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Wash was passive, allowing her legs to drape across his lap and accepting the wine. He took a long, slow swig, thinking carefully.

"I am a coward," he began carefully, intoning each syllable. "I can't stop seein' them, all o' them - Julie, Clerise, you." He drank deeply, and handed the bottle back. He closed his eyes and let his head fall gently back. He didn't have the right to ask these questions of her, to ask in a way, to borrow her strength. But the truth was, he had no one else to turn to.

"Especially you. Always you. Some days it feels like I'm dead already, and just too stubborn t' stop movin'."

That was another thing he had realized, in his time alone. That spark, that desperate fire she had inspired in him - it had been all he had. Living for others, though, was untenable. But what was there to strive for here, except to live another day?

"What, Miss Belrose, keeps you goin', when everything's gone to s**t?"

They cared too much. Wash let this statement sift through the sieve of his mind, tasting it. But what was the alternative? Not caring? Then what was the point of anything? Still, he found himself enraptured as her hands and lips and face moved, hungrily taking in every gesture.

The first to go is your heart. Everyone thinks you are broken, everyone thinks that you are wild and without emotion.

He didn't believe that for a second. She might never give him the gift of that level of emotional transparency again, but she was capable - even if she didn't believe it herself. He took comfort in that assertion. She was wild because she was so emotive, so ravenous - insatiable, for better or worse. So alive, that clawing, greedy prerogative to sustain, to survive and to thrive in spite of anything and everything.

A thorn bush clinging to a cliff; the flowers all the sweeter for their trials.

Wash looked at her then, really looked, allowed himself to see how deeply the shadows cast across her soul had left their mark; etched into her core so that she was both of the darkness and apart from it. To finally admit to himself that maybe she wasn't a saint, not really. She had a terrible capability about her, an implied, sinister brutality. And yet, in spite of this, or perhaps because of this, she was still so, so beautiful. Men had died for less. Men had worshiped less.

As a boy, he had attended mass dutifully every week, paying homage to a distant and stern deity, one who had felled nations. He had only come to understand the love He could bring at the soft, seldom spoken words and anecdotes of his father; a lens through which he could find a sense of peace. His time at Deus Ex had worn on him, had stripped him down to the barest bones of the man he had been; a tree in a hailstorm, all naked limbs and stripped bark.

Did he not find in her a different kind of mass? One of bodies and flesh, where words had never been needed? Maybe it wasn't just fear for her safety that had sent him running - but also fear that, if he realized her full nature, accepted her for all her flaws and sins, that that darkness might baptize him too. Washington Becker had always assumed the role of protector, striving to rescue her from her demons.

He accepted the bottle, taking a long draw of its contents without tasting them.

Maybe he'd had it wrong. Maybe it was she who would save him; to teach him to find meaning in the absence of light.

His touch was slight as he ran his fingers idly up the arch of her feet, where her toes met his side. "You deserve everything," he breathed softly. More than me, he thought, and for once his this did not send him drifting away to dwell on the past.

Perhaps the first step was to let go of everything he thought was right, and true, and mattered. To let his yesterdays slip away - just a slew of ghosts that had no meaning to the living.

Wash watched her smaller figure writhe as she moved closer on the couch; watched the intoxicating dance of her fingers on his skin.

"Yes," he replied simply, but it wasn't her promise of death he feared.

It was the way that, even now, he felt the ground slowly falling out beneath him. The way his gut wrenched and his spine tingled and his skin felt as if it was on fire. The way she carved a path for his more bestial urges, until what was left was more than animal but less than human. He had always considered himself a righteous man, but it was as if she could find his deepest desires and dig them out like marionette strings, plucking them one by one; tuning them to her own discordant notes. An eerie symphony.

He was not truly a creature of darkness; not yet. The fear and isolation had eaten away at his morality, at his closely held inner code, but vestiges remained. Cobwebs clinging to his mind in odd places. A body could only take so much, however, and Washington Becker was a man looking for a cure, a cure to a disease for which he had no name.

He let that desire fill him, focused on it singly until it forced every other emotion out; raw and terrible. Wash looked down to Sasha then with a darkened countenance.

He had come here, in a way, to face his fears - and in a way, he was.

"What d'you want," he rumbled, "from me?" He took one of her small hands into his and pressed it into his chest, over his heart. It's beat was excited; erratic and frantic, and it matched the intensity of his gaze.

Wash let his gaze slowly drag its way up to her eyes, the sweet ache in his neck pulsing with the beat of his heart.

What did he want? Oh, so many things. Most of him wanted to surrender, to find release in her nails against his skin and his flesh to hers as they once had - but that was then, and this was now. Now, he had more questions than he had answers. The soul deep ache that had plagued him since he'd come to the island was bubbling to the surface, like so much ichor waiting to be lanced and bled.

Salvation was another possible answer, but of a different kind than he was used to. To be saved from responsibility, from the prerogative to make decisions and to face the consequences - but that was a coward's wish, and he knew she would not want to hear it.

He let his eyes lose focus, till she was just a pale specter wreathed in the shadow of her hair. There were parts about her that were still familiar; parts of her that made him sick with desire - but there were new things too, shiny and sharp and dangerous things. It was as if she was slowly blossoming before them all, into something malevolent and deadly. Was this his fault, somehow? Had she died, after all, in his absence?

It was too much, all of it. Running hadn't solved anything, but instead made it so much more complicated.

"I want..."

He closed his eyes and stilled his breath, losing himself to the moment.

"I want to be broken," he replied in a low whisper.

Wash's eyes were sad, and more than a little lost, but only for a moment. He knew the truth of her words - could feel the crunch and crush in his mind as the bits and pieces of Washington Becker slid around in a jumbled heap. There was not much left of the man who had taken an abrupt leave almost two years ago; not much left to salvage. But if he tried, if he really tried, maybe he could begin again. One piece at a time.

With extreme care he slid out of his own clothing, and a sense of peace overwhelmed him.

Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress;
my eyes grow weak with sorrow,
my soul and body with grief.

Soon he stood similarly garbed in lamplight and shadow - bathed in her shadow, scoured by the light.

I am forgotten as though I were dead;
I have become like broken pottery.

He moved toward Sasha, and it was like he was stepping back in time - a time when her body was similarly clean and unscarred; a time when this, just this was enough to sustain them. The play of her darkness against his body and mind.

Light and shadow.

How abundant are the good things
that you have stored up for those who fear you.

Standing over her now, almost touching, he let his hands hover over her shoulders, moving inexorably lower, down past the ribs, over the curve of her hips to the tops of her thighs. Almost.

Wash slid down to his knees in front of her, and worshiped.