CHAPTER FIVE

The barren, dim room in which the Emperor had returned to consciousness had been misleading. He’d assumed it to be his new quarters in the manor, but it was, in fact, the examination room reserved for the Worldlord’s alien pets, which were sequestered beneath the harem garden in an underground complex that presumably also served the servants and maintenance crews. When next he woke, it was to the ungentle prodding of the same male who’d done his cursory health check, who clipped a leash—a leash—to his collar and dragged him by it to a wire door that only reached his hip. Six such doors were studded into the wall, and as he stared, a sleepy Harat-Shar looked out hers and then turned away again.

“In,” the male said, and shoved him. Stumbling, he fell to one knee and thought about resisting, except that it was too hard to think through the fog in his head. The tube before him was no worse than the ones Chatcaavan fighter pilots used as sleeping bunks on small carriers. He had slept in such bunks while working his way up the ranks of the military.

Those bunks didn’t have wire doors, though.

The second shove almost drove him in face-first, but if he went in face-first he’d never succeed in turning again. The Emperor hastened around and wiggled into the tube, the male shut the door... and locked it.

That electronic buzz... how many times had he heard it, used it on his own lockers on ships? On his valuables, what few he’d had.

And then they left.

“It’ll get better.”

The Harat-Shar, whom he could no longer see. But the voice was coming from the kennel above him, where he’d glimpsed her face.

What to say? What could possibly be said? He’d been penned up like an object, without even enough space to lift a wing. If he’d had a wing. And what good would it be to Change here, trapped like this? He would have to wait for the right opportunity. And he would have to seize that opportunity, because he couldn’t allow himself to be imprisoned here, in this shape, in this cage. He could not win back his Empire from the kennel of a slave.

“I know you don’t want to talk yet,” the Harat-Shar continued. “That’s okay. We all went through what you’re going through, we understand. But when you’re ready to talk, my name’s Dominika. The rest of us are Andrea, who’s the human, Emlyn the Hinichi, and Simone... you probably won’t see Simone, she never comes down anymore. But she’s a calico Karaka’An, in case she does. Andrea and Emlyn are usually out during the day. I’m usually out during the evenings. Simone... you’ll see when you see.”

As if he cared to learn their names. As if he was going to be here long enough to know their schedules.

“Anyway, we’re here for you. When you’re ready.” A rustle, as if the alien was turning onto a different side. In a futile attempt to become more comfortable, maybe.

He would never be ready. And he wasn’t going to sleep. He had plans to make. Preparations...

The Emperor woke, groggy and disoriented and tired of both states. The buzz of the lock opening should have alerted him but it hadn’t, and it was one of his captors grabbing him by the hair and giving him a rough shake that brought him conscious.

“Come,” said the male. Exasperated, to someone behind him, “The stage where they don’t know enough of the language to be able to obey their betters is irritating.”

“Hopefully it won’t last as long with this one as it did with the last one,” said the other male.

Another shake. “Now.”

“Her name is Dainty. She’s been told that.”

“Is it female?”

“Oh, no, male. I forget. It’s the build and the limbs, they confuse me.”

“Dainty, come.”

He would obey because it would get him out of the kennel... and because the fist in his hair made his scalp throb so badly his eyes were watering. Infuriating, that this weakness should show where they would see it. Why had the Ambassador not revealed how tender humanoid skin was? How had the Emperor not noticed during their tussles when he’d been in Eldritch shape?

“There, they learn.” The first male clipped the leash back on. “Let’s go prepare it for service.”

“Her?” the second male said, bemused.

“Definitely not male, no matter what’s between its legs, or it wouldn’t have gotten caught.”

“At least it tried to run.”

The first male snorted. “Prey always runs.”

And he had... hadn’t he. But he’d had no choice. To live to see his Empire saved... the Emperor thought of the Admiral-Offense and his body tightened in pain. The Admiral-Offense had been a friend. He could say that now, having been taught to admit to such feelings by the Ambassador. A friend. And now, almost certainly, dead covering the Emperor’s retreat. So that he could fall into despair in the slave harem of an enemy? No.

There would be an opportunity soon to escape. He could slide into the wilderness, lose himself there, make better plans. He’d thought being here where he could hide in plain sight was his best chance of success, but he knew better now. He couldn’t survive long mewed like this. His borrowed human skin was constricting around him.

The two males led him from the kennels and into the room where he’d been sluiced off the first time. They washed him again, ignoring him to chat about inconsequentials he found impossible to concentrate on because cold water hurt, and his head throbbed so insistently he closed his eyes to keep his vision from adding to the disorientation. They must have noticed, though, because they chained him on his toes and returned to their work with humiliating thoroughness. They dried him with towels—“interesting how the skin pinks from friction, the other’s skin color made it less noticeable”—and then brought him to a second room, which was far more ominous for its workbench and soft chairs.

“Now,” the second male said. “Finally we can work. What do you think?”

“I think the coloring on this one is dramatic, like that furred one who’s falling apart.” The first studied the Emperor, then reached and took him by the chin, turning his face from side to side. Scowling, he also pressed his fingers alongside the Emperor’s squinting eyes and forced the eyelids apart. “Not sure why the light’s bothering it so much. Didn’t the physician say it was fine?”

“A head injury, but not serious. The symptoms are supposed to recede at some point. At least if they’re anything like our head injuries.”

The first sighed. “Well, we’ll make do. It’ll be good once it can open its eyes completely. The color is marvelous. Almost as good as a Chatcaavan’s.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think—obviously—we emphasize the contrast of the mane against the hide.” The first male pinched the Emperor’s skin at the shoulder. “Look at that. Like a morning cloud, pale and bright. Every new mark someone leaves on it will show beautifully, and the old ones fade nicely. I hate having to take care of this many pets, but if we’re going to end up with a new one this is an ideal addition.”

“Contrast, then,” the second said. “Black and white ornaments?”

“Piercings,” the first said, pleased. “Black metal. Set out the needle. And let’s go with a taller collar, it’s got the neck for it.” Squinting, it added, “I’m not sure what to do with the genitals.”

“We could castrate it.”

The Emperor didn’t twitch only because he’d been following the conversation as if it was being translated several heartbeats after issuing from its speakers’ lips. That saved him, for the second male said, “You’re tweaking its skin too hard, it’s flinching.”

“Castration is for males who actually might do something untoward with their parts,” the first male said, tapping his nose with a fingertip. “Slaves never manage anything that aggressive. Besides, it looks weak. Surgery might kill it.”

“That would be a pity, given how much everyone wants to use this thing to taunt Manufactory-East. I wouldn’t want to be the one who accidentally kills it.”

The first chuckled. “The Surgeon wouldn’t thank us for that, no. So maybe we’ll just wrap its loins and drape a cloth over them. Something flowing and feminine.” It studied the Emperor. “And paint. We’ll seal it so it stays on for a few weeks.”

“Tattoo?”

“Too much trouble. At least for now. We’ll see what the Worldlord wants to do with it first.”

“All right,” the second said. “Let’s get to work.”

They secured his arms and legs, though he didn’t know if he would have fought them even if they hadn’t. The vagueness in his head was worse, and the light made the throbbing intensify. He suffered himself to have unguents rubbed into his skin, and his blunt little toenails and fingernails filed to points and painted. They left his hair long but trimmed and coiffed it, and took advantage of his closed eyes to paint their lids and do something to the lashes that made them feel stiff and heavy. And they talked the entire time, of ways they’d painted and decorated other aliens, and how doing so differed from painting and decorating female Chatcaava, and what they’d learned from aliens by studying them immediately after capture and seeing what they did to their own bodies. It was suffocating. He’d had no idea male Chatcaava could talk so much about such trivialities. It was easier to ignore it than it was to force himself to participate in it, even passively, by understanding it.

He was left to that fugue until the first male gathered his lower lip between two fingers, pinching it, and then thrust a needle through it. He jerked away, or tried, but the second male was holding his head.

“It’s awake now,” the second observed cheerily.

“And probably won’t appreciate how much we’re improving its appearance,” the first said. “Pass me the first ring.”

The first?

“Won’t need a collar leash to make this one obedient after this,” the first said, moving to the first nipple. “Absurdly sensitive, even for a freak.”

The pain was bad, but not as bad as the memories that accompanied those insistent pinches: confused flashes of loving hands and kisses exchanged in similar shapes, and the Ambassador’s wicked amusement, and apologies tendered with gentle fingertips. The Emperor did not want these males to go where the Ambassador had gone before and overwrite those memories with their clinical attentions. And yet, implacably, they did, and he suffered.

You told me to suffer the pain of another was far worse than to suffer your own, he thought to the memory of that face. You said nothing to me of the trauma of being violated in your mind, where you should be sovereign.

They stopped after his navel, not because he was shivering and panting, but because they were interrupted by the male from his first day here, the one who’d served as loyal second to the one who’d decided to keep the ‘runaway’ slave. The Steward, he remembered.

“So, this is where you’ve hidden the new slave?” The Steward leaned forward, scrutinizing him. “You’ve done a remarkable job on her. Him.”

“It, we’ve decided,” the second male said. “It makes it easier than remembering.”

“Very striking,” the Steward said, approving. “Very stark, the way you’ve accessorized it. The Worldlord will be pleased.”

“Thank you,” the first male said, satisfied.

“Did you beat it, though? It looks sick.”

“It might be hungry,” the second male offered. “Or traumatized. The freaks always seem to suffer disorientation and denial after being captured.”

“Make sure you feed it, then,” the Steward said. “Can you get it to open its eyes?”

The first male tapped the Emperor under the chin with a crooked finger. “Up face, Dainty. Do you understand? Look at me.”

He pretended ignorance, succeeded until the male found one of the nipple rings and twisted. Then he jerked, eyes widening.

“Ah!” the Steward said. “So it is how I remembered. The eyes!”

“Is there something special about them?” the second male asked. “Other than their color, which is remarkable for a freak.”

“That’s the thing,” the Steward said. “There is a bulletin out about a specific race of freaks, and I think this may be one of them. They are supposed to be very thin, white as salt, and have vivid eye colors.”

The Emperor could not help but look at the Steward then.

“This alien is definitely pale, thin, and bright-eyed,” the second male observed.

“Perhaps this is one of those aliens, then,” the Steward said. “That would be quite a coup. The Emperor himself seeks them as pets, though he wants a particular one, the one that was formerly Kauvauc’s bedtoy.”

Like being struck. His legs shivered, became uncertain beneath him. Had they… had they used his name?

“Do you think Manufactory-East was seeking his very own then, to show his status?” the second male asked, interested.

“They are supposedly very rare aliens,” the Steward said. “Not numerous, and few travel. I think the Worldlord would very much enjoy showing this new pet to Manufactory-East to emphasize what he’s lost. He should be home later this evening.”

“Where shall we put it when we’re done here?” the first male asked.

“Leave it in the annex with the others. It can wait there until someone calls for it.” The Steward considered the Emperor a moment longer. “They say that these aliens can feel feelings through their skins.”

The second male snorted. “Sounds like the sort of thing people say about freaks to make them sound more exotic.”

“Wouldn’t it be interesting if it was true, though?” the first male mused.

“It would be a nuisance, is what it would be,” said the second male.

The Steward chuckled. “I’m with the Assistant Artificer.” He ran a finger along the edge of the Emperor’s jaw. “Very well done. Have him ready by the evening.”

“Long before then, Steward.”

And then the other male left, before the Emperor could tell him that he was no Eldritch. That Eldritch didn’t have dark hair, that they could have eyes dark as uncut sapphires, that they were much taller and they did in fact feel through their skins. That no Eldritch was here to receive the Emperor’s outrage that someone had remembered his name… that someone had used it to refer to him. That the Usurper that sat his throne dared to strip him of his title and spread the naked memory of his name until even such nobodies as the males who decorated harem pets could use it to refer to him.

I am the Emperor!

“Come along, Dainty,” the first male said, rising. “We’re done here, and you must await your masters’ pleasure.”

The annex was on the floor above them, but still underground. There was at least some sunlight, gliding down on the ramp that led up to the ground floor, but it was otherwise a utilitarian room, with pillows to kneel or lie on, hooks on the walls sufficient for leashes, and nothing else. The male left him bound there, and with nothing to do he sat with his back to the wall. He tried putting his knees against his chest, but the piercings hurt. Cross-legged was the best of what was left to him, if he wanted to avoid kneeling; the leash was too short for him to lie down.

Once upon a time he had found time without distraction useful. He could use it to organize his options, sort through deployments of distant fleets, consider the economic and political currents that had required such ardent management.

This, though, was not time without distraction. It was time with nothing to do. And even if he’d had anything to do, he couldn’t imagine pushing past the thickness in his head to grasp it. That had to be an injury; hadn’t the human said so? A concussion? Probably from the flight down to the planet—ejection sometimes caused soft tissue injuries, though he wasn’t sure if such a head injury counted. Maybe he’d acquired it on ship during the fighting. He didn’t remember how one recovered from concussions. Rest, perhaps. Was what he was doing now resting? He pulled against the leash, swallowed as the collar gagged him. Human necks were so tender. Why had the Ambassador not warned him?

His hands on his knees were trembling. He pressed the palms down so that he need not notice.

There was no marking time without windows. It was long enough that he was grateful when someone finally arrived and unhooked him from the wall. As he followed, he tried to attend to the layout of his prison. Going up the ramp took him to the gated garden where he’d found Andrea; a large area, lying in the shadow of a raised deck that probably held the harem. He remembered manors like these. Hunting estates. That was how he’d gotten over the wall: it was intended to keep the wildlife in it from escaping, not to deny people entering it... because Chatcaava would be flying overhead, seeking prey to harry, and it wouldn’t do to have any force field repel their dives. This part of the garden, then, was the safe zone, probably intended for females to use. And aliens, if Andrea and her Hinichi friend had been in it. Would he too be given freedom of the garden? How could he earn it?

No, that wasn’t the question. Could he bear to earn it, maybe.

He was led into one of the towers, which inevitably meant he was destined for a room with a male in it. And an important one, presumably, because they climbed a great many stairs to reach the suite where he was, once again, leashed, this time to a hook on the floor, near the wall. There were few such hooks in the palace, perhaps because no one bothered to leash any of the slaves or females there. They knew there was no escape.

This was an opulent room, with a broad balcony sweeping outward for guests to light on. The afternoon was late, from the cast of the sunlight, and there was a breeze the Emperor would ordinarily have found pleasing. On human skin, it was too cold. His flesh pebbled in a way he recalled more favorably from caresses—here it just hurt, especially around the new piercings.

There were voices talking through the door. He recognized them both: the Steward and the male who’d been with him in the garden. They came through that door, still talking, and ignored him as they poured brandy from the sideboard and finished their conversation. Only then did the first male consider the Emperor. “Nice work they did there.”

“I think so,” the Steward said. “But I don’t know about the creature’s temper.”

“You think it’s rabid?”

“I think it’s either dumb, or violent. Why else the escape attempt?”

The first male snorted. “It looks neither to me. Well, dumb perhaps. The Physician did clear it for use, didn’t he?”

“No thinking or hard exertion for a few days.”

“And nothing in a slave’s life requires either,” the first male said. “Still. Very pretty. Do you really think it’s one of the Emperor’s aliens?”

“It certainly looks like one.”

“Didn’t all the pictures have white hair as well as white skin?”

“Hair can be dyed.”

That made the first male laugh. “Maybe it’s smarter than it looks if it’s trying to make itself look less like one of the more popular freaks.”

“But where would it find dye?” the Steward said.

A grin spread over the maw of the first. “Maybe it has some fire after all. Leave it with me... I’ll make sure it’s suitable for the Worldlord’s use. If it’s dumb, violent, or neither, I’ll know by the end of the night.”

“Truly, the sacrifices you make for the Worldlord are without end,” the Steward said dryly.

“We are good allies, I like to think,” the first male said. “And a good ally is always prepared to make sacrifices for the good of the alliance.”

The Steward snorted. “I’ll send dinner up later.”

“Thank you.”

Left to himself, the male did not drag the Emperor, off, however. He sat on a chair with his glass of liquor and watched the sunset, every limb lax. Ordinarily the Emperor would have found his wings lacking in elegance, but after over a day without any of his own all he was conscious of was a wan avarice. He was still staring at the light on those vanes when the male rose and unclipped his leash, tugging him roughly after.

There was a door leading to the second chamber of the suite, where the bed was. It too had another balcony large enough to receive visitors, and like the first it was open to the breeze and the evening gloaming. The Emperor saw the lights glowing in the distant city in the moment before he was flung against the bed’s edge. The impact against the new piercing on his navel disordered his thoughts with the lance of unexpected pain, and then the male gathered him by the waist and rolled him roughly onto the bed.

The Emperor had been expecting... something. Taunting. An attempt to inspire fear or obedience. Scrutiny, at least, some sign that the male wanted something out of the exchange, something psychological. It was a game, after all—the Emperor himself had played it more times than he could remember. Granted, he’d been considered freakish for turning the same intense regard on playthings as well as rivals, but what was the point of engaging with anyone without seeking the satiation of that fundamental curiosity? All encounters had the potential to teach. To satisfy the mind as well as the body. Given such a contest, he could win, even trapped in this humiliating body. He had only to meet the male’s eyes and they could fight.

But the male shoved him onto his stomach, yanked what little cloth concealed him out of the way, and thrust into him.

The spines. He’d known about them, but not how they interacted with humanoid flesh. He didn’t scream only because, he thought, he passed out. Thought, because when he was conscious again he was still under the male, who was moving now, roughly. Had he imagined it? But he hadn’t remembered wetting the pillow. Not tears. Surely not. Maybe he had screamed? Almost as bad as tears.

The pain was bad enough he simply disbelieved it.

The comm request buzz was surely another figment of this fever dream, because it didn’t cause a cessation in his rape. Instead, the male laboring over him said roughly, “Deputy-Apex-East. Yes?”

“Pardon, sir. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“It’s fine. Just exercising myself. What is it?”

“The debris clearing teams want to know if you’d like them to continue. There are still pieces missing, but they’ve scattered fairly far from the site of the original battle. It may not be worth the time to sift them.”

One hand pressed on the Emperor’s back, spread fingers digging talons into flesh. “Tell them to get back. We have enough to do without engaging in scutwork at heliopause just to appease Second’s paranoia. We destroyed the target. We don’t need to bring him every scrap of insulation and wire just to prove it’s all been accounted for.”

“I’ll tell them to prepare a report for the Emperor, then. Will you be returning soon? Things are crowding up and it’s only going to get worse as the rest of the fleet musters. There are going to be arguments once everyone starts shifting around.”

“It’ll be good for them to take a few snaps at one another. It’ll keep them off our backs. There’s a situation brewing here that I need to take care of personally. I trust you can handle things for a few days?”

A snort.

“I thought so.” The male’s hand twitched on the Emperor’s back, and with a shudder he spent and pulled himself free. Shoving the Emperor aside, the male continued, “Any other trouble?”

“No. Everyone’s eager to be gone, though. If there are delays, I anticipate the usual problems that accompany too many males in too small a space with too little to do.”

“There are always delays,” the male said. “But I don’t think Second will let any mold grow under his tail. The Navy’s been preparing for this too long. I’ll tell you when I’m on my way back.”

“As you say, sir. We’ll be here.”

“I know it. And well done.”

“Thank you, sir. Enjoy your evening.”

The comm buzzed its closed channel, leaving the male to sigh. “I’d enjoy it more with someone with a little more fight.” He pressed a foot against the Emperor’s hip. “I don’t even know if this thing is conscious. And rather a lot more blood than I thought. Maybe there’s a reason Manufactory-East let you escape, mm?” A shift under the Emperor as the male repositioned himself again.

Would he ever have raped a comatose slave more than once? Had he? The Emperor couldn’t remember.

It hurt more the second time.

He didn’t even object to the use of his mouth, because by the time the male got to it, he was clinging to consciousness for no reason he could divine, only that the sight of the stars through the open balcony was more precious than breath.

The male finished. At some point. It felt interminable. It felt impossible that it should be over, as well, but somehow, he thought, it was. No more pressure on too-thin skin, no more cruel friction, no more degradation. But it was over, and the Emperor knew it only because the breeze continued to play over his tacky skin but the male was gone.

He’d left. Completely. Without so much as leashing the Emperor to anything to keep him in place, and why would he? The Emperor was in the body of a wingless slave who’d shown himself to be so weak he couldn’t even fight his own violation.

The male had left him. In a room. With a window.

His breath soughed in and out of a throat gone raw and tight. The sight of the dark sky was powerfully affecting, so much so that it blew all the thoughts from his clogged head. The mortification, the physical suffering, the shame, the memories of touches and pressures he hadn’t fought, or had been unable to fight, all of it eroded and left him empty.

And then he lunged for the edge of the bed, falling over it, tangled in the sheets. Scrabbling for the balcony he gained it and reached for the shapechange. To be free, at last, at last to be shed of all this, to leave it behind, to be the Emperor again—in hiding, but once again possessed of agency and autonomy! To unfurl wings, to feel the air in streaming columns beneath them, bearing him up! To have a real face again, and horns, and a hide hard enough to shrug off casual swipes of talon and blade....

Change, he thought as he lunged for the egress, and only the blanket still furled around his ankle saved his life because nothing happened.

On the lip of the balcony, staring down six stories, the Emperor found himself still human. He forced himself upright and reached again for the Change, for the sweeping ecstasy that was the Chatcaavan birthright. Nothing. The fog in his mind interrupted every effort at concentration, and yet he could sense the revelation just beyond his grasp. It was there. He knew it was there. He could taste his true body like yearning in his mouth, in every cell of his body, in his open palms as he strained toward it. Change! A demand. Change change now change!

His prison of flesh remained obdurate. He rolled onto his savaged back and howled his denial. No matter how he struggled, his birth shape remained elusive, melting out from beneath him every time he almost had it, and he kept trying and trying, and still this cage, this sleeve of useless weakness trammeled him.

He was still there on the balcony, fighting to become himself, when the males who’d decorated him arrived and dragged him back from the ledge.

“How’d it end up outside?” the second male asked, perplexed.

“No idea. I doubt Deputy-East would have been careless.”

“Maybe it was trying to fling itself over the edge?”

The first male snorted. “It would have found out the hard way that life is short.” He leashed the Emperor. “Looks like the Deputy made good use of it, at least, so we don’t want it making any grand suicidal attempts. We’ll make sure it’s properly tied down in the future.”

The words penetrated then, through ears that remained stubbornly human. He was still here. He was still lodged in this flightless ruin. He’d been violated—casually, and during a comm call—and found suitable for further use.

They were going to keep him, and he couldn’t escape.

He was trapped.

The Emperor howled and lunged for the nearest of the two males. Even in his madness he knew the futility of the attack, but he could no longer hold back. The hand that smashed his face—he welcomed the pain. He didn’t care that he was damaging himself more than them with his struggles. They had to batter him to reduce him to a state where he could be hauled after them on his hands and knees, and even then they had to halt at intervals when he recouped his energy for another rush. He could not escape, but some part of him wanted to force them to put him down, like a diseased animal. No one kept a dangerous alien as a pet. No one cared enough to expend the energy required to tame them. He would be vicious, and they would kill him, and all this would be over.

He could not live wingless and collared and abased. He could not exist like this. He would force them to end it.

“Maybe we should let Deputy-East rape our slaves more often,” the second male commented to the first as they passed through the night-darkened garden and into the slave annex underground.

“Feisty is much better than catatonic,” the first male agreed. “The Worldlord will enjoy a fight much better than a limp body.”

“Wash it, you think?”

“You want to chip all that off tomorrow when it’s set?”

“No.”

They were going to wash him. They were treating him like this was normal, as if his writhing and hissing and clawing amused them. They were chaining him up in the room with the drain and stripping him of what few rags of his decorative clothes existed and hosing him down, except this time they were cognizant of him, and satisfied, as if he’d finally done something useful.

He tried to bite them when they dried him off, but they were already ignoring his efforts as interesting trivialities to be compensated for, but not treated as significant.

The kennel… seeing it, he knew he had to die before he went back into it. To allow himself to be shut into it was to admit that he was trapped in this body, in this life, forever. He writhed and clawed and spit and snarled… and they simply lashed his legs together and slid him in.

The wire door lock buzzed. The two males left, still talking.

Silence.

He screamed. He tried to hook his fingers in the wire grid and shake it, and when he couldn’t force his fingers through the holes he balled his hands into fists and beat on the door until the wires cut him and hot droplets of blood spattered his face. And he screamed and screamed until he realized he was sobbing, and then he couldn’t stop.

We do not cry, you understand. We whimper. We writhe. We wail and scream and moan. But we do not leave any evidence of our suffering. We do not weep. I would like to know what makes you cry.

He thought he’d learned. He’d thought, holding the Ambassador’s face cupped in his hands and tasting the Eldritch’s agony during the torture, that he’d understood what it was to weep. But he’d only learned what it was to cry on another’s behalf, and that was noble, was dignified, was made holy by compassion.

This… this ugly, coughing, heaving paroxysm that never seemed to end, with the snot smeared from his nose and the sickness near to vomiting, and the unending self-involved anguish that could take not even the smallest of consolations in having been uttered on someone else’s behalf… this ugly confession of pain past bearing, of weakness…

This… this was crying.

And now he knew.

Now he knew.