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shock therapy He calls me and I cannot resist him. His voice creeps into my mind, beckons me, summons me, and I follow him, willingly, eagerly if I have lain for too many sleepless nights on the unfamiliar softness of my bed. He leads me down, always down, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the castle. Down, past the new metal walls, down past the old, hewn rock, down until I'm in the natural catacombs of the Old Castle, the castle that was here before Arus was united, here before Voltron, here before civilized man. It's damp down here, damp and dark and dangerous for the uninitiated, the unasked. But I have long since become familiar with these passages; I am too familiar with these tunnels that house the ancient dead, I think, for I can walk down these halls without a light, without fear. I have faith in him. The walls and floor are coated with slime. The air is cold. The creak of the ceiling above me tells me that we've passed underneath the lake. We're almost there and I feel myself growing excited; my heart flutters and, despite my best efforts, I begin to breathe faster, shallower. It-I-wasn't always like this. When he first called me, I was afraid, so very afraid. I thought I had lost my mind thought the strange voice that echoed in my head was the result of too much pressure and not enough sleep. I was afraid when I woke up in the hall, woke up slumped on Black's control panel. Woke up hard and aching and wanting-no, needing-something that I couldn't name. I was terrified when I started seeing him in my dreams, and then in the after image. And then he came out of my dreams and stared at me, unblinking, when I lay awake. It was his eyes, I think, that finally made me leave my room and make my trek down to the tombs that first night. He had such sad, lonely eyes. He had loss in his eyes. The door to his sepulcher creaks when I push it open. It always creaks, no matter what I do to the hinges, no matter how much oil I waste on them. I step through, into the glaring light of a thousand burning candles. I am dazzled for an endless moment by the sudden light, and then his hand touches mine and I feel his breath stirring the little hairs on the back of my neck and suddenly it's not the light that's dazzling me but him. Him. Oh, he is beautiful. I never doubted that fact, never. I had noticed his beauty the first time he appeared before us, begging us to save his planet and his child. I see it now and it hurts me in some way I can't begin to describe. "Keith. My beautiful Keith." He is younger now, looking like he did in the paintings in the Great Hall, without the beard and the hard lines of worry and never-ending pain that edge his eyes. He looks sharper somehow, sharper and cockier, and arrogant in a way that Lance sometimes tries to be but he can't because he wasn't born into his arrogance, not like this. His hand trails down my chest, across my chin, through my hair. This was a new thing, this constant touching. I remember when I first started coming to him how he had been little more than a fuzzy outline, a memory of a man who only wanted someone to listen to him, listen to his fears and worries and hear the pride he felt for his daughter. Now, though. Now he is solid, and strong, as solid as the granite tomb he pushes me against, his granite tomb, as solid as the effigy carved on the lid. He feels so real, so alive. I don't know if I'm imagining the heat in his hands, in his lips, his body, or if there is actual warmth. I don't know if he has become alive or if I've become a ghost. I don't think it matters too much, because he is moving inside me, and he moves me, sparks pleasure in the pit of my belly. I don't care about anything when he touches me like this. I don't care if this is just a dream, if I've made him up out of a want, a need I didn't know I had. I don't care if this is, possibly, more sinister than an elaborate fantasy. I don't care because I feel oddly whole when I am the only gasp in a quiet tomb, feeling the rough granite scrape my back until I bleed and stain the white-grey stone. "Keith. My knight. My champion. Mine." His voice grips me, possesses me, marks me as his and I don't care. I am his. I have sworn my loyalty to my king, my dead king. I would die for this dead apparition, for this man that may be no more than a figment of my deluded imagination. "My king," I want to say, but when he touches me in this way I can't speak, can't do anything but be. I Belong. To my lord. My king. My master. |