“It was easier being strong when another man was strong enough to be weak.”

“Tiger and mountain lion. Fuck you. Fuck you for getting me out. You should have shot me. But you didn't have the guts to do it. Too weak. You just didn't care enough. You waited two years, and then you fucking stopped caring and tore out my fucking heart. Come on. Promises, Dan. Keep them. Cut it out. If you're a man.”

“I like men with weaknesses, his father had said. I can buy them. Men without weaknesses I have to kill.”

“Sergei remembered well how unsettled Nikishin had been by the arm and leg that day. Then, it had made him sneer inwardly, but it was difficult to maintain that derision since he began to like the man. Trust him even. And that could be dangerous enough, laws being what they were, Nikishin being who he was. Never mind that any normal individual would be revolted by Sergei’s current physical state, and justifiably so. Cyborg patchwork over mangled flesh. The pinnacle of attractive. He’d always been different, a freak. Now it was just visible. Impossible to hide.”

“Dan didn’t want to say anything, but the words were unstoppable. “I fucking love you. Don’t leave me. You’ve got to find me.” Again, fucking tears. Vadim shook his head, then pressed his face into the crook of Dan’s shoulder, hoped to hide his weakness and felt like a man condemned to die. “I will... find you. If it’s the last thing I’ll do, I’ll come back. Nothing will stop me.”

“What about the scar … in my face.” He managed to force out, couldn’tfind the words, no better nor easier way to ask and even plead. Do you want me.Do you honestly still want me?Please, want me.”

“You really do love him, don’t you?” she said quietly.Vadim blinked, then looked to the side, without seeing colours and patterns, but it helped him find words. Speaking about love without cliché, without borrowing somebody else’s well-worn words that were too comfortable. "Dan changed me in ways that stripped away the man I wanted to be, and the man I was made to be, and the man I was expected to be. He skinned me alive, and left only…..somebody who….” He breathed but barely. “…can live and die now, like a human being, not an automation, not somebody else’s creation. Dan took my fear of death. I can’t die now. I know I’m immortal.”“Immortal?” she said quietly, sitting still. “Your soul? Your being?”“I don’t believe there’s anything like a soul. But I believe most people are asleep. They aren’t even aware what they are, or that they are alive. And we are all scared to die, so when it happens we scream for our mothers and clutch our guts because we’re scared. I’m not. I’m not afraid of death. The only thing I’m afraid of is losing Dan.” But if that happens, he thought, Dan might just keep the promise and kill him on the way out.”