Tainted Tears

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FIC : Tainted Tears – Chapter 3
Author : Sagakure
Fandom : Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac, Cavaleiros do Zodiaco, Caballeros del Zodiaco, Chevaliers du Zodiaque).
Pairing : Not exactly yaoi. Well, maybe, but not with a pairing yet. There is BIG innuendo for Saga x Kanon and Kanon x Saga, though. (\"Obvious\" would be a better word than \"innuendo\". ^^;)
Rating : NC17 (For utter angst and mature content. Don’t read if it’s not your cup of tea).
Warnings : Timeline went to space, so it could be considered AU, but I’m otherwise sticking with the canon story whenever it’s possible. The original timeline for their ages couldn’t have worked with this story. ^^;;; Even with the AU timeline, Saga and Kanon are very young when they get rescued by the Gemini saint and he becomes their master.
Saga and Kanon are in their early adolescence at the beginning of this fic. That means they\'re pretty close to the age of Seiya and Shun in the series. Just wanted to mention that so you can picture some of the scenes without getting too shocked, since ages are not mentioned and people could think they\'re even younger. This fic has a very heavy subject, but the point here is more the things they go through to get over the trauma caused by their past, rather than anything kinky itself. There are scenes with sexual content, but they\'re only there when deemed necessary for the story.
Disclaimer : I do not own Saint Seiya.
Saint Seiya is (C) of Masami Kurumada, Toei, Shueisha, Akita Shoten and quite probably some more people.
No copyright infringement or disrespect intended here. This is a work of fanfiction, done completely for fun. No profit is taken out of it.

Notes : I\'m going to use the Japanese term for Shion, \"Kyoukou\". I might change it later if I find a western word that matches it better.
I didn\'t want to go for \"Pope\" because of its other meanings, even though it was one of the closest possibilities. ^^;

Completely unrelated to the disclaimer, but drop by my website if you want to see Saint Seiya fanarts I also do. ^_^ It’s here --> http://tokyo.cool.ne.jp/sagakure/index.html

You can also read the fics a bit before I upload them here if you go to my livejournal : http://www.livejournal.com/users/sagakure/

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Drop # 3 – Leon

Saga limped down the little alley. It almost hurt too much to walk, but he had lived through worse things before.
Well, this one was one of the worst of them, but it wasn’t the first time he got hurt, and it used to be even worse when he was younger.
He took support on the bleached wall and stopped to rest and bit, his legs shaky. Running his hand over the front of his shorts, he felt the folded envelopped with the money inside, and sighed in relief. At least the customer paid him. That was a rather big debt, and Saga was afraid that the man would be refuse to pay everything at once. Some of them tried to pay only part of it, or denied owning that much and took hours to convince.
If the tab was small, most usually they’d accept to pay without too much trouble, considering that they were being given some free hours of pleasure in the person of the messenger coming to collect the debt, but the customers that owed more always made things harder.
They probably knew better than thinking of not paying a brothel controlled by the mafia, but they always hoped that if they complained and paid only a bit, they’d have more time to get the money together before they had to pay everything.
Saga wasn’t good at discussing money matters, but he was gentle and sweet, as well as stunningly beautiful, and that’s why he was unfortunately often sent for that kind of task.

But one of the biggest downsides with those errands was the fact that out of the \"house\", nobody was there to control what the customers could and could not do to them. Especially because they would have to go anywhere the customer wanted, in order to recover the money. And very often they would be forced to do anything the customers wanted too.

Today’s one was another of the strange types... The ones that Saga had labelled in his head as the \"acrobatic kind\", the ones into ropes and toys.
He hated those, but it’s not like he had his word to say about anything.

Hanging upside down bent over the bed, his whole body tense and tightly tied up, he quivered with a mix of fear and pain that seemed to delight his client. The ropes were strong and the knots didn’t give the tiniest slack for his taut muscles to relax. Each rope\'s end was tied to a different loop on the walls of the room, like a horrifying net from which he couldn\'t escape unless the man untied him.
When the client finished tightening the last rope of his \"masterpiece\", Saga thought he was going to die that afternoon. His head was buried against the matress, and his body was hanging vertically, upside down, the ropes biting into his skin. Out of the corner of his eye he could see his legs, above himself, spread as far as they could get, farther than the boy ever thought it was possible. He was a perfect \"T\" shape hanging in mid-air.
He could feel the blood rushing down into his head because of the awkward position, and almost fainted as his muscles creaked under the effort when the man started playing with him.
But he was somewhat relieved to find out that this was one of the customers who liked tears, because he couldn’t hold them anymore when the pain became too unbearable.

For some reason, even though he didn’t care too much if people heard him whimper or moan during the nights back in the \"house\", here he was hyper-aware of the slightest sound, worried that people in the street or in another room would hear his voice, when he could no longer keep his cries reduces to a minimum.

Sick games or not, he didn’t take long to notice that this customer wasn\'t in it just for the pleasure. Making Saga suffer was a form of indirect revenge against the \"house\" for taking his money. Even though that was money the man \"rightfully\" owned after hours of entertainement at the brothel, he seemed to still see it as something he’d rather not have to pay, and faced with the obligation to do it, he decided that the messenger wouldn’t leave unscathed.
Saga had blanked out for a moment, when the searing white pain invaded his body, flooding all his senses and making everything fade in front of his eyes, and he thought the man would rip him apart when he penetrated him with the toy. And the sheer cruelty in that laughter, as the man rammed it in and out of him almost horrified him more than the pain that invaded his body.
Throughout the afternoon, whenever he hoped it was over and the client didn\'t have enough energy anymore, the man would remove himself and slide another toy into Saga\'s body, tearing more cries of pain from the boy and leading him to believe it would never be over.

He didn\'t even dare to move when the man untied him and he dropped limply on the bed, like a broken doll. His muscles had gotten used to being stretched so widely that he had trouble convincing his legs to hold his weight when he finally attempted to stand up.
But once again, he didn’t really have a choice, for the man threw the enveloppe with the money on the bed and told him to take his clothes and leave. Saga didn’t dare to ask for permission to clean up the blood and fluids between his legs before doing so, and did his best to hurry up, afraid that the man would change his mind.

As soon as he found himself outside, he wiped himself with the few tissues he had taken with him and staggered as fast as he could away from the place, biting the inside of his cheeks to keep from crying out in pain. When he felt something warm running down his intimacy, Saga shuddered in fear and disgust, absolutely terrified by the idea that the blood or something else mixed with it might run down his legs or stain his tight white shorts, and that everybody would see it. It reawakened his permanent fear : That everybody would know. He swallowed back his tears as well as he could and clenched his fists, trying to hold it in and to manage to go on walking.

When he finally felt like he was far enough from the place to stop shivering in fear that the man might decide to come after him again, he looked for a smaller alley without anyone in it, to have some privacy. Then he fell on his knees, hugged his chest, and cried harder than he had in long time. Their daily life was utterly miserable, but those moments were the worst of all. It took him immense effort to manage to stand up and go on after one of those days.
He knew it was as bad for Kanon, but somehow those things seemed to hurt him in a different way. Maybe because he was always hoping that things would be as bad, and that maybe the next customer would be less bad than the previous.
Kanon always expected the next one to be worse, and braced himself for the unknown as well as he could. Saga hoped, and when his hopes got crushed that hard, he felt wounded in his very core. As if there was a major flaw in him, that made him so utterly vulnerable that he didn’t even know how to react when something like that would happen.

And so he cried and cried until his head ached because of the sheer tension of the muscles in his face.

And this is why he didn’t see the two shadows stalking towards him.


**************

Leon always felt moved when he visited the poorer parts of the city.
It was as if for some reason, he felt guilty. Guilty that his life was good, and that he had all that he needed, while those people rotted in misery.
Not that he didn’t suffer for years himself, as the training to become a saint was anything but easy. But it was many years ago, and besides, it wasn’t the same kind of suffering. Even when he remembered the moments where he passed out in pain after one of the harder training sessions with his master, he still thought that nothing in it could be as painful as the daily life of some of the people he saw there. Even if he was destined to die in battle, he thought it was by far better than to live in utter despair.

A little voice on the back of his mind would usually laugh at him and say that it was ridiculous to feel guilty for having a good life, considering that any day a holy war could start and he could very well have to die for this people. The little voice whispered to him that it was only fair that he lived in a comfortable temple with servants all around him and everything he might need. After all, unlike those people, he wouldn’t get to grow old or ever get to take any big decisions about his own life.
They were free to go anywhere they wanted, while he was tightly trapped in the Sanctuary’s inflexible rules, even more so because he was one of the twelve higher members of that selected society... He was a gold saint, and technically, his life didn’t belong to himself.
It belonged to the goddess.


But he still felt freer than anyone he saw in the slums, be it at Rodorio, the closest village to Sanctuary, or at any of the other surrounding villages near to Athens.

And as much as the Sanctuary absolutely forbid any saint from interfering with the life of the normal people, he couldn’t help but feel utterly tempted to help when he saw someone in need. His heart ached because of that interdict and he had great difficulties to avoid giving in the urge to bend the rules here and there in order to be able to help at least a little bit.
Saints were forbidden to use their powers for anything else than the protection of the goddess and her Sanctuary, but occasionally using their cosmo to soothe a troubled spirit or a dying person was tolerated.
And that was what he had came to do today. An old man from the family of one of the servants working in Sanctuary was on the brink of death, and apparently, panic seized him at the memory of his sins, making his agony all the more difficult. When the young woman who worked in the kitchens had came to beg for Leon to help her grandfather, the gold saint couldn’t refuse.
He had carried his task with his usual effectiveness and compassion, and now he had to go back to Sanctuary and report to the Kyoukou, the High Priest of Athena and supreme leader of both the Sanctuary and all of its saints. A gold saint’s activities among the normal population were always under high surveillance, for with great power came countless hindering rules.
Leon accepted the reasons behind it of course, and had a strong respect for Shion and his decisions. His rational mind told him that as pure as the heart of a gold saint was supposed to be, you could never be sure that none of the would ever feel tempted to do something against the ideals of their goddess.
Even if Leon believed that he wouldn\'t do anything with ill intent, he himself was far from being perfect, as much as he struggled to always keep his bad pulsions under control. It was necessary to have tight rules to ensure that no saint would alter the curse of history by taking drastic decisions that were unaccounted for.
Yet his more gentle side couldn\'t help but suffer a terrible anguish when he felt that he could do so much to make some people\'s life better, but he was denied that possibility.

As he meditated upon the question while walking, he felt an extremely powerful yet completely unbridled cosmo flaring up suddenly to a surprising height, before disappearing again.


***************


Saga gasped for air, his troath held strongly between the fingers of the younger of the two thieves. They snickered, seeing him struggle. The punk lessened his grasp to allow him to breath a bit, then pinned him harder against the wall with his arm across the boy’s chest.
Saga let out a choked cry when he felt the other man slide his fingers between the skin of his belly and the belt of his shorts, grab the envelope and slip it out.

\"I told you, the little whores always carry money on them when they’re coming back from those oustide \'missions\'!\"

They must have been following him since he left the customer’s place, but he failed to notice them because of his utter despair. The boy cursed himself again for his lack of attention. He usually would to be obsessed about everything around him, constantly afraid and hyper-aware of the normal people’s gazes over him, and always scared that his clothing or something else would give away what he was... But this afternoon, he was too miserable to care as much as usually, and now he was in serious trouble because of that.

\"I don’t care for \'em boys, so I’ll be taking the money away! See you later at the boss\' place!\"

\"Sure man, I’ll be joining you as soon as I’m done having some fun here...\" – the younger thief had a cruel smile as he pulled out a butterfly knife, and used it to tear open the side of Saga’s shorts, then the front of the boy’s sleveless shirt..
Momentarily unconcerned by whatever was happening to his body, Saga stared in utter shock and disbelief as he saw the other thief disappear into the shadowed alleys, taking with him the enveloppe with all the money.
The boy let out an anguished scream and felt everything around him spin at high speed making him completely dizzy. That was a sensation he had already felt several times in the past, and although Kanon had experienced the same, none of them knew what it was. It was as if for a second, the entire universe rushed through their veins at an insane speed. They avoided talking about it to anyone else, afraid that it might be another thing that could potentially get them in trouble. It usually happened when their level of despair reached a peak so high that there wasn’t any other way to let out the feeling of utter panic rising inside their bodies.
The first time the twins felt it was a few years earlier, when the managers of the \"house\" decided that they were old enough to be initiated into the job they had really been purchased for.
That day, the two brothers felt like they died for the first time.
Even more so because their owners decided that the best way to get them started was to do it brutally, thinking that this way, whatever happened later, the twins wouldn\'t be shocked by any of the customer\'s behavior. Saga had gone into shock for days, and if Kanon managed to keep it together instead of falling apart too, it was only because he had to protect his brother.
Saga remembered waking up in Kanon’s arms, and finding out that the younger twin had been clutching his unconscious form for three days and nights, sitting curled in a corner of the room with his twin cradled tightly in his arms, and his eyes red from too much crying and lack of sleep.
That same night, they were forced the receive their first clients.

Maybe Kanon was right. Maybe all hope was an illusion. Saga\'s mind wandered off to thinking of his twin, probably still feverish and waiting for him back at the \"house\", and he tried to avoid imagining what might happen when he would come back and tell them that he had lost all that money.
The thief licked his lips and tried to forcefully part the boy\'s legs, that were tightly shut. The knife felt cold against the skin of his belly, even though Saga wasn\'t quite registering all the feelings anymore.

\"Spread them or I’ll bleed ya’!\"

And he complied, because dying wasn\'t an option. He couldn\'t leave Kanon alone, even though he was more scared of going back to the brothel and explaining about the money than he was scared of dying.
Kanon was a bit better than him to resist the mental anguish, but Saga was physically stronger and more able to protect his twin when sickness or tiredness made him too vulnerable. Kanon gave him the moral support he craved so much when things got unbearably bad and Saga protected him when the younger twin\'s health failed him. As much as they hoped death would free them from that place, they needed each other so desperately that separated, neither life nor death would be possible.

Saga thought the sky seemed incredibly far away and painfully blue when the punk slid his fingers into him brutally and mocked him for the blood and stuff that were now running freely down his legs. His sobs and the man\'s grasp on his troath were making him more and more short of breath, and his mind was starting to slip out into oblivion when the man lifted one of his legs to get better access.


And this is when, out of nowhere, a man in an incredibly shiny armour appeared and teared the punk off him, sending the man flying to crash against the opposite wall. Saga collapsed to his knees, unsure if he was conscious or had lost his sanity.

\"How dare you put your filthy hands on that poor child, you degenerated monster!!\"
The voice was strong and unwavering, clearly used to authority and well-aware of the justice in its words.
Saga stared up, mouth agape at the sight in front of him. The man was wearing...an armour. And a big white cape fluttering behind him. There was an impressive aura of power around him, and the golden light that surrounded his body marvelled the boy even further.

The punk stuttered in panic and scrambled to his feet, then dashed in a mad runaway, letting out a scream of pain when a wave of energy sent by the gold saint slammed full blast into his back for good measure. It wasn’t meant to kill or anything, but it would teach him a good lesson.

When Leon turned back to check on the boy, a shudder ran up his spine.
\"Oh, by the goddess...are you well, child?\"

Saga came back to reality with a jolt, hearing the man speak directly to him, and stared back with a dumb look, unable to find his words. The gold saint was glancing worriedly at the blood running down the boy’s legs. Technically, according to the Sanctuary’s rules, he didn’t have the right to have interfered, even if he had seen the incident happening just before his eyes. But he had been attracted by the cosmo he felt, and when he saw what was going on, no rule in the world could have prevented him from prying the man off the poor boy.

\"That shiny light...You...you are a saint of Athena, aren’t you...?\" – the boy blurted out, then flinched away, suddenly afraid that he might have irritated the man.

\"You can see my cosmo?! The flare from a moment ago came from you, didn’t it?\" Leon had displayed a level of energy too low for a normal human to be able to see the aura around him, and so the only explanation was that this child had also awakened to the cosmo, and was most likely the origin of the outburst from earlier.

The gold saint was doing his best to appear less scary, but the boy still seemed lost in hesitation between cowering in fear and staring unabashedly at him as if he was a statue that had started moving suddenly, or some other kind of marvel coming straight out of a book.

\"Do you have parents, or anyone that we could call to help you?\"
The child shook his head with a miserable look, but kept staring at him, as if he wanted to burn the image of the man in the golden armour into his mind.
Leon wasn’t surprised by that answer. As locked away in the Sanctuary as he might live, he was perfectly conscious that no parent would sent his child out in the skanky clothing that this poor boy was wearing. Or at least, he hoped that none would.

\"The old priest that disappeared...he’s told us about the saints, and how they’re good and pure, and better than everyone else in the world...and he said that they’d always protect the world against evil, and that they...they...\" – his sobs didn’t let the boy finish the sentence, and what was left of his voice broke down into an unintelligible flow of whimpers. Now that the fear had passed and only awe was left, he started feeling more acutely the pain of his wounds, be them physical or moral.

Leon had never dealed with children, and had no idea of what to do, but his heart guided him and he hugged the child to his chest, then gently lit up his cosmo to soothe his bruised mind and abused body.

\"You’re coming to Sanctuary with me.\" – Leon whispered into his ear in a decided tone, and Saga\'s eyes widened in utter surprise.

************

[To Be Continued]
[Next chapter : Drop #4 – They\'re twins.]


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Sagakure, May 15th, 2005


If you liked the fic, please comment! ^__^/
It\'s a depressing chapter, but things should get better for the twins as soon as Leon manages to rescue them. ^^;/