Touches: Gann

Written for a prompt on tumblr from steamboy: "Haphephobia – fear of being touched - Gann ". Consider it semi-canon for the All It Takes timeline.

Reality is a place of consequences which ripple from every action. It is cold and heavy, its edges too sharp and far too numerous. It is subtle as a sledgehammer and frequently as pleasant. It is solid, immutable, far too bright and lacking in subtlety. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, real, and that Gann dislikes.

He prefers the world of dreaming, where he is master. That shifting place knows no boundaries, no certainties except those that he chooses himself. Its possibilities are limitless, its shape tenuous and gentle as fog, its colours softly opalescent. He shapes it to his will, and there he is free.

The harsh facts of reality cannot bind him in dreaming. If he walks the shore of the Lake of Dreams, he is one who left of his own will. There are those who will welcome him when he returns, who miss him when he's away. If he wanders through the streets of Mulsantir, he is treated kindly and without suspicion. He is respected, admired, even welcomed.

Gann is straying closer to Mulsantir than usual, one evening. Almost against his will, he finds himself drawn to the misty rainbows of a maiden's dream. He only intends to watch from outside, not to disturb her, but he feels the fierce shape of her loneliness, and it's so like his that he cannot help but part the edges of her dream and speak to her.

She greets him with surprise and a blush upon her pretty cheeks. She tells him that he is handsome (and that's news to Gann; while the glimpses of his face he's seen in still water do not seem displeasing, he knows hagspawn are hideous and he is coloured like others of his kind) and that she is pleased to see him. The young men of Mulsantir treat her cruelly, she says, for she is unlovely.

He does not think so – and her kindness would have beautified a far plainer visage than hers – and when he stammers over saying as much, she smiles. She draws closer to him, reaches up to take his face in her hands and press her lips to his.

It is the gentlest touch he has ever known.

The sweetness of it thrills through his veins and demands a response. Instinctively he gathers her closer. She is a good teacher and Gann an eager student. By the time their dream starts to unravel, heralding the dawn, his heart is so full of hope and joy that's almost painful in his chest, for here at last is someone who accepts him. "I will find you," he vows, mouth pressed against her hair. "Look for me today. I will find you, and we will be together, and neither of us will ever be lonely again."

She laughs softly. "You are the nicest, strangest dream I ever had. I hope I dream you again some night."

"I'm not-" but the dream dissolves as she wakes.

It doesn't matter if she thinks him only a trick of her dreaming, though; he will find her and that will prove otherwise. For the first time, he looks forward to reality.

Smiling, he goes into Mulsantir that day. The suspicious stares of the townsfolk, the things they mutter and the way their hands tighten about their weapons have no power to hurt him any more. He looks around the docks, up near the temple. He even risks knocking on the door of the berserker lodge.

Finally, Gann finds her down in the marketplace. He knows her immediately, despite the duller shade of her hair and the wine-red staining over her face, and he goes up to her stall with a light heart. "Hello," he says, smiling down at her. "Here I am."

"You," she gasps, and the sheer terror in her eyes is worse than any physical blow. "You... you're not real. You're not here. You're not-"

"I am," he says. "I promised you –"

"Get away from me!" she screams, and her father and brothers flock to her defence. Gann tries to escape, to break free long enough to somehow explain to her, to understand, but he is surrounded and they are merciless. The world narrows to fists and boots and pain and the single thought what went wrong?

-0-0-0-0-0-

Gann comes back to consciousness on a midden heap outside Mulsantir's gates. His eyes are swollen to slits and the smallest attempt to move brings such agony that he loses consciousness again.

The next time he wakes, the pain is gone and he can open his eyes. A large telthor owl is sitting on his chest.

Geiborah, his first teacher, hoots softly. "I am sorry, child."

The owl scrabbles down to his knee as Gann sits up. "What went wrong?" he asks miserably. "I thought – she was afraid of me –"

Geiborah nibbles on his fingers; the sensation is warmth and a faint buzzing. "You have always known that the Rashemi are hostile to you, Gannayev, and to your mother's people. Why did you think their hearts had changed?"

In a few words he explains the dream he'd shared. The owl-spirit twists his head, listening, and hoots sorrowfully as Gann finishes the short tale. "Oh, child," Geiborah sighs. "Did you never realise it was possible to dream of something you did not desire in reality?"

It makes no sense to him – how can you want something and not want it at the same time? – but if Geiborah says it is so... "I'll go to her again," he says. "She'll explain, it will be all right..."

"Gannayev," the owl says, "you nearly died."

He weighs this against the acceptance and the kindness she'd shown him before, and decides.

He finds her dream easily, but does not enter. She prowls about its perimeter in heavy armour, a hard expression on her face and a burning sword in her hand. Geiborah is right, then; she does not wish his presence. All the tenderness she had shown him belonged to dreaming. The reality of him is something that she will not accept.

He leaves her undisturbed and walks away.

Over the years that follow he learns: if he walks into their dreams, they will believe him only a fantasy. If he says the right things, he will find a welcome. Illusions are hollow, but they are enough.

If nothing touches him, he cannot be hurt.