60,008 years ago...  

Beginning of Story

Cal can count the times he's worn a true smile in the last twelve thousand years. Since their deaths, he hasn't found many reasons to find joy in... anything. Den has helped with that considerably. Turns out having a friend has its benefits.

Looking at Den and Ri now, Cal feels himself smiling. For real. It's a soft thing, one that does carry a hint of sadness, but it's one he can handle. He's glad his friend has the opportunity to be a father. He's glad that Den and Ri get along. He's glad that the both of them can be happy.

And he's glad that Ri has managed to reach ten thousand years without issue. That's more time than Yesmine ever got. He hopes that Yveira can continue to keep her boy safe. He doesn't wish the pain of losing a child on anyone.

He doesn't wish the pain of seeing the people you love hurt on anyone.

Ri rubs at his arm as he looks at his cards. He's still upset about the complete beating both Den and Cal handed him when they were sparring earlier. The kid had a big mouth, and was going on and on about how he's mastered every weapon he's ever gotten his hands on.

Den and Cal had merely shared a look before dragging his arrogant ass outside to beat some sense into him.

It hadn't even taken them that much effort.

But now, Ri is pouting. He decided to challenge them to a game of cards instead, claiming it's more his forte. The kid doesn't seem to realize that Cal can read his mind. He knows what moves Ri is going to make before even he does. It's cute though, that he thinks he stands a chance.

All three of them are gathered in the main sitting area, their feet propped up on the small table. Ri looks at his cards and tries very hard to hide his smug smile. He thinks he has this round in the bag.

Of course, Cal is aware of every single card he holds in his hand.

Den, on the other hand, Cal can't read. It doesn't help that he keeps his expression impassive as well. It's annoying. But, at least Den actually poses a challenge. If a little one.

"Why are we humoring the boy?" Cal asks after a while, fanning himself with his cards.

Ri frowns at him as Den flicks his eyes to Cal, smirking faintly. "Because it's amusing."

"I can hear both of you," Ri comments dryly.

"Great, we established he has ears, congratulations," Cal says with a grin. Ri frowns again.

Den reaches over and pats Ri's shoulder in mock sympathy.

He sighs heavily and tosses his cards on the table face down. "If you are just going to keep mocking me, what's the point in continuing this game?" Ri asks, scowling at Cal.

Den arches a brow. "Weren't you listening? I'm amused."

"Ha. Glad to be a source of entertainment for you two," Ri mutters dryly.

"You should feel honored. Most people bore us," Cal says cheerfully.

Den nods in agreement and tosses a card down.

Ri shakes his head and looks at Den. "You said you used to be more arrogant, but I really don't see how that is possible."

Den snorts. "If you think this is me being arrogant, you've never seen it."

"You haven't seen arrogant at all, boy," Cal says, one corner of his mouth tilted up.

Ri sighs heavily. "I like you two better when you are making fun of each other and not me."

Cal shrugs. "I'm not in a mood to tease him. Besides, you make it so easy." Den laughs a little.

"I hate both of you," Ri mutters under his breath.

"Aww, we love you too," Cal says with an unusually bright smile.

"Yes," Den says dryly. "Much love."

Ri rolls his eyes. "Speaking of love and arrogance. You never did say what happened to that girl." He tilts his head curiously at Den.

"Don't get him started on the moping," Cal says with a deep sigh. "I've had to hear it enough. Honestly Den, it's been twelve thousand years."

Not that Cal isn't still moping after twelve thousand years for a very different reason. But he's justified. Den was merely dumped.

"I don't mope," Den mutters before looking at Ri. "She left me. What else do you want to know?"

Ri looks thoughtful. "But why did she leave? It just seems so sudden... and out of place."

"Den can be quite an ass," Cal says. "It's not that much of a stretch."

Den rolls his eyes at Cal. "There was... a misunderstanding, I thought," he says thoughtfully. Cal arches a brow at Den, not having heard this part of the story before. Den usually just mopes and doesn't continue with it.

"What kind of misunderstanding?" Ri asks.

Cal places his cards face down on the table as well, abandoning the game. He picks up the bottle of Deri -- the only one at the table, since he's the only one who can't get drunk -- and takes a long sip from it.

"Marr' Dana showed up," Den says and sighs. "Apparently she was upset that I hadn't been around in several thousand years, and she wasn't happy to find me living with another woman. Not that she had any room to say anything, we were never in a relationship." He waves a hand. "Yesmine --" everything in Cal freezes. That name. He knows that name. He chose that name. He gave his daughter that name. It's impossible. Den can't mean the same Yesmine.

"What did you just say?" Cal asks, not having heard the last bit of Den's statement.

Den gives him a weird look. "She took it the wrong way and left. When I called to try and clarify things, she told me she never wanted to see me again. And I haven't." A sad look crosses his expression. He can't mean the same Yesmine.

But even as Cal thinks it, the pieces are clicking together in his mind.

"I've thought about trying to talk to her, but... she knows where to find me."

Cal can't breathe.

Den leans forward and puts his cards down. "Eilon." He frowns, concern in his eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Her name... what did you say was her name?" He asks, his words surprisingly even. There is a chance he heard him wrong.

Even though everything is starting to make sense in his head.

Yesmine had talked about a guy she had met. An elf. One she was very fond of. One she kept going to visit. One she practically lived with.

"Yesmine," Den says, brows drawn together.

All the careful walls Cal had spent building over the last ten thousand years, crumble. He can't. This can't... Cal can't.

The images flash in his mind. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

"Eilon," Den says again, his tone now very concerned.

"Yesmine... are you sure?" Cal manages to say. He doesn't know why he's trying to convince himself that this isn't true. That they can't know the same Yesmine. That he can't be the elf she had liked.

Even though like wasn't the word she had used.

"I think I'd know her name," Den says slowly, his words cautious. "What's wrong?"

Cal stares at Den, blinking slowly, trying to keep whatever small grasp he still has left on his composure. "That's the name I gave my daughter," he says slowly, his voice cracking.

*****

It takes Den a moment to process.

Yesmine is a fairly common name in Kracia, and Den never knew Eilon's daughter's name, anyway. They haven't talked about it in that much... detail. Eilon isn't ready for that.

So it isn't surprising, really, that it takes Den a minute to grasp what his friend is saying.

Everything inside him goes incredibly still.

"No," he says. He doesn't care that he can't tell the difference between the tones in his voice--if he's demanding or begging.

"No," he shakes his head, staring at Eilon. His Yesmine and Eilon's daughter are not the same person. He did not fail her that way.

She was not tortured and raped for thirty gods blasted years while Den didn't even know where she was.

While he was drowning himself in a bottle because he thought she'd left him.

No.

He doesn't even notice when his veins begin to glow, when he's shifted into his true form for the first time in... millennia.

"You're wrong," he tells Eilon, but the words are a whisper. Whether it's horror or fear or a plea in his voice, he doesn't know.

But the emptiness has returned to Eilon, the mask gone again for the first time in ten thousand years. There's nothing in his tone when he says, "You lived in a treehouse, with two levels. She loved the view, because there isn't one like it in the palace."

Den flinches.

Everything inside him is silence and a roar, every memory of Yesmine tangling in his head--her laughing, her smiling, her dancing.

And suddenly it's Enna, screaming.

"No," Den says, and this time he knows he's begging. He doesn't realize that the wetness on the cards he's clenching has come from his eyes--doesn't realize that this is the first time he's cried in five hundred thousand years.

But tears are forming in Eilon's eyes, as well.

And Den can't run from it. He can't get away from it.

Moments and miles and years pile up inside him, every image of her flashing through his head, mixing with images of Enna until Den can't tell the difference.

It didn't happen again.

Please, gods, it didn't happen again.

"She talked about you," Eilon says softly. "Every time she came back. I... I don't know how I didn't put it together before. Stars." He pinches the bridge of his nose, and he doesn't look up again.

It happened again.

And this time he wasn't even there. He should have been there. He should have gone after her, should have asked more questions when she told him she didn't want to see him again, should have pushed harder. He shouldn't have let her walk away just because he was hurt.

He should have been there.

It doesn't matter that he knows he couldn't have done anything to help.

He should have been in that cage next to Eilon if nowhere else. She needed him and he wasn't there.

He keeps seeing Enna drowning.

Keeps feeling the weight on his wrists, the weight he can't hold up anymore, keeps seeing her go down another inch for every inch his beaten and broken body is forced to give.

He keeps hearing Yesmine laughing. Keeps seeing her playing in the ocean, standing under the Azayi star system, running through the forest.

Keeps hearing what she said the last time they spoke.

"We need to talk," he'd said, when he called her a few days after she stormed out of the treehouse.

"No," she responded, pausing. It was a pause that broke him then, and it kills him now. "We don't need to talk. I can't do this... I can't do this anymore. I don't..." there were tears in her voice. He'd noticed them, but he'd thought it was because she was angry. "I don't want to see you again."

And Den had been so shocked, and so confused, and so hurt, that he couldn't even stop her before she closed down the communication.

"Why?" He whispers, and the amber glow from his veins is filling the room, there isn't any sound outside it--they might not even be in the room anymore. They might not even be in Kracia anymore.

Den has no control.

He is not in control.

He can't make the images and the memories and the horror go away.

"I..." Eilon says, but he's at a loss for words. Eilon is at a loss for words. Neither of them are in control.

Yesmine was his daughter.

Den's Yesmine and Eilon's Yesmine were the same.

If he hadn't let her leave... if he'd gone after her... she would still be alive. She wouldn't have been...

Den can't breathe. He can't think.

He doesn't want to think.

He doesn't understand. It had to have been only a few days after she left him that they were taken, her and her mother. It had to have been... but why?

Why then? Did he miss something? Was there something he should have seen, something he should have done, could have done?

There's energy building up in him, racing through his veins, pounding in his head. Den can't take it. He can't take it.

It isn't like the silence he felt when Yemia died.

It isn't even like the pure, undiluted rage he felt when they forced him to drown Enna.

It's... he doesn't know what it is. Sorrow. Pain. Horror. Shock. Regret.

Why? Why did she leave him? Was it really because of Marr' Dana? Den can't stop thinking about it. He can't stop going over every moment of their last conversation, looking for something, anything he missed.

Not that it matters now.

She's dead.

His Yesmine is dead.

She's been dead for twelve thousand years.

That's why she never contacted him. That's why he couldn't get in touch with her. That's why she didn't come back.

She was dead. She's dead.

Just like everyone else he's ever loved.

He warned her when they met. He told her the people he loved had a tendency to die. He told her life wasn't kind to him.

But he'd stayed anyway, gods, why had he stayed?

Den can't breathe.

"Stars. I took her from you. I'm the reason you lost another person," Eilon says, his voice completely broken.

Den's eyes focus, his gaze on his friend--his friend, the best friend he's ever had. Yesmine's father.

Eilon might've ended up Den's father-in-law, if things had gone differently.

He can't breathe.

Everything is nothing and he doesn't... he can't...

"No," Den says, his voice strangled. "I should have gone after her. I should have done something. I should have realized... I shouldn't have--"

"They hurt her because of me! Because they couldn't hurt me!" Eilon yells. Den can't do anything but sit. And stare at him. And feel... too much. "They hurt them because I wouldn't scream any other way. Because I couldn't feel pain the normal way." His breathing hitches.

Den isn't breathing at all.

They've never talked about it, not like this. Den has never asked. He hasn't been able to. It took him five hundred thousand years to be able to talk about Enna. It took... Yesmine.

It's barely been twelve thousand years for Eilon.

Den knew better than to ask.

He still does.

But he can't. He can't... not.

This is no longer Eilon's pain alone.

"Why?" His lips are numb. Does the word even fall out? Den isn't sure.

"I wouldn't listen to them. I wouldn't do what they told me. They wanted to use me to establish a relation with a world my father was in the process of conquering." His tone is dead, empty, as dead and empty as Den is starting to feel inside.

He remembers the way this feels.

He spent three hundred thousand years staring at a cavern wall, feeling this way.

"It would have required me to either cheat on my wife or leave her. I couldn't. I wouldn't. I loved her. I still love her."

Den is still crying. He has no air. He isn't grounded.

But his eyes ache and itch and burn, so he knows he's crying.

"They grabbed me twenty years before they ever got around to them." Den remembers that. He remembers Yesmine saying that her mother was worried because her father hadn't come home. "They tried everything the could think of. Every single torture technique. Even invented new ones. But I was beyond pain. They had trained me too well to withstand it when I was a child. It had no effect on me. Physical pain I could handle."

The silence stretches. Den hates the silence.

He hates everything about it.

Eilon's head falls into his hands. Den... Den doesn't know what he's thinking. Den can't think beyond the horror. Can't feel beyond the pain.

Beyond the beating drum in his head, the one that says She's dead, she's dead, she's dead, she's dead and I didn't even try to save her.

"It didn't take them long to figure out how they could hurt me. I realized what they were going to do the moment they cut the ropes loose. The moment they took me to that room. I remember feeling glad because Yesmine was away." But she wasn't. She wasn't, because Den was a fool and he let her leave him. "I remember the feeling when she returned. And then they put me in the cylinder."

Den knows what comes next. He heard the rumors, the stories. Eilon doesn't need to keep going, and Den doesn't want to hear it again, anyway.

Doesn't want to know the things the rumors didn't say.

Eilon is sobbing. Den is sobbing too.

He doesn't know where his pain begins and his friend's ends. He doesn't know how to fix this or how to make it go away. Yesmine would know.

But Yesmine is gone.

Den doesn't know how much time passes before Eilon gathers himself enough to speak again. "She didn't want to leave you," he says, his tone slightly more even. Den flinches again. "She loved you." His voice is so soft. Den hears him as if from a long way off. Stars, he'd known that. He had. "Jaerren somehow found out about you. He threatened her. I wasn't there when it happened, I only glimpsed it in her thoughts briefly before they put me in the cylinder. She was forced to tell you she didn't want to see you again, or else they would have gone after you. They would have hurt you in front of her."

There's white noise in his head.

Den can't breathe. He can't think beyond the scream trying to tear itself out of him.

He should have known. He should have known something was wrong. He should have known she wouldn't have left him over a stupid fight with an ex-lover.

He should have known better.

He should have gone after her.

He shouldn't have let her leave.

"I let her leave," Den whispers. "I just... let her go. Why did I let her go? Why couldn't I have made her stay?"

Eilon is quiet, and Den knows it's because his friend is thinking the exact same thing. It's all his fault. Yesmine is dead and it's Den's fault.

"I know it's not your fault," Eilon says. He's wrong. "I do. I really, really do. But I can't help but ask that same question. Just how I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I had just left them. If I had just done what they wanted of me. If I had sacrificed them for them to be alive. I would make that change any day. I would give them up if it meant they were alive. I begged my brothers. I begged to everything I could think of. But they were done listening by that point."

The world is going to shatter. Den can feel it, rising like a tide.

He can feel it mixing with the emptiness and the anguish and the things he can't control.

He can't leave Eilon behind.

If he leaves Eilon, he leaves himself. Because Den has nothing and no one else.

He doesn't know where he takes them. He doesn't know how far, only that the world has few lifeforms. Only that, because he can't cause more pain to get rid of his own.

When Den finally screams, everything shatters.