"The road to Hell is always paved with good intentions, little brother. You should realize that by now," Tanira answers you lightly. She draws the cloth down a little. "Close your eyes."

     "Well, whatever we're going to say, we better think fast," Pres mutters, slouching down again. "Here she comes." Maddie turns, eyes and lips rounding as she spots their sister.

     "You do not have to feel weak. The power to feel strong is in your grasp. It is up to you. You determine your self worth. Being with a man, intimately, emotionally, sexually, does not make you a girl anymore than it makes you a banana."

     The only trouble with world-views is that they tend to narrow one's view on everything. And so... goggles off, Preston West. The world's just gotten a great deal more interesting...

     He glances to you and then to the dog. "Intelligence is a curse. But you have earned a right to know things, Loki. So - go ahead and ask."

     Maddie shoots Balthazar a look that wavers somewhere between you didn't tell me! and you're a WHAT?. She blushes as the applause and murmur both move around the room with their rhubarbing rumble, and she hastily - very hastily - takes a drink. A large one.

     Loki slides back, dragging his foot away. "Sure." And on tonight's episode of Seventeen Synonyms For Yes... He stands up, momentarily shaky for reasons that have nothing to do with general ability to walk.

     "Well, that presumes you really are driving, and that changing stations isn't better done by the person who isn't supposed to be keeping his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel," Gwilym answers promptly. "No man's an island, Loki, no man's son."

     "You have finally learned that it does no good to argue with me," Agapios grins. "I never thought I would see this day come." When he says it, however, it has two meanings of a two-fold depth. His smile turns from teasing to fond to loving in a manner of moment.

     He knows your street so well. He has walked it twenty times or more by now, leaving you gifts in your mailbox and the occasional drawing on the sidewalk. When he approaches it, Balthazar slows the Rover. His fingers lightly brush the palm of your hand as turn signals flash and he pulls over to the sidewalk.

     Hope for the best, and the best is usually revealed. Fear the worst, and the worst always shows itself.

     "Hey. Get in before the nice police officer changes his mind. Welcome back to hell."

     "Once upon a time..."

     "I am glad we talked. We will continue to talk, oes?" And now he is the one with a hand on Bran's shoulder. "I am sorry, Bran, for the exile. It was wrong of me." He lightly pats Bran's shoulders and turns, leaving a stunned Bran in his wake.

     "I had no idea that they were," he frowns deeply, "... set against us. I do not like being treated as a criminal. What have I done but give my life for their kingdom?"

     For a week or more, as time in the empire is kept, Balthazar had been in a constant state of Behind and constantly running. A band on the run, he fancied himself, slipping from realm to realm in between gigs and rehearsals, phone calls to a girl, thinking about the girl, and at some point trying to find time to eat and to sleep.

     "...I had not realized... how much I had really missed him. I would acknowledge it, as one does with the passing of time."

     "I have never closed my door to you. It has always remained politely ajar," Iowerth notes. He speaks his own truth. "You're my brother. It isn't so much a door as it is a curtain."

     "I ... should let you return to His Majesty," Agapios repeats, a small smile or recognition following. "No doubt you have other matters to attend to today, other than swimming in the memories of ... old currents..."

     It has been a hell of a three-day night. Three dog night? Whatever it was. Gwilym stirs, body as close to entirely limp as it is possible.

     ... You are staring... uncertain... wary and wise...

     A hand comes up, tugs lightly at your hair, and she sighs, going quiet. Love is a son of a bitch. Remind me, if I ever run into that fat diapered freak that's Cupid, to kick him in the balls...

     "...I can't go on pretending to be Saint Peter to make all of you love me, or forgive me, or need me. I'm collapsing under the strain of it..."

     "You have no idea how brightly you shine. How ...tempting your energy is. How to tame it, for an instant, is one of my greatest pleasures and delights. You are like holding lighting. Like putting one's head in the tiger's mouth."

     A moment's pause is all there is. I'm not trying to make you feel guilty. I understand your part of the argument. I can understand his regret. I ...appreciate it more... what he was going through, or I imagine he was going through, when we were young.

     Outside on the docks, he pauses to take a look around. One never knows what the future will hold. He never once thought it would ever bring him here, or that he would ever have fought trolls and ogres on land in the company of Tiernan of the Winter Diamonds.

     "...In either case, we should take our fates into our hands, make our choice, and deal with it. His hatred is not an inevitability."

     "Ask me again," Iowerth says quietly. "This time, ask me without your hands in my pants."

     If I'd known that the last time I saw you would be the last time I would hold you, the last time I would be held by you, I would have done so much differently. But if I'd known, I wonder, would I have had the nerve to leave...

     And the feeling continues. One spasm becomes two becomes ten becomes twelve. Gold eyes glance to Edward as he grips his own sire. He cannot speak -- his throat is closed, his ability to voice cut off. It is a Mexican stand-off, ami. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

     Gold gaze is suddenly given to you as he reaches the doorway. He doesn't shove his love at you like a child. It is there, commingled with all the rest, a Pandora's Box of his emotions.

      "I think it is self-fulfilling prophecy," Ian begins in medias res, "...that We," the vampire sort, "...are doomed to destroy any chance of contentment in our damnation. What little fire there is, we snuff. I - I will admit - am very good at such. And I've learned to realize it. I did not expect it to see it today."

     "I guess we call a Toreador we trust." A pause. "The list is short. Girault..." He pauses again, corners of his mouth upturning. "It is a short list indeed when Il Gatto di Firenze floats to the top of it."

     Was he not the one desired? Last year ... not far off in time from this, just after Yule I think. You were longing, bored. Even as you are now. And he arrived like golden fucking dawn, with all his Goodness. And you wanted it.

     Will he still want to speak to me? Do I really want to speak to him, knowing it might not have been him? I don't know what I want...
     Worse than a child in a candy store, and with less reason, isn't she.

     "Meanwhile," Soldekai smiles, "...practically...I ask the Council to remove the lions and any proscriptions. That...will take a bit, I think now." After talking with Yves. He will say what the others cannot...what Blandine cannot. Ignore them. The proof is in our actions. Politic is Nothing.

     But then, there is you. In his flurry, Soldekai pauses to see you and give a smile. "My love is true, Christopher," no matter of yours or how this began. "I believe yours is as well," the soldier talking. And whatever he had planned between you two this day is left in tatters. He has to go to Heaven. Soon, they will all know that he knows, that you know, and that all is clear. They, on the other hand, should know - the Archangel of Brilliance is his own being.

     "Maybe... we have been... because I had to realize it. Sometimes..." his voice goes soft. "...sometimes I have heard it happens that way, Brother Hope. Would it be wrong of me to say I was hoping for something a bit more... dramatic?" Kit tries to laugh, but he cannot. It's not funny.

     "Anyone can change, Christopher. If they can Dream it, they can Wish it, they can Aspire to it." Do you understand what you have shown the Symphony? What last lesson We all had to learn?
     "...even Malakim." Even Lucifer.

     He is quiet for a moment, then you feel a little smile. "It is a good dream." And with it, he will ride from thoughts of captors and guards. From thoughts of leashes and cages and flesh and clay. It is a good dream.

     A moment while strolling, a moment taken for himself. Oh, is that the first sign of falling? Dreamers have felt him, and he has moved among them, but now... just now...
     A moment for Christopher...

     Brilliance has left Venice. Soldekai off on Heavenly errands, those as archangels have -- whatever they are. The sun hasn't been seen in days, and all of the record-breaking snow has turned to rain.

"If you wanted to go to the church I would've taken you there in the morning, Christopher. This cloak and dagger shit isn't going to fly..."

     I have taken the back ways, the maze of small walkways and smaller bridges. Past the smell of bread baking -- truly, the very best definition of 'warmth' -- and the sound of a television set as I move past a cafe. I have come to speak with the ghosts of Monteverdi and Vivaldi. And to listen to the dreams of children. This way... the only way... to find my own...

     ...The lights of candles sparkle in multi-colored glass votives. Surrounding a window overlooking a small canal. The sounds of the Grand Canal are not far off, no. Wafting like the wind through the narrow passages of this old city. This old 14th Century gothic house, now separated out into various flats and spaces for rent, boasts some of the loveliest arched windows in all of the city. They are opened now, to let the breeze flow in.

     "Anything," Soldekai grins. "We return...Sakir..." he has such a hard time calling him by a name, "...and that is it. We have located where he might spend his time," a grin at Jonathan, "...not a hard operation. After that...who knows. Maybe Americas for a bit. Then...we decide what to do about the valley. How's that for a plan?" Soldekai glances around to each of you, waiting to hear suggestions or other ideas. "Put it this way...if there is something in the Valley," he explains, "...then it is better that we find it...instead of the others."

     Essence is what is given. Essence is what pours out of the one collapsing back on the sand, singing today. In sound audible to all ears. In power felt by some more than others -- that is the nature of this song. It continues, with its call and answer to Allah in a tongue that is of no tongue but understood in all nations.

     Steps that were lost when he was arrested in India were retaken and followed until reaching this village of the fountain and the many caves. It is this... womb of the world. The Mesopotamian basin. He has returned to where it once all began.

     Blandine sits back, the dust shifting around his form. "You will not feel so grateful," he says softly, the flickers of brows rising and falling, as if some great joke is soon to be revealed, "...when you Understand."

     Soldekai, Aceh must wait. When the fire speaks, you know it is Michael. And the jungle goes suddenly silent. Every 'friend' that thought to advance now clings to its spot of God's Earth. There will be no movement now. No more movement tonight.

     There's no escape. In a thousand guises, I insinuate myself into a thousand copulations. Dawn into dusk, dusk into dawn. Bed to bed, nation to nation. I forget by not having time to remember. But what happens when the solace becomes so used that it's hollow. Even the solace becomes part of the act. The endless fucking act...

     "All the information's in that there card," she informs Erik, Jared, and Dei in a tone which for her, is amiable to the point of mellowness. "I'm a reporter, I can ask you set questions if you like, or I can make it up as we go, or you can tell me to go get stuffed." Her own accent is London punk, with a hint of something a bit better educated creeping through underneath. "I'm Drancy."

     "I will have what you are having. You look very good, doing very well. You are... beautiful and strong and in the fullness of your Word. I would be proud of you, Julian, except that we are both damned. It is hard to be proud of that..."

     He cannot hear the gunfire. The tank is far too loud. It rumbles as it halts again, sand scattering as gears are put into neutral. As soon as Kit has it halted and settled, he stands up...his head popping out of the tank. And then his two arms raised, angelic leaving his lips. "If you can get the Chamberlain out, I can blow it up you know..."

     God, though I am a grievous sinner, spare me from that fate...

     "And what exactly..." comes the voice at the other end, relaxed and teasing, "...was I supposed to think of that small piece of footage you sent me? Oh, I'm sorry, it was not footage..." Ian purrs, rather amused at it all.

     William frowns, confused. Aching. "You acted in passion they all should have expected, but I am missing the fucking point, Ian. Should I not do this and think of you? When can I go a day without thinking of you. Goddamn it, if I didn't love you I wouldn't think of you. What the hell do you want?"