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When Isaiah's number had popped up across the screen of his cell phone, Kam had been worried he'd answer it to another trick, just to hear that eerie, mocking voice cold and clear on the other end. As he realized it was simply Ice, a wash of relief flooded him, followed by that same heavy stone of guilt that had been sitting in the pit of his stomach from the moment he lay eyes on the neat, loopy script marring Isaiah's art - still sitting on his desk.

It had taken a bit to convince him to come by the condo and in the end, he wasn't sure if Isaiah had agreed because he was willing to look Kam in the face, or if he simply wanted his cat back. At least Tastykake served the purpose of a hostage, if nothing else, and had been somewhat of a distraction for Kam's frantic mind as he spent the better part of the early hours of the morning threatening to strangle her if she didn't stop screaming.

Waiting for Isaiah to answer him had been hard - but now, waiting for the tell-tale knock on his front door made the bile rise in his throat. He'd spent so long avoiding his friend, avoiding the conversation they needed to have, that he didn't know where he would even begin. Now he had done much more than keep secrets and lie - he had cost Isaiah everything.

How did he apologize for something like that?

Kam found himself sitting in the recliner of his living room, staring at the doorway on the other side of the entrance arch. There was a beer in his hands that he had barely touched, meant to distract him from putting his fist through anything as the fingers tightened and relaxed, over and over.

He was waiting with equal parts hope and dread. This day would never be over quickly enough.

The time it took for Isaiah to arrive seemed to stretch on almost endlessly, leaving Kamboja sober and more alone with his thoughts than he wanted to be - more than he had been in a very, very long time.

What could he possibly say that wouldn't make his friend hate him forever? How much of the truth could he bear for Isaiah to know? He had already been too guilt-ridden to answer a simple letter and now, during his silence, he had cost Isaiah more than he would ever be able to make up for. But even knowing all that he'd done, he still couldn't explain the truth as it was - as it was, undoubtedly, about to be. There were lies upon lies piling up under him and more threatening to weigh him down.

Isaiah couldn't know the truth of what Alkaid wanted, but no answer at all would not serve to satisfy Ice.

The rap of his cane against the door startled Kamboja back to himself, splashing a bit of the beer over the lip of its bottle. He set it down with a grumble and wiped his hand on the back of his jeans before he cross to the threshold like a man walking to his own trial. With a single, solidifying breath, he pulled the door open and came face to face with the man that was about to be judge and jury. Despite it, a look of unrestrained relief overcame him as he saw the man in flesh and bone, unharmed - at least by anything he could have caused.

"Your cat is here," was the greeting he gave, before he stepped aside and held the door open for Isaiah to walk through, "as well as.. uh, you know, you should probably just sit down first."

The dark, burly man took a seat in his chair and settled his eyes on Isaiah while he tried to calm TK. There was a small sigh as she simply flitted off again, no doubt to wedge herself under something that neither of them would be able to pull her out from beneath.

Not that it mattered, because Isaiah didn't have a home to take her back to.

The thought struck him hard and he winced, reaching for the beer bottle and wrapping his strong hands around the neck more for comfort than because he wanted to take a sip. The glass was barely cold against his palm. Everything the dark haired man was saying washed over him like a flurry. He didn't even know where to begin with his answers now any more than he had the ones Isaiah had asked by letter.

"Probably," he mumbled in answer to Isaiah's final admittance. Kam remembered what it was like to realize your life had changed in the blink of an eye and nothing was ever going to fix it. Of course, Kam had to remind himself that he had lost a lot more than a few physical possessions, even if this was something all together more terrifying than what felt like a mundane, human accident. With that thought in mind, he leaned forward in his chair and moved a newspaper that he had planted over the top of something Isaiah would immediately recognize as his own work - defiled.

I do not make idle threats. Bring me what I asked for.

"Would you believe me if I told you that she had no suspicion that I was Gehenna before that night at the liquor store?" His free hand came up and rubbed at his face, as if that simple gesture might just wipe away everything he knew. "Or that she's the reason I'm always in bars, never doing my ******** duty to this damn war?"

The beer bottle was deposited, untouched and unwanted, on the table where several rings of moisture suggested he'd picked it up and set it down a half dozen times already.

"I'm sorry, Ice. I didn't have any reason to think you'd ever be caught up in her games."

A small wave of his hand at the charcoal piece was his way of saying that Isaiah could have it. It wasn't his to keep, nor did he want any reminder of the woman lingering near him. Looking at her too-human script across a work he'd seen hanging in Isaiah's apartment was a sickening feeling.

"Then don't believe me, Ice." His jaw clenched after the words, so tightly that the muscles were bulging, aching under the strain of his grinding teeth. He wanted to tell Isaiah that there wasn't a reason not to trust him, not to believe him, but then his mind wandered to what he really had to do after this talk was done. To keep Isaiah safe, to keep Sana and Ariel safe, he had to betray someone else. His heart already felt heavy with that knowledge and his lips wouldn't part to produce the lie - he wasn't a trustworthy person. He couldn't pretend to be.

Yet he was more loyal than Isaiah could have imagined. His loyalty was his greatest strength, and his ultimate downfall. Alkaid knew it too well, after years and years of stringing him along, and now she had used it against him. Who did he care about most? That was his choice.

His eyes dropped to his hands as Isaiah's anger hit him like a tidal wave and the fingers slowly curled into a fist, until the knuckles blanched white. If he'd been holding the beer bottle then, it was likely that he would have shattered it. Instead he simply stood and began to dig into his back pocket for his wallet, still refusing to meet Isaiah's gaze.

"Fine, if that's what you want. You know where the guest room is." His battered leather wallet was in his hands by the time he spoke, although he seemed to be having a hard time steadying his fingers enough to maneuver the over-packed folds. His thumb pressed against a thick, black card and finally managed to pull it out. It dropped with a hard click against the tabletop between them and as he shoved his wallet back into his pocket, he motioned to it with a knuckle. His dark eyes lifted back to Ice's finally, though his face retained its stony expression.

"Buy whatever you need while you're here, since I just cost you so much." It was hard to tell if there was anger or venom in the words because the darker man was already beginning to shut down. Kamboja knew enough about himself to recognize it as the calm before the storm, the eye of a great torrent of anger. Somewhere in Destiny City, someone or something was about to earn unwanted attention.

Bit by little bit, the stony expression that Kam had pulled over himself, to hide the rage and self hatred churning turmoil deep in his gut, began to fade under the helpless, hopeless sight of a balled-up Ice.

Guilt punched him hard in his gut and he sighed, relaxing the tension in his shoulders, but letting weariness rise to take it's place. The thick, guarded man had spent a night partying before he'd walked into this personal nightmare and his lack of rest or peace was beginning to shine through. It was impossible to keep functioning in a state of all-consuming rage, especially when the only person it benefited was himself. Looking at Isaiah now, he knew that he owed him more than distance.

His thick fingers reached out and pulled the wallet loose from the pale fingertips of his broken friend, then set it down on top of the card he had tossed not moments before. Yet it was Isaiah that he settled his dark eyes on and, finally, he dropped down onto the edge of the couch near him.

"Stay mad at me, if you have to." Beneath all his frustration, and his uneasiness over the things that were yet to come, there was a concern. Broken souls made his heart ache, even when he was too busy caring about himself. "But tell me what to do, to make this.." there was a pause where he tried to find the right word, but knew there wasn't one that would encompass the delicacy of Isaiah's state of mind. In the end, he just sighed at himself, and his lack of an efficient vocabulary.

"Tell me what I can do."

Of course that was what he wanted.

Kam sighed again, as he had done a dozen times already in his wariness, and leaned back into the couch instead of remaining perched on the edge. Wherever he had thought to go, whoever he had wanted to see while Isaiah dealt with this alone was pushed out of his mind. There was no drink or woman that would change what others expected of him.

A couple of times he opened his mouth and closed it, deciding against whatever way he had wanted to begin his explanation. It was one thing for Fiona to ask him, for Denebola, but for Ice..

Were they really close enough for this?

Two exhausted, dark eyes swept over the table with it's contents. A wallet Isaiah could no longer keep, money that Kam offered that ultimately would make no difference, the only piece of art that remained of Isaiah's hard work. The man at his side was as broken as he felt himself. She'd pulled them together in this, even if Isaiah resented him for it forever.

"She has my little brother."

His words filled the silence between them and felt strangely distant, even to him. Sometimes the idea of Khal ever coming back alive, of existing anywhere alive, seemed so absurd that he didn't know why he kept hoping. It wasn't the whole story though, not now. It didn't matter if he held onto hope or let it go now that things had progressed so far because she kept coming back around to remind him, to keep him in his place. He ran a strong hand up his face and rubbed at his eyes, pushing back the sudden exhaustion that crept over him now that the adrenaline was beginning to wane.

"And now that she knows who I am, she wants.." his teeth grit, but his eyes looked up at Isaiah. The admission was hard - he'd never spoken of it out loud to anyone and even now he wasn't sure that he could say the whole truth. She wanted him to betray his own people, she wanted treason. If Isaiah had just run that night when he told him to..

"She wants me to bring her a Transcended Senshi. You were the first punishment for my refusal."

Isaiah was first to speak and Kam was all too happy to let him. Somehow, the emotionless, analytical approach that he took was neither surprising nor upsetting. Deep down, the dreadhead knew that his life would have been so much easier up to this point if he had simply done everything that Alkaid had asked of him.

If he'd never gone looking for Khetal, Khaldun, whatever his brother wanted to be called these days, he would never have found Alkaid instead. He could have let Khal slip away into memory peacefully without earning the ire of some broken, puppet of a woman hell bent on keeping him in his place. Isaiah was right about that - whatever larger game he was a part of, Alkaid was enjoying the place she'd put him in. Now, if he'd simply given her what she wanted, Ice wouldn't have been in the position he was in either.

And yet that knowledge did nothing to soothe his hurt.

As much as he knew that playing her game was the answer to his problems, it wasn't going to fix all the damage that had been done, or all the damage that would be done. Even if they weren't allies, some of them had been kind, some of them had been loyal.

Loyal.

The word chimed in Kam's head, repeated over and over in a voice that he recognized not as his own, but as Gehenna's. Rayyan. He knew that he had two choices - to preserve his loyalty, his path of defiance or to give in to the woman and save himself, to choose selfishness. But now it was more complicated - was it selfishness now if he chose to save Isaiah?

He turned his dark, sorrowful eyes on the thin man at his side, drinking in his words and opinions as they flowed past his lips.

"No, you're right," he said low, barely more than a mumble. "I don't want you to get mixed up in this any more than you have to, but I know that it's you or someone else I care about at this point. She has to have seen Sana, right? And Ariel? I haven't been in danger, there hasn't been a single threat on my own life.." His words trailed off and he sighed for what felt like the hundredth time, or the thousandth. Selfishness was ignoring the warning signs because they didn't apply to himself.

"I already know I have to do it, Isaiah. You're right."

Isaiah always did seem to be the more articulate one and in that moment Kam was, for once, extremely thankful. The darker, weary man even managed a small smile as Isaiah suggested the very alternative that Kam had been pursuing.

Get drunk.

Call the sexy, carefree not-quite-girlfriend.

At least he no longer had to explain to Isaiah why getting smashed and losing himself to physical pleasures was so appealing. At twenty seven years old he should have been outgrowing the phase of partying hard, but for him it had never quite been a phase so much as an escape. When his dark eyes settled on Isaiah's, he knew that deep need to forget when he recognized, and he knew that Isaiah's path to that need would lead him down a longer, harder path than Kam had ever let himself dive into. As much as he felt the years of struggle in his bones, like a weight that was crushing him beneath its gravity, the echo of it in his friend roused him from the lonely island of self pity.

Kam was only a better man when he had someone other than himself to care about. For a long time it had been Khal, the brother that didn't even want his help, but now?

"You're right," he started, leaning back into the couch as he did so and raising his hips up just enough that he could dig into his front pocket for the phone he had been holding onto since the moment he'd seen Alkaid's handiwork. It pulled free and he settled comfortably into the cushions, flipping through his contacts until he had Sana's number on the screen.

"I'll call Sana and ask her to come cheer us up for the night." With his finger hovering over the call button, he spared Isaiah one last glance. "Is there anything I should ask her to stop and get?" His other hand was already reaching for his own wallet, and the card Isaiah had forked over with it.