Would you have killed him
“You saw what he did to Tug-of-War. To Pitch Black and Paine,” Alastair said quietly. It was now Justify Killing Vagabond Time. “And what he did to us. All of us. You, me, Danilo, Romeesha. He didn’t just highjack our lives. He hijacked us. Kidnapped us off to the desert and force us to fight him. Not to make us better, but to get him ready for whatever could be thrown at him. We were just steps…”
“Steeled.”
That didn’t make any sense. “What?”
“The man’s face. I figured it out. He was steeled.”
Alastair blinked. “We’re back at the drawing again?”
“He was steeled. It’s not over. When he defeated Vagabond. It was just the first step. You said it. ‘Just steps.’”
“You’re me freaking out, man.”
Finn hurriedly sketched in the man’s face. Eyes, nose, mouth, brows. Falling out of the air, rising up from the page, the man’s face materialized. Finn’s whole body was suddenly into the effort, as much as his mind already was. It was only, from Alastair’s perspective, a few strokes of the pencil, and yet there Finn was, leaning in close the surface of the paper, his eyes on fire, focused and alight. He was in the zone, where nothing and nobody, save artist and canvas, existed.
And then he stopped.
Finn always knew, creepily, when to finish. Still in Alastair’s arms, his body relaxed.
Alastair’s head tilted in wonder. It was spot on. Actually, it was uncanny. Vagabond and the…man, whom they only knew as “Unicorn.”
Finn inhaled, as if to speak.
Alastair was quiet. Something was coming.
“I would have killed him, too.”
The other man winced. For someone like Finn to come to a conclusion like that, the man who remembered with fresh guilt killing a bee for fun (he was convinced it was trying talking to him when he did that) as a child, it was a catastrophic step. Alastair hugged his love closer.
That night, they made an all-consuming love, frantic, as if they were trying to run away from something. Or gain something that had been lost, and the memory was so pure, so sweet and fresh, it was as if it—whatever “it” was—was still there. They reached out to each other, these two men, throwing down all the walls, all the shields, until no protection was left. They reached out, gave each other their fires and dreams, and for one universal moment, they were the gods of each other.
Later, when Finn wearily retired to the basement, Alastair followed, and lingered on the basement steps, out side the scorch zone. It took longer this time, but where it had not been before, suddenly there was a great orb of prismatic, opalescent light around the man, as scintillating as a mirrorball. It was beautiful.
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