It was many hours later when the door opened. Stare had not slept at all, but rather cried until no tears could come anymore. Then she had curled up tight, closing her eyes and lying there in silence, listening to just the emptiness of her haunted mind. The mind that was not free, her body that was not free, her whole life that was not free.

The door slid open and there was no need to question who it was. Footsteps scraped across the ground, and a soft, weary sigh came from between lips as the figure carried himself over the floor. They were in almost darkness, but he was a god and could see as well as she could in it. She heard him slump into an armchair, somewhere close by, the furniture creaking - then quiet fell again.

It was a long few minutes before she spoke.

“You're never going to let me go, are you?” she asked quietly, painfully, in a croaked voice that needed water but had refused to get up.

A low murmur told her all: “I cannot, Stare.”

There was a long pause before he whispered again, and the voice was honest, brutal and self-loathing. “I think it best,” he began slowly, “if we agree to never speak of this night. It was never meant to be uttered, and it would be best if it never were again.”

“It doesn't change the fact that it was though, Vitruvion,” she whispered. “It still - still -”

Hurt? Scarred? Made her furious, and panicked and highly anxious to the point where all she wanted to do was scream into the air again and again and again ...

“And if it were not for Sable, it would never have,” he replied quickly. “She also swore to not talk about the ownership issue.”

“Fuck you,” Stare breathed, “for ever doing that to me.”

There was no answer to that, only a sharp draw of breath. Stare could hardly believe that the man who would enslave her was also in love with her, even if he was her god also. For that she was talking to Vitruvion as a mortal, a simple fellow man of maximum seventy years or so. If he had been better, if that had all been true then maybe …

She shook herself, burying her beak between her arms. No, that was stupid to consider. This man had begun their relationship by kidnapping, then raping. That was not normal, no matter if - she paused as a thought struck her. He had not used Sable or Blaze for three months, had not touched them or had them abused. Was it possible that that was because of how she felt about it? Because she was so disgusted and it filled her mind everyday that those thoughts had become toxic to him, changing the way that he thought and acted? Pausing, she blinked, a rare moment of bliss in this terrible time. Was it actually possible that she had succeeded in that? Making him behind to hate his own actions, which had begun as a campaign to take his revenge out on mortality which he saw as an enemy, but now he had ceased in part because he was fond of her? Who had once been a mortal?!

But now, thanks to him, and his desperation to never see her go, he had made her immortal.

“That is a decision I do not regret,” he murmured softly, “And I never will.”

“Vitruvion,” she replied abjectly, “Please leave me alone. Please. I don't want - anything.”

There was a long pause. Then the shuffling of fabric before he began to move, easing himself out of the chair. The noise ceased a moment as he whispered a few last words.

“It isn't … safe anywhere, Stare. You need to stay in here. For your sake … and for mine. I know you will hate me saying this but I am still your god, and your employer.”

She grabbed the cushion by her hands and pulled it over her head. “Please, my lord” she mumbled, “just go.”

“And get something to eat, to drink. I'll have Brer come, you like-”

“I want to starve and die here,” she rasped, “I want to fall away to nothing, to dust and not be seen again.”

“If you do, then I'll see you when you are better, my dearest,” he replied softly. But that was the last thing he said. He twisted around and left the room, only footfalls and no tapping of his cane. Only the rocking of another door being closed.