FicWad

Title: Unexpected Places
Author: MakaiKitty
Rating: PG-13/R
Category: Original Fantasy, "Unexpected Places" storyline
Pairing: Garrett/Kinder, slight Aviann/Lisbet
Warnings: Slash, M/M, angst, H/C, daemons, language, implied (past) violence/child abuse, implied (past) Non-con
Distribution: My website, My LJ and any LJs I choose to post at, AFF.net, FicWad, and DeviantArt. All of my accounts are under the user name MakaiKitty. If you'd like to use it just let me know.
Disclaimer: The characters, daemon realms, and situations in this story are all original and belong solely to MakaiKitty. Please don't steal, borrow, take, or otherwise use anything from my fics.
Updates: Just join my YahooGroup to be informed of any updates to this or any of my other fics - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/makaikittyfics
Word Count: 18,979 words
Status: Complete

Unexpected Places

They had discovered the hidden hot spring quite by accident when Garrett's restless pacing had ended with him kicking a rock across the length of the cave. The rock had bounced against the back of the cave, just as dozens before it had, but when they heard the rock continue to tumble long after it should have run out of space both Garrett and Kinder had spent the rest of the day trying to figure out where it had gone. After a little poking around they had found a narrow path that led down into another series of caves that eventually ended in a beautiful hot spring. Both daemons had been thrilled about the discovery, more than happy to wash away the accumulated grime that covered their bodies after days with nothing but cold rainwater. They had stayed in the water that night until their bodies had pruned and they had both felt lightheaded from the heat.

Now Garrett came to a halt at the water's edge, dragging Kinder with him all the while, the smaller man bumping into him with the force of the sudden stop.

"We'll both think more clearly when we're warm and dry." Garrett said by way of an explanation.

Kinder just nodded and reached down to finish removing his pants, having to tug his wrist away from Garrett's grasp before he could accomplish his task. A small smile returned to his lips when the other man muttered a quiet apology at having forgotten that he still held Kinder. The expression earned a matching grin from Garrett as well.

Garrett pulled his own shirt off as Kinder finished undressing, but he made no move to do anything further. He also made a point of looking at anything other than the quickly revealed gray skin of his companion. He thought that things were already awkward enough between them without the added problem of being caught staring.

"Aren't you coming in?"

Garrett looked up with a start. He hadn't realized how lost in thought he had become, completely missing the telltale sounds of Kinder's body moving swiftly into the steamy pool. He could now see Kinder at the far end of the small pool, looking at him expectantly, waiting to see if the other daemon would join him.

"Yeah, of course I am." Garrett assured him, reaching down to hastily undo his belt, shedding his clothes quickly as he made his way towards the water before he could give himself time to reconsider.

Once he was waist deep in the heated water Garrett stopped, looking over at Kinder but not moving any closer to him. Not only did he not want to make matters worse but he thought that they both needed time to think, and he wanted to give the other man some space even if it was only the width of the small pool that separated them. And, if he was to be completely honest with himself, Garrett didn't trust himself to get any closer to Kinder. Even after the other's unusual reaction Garrett still wanted him with a fierceness that surprised the warrior. It had hit him so suddenly, but now he wanted the gray skinned daemon in a way that he had never wanted another. He had taken other lovers in the past, never lacking the warmth of another at his side nor in his bed when he so desired it, but the trysts had always been brief and purely physical. This was different... and it scared the hells out of him.

"I won't bite, you know." The soft, slightly amused voice drew Garrett out of his thoughts yet again. Garrett wasn't used to being trapped in his head so much. Action was much more his forte. He shook his head a little to clear the haze from his mind, not at all certain if he heard Kinder's next words or if his suddenly traitorous mind conjured the words up just to torment him. "Unless you want me to."

"Stop that." Garrett chastised. Then, with a plea in his voice he added a heartfelt, "Please."

"I'm sorry." Kinder didn't sound sincere, but Garrett let it go. At least he didn't sound bitter or desperate any longer, and even better was the lack of the frighteningly empty voice that the daemon had been using on him earlier. Garrett preferred teasing and tempting to dead and dispassionate any day.

Taking a deep breath Garrett steeled himself for a conversation that he wasn't sure he was ready to have. /No time like the present/, he told himself. "Look, I-" His voice died in his throat when he looked up at Kinder. He wasn't sure what he had been about to say, having hoped that he would find the right words when he needed them, but the sight that greeted his pale green eyes was not what Garrett had expected in all of his wildest dreams. Or nightmares.

The silence confused him and Kinder's eyes were playful when he first looked at Garrett, but they quickly shifted from befuddled to defeated when he realized that it was not his nude form that had caused Garrett to go speechless. At least, not exactly.

His hand went reflexively to the star shaped blue symbol imprinted on his lower back, just below his right hip, grimacing at the thought of the accursed mark that had caused him so much pain in his life. The mark that told Garrett that his journey was near it's end. And perhaps Kinder's as well.

The elders had told him that there was one sure way to recognize his prey. A marking that they all bore on their bodies. "You're..."

"A verzacht." Kinder finished for him, knowing that Garrett would be unable to bring the truth fully into the harsh light of reality. "I'm a verzacht. I'm the monster you've come to slay."

"You can't be!"

"This cursed mark on my body says otherwise." His voice was bitter, his eyes hard, but at the same time he looked so tired that Garrett worried for him even through the shock of this new revelation. "Although, really, it should be red. That's how it is for all of the others. But it shouldn't matter for your potion."

"You can't be a verzacht." Garrett repeated, as if saying it enough times would make it true. He needed it to be true. "Japheth told me that the verzacht are cold and cruel. That they would try to kill me long before I could even think about killing them!"

"Didn't I tell you about my village, my family, the type of people that they are?" Kinder reminded him, turning to fully face the other man, a sad smile on his pale lips. "Your Japheth spoke the truth."

"No." He shook his head in denial. "No. It's not true."

"Besides, I may be an exile, but even I have blood on my hands."

Garrett couldn't believe this. Couldn't even speak to deny it. The Kinder that he had come to know over the past days was kind, and gentle, and soft in a sweetly endearing way that made the hardened warrior want to protect and care for the other daemon. He was not a killer.

"You're not the first to come for me." Kinder explained. "I sometimes wonder if my village doesn't send them to me, offering the hunters an easy mark in exchange for leaving them to their own devices. Although, why they would bother I'll never know. Maybe if I die then my family feels that they will finally be cleansed of the blight that I brought upon them?"

Garrett turned wounded eyes on him, begging Kinder to stop, to let him go back to pretending that he wasn't here to kill the smaller male, but Kinder pressed on as though he couldn't see him.

"Sometimes they come for my body or my blood for some potion or spell, much as you have, but as often as not they're just headhunters in it for the thrill. Bringing back the head of a verzacht is considered to be a thing worthy of high praise by their kind, or so I'm told." He shrugged frail shoulders, as though it were of little concern to him one way or the other. Garrett was appalled. To hunt another for fun? For /sport/? "That's why I hide every day of my life, why I'm always alone, why I can't risk going into the cities or towns even for supplies. They'd kill me for being what I am. Or for what I've done."

"You're not a killer." Garrett was suddenly not certain of much, least of all himself and what his plans for the next few hours entailed, but he knew with all of his being that this much was true. "You're not."

"You just don't believe anything that I say tonight, do you?" Kinder tried to joke. "You don't believe that I want you. You don't believe that I'm a verzacht. You don't believe that I'm a murderer."

Garrett just shook his head, unsure of why he suddenly could not speak.

"I never want to kill them. I don't want their deaths on my head." The verzacht looked down at long fingered hands, graceful if not for the wounds that covered them, seeing things that Garrett could not. "Sometimes I don't have to. Sometimes I can seduce them, tempt them with this sorry excuse for a body, convince them to leave me alone in exchange for enacting their darker fantasies for them." His entire form shivered with remembered pains, and Garrett longed to rush to his side and hold Kinder until he stopped shaking, to take away all of his dark memories and replace them with new pleasures, but he could not make his body respond to his heart's will. He was mesmerized by the other's dark tale of despair. "More often than not they're not interested, or they take what they want and then try to kill me anyway, but so far I've been lucky enough to catch them off guard before they can go for the killing blow. And when I can't... I run."

"You were hiding when I found you." Garrett didn't ask if it was after having seduced his last hunter. He didn't want to know. "Running for your life."

Kinder nodded, his dark hair covering his face for a moment, hiding him from searching green eyes.

"I can't run from you." When he looked up Kinder's jaw was set, gaze steady, his mind seemingly clear. "I won't run anymore. I'm tired of running."

"What are you trying to say." He knew, but Garrett had to ask anyway.

"I'm so tired." He sounded oddly at ease, as though a weight had been lifted from his oft abused soul, and despite the sadness in his dark eyes Kinder seemed certain of his words. "I'm tired of living like an animal. Tired of being afraid for my life every day. Of jumping at every sound and shadow, afraid that another one of them has come to hunt me or hurt me. Afraid that this one will be unswayed by my /charms/, or unmoved by my plight, and that they'll be stronger than I can fight and faster than I can run from."

"You can't mean..."

"I'm an exile, Garrett. I have no one who cares and no where to go." He spread his arms wide, reminding Garrett of their temporary /home/, of what Kinder had to look forward to even if he was left alone. "I was never meant to exist in the first place. I have no reason, no purpose, except that of pain. I hurt all of those around me, it's all I've ever done, so you'd be doing me a favor. Really."

"You want me to..." He couldn't even say it. Garrett felt sick to his stomach as he listened to Kinder speak so reasonably about his fate. The warrior could face a rabid norwar without feeling even a stab of fear, only a strange sort of excitement and the thrill of the challenge, but this made his insides twist in the most painful of ways. He had come here to kill a verzacht and now he was being given his chance.

"Kill me, Garrett."

"I..."

"Isn't that what you came here to do?" Kinder tilted his head in that strangely bird-like way that Garrett had learned that he was in the habit of doing, looking at him with a pity that the other man felt he didn't deserve. "Your people need my bones, need my blood, need that potion in order to make you strong so that you can protect them. They need /you/, Garrett. No one needs me. So, kill me and go back to them as a king amongst men. It's your destiny."

"How can you just stand there and say things like this?" Garrett demanded. "How can you ask me to kill you?!"

"I've been waiting to die from the day I was born." Kinder answered simply. "Kill me and give my life some purpose. End my pain and give your people a new future. It's for the best."

"How can you say that?!"

Kinder smiled sadly, moving towards Garrett with the near silent swish of water against flesh, not stopping until he could touch the other man. Garrett moved back as if burned when Kinder first placed his hand over his heart, drawing back as the other hand moved towards his face, surprised to see the fingertips come away with moister from tears that he hadn't even realized were quietly spilling down his cheeks.

"You've given me something that I've never known before. Peace. I feel safe with you, cared for even, and my heart has felt lighter than it ever has with you here beside me." Leaning up to kiss the soon-to-be king's cheek, Kinder whispered a heartfelt entreaty into Garrett's ear. "Let me repay you for all that you have given me. /Please/."

"No!" Garrett pushed him away with brutal force, when all he really wanted to do was hold him close and ease the pain for the both of them. "I won't kill you. I /can't/."

"Then what will you do?" Kinder sounded so completely reasonable while trying to coax Garrett into seeing things his way, handing his life over without a second thought, and the very sound was enough to break a dam of emotion within the kanarian's heart that caused hot tracks of tears to flow freely down Garrett's face. This wasn't right. Nothing was right anymore. "Will you let your people die, suffer at the hands of the wyrm, all for the life of one worthless verzacht who no one will miss? Will you spare my life at the cost of theirs? You know that you can't do that, Garrett."

"You don't know anything." Garrett shouted, backing away to the edge of the pool, his entire body trembling with barely contained rage. How could Kinder ask this of him? And how could the Gods be so cruel as to allow it to happen? Would he truly be asked to choose between the lives of his people and the man that had stolen his heart? "I won't kill you."

"You have to."

"No, I don't." He would not be forced to choose. Never. "I knew that I couldn't do this even before I came here. I can not kill another in cold blood, ever, even if it is for my people."

"Then they will die, with or without a king... and for what?" Kinder tried desperately to reason with Garrett, moving towards him again even though the other man moved back with each step forward. "I will die anyway. I can't go on living like this for very much longer. My luck won't hold out. And neither will my soul. Let my death be for something!"

"You don't even know my people, have never set eyes on our village before, so why are you suddenly so intent on dying for their sakes?"

"I don't do it for them, you fool!" Tears to match Garrett's fell from sapphire eyes, Kinder's calm resolve finally breaking in the face of their shared suffering. "I'm doing it for /you/."

"No." Garrett would not have his hand forced in this. His will was too strong. "I will not allow you to die."

"Then what will you do?" Kinder questioned accusingly. "You've been in this cave for nearly two weeks. You said it yourself that time was short when you first got here. Fate has left you with no option, save one."

"Yes." Garrett agreed. "I am left but one option. I will go to the wyrm and offer my life in exchange for those of my sister and my people. And you. I will die in their place and my village will know peace for another cycle."

"And where will that leave them when you are gone and they have no one to protect them?" Again, being maddeningly reasonable. It made Garrett want to lash out. To silence Kinder, or prevent himself from hearing, anything to stop the words from flowing. And the truth from existing at all. "I know what it is to be alone and without a protector, to be left to fend for yourself and to know that it will not be enough. That need not happen here. There are too few who are noble as you are, and I will not allow you to die in vain when I can save you and them. Kill me and leave this place. Go on to lead your people, find your place in the world and with it the happiness that you deserve." Kinder turned as he spoke, and his last words were spoken over his shoulder. The time for words was at an end. "It is my gift to you for all that you have given me."

Garrett was left at a loss for words, shocked, saddened, and utterly drained by the finality of Kinder's words. He looked across the expanse between them, so close and yet so far away at the same time. Kinder's back was to him, a tense line that belied the surety of his words, his shoulders firmly set as he refused to look at Garrett or speak any more. He obviously felt that the final blow was about to be struck and he was going to accept it without a struggle. But this was not something that Garrett could do without facing the man eye to eye.

His mind made up, sure of the next few seconds of his life if nothing else, Garrett reached out and spun Kinder around by his shoulder. As if time had slowed Garrett watched navy hair fly through the air, crystalline droplets spraying in delicate arcs that caught and reflected the pale natural light of the room, until finally all was still again.

When Garrett was finally able to look into dark blue eyes that had become so familiar over the past days, now sad and fearful despite their owner's apparent acceptance of his fate, he saw in the other man something that was broken and resigned. He would die and Garrett would rule. It was really to be that simple. With the force of Kinder's gaze full upon him, his mouth now silent but his words still ringing loudly in Garrett's head, the soon-to-be king finally knew what must be done.

He only hoped that he had the strength to do it.

To Be Concluded...