Title: The Sad Game
Characters: Azura (xFlorean, xNoir)
Author: liriaen
Warnings: Mentions of drug use, non-con, prostitution, violence. (All in a day's work for You Higuri...)
A/N: Written for ele5 during yaoichallenge's Rare Fandom fest, prompt: „Azura, character study." The title and poem are borrowed from Daniel Ladinsky's Hafiz. Thanks go to Minakokouchou for wonderful GC translations, Moshesque for excellent beta, and Misura for the pomegranates.)
Summary: People change, and if Ray's priorities have shifted... why, so have Azura's.

The Sad Game

Blame
Keeps the sad game going.
It keeps stealing all your wealth –
Giving it to an imbecile with
No financial skills.
Dear one,
Wise
Up.

---

"You're not going to pray?"

Florean lies sprawled across plush pillows, pretty and useless. The opium has almost reduced him to an invertebrate, but his eyes are still that rare shade of amethyst.

Languidly, Azura stretches, losing one slipper. "Pray?" He lifts his left eyebrow. "I don't think so. Why?"

"Aren't you Muslim?" The kid is slurring his words already, but he seems perceptive enough to correctly interpret the call to afternoon prayer.

"The hell I am." Azura counts to five, holding his breath before he exhales. His good eye roams over blue fayence tiles, imported all the way from Iznik. Looking out a white latticed window, he mumbles, "I don't need to pray." He doesn't notice that he's adjusting his gandurah in a timeless Targi gesture of humility and shame, and if asked about it he'd surely explain it as an automatism – comes with the clothes, you know. "I'm just enjoying life," he concludes, fanning the hookah.

---

"Ow! Aiee, you mean old toad, let go!" Ray is flailing, his djellaba a dirty blur. Azura in turn bites his tongue - it's enough if one of them shrieks like a baby. It doesn't have to be him, even if his ear is about to come off.

Isaac gives them another tug, dragging the boys through the kasbah. "It's high time you two strawheads learned something," he snaps. "I didn't fish you out of the gutter so you could become pickpockets."

If tiny Ray can bear it, then so can Azura – twice over, if needs be, although his ear is really throbbing something fierce. "But, Isaac abu," he yelps, stumbling over a jutting flagstone, "you're not... you aren't... I mean, why do we have to-"

The old man comes to an abrupt halt and frowns at Azura. "So I'm a Jew. What of it? My people were here before yours came down from the trees. And we're people of the Book, all of us. It was difficult enough to get you whelps enrolled, so I trust you not to shame me."

"'Kay." Ray pulls himself straight. "Thief's honour, we won't." Azura nods, throwing his younger friend a look swelling with pride. They won't. They can do this. They can sit in the medrassa all day, learning to read and write and recite the Q'uran - never mind the easy prey in the souk's narrow lanes, or the fun their friends are going to get up to, dodging rival gangs on their own turf, stealing from tourists...

As it turns out, they can't. Well, they can, but after the third day they don't feel like going anymore, especially once Azura finds the ulema's pocket watch appallingly easy to pilfer. From now on they prefer to sit atop abandoned buildings and watch the day go by, eating stolen pomegranates. It's well past the afternoon prayer before they can show their faces back at Isaac's, and Azura begins to measure their time together by the muezzin's call.

"I mean, it's just not right, y'know?" Ray says out of nowhere, licking red juice from between his fingers. "Chopping off your hand just for stealing? That's a bit harsh."

Azura shrugs, peering into the sky. "Only if you get caught." With a grin, he takes Ray's grubby hand and licks it for him, his tongue rough like a cat's. "Which you won't," he tells Ray's thumb. "Because I taught you my best tricks."

---

I did, didn't I? I taught you everything there is to know. I even told you to leave when the chance presented itself. Don't be stupid, I said; what do these slums hold for you? Go get a better life! Go to France and make me proud. And you did. You waved from the boat, but once that anchor was lifted you ran starboard to watch, and you never looked back.

We were sworn to each other, Ray. Sworn. I patched you up when your scrawny butt bled from selling it for a few dirham, and I let you slip under my blanket when you were crying for your mum. Not that I expected anything in return, mind. At least not in the usual sense. Sure, I could have had your body - there was a time when you offered it for the price of a small loaf of bread. But I wanted something more precious by far.

What's that? I deprived myself? No. Don't try to tell me I sent you away. I did no such thing. I wanted you by my side when the time was right, when my schemes were ripe. We're at the beginning of a new era, Ray. From now on money will rule the world, not invading armies. Empires will rise and fall because the banks will it. Money will pull the strings and twist the garrottes, not the henchmen of some little sultan. Money will hum and whisper through invisible telegraph lines, and both the imam and the colonial in his starched collar won't see it coming when power is torn from them, together with the rug beneath their feet.

And you should have been there, by my side. You should have seen that new dawn, the coming of Empire. You should have sniffed the air high under that New York sky, but without you it tasted stale. - Once I returned to Morocco, I retraced our steps: I stood in front of the medrassa and bought a basket of pomegranates and sat on the roof of my house. I walked down to the souk and pushed my hands into sacks of spice, pepper and cumin and mint, but they had lost their flavour the moment I touched them.

---

The bite of the whip draws blood every time it touches Ray. There's something beautifully economic about the way the coiled leather translates the smallest of efforts – like the snap of a wrist – into a spray of red.

Between each hiss and smack of the lash, Ray's body slumps forward, then arches back up. It's not that Azura necessarily gets off on this - only he does. Ray's struggle for conténance is too marvelous to behold, made all the sweeter by the clear sweat running from his temples and armpits.

If only... if only it were in fear of, not fear for. Ray worries more about his little boy toy than about his own body, even as it is being pulled to shreds. A particularly vicious blow sends him reeling, and Azura uses Ray's complete disorientation to step closer and nudge his chin up.

"So caught up in these things, Ray," he chides softly. "Small things, unworthy of a man like you. – Look what a stir he's been creating, the fabled Masked Noir! But what does he chase in the dark streets of Paris, this Thief of Thieves? Jewels and paintings and lovely eyes. What a disappointment you are." Shaking his head, Azura resumes his position. "But I'll teach you. Even if it's the last thing you learn from me."

---

I know; don't give me that look. I understand that these baubles are your raison d'être - you are drawn to beauty like a moth to a flame. This new order, however, is quite simple. It will assign a monetary value to the things you deem holy, it will reproduce and debase them, until the only things worth having will be status symbols, devoid of meaning. The Old World will come crashing down around your ears, but... I have no desire to see you fall with it.

You may consider this a part of your éducation sentimentale, then. Ultimately, you're either with me or against me; there can be no middle ground. And, Ray? I would like to have your full attention. A man of my rank is not accustomed to sharing.

At least that's what I thought when I took your toy away.

Imagine my surprise to find him untouched! He would shiver under my hands as if gripped by a fever... higher strung than an Arabian horse, that kid. He's neurasthenic, if you ask me, like all French nobility – surely the product of a long, lily-white line of inbreeding. Nevertheless, I didn't expect him to be quite that responsive. I didn't think he'd reverberate like an oud, so... tremulously. Or that – just before coming - his eyes would turn that impossible shade of violet. Small wonder I kept going back to him; kissing him behind your back and all that.

Still, I was resolved to... hm - maybe no longer break him. Use him I would, though. He's the key to that stubborn heart of yours, and once that flies open, he'll have exhausted his welcome.

Look, Ray, I'm not squeamish; I just don't want unnecessary blood on my hands. If he survives, I'll let him go back to France or wherever, taking your annoying entourage with him. Who knows, perhaps I'll pay him a small apanage? Nothing grand, mind, but enough for a bel-étage on one of the more fashionable boulevards. He's a sweet thing, actually. If he doesn't crawl back to the opium or drowns himself in absinthe, he may even have a future.

By the way, was it your time as a two dirham-whore that made you keep your hands off him? Because I can assure you, he was most delicious. Had circumstances been different, I might have been tempted to keep him.

Then again, I bore easily.

---

Back in the twilight of his suites, Azura pauses, frowning at a silver-framed mirror while his fingers follow a line down his right brow. The fact that Ray caressed it, getting dangerously close to slipping off the patch twists his stomach in a knot. Ray, the loan shark, not dealing in compassion; Noir, the master thief, picking only the choicest and most beautiful pieces... stroking Azura's marred cheek.

It's enough to make him nauseous.

Then the patch sails to the ground. Azura sweeps his hair back, pulling it tight enough to hurt his scalp, and stares at the ghastly mess. Even after all those years the scar still looks angry. The lid has closed, but sometimes a muscle reflex will make it twitch - as if it wanted to open and see again. In a way, it does see. It is turned inward to observe Azura with a mute glare, a constant reminder that it does not pay to be weak, or unselfish.

He doesn't bend to pick up the patch; he's in his private rooms where a swathe of hair is cover enough... as long as he keeps away from the mirrors.

---

Ray is screaming as if it were he whose face just exploded in a hot gush, and Azura is screaming, too, yelling at Ray to get lost, for fuck's sake, he'll be holding the alley against the gang, but Ray is losing valuable time, caught between fight, fright, and flight, stuttering "oh my god! oh my god!" which isn't helping at all.

Reeling from shock, Azura slumps against the chalky wall, but not before he has slapped Ray into motion. With a sigh he's falling, falling; Ray's receding figure being the last he sees.

"Does it hurt?" Ray wants to know, once they've returned en masse and carried Azura home. He's crouching on naked heels, awkwardly patting Azura's hand, worrying his lip and looking for all the world as if Azura were about to die.

Azura is too dizzy to answer and grips Ray's hand instead, and wonder of wonders, little Ray gets it and crawls onto the cot to hold him tight.

---

You would think they can do everything, in America. But they couldn't give me back my eye. Not that I asked or begged for it; it was old man Romwell who dragged me from one specialist to another. They could restore the lid, they said. Make enough of a hole to fit me with a glass eye. Their pretty blond assistants would give me candy bars and whisper behind my back, what a shame, such a handsome boy. Did you see his good eye? Now that's some blue.

The evening before the operation I went to Romwell in his study. Told him I wouldn't go in, the next day. He wasn't happy, I can tell you that much. He thought a patch looked too sinister for his heir apparent. Business of that magnitude needs a respectable face, you know. Not that he ever said that, but... well. I hardly need to remind you, Count Courlande

It would have been different had you been there, I think. I might not have quailed so much. Don't get me wrong, Ray. I'm not blaming you. It was my choice. I know better now.

---

"I'll give you one more chance. Give up that boy and come with me," Azura offers, wiping red spittle from his mouth.

He would laugh if the situation weren't so goddamned ridiculous – and if he didn't feel like bringing up a spate of blood, his body having recently been riddled with small calibers.

Their race along the coast, down in the ruins of Carthage and out into the Tyrrhenian sea has quickly devolved into an unending chain of mishaps, thwarted efforts and last minute saves, but Azura is coming out on top. No doubt about that. If Ray chooses this moment to drown, preferring to be with his amethyst, then so be it.

So be it.

Clutching the carved treasure chest and nearly retching with pain, Azura stumbles up the stairs. He doesn't like to remember whose hand pulled that trigger, but there's the ghost of a smile hovering near his rictus grin. Ray's voice still rings inside his head, that half-amused, half-contemptuous "don't just die like a dog halfway out there." The famous last words of Ray Balzac de Courlande, the great thief Noir, unfortunately deceased in a watery grave, one of the unhappy victims in a double suicide-

Tragic, really. Most unnecessary.

In his mind, Azura keeps quipping and arguing with Ray, but the rush of water soon becomes a roar. Listening for voices, he almost misses a step.

His blood is splishing on white rock as he staggers away from the fortress. The thing under his arm should feel more... fatuous, shouldn't it? It could at least throb or glow instead of being a dead weight pulling him down.

Collapsing against the cliff, he stares at the horizon where water and sky seem to meet. Azura, the blue mirror of the sea. He pants and presses a trembling hand against his soaked gandurah before he finally breaks the seal on the chest. The chalice looks unassuming, even from a purely artistic, collector's point of view. It's just an old cup.

Already half unconscious, Azura grabs the ugly thing and hurls it out to sea.

---

See? I defy you. I defy your thousands of years of history, the wars fought over you, your stupid, romantic ideals. They say whoever touches you will become as God, wielding a power greater than any man's, but you're... insignificant. Irrational. You have no place in my world. I do not need your empty promises. Look...

... you sink like any other piece of junk. You're nothing.

You can't even bring back Ray, can you? My poor brother, my magpie... too fond of his gem stones.

Azura's chuckle fades away. He feels chilly despite the summer heat, chilly enough to make his teeth chatter, so he withdraws deeper into his sticky, voluminous robes. He'll rest a moment, he decides.

Then he closes his eye and turns his face to the sun.

--