the railing, gripping her purse and wondering what she ought to do. She would call Bonita from the hotel once she'd gotten a taxi, hailed it fast enough for a painless getaway. And suddenly, it struck Cagalli that someone was coming, emerging from the distance.

Footsteps she feared where echoing towards her, and she was startled to find Athrun standing before her with a deadened expression on his handsome face, like he'd gotten drunk but wasn't actually, as if he didn't know what to feel from all the numbness he'd put into himself. She was made to feel like a hunted animal, given no opportunity to run and hide when he came for her, knowing nothing except that he wanted her and badly.

Cagalli looked away from him towards the side, vaguely embarrassed and upset that he hadn't taken what she had wanted to give him at face value, leaving and pretending she'd never seen him there. And the dark road ahead of them loomed deep and great, a gigantic meandering lake of ink, dyed by the erstwhile blackening sky as both merged from where the eye could see, preparing for the coming of dusk. The darkness around them was now quiet and insidious, but the lamplights above them, lining the street side for nobody but them, since the cars weren't here, defied the night, made it seem golden in some spots.

They spent a few seconds more of awkward silence until she turned back to him and asked, upset, "Why are you here?"

And the redundancy of the question made her blush to her neck as she bit her lip full on the bottom and Athrun frowned a little.

He took a firm step forward and she might have fell off the cold, hard rail she sat on in her panic if he hadn't gripped one end of the scarf she was wearing protectively around her neck. Cagalli flinched, he looked into her eyes, dropping his cold wall of silence as the eyes became alive in his face, intense and demanding for things she didn't know how to give or what they were in the first place. His hand was cased around the end of the scarf, and slowly, Athrun spun his wrist forward until the entire length was masking his fist partially and his long, slim fingers were positioned at the boundary of her chin and her neck.

His touch burned her, and she thought of what he could do to her, and her eyes widened instantly, well aware that he was most probably reading and capable of understanding her thoughts. His eyes were boring holes into her, and he half-smiled, as if confirming her rampant thoughts.

"What are you doing?" Cagalli cried, in shame and terror. His eyes flashed then, and before she could even feel fear, Athrun had yanked her off the rail, a hand gripped on her scarf to control her, and she realised it was a leash onto her neck now, and might have cried out further if she hadn't been enveloped in his waiting arms, against the hard, real lines of his broad chest. Their faces were barely inches apart, and the realisation of that made her squirm like an inexperienced girl. Had her scarf undone before he had leashed her, she might not have been undone by it. The irony made her even more panicky and she began to struggle like a wild animal.

His eyes were dark with anger, misery, lust, disdain, desire, and everything she could find no words for in that very instant. But Athrun didn't stop there, he simply didn't. If he had, perhaps nothing would have gone wrong from that singular second, but he half-smiled, half-smirked at her, stunning her completely as he said recklessly, "You look beautiful tonight."

Her throat resembled a desert, and she licked her lips nervously. But anger had reared its head in her like a monstrous python, coiling and striking then, and she hissed with poison laced everywhere, "Only because I look like a whore."

Hatred worse than anything she'd seen coloured his features although he did not blush with anger, because Athrun Zala was like that, his wrath was cold whereas hers was a fiery temper, and she knew now, that the former was the worse of both. But he swooped low, a hand forced to her chin, bounded by the scarf, and the other forcefully pressing her body to his open one, and it was a deeply possessive kiss, his mouth on hers as she stood, frozen, and she was no longer tense with fear but strangely limp with his vented anger flowing through the channel she'd unwilling provided.

And an alarm bell went off in her head and she broke free of him and with a singular motion, undid the scarf, tugging and pulling it off madly, leaving an end attached to Athrun's hand and pushing the distance further away until she was safe from him as he stood silently, watching her with the end still attached brokenly. He let it fall from his hand, a colourless, insubstantial wisp of chiffon, like smoke that traveled down to the earth rather than to the sky, and she started like a frightened cat, aware that his eyes were fixed on her.

Her eyes ran to the end of the road, and a fresh wave of panic swept over her, but her humiliation and pain gave her a beauty that was accented by her fury. In the haze of what she was seeing, she was only vaguely aware that she was panting madly, like she had run a long distance, but what she more aware of was the fact that Athrun was silently watching her.

The kiss was still lingering, and guilt was riding through her, making the most of her fear, and in an unthinking, brilliant serve, Cagalli had struck Athrun across his face. The pain under her palm, a searing blade of fire made her flinch like him, a common reaction to both their pain, so deeply shared then.

"You don't have to lower yourself to bed me," She hissed for the second time, shame still everywhere in her trembling lower lip, full and pink by his kiss but she raised a tremulous hand to touch it, unaware that she was intensifying the desire in him, "You can have any woman you want."

His face registered a second's worth of shock, then wild anger and pain swept into his face, penetrating the mask through his eyes, until she was reminded of how precarious her situation was, and still trembling, she ran forward into the darkness, not understanding anything other than the instinct to run away from her predator, to be safe from his touch and more crucially, safe from herself. And that was enough to urge her badly balanced feet forward on the heels she had put on for just one night, and she tripped more than once but regained the little stability she had from the start.

Athrun's face was molded resolutely, still flashing in her mind, and she was horrified to hear his footsteps after her, terrified to realise she was the hunt this night, and knowing fully well that she would never outrun him like this. And at that precise moment, she stumbled terribly and knocked herself forward, but Athrun had seen this, his face had been of a wild fury but he had leapt forward and was pulling her weight skywards, undoing the fall she had brought upon herself, until she was shivering and pressed in his arms, the height difference made up for, just for tonight

And why had she ran from him? It wasn't just the fear, it was the instinct, the very animal instinct to run when being chased, and she had, she had tried. But it wasn't enough; it was never enough for anything. The street lamps were taunting her, laughing hard now in their giggles of spotlights.

"Stop chasing!"

He saw then, that tears were teeming from her glistening golden eyes, and the street lights were not the cause of their glimmer. Her lips were poisoned with delicate reverberations of her agony, and his hands, tight around her hands in that moment where he had prevented her painful tumble towards to earth, were still stationary there, inactive. Angered by her traitorous tears, she pulled a hand from his grasp and swiped them away with the back of her wrist, her features defiant and harsh. And his eyes were tortured as he looked quietly at her, unappeased by her suffering because his was so much greater by watching her suffer.

"Let's settle this once and for all," Athrun said softly, but with that edge in his voice that made her tremble. He watched and waited.

And finally, she nodded, desolate in her state of mind. She had no choice, that much she was aware of then. She stumbled forward as he guided her, blinded by the knowledge that even if she hadn't met him here, hadn't been brought here, she would have been most likely to have gotten drunk, struggling back to the hotel and sleeping soundly until the morning to call for Athrun to do what he had to do. And that wouldn't have been easier than this in any case.

She gave a gasp, she was suffocating, but a second later, she had quietened. In his car, the air was palpitable, tensed with fear of what the other could do to affect them, and even then, Cagalli saw sometimes, that Athrun's eyes were not on the cars behind them. He was not a reckless person; he had never been and would never be, but tonight, there was an indefinable urgency that coursed through their bodies like an unbridled ocean. She saw then, that his eyes were sometimes on her exposed neck, darkened with something she did not know how to describe but recognized and shivered, not because of the cold. Her eyes were forced to focus on her hands, clasped tight in her lap, until she heard his voice telling her they had arrived and it was slightly safer to look up to meet the desire in his eyes.

With a single flip of his fingers, she was blinded by the light that flooded his small apartment, and behind them, the door was locked firmly, as if daring her to comment on it. She did not however, her eyes were concentrating on what lay before her, and Athrun's presence, she saw, had defined the parameters of this place.

The books lay obediently and accurately arranged in their shelves, and the little glimpse of the kitchenette revealed the cups standing politely in their cupboards, the glass sanitized and respectfully glinting. The papers he had probably been working on were arranged in formidable stacks and weighed down with a folder as a paperweight, and everything was foreign in its appearance but somehow familiar in its nature of arrangement.

She was not a fool. He had brought her back here for reasons she could half-guess, reasons she herself half-harbored, and coming here of her own accord had been the same in result if he had forced her here, and yet, she had still come to him. Her mind was encapsulated then, in eternal, unthawing ice.

Awkwardly, she turned to him, afraid of the thick silence that had enveloped around them like a fog, binding them to each other. His eyes had followed hers in their paths, as if he revalued everything according to the reaction she took upon seeing his things.

"This place hasn't changed very much, probably," She said softly, watching his eyes watch her, feeling a tremor pass through her body and she consciously gripped her own arm, afraid of its potential threat to her dignity, "Because you haven't changed very much."

He looked softly and sorrowfully at her, and she had to look away, unable to meet his eyes.

"Will you come back to ORB with me?" She asked tentatively, "To have them signed? I'll get Kisaka to come as a witness, and then, we-,"

"I'll never give them to you." He said flatly, and she saw that anger was erupting in his face at her clumsy wreckage of the moment, and that desire had its hold still on him even as his eyes bore hatefully into her. She shook then.

"I, Athrun, you said-," She cried in her desperation, "You said you would, you promised!"

Her pain was making her incoherent and she was shaking her head, as if trying to clear all her muddled thoughts, trying to regain her composure once more in front of the man who could make her lose so much.

His eyes silenced her, filled with scorn and reckless impulse. "I said I'd give you what you wanted."

"But I want you to come back to ORB and finish this, I want you to give me what we both need to live properly," She pleaded, "I want us to stop pretending like this, stop having to tell others we are still what we once were!"

His eyes silenced her, forced a stop to her urgent pleas, and then she watched the ripple in his eyes, seeing something move in them, dangerous and brilliant.

"I'll teach you then," He answered blindly, harshly, his voice was an insolent whiplash of hatred, "I'll teach you to understand what you truly want, no, what you truly need."

And suddenly, in a singular, swift, blinding shove, Cagalli's back was facing the wall, and she hit it with a soft, dull thud as she gasped, feeling her eyes straining to widen, his hands on hers, his lips searching, searching and placing themselves on her neckline, allowing not even a gasp to be fully pronounced.

"Athrun," She sobbed, "Don't!"

But he didn't heed her, even as she struggled against him, kicking, biting, scratching everything that got near her reach, allowed itself to be reached by her, and she was reduced to someone like this, someone who had once commanded the troops by the thousands, untouchable, separated from a normal human. She was faltering now, hitting and bruising whatever she could, but then she suddenly jolted, realizing how little she could really hurt him. He took advantage of her hesitation and gripped both wrists, forcing her to hit the earth with her back as his form shadowed her almost entirely as they wrestled like dangerous beasts in search of elusive survival.

She blindly reached out and scratched him across his cheek and it seemed to fail in its intent to hurt, for he was already fighting her and defying all that she stood for then, and yet, this was no assault, it was a conquest, rightfully won, fair and just, for she was hurting him and he was allowing her to, and then fighting her back, allowing herself to defend against him in any way that she could think of.

And abruptly, her hand, harsh and forceful against his shoulder, trying to push him away from above her, froze in its track, in midair, and she closed her eyes, holding back the tears that would have spilled otherwise. Numbly, his left hand, previously holding down her wrist to keep her from wounding him, moved down slowly to meet hers, still transfixed in midair, and their fingers entwined like luxurious vines in the emerald forests as her free wrist moved slowly, hesitantly to the scratch she had made on his cheek, watching his close his eyes now, and then her hand broke free of his, and both arms, as if uplifted by the fanning of great wings that summoned healing winds around them, lifted her arms and secured them around his neck, pressing his entire being towards her, welcoming him in the flames of rediscovery.

And the night drew long and fine, like a quivering arrow upon its sturdy bow. He was demanding, utmost in his possessiveness of her, as if everything inanimate thing around them would conquest for what was rightfully his, and she understood his need and responded to every nuance in his touch, every soft cry that urged the flames to consume, consume all they could. Words were hardly spoken as they moved with a reckless urgency, and in their absence, they provided the primal longing that had been their foe but now friend for so long in those days after that day. Each dream was melded into each one, like a tapestry that did not know when to end on the loom of time, and the world around them watched silently, hearing words that were nonsensical, absolute nonsense but the simplest, most functional for the flames that swept in them. The words that were uttered were but sounds, cries and gasps, drawing him closer, brining her softly to him, and they lay in the night, the lights dimmed, drawing sensuous shadows on their entwined beings, leaving them afraid their immortal act would be beyond their physical flesh's comprehension.

Hours later, she lay in his arms, one immobile beneath her neck, her golden hair fanned our on the flesh that had caressed her own before, her body clothed in nothing but his embrace, his other arm wrapped protectively around her and his head resting on the white cotton pillow.

She lifted a tentative hand to count her fingers, as if seeing them for the first time, the hours that had passed since she had been brought her for him to caress her like this, the number of hours that had seemed insignificant then. Five fingers for six hours. And the clock began to strike twelve, and he unearthed his arm beneath her neck, took her other shoulder and rolled her so that her back would face the sheets entirely as he looked deep into her eyes and watched her watching him before they began to move in mimicry of the hands of the clock, once more.

After that, they simply lay in each other arms and talked. They talked about the silliest things, the most mundane things she could ever imagine, like how work had been difficult lately with certain developments, how fine Leon was growing up to be, how bad the weather was for their health, things like that, stupid little things like that. But she was happier than she'd ever been, and Athrun gradually lost the edge about him he'd carried for so long now, and suddenly, he was gentle, changed, different.

An hour or so passed, and he laughed and told her that he had paid the neighbours back sufficiently enough, with the surroundings the thin walls provided . She coloured instantly and hit him on his arm as they held each other fiercely and laughed, but then abruptly, quite strangely, she began to cry, and the tears fell and fell even as he swiftly wiped them away and kissed her until she was panting, choking from her tears and his kiss mingled together. And as breathlessly as panting, he looked upon her face, and began to stroke her, his eyes filled with promises, she thought later with some embarrassment, he fulfilled entirely.

He was never satisfied, he was impatient and needy the way she had never seen him before, and it made her lose her inhabitations, to grant him whatever he asked for, let him take her over and over again until she was swept away in a glen of sensuousness where all that mattered was him and how she could please him in return for what he gave her.

At a certain point, as she lay with her head tucked securely under his chin, a hand of his folded upon her forehead, stroking her hair, now damp and sweet with her sweat, and her own hand gliding gently down the lines of his chest, he asked thoughtfully, "Do you remember the time when you released the bird from its cage?"

Two spots of pink appeared on her fair cheeks, the same cheeks he had caressed with the tips of his fingers and kissed with soft lips, and she retorted indignantly, "It's not my fault that you came up behind me so suddenly and besides, you were the one who forced me to let go of the trapdoor!"

He laughed a little, fondly, a bit regretfully that her hand had ceased its pilgrimage when she had replied, and he took over what she had been doing by flipping her from her side to her back, like a pancake, she thought humorously,and he bgan tracing a similar path that she had traced on him, but this time with his mouth and lips and teeth. She made a soft keening sound in the tension of her pleasure, feeling as if a dream was now real in the deja vu way she had been once so afraid of but now welcomed eagerly, and his fingers aided him in his ministrations, but suddenly, he paused, ignoring her abrupt cry of displeasure, asking, "You asked if it remembered how to fly."

Her fingers had curled in his midnight hair, demanding his touch, accompanied by her soft cried, but now, she looked puzzled and then answered tentatively, "You said it did. It did remember how to fly."

He began to nuzzle her once more, and her lips parted in a silent cry, arching herself to him, arching herself for him as he flaunted his hold over her, pausing to take in her breathless, sultry gaze, the feel of her fingers growing strong in his hair as she guided him, and hereplied quietly, dangerous in the persuasion and depth of his voice. "Something that is born to do what it must do can never forget how."

Later, she observed a sudden attack of exhaustion bring him from the insatiable nature of the flames into an edgeless, soft spell of sleep. She watched the pattern of his breathing, magnified by the rise and fall of his chest become steady and even, and slipped out from under his arms the way he always pinned them down to prevent her from kicking and punching in her sleep, unwilling to take a sheet away lest he was brought awake. And she looked around, the room where they had migrated into was locked, and the only thing left there was a shirt of his that they had together removed. And she slipped it over her head and curled into a ball, perched on a seat, as a slow but deadly panic tugged at her as she sat there, thinking so hard that her head ached even while the memory of the delicious things he had done to her played havoc amidst her fear.

The clock chimed three, and she was startled when his eyes fluttered open, and she watched him sit up, the sheet slipping from his chest to his waist to reveal the long thin, red lines she'd left with her fingernails, some by accident, some not quite, but all accepted and relished before he turned on her and paid her back double. He had sat up, jerky and ill at ease, until he saw her and a beauteous smile sent her heart fluttering and she slipped in her nervousness. He shifted over, nearer to her, and then swiftly reached out and hauled back to where she had been, where she rightfully belonged, to him. He did not just hold her, he was an unleashed fire of passion again, claiming her, tearing his own shirt with so much force that she gasped, and she fed him whatever that he wanted and took all that she wanted from him in return.

When some passage of time had been swept down in their tirade of feeling, she lay nestled to him, once again bare, save for his arms around her. But he was lazily tracing words everywhere on her with his fingers, and she concentrated a little but enough to realize they all spelt the same thing on her neck, arms, back, chest, everywhere he could lay his hands on as he periodically kissed her forehead, almost reverently but the mischief in his eyes betrayed the chastity of the kiss. And she looked at him, and he asked no questions but his eyes conveyed his message. They both knew what he had written. Mine.

And she nodded, and he was pleased, and he let go of her only to recapture her in the way he wanted, the way he needed so that her cries and his own would mingle together for the last time that night, for them to usher in morning like the single thread of the night's tapestry that was left running, unstoppably into the next sunrise of the day.

But as he slept, with that half-smile on his face that she caressed with a little touch of her fingers like a butterfly wing, she was seized by violent panic and she crept out, reluctantly putting on the ripped shirt that would probably never be in the reach of repair. His arms that had been curled around her, still gleaming and dripping, touched only the sheets and air. And she wanted, with all the fiber in her being, to slip back under his covers, hold him in return for holding her, daring to love him the way he did for her, feel him resonate and make her body sing for him like an instrument under his skilful hands, but the morning was the sobering drug from Bacchius' wine. She slipped off silently into the living room, and her eyes trailed the chaos they had left in the wake of their fire.

The world around her bore no semblance of Athrun's innate ability to keep things in order. Pieces of their clothes, some quite sorry looking, marked their trail the way the burnt leaves of a forest fire marked its path, the scenery in the picture was lopsidedly- diagonal from where she had accidentally lashed out at it while pressed against the wall, and the cushions from the couch he had carried her to were all over the floor from where they'd thrown them, and there were long scratches of her nails on the single, small armchair they had both sat. All these mocked her now, they bore testimony to the same fatal mistake they'd committed.

The carpet was badly arranged from the way they had tussled over it, and it lay at an odd angle, as if witnessing how she had brought Athrun to her, feeling his weight combine with hers upon the floor in a timeless, ageless moment of truth, and the guilt made her cringe.

Her eyes swept around, she saw the papers lying uncomfortably all over the floor when he'd swept them all off with a careless hand and led her atop the table surface before following, and she began to shake with laughter and sobs as she traced the war the two armies had fought through.

Then she quietened immediately, afraid he would wake and know what she was to do. And she pattered about as quietly as she could, rifling through all the drawers and cupboards until she found, unobtrusive in its brown envelope and neatly tied with a string in a loop, the things she had wanted to come here for.

And she took off his shirt reluctantly, gathering her clothes that had been deposited in a singular path to his bedroom, and began, hastily, to dress. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, caught in the afterglow of everything they'd done and she blushed, noting the places that had been marked by him. No scarf would hide those now.

But she did not allow herself one final look into the bedroom where he was still in the peaceful slumber they'd granted themselves for the night, and with a stifled sob, she took whatever she had came here for and moved away from all that she had cherished the night before.