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Charmed
By Artemis
Sorcerer.
My colleague. The one Agate assassin we depend on to get us – preferably alive - out of hopeless situations. My friend. My substitute family member. My lover.
Not so rarely I feel quite rotten for bedding Sorcerer. I mean, the guy is a certified nutcase – defenceless. He couldn’t stop me from using him as my means to get cheaply laid even if he wanted to. Hell, he isn’t even sane enough to decide whether he wants to!
Under normal circumstances he would be under heavy medication locked away in the padded cell of a high-security asylum.
That is another thing to make me feel as lousy as I do today. We use him and his abilities, keep him with that from living a less painful life. Eternity steals the life of all Agate members, but Sorcerer is the only one fully dependant on him…
I have no illusions, there is no way that Sorcerer will ever be completely sane. His gifts have caused him to go insane, even though a strong-willed person under medical treatment perhaps wouldn’t have gone quite as insane, and since he can’t just switch his gifts off he can’t be cured either. As long as the cause of his illness isn’t destroyed the illness’ symptoms can be treated - yet there won’t be any curing for the illness itself still is up and about. But under heavy medication and with the right psychological treatment I’m sure that his life could be made more worthwhile. Just that Eternity doesn’t needs his assassins to live a contended, sane life to be good killers. As fragile a person as Sorcerer is he anyway would crack right away again upon being forced to kill people, and then most likely he would be too far gone to do anything about his state.
I feel guilty for the happiness Sorcerer is deprived of.
And I feel guilty for using him. I always tell myself that I don’t harm him, don’t take any advantage of the shape his mind is in. But do I really? I can’t be sure that he would want to be with me, have anything at all to do with me if he would be sane, I can’t be sure that I don’t push him even further into insanity.
I just want things to run smooth between us. But they aren’t. Never did and never will.
Honestly, what do you expect when a lunatic sorcerer/part-time seer and a reluctant assassin team up?!
Often I recall our first meeting. I had been dumped by my parents at the door of Eternity’s safe house after a goodbye beating for good measure.
You see, their golden boy Hypnos was never beaten, but my parents never liked me all that much, they believed me to be a disgrace for our whole bloodline because my ancestors have been for many generation assassins and I’m the first heir who neither qualified for this particular profession nor took any interest in it. I won’t deny that I had all in all a happy childhood, many children grow up in unimaginable poverty while my parents are wealthy US citizens, I really have no right to complain. I simply had to follow some rules, which was to never talk back to my parents when they lectured me about having no ambitions and preparing well for my future career as assassin. Furthermore were emotions, excluding hate and anger, not desired, to voice let alone show mercy for targets was unthinkable.
Anyway, I was dumped at Eternity’s place with my sole possessions stuffed into a backpack, carryall and weapons case. He’s an acquaintance of my parents and – as far as I am informed - agreed readily to take me up in his small team, yet he’s appalled upon finding me in such a miserable shape.
When I had taken the shower Eternity ordered me to I went in search of food and dressing material, boss had left for god knows what and I don’t want to. I hadn’t known that there were more members, so you’ll understand how curious I was when I heard humming in the living room.
Only after he finished the song Sorcerer turned around from what I would later learn was his nightly concert for the moon.
And the moment my eyes met his I knew that my world was going to turn around him.
There was something untameable, something wise beyond his youth, something unfathomable in his mysterious eyes. I yearned to see this eyes soften and lighten because of me. I yearned to have him of all people care for me, maybe even love me sometimes in the far future.
Back then I had no idea just how difficult it would be to make my yearnings of this first meeting happen.
As much as I hate to say it, but the easiest part was to get into bed with Sorcerer. He needs only one glance to be able to see into people’s hearts, to know their deepest desires and fears. In my eyes this gift is a much greater burden to bear than his magic and visions. In my first night already he came to my room and offered me sex.
Even though it shames me to no end, I accepted his offer. Back then I didn’t knew just how stark raving mad Sorcerer is - and that that’s even one of his good days. Even though I am no one to turn someone pretty away I would like to believe I wouldn’t have accepted if I knew then of his state of mind. Okay, okay, I’ll admit it, I was hormone driven, but I’m no lecherous bastard! Happy now?
And after that… well, like I mentioned before, I’m incapable to turn such a pretty person as Sorcerer away. I must confess that my brains were located below the beltline at that time.
Now things are totally different. I care about Sorcerer’s well-being and happiness more than about my own life. I am plagued by pricks of conscience for ever taking him up on his offer, for ever so much as getting near him. He is crazy and I’m usually not one to take advantage of the weaknesses of people I care about, in the contrary to my team mates.
I don’t want Sorcerer to be hurt. And yet it seems as if whatever I do I do the wrong thing. If I turn him away I’ll maybe push him over the last boundary and if I don’t I might just as well…
The god of death thinks that I don’t notice.
He thinks I am too mad to notice and draw conclusions.
But I do notice the way he looks at me in this longing, pained way, the way he sighs as if he carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders.
I don’t want to hurt him.
Thanatos is the only one around here who treats me like a human being instead of like a dangerous animal – which I am, I realize that myself – or like an object. I can’t remember that someone before was ever as kind to me. He cares for me and looks after me, he helps me and comforts me. He makes me feel human for the first time in my life. For that I’ll owe him for all eternity.
I just wish that I wouldn’t bring him so much pain. He is happy when he’s with his mates, girlfriends and even with Hypnos who hurts him also so much. He can never feel untainted happiness with me. There is always a but, always pricks of conscience, always this heavy burden no one but him demands him to carry.
You wouldn’t have thought that I would be sane enough to think so many clear thoughts, did you? You thought I would be spending all my day in my magic room brewing potions and all my nights dancing naked around trees, didn’t you?
I am mental to the extreme. This is a privilege.
What, you ask?
Well, of course that I am aware of my condition. There are very few lunatics who are actually aware of the state their mind are in. And it’s also a privilege to be insane. Only in insanity you can find complete lucidity. For us madmen the many petty worries you bother yourself with are meaningless, we have the time to focus on really important things. Like seeing into people’s souls.
Or maybe that is my special power? I don’t know. Eternity says I am a sorcerer and a seer, that I both possess both the visions and a very rare kind of divination – I can see read people as easily as my team books. I wouldn’t know the answer. I can’t remember the time when I was sane, perhaps I was born this way.
Neither do I know nor do I care.
Sane people would worry themselves much about these things.
I worry about different things.
For example, there are the voices in my head, the nicer ones and the nasty ones, who are always taunting me. But even these have their usage, these voices are like a good friend or maybe an invisible counsellors, they are constantly with me and give me advices.
Hm, I wonder why I have never suggested we paint or decorate the room? The white walls and the sparse furnishing are annoyingly blank today. I wonder if they’re mocking me? I hope not. Inanimate objects usually don’t like me all that much. And since Eternity won’t get another safe house with nicer walls because they’re mocking me I can’t even get away from them.
What was I even talking about, what do I want to say to the voices? I don’t know, everything is a blur, I am lost in the maze that is my mind, without an entry or an exit in my reach and I don’t even know if they exist. Everything is spinning around me, spinning too fast and too slow at the same time, spinning out of control.
But I know what this means, another precious lucid moment is about to be over…
The black-white-every colour of the spectrum swirl/void in my mind is expanding and tugging more violently at the remains of my sanity, I can’t fight it any longer, like so often I’m loosing myself in the state of mind that is utter insanity…
The past three weeks Sorcerer has been in one of his phases.
I mean one of the phases when he is totally and utterly crazy and acting like it.
You see, there are lucid times – or as lucid as one poster boy for lunatics can ever get – when you could almost believe that he’s sane. When Sorcerer is in a really good mood nobody who doesn’t knows will notice his insanity, you can talk with him like with an ordinary person and apart from occasional moments he behaves normal.
But there are other times when Sorcerer should be by all means strapped up in a straightjacket, locked into a high-security padded isolation cell drugged with enough sedatives to knock an elephant out cold.
I fear I must say that the last weeks have one of his worst phases of the time I know him. There were only maybe two, three times when he’s as bad as this.
22 days of insanity.
22 days of the whole team’s nerves being taxed to the brink of snapping. It’s always a great strain when he’s behaving like the madman he is.
On good bad phases he’s only dancing around the apartment giggling insanely, locks himself into his magic room for days on end to brew potions and experiment with spells, refuses to eat or drink because the food is evil, keeps us awake with singing all night to the moon, talks to walls and objects, with his voices. That may sound funny to you, but when you have such a guy as roommate…
When he’s seriously off his rocker he’s being in a nutshell a pain in the ass. He curses everything that moves and leaves from our apartment only shambles, burns houses down and wreaks havoc in whole cities, it’s impossible to get through to him, he hurts himself to the point of endangering his life, he shouts himself hoarse, he refuses to let us dampen his powers and if we try it against his will he just disappears to the other end of the world and most of the time we fail in trying to catch him. But we only have to wait a couple of days, then we merely have to follow the trail of destruction…
It hurts me to see him like this. He’s too crazy in the bad phases to realize what he’s doing to himself and others, but I know. And it hurts me to see him hurting himself.
I wonder when this phase will be over?
I hope it’s soon, I can’t take much more of this before I become as insane as Sorcerer. I want this to be over finally, I want him to be again the lover of mine I know and care about, not this scary, inhumane, twisted monster he turns into every so often.
This is driving me crazy. Sorcerer always gives me headaches, but it’s worst when he is like this. For the others his state is merely an annoyance, but for me it’s torture…
…to see him like this, it breaks my heart…
A knock on the door jostles me out of my gloomy thoughts. Probably it’s just Hypnos who wants me to talk Eternity into letting him go away on a killing spree, or Eternity is here to complain about me not having finished my share of the research work for our next mission yet. It can’t possibly be Sorcerer, he has locked himself into his magic room for four days now, even sleeps there as far as I know.
“Leave me alone!”, I bellow angrily.
The door is opened nonetheless.
To my great bafflement the one who enters is neither Eternity nor Hypnos. It is Sorcerer. Sorcerer being wrapped in a black cloak and looking as if he’d just crawled out of a rat hole. His hair although clean is tousled and hangs into his face, he smells of smoke and steam, like always when he comes out after days of brewing potions over the fire. He lingers in the doorframe unsure of himself, something you don’t get to see often. “Hi Thanatos”, he greets self-conscious.
“Sorcerer”, I greet him cautiously. I want to know first with whom I’m talking here.
“Thanatos, I’m sorry for the way I treated you and the guys in the last few weeks. I was a bloody git and I don’t blame you if you’re angry with me – I know for sure that Eternity will be - I just want you to know that I didn’t meant any of the things I said and did.”
“Hey look, it’s no big deal. You are always like this when you have your phases and as long as I know that it’s only your insanity that’s talking I can deal.”
“Really? Well, then I guess…” Instead of finishing the sentence Sorcerer locks the door behind him and crawls with catlike elegance onto my bed. He shrugs out of the cloak, wearing underneath only a loose tunic and tugging on my pyjama shirt.
But this is not how things should be. You can’t solve problems in your relationship with sex. Not that the sex with him is bad, not at all, but sex can’t solve our problems, for Sorcerer and me it’s merely a way to postpone the inevitable and uncomfortable conversations we’ll have to have sometime.
I want to know what he really thinks, why he’s really with me, but Sorcerer doesn’t wants to talk about anything. He never does and never will as I’ve come to understand. Under normal circumstances I could be arguing with my conscience that he’s just too crazy, but this is one of his extraordinarily lucid moments.
Sorcerer curls up in my lap like a little kitten and looks up at me with wide eyes, runs a hand through my hair. “Come on, Thanatos, let’s not waste what precious little time we have with worrying ourselves sick. I don’t know how long I can keep the insanity at bay, maybe already in a moment I’ll be lost again fully in the insanity as I was for the past weeks, we can’t afford to be worried. And besides, you are the only one who can help me to keep away from the void. You only have to be in the same room, then I can distinguish what is happening in the outside world and what is only in my mind, but if you aren’t around to help me the lines blur until everything is one big confusing mess. I don’t want to return to those place yet, I don’t want the other one to be in control again so soon.”
I don’t know how to answer to that. Sorcerer always baffles me, he always knows what moves me and how to disperse my worries. That’s his greatest gift and his worst curse…
Sometimes I find myself wishing that Sorcerer had been born without super powers. Then he would be now sane because only his powers have driven him into insanity – with his fragile heart he wasn’t able to handle the pain of others, wasn’t able to master the magic inside himself when it challenged him. but if he didn’t possessed his powers then he wouldn’t be the same person that he is now, I would’ve never met him. No, that’s not true, he didn’t had to be without his powers. He could handle his gifts/curses without Eternity always messing with his mind. Then he could be treated and even though never healed he would be able to live a life worthwhile.
“We should go to sleep. There is a hit tomorrow”, I remind him. Eternity wouldn’t be happy if we fall asleep when we should be killing our targets.
Sorcerer’s face darkens, his eyes droop and he looks down at his shoes. “Do I have to come along? I don’t want to kill people just yet, I’m afraid it will take from me what little lucidity I have just regained. I don’t care about being insane in itself, but I do like to be myself.” A snort, “oh well, at least I am aware of the state my mind is in, most madmen aren’t granted that privilege.”
“I fear Eternity won’t allow you to stay behind. But I’ll ask him for you. Whatever, have you sung yet your moon song?” No matter how much I care for him and how beautiful his singing voice is I don’t want him to keep me awake all night with his concert. Besides, it hurts to listen to Sorcerer’s voice. It doesn’t hurts your ears like when someone sings terribly off-tone, but singing is his only opportunity to express the deep pain he feels.
“The moon doesn’t shows herself tonight, but I can still feel her.”
I watched calmly Sorcerer uncurling from my lap and wandering to my room’s small window, sitting on the windowsill with his arms slung around his drawn legs and his cheek resting on his knees. Wherever he sits he always curls his body around himself. I wish I would have listened in Psychology, then maybe I would understand the deeper meaning of this quirk.
He sings a song in a language I don’t understand, but it sounds a bit like Babylonian or maybe ancient Greek? I’m not sure, I was never good with foreign languages – or anything related to school and studying. I ever only learned two languages, but at least I speak these fluently. My native tongue American English and German, my strange new home’s language. Inevitably I’d to study it seeing as I’m living in Germany since my 14th birthday, and I’m now 19 years old.
That reminds me, I have to write my parents soon and tell them to send my papers, until they’ll have responded it’s time to apply for naturalization. Germany is still ranking first in my very own list of the strangest countries of the world – and yes, I have the right to make such a list as you get a lot around the world being an assassin – but it’s as good a place as any. Integration will neither work in the USA nor here, seeing as I’m a psychic, an assassin and change my identities on a daily basis, there are days when I use up to eight identities in the course of 24 hours.
Sorcerer finishes his song and he crawls back into my lap. I envy him this sure catlike movements. Eternity is always a macho, Hypnos a gentleman villain, Sorcerer a madman with the elegance of a cat and I’m a clutz. Isn’t life unfair? I lay down on the bed and wrap my arms around the beautiful creature snuggled up to me and whisper into his ear, “go to sleep, babe, tomorrow will be a busy day.”
I close my eyes and count silently.
“Thanatos?”
31 seconds. I’m impressed. That’s a new record, commonly Sorcerer doesn’t manages to wait that long. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very quiet, pensive, shy and introverted person, doesn’t speaks unless spoken to - apart from insane ramblings, talks to his voices and objects – has no friends and avoids company whenever he can. But when we are alone, then he comes out of his snail shell and you could almost think that he wants to make up for the silence. If he doesn’t wants to rest then it’s impossible to get rest, my pretty lover just has a head of his own. “Yes, Sorcerer?”
He props up on his arms and gives me a lingering kiss. “It’s too early to sleep and I’m not any at all tired. Hypnos fed me in the last few days so much Fenistil that I got more rest than other people do in a month.”
I chuckle and run a hand affectionately through Sorcerer’s hair. This is my cue… “I love you so much and you have no idea.”
Sorcerer tilts his head to the side with a questioning look on his face. That’s not what people expect when telling the object of their affection that they love them, but it’s better than what I expected – which was that Sorcerer would either laugh at me or be appalled. And not without reason, he doesn’t uses to be comfortable with emotions. “Are you serious, Thanatos? Because if you aren’t, then just tell me and we can forget that this night has ever happened. But if you are…”, he trailed off with a nervous glance at me.
I gather all my courage up and say. “yes, I am.” God, this required even more courage than telling him that I love him, because now I can only await my judgement…
Soft, warm lips are pressed against mine. “I love you too. I wished for so long that I could tell you, but I didn’t knew how you would react, if you would reject me or think the insanity was talking…”
“You have no clue just how adorable you are, Sorcerer”, I tell him with a soft smile.
I can’t remember ever being so happy before!
Sorcerer is entrancing me, fascinating me like no other. There is no one who can compare with the beautiful soul that is right now giving me a shy smile.
A single of his innocent little smiles has me spellbound…
I’m charmed.
The end
Now I’ll admit that’s not my best work, but it’s a start. I’m not very comfortable writing fluff and madmen, two in one was quite a challenge.
Anyway, if you would please write a review you would do me a great favour.
And if you haven’t already, please read A Chess Game To Remember, which deals with Hypnos and Angel.