For Persephone, Love was not an abstract. It was not something open to interpretation; it was a fact, a statement, a certainty beyond 1 and 0s. But it was also subject to decay. It was subject to corruption, time and entropy. Love was a living, breathing thing and like all living, breathing things, it could die.

And so it had.

"It is a new program, my dear." He spoke to her without looking at her, carefully enunciating the words in the accent he affected. "Wait until you see the effects." He spoke to her like she was still part of the game.

As he brought the cup of wine to his lips, Persephone looked away and stopped listening. She had become quite good at ignoring his egotistical babble. The game had been fun at one time, she recalled. They had both enjoyed it immensely; reveling in their superiority, using their knowledge to control those still unaware. They had seduced countless partners with a simple well-written program or series of events designed to toy with their sense of reality. Persephone had loved watching the humans and their ordinary minds trying to understand what was happening to them and she and her beloved Merovingian would laugh, alone together; gods in their marble-tiled Olympus.

But Merovingian had been a different man in more ways than one then, and she, she had been a different woman. She had stopped playing the game when it had stopped being funny, and it had stopped being funny when she had felt envy for the first time. Sitting in the restaurant they had chosen as their new purlieu, Persephone had looked around at the blind, unthinking patrons and she had been jealous. She had been jealous because, though everything around them was false, their love was real.

The rooms in which they sat were a fa�ade, the foods they ate were lines of code, but the affections they formed toward one another, that the Matrix could not create. Understanding it all as she did, Persephone knew that the people they believed themselves to be were not who they were; their tastes and opinions were based upon a reality that didn't exist, but that did not change the waves of emotion she sensed from them. In this fa�ade, in this false reality, they loved one another and Persephone cursed her superiority, cursed her eyes for being open to see the lies. She knew love was a lie and she didn't want it to be.

"Why so silent, my love?" Merovingian leaned to her, touching his lips to her cheek even as he eyed a young woman at the table behind her. "Choosing a new player?"

"No...my love," she answered pointedly. "I will not be playing today."

Irritation flickered across his features just long enough to tell her that her increasing disinterest had not gone unnoticed and she heard a quickly muttered, "Pour lamour de Dieux, femme" before he stood from the table. "You will excuse me, please?" Without waiting for an answer, he strode away.

Factually, she knew she had loved him once. She knew it like she knew the constancy of the hours in this make-believe world, but it had decayed, the decomposition revealing anger, resentment and malice. It would have to be put out of its misery one day. But not today.

Her eyes lingered on an old couple dining together, their frail hands resting atop one another as they shared wan smiles through their conversation. Persephone felt a smile cross her own lips even as a sliver of jealous bit through her. They were so happy in their delusion, so content with the lie.

She turned away, not wanting to face the image of an ignorant bliss she would never have, and her gaze fell upon her remaining companions at the table. They were her husband's henchman all of them, and at the end of the table, lounging luxuriously in their chairs were the twins. Nearly all Merovingian's men were Neanderthals, early proto-types with neither intelligence nor class, but twins were different; Persephone liked them. While the others depended upon Merovingian to protect them from destruction, the twins did not depend upon him at all. Instead, they had a common purpose, an intent similar to Merovingian's and so they were allies who chose to play the lackeys. And also, they enjoyed his company. They liked his jokes and his flair for the decadent. They did as Merovingian bid only because it suited them to do so and that Persephone could respect.

Persephone stood from her chair, noting several sets of male eyes following her as she walked toward the end of the table, her heels clicking lightly on the floor. She walked to where the twins sat in carefully designed casualness, legs sprawled over the arms of their chairs. "Will you come with me?" she asked. Without even a glance at one another, they stood. Persephone led them from the restaurant and into their private quarters, knowing they understood perfectly why they had been asked to follow; this was not an unusual request.

She unlocked the large wooden door before her and swept it open to reveal a gilded bedchamber. It had been programmed to resemble the King's bedroom at the Grand Trianon in Paris, complete with draped canopy and gold accents to the ivory-white bedspread; the picture of decadence. Setting down the keys atop the small tea table, she turned to the twins to see they had closed the door behind them and were already removing their long coats in anticipation.

In silence and in step, they walked to her, admiring her briefly through their shaded eyes before each setting one hand to her waist and slipping the other into the hair at her neck. "No," she said, feeling the cool, strong lips against her neck pause. They lifted their heads to look at her. "I want to watch."

Without even a moment's hesitation, their hands left her body and they turned to one another. Hands grasping silver ropes of hair, they kissed, their mouths opening to allow the clack of teeth and slide of tongues. They were rarely gentle with one another; they saved such courtesies for when either Persephone or Merovingian were partnered with them. They enjoyed being watched; it fed the narcissism that was so engrained in them; but they allowed only Merovingian and Persephone to participate. They were the only ones they deemed worthy of their attention. And Persephone recalled well what it was she was choosing to sacrifice at this moment: Few pleasures could compare to having both twins focused on her. But that was not what she wanted right now.

She sat down at the table and watched as they pressed their bodies together, sharing their heat, resembling a reflection in a mirror. Already, they were on fire, passionate for one another, the evidence showing plainly in the designer slacks slung low at their waists. It never took them long to incite themselves. She thought of them as brothers only because it was more intimate, but truly, they were two halves of the same program; what one felt the other felt and so every touch, every flick of the tongue was double. But more than that, they fed off one another. They kept company not because they had to to run properly, but because they simply preferred one another to anyone else.

Their mouths opened hotly for each other, and they paused for only a moment to remove their sunglasses in unison; another treat reserved only for one another. Persephone knew the eyes behind the shades were a pale, unearthly blue, but she almost never saw them. Grunting softly, one twin shoved the other roughly against the wall, forcing their bodies together and bracing himself with his arms. He shifted his hips and they both gasped, merely for the aesthetic pleasure of the sound than for any vocal need to make it. Dark lips and a flash of white teeth bit at the twin's throat and he yanked the tie from his neck, scattering the buttons from his collar. Pulling on silver cloth, thrusting himself against his captive twin, the other exposed the pale skin of his brother's chest, his fingers biting into the flesh to leave deep blue imprints.

The caged twin grinned, and flickering suddenly into a translucent form, he passed through his brother, a sensation Persephone knew from experience was extremely pleasurable. The other turned around to face his twin now standing behind him. He smiled, not remotely surprised by the tactic, but clearly enjoying it. His brother, now in control, grabbed at his vest and tugged on the buttons. When he moved to help, his hands were slapped away and the vest ripped open; the shirt quickly followed. His brother's azure eyes lowered slowly to the remaining slacks, a smirk on his face. He licked his lips and his brother did the same.

Stepping forward, he gripped his twin firmly between the legs, gritting his teeth at the sensation burning hotly between his own. He moved his hand quickly up and down, coaxing the hardness and causing his brother to bite at the nearest flesh within the reach. Pain and pleasure edged against one another as his own ministrations had him hot and aching beneath his slacks and his brother's bite left sharp marks on his skin. He pushed the offending material from his twin's hips and dropped to his knees, immediately taking the firm length into his mouth. His brother threw his head back, gasping, and coiled his fingers through his hair, guiding his head to set a fast, harsh pace. Persephone watched, ignoring the heat pooling in her despite her innocent intentions for observing this display.

Biting his own lip hard enough to draw blood, the standing twin forced himself into his brother's mouth, delighting in the sensation of hot, wet warmth, but they had other plans for their completion. Making a ghost of himself, he passed through his brother. He felt the momentary and diluted pressure of his member, throbbing and slick, passing through solid flesh, a tease of what was to come. Solidifying, he turned to find his brother already standing, his back to him, shoulders bare and enticing. He roughly shoved down the slacks, and positioning himself, pushed hard into his brother with dual choked cries.

Moving deeply within, he pressed his lips against the silver hair cascading down his twin's back and reached around to pinch at a pale nipple pressed nearly to the wall. He gritted his teeth and thrust again, feeling a spike of heat stab through them. Persephone shifted; her breaths came shallowly and her heart beat rapidly in her chest. It was impossible to remain unaffected, especially when she suspected what would happen next.

In a flash, both twins faded to transparent shadows of themselves, their bodies still connected. They ghosted through one another, the faint gold edging their forms swirling and mixing, then coalesced into skin and sinew, now on the ornate carpet, one straddling the other, holding him to the hilt. They panted, gripping one another, the intensity of the sensations showing on their faces and in their tense hands, pressing hard enough to leave marks. Persephone gasped just imagining what they must be feeling; to have heat buried within them, alternating the sensation between their two bodies, touches becoming feather-light by comparison only to shock the system with sudden, intense pain and pleasure when feather becomes flesh, rock hard and pulsing. With a labored, enraptured groan, they dissolved once more, leaving their cries behind them like echoes. Their forms churned together, their moans sounding disembodied, coming from all around Persephone's ears. She watched their roiling translucence arching toward the bed, and the ivory white covers depressed beneath their weight as they reformed, their skin nearly as pale as the bed linens.

One twin lay between his brother's thighs, his length deep inside of him. Silver hair fanned out on the covers, contrasting lightly with the golden accents, and they both breathed heavily, staring into each other's ice-blue eyes. Agonizingly slow, the twin pulled out, his back arching and his thighs tightening, and he gripped his brother's weeping member before he thrust firmly back in; again and again, stroke after stroke. With twin moans, the two shuddered and tensed, naturally reaching their climax as one. Still firmly between his brother's legs, the twin collapsed on the body beneath him.

Watching them now, pale and naked, deep in a sexual delirium they could only find with one another, Persephone was reminded of words from an author considered a genius in a world that no longer existed; in truth, his was a simple mind among simple minds, but still, he had managed to stumble upon a few phrases relevant in the world as it is. "To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance," he had said. He could not possibly have foreseen the twins and yet, they proved his point most readily of all.

Of all the false loves Persephone had seen, theirs was the purest, the most honest about what it was. There was no affection in their relationship, no manipulation, or compromise, or meaningless terms of endearment; they were simply two halves of a whole. They completed one another, they preferred one another to any entity or being they would ever or could ever meet. They would never fight or leave one another. They would never grow tired of looking at one another; their narcissism, their blatant love for themselves, for each other, was precisely what made them so eternal. For one twin to give pleasure to the other was to give pleasure to himself; it was purely selfish selflessness. It was, in the eyes of rhetoric, love. Pure, simple. Love.

She walked slowly over to them as they extracted themselves from their embrace. They stood from the bed, tall and milk-white, their eyes a pleasantly unnerving blue. She smiled at them fondly, lightly stroking their pale arms with her fingertips. "Thank you." She wanted to catch the fading traces of what they felt, that completion, that utter perfection of being with precisely the right person forever. She could program a copy of herself, she supposed, but it would not be the same. They would be two wholes; they would not complete one another, they would only complicate. Pulling the twins toward her, she kissed them both, tasting their lips. No, she would never have that sensation again. She had had it once with Merovingian, but that time had died and decayed; it would not come again. Feeling equal parts mournful and bitter, she idly stroked the twins' silver locks. "I envy you," she said.

The twins glanced at one another, and then one replied: "We can understand that."