She woke up slowly. She felt strange. Wrong somehow. As if electricity was crackling through her.

She froze as she realised someone was stroking her face with light, tender fingers. The contact disappeared and as Chatoya leaned over to flick on the light, she knew what she would see. Or who she would see.

Blue was sitting on her bed - on her *bed*, so close she had nowhere to run - and simply staring at her. Those dark eyes were unreadable as ever, but never blinked and never left her face.

"Get out."

"Let's not go through this again."

"Get out!" she shouted and grabbed the knife from under her pillow. He caught her wrist just as swiftly and it fell from her nervous fingers to the floor. "Please...leave me alone."

"I can't."

"You can. Please, just stop this."

His grip on her wrist had relaxed and he was stroking the palm of her hand with his fingers, almost distractedly. "No. I can't. Would that I could."

She froze. "What are you saying?"

Those strong hands were holding both of hers somehow, entwining their fingers and nearly short-circuiting her mind.

"I'm saying I seem to have put myself in a rather unusual situation." Those dark eyelashes hid the hypnotic blue of his eyes as he looked down briefly. "And I'm not entirely sure that it bothers me."

"No, nothing bothers you, does it?" she choked out bitterly. Feeling so helpless again, feeling all that emotion come back, however deep she had buried it. So cold, so controlled.

"You bother me." She met those eyes, startled, and saw something she would never have imagined there. "You bother me a great deal."

"I'm sorry I intrude on you so," she said stiffly.

He smiled faintly. "When you're there, I worry I'll hurt you, When you aren't, I worry someone else will. And of the two, I think I prefer it when you're with me. That's where you belong."

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. His hands slid to her elbows and he pulled her closer. "I don't belong anywhere."

He shook his head and kissed her, very gently, his head dipping to the hollow of her throat. And powerless to resist, she shivered and felt despair wash over her, mixed with that bittersweet happiness.

"You belong with me," he repeated. "Can't you *feel* that?"

"Why are you playing all these games again? Did you run out of entertainment back home?"

"Playing?" His face was incredulous. The first genuine emotion she had ever seen from him. "Toya mine, I stopped playing a long time ago. You were too precious to risk. And hurting you only hurt me too."

"Gods forbid that should happen," she muttered .She couldn't believe him. Not now.

A soft sigh and one hand moving to run over her cheekbones, her hair. As if he couldn't stop himself. "I have a right to hurt too. It's not one I want to exercise terribly, but I've hurt a lot this past month. I didn't think I could ever love anything more than killing." A one-shouldered shrug. "But then, you were always the exception."

Please, not again. No...I can't bear it once more. I can't live, I can't love with someone who is controlled .I can't bear ice and alien skies in every look. I can't bear the cold anymore.

"Then I shall remain that way," she whispered, turning her head away so she wouldn't have to see his reaction. Because there would be no reaction, except perhaps a little flicker like a chink of moonlight slipping through his armour.

"I won't let you, you know."

"You can't stop me. Go away." Her black hair in front of her eyes, thick and heavy and a grateful shroud from a reality that was harsh, so harsh, because it was filled with tenderness without compassion. Because it was worthless.

"Look at me. Tell me that you want me to go and I will. Tell me the truth." He pushed away her hair with careful hands and traced the tearlines on her face. "I didn't mean to make you cry."

"Yes, you did."

His laugh, dear goddess, that beautiful harmonic laugh following her every move like a shadow. His cruelty, oh, nothing but a thousand daggers in her back, each digging deeper.

How you hurt me. How you toyed and wavered and ripped a little piece of my soul away with each touch. I used to love my life because the sun always shone. But then you came, and you were so much brighter and so much more beautiful and I never realised that the light in you was only shadows of a different hue.

And now the sun is back and I hate it because it will never replace you.

He was closer somehow. Looking into her eyes with a sweetness that was marred by that perfect discipline. "No. I only wanted to hurt you because I thought it would stop me needing you."

Her whisper was a bleak rasp. "You never needed me."

"I always needed you. I just didn't know."

He had control again, his hands holding her face so she was forced to look into those eyes that were endless as infinity itself, if infinity had been frozen in hell's heartless winter.

"Need?" she whispered and jerked her head back, pushing him away. "What do you know of needs? You don't know what needing is because you always just took what you wanted. And maybe you think you can take me, maybe you even think you want me, but when you're bored, when you're tired, I'll be thrown into a grave like every other person you've broken. Oh, don't talk to me about need, Blue Malefici."

"You're right," he said softly. A cryptic flicker in his face, in the line of his jaw. But he didn't move away, and his hands stroked over the raven shimmer of her hair. "Gods, you're right."

And she thought for one desolate, triumphant moment she had won.

"I won't talk," he said, those dark, dark eyes rippling as they looked at her.

One finger inched up to skim her cheekbone, and then he kissed her and there was no control, no coldness, nothing except need.

I need you, she thought, and heard the sound of her heart breaking.

"Oh god," she heard him say softly. "Oh god, oh god, it's right."

He said nothing else.