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Chapter 21
Rubble was strewn everywhere with people streaming back and forth through the wet remains of the Central Tower. A large man dressed in military garb slinked away from the gathered emergency vehicles and walked over to a spot near the edge of the wreckage..
To one side of the throng of people was one lone figure, half crouching, half sitting on a fallen piece of concrete. The cold wind whipped through his tussled blond hair contemplatively. He did not even look up as the large man approached.
"Still no sign of him Jones," Hank said, swallowing hard. He rested a big paw on Kylan's back, "We'll keep looking. We'll find him."
"Thanks Hank," the other man replied.
"I know that you two were-I mean..."
"How's the clean up and head count coming along?" Kylan asked quickly to Hank's obvious relief.
"Uh, " Hank paused, his eyes darting away. "There's somethin' I gotta ask yah."
"Hank..." Kylan began, looking off at the remains of the building "I-"
"Did you...Did you get hit on the head or somethin'?"
Kylan looked back.
"It's just, uh..." Hank looked away, "You look different. I mean, the face and..." Hank looked back at Kylan and squared his shoulders, "We'll find him Kylan," Hank repeated with a smile before slowly walking back to the waiting group of officials just behind them.
As Kylan sat, with the wind blowing through his hair, he kept replaying those brief moments before everything went white.
"I love you," Wade's silent resolve echoed in his mind over and over again.
"Looks like it's just me, now," he whispered to himself, lowering his gaze to the ground. His eyes were wet and he desperately needed to do something, but was too worn out to help the others.
As he walked slowly through the drenched rubble and disoriented people, he let his fingertips glide slowly over the carnage that had become all too familiar in his life lately.
'Where had it all gone wrong?' he asked himself. What could he have done to avoid this? Kylan couldn't say. He looked back to the crowd of people. Somewhere crying, others were barking orders, while still others were looking around with a startled, relieved, or even awestruck look on their faces. All of them looked alien to him, as if he was another creature entirely-not human.
The fact that this wasn't his home planet weighed heavily on his mind while he kept walking, slowly, through the debris and puddles of water.
Blue?
Kylan stopped and shielded his eyes as a clear, blue light blinded him momentarily. Moving toward the source, he looked again. Hanging from a crumbling piece of wreckage lay Blaine's old blue pendant.
Absently, Kylan reached up to his chest to feel where the pendant had once lay as if to convince himself it wasn't part of a dream. Skirting some wandering people, he made his way to the pendant and bent slowly to pick it up. His heart felt warm and heavy in his chest with all of the things he had lost.
As he reached for the pendant, a thin sliver of white light blossomed out from the air around the stone on which it hung. Startled, Kylan stumbled backwards as the light jumped and twisted in the air above and around the pendant. It quickly grew in both size and intensity to the point where Kylan was forced to look away. As the light receded, he looked back to the pendant and his heart nearly stopped.
He stumbled forward and dropped to his knees with a warm splash in the pooled water in front of Wade's soft, naked body.
"W....Wade," Kylan gasped, reaching forward and scooping up the slim man in his arms.
"..Ugh, Kylan... What?" Wade mumbled.
"Oh god," Kylan breathed, engulfing the other man in his large arms, "Oh god, oh god," he repeated. "I thought I'd lost you!" he said finally, as both men pulled back. The warmth from Wade's body still lingered in his arms while he smiled, even though his cheeks were wet from the happy tears coursing down them.
"Mmm," Wade replied, wincing as he touched his head.
"Are you...?" Kylan asked, leaning forward, "Are you alright?"
After a second's pause while he collected his thoughts, Wade nodded. "Yeah," he said, "I'll be fine I think." He pulled back slightly and looked around, "What happened here?" He paused again. "And why the hell am I naked?"
But Kylan wasn't listening; he absently brushed a hand against Wade's cheek. "Your eyes," he said finally.
"What about them?"
"One of them's the same as his," Kylan said absently.
"Blaine's," Wade replied.
Kylan blinked twice, "You....you know... I mean, knew him?"
Wade's hand moved over the pendant that now rested around his neck, "Not really," he said, as if to himself. "But I think that part of him was with me for a long while."
"What do you mean?"
Wade bent forward and kissed him. "For better or worse, it looks like part of Allan is with you now, too," he said, looking at Kylan's new jaw line for a moment.
Kylan didn't seem to notice or care. "Do you remember what happened...?" Kylan asked
Wade rose slowly to his feet, the mud from the pool of water left a small sheen over his back and down his legs as the liquid slowly dripped off his body. "I..." he shivered involuntarily, blushing at the overexposure.
"Here," Kylan opened his coat and grasping Wade's frame, pulled him into the warm folds of the fabric against him.
Wade tried to smile, "I...I remember parts of it, like it was a dream," he said slowly and haltingly. "I can't believe that Charles was so tortured, that he felt so..." his voice trailed off.
"Hey now," Kylan said, rubbing against Wade's cheek, feeling the stubble bristle against the other man's skin. "There's nothing that we can do about that. It's over."
"I know," Wade replied, "I just wish that I could have done something differently."
Kylan sighed, his whole chest heaved, "I know how you feel. Really, I do...But...I think that the real man was gone a long time ago."
"How's the cleanup coming along?"
"Pretty good," Kylan said, looking back at the crowd milling about like lost sheep. Overhead, the clouds were starting to clear slightly to the wake of the coming dawn. "There were surprisingly few lives lost as a result. But this planet will never be the same again."
"Kylan...?" Wade asked, pressing his face against Kylan's warm chest.
"What's wrong?" Kylan asked, tightening his arms around Wade's small frame.
"At the last there, I could feel something," Wade said. "It was only a fleeting impression though."
Kylan looked down at him as best he could, his breath hot against Wade's neck.
"I....I don't think that this got rid of everything," he said finally. "I think that there were is more of this stuff left out there than just Jameson."
Kylan pulled back far enough and looked at Wade hard in the eye. "One step at a time, Wade."
"I...I know."
Kylan paused before speaking again. "I... I have to know one thing before I worry about more shit out there," he asked, hesitantly.
"Shoot."
"Do you still have something funky with you?"
"Remnants of the infection, you mean?" Wade asked. "The stuff that supposedly made me faster, stronger, and all that?"
Kylan nodded.
"I..." Wade looked away. "To tell you the truth, I really don't know," he said after a moment's pause, before snuggling back against Kylan's warm chest.
Kylan smiled and shook his head. "Either way, you were unbelievable," he said. "What do you say we go celebrate? Just you...and me..." He leaned in forward, his lips slightly parted, but Wade pulled back at the last second.
"Wait...I" he said, "I didn't answer your question from before...I..." his voice trailed off as Kylan's lips made contact.
Wade could feel his legs start to shake against his will.
"I'd say that both of our intentions are clear at this point," Kylan said, after his lips just grazed Wade's cheek. "Wouldn't you agree?"
Wade turned his head and stole a quick but forceful kiss. "Yeah," he said, biting his lip. "I guess so."
Both men shared a smile before Wade all but collapsed against Kylan's chest. It had been a long struggle, but that it might, finally, be over.
If only for a short time.
In the distance, the survivors still surveyed the rubble while repair and emergency crews ran every which way. There was a large crowd of the general public too. Some of the survivors were injured and hobbling around, while others just wanted to look and stare at the carnage.
To the one side, a large man was still trying to search through the rubble-even searching under the smallest of rocks-while in the distance, two very tired men shared a kiss before the one took off his coat for the other. Both men then walked off into the distance together. At the last moment, the darker haired man turned around and hollered back, waving to the large man who was still searching the rubble. The man stopped and started running to catch up, hooting and hollering his happiness into the sky as he stumbled on the nearby rubble. Wade couldn't help but smile as Kylan held him close.
Far away in a remote corner of the universe, near a dying star, a small amount of debris floated remnants of some kind of explosion or battle, perhaps.
A small piece of material, darker in color than the others, floated closer to the cluster than some of the others bits and pieces; actually bumping into a few and tumbling gently away. A few moments after the fleeting contact, a thin tendril fetid black liquid whipped out from the darker chunk and latched onto one of the chunks like some kind of insect claiming its prey. Slowly at first it reeled the piece in as if savouring the conquest, before bringing it back to the main piece with a quick snap of the tendril before slowly and languidly sucking it inside.
************************************************************************ Author's Note:
Again many many thanks to Kane for making this story possible ^_^!
Thanks to everyone who've read this story and (hopefully) enjoyed it. I would love to hear your thoughts,
Until next time,
Cheers everyone,
-Gene
corporeal09@yahoo.com