Occasionally, he watched me, always in disguise. Always from afar. When I went on my walkabouts, when the pain inside was too great to bear, I always felt his presence in the periphery. And somehow, it had been comforting, as if I was sharing my burden with someone who, if not cared, then at least understood.
This time, when Inanna brought him back to the Shield, I knew without a doubt who he was: the son I never knew existed until only recently, since I was reunited with my love after millennia apart.
I could feel his heartbeat within my heart. The throbbing pain of his soul within my soul.
I wanted desperately to heal him.
“And the pain inside your body?” the Healer said in an even lower voice, barely a whisper beside my ear, trying to preserve the secrecy of my private shame.
I swallowed before I licked my lips and answered.
“Eight.”
It was a blatant lie. On a scale of one to ten, the stabbing pain in my internal organs, muscles, tissues, and especially…below…that agony was over a hundred. A burning, scathing, never-ending corrosion within, where Medusa had torn me apart cell by cell.
I breathed deeply through my nose, tamping down the urge to scream and rage in a well-practiced ritual, and clenched my jaw. At least it wasn’t a thousand on that arbitrary scale, which was what it used to be a few weeks ago before Ishtar and I decided to visit the Shield for a time.
Now, surrounded by family and friends, and most of all, by the innocence, love and pure joy of children, my demons have receded like shadows chased away by the brilliance of sunlight.
The Healer’s silence spoke volumes. I didn’t fool her.
“Lie back,” she instructed, “I will use my zhen now.”
What she meant was that she wouldn’t touch the most shameful part of my body with her hands; she never had. Only Ishtar had ever seen the scars, for I would not hide any part of myself with her. She deserved to know the broken male she’d tied herself to for eternity.
That’s not entirely true either.
I’d hidden the worst of myself from her. My recurring nightmares of the millennia of torture suffered under Medusa’s hands. The vile, unspeakable things she did to me. I’d tried to protect Ishtar from that darkness, even when it tore me apart inside. All over again.
Over and over and over…
“Papa…”
My son whispered in my daughter’s voice, his hand tucking gently into mine, as if to hold me steady, reminding me to breathe.
And I did. I soaked in the aura of his beautiful soul.
There is unfathomable darkness within him, but there is also light. He warms me. He lances through my doubts and demons with hope.
I’ve finally found him. I will never let him go. I will always protect him. Love him. Support him. And to do so, I must get stronger. Medusa will not win.
I gave him a slight smile and patted his hand before lying back, forcing my body to relax as the needles of the Healer’s zhen inserted into my pores, hundreds of them all at once.
Rain was mostly silent as she probed me, keeping her assessment to herself. She was infinitely gentle; I barely felt it, merely a tickle here and there. This was a vast improvement from when I was first freed by Inanna from the prison in a land called Japan. Back then, everything hurt. But after a year of recovery here in this very same healing chamber, the pain was borne more of the nightmares in my mind than real physical trauma, though there was that as well.
I took another deep breath, filling my chest.
I was stronger now. I will get stronger still. The physical pain, whether phantom or not, I knew how to deal with. It was my soul that needed to heal.
And I am. Slowly but surely healing.
“When will you tell him, General?” the Healer asked, jolting me out of my reverie. “He deserves to know.”
I darted a nervous glance at my son in the guise of Inanna. I felt the tension in his hand that still gripped mine loosely. I didn’t even realize he was still holding me until that almost imperceptible twitch.
“He does,” I agreed. “But do you think he will believe us?”
“DNA does not lie,” Rain replied.
“A person who wishes to believe something will always seek evidence that reinforces their beliefs,” I argued.
“True,” she murmured, and I felt the subtle retraction of her zhen from my body. “But he must know the truth to start healing. It is the only way for him to know himself, as well as the family who loves him.”
My son’s hand in mine tightened, even as his skin grew clammy and cold. I suppose we were telling him the truth whether we planned to or not.
Perhaps it’s best to “rip off the Band-Aid.” There was no going back now.
I didn’t know much about Binu. Or Ere. Or the Creature, as we used to call him. An undefinable “it.”
I will rip out the throat of anyone who ever called him such again.
I knew he was smart, logical, cunning. He had to be to survive Medusa. She did not suffer fools in those who served her, whether voluntary or not. I tried to give him the facts now, and leave him to draw his own conclusion. Perhaps this was the best way to reveal the truth to him, when he pretended to be someone else.
“Explain to me again about this DNA test,” I requested of Rain. “I am not certain I completely understand the magic of modern medicine.”
She continued to flutter about me, checking this and that. I could feel the slight breeze from her movements and sensed the soothing gentleness of her methodical approach to healing. It seemed like an elegant dance in my mind, a delicate hummingbird hovering over a wounded flower.
“Shortly after Inanna came back with…our guest, I took his blood sample when he collapsed in that sudden seizure,” she said. “His disguises prevent us from seeing his real form, so I couldn’t visually track the state of his health. I suppose Benji is the only one of us who can see the real him. But I could glean no severe health issues from Benji’s descriptions.”
I nodded, encouraging her to go on, even though I’d heard all of this before. This was for my son’s ears. I could tell that he was intently listening as he continued to clutch my hand.
“His blood is extremely polluted, and he’s almost fatally anemic. If he were human, he’d have died long ago. That seizure alone would have killed him.”
I ground my back teeth at the Healer’s words. Hearing my son’s condition was worse than suffering my own.
“Some kind of reptilian venom, mixed with an inorganic concoction of a variety of poisons, makes his blood run black when he doesn’t have regular infusions of Pure blood,” Rain continued. “I tried other blood, of course, to revive him from the coma, starting with human, as we all assumed he was vampire. But it was your blood that brought the color back into his skin the quickest. You are the only one amongst us who is born of two Pure parents. Your blood is the most powerful for a Dark One to consume.”
“He is not entirely Dark,” I reminded her.
As well as my son beside me.
“No,” she agreed. “As the DNA results show, he is half Dark, half Pure. Well, if we want to be precise, half Pure from your genes, one quarter Pure and one quarter Dark from Ishtar’s genes. And of course, he shares half of his genes with Inanna, his sister. That has been verified as well.”
A jolt traveled through my son’s hand into mine as he squeezed me even tighter, so tightly, the bones of my fingers ached.