Dusk in Kalevia: Chapter 10

The door to apartment 13-07 looked the same as all the others in the tower. There was no suggestion that within this particular unit dwelt a piece of the existential dread had that dogged mankind since the dawn of sentience–it was just an ordinary painted metal door reflecting the anemic light of the wall sconces.

Toivo wondered briefly if he had misremembered the apartment number, but then he felt the beginning of a familiar chill in his guts. There was no doubt–past this this door was Solas, his enemy, his ally, a force of great fear and keen need. The only being on Earth able to bring Toivo’s failed adventure to its inevitable conclusion. Toivo pounded on the door with his fist, pausing after each emphatic triplet of knocks to feel the sting prickle through the bones of his hand.

“Solas,” he called, his cheek pressed against the metal. “Solas! Answer the door, damn you.”

It was over a minute before Demyan emerged, clad in black silk pajamas and rubbing a towel over his still damp hair.

“What the hell are you doing back here?” he asked, ushering Toivo into the apartment with a raised eyebrow. “Haven’t had enough craziness for one day?”

Toivo shook his head, shivering as rivulets of melting snow trickled down the back of his neck. “This needs to end. Tonight.”

Demyan jerked back, eyes wide. Toivo raised his empty hands.

“Don’t worry. I’m unarmed.”

“You joking with me, Comrade?” Demyan scowled at him.

“No joke. I surrender.”

Toivo shrugged himself out of his sodden overcoat, let it slide to the floor, and followed it with the jacket of the hated uniform. He pulled off his boots and socks and made his way across the room, the ends of his trousers squelching under his bare feet, before collapsing on the modular sofa without a word.

He let his head loll back, and stared at the black expanse of the ceiling, baring his throat to the man across the room.

“Have you been drinking?” he heard Demyan ask.

“No.” Toivo closed his eyes and drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m tired, Solas.”

“So am I. Been a long day.”

“No, that’s not… I mean, I’m tired of it.”

“Of what?”

“This.” He wrenched the word out, and it lay there between them, spiteful and foreboding–encompassing his body, the human world, everything. “I just want it all to be over.”

He could feel his words sinking in; there was a lengthy pause before Demyan spoke again.

“Wait, you came here to ask me…?”

“Maybe like last time. Quick. Bang. Right in the heart.” Toivo sat up and spread his arms with a theatrically bitter smile.

Demyan stared at him for a time with an inscrutable look on his face, the pallor of his cheeks enhanced by the cool green light of a hand-blown lamp. He looked as though he was about to say something, or be sick, or laugh; Toivo couldn’t tell which.

Demyan finally spoke, in a voice little more than a whisper.

“Fuck you.”

“What?” Toivo realized that Demyan was shaking, and for a second wondered if he had misheard him; but then he saw the glint in Demyan’s eyes, and realized that the man was quivering with rage.

“You heard me.” Toivo could feel the anger now–sharp little darts of fury that even Demyan could not suppress. “Zophiel, you fucking coward.”

A defensive anger swelled up in Toivo, heating rapidly. “All right, fine–I’m a coward! What do you want me to say? I’m just so finished with this…this goddamn, wretched…”

He could hear the emotion creeping into his tone, and he was embarrassed by the knowledge that Demyan could hear it, too. “The fear, the despair… It would be one thing if I could turn it off, but I can’t. They’re always calling me, crying out fix-me-help-me-mend-me…but they can’t be fixed. They’re always going to be broken and terrible and on the verge of losing everything. Every time, every goddamn time, no matter how much hope people have, it doesn’t matter–they still end up dead in the end. And it hurts every time! It hurts–”

Demyan lunged at him in a fluid animal motion, cutting off his rant and pinning him back against the cushions with startling force.

This time, Toivo didn’t fight against him. Letting his body go slack, he relaxed into the rough pressure against his chest, resigned to his fate. He wished that Demyan would at least refrain from using his bare hands–in his recollection, an unfortunately brutal way to go–but then, he had come here requesting an exit. He couldn’t be picky.

“Enough,” said Demyan.

The grip on Toivo’s shoulder relaxed; the hand pressing him into the back of the sofa withdrew. Demyan stared at him, his face calm, with no hint of the haughtiness that usually animated his features. Toivo could feel Demyan’s barrier waver and fall.

Emotions began to seep through the fingertips on Toivo’s collarbone. There was anger there, yes, but mostly disappointment, with sadness and that familiar, immeasurable hollowness. Toivo remembered the interrogation room and the glimpse he had gotten of Demyan’s true nature–everything he was running from compressed into the form of a man.

“It’s not that I don’t have any sympathy, but…listen. I say this as a natural-born cynic: cynicism doesn’t suit you.” Demyan swatted a decorative pillow to the floor and collapsed beside Toivo. “Me? Even when I win, I lose–I ruin everything I touch. I break hearts, nations, dreams. And you’re telling me that you have it so hard?”

Perhaps he’s just…?

“So what if you can’t fix things?” Demyan asked. “What even counts as fixing things in this world? What are you so afraid of? What–”

Toivo placed his hands on either side of Demyan’s face.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh, I want to try something.” Toivo spread his fingers through the hair above Demyan’s ears, loosening a few damp strands to fall across his cheek. “It works better when there’s contact.”

I’m going to have to face this.

Toivo felt himself standing once more at the edge of the precipice, the infinite darkness stretching out below him…

And he leapt.

The fall was startlingly swift, a mental vertigo that struck him through with panic. This was what he felt when he looked at the humans–a helpless, tragic sense of his world spiraling out of control. He would shatter at the bottom of the black-hole maw. He struggled and cried out, bracing himself for impact…but there was no bottom to hit. Nothing below him but the endless void of space.

Then, a realization came to him–falling there was just weightlessness.

There, in the darkness, he flew.

He saw through Solas’ eyes, felt the weight of Solas’ body as it lived its endless permutations. The loneliness there–the constant wanderings of a pariah who’d had power and pleasure but found hope forever denied–tore at Toivo. In a desperate attempt to quell that hunger, he did as he always had, and reached for his heart in a luminous burst of power.

These are all the beautiful things I have seen in human hearts. This is the love of a man for his wife, the dreams of a child, the burning flame of a girl’s soul as she promises herself a better tomorrow. Every person whose soul you’ve sifted through looking for despair had a memory as bright and passionate as this. Here they are–the sides of humans you’ve devoured before you were able to see them. This is why they fight and survive, despite everything against them.

He was a shining waterfall, tumbling down the dark cliffs of Solas’ soul, scattering memories in his wake. The centuries of fear leeched at him, but Toivo found he was as infinite as the darkness around him. Toivo opened himself to it, and it spilled through him like black ink in clear waters, smoothed into harmonious dusk. It was chaos; it was peace. He was a river that would never run dry.

Far off, he heard Demyan gasp and struggle in his grip, and he opened his eyes for a moment, bringing himself back to the physical world.

They were terribly close, their foreheads almost touching, Demyan’s brow flushed and beaded with sweat. Demyan moaned softly, and Toivo felt the secondhand rush as Demyan exulted in his gift. The smooth arc of Demyan’s cheek stirred something strange and impulsive in Toivo–a great sympathetic ache for Demyan, a hatred of the space between them.

All you wanted, all these years…

Without thinking, Toivo leaned forward to bridge the gap.

The delicate brush of skin as Toivo felt his lips meet Demyan’s startled him; he pulled back, alarmed by the audacity of what he had done. He expected anger at his transgression, but the message he found instead on Demyan’s face–a raw combination of surprise and undisguised desire–destroyed his last resistance. Toivo pressed himself to Demyan’s chest, his trembling mouth joining his shadow’s.

It was soft at first, like the first pale rays cresting the horizon. He felt Demyan relax in his arms, his mouth opening in invitation, embraced by the luminous strands of Toivo’s power that curled around them both. Toivo ran his tongue along Demyan’s lips, tasting the lingering toothpaste chill, and then suddenly Demyan was clutching at him, devouring his mouth with such ferocity that Toivo’s mind went white, leaving only the feverish yearning of his human body.

Toivo dug his fingers into the stiff canvas of the couch, trying to ground himself as Demyan’s mind surged through him, wild with excitement. As their bodies and minds tangled, he lost track of where he ended and Demyan began; his senses fractured, pleasure shifting kaleidoscopic in the sensation of Demyan’s mouth on his collarbone, Demyan’s fingers sliding up the nape of his neck to twine in his snow-damp hair. As he felt Demyan’s tongue tease at his frost-nipped earlobe, Toivo was vaguely aware that for the first time in his memory, his shadow felt properly warm to the touch.

The blood rushed through Toivo’s frame, a warm tension expanding through his stomach, his thighs, between his legs. He was a coiled spring under rapturous pressure, a brilliant fuse of anticipation burning at his core. Demyan’s strong hands raced across his back, and prongs of darkness pulled at him. He could feel it clearly now as the shadows bound him, the draw of his antipole; gravity and ecstasy.

Toivo wasn’t quite sure how they made it into the bedroom. Circling, stumbling, kissing, they tumbled to the bed with a whisper of clean sheets as their hands roamed. Every time Toivo touched Demyan, he felt the reverberation of the feeling echoed back to him, the empathetic link driving him to distraction. Around them wound the stands of their power, light and shadow entwined.

Silk rustled beneath Toivo’s palms as he struggled to find a way under Demyan’s pajamas. A button broke from the nightshirt and went spinning away into the darkness, and he heard Demyan laugh–a thick, rough chuckle that ended in a sigh. Toivo slid his hands beneath the shirt, up Demyan’s smooth stomach, brushing across his nipples and down the ridges of his ribs. Pleasure radiated through his fingers as Demyan arched his back, pressing himself close.

“How long?” Demyan breathed. “Since you got this body?”

Toivo had lost all sense of time, and replied only with a mumbled moan, his tongue trapped against Demyan’s throat.

Without warning, Demyan rolled, and Toivo found himself clasped beneath him, the angel’s form heavy and solid between his legs. As Demyan’s hips moved against him, heat and pleasure–a long-forgotten sensation from another life–exploded through Toivo’s frame. It tore a groan from his throat and he arched his spine, straining against the warm body above.

“These bodies have their limits.” Demyan’s hands dug under Toivo’s back, pulling him hard against his torso. “May as well enjoy them.”

The incense spice of sweat filled Toivo’s nose as he buried his face in the hollow under Demyan’s arm. With a small cry of desperation, he grabbed a fistful of hair and dragged Demyan’s mouth back down onto his own.

It all makes sense, he thought hazily, giving himself over to the pull of Demyan’s soul.

Two parts of a whole. Light and its shadow.

Human.

Proceed to Chapter 10, page 3–>