Disclaimers: BeastMaster characters and concept are property of their creators. No copyright infringement intended.
Original story is property of the author.
Spoilers: "The Burning Forest" and "Gemini." Rating: PG; Drama.
Author's Note: This story was one of those that wouldn't let go til I wrote it down, but the first person POV surprised me until I really got going. There were a lot of unanswered questions in "Gemini" (not the least of which was why they had to pick my astrological sign, thankee verra much! <g>), which upset me because the episode had potential. I understand that you really write yourself into a corner when you throw incest into the mix, but I felt that things could have been done better, including an explanation of why Nye and Jem had been thrown out and just how they had come by and tamed the acrobatic cousin of the potted-plant from "Little Shop of Horrors." Answers to both those questions (but not limited to that) could have made "Gemini" a really good ep instead of (in my purely personal opinion) just this side of weak. This story is my attempt to even things out a bit, but watch out: the angst got the vine's dose of Miracle-Gro.
Requiem
© 2000, Grace Macy
I was not there when they were born, but for all else . . . I saw. I watched and listened, I yearned and gave. And I remember every moment.
I remember their mother for the brightness with which she drove away my grasp. I remember the seething mass of emotions she created by her defense of her babes, and the siren-song of that barely controlled chaos just waiting to happen. I remember the men who took her life under the heavy cloak of the night, and then said it was all for the best. (Oh, yes. I remember them well, for they were the first to fall to my bright ones perfect aim, and their screams still echo wonderfully through the blazes of my Forest, claiming innocence in their hearts at their evil doings.) I remember best, though, finding my bright ones in the woods to which they had been driven by the self-righteous hatred of their "kin".
Their mother had kept them safe from the superstitious fear and hatred of their village, but her death at those men's hands had given release to the desire to drive two children into certain death. Had they been babes yet, as the village had initially wished, they would surely have perished. Certainly they would not have caught my eye. But in that delay they grew to an age in which that act of violence and hatred could shatter their innocent belief in goodness.
And that was what drew me: that knowledge of the evil that existed in the world, that certainty and contempt for all others but themselves and their mother, whom they had known just as clearly to be good. That bitter fury that blazed in their young minds, consuming every shred of love except that which they felt for one another. For in that bitterness, they were a mirror of my own heart, echoes of what was left of my soul, and I was drawn to them as iron to a magnet. They were my lodestone, and I became their salvation and their doom all at once, enfolding them in my darkness and the twisted strains of hope that float in my world.
No other would have cared for them as I did. No other would have welcomed two who were one, one soul shared by two bodies. No other would have taken them into the shelter of her arms in the dead of the night. And in no others would I ever find a total lack of fear upon seeing my claw and the red of my eyes.
I knew when I found them that they stood at a crossroads, poised on the edge of light and dark. Perhaps I could have found another way, perhaps I could have placed them on a different path. Perhaps. My cruelty was from love, this time; a silent, unacknowledged point to my old mentor/father/adversary. I loved those children, needed them, and so I chose a path that would keep them with me always.
Not the path of self-love, or sibling-love, for in other worlds and other times there were cultures in which kings, to gain the throne, would almost regularly wed a full- or half-blooded sister for the right of succession that lived only in her blood. No, that choice was made for them as much by the mob that deprived them of all other sources of love and dependence as by my actions in setting them apart in that wood.
(To whom else could they ever have turned, to whom else could they ever have given their trust, their hearts, and their bodies? Not inevitable, perhaps, for in everything there is choice -- but of the precious few choices in their lives in those matters, it was perhaps the most understandable of all.)
But I gave them the tools to act on their impulses, their bitter instinct for cruel vengeance upon any strangers who entered their small realm. I fed their anger, supported their contempt, nursed their love for none but one another -- and myself. I sealed their fate with the first glimpse I took of them.
I have never known where they found the two cats, but I know well why they kept them alive: they were a reflection of them, just as the bright ones were to me. Beauty, confidence. Danger, unknowing cruelty. Perfection, mirror images. They were the only living things towards which my bright ones showed true love and compassion, except for each other. I could no more have taken those sleek beasts away from them than I could have abandoned my own power. Just as I could not have turned them away from the dark path I set them on even if I wished it, for they made their choice early on and kept to it despite years of chances to find another way. Humans make choices, always and forever, inside and outside of the influence of any god or spirit. They made their choices, and perhaps some part of them did it for the same reason as the one for which I drove them onwards . . .
In the end, their doom was as much physical as it was magickal. Poison that destroyed even the traces of life. Poison from a seed I gave them, taught them to nurse well; a seed whose use by them I enjoyed as much as they did. And my gifts were not limited to just the vine which was their doom: it was I, also, who provided the weapons and the eagerly-learned skills. How I marveled at their prowess, preened over their deadly aim and never-ceasing enjoyment of their kills. They had been born of another, but I had been their dam, their source of life and dark joy. I had chosen their path and set them on it, feared whenever they swerved, and shouted in an agony of relief when they returned.
No other would have wept when they died in their forest, destroyed by their own power and the terrible beauty of the dark magick with which I had gifted them. No, no other wept for their pain -- not even the compassionate BeastMaster and his friend. But they were my children, the bright ones, as surely as if I had birthed them myself, and for their pain I wept the first tears I had allowed myself to shed in over a hundred thousand years, even as I knew it meant they would be with me finally.
Perhaps she thought only to commemorate their existence. Perhaps she sought to make some pretty tapestry in her stars. Perhaps she wanted to replace the two my old Master had stolen from the firmament. I doubt she wished to keep my bright ones from me: she could not have known they were mine, nor dreamed that she could stop the journey of a soul with the placement of its remains. I will assume all of this, for it is neither time nor my wish at the moment to punish the pretty blonde bitch for her presumptions.
Let her enjoy her stars and the confusion of the humans at this new constellation; I have what my most secret heart had wished for all these many years. My children are home at last, and they will hunt the wicked among the leaping fires of my Forest, and neither they nor I will ever feel the pain of aloneness again. Two, now three, forever as one . . .