"How did you come by your scars?" The words slipped out so easily, but John had spent long enough struggling to compose them that they left a tinge of nausea in their wake. He was bold, foolish enough to bed a man who could kill him easily, but even he was not so brash that Bane's stilled hands and tensed shoulders gave him no pause.

After a moment, Bane took up the motions of oiling his armor again. "You know that I was a whore in the Pit," he said, his voice weary.

John cringed. "Don't say that," he protested.

"Do you then despise whores?" Bane slung the leather over the edge of his bot and turned to look at John straight on. "Is a woman, or a man, who trades the service of their body for the things they need- is that person wicked, or defiled?"

"When you say it thus..."

"You may say it however you like, John. I regret that I was compelled to do these things; I am not poisoned by the memory. Of the regrets I carry, the one that cuts deepest is the day I swore off my whoring, because that was the day they cut me."

John sat, silent and shaking, eyes fixed in his lap to avoid the burning weight of Bane's unflinching gaze. "I apologize," he whispered.

"You never bore a blade against me," said Bane, but his tone was not flippant, and there was gentleness in his voice. "I had half a man's growth on me, and the men had begun to mock me for my... trade. I chose to lash out in rage, swearing I would never take a knee for any other man's cock again, and I chose for my audience the most cruel and brutal of men in that prison. They... assaulted me, but I would not submit- I said that I would rather die under the knife, and that is when they cut me."

"Gods," said John, struggling to contain himself, still fearing that he would incite Bane's wrath.

"The wounds festered, as they were meant to," continued Bane, "and when they had healed enough that I might have taken up my old trade, I had grown broad in the shoulders and dark in the eyes, and my wounds pained me frequently. No one wished any favors from me then; I became a man of battle. I found... a girl, born in the Pit, to protect, and for her I took my greatest wounds, and because of her I was rescued by the sorceror and given my mask."

"Talia," murmured John, and the name flooded his mouth with bitterness.

"I cannot help that I love her," said Bane, finally wresting his eyes from John; "I have forgotten what it feels like, not to love her."

John forced himself to breathe for a few long moments, burying the hot shameful tears that threatened to spill. "The scars were none of your fault," he said at last. "The privilege of your body is yours alone, and no one's to take it from you."

"It is an old wound," said Bane, turning back to care for his armor. "And I wonder that you, who wear guilt and shame like a cloak, have the fortitude to lecture me so."

"You are a warrior who loves his mistress from afar," said John with a wry smile. "I am a man who craves another man's kiss, and would die before causing that man the pain a kiss might bring him. Tell me there is no shame in that craving, no guilt in that knowledge."

John might not have seen the way Bane's hands tightened at that, except that the leather armor creaked intolerably; the two of them worked in silence until the candle burned low and the night grew quiet, and when John joined Bane in his cot they simply lay, clinging, while John thought his heart might shatter with the slightest movement