Crash and Burn

It burned. He could feel it long before he opened his eyes. What had happened? He couldn’t remember. The last thing he recalled was seeing HER run into the fire calling his name. He had been outside. He had tried to call to HER, but SHE didn’t hear him. He had run in after HER.

He felt the tears bubble to the surface of his eyes. Yes, bubble. He felt his skin liquefying. He tried to move but it was too hard. When he did get one arm up it was just in time to see the skin and muscle fall from the bones break away and fell to the floor. At first he was too far in shock. His nerves were obviously long since dead. He had not felt his body and had stopped feeling the pain only a moment ago. He tried to scream but nothing came out. He had seen HER come in; he had gone to rescue HER. Where was SHE?

He caught sight of red flames, brilliant and beyond enrapturing in sight as they rose above him. Had SHE done this? Had SHE lead him in here to die? He could not believe that. No. SHE was not so cruel. The world faded from sight. He could feel his spirit lifting and the great fiery woman looked down upon him with arms spread invitingly. He flew to them and as they closed around him he knew it was HER.

~I love you…my Crimson beauty,~ and then he was gone.

Iason awoke screaming and Ari lifted pulling him quickly into his arms. Iason’s skin felt hot, too hot even. He was shaking and tears rolled down his face. The fire had felt so real. It had consumed him so quickly and his dragon goddess in his dreams had become something else. She had died in his dream with him. They had danced into the oblivion of the skies and he longed to return to it even if it had been so terrifying.

“A dream,” Iason murmured to himself, trying to remember it wasn’t real, “J-just a dream.”

“Are you alright, Iason?” Ari asked him softly, “Was it a nightmare?”

Iason blinked, “Yes. I s-stopped taking m-my medicine. I wanted to see *her* again.”

“Who?” Ari gave him a quizzical look.

“Red, I dream of her, but only when I don’t take my medicine. She was in the dream, but…” Iason replied softly.

“But what?” Ari leaned back, Iason still straddling his lap.

“She went into a fire and I followed. We both died! It felt so real!!” Iason shivered then the tears started again.

“I think you had better take your meds again,” Ari suggested.

“Yeah, I-I probably should,” Iason pressed into Ari again trying to remember that even if she looked like the girl on the street, it wasn’t possible.

Ari watched him stare at the blanket and tilted his head, “Why do you want to dream of her so bad?”

“I-I saw her, on the way home. It looked like her, a lot younger anyway, more my age,” Iason told him softly. “She looked right at me; it was like even through the tinted glass we saw each other. I felt… something.”

“Felt something?” Ari asked curiously.

“It’s hard to describe. It was like my heart was being pulled at and I wanted to get to her,” He looked down guiltily, “but Lucious saw her to. I’m afraid he might do something, or has done something to her.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Ari said making Iason bring his hands to his face, “I am sorry, I wish I could comfort you by saying he wouldn’t, but we both know I’d be lying.”

Iason’s bottom lip quivered, “You don’t think he’d kill her, do you?”

Ari looked down and didn’t reply. Iason knew what the silence meant. He knew the answer before he’d asked the question, but he had wanted to hear something else. He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around himself.

“I’m sorry, Iason, we can hope for the best, but that’s all we can do,” Ari told him softly.

Iason nodded and the two spent a long time just sitting their cuddling together. Iason was trying to forget the both horrible and wonderful experience of that last dream, but it clung to him like super glue. He couldn’t tear his thoughts from the woman in his dream. It was as if she were something so much more than a dream to him.

Ari eventually moved off the bed to get dressed, choosing another of those high class suits to wear. His fingers toyed over each before he finally chose a black one and began to dress. He was annoyed, but he couldn’t place why. It wasn’t as if Iason’s ‘dream girl’ posed a threat to his attempting to gain Iason’s affection. She wasn’t real, Ari was.

Ari looked back to see Iason dressing and decided that he would work on luring the other boy, but keep his own emotional distance. He needed to get the companionship, but he sure as hell didn’t need the heart ache. He closed his eyes and sighed. He’d never admitted it to anyone, but maybe why Iason’s dream phantom annoyed him was because he too had one. His was a woman with long beautiful red curls and deep blue eyes. She always wore a long black gown and played a harp while he lay with his head upon her lap.

Both women were phantoms, perhaps dredged up by their minds to fill an emptiness inside that could eat away at their sanity without them. Ari pulled the blouse on tucking it into his pants and carefully beginning to work on the buttons while pondering this. His woman was called ‘Angel’ and she sang like one as well. She was always kind and they spoke in soft whispers to each other. He had told her secrets he told no one else, but he knew she wasn’t real. He had told Iason he had never seen a woman with strength of character and mind, and he had not. He could not count Angel because she was something only in his head.

Ari walked back to the bed then and looked Iason right in the eyes, “Look, she was just some girl on the street. You don’t know her name, you don’t know what she is like and you never really saw each other. She is *not* the girl in your dream. This is something you have to realize. The more you dwell upon it and the more emotion you attach to her, the more it will hurt when Lucious does something to her. You can’t put her through hell because of some dreams you’ve had, ok? That’s something I have learned over the short years of my life. The more something or someone means to you the more Lucious will break it down.”

Iason started to cry, his hands going to his face, but Ari caught his arms in his hands and pulled them down again.

“No,” Ari told him firmly. “This is what I mean, Iason. The fact is he won’t kill her. That would be too easy. First he’ll start taking away things she loves, and then he will start tearing her mind apart, raping her mentally, emotionally and possibly physically. After that he’ll start making her hate you. He’ll make her want you as dead as she’ll want him. Do you want that?”

Iason shook his head, “No, I-I don’t.”

“I did not think so. She is nothing to you, Iason. I am real, I am someone you can get to know, someone who will take care of you,” Ari told him softly, “Someone who wants to protect you and can.”

Iason fell against him sobbing softly into his chest while Ari rubbed his back, “You have to make yourself cold, Iason. You have to feel nothing to anyone you would have gone after if you had a life that was your own. In the end the only person you can care for is yourself. Everyone else is just there to support your own strength, to use as a way to get out of this hell hole. You do not want to be stuck here forever, trust me.”

Iason looked up to him blinking away more tears and calming, “What about you?”

“I’ll be here when I can be here,” Ari assured him, “when you run though, you can’t look back, even for me. If you look back you’ll never make it.”

Iason nodded slowly but Ari knew the other boy was still too young to really understand what he meant. He would do his best to prepare Iason for that moment, but he himself was only a few years older than the other boy. This world made you grow up too fast. There was no such thing as a child to Lucious, and never would be.

They would work together this vacation to try and teach Iason how to approach the things that happened to him. Ari was a good teacher, kind even when harsh. Iason learned slowly to enjoy the things done to him, learned how to cope with who did them. It was not easy, but who would expect it to be? The things they went through were not simple.

By the time Ari left he had learned how to enjoy but not become attached to others. Ari was quiet when he left, and so was Iason. Words were not needed, and they could bring so much pain to both of them. Iason waited until Lucious had taken the boy out to the car and both were inside to move to the window. He watched the car leave, pressing himself to the glass window of his large cage.

He would find a way to use what he had been taught, and his heart beat for Ari now. He could still smell his new companion on his clothing. He brought his shirt to his nose and breathed deeply. He had a friend and someone he loved. He sank to the window seat and curled his feet under him. He tried to recall the images he’d used to escape the sadness and pain before. He could almost see the carpet in his mind, but the dragons and their battle were fading. In their place was the image of a white haired boy with jade green eyes.

He went back to his room and lay down on the bed, his mind swam with the warmth of Ari’s touch and he longed for it as he drifted to sleep.

“Have you learned anything, Val os Paerosi?” The man before him was oriental looking in origin.

“Yes.” He replied, it looked like Kyr but he had answered to another name.

“And what have you learned?” The other asked him.

“I have learned once more that I am more powerful than Jhylol. I still draw them in, they still want me.” He replied.

“When will you ever learn humility, Val?” The other man shook his head.

“When you, Si Kesol, learn that I am what I am.” Val looked into this man, Si’s eyes, “Brother you are my kin and yet you still think I shall relent to say I am and was wrong. I was tricked, you were tricked and you all still think I am at fault.”

Si closed his sapphire eyes, “I have to send you back, I did not want to.”

“I want to go back, at least among the mortals there is one who sees me as being of worth,” Val told him softly.

“Of what do you speak?!” Si asked, “Who did you corrupt?!”

“I corrupted none,” Val smiled and willingly took his pendant and statue casting them to the mortal world, “I am the one corrupted, and I would willingly fall for her!”

Si’s eyes widened as his brother faded from the heavens, “NO! You can never return! Val!! Vall!!”

Val fell, he fell from the heavens and he felt himself drawn into that statue, gus essence of power confined to it and the pendant, locked until the time came for his mortal form and they to be reunited. SHE would find him! That was what he believed as he fell, for who else would want the statue and pendant? She would wrap her arms about him, his Red, his Crimson beauty! They would forever be one!

SHE was fire… and he saw the eyes of the one that lifted his statue and pendant with a smile. Ice, no creature should have such cold blue eyes!!