He clutched True Earth to him in reverie, his hand clenched in the other and pressed tightly to his mouth, as the Rune hummed ceaselessly within. The rhythms it pounded out through his blood were vaster than words, layers on layers of meaning, but in languages never spoken by human tongue, in languages dead and long since torn by time from the pages of history books, in languages of animals that know no higher thought, one sentiment was repeated. ...Protect him. Can't you protect him?

I am trying. I'm truly trying... but how can I make him see?

Sympathy, firm-edged; compassion and resolve, entwined in golden threads. Protect him.

The Rune pulsed in his hand, unusually fierce, and his mind-sight clouded with visions.

Luc lost amid the rubble of his cruel prison, dust swirling up from the barren floor.

And now in a prison of his own design, the rubble crashing down all around him, no longer borne aloft by the wind....

No... I failed to protect you once. Not this time. "...It won't be like that this time!!"

---



Hugo looked at him with alarm. "You're not thinking of going back in there--"

"I don't fear the earth." Sasarai smiled, the secretive smile he almost always wore, as if delighting in the punchline of his own joke, yet his eyes were severe as he raised one hand to the heavens. "Leave this place." A pause. "Leave! I can't hold this place forever."

True Earth concorded, and a dull hum rippled the ground and sky as each danced to their own rhythm, the earth's a fierce tremor stilled beneath his steady hand, the air's a higher buzz that sang enraptured and confused as all around it stalled. Stone towers hung uncertain at precarious angles, a faint glow like evening sunlight that encased the battleground the only thing appearing, improbably, to support them. The ground creaked, and the sky thrummed. Tiny insects danced in the heat, perturbed.

Sasarai sought to clear a way, and the elements honoured him; the rubble parted for him, and the air was perfectly calm before the path that cut unerringly to a single figure, hunched and dirty and, to mortal eyes, almost indistinguishable amongst the chaos of the temple. Yet the currents of life that flowed between the two marked him to Sasarai as a beacon, a spark of humanity flickering cautious and unsure, like the mayflies. Threatening to scatter, as they would, at a motion, to disperse to a land where the air had greater freedom. Luc didn't like the lack of wind either, he thought idly-- a statement that within his mind quickly grew to such absurdity he would have laughed, had the mood been much less grave. Luc didn't like the lack of wind... no, that was an understatement. He lacked, he lacked so very deeply, and all that he lacked was exemplified in that statement, the lack of wind; he had lost, lost his power, lost his dreams-- and he had lost his humanity long ago, someone who inherently personified the lack of wind elevated at his expense. Or at least, that was what he believed.

Luc had not lost. He simply needed to re-evaluate what it was he wished to win. --Sasarai knew that was easy for him to say, of course. But he was determined to make it true for his brother as well.

"Luc..."

His voice came out reedier than he'd imagined it might, but the shadow-figure turned at the sound nonetheless.

Sasarai picked up his pace, hand outstretched. "Don't await your death in this place. Come with me, brother. Please." A clear shell of earth glittered around them, like a mirage in the hot air.

He was expecting to be struck at, and so it didn't faze him when he was; it was shield one of them or shield them all, so his magic didn't keep the blow from landing, but he rolled with it the best he could. He met his brother's fierce gaze through stinging eyes, his own expression he imagined faintly pained but placid, Luc's a mask of feral hatred-- anger, and something almost approaching triumph.

"Don't you think of pitying me," he cried, the tone of his words a victory roar. "Don't you dare. You can haunt me when you're dead, you ghost, you vile illusion. But don't you dare tear this final shred of dignity from me."

"I don't want to take your dignity, Luc. And there is no dignity in death." Reclaiming the distance he'd lost from the blow, he knelt beside his twin, no longer a hovering vulture but an equal.

"Then tell me, where do I find it? In living on forever, to be tormented by the destiny I failed to conquer every day of my life? You could never respect me, but you could at least do me the honour of pretending."

"I do respect you." Sasarai's voice was soft, though an echo followed his words; his eyes intent on Luc, sharp as crystal, subtle as the fading light.

"Don't mock me!!"

Still calm. "I'm not mocking you."

"Don't lie to me!!" Every facet of Luc's expression seemed to hone itself to a razor point, bent on shredding Sasarai's words with his own. "You're made of nothing but lies!! You're like a terrible joke, some twisted mirror designed to be everything I fail at! But it's all-- just-- fake! You don't even understand that, do you? You're nothing real! Nothing could be like you!" The volume of his voice fell, as if in bewilderment. "How could anything be like you? How can you smile? How can you smile at me?"

Sasarai was not smiling. "It's not at you. Sincerely, Luc... I'm not mocking you. I know you can't see what I see... not yet, but I want to show you... I know why you don't see it, I know what you've suffered, and I... I didn't know, and if I could only do something to take all of that away from you I--"

"What are you rambling about now?! Leave me in peace, devil!"

"I just want to show you--"

"Leave! Don't you dare be the last thing I see! Do you want to punish me that much? Do you hate me that much?!"

"I don't hate you."

Before Luc could even think he was buried in Sasarai like a landslide, the bishop clinging to him with a fierce determination that reflected in the glimmer of his shield. Luc gazed up at the canopy that shrouded them both and thought that in every facet he could see Sasarai's eyes, glittering back at him. The thought sickened his stomach, and he snarled and struggled like a cat in a sack, clawing aimlessly at his captor. Sasarai's voice rasped against his ear, and his struggles only amplified.

"I don't hate you, and I'm going to hold you until you realise that."

"You sick bastard! You doll! Don't touch me! Stay back!" Luc's voice was high and keening, verging once more on the irrational, cracking where it scraped his throat in its hurry to claw its way out. He dug his fingers into Sasarai's face, trying to wrench him away, tear off this choking shroud. But Sasarai only leant deeper into him, bracing against the pain by pressing close the very thing that inflicted it, whispering to him about how it was all okay, it was all going to be all right....

What drove this mad bishop, that he would embrace the thing that wounded him, that he would claim to love that which hated him so? Was that not how he approached the whole world? Loving that which hated, smiling at that which brought fear?

"What kind of pleasure do you take in suffering?" Luc hissed back. "What pathetic monster are you?"

"I don't take pleasure in suffering. Far from it. I'm just willing to search for the light in every darkness. I know you feel so full of darkness, Luc. But I know there's light there too-- you're alive! How can you not feel it?" His last words were whispered, enticing, like a secret-- like a teacher pointing out the mysteries of the world in a star-drenched sky. Can't you see it? Isn't it beautiful? Luc shook the image out of his head.

"Light? Where were you when there wasn't any light for me?" His voice was pointed, wielded like a weapon, worn with a grin, an attempt to push back the bishop's advance into his mind, turn a weakness into an attack; yet his words were laden with truth. "Where was your light then?"

"...I'm sorry."

"You're... sorry?" The tone didn't know whether it was sarcastic or genuine.

"I believe I failed you. I would never have allowed that to happen to you if I had known. For the longest time I didn't even know that you existed. I couldn't condone such cruelty, I swear, I would never have let it happen, never...."

"There's not much you can do about that now, is there." The last word was flat, a thud. An ultimatum, or a resignation.

"...No. I can't change your past. But I can help you change your future. Just let me try...."


Luc's hand on Sasarai's shoulder slackened from pushing him back. He snorted. Chuckled. A low, bitter laughter that bubbled and spasmed and made him throw back his head and let the air gust from his lungs in raucous shouts, over and over, Sasarai never faltering in his grip, higher and harder and louder and wider until his ears and his throat and his head hurt from laughing and suddenly his chest felt so very tight, and everything was spinning, and he laid his head down on the first thing in reach which, not exactly coincidentally, happened to be Sasarai's shoulder. His next words were hoarse, and not entirely, not as they had been when he'd begun to think of them, insincere.

".....Tell me, brother.... Is fate..." He winced at the question he hadn't spoken in so long. "...unchangeable?"

"Yes!--" Sasarai blurted out, as if he'd been waiting too long for a chance to answer this. "--I mean, no! I mean, you know what I mean."

Luc gave him a look, and Sasarai scrambled to salvage himself. "It's not unchangeable... it is changeable... That is what humans do... we are the hands of destiny, we shape it, that is our burden and our great, great gift...."

"I failed... I failed to shape destiny. I failed."

"You can shape it now. You can fight against this... you have to fight! Are you going to let destiny force your hand here? Are you going to lie down and die like-- like a dog?" Sasarai felt no enmity for dogs, nor destiny for that matter, but it was the kind of rhetoric he felt his brother would understand. "You-- you can't fight destiny if you're dead, Luc...."

His voice was dead inside, all traces of laughter gone. "...I don't want to fight it anymore. I fought, and I lost. This is where it ends."

The low, monotonous hum of True Earth's barrier thickened the air for want of words, warm and stultifying like cicadas in the desert, muting the slight sounds of their breathing and what might have been murmured half-thoughts; only a considered attempt to speak would cut through its weight.

"...no words, my brother?" It was whispered so close to his ear that the humming did not have time to steal it away: less a whisper than a hiss, yet not as vicious as before, painting a picture in Sasarai's mind of the face that voiced those words; truly triumphant now, yet it was a wistful triumph. The victory of one who had won by losing everything, and saw this as only the faintest of ironies.

Yet-- even without words-- he could feel Luc's expression shifting, feel the tension around them change its quality, as Luc brought a hand up to touch a sudden dampness creeping inside his collar. Luc's fingers, almost wondering at his own audacity, half revolted and half something altogether less cruel, found their way to Sasarai's cheek, and found the same dampness there. It wasn't thick and sticky, like blood. It was just water. Water, a gulf between them, dividing earth and air. Water that, Luc all but marvelled as he gazed upon the droplet adhering to their skin, the surface tension never breaking, only trembling, held them together. It was the most tenuous of bonds, but it held them still.

Perhaps no words were needed.

"Master Luc...."

The soft voice was a murmur in the buzzing haze, but Luc heard it. He lifted his head from his brother's shoulder, turning to regard the frail, bloodied girl. "Sarah...." Stiffening, he got awkwardly to his feet, not caring that he was using Sasarai as a brace.

Sarah regarded him with quiet confusion, her eyes clearly glazed from the mere effort of standing. Luc staggered to her side, ignoring the hand that Sasarai reached out to support him on his way, stumbling once more before her feet. She knelt down to rest a hand on his back, a serene expression overcoming her that made Sasarai worry she wouldn't want to get up again.

"We have to leave." Sasarai's face was gathering beads of sweat, though from exertion or the heat he couldn't be sure.

"Leave?" said Sarah, as if it was the must curious thing in the world to request. "We can't leave. We're too weak to survive... But it's all right. This is what's meant to happen. We cannot, after all--" She coughed. "...fight fate...."

"Sarah."

She looked to Luc, mild surprise on her face at his tone. "Master Luc?"

"I told you... you didn't have to die with me, Sarah. And.... I...." Sarah's look of surprise didn't fade; she was not used to seeing Luc uncertain, at least not without trying to hide it. I believe..., he wanted to say, but he didn't know if he really did at all. But for a flickering moment, perhaps, he had believed that he might come to believe. "...I think... maybe...." His voice thickened, and Sarah clasped a hand over his comfortingly. "...Let's just get out of here," he said, not looking at Sasarai. "This isn't the place. We can decide later."

She faltered for an instant, then nodded. "I go where you go," she said softly.

Sasarai nodded too, though more in relief than in agreement. "Then let's hurry. I can't do anything about your wounds while I'm maintaining this magic, I'm sorry... you'll just have to use me as support until we make it out. We'll make it," he added, firmly.

And so it came about that the subdued, but not entirely sombre, party were the last three to leave the ancient Sindar ruin of Great Hollow. No words were spoken on the journey; it was all Sasarai could do to hold up the structure, and Luc and Sarah needed all their strength just to walk, following pridelessly, huddled against him like two grim spectres. But it was not death that followed Sasarai out of the cavern that day; it was life, exceeding life, the inclination of all the world to strive towards continuing existence.