Dear readers: I am (obviously) a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo. I have watched the anime, the movies, and read the books. Thus I'm afraid I can't separate Edmond from the sea. So, some of the ships he encounters are space vessels, and some of them roam the water. Obviously when visiting another planet it would require a spaceship. However, since in the anime they still use trains and cars as transportation (in this futuristic society) to move around their own planet, I'm going to argue that they might still use wooden/sea fairing ships as well.
Fires and smoke; they seemed to follow him these days. Edmond, burdened under the weight of an idiotic innkeeper, pulled himself slowly from a building far away from Paris. A paramedic dashed forward to relieve him of the fool's massive form.
His fanged mouth growled, irritated, as Edmond brushed the soot from his sleeves. When he gave his statement to the police there were no details spared. The innkeeper had set the kindle, in barrels, around the dining area. He'd prepared the arson with disregard for all of his patrons. Like a naive child, Edmond hadn't realized what that fat and ridiculous man had been planning - not until after the piercing screech of a fire alarm had disrupted his dreams.
He turned his back, marching away from the flaming building, before the doctors could stop and examine him.
Anger threatened to bite. That ass deserved to die. The innkeeper deserved to die for risking the lives of all the people who had paid for his services, and a night free of danger and cold. Men, women, and children -- he'd ranked all of their lives beneath his greed. Another snarl escaped his throat.
All of Gankutsuou's eyes enlarged, fascinated.
Lapsing into a moment of exhaustion after their journey off planet, Edmond had missed the clear signs of mischief, later waking to the smell of burning wood and hair, people screaming, and an infant crying. A beam, hot with flames, blocked his way to the nearest fire escape in the hall. Together, along with a woman who had emerged from the next room, they had fled down another set of stairs. The railing's fell away, and the column supporting the ceiling tried to collapse. Embers floated through the air with deadly intentions, looking for spots barren of flame wherein to land.
The front door was inaccessible. He'd grabbed a bar stool by the kitchen and threw it into a window, allowing the woman to escape through broken glass and wire.
"Help." A voice asked, without intensity. It stopped Edmond, and he found over his shoulder the man, trapped by wreckage, underneath the weight of his own scheme.
Tempted to leave him there, encouraged to do so by the cavern king, realizing this man would have let him die; Edmond regarded the pink and bulbous face.
The innkeeper's expression was not pleading. He knew his crime, yet his eyes and his voice still dared to ask, simply, for help. Not ready for the end, he looked to Edmond, searching for compassion.
"Weakness." Gankutsuou mused.
He needed to say no more. If Edmond had accessed more of Gankutsuou's power, given him more free reign, he would not have needed to sleep. He would not have been too tired to care what the innkeeper had been about. He would have had the heart to leave him there to die.
"Wait!" A voice called from behind. A young guard hurried forward, dressed in the classic blue uniform of his station. "Please wait!"
* * *
My heart is racing, my skin dewy with sweat, and I hear my own breath fill the room with panting. She's atop me, another body heavy against my own. The force of my ache makes her gasp as I push, the sound erotic, and our friction wet. The muscles in my stomach burn from lifting us, and she rocks back and forth around me, slightly, not sure what to do.
White skin blushes and glows, dim in the turned down lights. Her hands are limp at her side, inexperienced, and my own hold her in place at her hips. My fingers make little dents over her thighs, and I remind myself not to grip her too tightly. She's soft, and warm, both shy, and frightened of the feeling between her legs.
When I run my hand over her breast I'm surprised by how it feels. The skin of another person is easily caressed, and a much more silken texture than I'd thought. She looks away, refusing to watch me explore her, ashamed and excited.
The shadows kiss her cheeks with circles and massage the edges of her body. She rises and falls on my rhythm.
Her shape holds my gaze, womanly and curved, but I feel odd staring when she chances a glance back at me. The awkwardness of our eye contact makes my shaft yearn -- to know she's giving me so much power. It's nice to be on the other end of that equation, for once.
Blond hair falls into her face, pulled loose from the style she'd worn on our date. I didn't think we'd end up here, and neither of us was well prepared. It's only been a little while since I came to New York…. She's embarrassed, and covers her hips, trying to conceal her size. I smile and reassure her: she's beautiful.
We experience each other for a time, and though my pulse rushes blood into my need, and although I watch her nervous eyes grow gray as she draws closer to climax, I cannot seem to satisfy my own elusive pleasure. I try several positions; clumsily, and finally find myself looking down, propped above on my knees, pushing as gently as I can in my urgency, holding one leg over my shoulder.
It hurts her, but she begs me to keep going. Part of her thinks that if this experience goes well, if she gives me enough pleasure, I'll stay with her forever.
Nothing comes, no release, no exuberating orgasm, but she is close. I close my eyes, intending to work until I have given her something. She whimpers, an expression both of pain and pleasure.
After a time in the dark, behind the lids of my eyes, reality melts away. I let go and feel, forgetting whom I'm with, my name, and my reservations. I imagine him. His face, his mismatched eyes, his dangerous grin; I wonder what it would have felt like, to be pinned beneath him in frantic passion, to feel him hold me down and whisper in my ears as he penetrated me. His mouth would have been slick and warm around my cock, his hands aggressive, and sweet.
At last the spasms bringing me back into the room, and hers follow soon after, jerking and wiping away all thought.
* * *
Edmond looked up to the bow of the L'étoile de l'océan, a fine black wooded ship with full sails and a billowing flag. The letters on its hull were crisp and white, and curved gracefully. They matched the writing on a note in his hand, the penmanship clear and straight.
"So," Gankutsuou said, looking at the name over his shoulder. "You're going to try it eh?"
"It was one of my greatest passions, once."
The guard who had approached Edmond two days ago had insisted on buying him a late night meal, under the illusion he was some sort of hero. During the conversation, in which Edmond was ever evasive, he'd discovered that his hero could man a ship, and told him his brother captained one.
Thinking not of consequences, blindly trusting a stranger simply because Edmond had refused to let a moron burn to death, this civil servant had insisted Edmond meet the fellow and join the crew.
"I think I'm starting to get it." Gankutsuou mumbled. "Are you…kind to these strangers who are just as likely as any to stab you in the back, because….it has payoffs? But, if you would like rewards I hope you realize -- my way is faster, and with far greater treats."
Edmond didn't argue back, as so many would. Gankutsuou was right, in his mind's eye. People, especially the ones you loved, could not be trusted, and those who seemed interested in helping you were probably not, and if opposite proved true, there was always some hidden selfish motive.
Even nobler drives, such as moral or spiritual reasons, were still intended to benefit the participant by pleasing whatever god they named. There was still some personal gain. Nobody, none he could honestly say he met, did things simply to do them. It was illogical, none animalistic. Motivation was always key, and nearly always self-serving.
"I've never claimed to believe in altruism." He finally responded.
"So will you take the job?"
He folded the paper again, it's surface wrinkled and gnarled on his black glove, and scratched, gently, the angle of his chin. There was no part of him ready to believe the guard had 'just done him a favor.' This had to be a plot.
Rather than walk onto the fine vessel, docked so listlessly at port, he turned heal. There were always other ships.
* * *
I'm trying hard to be Eugenie's boyfriend. After everything we've been through I can't just abandon her. But it's too much. Every time I touch her, every time we kiss, the essence of another threatens to enter my imagination.
It's time to tell her the truth.
I do it when we meet for dinner, early, so she can find someone to cry with if she hates me, or if she chases me out of her home. I can't read her expression as I talk, for five straight minutes she is blank and careful.
"I see." There is no pain in her voice, but I sense a tension, "So, even after what he did to Franz, even after you rescued me from Andrea on my wedding day, through all of it, and up until this moment…you love him."
"I don't know who I loved. Maybe I loved what I wanted him to be? I don't know. But it isn't fair to you, to let this hang between us."
She smiles softly, "You still love him. Even if he's gone, its still there." She crosses the room to kiss my lips, and the pleasantness of her sent breaks the last of my resolve. It finally comes out: the confusion, frustration, the anger, and the loss.
In front of the person I need to be strongest for, I start to ball.
Eugenie doesn't judge me, she sits, with my head on her lap, as I cry on her knees, clinging to her, in the parlor of her dorm room house, and she simply strokes my hair.
The voices of her roommates in the kitchen quiet, and steadily doors close throughout the house.
Through my tears I can see the bookcases and blue carpets lit by the fireplace. It's warm, like when Franz died.
My sobs are worse.
"Albert…" she speaks the words slowly, thinking about each one before they leave her lips. "maybe you should go to Marseilles for a while."
The timid suggestion horrifies me – it means I've pushed her away. I should never have spoken. Immediately I draw back, and search her eyes.
"You only knew the Count with the mask he wore, after the terrible things that happened to him, and to us…how could you possibly be certain of anything? Maybe by experiencing the place where he was the truest "Edmond Dantes," you'll get a better picture of what was underneath all of his lies, and I hope…some closure."
"But Eugenie, what about you?"
"It's clear you need to do this. I won't hold you back. You need to find yourself, just like I'm doing here. This is your journey. That's what I think. And where ever it leaves us, even if it hurts, I'm still going to be your friend."
