March 2010
"I have mentioned that I hate this…?" Keith groaned as he lay waiting on the bed.
"More than once," Wong informed him pleasantly.
He had no complaints about Keith's chronic insomnia. In fact, it was convenient on the whole. When the time came and he had served his purpose, it would make him that much easier to dispose of, and until then, it made him that much more irrational and suggestible.
The pharmacophobia, on the other hand, was a nuisance, particularly on those occasions when he needed Keith in full command of his powers to telepathically address an entire continent at once or crush buildings under glaciers. Planning ahead and putting him to sleep in preparation ought to be a simple matter, but not even the boy's cultivated sense of leaderly dignity kept him from gagging on every form of oral medication, tearing inhalation masks off in a panic, or encasing syringes in blocks of ice. Because of that, Wong was careful to prepare the injection as soundlessly as possible and keep his body turned so as to shield it from Keith's view. It was a nuisance to have to do these things himself, but it wasn't as if he hadn't mastered the skill in all his years of research.
He had even considered the possible advantages of arranging enough "crucial missions" in succession for Keith to become addicted to the drug and thus that much more dependent on him, but at least for now, it would be superfluous; he was already completely in control. Electronically distilled into numbers on paper, Keith's powers dwarfed Wong's by an order of magnitude, a disparity he could observe for himself every time Keith's telepathy touched him, but Time and intelligence were the more potent substances. He could only smile at the enormity of his own kept dragon, so easily tethered with illusions of belonging and purpose, so easily led by Wong's greater knowledge of the world and of strategy.
So easily destroyed, if he chose right now to fill the syringe another inch…
Keith heaved a sigh, and Wong, in a flash of catlike caprice, snipped that breath off halfway through, bringing down on it the still perfection of frozen time. With a practiced hand, he slid the needle into a vein just above Keith's elbow, smoothly depressed the plunger, and drew it out. By then, maintaining the suspended moment was a strain — a problem he meant to solve someday soon — but he kept his grip long enough to take several steps back from the bed before consenting that the world move forward again.
Keith cried out and jumped in quite an undignified manner, but nothing more than that — this time. Perhaps he was improving.
"You see, over before you know it," Wong assured him.
He let himself fall back against the pillow but was still breathing hard with a hand over his eyes.
Wong dropped the syringe into a disposal unit before approaching him and pressing a plaster to the drop of blood where the needle had gone in.
"Thank you," Keith said at last.
"We should all be thanking you for your great efforts," Wong told him sweetly. Privately, he thought that Keith might well thank him. His breath was slowing, surely a sign of the warm ease and euphoria that would already be sweeping over him…
"I know why it has to be done," Keith said, his voice growing dull with distance, "but it must be… losing control… God, I hate this feeling…"
Well, Wong smiled to himself, "euphoria" was in the eye of the beholder, and such imperfections were to be expected when translating those promising numbers and laboratory notations into a flesh-and-blood creature — even a dragon like this. But it was serving its purpose tractably, so willing, for all its raw power and wounded ferocity, to fall asleep in its master's hands.