He Was Almost Absorbed By The System - Part Two

Chapter One Hundred And Ninety Seven - Forgive Me For Forgetting

Kyan glanced up sensing someone close by, but thinking it was probably one of his fathers.  Only the shape of that person, as he viewed them through tear filled eyes, was not the same.  He was tall and broad of shoulder, but not as wide nor thick as Damien, who was made of ropey muscle and his hair was also the wrong shade.  Kyan blinked away the tears, thinking he should apologise to this person for crying, but then reconsidering as this person was a stranger he owned no explanation to...

A strangled cry escaped his throat as clarity came to him.  Dominic...

He searched those wide, warm eyes, longing for recognition, glanced at those soft lips and urged his name to be spilled from them, but nothing.  Turning away, he cursed himself for being stupid and walked quickly away to the gallery's bathrooms, his heart aching in his chest.  Why did he think that he was special enough that once Dominic was in front of him, the man would remember everything?  They were not in the Archive now, there was no Yin nor Yang to return their memories to them.  The man he had loved so desperately was lost to him.

He only made a handful of strides, when a warm hand enveloped his, tingles of familiarity shooting from his fingers to his spine.  He turned to question, but found himself being lead by his grasped hand through a door that declared 'staff only.'  And then it was just the two of them, one celebrity and one boy.

Slightly calloused fingers stroked away the remnant tears upon his face and Kyan reached up to remove them.  "Don't," he begged the man. 

Dominic merely took advantage and entwined their fingers together.  "This may sounds strange, but I believe I've been searching for you."

Kyan glanced up at his to see clear and earnest eyes.  His heart leapt in his chest, but he didn't want his hopes to rise too high.  "Don't say that, you don't know me."

"I feel that I do," Dominic denied.

"No, you don't," Kyan said, his voice breaking on a sob.  "You don't.  You don't remember me at all, do you?"

Dominic wanted to lie, wanted to reassure the youth before him that his soul screamed to possess, but he felt that this boy would see through his lies, his acting, so chose to be completely honest; "I don't," he admitted.  "And yet I do."  Kyan's expression couldn't help but become questioning.  "Every night, I see things that seem so real that I can't help but think that they are memories, not mere dreams.  I can't say I understand them completely as one moment I will be wielding a sword, the next a silver headed cane or an antique game controller but in each and everyone of late, I see you or rather your beautiful, pale eyes.  And I can't help but to long for more.  You were in that alien contraption with the rest of us, weren't you?"

Kyan hesitated for less than a heart beat before nodding an affirmative.  And then he was tucked into the warm embrace of the man he had loved for an indefinite amount of time and he openly began to sob.  This triggered another memory within Dominic, one where he was holding another crying youth... no it was still this boy.  He may have looked a little different, been a little younger, but in his arms, he felt no different at all.  "Thank goodness," Dominic murmured as he pressed his face into the silky hair on top of his head.  "I doubted... I couldn't help but have tiny doubts that the memories were not real, that they were figments of ghosts from that alien machine, but now..."

The two men held each other for a good deal of time, savouring the warmth of the other, finding comfort in just being together, the older glad he had not actually been going mad and the younger glad he still had this chance to grieve and move on.

"What's your name?" Dominic asked him as they clung to each other.

"Kyan," the youth whispered and Dominic felt the name was perfect.  As he repeated it in his mind, it felt as if a key was slotted into a lock, revealing a handful of secrets that Dominic should not normally know.