Author's Note: This ficlet picks up midway through the fight in the Court of Brilliance in Chimera's epilogue.

Chimera - Epilogue (Rewritten)

This battle, fought on the planes of dreams, had a gritty reality to it she could not deny. As they moved back and forth, Chatoya knew she had laid her future at stake, and if she should lose...

 Well, I won't lose, she told herself.

 Chatoya was almost a passenger; for a frightening moment, her and Bhari's memories melded - a wavering image of Hael overlaid Blue Malefici, before fading into strings of smoke.

 Unexpectedly she was moving forward, inside his attack, her arms and wrists aching from the weight of the wood. The staff blurred in her hands, left, right, and then the end blade swung down and round, hooking round his ankle and yanking the feet from under him.

 "Upright to horizontal in five seconds flat, actually," she said, impressed at her calm. Or was it just numbness at this surreal battle?

He got to his feet gingerly. Blood was pooling around his foot, and his weight was leant on the other. It wasn't healing, nor would it here - this was her chosen battleground, and he was only mortal now.

 "An art I'm sure you're practiced at." He sounded distracted, but his face cleared, and he settled back into a fighting stance. "How about we try a different way?"

 She was unprepared for his swiftness, and the thought chimed in her mind. He was testing you too, and now it's for real.

His blood spattered the ground as the staff swung and darted, and she felt Bhari's fierce joy rise at the challenge. Again, and again, she parried and danced away from him, each time taking small bites from his flesh, leaving dark trails on his clothes. A blade sliced her arm, and Bhari's presence almost overwhelmed her with combative fury.

 Let me take over, child, ordered the Drax, more alive now than she ever had been. Let me beat this little upstart.

 No. Chatoya could remember clearly what had happened last time she had let Bhari dominate. And she wasn't sure that if she gifted the Drax her body, it would ever be returned to her; if there was one compulsion which lived still in the ghost of the dragon, it was her yearning for Hael, whatever face he might wear.

 No. Guide me, and I will obey, she told the dragon firmly. But I won't parcel myself up for you to unwrap at your leisure.

 But she felt the fractional slowness in her responses, her concentration torn between listening to Bhari and watching Blue's movements, swift and clean as any true predator, unencumbered by conscience. Even injured, he fought with the same ferocity, and they moved back and forth, the blows reverberating down her arms. Her parries were becoming more desperate, her grip more slippery as sweat greased the staff.

 This wasn't how it was meant to go. She was retreating, and he was moving with more surety, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind him. She saw him as he was then, a creature designed to endure, no matter what. To fight on, to survive, to accept the price he must pay and think on it no more.

 The sun struck her full in the face, and in that moment, she realised he had been guiding her more surely than Bhari had. She was blinded, fear shooting up her spine-

 There was a tremendous thud, and her very bones seemed to rattle with the force; he had hit the staff so hard, she felt something in it give. She squinted, and made out of his silhouette-

 The hooked blade sliced into the weakened centre of her staff: it snapped, and she was left holding broken wood, and before she could blink, his weapon was at her throat, the metal a frighteningly light touch.

 "Why do you look so surprised?" he asked her, the scorn cutting her more deeply than that blade ever could. "Surely you didn't think you would win?"

 I thought I had a chance, she thought but couldn't rouse the passion to say it. She felt numbed, as if the world had twisted out of her hands like a fish. Oh Goddess, what had she done? Handed him back Pursang, handed him herself, handed him the control she had fought so long to keep.

 "You're mine now." There was an arctic edge to those words that robbed her of reaction. "The fight was entertaining, while it lasted."

 Not for me, she wanted to protest. It was all I had to cling to.

 "Leave me alone," she said, her voice dull, empty. She didn't know what else to say; only this truth, that she could not bear to have him near her, gloating, crowing over her like the prize that she had made herself.

 "I shall," he purred, and it had the ring of prophecy.

 With his absence, this dream-wrought battlefield seemed to collapse, as if his vitality and her hope were all that had held it up. With both gone, it crumpled, colours streaking and melding, the past becoming nothing but clouded filth and empty space.

~*~

She wanted to wake up to her bedroom, to take what comfort she could from the familiar surroundings before she had to leave her sanctuary and confess what she had done. Instead, she opened her eyes onto green.

 She knew the place well, and it made bitterness surge through her, so violent she wanted for a crazy instant to rip the scenery to shreds. It had all begun here, and so she supposed it was fitting it should all end here too.

 But...it wasn't Blue who sat among the leafy glen. It was another man, one who seemed as natural here as a forest god, an archaic creature stepped from legend to bless her.

 Too late, she thought, staring at Hael. Too late.

 "What are you doing here?" she demanded, her voice harsh and brittle. "Have you come to gloat?"

"Never." He stood, facing her as Blue had so long ago, but without a hint of hostility in him. "I wanted to speak to you. I...thought this would be safe."

 "Safe from what?"

 "Your Blue."

 She laughed, the sound infected by her self-loathing, her loss. "He isn't mine. But I am his."

 He strode up to her, livid with some of Hael's old animation. His happiness is gone, she thought, but like Bhari, I can still awaken his anger. How good I have become at that.

 She expected harsh words, but he only cupped her face, those river-green eyes full of regret, and she thought that at that moment they must mirror one another, as lovers so often did without realising.

 "Will you give in so easily?" he asked, his voice soft, full of tenderness.

 She met his eyes, her own full of anger. "No. Of course not, but now I have to break my word to him. Now it will be that much harder, and he will hurt my friends while I fight him, and I will have to watch them suffer because I gambled my right to stop him."

 His hands drifted through her hair, his attention on her as if she were a piece of beloved art, familiar and yet new in each moment. "Perhaps I can help you."

 "Why didn't you help me earlier?" The words burst from her. "Why didn't you stop him?"

 He didn't flinch away, nor did he let go of her. "In his own mind? No. But...perhaps I have been passive too long. It...seemed easier to become an observer, but I cannot sit by while he and Kheo bring back the Burning Times."

 Confusion was overtaking her resentment, slowly but surely. "You're a ghost. What can you do?"

 His mouth quirked, even a shadow of a smile enough to show her a man she had loved once; that she did still love with a timeless intensity that she could neither understand nor deny. In a thousand dreams, he had been hers, and even in the depths of this nightmare, some part of him still belonged to her. "I am no ghost. You woke me long ago, when you took my powers, and you intrigued me enough to watch you. And later, your Blue took my power, and he was intrigue of a different sort, and so I watched him too. In some ways, the world has changed so drastically, and in others, not at all."

 "You're alive?"

 "Alive, but asleep." He shrugged. "I made your lives my dreams, and because of it, you made my life yours." His eyes were solemn, and the distance between them seemed shrunken by his confidence, malleable and breathless. "You remind me so much of her. Both of you fought beyond the point of sense, and I would have done the same once, before I convinced myself that a broken heart was a good excuse to surrender."

 My heart is broken, she wanted to say, and it will shatter another hundred times before my life is done, but it cannot be an excuse.

 "I fought for her, and it was a mistake," he continued. His hand trembled against her face, warm and more real than his words seemed. "I will fight for you, too, but it won't be a mistake."

 "What do you mean?" she asked.

 She saw something of Hael's courage then, stern as the royalty he had once been. "I will take back my power and wake. I have watched other people's lives too long."

 Chatoya felt the first hints of hope, blossoming like crocuses. "Really?"

 He laughed, and the sound was rueful and yet full of joy; Hael of old, laughing at her and himself. "Really." He drew her to him and left a gentle kiss on her mouth, chaste and proper as his eyes were wicked and mischievous. "The things we do for love."

 Not for me, she thought. But Bhari - still you love her, and fool that you are - that I am - we try to fix the errors of those we cannot ignore or forget, though they will never thank us for it.

 "Thank you," she said.

 Sobriety didn't really fit his face. "Don't thank me."

 She looked into those old eyes, full of memories of war. "I owe you. You've taken away some of his power."

 "Perhaps I can do more," he mused, a shrewdness to his gaze she had not expected. "He is your Blue, Chatoya, whether you know it or not. And he thinks that by conquering you, you will cease to haunt him - because you do, more surely than death or desire ever have. Fight him. Make him doubt."

 "I intend to," she said grimly.

 His last words baffled her. "Be gentle."

  ~*~

 She woke, clutching that meeting to her with furtive secrecy.

 Be gentle, he had said, and she pondered those words, turning them over and over, all the way down to the kitchen, where a smouldering Lance and Vaje were waiting, neither of them wearing shining happy morning faces.
 
 "What the hell is this?" demanded Lance, slamming a scrawled message in front of her. "Why in the name of blue bloody snakes is Chronic Sonic sending us orders?"

 Ah. This was the tricky part. She knew she would have to effectively split Pursang straight down the middle, and the majority of them wouldn't like what she was about to do. "You remember you were telling me about rite of conquest?"

 "Oh, Jesus." Vaje sat down heavily, face glum. "Tell me you didn't."

 Lance goggled, his air that of a child told that Christmas had been cancelled. "Witch, did you gamble Pursang?"

 Inwardly, she cringed. "Yes."

 His fist hit the table so hard it left a dent. "You stupid bitch!" he shouted. "D'you know how long we've been waiting to be free of the bloody Maleficis? That family have been running the Furies for two hundred years!"

 "Easy," muttered Vaje, though he didn't look any more pleased. "It's not like anything's changed, Lance."

 Lance sputtered. "Except that she was, you know, the only person that Malefici couldn't kill?"

 "I don't intend to keep to the terms," she said quietly.

 Both of them stared at her with identical incredulous expressions. Lance recovered first. "No way. Conquest is sacred to us. There's no way you can justify it."

 "Not even if Blue's intending to welcome back Kheo Rastaban when he wakes and bring back the Burning Times?"

 "Kheo Rastaban is dust," declared Lance.

 But Vaje was looking distinctly uneasy. "Actually...that's not entirely true."

 The Australian peered at him. "What do you mean, not entirely? Like...his arm survived?"

 "Um. More like the Jubatus family foresaw his return a few.." The shapeshifter coughed delicately. "Decades ago."

 "Decades?"

 "I sort of stole a letter which confirmed it. I just didn't think it would happen so soon." He rubbed his forehead. "I suppose I should have said something when we figured out that the Four were alive, but to be honest, I thought we had enough on our plate."

 Lance looked from one to the other and then groaned. "Christ. You're both serious. And if Rastaban's already got Malefici's support..."

 "Not necessarily," she interrupted. "Not if Hael takes back his powers."

 She couldn't help but be gratified by their matching double-takes.

 I will wrest Pursang back from you, she thought at Blue, breaking her vow with every moment. And it starts here.

~*~

 Two exceptionally busy weeks whirled by, notably absent of Blue. She, Lance and Vaje were calling member after member of Pursang, spreading the good news about Kheo Rastaban. And if there was one thing the Furies knew all about, it was warfare; she had several of the eminent historians among them compile a brief essay on the Burning Times and send it to everyone who had a contact address.

 "Well, so far, most people aren't very happy with Malefici," remarked Lance. He pointed a pen at her. "Most of 'em aren't too happy with you either, but the fact that you've got Bhari's powers and Blue's about to be very short of Hael's is making a lot of people feel better about you."

 "Years of in-fighting, and all we needed was an incoming war of catastrophic proportions to make us all bond," said Vaje brightly. "Who knew?"

 She had never intended to be so transparent about her intentions, but she had no choice.

 "Oh, and this arrived yesterday," commented Vaje, throwing over a postcard.

It was a picturesque scene of a Spanish beach. She flipped it over; on the back, in a flaring, strong hand, someone had written, "Just topping up my tan. Thirty thousand years in the dark gives you a terrible pallor. See you soon."

 "Hael," she breathed, turning it over and over in her hands. "He did it."

 ~*~

 She woke up with a feeling of vague disquiet. Her dreams had been clogged with golden sand and scenes of battle, and she was glad to escape them. But as she stared into the dark, the feeling intensified, and after a moment, she realised why.

 A breeze brushed her face, but she had shut the window to keep out the insidious threads of the winter cold.

 "I thought you'd be here sooner," she said, her voice strident, taunting. Part of her was shrivelled with fear, waiting for the strike she was sure must come.

 His voice came from nowhere and everywhere, a velvet purr in a suburban jungle. "You thought wrong."

 She leaned over and switched on the light, and even though she knew he was there, terror snaked through her at the sight of him.
 
 He was stood at the end of her bed, and she thought that even with thirty thousand years in the dark, Hael could not match that white skin, as if he drifted through the highest reaches of the atmosphere with the pale clouds. His beauty was effortless and frozen, reduced down to the shapes the light made on his face, a monochrome patchwork of such simplicity she found it hard to comprehend the complex creature that lay beneath.

 "You seem to have forgotten which of us won that fight," he commented, the chill in his voice matched by the crystalline sharpness of his eyes.

 "You seem to have assumed I would abide by the rules," she answered, drawing herself up with as much dignity as she could manage while buried under a duvet. The fog of sleep was rapidly clearing from her mind, and in its place, she could feel the soulmate link, shivering with dangerous intensity.

 "A mistake on my part. I thought you a woman of honour."

The words stung. "Honour? I am. That's exactly why I won't keep to a promise that has no better worth than to satisfy your need to win. If breaking it is what is needed to keep the Burning Times from returning, then yes, I will. The moment I kept that promise, I would have lost every piece of honour I ever had."

 "And what else will you stand to lose?"

 She swung her feet out of bed, hitting the floor with unnecessary violence. Standing, she felt she regained some of her poise, even if she faced him ragged and disarrayed by sleep. "You."

 His laughter curled over the air like smoke. "I have never been yours to lose."

 Those words didn't ring quite true to her. They could have had this conversation anywhere and at any time, but he had chosen here and now. That seemed to her significant, a need to stride into her refuge and claim it as his own.

 And she remembered Hael's warning, and thought she understood something of it. Be gentle.

 "Haven't you?" she inquired, her voice low and sure, offering no accusation, making no threat, only asking.

 "You know this game can't last. You can't win."

 She sighed. "It isn't a game. I don't think it ever was. And maybe I can't win, but I can fight you, and I will. I won't be yours, Blue, not like this."

 Something flared through his eyes, a gleam of gold, and in the soulmate link, she felt an emotion she had not expected. "You will be."

 She met his eyes, matching him stare for stare as she had so often. No yielding, no mercy, no change. He had won one battle, and yet she fought on. And she supposed in some way, they were not so different, she and he; in the Court of Brilliance, he had not allowed a wound to slow him, although his blood had dribbled out with each step. Nor could she surrender so easily, not now.

 "Make me," she challenged. "Why did you think winning that fight would make a difference? You've conquered me a dozen times by the laws of the Furies, and when have I ever done anything you wanted?"

 "Breaking our laws carries a penalty."

 "Does it?" she said, allowing mockery to infiltrate her voice. "Does it involve death?" She was quite sure it did, but she didn't let him interrupt. "So what you're saying is that if I let Kheo warmonger, you'll delay my death until he tries his hand at wholesale destruction again? Very generous, Blue. But I'll have to turn you down."

 His face was unreadable. "I won't show you mercy, witch of mine. Not now."

 She looked at him, this boy who had won her love and yet was unable to understand why he had not won her. "I will show you mercy, Blue, because I love you."

 "Am I supposed to care?"

 "Don't be ridiculous," she said calmly, keeping her emotions battened down; bemusement flashed through his face. "I do love you, but I won't be ruled by you and I won't ever be yours."

 "I wouldn't count on it," he said. "Very well then, my witch. It is war."

 And with those words, he was gone.

 It always was, Chatoya thought, but I don't think you're sure what you're fighting.

 She had felt that jagged emotion through the soulmate link, brief but entirely comprehensible. Desire, she thought. You want me because I'm the only one you could never have and yet never destroy. Perhaps there are other reasons why I fascinate you so, but that one is all I need because it's what will bring you back time and again.

 This is our battleground, after all. You and I and silence; we fight with words, and I fight to prove I am not yours as surely as you fight to prove I am. It never seems to occur to you that the moment you can claim me, you will belong to me as well.

 And one day, there will be more than words. I know it as surely as you do, and I could press the issue; I could be like Bhari, charming, seducing, drawing you in, but you would loathe me at every moment, and any such victory would be fleeting.

 No...I'll heed Hael's words. I will be gentle.

 After all, it's exactly what you won't expect.