Manchild

by Rahalia

Pairing: Q/O AU

Rating: NC-17

Archive: m_a, my site. Anyone else, please ask.

Feedback: Yes please! On-list or off.

On the stereo: Enya's "Boadicea"

Summary: Ancient Celtic times. A man makes the ultimate sacrifice.

Warnings: Contains scenes of blood-letting and character death.

Author's notes: Un-beta'd. This was written in about half an hour and appears here virtually as it came from the Muse and onto paper.

The pic that inspired this fic can be found here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/master_apprentice/files/manchild.jpg

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The warm night wind caressed the man like a lover as he stood on the edge of the crag. Behind him he knew they were waiting, but this was his gift. One last beautiful night to drink deep into him; one final communion with the moon before he joined her light and swam amid the stars, her eternal companions.

His hair; long, coloured like the earth and seamed with silver, was unbound and whipped his face like a thousand tiny flails. Promise of what was to be, what he had been born for.

They had chosen for him the most beautiful boy in their midst; a boy with skin the hue of the soft sand far below him and with hair the golden russet of the autumn leaves that fell to the ground beside his home. Such a boy as this, they told him, came but once in many, many phases of the stars; and the man trusted them. Nature would be served by beauty, beneath the beauty of her own stars, cloaked by the beauty of the night.

The wind died and a soft murmur behind him pulled him from his contemplation. The boy was here.

It was time.

Crops did not fail without reason. They had never failed before in all of his long years, but they had failed now. He had begun to wonder if his grave would be a peaceful one of sleep beneath the soil instead of a blissful flight to the stars.

Raised from childhood to the destiny he was now to fulfil, he puzzled over his emotions. For many years now the chosen child had lived to old age and died naturally; a last breath in sleep, not with an explosion of stars behind his eyes. Always a male child of great beauty, and he had been so beautiful.

He drew his body up to its full, imposing height. A graceful man, he still was beautiful, but it was a beauty of golden age. He had been chosen as a child of five years, primarily for his exceptionally blue eyes. Eyes bearing the colour of woad, marking him out as a nature child. The natural, chosen child.

He had been raised to kill his predecessor, and now - not twenty steps behind him - waited the boy who had been raised to kill him. A boy he had not yet seen.

He drew a great, deep breath into himself, concentrating on the centre of his being, and then he turned from the moon and stars, away from the black night sea and the soft sand; to behold the boy. His boy.

So young... as if his mother had barely given the aye to his leaving their homestead. Clad in a soft dun-coloured wool jerkin and thick kilt, he stood illuminated only by the lights of nature.

His hair was long and tousled, soft as summer grass and smooth as a sea-washed pebble; gleaming like dark copper. His skin almost glowed in the pale moonlight. So beautiful...

They have chosen me a such a boy; between child and man... and he is such perfection that it will be hard to leave him...

The man fell to his knees on the crag, watching through hooded eyes as the boy approached; his soft leather boots making no sound on the wet grass. Behind the boy, the others melted into the night. The ceremony, as generations of lips had told it, was of two men and the moon. No other was permitted.

The boy sank down before the man, and his eyes glinted; agate set into polished sandstone. His fingers twined into the man's long hair, sliding it away from his face.

The kiss, though decreed in ritual, was one of a lover to his mate. To give him a boy so skilful was truly an honour to him. He wished the crops had been bounteous, wished he could take this manchild; keep him, love him and die aged and content in his arms. How much he wished this and yet it was not his destiny. If his destiny had not been to kneel here, this boy would never have entered his life. The Gods had reason, after all, and this was their final gift to him. Beauty and love and an ending steeped in pleasure.

The boy's lips caressed his; his small, wet tongue tickling deliciously, pleading entrance. It was granted and the man shuddered, holding tightly onto his emotions. Not for him the last-moment plea to be spared. He would not fall in love now, could not regret that which would never have been were he not here in this place, in this moment.

Those intoxicating lips were gone, and he opened his eyes. The boy smiled slightly, the colour of his eyes shifting like the currents of the sea. He sat back upon his haunches and slowly pulled the soft wool jerkin over his head.

His skin was pale in the moonlight and the man's gaze followed the plane of muscle beneath soft, white flesh until it rested on the bronze haft of the dagger; pushed beneath the waist of the boy's kilt.

It was time.

The man lay back silently, watching as the boy drew the knife, removing it from its leather scabbard. There was an intense sorrow in the boy's eyes as he kissed the man once more.

The blade slid smoothly into the flesh of the man's left ankle as he bit down the gasp that willed itself to his lips. It then slipped through the skin once more on his right ankle and deep, dark, healing blood seeped into the stones; into the very bones of nature.

The sorrow had left the boy's eyes, replaced by joy. The man had felt it, too: the singing of the earth. The crops would not fail again; his blood had seen to that.

Not in the time of this beautiful manchild the man prayed. They will not steal his beauty, his youth... they will let him keep them, allow him to die old and content in the embrace of his mate... but how I wish that mate could have been me...

The copper blade moved slowly across the man's left wrist and he could not control a whimper of sorrow for what he had lost.

I do not want to leave him...

His right wrist was tenderly opened up; his blood trickling into the earth as the singing grew louder. His vision was blurring, but he could feel the boy's warm hands on him, preparing to complete the ritual.

No pain, just swift fulfilment. The boy was buried deep within him, moving hard against him, pushing him higher to his destiny. The man could feel the stars reaching down to him as his lifeblood fed the parched soil and his body rose and reared beneath this tender slaughter.

The stars' fingers touched him and he screamed; pure pleasure and near-emptiness warring for possession of him. The last thing he heard was a cry from the boy above his dying body. The last thing he saw was a burst of light exploding behind his lids. The last thing he felt was the boy's breathless kiss as the blade slipped easily into his empty heart.

The light in the boy's eyes died and he looked at the man beneath him. Had the crops not failed, he knew he was to have been introduced as a prospective mate to this beautiful man just one phase of the moon from this moment.

And he wept for what they had both lost.