Brandon didn’t want to consider this, but he knew the Dreams about Kail were connected. Perhaps they were important more than he wanted to deal with right then. Still, ignoring the fluttered in his belly and along his skin the Druid pulled away and said.

“Forgotten? Like amnesia?” Brandon frowned in concentration. Not liking that idea. Not liking it even a little. In fact, somewhere inside of him...Brandon felt a voice whispering at him to stop going down this path of thinking. Stop right now.

Ezekiel couldn’t feel or sense what he was feeling. The Shifter just kept talking about things that made Brandon feel like a peeled potato. Exposed. Vulnerable.

“Yeah Amnesia.” He was saying, as the Guardian adjusted himself back against the wall in a more comfortable position. Folding his arms across his legs the Shifter leaned on his elbows and gestured. “Babe, could you have forgotten your own past? Could you just not remember who you used to be? You said that there is another you in the dream. A man that looks like you!

Brandon clutched at his chest. In his mind’s eye he saw the man in the Dream. The man that looked like him. His twin. Long blond hair. Ancient, powerful green eyes. A strange man whose pain felt so familiar. A stranger whose guilt seemed close enough to drown him. Brandon remembered all the times Jacob had spoken to him. The way Hovel had threatened him. The way the Bane had despised him.

Brother!

Shouted Kail in his head.

Brandon...Lil One...

Purred Jacob in the real world.

Brandon thought of his years with Nora and Jacob. He thought of how he remembered being an adolescent little boy. A child tortured for years.

A tall strong man, with green eyes, magnificent robes.

A haunted man with green eyes, broken, hateful and half naked trapped in hell.

Brandon couldn’t reconcile the two ideas. The man in his dreams...that man was not him.

Shuddering out a denial, he shook his head and replied “That’s insane. Who I used to be? That can’t be the answer. It can’t be that simple Blue boy.”

Brandon stopped, swallowed and closed his eyes. “Ezekiel I’m me. I grew up in this Base. I have been aging like any other mortal for years. None of this makes sense if I approach it from the angle of me just being an amnesiac. If I am impossibly old? Then why do I remember being a child only a couple years ago. It makes no sense.”

“None of this shit makes sense Brandon!” Ezekiel snarled at him. “Tell me! Can you think of a better explanation though?”

Taken back by his tone the Druid quietly looked away.

“No...” Brandon whispered, swallowing as his mind whirled with a million different things he didn’t understand. He suddenly got up and tried to walk away from the Shifter as he began to tremble all over.

It made sense. God it made sense...but it also made no sense at all. Nothing ever did.

Perhaps not sensing his growing ambivalence yet, Ezekiel stood up as well, and quickly snatched Brandon’s hand before he got too far, and with a hiss he demanded. “Brandon look I know you are confused, but what if this is it? All of the evidence points to this conclusion. You’re not you. You’re this other person the Child of Sun and Moon.” Ezekiel pressed.

He sounded so sure. His words made Brandon’s every nerve ending feel as if it was being teased with burning hot needles. He wanted to scream at the Shifter to shut up.

“Bandon, what about the dreams you’ve been having. Do you remember! Perhaps this is the key!”

“NO, I can’t remember!” Brandon suddenly exploded. He couldn’t reconcile the words, the fact, the emotions, and the confusion.

He couldn’t made his mind settle. He couldn’t stop the screaming panic inside that always started to rise when he tried to think too deeply about his own history. The pieces of the puzzle seemed bared from each other. No, it was more like they seemed to be fighting not to be put into place. And he felt like he was being torn asunder every time he tried.

He suffered under the weight of so many eyes on him in that moment. Kail’s silver gaze like a lethal caress. Nora’s caring, and Jacobs black haunted eyes. Hovels obsessed hateful blue pupils. The milky white globes of the Bane. The voices of all the men and women in his life began to shout and whisper words across the valley of his soul, the Bane screeched, cackled, and laughed in his ears.

Brother

Lil One

Abomination

Druid

Friend

Son

Killer

CURSE...

“STOP!” Brandon cried at Ezekiel. He shouted at all of those eyes. All of those voices. “None of this makes sense! I don’t know who I am Ezekiel! I NEVER DID. Every name I’ve ever had was given to me! EVERYTHING I have ever known came from pages in books. Am I the child of Sun and Moon? Am I Jacobs and Noras Lil One? Am I a monster? Am I a tainted child of some evil prophecy? Am I brother? Am I lover? Am I Friend? Betrayer perhaps? Or maybe I’m just a tool!? GOD! I wish I had the answers! I do!” Brandon stepped back shaking and blinking away his miserable tears.

“But I’m telling you I don’t have the answers. I just want all of this to STOP... ” Brandon’s trembling lips drew closed on the rest of his rant and he hung his head in desolate confusion.

“Brandon...Shit.” Ezekiel began after a long steely silence, he crossed to him and touched Brandon’s cheek, dashing away his tears, but Brandon, feeling shaky and weak, shook his head and spoke before the Shifter.

“I’m sorry.” He offered, pressing his finger tips to his exhausted eye lids, fighting not to tense as his pain and exhaustion slammed into his brain. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...”

Ezekiel simply waited on him to calm. Then he softly said. “I know this is hard Brandon...” The Guardian wiped at his brow. “I didn’t mean to bombard you like that. I got carried away.”

Brandon analyzed his gorgeous face, his pale skin, his loving blue eyes tinged with agony he couldn’t quite deny as the poison of the silver killed him. And suddenly Brandon felt horrible and selfish. Here they were talking of things that didn’t matter. These painful things that never should have mattered more than their current circumstances. The guarantee of death waiting on them was far more important than discovering the answers to mysteries beyond their current control.

Brandon traced the chains on his lover’s throat and suddenly nothing mattered to him more than the present. That moment.

Coming back to the conversation with a sharp blink, Brandon crossed back to his Love, and replied to him saying “You weren’t bombarding me; I just took my confusion out on you. I’m sorry. And you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Looking up at Ezekiel he softly finished. “You’re just trying to help me understand all of this. But I think we both forgot something...”

Flourishing his hands at the chains on the ground the Druid said. “Right now that stuff hardly matters, because ...if we don’t find a way to escape? If I don’t figure out how to get you out of these chains and away from these Zealots and their Bane, then were both going to die here and I’ll never understand anything.”