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[Title] Al Kimia [Author] Mara D [Series] Castlevania: CoD [Pairing] Isaacxhector (Yaoi! obviously) [Rating] Nc17 (There is a hinted sex scene. Do with it what you will but be warned. I'd really only give it an R at the most but hey ^_^) [Beta] none. [Spoilers?] Yes. [Chatter] Some details from manga, some from game. Pick and choose. Pick and choose. Slightly AU, but the world will deal.I don't know if I hate this yet, or really like it, but either way, I'm pretty okay with it, so I'm interested to get opinions. It is supposed to be a bit etherial, and might not make as much sense if you don't have a grasp of the concept of Alchemy and some depth into the basics of it. ~*~ Out of the black and into the red, Out of the red and into the white, Out of the white and into the gold, Out of the gold and into the world. ~*~ Nigredo Out of the black and into the red, ….That which poisons can also heal. Isaac sat, one knee pulled up to his chest as he watched Hector touch the face of the corpse of the young woman. He was sitting on a nearby rock, crimson hair touched by the night wind, but otherwise, he was unmoving. As still as the death that hung in the air, as still as the death that soaked the grass in gore and blood. As still as the beast that sat, hunched and confused, it’s velvety muzzle wrinkled in a half snarl of pain and bewilderment. “Why do you feel badly for them, they would just have slain you, you know?” Isaac’s melodious voice cut the night, barely audible over Hector’s weeping. Hector turned tearstained blue eyes to Isaac. “They were God’s children!” He said lowly, his voice shaking as he stared at his gloved hands, covered now in blood. “Pathetic…” Isaac sneered. “To think I considered you to be the stronger of the two of us.” He stood then, a serpent uncoiling from the earth. “We are God’s children too. It is only man that has forsaken us…don’t you think we were born with this power, this calling for a reason! How can there be shame in being how you were born!” He thundered, raising his hands in frustration before he again mysteriously calmed, taking a few collected and graceful steps towards Hector. “Perhaps we are monsters…but even monsters can feel…can bleed…Even monsters have a right to live. If they didn’t, these beasts would not come when we called, certainly you must see that Hector?!” Disbelief tainted the singsong challenge in Isaac’s tone. The redhead gestured towards the Demon crouching in the grass next to the silver haired man then. It was bleeding, though the wound was quickly healing. It was glancing at Hector with frightened eyes. It had wanted to please and protect its master, but it could smell the grief and the pain. It cringed and fawned, clicking it’s teeth at it’s grieving master uncertainly and making low and piteous kreeling sounds. It was too afraid to go to Hector for reassurance, fearing it had displeased, and was too desperately loyal to leave. It was a turbulent type of beast, hard to control. The village men and women that had stormed the castle had meant fully to kill The Master as well as the Forgemasters residing there in his service. Hector had failed to be able to properly control the beast as they had protected Lord Dracula, though Isaac had not cared who had died at his hand. For some reason, Hector did. Isaac pitied Hector. Hector had forgotten that, to a degree, an Innocent Devil did have free will. It had only done what it knew how to do, and done the best it could to protect it’s master. It’s world. It’s everything. Isaac saw it as a learning experience, but Hector saw it as a miserable personal failure. They knew so little about this power! How far it extended…what types of beasts could be forged…how the acted and reacted. They had learned. They understood now. But soft and gentle Hector had somehow been wounded by this. Isaac’s pale blue eyes studied hector until he looked away and turned his gaze to the beast beside him then, and his shoulders shook with some sort of hiccup. His face fell further, and he buried his eyes in the heavy blue velvet of the undertunic covering his forearm, making a low moaning sound of pain that twined with his devil’s. “I can’t even stand the wretched things, and here the two of you are, crying because you don’t understand each other. If you must summon it, then at least be a man and /deal/ with it.” Isaac hissed. Would the tow of them just stop crying?! It wasn’t even an issue! Their lord was pleased! No one was harmed but those who came with rage in their hearts. The red haired Forgemaster turned his back to Hector for a moment, his lip curled in disgust. He wanted to shout at Hector to stop being so /weak/ because it was depressing. Instead, he sighed in irritation then and perhaps a tiny bit of regret. His devils didn’t really like him well enough to cry for him when they were confused or hurt. But then again, he wasn’t foolish enough to scold them for being what they were either. “I am the wretched one!” Hector hissed. “I am hated in all three worlds! I am a poison!” Hector, the man that all gentle things loved, Hector the man that animals willingly came to and basked in his presence. Hector whom the village children loved and would pester should he go into town for supplies. Hector who was so soft and good that Isaac wanted to hold him close himself. Wanted to have Hector find good in him and draw it out, though he saw it as a terrible personal weakness. Perhaps it was weak, but Isaac wanted it, and he would have it someday. He wasn’t used to being told ‘no’. If anyone could find the good in him, it was this pitiful mewling man sobbing over a few dead murderers. “Look at me.” Isaac hissed, suddenly demanding. He got no response, and Hector did not look up until Isaac grabbed him by the arm, yanking him to his feet roughly. and placing his hand on the dragonling’s head, forcing the bloodied and gloved fingers to stroke that surprisingly soft muzzle. Hector’s glare could have melted solid rock. Isaac just smirked at him where their hands touched. “Be a man Hector…there is no shame in being what you are, for you…or for your Devil, or for the dead here.” Isaac chuckled. “Though who lives or dies? That is up to fate and God be damned.” “You’re sick!” Hector spat. “The serpent bites it’s own tail first…” Isaac laughed as he let go, and Hector sagged back to the ground, hand still on his Devil’s muzzle. He watched Hector sink back to the grass with a whimper, and this time, close his arms supportively, protectively, around the beast’s shoulders, laying his head against those smooth and cool scales. Isaac smiled to himself, licking the dead woman’s blood from his gloves. That which hurt could also soothe. It was all he could give Hector. The only comfort that there was. Comfort in his abilities and in himself. It was all there was in this birth. Nothing came into this world without a rush of blood. This was Hectors. He would learn, or he would fail. He would understand, or he would break. And he could not break. Because Isaac wanted him. Rubedo Out of the red and into the white, ….The void, activated by thought and purified by deity makes the manifestation. “Of course they are angry! Our Lord slaughters them by the dozens, and for what?!” Hector raved, his hands trembling at his sides. “They are the ones who declared war on him, they killed his wife! What man would take the death of his woman lying down?!” Isaac asked Hector coolly. “He is not god!” Hector choked out, his voice echoing off the stone wall of his research chamber. “God has forsaken us, if the village people are to be believed.” Isaac said, shifting until both hands were on his hips and he was leaning back against the wall, legs crossed nonchalantly at the ankles. “How can that be!? His light is in even this!” Hector said, pointing to a devil lounging on the papers covering his bedchamber desk, watching Isaac with suspicious eyes. “So you admit it at last.” Isaac murmured, the corner of his mouth turning up into the smirk that he obliged only Hector with. “I would not be able to do as I do if it were treading on God’s territory!” Hector said, a strange certainty to his voice. “So you admit perhaps…that man only has a finite and dogmatic concept of God, and right and wrong?” “The only sin is cruelty!” Hector cried. “So these devils of ours…they are no different than a sword? Only as good or as evil as he that wields it. Is that what you think?” Isaac asked, pushing away from the wall now, and circling Hector in easy strides, leather creaking with each step. “Those are my thoughts, yes…why do you trouble me Isaac, what /do/ you here?” “I trouble you Hector? I’m hurt.” Isaac murmured, pausing to face his coworker. “Do you suppose…that this concept of yours applies to other things as well? Hector Hector…why are you alone all the time? Even The Master notices that you won’t take a woman.” “I have no time!” Hector said lowly. “And so you go without any companionship…dare I even say love…because you are too busy?” Isaac took a slow step forward, a step closer to Hector. “I don’t think that that is it at all.” Hector bristled and refused to back away, shoulders hunched defensively. “I am not unloved.” Hector said softly. “Oh no? Then why at night do I hear you cry out for your family in your dreams? Why do you sit around with such sadness in your eyes that even your Devils cannot stand your pain?” “Nonsense!” Hector snapped, eyes circumspectly regarding Isaac. “The serpent bites his own tail first.” So the man was giving Isaac a dose of his own medicine. Brilliant. Nothing less that what the red-head had expected. Isaac smiled, and this time, it was almost a bit sad. “Perhaps…” Isaac took a step closer, so close that Hector closed his eyes and turned his head away. “Perhaps I am.” Isaac whispered, turning Hector’s face back towards him with a gloved hand. Hector resisted, his jaw and neck resisting the motion, but not for long. Not when Isaac pressed a careful kiss to those lips. At first Hector stiffened against the gesture, and a powerful palm came up to push at Isaac’s chest. The redhead just covered Hector’s hand with his own, and instead, lapped softly at Hector’s lips. Until Hector yielded with a frustrated whimper and Isaac slid inside, tangling their tongues cautiously. Hector had no idea what he was doing, but Isaac didn’t mind. In this he could be the teacher. As steady a hand as Hector had taken when showing him the finer nuances of forging. Hector was glass. Fragile and beautiful and as rough and aggressive, as brash as Isaac could be, he would never be so with Hector. Not like this. This was his and his hands were careful, as Hector’s hands slipped around Isaac’s waist nervously, hungry and uncertain. Isaac encouraged, a hand tangling gently in the silver silk at the nape of Hector’s neck, and a hand at the small of that broad back as the taste, the smell of the other man inundated his nerves. So sweet and cool and gently nervous. The kiss could not have been any sweeter, perhaps because it tasted of victory to Isaac. Or perhaps it was something else all together. He expected Hector to rebel more, to fight him harder, but the man had simply fallen to what was with a patience that Isaac could not even begin to comprehend. Hector asked no questions, and Isaac said nothing either, and when the touches carried them to the bed, when Hector was boneless and gasping beneath him, Isaac knew he had found his absolution. Like capturing some of his innocence, his boyish childhood heart that had broken so long ago. Hector was both poison and balm. Hector was the very refinement process of personal alchemy. Hector was the accepting touch of god in Isaac’s cruel world. Hector was endless silvery white. Albedo Out of the white and into the gold, ….As above…so below… Once, what seemed like so long ago, someone had touched him like this, and only for a moment. But there was no comparing her to him. There was nothing left of Isaac, not the man he had known. Perhaps the curse had been the very thing to bind that tattooed and scarred physical body back together, but no matter how deep the magic, no matter how strong the forge, nothing would bring back the part of Isaac that he had lost. He was half of what he had been. The redhead had once asked him what kind of man it took…and now Hector knew. For now, in this moment, it was the knowledge of that truth, and Hector. She hadn’t been his woman. She had been his friend. They had never kissed, never made love, and yet, she was his in some way. Perhaps it was because she had been his first real comrade. She had accepted him for who he was, had loved him for that reason. Because he was Hector, and no one else. That was why he was pursuing Isaac now. It wasn’t for her, not really. It was for himself. It was because the Isaac he knew wouldn’t do this. The Isaac he knew had Hector, and had had nothing to be jealous of. He did this for her, not because she was ‘his woman’. He did it for her because she was his friend, and the world was now a darker place without her. Because his world was dark, a dark gold of consequence and inevitability. A world darkened by the misunderstandings of humanity and the religion that drove them. He understood the madness that had seized Dracula, but he had turned it aside. He knew the hate and the hurt. He knew the madness. He felt it like the pounding headache at the back of his skull, felt the pain Isaac had borne, betraying Hector, swearing allegiance only to The Master. The pain of having to betray when Isaac himself knew the pain closer than his own skin. Hector had understood. That was the worst part. He understood, and the hate could not completely take over his heart to numb the pain be it for good or evil. This in the end was the fruits of their labor. Not for Forgemasters, or even those that loved as he did. No. This was the fruit of a spoiled land and people. A people that knew the sin of cruelty all too well. He could not save Isaac, and he knew this. He only hoped to set both he and his fellow Forgemaster free. Free of pain, free of the cruelty of being used as tools of abomination by those twisted by hate. To reach paradise sooner. The serpent bit its own tail first, whether for good or for evil. The mercury of healing and death were both balms sometimes. Sometimes, they were synonymous. He knew without a doubt, that if there were peace to be had on the other side of purgatory, he would find them both waiting for him and at peace. He would stop the one sin. He would find a way to end the monstrosity of the specter of death and brutality. He would mold this dark metal into a weapon, and he would use it. For the sake of peace. For the sake of the outcasts and the forgotten. For the sake of even the monsters. The ones in his head and the ones at his side. Citrinitas Out of the gold and into the world. …This is the power of all powers, for it conquers everything subtle and penetrates everything solid… In the end it was not the power of a Forgemaster that saved him. Nor was it the vengeance for a lost friend. It was the one gift that both of them had given him that neither could nor would take back. It was Love. The light of God, the agent of both thought and purity. The love that stayed with him forever in the memory of Isaac’s hot and careful touches, acceptance in love, and Rosaly’s acceptance of Hector. Acceptance of his nature, of his character and his strengths and weakness. Isaac had taught him to love, to be a man, and Rosaly had accepted him as that man. He stood now, overlooking the Baljhet Mountains, and he knew that he wasn’t broken. That he wasn’t lost or wrong, and while he still stood as an outcast still, in his own land, he knew change was coming. The pain was not for naught. The loss was not for nothing. He had taken hate and death and turned it into a weapon against itself. He had brought light, no matter the smallest glimmer, to the people of Valachia. No one would know, nor would they appreciate the sacrifices that had been made by those Hector loved, nor would they know Hector’s name. And that was just fine. This power had become for the good of man, because man had made it that way whether he meant to or not. Perhaps it would die with Hector, sink into the earth forgotten. Perhaps it would be carried on in blood memory only among humans. Perhaps it would fade into obscurity, and perhaps it wouldn’t be enough. But one man, and his friends had a small difference for a few moments in eternity, and that made everything worth it. Love was the only natural outcome of Alchemy and knowledge, and it was a strange irony. Something based so heavily on science would draw its only real and concrete answers from the human heart. ~*~
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