Changing Perceptions

They had taken the young Japanese agent by surprise; come upon him when he was separated from the rest of his team and Jonah had been on him before he could raise his guard. Driven him back and off balance enough to smash his head against the wall and knock him out. His leader had chuckled to see how quickly the boy was taken out of the mission before the inevitable clash of their teams. By their guess, he probably wouldn't be missed until well after the teams regrouped, when his comrades would begin to wonder why their youngest agent hadn't returned from a simple reconnaissance of the car garage.

His leader had motioned for Jonah to finish the job and follow him, but the scar-faced man had been reminded of other plans. Plus seeing the trickle of blood from the cut on the unconscious boy's head contrasting against the pale skin... Up close, the boy was more tempting than he previously anticipated. He hadn't cared that his leader would be angry with him for disappearing before their assignment was completed. No, he was more interested in spiriting away his little prize. The Japanese youth was such a pretty treasure to keep for his private amusement. But his original intention felt thwarted now that he had him. In the privacy of his little sanctuary, something had changed profoundly. 

His prisoner's dark-eyed gaze never wavered as it locked on him. Jonah could feel him waiting. Not fearfully, not in open defiance, but in resigned anticipation, perhaps. Jonah felt cheated. Surely, given his current situation, the boy could at least show some concern. He had not expected such apathy from his would be toy. Then again, perhaps apathy was the boy's only shield. 

The scar-faced man came closer to sit on the futon beside the Asian youth, noting as he did so that the brown eyes weren't focusing on him properly. But he couldn't excuse the lack of reaction to the boy having a concussion; the vulnerability of his position couldn't be so easily dismissed. Handcuffed, his body drugged limp and without strength before an enemy, and his clothes taken away, leaving him nude under a red robe thrown loosely over his reed thin body. The boy was alone with the one member of the terrorist force Nomad who was acknowledged as insane and who carried out a much-vocalised vendetta on God. He should be afraid. Yet, if there was any emotion at all in the dark-eyed gaze, it was only of puzzlement. 

Jonah's hand reached over to brush the boy's raven black hair from his eyes, the action allowing him to see the bandage tied about his forehead. An unspoken question hovered in the eyes. 'Why?' Jonah didn't know the answer himself. He could say that he was curious about this young Japanese agent, but he couldn't explain why he had taken it upon himself to clean and dress the boy's injuries. Why he had taken the trouble to lay clean sheets on the futon. His original intentions for the boy had been far from pleasant. But he changed his mind after bringing him here, so taken was he by his curiosity. His interest in deriving amusement from the other's pain and humiliation dissipated with the discovery of what lay beneath the uniform.

The Asian youth made no motion of protest or complaint when Jonah pulled the robe away to expose his naked chest. Jonah observed that he did not even flinch to feel the older man's fingers tracing the faint lines of scars that covered his chest. A few of the scars could be attribute to surgery and injuries in the line of duty, but some particular patterns... He studied them again, this time under the watchful, dark-eyed gaze. Once more, he arrived at the same conclusion, that the scars were not the evidence of torture. The scars were too precise... too clean... the lines too small and smooth... too orderly... It was a veritable roadmap of-- of self-inflicted pain.

Jonah let his fingers traverse the scars across the washboard stomach and pushed the robe further down to expose the lower body. To where the scarring stopped and where he first noticed the tattoo. 

Something made him turn his gaze up to the boy's face in time to catch the blush and see the Japanese youth turn his eyes away in shame. It didn't surprise him now. He had thought that the butterfly could not possibly have been something the stoic young man would choose for himself. The scar-faced man let his gaze drop again to the vibrant pattern that lay on the inside of the boy's left thigh. To be fair, it was beautiful. Though the markings that lead to it... the tattoo that graced his broad back was far more impressive. A glimmer of understanding about the contrast of the scars and the tattoos came to him now. Jonah guessed that the young agent had not been willing to have tattoos of roses inflicted on him any more than he had wanted the butterfly on his inner thigh. 

Patterns of roses and butterflies... The scar-faced man wondered when he had picked up the tattoos and if they had been the catalyst for him to start the self-mutilation of his chest and stomach. He wondered whether his fellow Special Forces comrades knew about the marks on his body. If they could even guess what lay beneath the sleeveless, high collared black shirt he normally wore.

It was a clever idea to leave his arms and face untouched. Jonah had never given thought to do this when he started cutting his own flesh so many years ago. If he did, he might have escaped all the pills, medicine, and drugs the doctors tried to impart on him in their efforts to 'cure' his insanity. But he would insist that he wasn't insane. God willed it. He caused it with the accident that left him untouched, except for the marked increase in his recuperative powers and the loss of his ability to feel pain.

Jonah's fingers wandered again to the scars on the boy's chest and moved to lift the downcast face, making the brown eyes meet his gaze. He had to ask. "Why?"

The unfocussed eyes blinked at him, as if surprised at the question. 

He tried again. "Why did you cut yourself, lad?" Jonah waited patiently, letting the silence stretch uncomfortably between them.

"You--" The Asian youth closed his eyes a moment before he opened them again to looked pointedly at the bloodied bandage Jonah had earlier wrapped around his arm. "You do the same. Why do you do it?"

"It's nothing to me." Jonah's brow knitted in uncertainty. "I feel no pain."

Brown eyes turned to stare at the scars on the older man's face, most especially the one that was responsible for the loss of an eye. "If it's nothing, then why cut yourself? Didn't you just want to know if it would change? If it would be this time that you'd at last feel something?" The eyes closed and he turned his head away. "I wanted the pain."

"Why?"

The Asian youth didn't answer. Jonah thought for a moment that he had fainted, but when he reached with a hand to touch his face, the eyes opened again. So he repeated his query. "Why?"

"A distraction."

Jonah felt troubled and disturbed by the boy's words.

"Why did you dress my wounds?"

The words roused him from his thoughts, making him turn his eye back to the pale boy. He didn't know how to phrase an answer. Instead, he again let his fingers trace one of the lines of scars across the pale chest. His gaze once more led to the tattoo on the inner thigh.

"I wanted you alive, lad." Jonah got off the futon and said no more as he left the room. He could feel the eyes of the boy following him, burning with curiosity as strong as his own.

He freed his prisoner from the handcuffs, deciding that the drugs would keep him too weak to escape. There was also the concussion to consider and he made sure he woke the Asian youth every hour. Jonah surprised both of them with his attentiveness. Since the Asian youth's first awakening, Jonah had gently tended his injuries and seen to his comfort. They hadn't spoken much else. At the close of their first day together, the scar-faced man gathered the weakened boy in his arms and helped him hold a cup of soup as he drank from it. 

When the soup was finished, Jonah cradled him against his chest, letting the young man doze in his arms. Jonah felt him tense slightly as his hand reached under the robe to brush against the skin of the boy's inner left thigh. But the hand didn't venture any further, his sensitive fingers finding the mark where the skin felt different.

"When?"

He waited again, neither pushing nor demanding to have his curiosity sated. Jonah wondered if the boy had ever spoken to anyone about the tattoos or the scars. He frowned to himself, wondering why he cared to learn. Why he felt so strongly about understanding the meaning behind his enemy's emotional problems. Why he wanted to understand the boy's desire to feel pain.

"Before this team--" Jonah almost missed hearing the softly spoken words. "A mission failed and-- the target decided I would be much more entertaining alive."

"How long?"

He received no answer for this question and Jonah decided not to press for more details. He could make intelligent guesses as to the degradation the boy must have suffered. Given the size and position of the tattoos, he could presume how long the process must have taken and what could have followed at the end of each session under the tattoo artist's needle.

He moved his hand away from the tattoo to again stroke the faint scars on his chest. "And this? Did this start after you were freed?"

"What do you think?"

Jonah abruptly vacated the futon in discomfort and a pained hiss escaped the Asian youth's lips as he was suddenly dropped onto the hard futon. The scar-faced man towered over him angrily. He was confused, he didn't understand what he was doing or why. Before he brought the boy to his safe house, he had known what his purpose in life was. He had known what he wanted to do. 

Since childhood... since that fateful accident, he felt no pain. He felt nothing. He had been told that God felt for him. That God would carry his burden of pain when he could not... God had his feelings. He wanted them back. He wanted to hurt God. Hurt the Supreme Being so badly that He wouldn't want his pain anymore. So that He would give it back and let him feel again. He wanted to hurt God. 

Nomad gave him that opportunity. Showed him that cutting his own flesh was not enough. God felt for more than one boy; he felt for the pathetic masses. Their terrorist activities could do so much more. Privately, he had even tried knocking on God's door. But the priests and the nuns of the individual churches he visited and destroyed were not enough. He still felt nothing, accomplished nothing... He did not hurt God enough. Maybe he could not... Not that way in any case. Then he remembered God's love of beauty and he had thought to destroy-- mar all that was made beautiful in God's image.

Jonah tore at the robe that covered the boy, letting his eyes drink in the magnificence of the Asian youth. He was beautiful. Jonah could remember having seen this young Japanese agent as he tended to business in his civilian guise at the Art Centre. Surrounded by adoring schoolgirls as he worked with his potter's wheel or at his sculptures. Producing his own creations of beauty with his clever hands. 

The Special Forces boy, beautiful, smart, gracious, graceful with his sword... so gifted he must have been favoured by God... Jonah had dreamed of having that pale, smooth skin at his mercy to tear at, to slash and mar and mutilate. Dreamed of having the boy in his control to humiliate and debase. He fantasised over how much he could hurt God by destroying this beautiful young man. Now he had him, but Jonah felt cheated. 

Scars of self-loathing sneered at him. Tattoos, beauteous in appearance but degrading in purpose, covered the boy's back and winked at him from his inner thigh. Brown eyes stared up him, empty of any emotion. Pure apathy stood in those eyes.

"I wanted to hurt God." The words left his lips unconsciously. It was the only way he could express his disappointment.

Deep brown eyes blinked at his statement. "But God is dead."

The scar-faced man fled the room. His mind was racing, the foundation of his very being shaken. //"But God is dead."// No one had ever said that to him before.

When Jonah returned to the room, he tried not to care. Tried not to let his mind interfere with the plans he turned over in his head weeks and months earlier. The boy was far too weak to fight or resist him, letting the Nomad roll him over on his front and nudge his legs apart. However, as he pulled off the last tatters of the red robe, the full glory of the exposed tattoo made him pause. He couldn't help his fascination with the elaborate design that graced the smooth back. It made him wonder what had gone through the minds of the men who previously took the young man.

He felt nothing. His body did not respond to the vulnerability of the boy beneath him. The scar-faced man let his hands run over the smooth skin. His hands traced the designs down the length of the back and over the smooth curves of the buttocks. He let his fingers trace the crack between the cheeks and brush against the puckered treasure hidden there. Nothing.

Frustrated, he roughly turned the boy on his back, but that was worse. The scars mocked him even as he pinched and pulled at hardening nipples. The body involuntarily responded to his rough handling, but the boy did not. Empty eyes stared at the ceiling through him even as he kissed and bruised the unresponsive lips. And he felt nothing.

Jonah got off the boy and sat on the futon beside him. He wanted to scream. Nothing mattered, he saw that now. He knew all his efforts had been wasted. Saw it so clearly illustrated by the Japanese youth. He knew that everything he had done before... everything he had intended to do... his efforts to hurt God were all wasted. 

"Why are you crying?"

"What?" The question surprised him. 

"You're crying."

So he was. The cheek under his lone existing eye was damp with tears. Was this what pain was? This sinking despair that-- Wait-- he did-- he did hurt. Others had told him that he was a man that felt no pain, but he did hurt. When did that happen?

//"But God is dead."// The boy had told him so, and it sounded so right. And Jonah reminded himself that he did cry, so he could hurt now. He could feel pain. A much more exquisite pain, purer than any crude physical sensation.

He turned to look at the boy on the futon again, his hand reaching out again to trace the scars on his chest. /What is physical pain compared to the pain inside?/

"Did you feel pain from this?" He drew a finger over one particularly thick scar.

The brown eyes looked up at him curiously before he answered. "Not enough."

They stood in the alleyway in front of the Art Centre. Jonah supported the still shaky boy, waiting for him to gather his strength enough to take the short walk across the street before he let him go.

He looked at Jonah in puzzlement as he leaned against the shorter man. "Why?"

The scar-faced man turned the question over in his head again. His leader had ordered him to kill the boy. He had originally wanted to rape and mutilate his body. He didn't do any of that. What for?

"Ran?!"

The shout came from across the street. Jonah jerked his head up to see three other members of the government Special Forces unit pour out of the art centre. He quickly pulled his support away from the boy and leaned him against the wall before starting his withdrawal.

"God is dead." He didn't look back.

Jonah endured his leader's yelling and demands to know where he had been since he abandoned the mission, but he said nothing. He just quietly went to his room and left his comrades staring after him in puzzlement.

As he entered, his cat came bounding towards him to rub against his legs in welcome. Jonah stopped to watch her for a moment before reaching down to give her a rub under her chin, smiling as she purred for him. He left her to turn his attention towards his collection of knives. Selecting one, he made a small cut on his arm, confirming that he still lacked the ability to feel physical pain. Then he pondered over what he had learnt about that young Japanese agent.

He focused his attention inwardly, turning events of his past over in his mind, examining what he thought of them. A cough of a laugh left him. He had cared so very little for anything before, small wonder he felt no pain. At least now, he knew how to feel pain. He knew how he could evoke pain within himself.

"And God is dead." 

He started to laugh, the volume of his laughter growing with each passing minute until he was howling. Two comrades bust into his room, for all intents and purpose prepared to wrest his knives from him if he proved to be cutting himself in wild abandon. But he wasn't. Why should he bother with crude physical sensations anymore? What for? God is dead.

Maybe he'd look up young Ran again. So selfish was he that he hadn't given any thought about it then, but the young agent helped him straighten his head. He had to return the favour. Maybe they could explore together how much physical pain he really wanted to experience. Maybe they could even find out how much pain was 'enough'.