This is for Regina (I wanted to show my deep appreciation for her patience and guidance, I couldn't do this without her!) who didn't appreciate (for the record, neither did the Puff) the accusation of my "one-dimensional card-board cut-outs, not characters." Whose "relationship is based submission and dominance" and the statement, "If you're going to use non-canonical characters, they should at least be realistic and interesting."

Oh, and she wanted me to let you-know-who to 'play' the flute.

~~~~~~

I've never been good with people. I never had reason to like them, growing up. Small and malnourished, I found myself more the victim than not. Until I learned to play the game. I learned well. Well enough to keep my belly full. Keep clothes on my back. A roof over my head. No. I'm not proud. I survived. And I work hard to keep the memories buried, locked away.

Well-fed, I reached my full growth. When I did, I vowed I'd never be a victim again.

Or stand by and let another be one.

I've endured the full spectrum of comforts and discomforts, or pleasures and pain. When I hear people complain about the weather, I can only look at them. You think it's hot? I can show you hot. Trying to breathe air so heated it sears its way to your lungs, so thick you could spoon it in your mouth. You don't like this rain? Try walking through a downpour so heavy the drops fall against your flesh like clubs.

You wouldn't last a day.

You think you're uncomfortable, try squatting hip deep in mud while insects try to eat you alive and call their entire family to the banquet. I've stood like stone for hours while spiders bigger than my hand crawl across my face. And, although I know how to avoid them now, I had to get bitten by snakes three times before I learned. But, then all my lessons are hard.

Poor people with your problems. Try being me.

I've avoided losing digits or toes to frostbite, or appendages to anything else, but only through the Estates ace medical teams. The same teams that graciously supplied me with a new knee thanks to a concussion grenade and a pin in my right shoulder's rotator cup courtesy of a sniper's bullet.

I've broken three ribs, cracked as many more. Fractured a humerus, shattered an ulna and have a flexsteel rod in my tibia. I stopped counting how many slashes, cuts, knife and gunshot wounds decorate my body. Sometimes, I think the only thing holding my skin together is scar tissue that, and the layer that hides it. The Estate can't have a too badly scarred operative. Bad for seduction.

I save the reminiscences for times I'm alone. My team is close, but this mission is simple and nearly at the end. Tell made the 'mark' alone inside. I hear Hoss beneath me, to my right. Stealth isn't far. The rest are on the ground or in the van nearby with Tell, extended eyes of Mother. Mother, extended eyes of the Estate.

Intel on this mark had been brief. I didn't know what he was wanted for, only that it was my job to get him. The Estate's training regime is designed to strip us of our conscience, make us loyal and obedient, or so they believe. The truth is we learn to bundle our humanity and pack it away to get the job done. When ordered to kill, you employ this trick or face eventual madness.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, humanity returns in a rush. Like now. My team's orders were to retrieve the data and the operative intact. If a sacrifice needed to be made, the data was more important than the host.

I found him in the front bedroom of that great estate he'd built on the pain and suffering of others. He was naked, parading back and forth in front of the bed like the cock of the walk.

Maneuvering closer, changing angles, I saw his audience. Staked out on the bed, trussed up like some ancient sacrifice, her arms and legs spread wide, was a child. Not a childlike creature, or a woman with youthful, childish features. This was a child. Her body several years from budding into womanhood. And she was weeping. Tears of terror, tears of agony, hopelessness and pain. Her eyes were wide as she watched him parade the prize of his bludgeoning erection in front of her. He must look like a demon to her.

He did to me.

He was telling her all the things he'd do to her. Things no child should hear. And how she'd like it.

Then she turned to him and said, "Please, I want my mother."

And the demon laughed. "You'll see her when I'm done, if you please me. If not. . .if not, I'll make sure you never see her again. Do you understand me, child?"

And I saw him smile.

Now, sixteen hours, forty-eight minutes later I stand outside a door and hesitate, my hand inches from the knob.

In the dim light I bring them closer to my face. The blood is gone. Twice washed clean. Once before I left the demon's mausoleum, quickly, fully-dressed in his own bathroom, to rinse the gore that clung to me away. And then again, after debriefing when I folded up the warrior and pushed him back into his box. I shed the killer like a skin and cloaked myself in my humanity.

The child had smiled at me when I cut her bonds, assuring her it would be all right, that she was free to go. That I wanted nothing from her. That not all men were demons.

I gave her money from the demon's own safe. Enough to keep her entire village alive for the next ten years if she chose to share. Enough to keep her family comfortable for several lifetimes if she didn't.

But even with the blood washed away, I still felt it there, saw it there. The killer slipped his box for just a moment and I heard the demon's screams.

He begged for his life before he died. I made him bargain as he watched his blood drip to the floor. He told me everything he knew, answered everything I asked, promised me anything I wanted, if only I would stop. The child. He tempted me with the child. . .or others like her. Younger, if I wanted. Virgins, guaranteed upon the life of their families.

If I would let him live.

I asked Tell if Mother had everything he needed from this plague. When he said yes, I switched my microphone to 'off.'

Seventeen hours, three minutes later. . .he'd never hurt a child again. I clung desperately to that thought as images of the blood on my hands reappeared.

I felt unclean.

Unworthy to be in the company of civilized man.

Tainted by what I had done.

Killer. Echoed through my mind. Butcher!

You can't touch him with those hands!

Ashamed, I turned to walk away.

And then I heard the song.

Softly, as the voice of angels.

Sadly, it whispered loneliness.

Sweetly, it sang of restoration.

It spoke to me of promises.

Forgiveness and redemption.

Of love.

And in that moment of clarity I knew what would happen if I turned my back and walked away.

Broken hearts.

Shattered dreams

Ruined promises.

And the killer I kept buried would win.

He could slip from his box, off his leash and into this world. A world where I was safe. In which the killer had no place.

Where unconditional adoration made me clean again.

My fingers curled again around the knob, this time turning it. The door swung open.

In a pool of silver moonlight, he sat centered in my bed. Radiantly golden. Gloriously naked. A cascade of hair surrounding him so black it made the night envious.

His legs were crossed. His back rested against my headboard, propped with pillows. Busy fingers, nimble fingers caressed the woodwind instrument. Moist lips mimicking a kiss as that sweet breath coaxed forth music. Hauntingly pleasing. Reaching out to me. Stealing past defenses. Disassembling contentions.

And he turned to me. Lips curling in a gentle smile. When the music called my name, I came willingly, summoned by love.

He lay the flute beside him.

"Don't stop," I whispered, curling at his feet.

"But I have a new instrument to play," he said, reaching for me. "And the melody it makes is more beautiful." And he smiled again, taking me in his hands, and the music rose up all around me and swept over me as he played me with the mastery of the artist that he was.

I closed my eyes and in the music he drew from deep within me, heard a poem I loved so long ago:

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princes; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princes who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must not be frightened, if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hands, it will not let you fall...

And I came in a cleansing flash of energy, calling out his name. Whole again.