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The Last Night	By : RosaTenebrum Category: A through F > Dragonlance Views: 2544 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Dragonlance series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-The Last Night
- 1
Written as a request in April 2008.
Takes place when Raistlin wakes up from a nightmare and Caramon comforts him in War of the Twins. The beginning is an excerpt from the said book (pg. 625, The Annotated Legends).
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And yet you love me, simple as the rush
And balance of our blindly mingled blood...
- Raistlin's Farewell, Dragons of Spring Dawning -
The Last Night

"Caramon!" Raistlin cried, clutching at his brother. "Help me! Stop them! Don't let them murder me! Stop them! Stop them!"
"Shh, I won't let them do anything to you, Raist," Caramon murmured, holding his brother close, stroking the soft brown hair. "Shh, you're alright. I'm here... I'm here."
Laying his head on Caramon's chest, hearing his twin's steady, slow heartbeat, Raistlin gave a deep, shuddering sigh. Then he closed his eyes against the darkness and sobbed like a child...
* * *
But, as Raistlin puts his head on his brother's chest, Caramon's heartbeat no longer remains slow and steady. Feeling the warmth of its counterpart against it, for the first time in ages, Caramon's shocked heart seems to stop beating for an instant, and then it speeds up again into an erratic rhythm of blissful recognition. The familiar, spicy smell of Raistlin's heavy robes hits him and overwhelms him; he takes it in, breathing deeply, inhaling that long-lost, longed-for scent, the sweet scent which regularly embraced him in his dreams during his two years of loneliness -when he always woke up in tears, finding no one there.
But now... Caramon can hardly believe it. His hands are shaking, following his raging heart. Raistlin is here! Everything is fine. They will forget about the war, about the Abyss and clerics and damned time journeying machines. They will go home. Together. And live together like... like brothers.
The thought is almost unbearable in its beauty. Caramon tightens his hold on his twin, convulsively, knowing he will not bear losing him again, feeling like it was only yesterday that he last held him, cradling him back to sleep. The torpid years of estrangement fade and dry up like autumn leaves, get blown away like dust in the wind. Suddenly Raistlin is a stranger no more, a stranger enshrouded in the cold darkness of black velvet. He is the brother he loves. Somewhere inside the blackness is the twin he loves. A warm, wonderful feeling sprinkles all over Caramon. "I missed you," he manages to croak through dry lips, his voice barely above a whisper, "I missed you so much, by the Gods." His tired eyes well up with tears of relief.
It is late summer, almost autumn, but the night is very warm; the wispy scent of fire and wood hangs in the dark air. The brothers' horses whinny quietly - they are peaceful again after having been driven into panic by Raistlin's cutting screams that had caused them to furiously yank at their tethers with rolling, white-washed eyes. From the corner of his eye Caramon can see them watching them with their ears attentively forward, apparently wondering what on earth it is their masters are doing. Blinking his tear-filled eyes, Caramon smiles radiantly at their bafflement.
"Don't let them murder me," Raistlin repeats through a weary sob. He squeezes Caramon's hand and, brushing it over his cold lips in passing, brings it to rest on his cheek that is morbidly heated by the fiery river of blood beneath his feverish skin. That movement, so endearing in its search for safety and comfort - Caramon remembers Raistlin used to do that when they were children and Raistlin was scared of his bad dreams. And even more so - it is a movement that Caramon thinks he can remember from somewhere much earlier than the outside world.
"No, Raist, of course not," Caramon replies, his voice heavy with love, even if he hasn't a clue as to who or what his brother is afraid of, "Shh, I'm here, I'm here. I'll always be." To emphasize his words, he takes Raistlin's face between his hands and, not even stopping to think twice, softly kisses him first under his right eye and then under his left, only vaguely realizing that doing so he might be treading on thin ice.
But it is too late now; the salty flavour of Raistlin's tears meets Caramon's cool lips; he licks his lips, slowly, almost sensuously, and tastes the tears.
And something returns.
The metallic taste spears Caramon's consciousness, violently poking holes in his body that suddenly remembers - from the dark depths rise the strangling need, the shame, the fear. All of a sudden he is acutely aware of the scent of Raistlin's hair, of how it was the same in the hot, moaning darkness where they lay next to each other - in the womb? No, later. Much later.
Drunk. I was always drunk. My little brother, I would whisper again and again, my dear little brother.
Caramon feels himself flush from head to toe. Unbidden, his hand on Raistlin's shoulder tightens its grasp; he can feel Raistlin's bones right under his palm, terribly hard and frail, heart-breakingly breakable.
First I only wanted to protect him. I only wanted to be a good brother.
He tries to fight the flood of memories - he shuts his eyes, hanging on to Raistlin, his arms in a deathlike grip. But he is too weak, too torn by Raistlin's nearness, and there is no wine to drown the demons, not now. The memories spin - freely, without control.
I was never happier. I made him smile, laugh even - and it was a greater victory than any of those I achieved over my friends with a wooden sword. We were there, on the little island of our bed, amidst the shadows, safe from the cold, alien world where people were single, incomplete. Everyone had abandoned us. It was just me and him, like it always was and always should have been. We would nestle close to each other; his head on my chest, his arm around my waist and my arm around his thin shoulders; the smell of his hair in my nostrils, the sweet heat, the light weight of his body in my lap...
And then, suddenly, it felt too good.
Caramon takes in a deep, suffocated breath of air. The memory is electrifying. A hot pleasure rushes over him. Sweat breaks on the back of his neck, and he shivers in the cool gust of wind that lazily sweeps past them, stirring the trees that wake up and start rustling their secrets to one another. He is shaking, badly.
It was unstoppable. Once it began.
Unstoppable. So much so that he started to cherish Raistlin's dreams, even as he was ravaged by guilt because he knew how painful they were to his twin. And yet every night he would lay himself down to sleep, hoping, staring into darkness with a burning, selfish wish - please, have nightmares. He often found himself wondering whether Raistlin wanted it as much as he did. Well, of course he didn't - the nightmares were terrible. It put a seed of doubt in Caramon, however - is it possible that I need him more than he needs me? His heart broke so many times, thinking about it.
Because he thought about it a lot. Contrary to what people believed, he did think about things a lot, only not very fast. It took him some time to understand what it was. And when he finally did, it was as bright as day: he was in love with his brother. Not like he was with girls, but differently, desperately.
This is alright, this is something any good brother would do. I tried to continue the story, the childish story, tried to continue it like nothing in spite of my panting, throwing in random words and short sentences, my voice ridiculously strained and met by Raistlin's silent self-control that was almost frightening, all the way up to the sweet moment when it ended with a fury that was almost frightening too.
After some time, when their secret had enthralled and addicted Caramon beyond return, it happened that his guilt and shame were somehow replaced by reckless defiance. In order to no more depend on Raistlin's fitful dreams, he had to find a pretense of his own. And he did.
The new excuse - it fueled his obsession back then and later, in lonely days, became a means to drown it.
The new excuse silenced his nagging conscience and made him brave, bereft of shyness - and the need that earlier had found its redemption only through dreams and darkness, staggered into the sunlight. By the grace of this new excuse he was no longer in control of himself - he was possessed, blessed by little spirits that told him to go to his twin - wonderfully free of guilt, beautifully irresponsible. And he would obey - he would go to Raistlin on his knees and lay his head down on Raistlin's lap, and Raistlin would caress his hair, often absent-mindedly while studying a book on the table with a concentrated frown. The haziness in Caramon's brain blurred the world around him, but not quite enough - he could not help seeing the amused glint mixed with contempt in his brother's eyes, although he kept telling himself it wasn't there. And then Raistlin would close the book...
The new excuse broke the obscure circle of silence. It released Caramon's tongue and finally allowed him to say the things he always wanted to say but couldn't before when the hours were silent and he tried to tell Raistlin what he was feeling by the way he was holding him. My little brother. Again and again. And then the inebriated, tearful, desperate confessions of love. So much, so much.
And from Raistlin - nothing but silence in answer to his forlorn words.
Nothing but sparks.
An owl cries in a nearby tree, startling Caramon away from the depths of his murky thoughts. He notices his fingers are digging deep into Raistlin's flesh. The tiny scars on Caramon's chest and arms - the sinister marks that Tika thought he'd received in battle - have become alive, reminding him of the lengths to which he had been willing to go and - the knowledge is bitter-sweet - still was. "Shh, Raist," Caramon whispers in a strained voice, not even hearing his own words, convulsively stroking his brother's soft hair, "Nobody will hurt you. I'll make sure."
Sparks... And spidery words, hissing syllables. They made my skin crawl.
His eyes - they were like dark, hard jewels as I looked deep into them, desperately trying to find traces of love. And then I had to look away and find that love in the pain. I told myself that love was in the pain, for him.
Another shiver of pleasure passes through Caramon's body, he is helpless to stifle it. I am over this, he tries to tell himself, I am over him. He doesn't want me. I am complete without him. With my wife. He doesn't even believe himself.
He always went back, always. Nothing could have kept him from going, not even the deep, red shame that bent his knees the morning after and made him gag his regret out on the ground. Because the shame wasn't there when his thoughts were sweetly intoxicated. Not when Raistlin touched him with the corners of his mouth turned slightly up in a small, icy smile, inflicting, controlling, eventually making him see the sudden ecstasy in his hard eyes, making his body convulse and spit even as his heart and mouth spat thirsty words of need. So much, so much.
I am... burning for you.
*
Tears. The despicable tears that he has held back for so long. He hasn't slept in days. His eyes are burning with want of sleep. But now he can finally cry, and cry he does against the coarse fabric of his brother's shirt.
So now Caramon knows, knows the wreck that he is. Not anywhere close to a god. Just a frightened, lonely, miserable human being, who wakes up wailing from a child's nightmare.
To be a god? Ridiculous! His plan is going downhill headfirst. Brother, he wants to say - I want to be a child with you again. I want to play with you in the sun - as though the sunshine would last, as though there really was hope.
But he won't say it, no. He would not say it, not even if his life depended on it. And so he cannot do anything but to stay still, wordless. He is clutching at his twin like a drowning man. He has to. He will stay there until the end of the world if need be and only stand up when he thinks he can face the pity in his brother's eyes. Which is never. And yet, combined with the excruciating shame, there is the anxious knowledge that makes Raistlin's arms hold on and spur on his tears even when the frightful shadows of the dream have already faded. When? When would he ever hold me like this again? In death?
"Don't let them murder me." His tired plea is returned with a few tender words from his brother and then, unexpectedly, he can feel Caramon's hands cup his face; his lips brush over his skin, both cheeks, tenderly touching the dark circles under his eyes. Anger rises in Raistlin like a storm - how dare he? Raistlin grimaces, ready to draw away from Caramon, but he notices he doesn't want to, not really. So he grabs his brother by the wrists, not knowing whether he wants to be gentle or cruel. Powerless, he lets his forehead fall back on his muscular shoulder. Caramon's pulse is throbbing against his fingertips, vigorous, nervous, and he notices his hands are trembling in his hold - those warm, steady hands with deep and strong lifelines, hands that were made to hold and love, to kindle life. So different from his own long-fingered, bird-boned, killing hands.
"I'm going to kill them," Caramon swore and his eyes filled with tears as their gaze followed the fleeing boys. "It's just a couple of bruises. I'm not going to die of them, you dolt. See, they may break my body but they'll never break my soul. You could never understand."
But the hands always understood.
The only hands that ever touched him in selfless love when he was weak and sick, unwanted by everyone else; when his gasping for breath was derided and mimicked on the game field, his precious books ripped from his frail hands and thrown in the mud by the laughing boys. And when dreams and fevers came Caramon's healthy warmth would shield his tired body. When his world was falling apart, there was one thing that remained the same. Even when the world was falling apart, Caramon was there; his constant, his immortal.
I was so afraid. Weak. Haunted, hunted. But never alone. In the dreams - chased, laughed at, ridiculed. He saved me from them. His love redeemed me in the end.
His hands caressed the back of my neck - clumsily, afraid to touch. The only hands I ever allowed to touch me. "Raist, look at this, this'll make you laugh. Once upon a time there was a little bunny..."
Raistlin opens his eyes, slowly. His gaze meets the dark silhouettes of trees that for once are not dying; they are young and lavishly green, untouched by time, but Raistlin does not see them. He sees something else. The memory surfaces. It has always been there - remembered but not reminisced.
His heart beat against my back. Fast, agitated.
"You're cold," he whispered. He stretched out his hand to my arm and felt the goose bumps there.
The first innocent touch; why, you cold only keep warm by staying close. And some time later the puzzled need in Caramon's eyes - it was not mirrored in his own eyes, of that he was absolutely certain. His eyes revealed nothing. Although he sometimes got the enraging feeling that Caramon, in all his idiotic simplicity, was somehow able to see behind them.
It was unstoppable. Once it began.
Slowly but surely his dreams, those harbingers of terror, turned into a blunt decoy. Caramon, I'm having a bad dream - that's all it took. Just those few words veiled in innocence, without his being asleep one second, and Caramon would get up and cross the sea between their beds. Did he really believe he had been dreaming?
In his arms I would forget that the last thing I wanted was to be close to him.
First it was careful and cautious, very unclear. He didn't really know what it was that he wanted from his twin and it made him angry, because he always knew what he wanted and how to get it. But this was different. He only knew there was a weird yearning inside him that made him restless, a yearning that had been with him throughout the whole summer, hammering his body and tormenting his mind with obscure, dirty thoughts. He could not go from thoughts to actions - girls shunned him while happily throwing themselves in his brother's arms. But the yearning remained and finally found its shadow of a release in a manner that did not even surprise Raistlin as he twisted and squirmed in Caramon's infuriatingly tender embrace, thinking that it was all - his brother was all he would ever know of love. He could hear the gods laughing.
And in the morning I would remember that the last thing I wanted was to be close to him.
It was desperation. Driven by a vague sadness.
Maybe a part of what he is comes into me. Maybe I'll have something of his goodness, his honesty. Maybe I have it in my darkness, just a touch of his light. Maybe he'll teach me what love is.
Caramon's neck is wet and cool; Raistlin doesn't know whether he's tasting his own or his brother's tears. It does not matter. He can feel how tense Caramon is, his posture is receptive and listening. Caramon only wanted to be a good brother, Raistlin knows that - it seems that all Caramon ever had to offer him was something brightly honest, something pure. But step by step something in him, some horrible madness, turned it into a wicked play. And it just so happened, instead, that I taught him what love was not.
Caramon was past control very soon after it began. Of course he was - the great oaf never excelled at self-control. He found a way - a childish, desperate, stupid way - that removed the burden from Raistlin, the shameful burden of having to ask his brother to come. He could vividly recall the first time Caramon staggered to him in the raw light of the afternoon sun, standing there on wobbly feet beside him, looking down at him with expecting eyes, and he looked back, irritated at the interruption, feeling a terrible amount of emotions and none as the fit of rage grew in his chest, only to be welcomed with loving devotion, as always.
Thenceforward the night turned into day, the silence into words, the bedroom into kitchen.
He hated himself for wanting it - and he punished his brother for his own desire. Time after time, convincing himself that he wanted it only so that he could hurt him, as they sat on the table like ancient lovers, his thin, cold lips made warm by Caramon's loving breath, his strong, consenting arms stamped by fire from Raistlin's fingertips.
Raistlin moves his hand upwards on Caramon's neck, instinctively finding the scars there - the little dents and craters, dark signs of eternal promise. He slowly runs his fingers over them, feeling Caramon shiver under the touch, helplessly, as if he's expecting yet another blow, a fresh flame. Against his will, Raistlin's breathing gets faster.
It did not happen often. Days, weeks passed. Caramon watched me with a howling loneliness in his eyes, without saying a word and yet speaking a thousand.
"I don't need you to take care of me. I don't need you. How hard can it be to understand?"
He threw the bottle at the wall. I laughed.
Caramon went to a girl. And to another girl. And to another. It was easy - he had a girl for every finger and then some. He spoke defiant, tentative words about marrying one of them.
"I could crook my little finger and you'd come back slobbering, crawling on your knees."
He was right - as always.
Caramon always came back, so obedient, so eager to please, his words slurring and loving, in his eyes the incomprehensible faith that he would never be abandoned again. Raistlin was enjoying and despising what he saw in him. So much stronger physically, and yet he controlled every single move from beginning to end - to grant or deny, to touch or not to touch. Power - he could not imagine a greater rush. The magic was burning in him, circling around his body, the more intense the lower it went, wanting to get out; it was crackling at the tips of his fingers, dancing on his brother's tanned skin, sending him into a state of insane arousal that was so different from the simple, pure bliss on Caramon's face. It was the same dark arousal that later rose in him at every lashing word, every order, every insult that Caramon responded to with meek submission.
Why am I like this? Why aren't I like him?
The odor of dwarven spirits in his nostrils, nauseating and sweet at the same time, mixed with the familiar smell of sweat and everything that his twin was. The expression on Caramon's face made him feel a deep wave of something - tender? - that threatened to tear him to pieces. One of the very few things in the world he didn't understand. And then the release - violent, thorough and irresistible; so merciless that he could no longer remember the words his mind had been repeating: Never again.
*
Unstoppable. Once it began.
The twins' memories meet now, a decade and more later, in the scented summer night, thousands of miles away from the Solace kitchen, on the desolate plains of Dergoth. They both stiffen, knowing each other's thoughts as though they were written on their skin in blood.
Raistlin moves away without a word and wipes his eyes with the back of his wrist. He starts to rummage in one of his bags.
Caramon is staring at the ground. His lips are moving. He has to say it. "I want to be like we were. I want it back. Please." His voice is very quiet. In his own ears he sounds like a child. He casts a pleading glance at his brother.
"No."
"You can't do this. Not to me."
Raistlin doesn't look up. His eyes are flat and cold. His face is tight with ire. "I can do anything to you." He gives a short, angry chuckle.
Caramon clears his throat, searching for a way to say the unsayable. The words come out slowly. "I just want you to know... that all I ever wanted..." His throat tightens. He is unable to finish. He lifts his head and looks straight at his twin with his heart in his eyes.
Raistlin raises his head too and stops, his hand still in the bag. Caramon sees kindness move across his eyes and then instantly run cold. "You are a fool," Raistlin says. "You're just a weak fool." He spits out his words.
Caramon shrugs discouragedly, stunned but unsurprised at the coldness of Raistlin's words. He stands up on numb feet and takes on the old task of boiling water for his brother. Raistlin huddles and draws his knees to his chin, so close and so far away. Caramon looks at him, remembering the warm and wonderful feeling that had spread inside him when Raistlin had reached out to him for comfort. He was there. I am sure of it. He was there and I let him slip away.
Caramon swallows his tears and looks away from Raistlin.
He wants the night to be over. If the final deathblow is to come, let it come quickly, without longer suffering.
In the morning they will go and find the cleric, take the long and gray road that extends cold before them.
Towards loneliness.
Towards godhood.

THE END
For Amy
- 1
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The Last Night