Into the Abyss

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FIC : Into the Abyss
Author : Sagakure
Fandom : Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac, Cavaleiros do Zodiaco, Caballeros del Zodiaco, Chevaliers du Zodiaque).
Pairing : Rhadamanthys x Kanon (also, Saga x Kanon; also everybody x Saga).
Rating : NC17 (For angst, mature content, and possibly bondage/bdsm. Don’t read if it’s not your cup of tea).
Warnings : Set post-Hades war.
Disclaimer : I do not own Saint Seiya. Saint Seiya is (C) of Masami Kurumada, Toei, Shueisha, Akita Shoten and quite probably some more people. No copyright infringement or disrespect intended here. This is a work of fanfiction, done completely for fun. No profit is taken out of it.
Thanks : To Dani, for being a wonderful beta!
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Kanon.

The judge accepted the deal and gave him his word that he’d do all he legally could to prevent the judgment from being unfair, but then Kanon had ruined everything.

The very only thing he had to do was let the judge do whatever he wanted to him and just obey, but not even that he did right.

He covered his mouth weakly, afraid of making noise and attracting attention. The fever seemed to be burning worse, but it might just be that his head felt hot because of sobbing so hard. He managed to remain silent, but his body was agitated by the shaking, and the tears running down his face felt cold against his overheating skin. Part of him kept screaming in his head that he should just die and get over with it, but he already had tried that, and wasn’t able to succeed even in such a simple task.

At his moment, he hated himself more than he ever had in his whole life.

He didn’t have a single shred of hope left in his body, and his mind was too raw and scarred to consider, even as a very remote possibility, that the judge might accept to forgive him and to go on with their deal.

Curling into a ball underneath the blankets, Kanon buried his face in his forearms and wished the sun wouldn’t rise the next day.

Or at least, that it would rise for everybody else but him.

*** * ***

[Into The Abyss – Scene VII] – A New Awakening.



His lips were cold.

Kanon whimpered softly, a shiver bringing his wavering conscience one step closer to the surface. He opened his eyes weakly, and glanced around.

There was a window open, and long white veils danced softly in the breeze, fluttering back and forth in a manner that made the thin material look as light as air. The thick dark-green velvety drapes that normally covered the veils and hid the several windows on the room’s outer wall were now open and tied to the side, letting the daylight seep through the thin fabric and fill the room.

Kanon could swear that the sky was blue… but it should be red, right? A timid blue speckled of white here and there spread as far as he could see from the bed. Yet another concession the Underworld did to the residential areas inhabited by the highest rank specters, most likely.

He must have tossed a lot in his sleep, for part of his body was uncovered, the blankets folded in a messy manner and partially thrown aside. So that’s why he felt cold.

The breeze caressed his skin again, bringing him a mix of the cold from the winter and a strangely soothing refreshing sensation. The fever had finally dropped, but the dried sweat on his body made him feel strange, and lying on the oversized old-style bed only enhanced that feeling by giving him the impression he was somehow smaller than usually.

He found out that he was naked under the sheets, and that bandages covered much of his torso, forearms and legs, with smaller patches of gauze here and there on other spots where he had been wounded either by the Scarlet Needle or during the battles in the Underworld. He used to heal faster than that. But maybe it was because he had been so weakened lately, and the days wandering without food, water or care had worsened his condition by much, not to mention that many of his wounds had reopened during that time, and that his broken hand was now much worse than before. Strangely, the wounds hurt much less than he expected them to, considering how bad they still were when he arrived in the mansion.

One thing was certain. People had been taking care of him, and taking care well. His broken hand was tightly bandaged and protected by splints; his bandages were recent, smelling of medication and clean gauze. The bed sheets were pristine white and felt good against his skin -- as much as they smelled fresh and had probably been changed recently -- and he himself was clean, despite the sweating from the fever. No more dirt streaks or blood smudges, although his bruises were still very real, and ached when he ran his fingers over his cheeks and jaw.

Much to his surprise, he realized that his nails had been manicured with care, filed and polished, and perhaps even had some sort of varnish applied, which would explain the slight shine they had now. It was done in an expert manner; just enough so that it would enhance their beauty, but not so much that it would give his hands an overly feminine or delicate look. They retained a manly beauty, softened by the light roundness of the tips of the nails. He wondered for what purpose they could have done that, but there were matters at hand too important for him to really care or give much attention to it.

His survivor instincts kicking in, Kanon was trying to gather as much information as he could about the place he was in. He pulled aside the curtains hanging from the canopy of the bed to be able to get a better look at the rest of the room. There was a small divan along the wall underneath the windows, with a blanket carelessly thrown over it and a small table covered in papers next to it. At the farthest corner, a small buffet proudly displayed a full tea service and some glass cups of different sizes.
A large fireplace took part of the center of the wall across the room from the bed, framed on the left by a simple door leading perhaps to another room, and on the right by a large set of book-shelves that took over the whole corner and part of the right wall of the room. Between the shelves and the entry door, a small closet covered the space left.
There seemed to be another closet -- a walk-in one this time -- near the bed too, that Kanon could see partially through the crack of the door that was left slightly open, as well as another two doors that he couldn’t identify where they might lead to.

Much of the room was made of dark wood, decorative details sculpted carefully in the mahogany of the door frame next to the closet, in the ceiling, the chimneypiece, the paneling and such, which gave the whole place the look of an old mansion, extremely well conserved and taken care of, but possibly at least a century old.

A pair of slightly worn armchairs was set up by the book-shelves, facing the fire-place so that the person reading could also enjoy the fire. Kanon found that the chairs looked familiar, a blur of the uncertain memories from his delirious fever period taking more or less shape in his mind. He wondered how many days he spent wandering between nightmare and reality.

As he fought off the post-fever tiredness, he remembered things better and found himself more and more alert, the effects of the long sleep finally wearing off.

And then, all the memories, all the horror and the intense feeling of utter despair and self-loathing that had been haunting Kanon throughout his whole delirium hit him again full-blast, with a weight that crushed him and nearly didn’t let him breathe.

This was no hospital, but his shattered hopes almost didn’t allow him to consider that it could perhaps be the judge’s mansion.

Even if it was, what awaited him was no better than if he had been in a prisoner’s hospital. No longer covered by the deal he had made with the judge, Kanon’s chances of survival were inexistent, especially considering his wounded state and the fact that his most powerful enemies must already know where he was by now.

Although at this point, his survival didn’t really matter for him. Not to mention that he had wanted to die before the end of the war anyway.

When Sanctuary was attacked, he had thought that he had finally accepted his destiny, and that the only way to atone for his past crimes was to embrace said destiny: He was never more than Saga’s shadow, and as such all he had to do was wear the armor until he wasn't necessary anymore, and then disappear as a shadow should. It seemed clear enough.

He had clung strongly to that idea until he sent the armor back to Saga and tried to take Rhadamanthys out with him. But from that point on, nothing happened as he had planned, starting with the fact that the judge didn’t let him die.

It seemed so impossible to Kanon that he should have survived that war after all that he had assumed of what was expected of him… He could only believe that if destiny didn’t allow him to finally die it must be because there was something else he still had to do first, something terribly important. And when he finally found out about the horror that awaited his brother, it all made sense and he understood fully how much it was going to cost him to help the older twin.

All dreams of freedom or even of resting torn apart and forsaken, Kanon had understood that to face his destiny didn’t simply mean to be Saga’s shadow and fight as the Gemini saint, then die when their need for him was over. It went much farther than that. He had to completely lose himself in his task, and give up all hope and freedom.

It was a trade.
His life, his very existence, for a chance for Saga to escape eternal agony.

And thinking of it coldly, Kanon had to admit that no matter how long he lived as a slave, it would just be a lifetime of suffering. He already suffered most of his life anyway, so it didn’t matter if he was forced to go on living, even though what lay ahead would be much worse than what he lived in the past.
After that, he could die later.
Right?
He wasn’t sure, for the judge had mentioned something about him staying there until the end of times, if he accepted the deal. Perhaps there was a way to artificially force him to live longer, but even if that was the case, Kanon thought that perhaps… perhaps it didn’t matter, for he deserved it anyway. All the pain, all the shame.
He had ran away for long enough, all his life.
Now there was a wall in front of him, and nowhere to run anymore.

Rather than ruin everything for the both of them, Kanon felt that he had to at least try to do something for Saga. He owed him that. He owed them all so much.

There was so much more to it that he didn’t even dare to think of or admit, but either way, the ex-marina was a man who believed deeply in going through with what you have to do. Despite his past ambitions of power and conquests, he never forgot the principles that Sanctuary instilled so deeply into him and his brother throughout their childhood.

He was so tired, but it was the one and only thing he had to succeed in doing to atone.
He had to go all the way to the end, stripped of pride and hope, and try all he could before it could all finally be over.

Saints are never free. Not even after death.

He had enjoyed freedom for long enough -- far longer than he would ever had been allowed too should he not have betrayed the goddess -- and it was time to pay.

So he went on, and succeeded. Against all odds, against all his fears, he succeeded. He crossed the whole Underworld, snuck in the most well guarded residential areas where the high rank specters dwelled, and even managed to somehow convince Rhadamanthys to accept his deal.
He thought that he ought to have been happy then, that at least his miserable life would serve to something good, but quickly afterwards his irrational fears and attachments ruined it all.
His last shards of hope renewed only for a short moment, wavering among the utter despair and fear that filled all of his being, Kanon forgot the task at hand for a second that was fatal.
He hit Rhadamanthys. Not only he disobeyed him and dared to talk back, but he hit him. And when he took conscience of the gravity of his acts and tried to repair it, the judge stayed silent, and ignored his pleas. And then, darkness swallowed him, for days of delirious fever during which he didn’t even know if he was alive or dead, but the guilt didn’t leave him alone for a second.

Sitting on the bed, hunched over with his head low and his hair a blue waterfall spilled all around his face and over the white sheets, Kanon hugged his own chest and sobbed hard. It wasn’t a matter of lost hopes and dreams anymore. He had the problem solved and he wasted all of Saga’s chances on a moment of madness; an eternity may pass, but he would never forgive himself for his catastrophic error.
The muscle contractions caused by the sobbing re-awakened the pain of his wounds, not as strong as it originally was, but still piercing enough that it tore weak little whimpers from his lips every time he breathed in too hard.

The unexpected sound of a door opening startled Kanon, and he froze.

"Oh! Many apologies, Sir, if I had known you were awake, I would have knocked. The maids forgot the window open after airing out the room and I came to see if you were cold." – It was the old man Kanon had seen the night he arrived, the butler if he remembered well.
The man crossed the room and started to pull the white veils aside and close the glass window, making small talk all the while tactfully avoiding looking directly at Kanon’s face so that he wouldn’t feel embarrassed that he had been seen crying.

"The Master is still at the Courthouse, but he should be coming back soon, he usually arrives around this time. He will be very pleased to see that you are looking much better, Sir."

Wiping his tears all over the sheets and trying to compose a face that hid better all the emptiness he was feeling inside, Kanon asked, surprised by the butler’s cheerfulness – "Did…Did Rhadamanthys tell anything of what was to be done to me?"

"Why Sir, of course not. Such matters are to be discussed only between the Master and you." – There was a badly concealed hint of shock in his voice, but he added gently – "I hope you’ll forgive my boldness, Sir, but I wouldn’t advise you to refer to Lord Wyvern by his name directly, just in case. It isn’t…quite respectful."

For a moment, Kanon almost asked the old man how he should refer to Rhadamanthys, but then he refrained from it, as his despair was quick to remind him that there was no point anymore. Everything was lost, and whatever he may call the judge wouldn’t fix anything.
The butler continued talking, babbling about the weather and niceties while he avoided looking directly at him, and Kanon started to think that perhaps it wasn’t by fear of embarrassing him… but out of disgust because of his recent condition as a pleasure slave. The thought brought him even more shame, but it was nothing compared to the misery he already felt for screwing up the deal with the judge.

For a moment, Kanon’s mind slipped back to his old self and contemplated the idea of trying to escape before Rhadamanthys returned. But even if he had any chance to succeed -- something he guessed wouldn’t be easy, for the judge wasn’t likely to have left the house unguarded this time -- he had no will to try it.

Before, he couldn’t even thing of trying anything like that since he had to stay for the deal to work; and now that he had ruined everything, there was no point in escaping anyway. It was too late, now. He had nothing left, no reason nor will to go on. It was better to just stay and wait for his fate.

If he had any luck left, maybe they would allow him to see Saga before each of them was sent to the torture fields, although he doubted he would be granted even that small joy.

He just laid back down in the bed, curled up in a fetal position under the sheets and closed his eyes, decided to wait for whatever would happen, ignoring completely the old man who eventually stopped his chattering and left the room as discreetly as he could, unsettled by the reaction.


*** * ***


Sometimes, Saga couldn’t tell the nightmares apart from reality. It horrified him, not only for the unwelcome memories of his past that the sensation brought back, but also because not being sure made things even harder, since he did all he could to remain strong as long as he was awake, so that his enemies wouldn’t have the pleasure of feeling a moral advantage over him and by extension over the saints of Athena.

Saga himself had no pride left perhaps, but he wasn’t ready to let his enemies know that. And it didn’t matter what he had or not left, he still had to uphold the honor of the gold saints, even having fallen that low in despair and misery. As long as someone there still regarded him as a warrior of Athena, he had to keep a semblant of dignity, no matter how fake it was.

And no matter how he secretly yearned for the pain, he had to remain as cold as possible so he wouldn’t give them that pleasure.

He had trouble being coherent with his own thoughts, and most of the time he wasn’t sure how he should react, or even how he himself wanted to react. If that pain was welcome or unbearable. What he really wanted and how far he could go before he truly lost his mind or broke. So he just tried to stick as closely as possible to a set of mental rules he issued to himself and repeated in his mind over and over.

To remain strong as long as it was a matter related to the war, as long as it was specters against gold saints, Hades against Athena.
He could be himself if it was just his captors against him as a man, and not as a warrior, but he couldn’t allow himself to let his guard down otherwise.


They had brought him again to the interrogation rooms. They did it every morning, and left him there for the whole day. In fact, he realized he spent probably much more time in those rooms, -- also nicknamed the "torture rooms", a much more appropriate name considering what they were actually used for -- than in the prisoner’s wing of the edifice.

It was a barren room, dull and entirely grey from the stone that paved its ground and covered its walls and ceiling, furnished with nothing but a little flimsy-looking square wooden table with metal feet, and two chairs, sometimes three. A gutter ran along the sides of the room, the ground along the edges slightly lower for the blood or whatever else to be washed away more easily.

A filthy basin sat in a far corner, filled with a dubious liquid that might have been dirty water, but that he didn’t dare to drink or attempt to use to clean himself between the sessions, unsure if it even was really water.

He ached to be able to clean himself, for the assiduity of the specters and guards often didn’t let him time for any of it when the prisoners were allowed into the common showers. He knew that during the interrogation sessions the guards would bring water and cups for the specters in charge, but he never had access to it.

Sitting on one of the chairs on each side of the small table, his hands bound behind his back by thick iron shackles, Saga awaited whoever would come for him today, and wondered how many of those rooms existed. The corridor was extremely long, and that aisle of the building seemed to continue farther yet. Maybe his fellow gold saints were in the same situation than him at the same moment. He couldn’t know; the walls were too thick to hear anything from the next rooms, and the specters had separated them all, perhaps in an attempt to lower yet a little more their morale, or to prevent them from exchanging information about what would be done to them, or about what questions their captors may ask during the interrogation sessions.

He shivered again. The dead were only granted a single piece of clothing, a simple whitish cotton garment that all the prisoners wore at first, after which they were on their own. His one was quickly torn to pieces the very first nightmarish night in the prison, and now he had no choice but to remain naked under the sneering and leers of his enemies. And he knew he couldn’t really even blame his nudity on them picking on him in particular, for he frequently saw other prisoners in the same situation. It seemed to be very common, much to their dismay considering how moist and cold the buildings of the First Prison were.
The weariness only added to the sensation of cold and uneasiness.
His body ached, dull pain constant in his every muscle from the previous beatings.

He would have hoped that the specters coming to interrogate him today were less bad than those of the previous day –- especially Rune, he thought, unable to repress a shudder -- but he wasn’t quite sure if the part of him that stored hope in times past still existed.

The heavy iron door had a small horizontal opening near the top, that could be closed or opened whenever the guards wanted to check on the inside of the room. He held his breath when he saw shadows moving in front of it, and soon, the loud lock mechanism and the usual creaking of the hinges resonated in his ears like an omen possibly even worse than usually.
He had two guests today, and judging from their surplices, they were high-rank specters. His eyes fixed on the table top, Saga ignored them, tiny beads of cold perspiration forming on his forehead.
He recognized them from one of the previous days.

He did his best to avoid letting the horror show on his face.


*** * ***

The ice in the whisky tinted against the sides of the glass with a familiar and pleasant sound. Scotch on the rocks might not be exactly the best choice for a lunch, but Rhadamanthys didn’t feel like going out for food or even bothering to call someone and have to go through the mental effort of deciding what he wanted to eat before sending them to fetch it.

In fact, there was something he very much wanted to eat, but the something -- someone, to be more exact -- had been feverish for three days, and didn’t seem to be much better by the time he had left for the Courthouse this morning. The raw need that assaulted his mind and body was driving him crazy, and his patience was running thin. So close, yet so far. He wanted to savor the moment he would make the ex-marina his, but the wait was nearly unbearable. More and more often, he cursed his restraint for making him wait, for not letting him plunge himself inside his former enemy and ravish him without more delay, unconscious and feverish or not.

He sighed, more than a little unpleased by the situation, and poured himself some more of his favorite drink.
Unable to stand anymore the paperwork that covered his office desk in heaps and heaps of various documents, he pushed the nearest piles away and considered dumping some more of it on the more competent members of his direct personal escort, but Valentine, Araulne and Sylphid were currently already hard at work in the next room with piles of the same kind of boring bureaucratic work, and he hesitated on giving them even more. It was after all by his own choice that he had accepted to work on those files despite the fact nobody asked him to.

He could spend his time the way Minos and Aiakos did, only occupying themselves with the most interesting matters at hand and enjoying the resting period the judges had until the tribunal was repaired and all the dead were accounted for so that the judgments could resume.
But waiting made his restlessness worse, and he hoped that the paperwork would maybe dull his carnal desires. It wasn’t working, and in fact, it was making things worse, for the boredom kept making his mind wander to the image of Kanon sprawled on his bed, naked, barely covered by thin gauze bandages here and there on his body, tossing around with his skin flushed and covered in tiny perspiration pearls from the fever.

He didn’t even dare to sleep in his own bed anymore, by fear that he wouldn’t be able to control himself if the ex-marina’s body got too close to his, and had been sleeping instead on a small divan since then, unwilling to relinquish his room and go to one of the guest rooms, but not wanting to move his captive to one of them either.

Stretching the muscles on his back and shoulders that still weren’t used to the three past nights on the divan, the judge stood and circled around his large desk, trying to shake from his mind the image of Kanon’s full lips slightly parted in a wanton manner, his breathing shallow and his skin flushed by the fever.


Rhadamanthys’ office in the First Prison's Courthouse wasn't much different from the other two judges'. Large, furnished in a traditional manner --dark wood and thick velvety drapes being a favorite of the Wyvern -- it was shaped like a square with the wall on his left covered in tall windows that flooded the place with light, and the one across the room filled with shelves and shelves of paperwork, folders, law books and other documents. On the cabinet behind his desk, Rhadamanthys liked to keep his personal things, especially a mini-bar with his favorite aged blends of whiskey, imported especially from the surface, for Underworld couldn’t produce decent liquors, in his opinion. The severe aspect of the room was softened by a large leather couch in the middle of it, facing the desk. Rhadamanthys was an unconditional of leather couches, and sometimes he felt that going through the paperwork was easier while sitting in a nice comfortable one, rather than at his desk.

Picking up his judge robes on the rack by the door, Rhadamanthys slid them over his surplice in the usual manner and left the room, decided to refresh his ideas by going to get a look at the prisoners.


Upon finding out that Saga was currently in the middle of an interrogation session with Minos and Aiakos, the judge decided to join his two colleagues, and strode to the interrogation aisle.

But rather than refreshing his ideas like he planned, what he saw when he entered the room had on Rhadamanthys the effect of a bucket of ice cold water.

The two other judges had instructed the guards to not let anyone in, but due to his rank and the guards’ assumption that he knew what was going on inside, they let him in immediately, and omitted to warn him of what was happening at the moment, causing Rhadamanthys to find himself in front of a most unsettling and unexpected scene.

The little table pushed aside, the two judges were sitting on the chairs, holding Saga between them in a most awkward position, forced in place partially by a spreader bar -- allowing them to secure his wrists and his heels behind his back, effectively keeping his legs spread and his whole body open to the touch and unable of any form of resistance -- and partially by Minos’ most powerful technique, the Cosmic Marionettion, that controlled every movement of Saga’s body, and permitted such a position to be achieved and enjoyed by the two specters much more easily than it would have been should they have had to hold him up with their hands all that time.

Minos had his hands on each of Saga’s buttocks, pressing them down firmly as he buried himself into the trembling body over and over again, using his puppeteer technique to buck the unwilling gold saint’s hips onto his shaft with his cosmo, apparently uncaring of the blood mixed with fluids that trickled down the gold saint's pale legs and onto the dark gleaming material of his own surplice, that he still partially wore on the rest of his body.
On the other end, Aiakos sat back on his chair, head thrown back in bliss as his fists gripping Saga’s hair guided the gold saint’s mouth up and down on his throbbing erection.

Apart from choking and breathing with difficulty, Saga displayed as much indifference as he could, showed no obvious signs of being forced, and didn’t even attempt to resist.
Minos’ technique could only do so much, and the gold saint could perfectly refuse to cooperate as much as possible, but it wasn’t quite the case.

There was pain in his eyes, yes, a pain and a despair so colossal that they seemed to know no boundaries, and his whole body was agitated by shivers that got worse every time he choked or risked gagging, or every time that the burning sensation in his backside made it feel like he would be torn apart, and yet, he didn’t struggle or even try to bite the man who forced himself into his mouth with powerful thrusts.
Could it be that they succeeded in breaking him? Certainly not, for deep into his eyes, past the tears and the utter horror, there was too much cold hatred for him to have given in.
They were still enemies, no matter what he let them do to him.

Rhadamanthys’ two colleagues acknowledged the third judge’s entry by nodding, but neither stopped what they were doing, too much into it or simply not bothered particularly by his presence.

All three of them had known each other for what felt like an eternity, and were more than used to frequenting different pleasure houses together on occasion, so being seen in the middle of it wasn’t anything shocking for either of them.

Except that what seemed normal at one’s eyes when done with a prostitute was suddenly much more unsettling when done to an enemy warrior.
And while Rhadamanthys had very precise ideas on what was right to do to a slave – pretty much anything since their will did not matter and they completely belonged to their owner – he found himself suddenly unsure whether it was proper to do the same thing to someone that was just like all three of them, but simply on the wrong side of the battlefield.
And the higher the rank of the warrior, the more it seemed wrong at his eyes, perhaps because for him, the gold saints were the closest thing to an equivalent of the judges on the Athenian side, even if his pride still lead him to consider most of them inferior.
Granted, the limits were very foggy in his mind when it concerned Kanon, a man he regarded with respect, but also with too much lust to think objectively, especially now that he knew he could do whatever he wished to him.

But to simply think of Kanon made him twitch inside when seeing the other two specters defiling Saga, for in a way it was as if they were taking what was his, and no matter how much his rational side told him it wasn’t Kanon, it flooded him with mixed feelings added to a bizarre form of jealousy and possessiveness.

The image of Kanon in his mind also brought a strange feeling, a little voice whispering to his conscience that he should perhaps help Saga, or at least stop the abuse, not because it seemed necessarily immoral in itself, but because he had been given what he most desired, and had paid almost nothing in return.
He did promise Kanon he would do all he legally could to see if the treason charges could be dropped, in order to grant Saga a fair judgment, but in a certain way, that was just justice, thus making it something that he might perhaps even have done out of his own will, should the specters be better disposed towards the saints.

Far from him to tell that to Kanon though, to whom he made it seem like a great compromise and a big favor he was doing him in exchange for the ex-marina’s complete submission. But it didn’t feel quite fair, and now that stupid little voice was whispering in the back of his head that it wasn’t right to do all that he wanted to Kanon and only give him so little in return. It wouldn’t cost him anything more to intervene, and it was the moral thing to do, after all.

After a last moment of hesitation caused partially by the horrible yet fascinating scene in front of his eyes, and partially by the time the judge took to finally make up his mind, Rhadamanthys spoke up, addressing the two other men.

"Oh, but in the name of Hades, just WHAT are you doing?!! This is absolutely disgusting!!"

"Oh really? I don’t see what’s so disgusting about it? First off, it’s not like those practices are uncommon in our prisons, and secondly, I’m merely attempting to obtain strategically important information from a prisoner."

Minos wasn’t going to be insulted without reacting, and he was quick to lash back at his fellow judge, but it didn’t stop Rhadamanthys.

"Oh, so that’s how you call it? How funny, I recall you using the same technique on a whore at the brothel. I had no idea you were collecting information that day!"

"My dear colleague, to criticize someone, one must be flawless himself. And if my memory serves me well, it was your cock, in that whore’s mouth. So piss off."

Rhadamanthys was speechless. Minos’s tendency to return acidic remarks wasn’t anything new, but this was quite low. Well, if he wanted to fight, then he had found himself a worthy adversary. His own methods might be less twisted than the Griffon’, but it was also what made them more legal, and hence harder to defeat.

"Very well. As one of the three judges, I have as much rights as you to set up special sessions to interrogate the prisoners. You, however, have set up quite an amount in the past days, which by our law, gives me the priority to set one up."

"And?" – The Griffon judge didn’t quite see where the other man was going with it, or perhaps he couldn’t believe he planned to carry on with it that far.

Aiakos, on the other hand, followed their discussion with an amused smile, while still focusing most of his attention on the thrusting of his pelvis into the luscious lips that surrounded his shaft in a most delightful manner, despite the tears running down the gold saint’s face.

"And I’m going to use that right immediately, to interrogate Saga of Gemini."

"You…! You can’t do this! We’re already busy with him!"

"Legally, I can, and will. I have priority, since I’ve had few interrogation sessions lately and need to ‘catch up’."

Minos fumed, but he had no choice. He knew the law as well as Rhadamanthys did, and couldn’t do anything other than leave.

"I don’t know where you plan to go with this, but it won’t be of any use to you!" – Getting up angrily, the Griffon specter removed the effects of his cosmo technique, letting Saga -- now only supported by Aiakos’s hands on his hair and the spreader bar that still held his legs in place -- slump painfully to the ground.
Readjusting his clothes and surplice, he grabbed his papers in a furious manner and left the room.
Aiakos stopped trying to conceal the amusement that showed now fully on his face.

"That was bad, Rhadamanthys! You should learn to share. Although I have to admit that it was pretty funny!" – The Garuda judge could barely contain his laughter, despite the minor annoyance of having such a pleasurable blowjob interrupted in the middle of it.

"You have me wrong. I just think that such methods are unacceptable."

"Oh, sure. I believe you." – But his eyes and his smile said otherwise. Aiakos was a good man and far from being stupid, but he was also a bon-vivant, and one who had a tendency to assume that the others’ motivations would be similar to his own. It was better to be careful though, for he was also a very close friend of Minos, and the less the both of them knew about Rhadamanthys’ motivations, the better. Aiakos could be a frightening enemy when he got serious, and Minos was quite possibly even worse.

Used to seeing his two colleagues bickering and fighting, Aiakos didn’t give it much importance. He was more interested in the rebuilding of the Underworld, and the gold saints were usually more of a very entertaining distraction to which he accompanied Minos, rather than anything obsessive like it was for quite a great number of the specters. He finished picking up his papers that were scattered all over the small table, and headed to the exit, tapping the other judge’s shoulder on his way, and adding – "Don’t worry about Minos, I’ll talk him out of his anger. And hey, have fun!" He winked, before closing the door behind himself, and Rhadamanthys sighed, frustrated at the assumptions.
But then again, how far from reality were those assumptions? He might not have any sexual plans for Saga, but considering what his intentions for Kanon were, maybe it was only fair that Aiakos should think that kind of thing of him. He crouched and begun unclasping the manacles that still painfully held Saga’s wrists and ankles to the bar.

When his eyes crossed the gold saint’s, the judge was taken aback by the coldness he saw in the prisoner’s gaze. Seeing the surprise in his enemy’s face, Saga didn’t waste a second, contempt filling his voice.
"Couldn’t wait for your turn, hm?"

Rhadamanthys considered hitting him for the insult, but then, Saga wasn’t Kanon.
Saga was no slave, and there was nothing to force the saint to behave with respect towards someone who was, after all, his natural born enemy.

"And here I thought that your little brother had inherited all of the family’s arrogance! How wrong I was." – He simply said.

"You know nothing of my brother, nor of me."

The judge smiled, a dangerous smile full of promises of pain.
"I know more than you could imagine, Saga. Don’t play with me, or you won’t like the results." – With a swift move, he had the gold saint pinned against the nearest wall by five fingers tightly wrapped around his throat. Surprised by the speed that his current body couldn’t keep up with, Saga didn’t see the blow coming, and now struggled for air.
Rhadamanthys’ deal with Kanon was to help Saga have a fair judgment, but there was no reason for him to help the saint in any other way, and much less let him insult him without reacting. And yet, he didn’t hurt him. It was just a warning, and he released Saga almost as fast as he had grabbed him.
The gold saint slid to the ground and coughed softly a few times before retreating to a curled position on his side and striking verbally again.

"Go ahead, hurt me. It’s all that you specters can do anyway, isn’t it?"

Now, he was starting to really get on the judge’s nerves.
"Do you want pain?! Is that why you were allowing them to pretty much rape you without a word of complaint, and yet now you try to provoke me? Do you want me to do the same thing they did? Have you never heard of gratitude?" – Decency made the judge stop his rant at this point, a vague and indistinct pang of guilt reminding him that he was talking about gratitude to the brother of the man he had made his slave and was very ready to beat into complete submission in the upcoming days.
And while he didn’t really think that his moral rules applied to saints of Athena -- people who were still their enemies, after all -- as much as they would have applied to fellow specters, he didn’t quite think that Saga had done enough to deserve his wrath or anything remotely similar.

Eyes lost on a point in the wall, the gold saint had an ironic smile on his lips.

Crouching down again, Rhadamanthys got a better look on the saint’s battered face. He was a mess of bruises, older ones and fresh ones, purple, bluish and yellowed marks mixing with recent wounds and bleeding gashes, on his body as well as his face, and it was a wonder how his relatively delicate features could withstand such treatment and still have any force left in them.
Picking up a pitcher of fresh water from the table and pouring some onto a white handkerchief he had in his pocket, the judge approached the wet cloth to the prisoner’s face, a gesture that earned him a gulp of surprise and a repressed flinch. But there was a wall behind Saga, and his attempt to back away from Rhadamanthys’ hand failed before it could even begin.
The judge wiped carefully some of the dried blood, wondering what he might find underneath it. Unsettled by the gesture and unsure of what to expect, Saga froze in place and stared with wide open eyes, a mix of expectation and apprehension filling his face.

Rhadamanthys had to make an extra effort of concentration. For a moment, just a moment, the look in Saga’s eyes was exactly like Kanon’s looks of puzzlement, and he had to remind himself that it wasn’t the same person. The Gemini saint was quickly back to his hard gaze, despite his breathing uneven from the strain that the tension and the position were putting on his abused muscles.

"It doesn’t have to be that way, you know? I can heal those wounds easily. This body is but a copy of your living one, and like all bodies of the dead in the Underworld, it is specifically designed so that the specters could use their cosmo to repair it, if there was such a need." – The judge’s words sounded calm without the usual commanding tone.

Saga shuddered, a mix of disgust and pride coloring his face otherwise pale from the exhaustion.
"I don’t need your help. And even if I did, I wouldn’t accept it. Now do your dirty job or leave me alone!" – He blurted out in a ragged voice that seemed on the verge of breaking from the extra energy expended in the attempt to remain strong.

It must take quite a great deal of courage or insanity to cause a man in that state to continue pushing his enemies that far.

Rhadamanthys considered smashing the gold saint’s head through the wall, but it would be of no use. Instead, he contented himself to merely slap him across the face with the wet handkerchief, before throwing it against his chest and getting up to leave.

A hand on his cheek – red more from old crusty blood and a blush of surprise than from the rather mild contact of the piece of cloth -- Saga stared in incomprehension at the retreating figure.

"We might see each other again, when you learn some manners. Until then, good luck on your own!" – The judge’s voice had a much harsher tone now, clearly filled with a carefully self-contained anger that had been so close to exploding.

Saga stared at the thick metal door for quite a while after it was sealed shut, still unable to understand what exactly had just happened, and why Rhadamanthys didn’t give in to the provocation. But it had been a very long day, and he couldn’t quite think straight, at the moment.
Soon, when the interrogation hours were over, the guards would come to take him back to the prisoner’s wing of the building, and on the way there, every single specter or guard who didn’t have something better to do -- and they were many, so many -- would tag along, and the nightmare would start all over again. He needed to rest, as much as he could, to be able to remain strong when it would happen.
A bitter ironic smile settled on Saga’s lips for a moment. The judge had been so close to guessing it.
So close.
But he couldn’t know, he could never imagine. Nobody knew.
His body reverting back to a childish position that might have helped him feel safe in a long gone time, the Gemini saint hugged his knees to his chest and rocked softly while he tried to hold the tears in all the while avoiding putting too much of his weight on the parts of his body that hurt most.
The thoughts that were now filling his head went so far and left his mind so raw that he felt a sudden need to bite into something to refrain from the primal need to scream that was filling his every pore. He grabbed the closest thing he could find -- the judge’s crumpled handkerchief -- and sunk his teeth into it, while a mix of a nameless terror and the shame at reacting so weakly fought for the control of his weakened conscience.
The shivering that had taken over his body lessened, and all of a sudden, he felt a familiar scent invade his nostrils. It couldn’t possibly be…? He crushed the piece of cloth against his face and inhaled deeply the smell that came from it.
But it was just an impression, and he tossed it back on the ground, ashamed of having been fooled by it.

For a moment, he had thought he smelled the familiar scent of his twin’s hair, something that was well-stored in some hidden corner of his memory since their childhood times, and that brought tears of longing to his tired eyes.

*** * ***

Dusk had almost completely faded into darkness, but the judge made it back home just before nightfall.
Hopping out of the carriage in an agile movement, he rubbed his hands together and repressed a shudder of surprise as the cold winter air hit him, his breath forming little clouds of steam and the freshly fallen snow crunching under his feet as he walked.
Not needing to turn around to know that the servants were already taking the horses and the carriage to the stalls, Rhadamanthys strode up the steps of the mansion’s entrance with a large package underneath his arm.

Despite some remnants of the anger caused by Saga earlier that afternoon, the judge’s spirits were considerably higher now that he had passed by the shopping districts and found out that a special thing he had ordered custom-made two days before was finally ready.

But upon entering the house, his mood improved even further, one could say perhaps exponentially, as the old butler came to help him remove his coat and informed him that "the young gentleman" seemed to be getting better, for his fever had dropped and he was awake.

In a fraction of second, the judge’s expression changed from mild excitement to a predatory grin so utterly feral and hungry that it sent a cold shiver running down the spine of old Alphonse, despite years serving the specter and being used to his reactions.

It was time to get serious.


******
[To Be Continued]
[Next Scene: "Collar and Shackles."]
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Sagakure, February 3rd, 2006