Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Midvalley's Serenade ❯ Scars ( Chapter 34 )

Scars

I wake to sunlight pouring down on me. My head pounds and my stomach churns with nausea so severe that I don't make it to the toilet but throw up on the floor next to the mattress I lie on. The acid vomit burns my throat. Too weak to stand, I lie with the sour stink in my nose, the taste in my mouth while the veins in my head throb with pain. I have no coherent thoughts. After a while, I roll back to the middle of the bed and sleep.

Dreams haunt me. A hazy blue cloud drifts across the golden moons in the night sky. Yes, the sky has eyes like Legato, and they watch me as he did at school. Furtive eyes peer from behind a veil of blue hair. Through the crack in his door as I walk past, I feel him watching me. I hear the hinges of the door squeak.

The squeak turns to a whistle and I am with mama at the sandsteamer depot. She's going to New Paris to have a dress made, an elegant pink gown with ruffles and lace. With a child's eye view of the busy station, I see legs walk by and wonder why. There's the magazine stand, the shoeshine boy, food kiosks, and the balloon man.

"Midvalley," I hear her lilting voice and I am back by her bedroom door again. Sweet and loving, she calls my name but I'm afraid to go to her, though my body hurts all over. She's dead. I know she's dead. I don't want to see the blood, brains and bone of her ruined face, but I go into the room, where she lies in the pink dress. I am drawn like a moth to the flame. I want to see her again. If she could just hold me, she could soothe my pain. I hurt. I hurt so much.

I go to the bed where she lies. No sign of the gunshot wound, she is whole again, alive and well. In my joy, I kiss her cheek. Her lips curve into a smile, she opens her eyes and I float in golden depths.

"Legato?"

When I wake up, the room is lit by golden moonlight and I shiver with cold. From the smell I have pissed and shit myself. I gag on my own stench and throw up again. My head still aches. I am incapable and cannot will myself to move.

I dream of the depot again and a legless beggar on a wheeled trolley board. I see a coin drop into his tin cup. A battered saxophone rests on his lap. It looks like Silvia, tarnished and dented. I look down at my useless legs and scream myself awake.

Fever takes me. The sky looks down with golden orbs. Was that then or is this now? Past and present weave a surreal tapestry. Did I dream he kissed the hurt from my bruises? Did I feel the imprint of his lips on mine? Who's lips?

I wake in a bed with clean sheets as Legato sponges my fevered body. When the water cools on my skin, I shiver with chills. He strips and lies beside me his skin against mine under the covers until I am warm again.

I lose track of time, but every day the suns rise and the suns sets and in between, I go through the motions of living, filling and emptying this sack of flesh and bone, my body.

I barely eat for food has lost its flavor. I sleep for life has lost its savor. I am empty of desire. Only the habits of heart and lungs keep me alive.

I stare thoughtless into space and when I sleep, it is mostly naps, nothing too deep to bring on dreams again.

Legato comes to see me. He looks weary and distressed and soon leaves.

Leonof comes next and questions me. I don't remember what he wants to know.

The Evergreen brings me letters. I set them aside, go back to bed and stare at the wall until blankness leads me into sleep.

Days pass and then more days.

Lenny comes to visit. He asks me something and I shrug.

He repeats it and repeats it again.

"Where's Silvia?"

"She died," I say.

"No, Middie, where's Silvia? Where's your sax?"

He puts his hand on my shoulder and looks sad.

I can't remember when I saw it last. I look around the room I stay in and see a bed with tangled sheets. The floor is piled with clothing and unopened mail. Fatigue overcomes me. The bed draws me like a magnet. I crawl under the sheets and stare at the wall. It barely registers when I hear the door shut. Then I remember that someone was here, but left. My eyes close and I rest.

When I wake, decisions surround me. Some are easy. Food, water, air. My lungs breathe and my heart pumps. I drink and eat and piss and shit.

But should I change my shirt. I don't know. The pink or the white? How long did I stand there deciding? I keep on my pink shirt. It reminds me of her and comforts me. Leonof gives me an odd look when he visits next. After he leaves, a puppet robot comes to shave me. It washes my bed linen and clothes that same day, then runs a bath for me and scrubs my back and picks out clothes for me to wear.

Legato comes for me and takes me to his room. He takes off his white coat with the skull on the sleeve. He embraces me and starts to kiss me, but I cannot respond . He starts to undress me, but my body freezes and I choke out words, "Don't touch me."

"I want to help you," says his velvet voice. I close my eyes when he tells me to and he finishes undressing me. He lays hands upon my body. His lips and tongue explore my torso. The cocoon of pain I live in starts to crack and I breathe a little faster. My body responds to his touch. I remember past pleasure and a fever in me builds as my tissues stretch and grow. He envelops my length in the heat of his mouth and I begin to move. I feel my face flush as sensations grow more intense. He seems to know what gives me pleasure, but when he starts to enter me, I moan for him to stop, but he penetrates me anyway, and it hurts. My heart beats like a frightened bird's. But he hushes me, calms my panic, and soothes away my body's fear.

"I want to help you," he whispers. It doesn't hurt so bad once he is in me and he touches my tumid erection as he moves in me, and the heat builds again and I remember what to do. He fills me, strokes me, touches me and where he touches me, I feel alive again. My body speeds up and I sweat. I feel motion and pressure, his hand moving on me as he drives into me. I writhe and buck my way to a hot high peak until spasms jolt me and I cry out, "God!"

When I opened my eyes, Legato was watching with a smile of satisfaction.

"There's life in your eyes again," he said.

Our bodies locked, my link flared open and I was in Legato's mind and he was in mine, though the link was shallow. I sensed pain in him and he withdrew from me at once. His cock was dry. He hadn't come in me.

He refastened his pants and walked to the dining area in his quarters and opened a pink box that was sitting on the table. He pulled out a cheesecake, cut it and set a wedge of it on a plate.

"Care for a slice?" he asked.

"Please," I said. All of a sudden my appetite quickened. For the first time in I couldn't recall how long, I was ravenous.

As for that cheesecake, I don't think I'll ever forget it. I nearly swooned when I tasted the delicate crust with its buttery crumbs, the tooth-tempting texture of the baked cream cheese with its sweet and sour tang accented by perfumed raspberry sauce and the subtle depth of the bittersweet chocolate truffle spattered across the tenderly browned surface. It was as if I had never eaten before. When I saw Legato's tongue lick the cream from the tines of his fork, a sexual excitation so intense stole over that I found myself aroused.

I took the fork from his hand and slid my tongue in his mouth. He sighed and sucked mine as if it were a voluptuous dessert. Tongue on tongue, groins throbbing in unison, the beat of our pulses in tune, I wanted him.

I had other hungers to feed. I was starved for the feel of skin on skin. My empty arms craved the fullness of a body to stroke. My hands and cock wanted his body, my mouth was hungry for his. I wanted more. I was drunk with a lust for intimacy.

"What do you want , Midvalley?" he asked with a languorous curiosity.

I didn't say a word but sat him down on the bed. I knelt at his feet and pulled off his ankle boots and his socks. He didn't move to help me but he didn't stop me. Then I unfastened his pants, eased him onto his back and slid them down and off. I frowned with concern when I saw scars on his legs, but dismissed the feeling as I removed his black knit shirt. I pushed the fabric up to his armpits and felt a little sick to see slash marks on his belly. He lifted his chest and I peeled the shirt away. I caught a brief glimpse of marks on his cheek, curtained when his hair fell again to drape his face. He did not want to meet my eyes. He turned over and I felt queasy when I saw his backside. Crisscrossed with scars from his neck to his buttocks, Legato had been used hard in the years since we last made love.

"What's the matter, Hornfreak. Lost your appetite?" he asked.

I almost wished I had, but the feeling passed, and I was hard as a rock. There was something erotic about his scars, I reached out to touch them. His skin was so hot, I wondered if he was hot inside.

"Hurt me, Midvalley," he said. "Put it in me now."

I pushed my cock into him. I know it hurt him, but he moaned perversely as if he enjoyed it.

He gave me the velvet of his voice, while I fucked him dry.

"Harder, Midvalley."

He was hot and his sheathe too tight for comfort, but the painful friction roused me and his voice spurred me on.

"Fuck me, hit me, hurt me," he whispered over and over. I didn't want to and hesitated.

"Do it," he commanded, and I raked my nails across his back and his penis hardened.

I got harder still at his response and began to rut in him.

"Hurt me, bite me, make me bleed," he urged me.

I bore down, clamped my jaws on his neck where other teeth had left their mark until his blood flowed and I sucked it.

He cried out when I did that. His excitement stirred my passion and I redoubled my strokes. The heat in my groin built to the boiling point.

He was getting close to climax as the blood dripped from his neck.

I bent close over his back and thrust in harder and deeper, my teeth in his neck, biting, my nails on his chest clawing while his voice whispered and goaded me on, "I'm worthless…hurt me. I'm garbage…fuck me hard…I'm nothing. Make me bleed…I'm dirt…cut me…fuck me."

I fucked him as hard as I could and plunged ferocious with animal vigor. When I ripped the skin of his back with my nails and he felt the blood flow, he shot out his hot load , his body trembling under me. With his blood in my mouth, I came as hard as I have ever come in my life with a discharge that felt like white heat. My pulse roared in my ears and my heart quaked at the strength of my orgasm.

Locked together now, our link opened wider.

I am washed in the salt ocean of his pain. Blood and scars, lacerations, agony. I look at the body below me with the marks of my brutality on him and begin to sob.

I hate myself.

I look at the wounds on his body and am struck by the desire to cover them with kisses.

I turn him over, kiss his lips and the link between us opens wider. More pain washes over me. Self-loathing, self-hatred, self-disgust and despair. I break the contact, and Legato looks at me as though he'd made a point.

I have an idea. I go into his bathroom, while he lies on his bed. In his bathroom cabinet, I find a bottle of sun cream. The sight of it tickles some memory, but there are still gaps in my mind.

When I return, he's still lying on his back, his golden eye observes me, curious. The gold of that eye reminds me of Silvia's gold. The torso below me has keys to finger, like Silvia. I have played him before and I know what used to give him pleasure.

Though the link between us is open, I empty myself of pain and hate and find that space, where I am hollow as my horn. I let the memory of my frenzied bloodlust drift away. I oil my hands with the lotion and begin to smooth his chest with long, deep, strong, strokes.

I close my eyes, but my fingers have eyes of their own and seek out his pain. His body is tight, tense and fearful, but little by little he accustoms himself to my touch, his tension begins to ease, and he sighs as his muscles relax. He's not an angel, he's not a god, he is a man, and my hands remind him of that fact. He cannot deny the truth of it.

I run my palms over his scarred flesh and healing energy flows through me. The pain in his shoulders lessens.

I see the scar where his left arm was grafted on.

"Be careful with it," he murmurs with his eyes closed.

He pays attention to the lessons that my hands teach him and with each sigh he releases like a sob, his pain eases.

Odd how much cooler that limb is than the rest of him, I think, and inches longer than his right arm and much more pale, even against his pale skin.

I massage his chest. It pains me to see slash marks across his nipples. They are old scars, but I am ashamed of the ones that I have just inflicted. The muscles around his chest are very tense and he cannot let loose. He guards a wounded heart, I think.

Then he turns over and I close my mouth on a sob to see the fresh lacerations on his tortured body. I empty myself of pity and all emotion. I can do him no good with my pity. I open myself to healing. His neck and shoulders are rigid with the weight of the burdens he carries. I begin to have some understanding of what Leonof and the Evergreen mean when they tell me that Legato needs someone to share his responsibilities.

I slide my oiled palms over the cruel scars on his back and buttocks and feel through the link the pain he felt when he got them. I hear Knives' jeering voice and feel the self-loathing of the man before me, but I empty myself and feel those wounds begin to heal.

When I touch his buttocks, I know they hold the history of his pain. I stroke him until the muscles grow slack and I feel his body open to me. Touch begins to heal him and trust between us grows. When I turn him over again, his body is languid and pliant under my hands. I straddle his stomach and my fingers seek to soften his tightly clenched heart and I feel the knots of his pain begin to melt, and flow away. When I feel he is as empty as I am, I kiss him gently and he responds in kind.

There is no pain in our link now. I remember what used to give him pleasure in our long-ago love affair and remind him with my tongue..

It is an expert coupling, two empaths feeling each touch of the other--knowing what pleased, knowing what pained and careful now to avoid that razor's edge, if only for the moment.

We tantalize each other building tension between us. Tongues lick and lap. Lips nip and smoothly pressure sensitive flesh, arousing erectile tissue just short of release. With both of us wordless and gasping, we push each other to climax, and after, lie naked in easy familiarity, our minds and bodies joined

It charmed me that he made an effort afterward, to keep things light between us. We knew we each still bore the scars of unhealed wounds.

"That felt good," he finally said. "Didn't it, Midvalley?"

I grunted in reply.

"Here, I restore you from your state of idiocy and you're incoherent again," he teased me.

I smiled in response.

"Thank you," I said.

I was grateful to him. It felt like I had been buried alive, before he healed me. I had missed light, color, music, sensation, and intimacy. He had given me back my life.

I sensed emotions he could not give words to, but his tone was wistful when he said, "We should go out. We could go to the White Cat Saloon and you could bring your saxophone along. It's been months since I heard you play and I've missed your music."

"Has it been months?"

"Master Knives has been very demanding," he said. "I wanted to heal you earlier, but I wasn't strong enough. I'm better now."

"So am I," I said. "When I used my healing just now, I didn't even feel ill."

"We'll go tonight then?" he asked. "Just the two of us?"

"Sure," I said, as I dressed.

I walked back to my room, pleased about so many little things. That I felt so good, that I had eased Legato's pain, that I actually remembered the way back without being led by a robot. My brain worked again, though my memory was still spotty. I was happy with the idea that I would be playing Silvia again.

When I entered the room, I was appalled when I saw how messy it was. I realized that I must have been pretty far gone to let it get into that state. I am not an untidy person by nature and was surprised to see the accumulated piles of clothing on the floor.

I was worried about Silvia and dug frantically under the heaped clothes and stacks of unopened mail trying to find her. I finally saw the edge of her case under some rumpled bed linens jumbled in a dark corner of the room. At least I hadn't left her in a place where the sun hit her, I thought with some relief. However close to brain-dead I might have been, at least I had some sort of instinct that had kept Silvia from any great harm.

When I opened the case to inspect her, I was glad to see that she wasn't in very rough shape, though the dried-out reed was shot. I opened the box that I'd bought at Monk's music, how long ago, I wasn't quite sure. I trimmed a couple of the fresh reeds, poured a slug of whiskey and put them in it to soak. Then I tightened some loose screws and polished her up. My hands trembled with excitement. Just to hold her in my hands again was bliss. I longed to play her again.

I began to tidy the room. My eye fell on my packed luggage duffle. I couldn't remember the last trip I had taken and wondered how long it had sat there. Legato had said it had been months since he heard me play.

I pulled out a couple of suits from my luggage, one of burgundy crushed velvet and a chartreuse suit. There were two silk shirts, one pink and one yellow. The yellow-green suit still smelled of sonic cleaning fluid and there was a faint stain on it. I wondered what had caused the stain. At the bottom of the bag, I found a crumpled white shirt with dark brown stains that looked like dried blood.

I got an agitated feeling from holding the shirt. There was something about it, that I felt I should remember. There was a hole in the shirt and holes in my memory.

There must have been three months of accumulated mail, quite a few from banks, tour promoters, musicians whose names I recognized and a handful of letters from Orleans Orphanage and my heart lurched when I saw letters from Nicholas D. Wolfwood. My hands fumbled to open the first as my memory quickened

.

I ripped the envelope open and the letter partly tore.

Dear Midvalley,

Thanks for the quick note. I'm sorry I didn't get to see you again before you left, but I know how it is when you get the call from headquarters.

I've missed you so much. Still I can't thank you enough for what you did for me and the money you spent just so I could be back with the kids here. You were absolutely right though, about it making me feel better. The doctor tells me that that in a month or so I can travel again and I'll be heading your way as soon as possible, to thank you in person.

Sister Luz showed me the check from the benefit. $$25,000. For a guy who doesn't believe in heaven, you've got a nice insurance policy. The way I look at it, the Lord has just got to let someone as generous as you into heaven when the time comes, whether you believe or not.

I suppose I should tell you, that Doctor Reed and Ruby have decided to stay and be our medical staff. Dr. Reed has fallen in love with the town of December and Ruby has fallen in love with the children. We have more help, thanks to you.

I can hardly wait to see you again. Annie and Blackie send their love and so do I.

Nick

Oh shit! Nick! My heart ached as it all came back with a rush. I felt sick and ashamed. I just spent the afternoon fucking Legato. Or had we made love? I sank to the floor. Was it love or lust? What have I done? I would go crazy if I thought of that now. I tore open the next envelope.

Dear Midvalley,

Did you fucking fall into a hole? What's going on? Did your arm fall off and you can't write? Forgive me if I seem a little upset, but I haven't had word about a blackout at headquarters. Please write soon. I'm worried about you.

I know you've been a bad correspondent in the past, but for God's sake, let me know you're all right. I'm going just a little crazy. I miss you, you know.

Nick

What was the date on the envelope? From three weeks ago.

I ripped open the next.

Dear Midvalley,

Lenny dropped by to visit today. He told me he saw you and that you look like hell and are completely out of it. Is it your illness again? He barely recognized you.

I can't stand it anymore, partner. I'm just too worried. I'm feeling almost 100 percent again and I'm getting on the next standsteamer and I should be arriving in less than a week's time.

All my love.

Nick

I was engulfed in memories that crashed down on me like a tidal wave.

For the second time that day, I hated myself.

To Be Continued