Chet Williamson - Reign

"Didn't you tell me? Or Munro?"

"No, I didn't, and I don't remember Munro mentioning it when he talked to you."

Dennis frowned. "I don't know. Maybe I just assumed it, knowing Harry. I can almost see it if I try," he said. "And I don't want to see it, Sid. I really don't want to." He finished his scotch in a single swallow, then held up a finger for another.

They continued to drink in silence for some time, their eyes on a football game on the TV mounted over the bar. Finally Dennis spoke.

"What makes a person do something like that?" Sid said nothing. Dennis's impeccably clipped speech was starting, very slightly, to slur. "You'd have to hate your life so much to leave it on purpose." He looked at Sid from weary eyes. "You ever think about it, Sid? About suicide?”

“No. Never have."

"I did," Dennis said quietly. "Few years back. When we first went out on the road with Empire, remember? I really thought about it. In Chicago. I was standing on the balcony of the suite, and I leaned over the rail, and I looked down, down, and I knew that if I jumped from there it would all be over so fast with just a moment of pain, and then nothing. I climbed over the rail and leaned into the wind holding on with one hand, and I was all ready to let go. But I didn't. I didn't because I was scared. I was scared of the fall. I didn't think I'd like it."

"Why did you… want to do it?"

The words came slowly, as if Dennis was forcing them out. "I thought my life was over anyway. I mean, in all my life I had created only one thing – I mean one thing that was real. And that was the Emperor. The character. I mean, that really was something. And it was mine. Nobody else did that for me, Sid. I did that myself. And I never did anything else. And that's why I wanted to… to die. Because I was afraid I'd never do anything else."

"Maybe that was enough."

"It's not enough."

"Dennis, most people go through life not creating a damn thing, and they're happy. But you took a character that only existed on paper, and you made it live. You made people laugh and cry and dream with it, and that'll never go away. The Emperor is really alive because of you." Sid chuckled. "Long live the Emperor, huh?"

Dennis shook his head sadly. "The Emperor's gone, Sid. That's all over. But I found something else to make me want to live. I found Robin, and I found the project. The shows are here now – the new shows, the shows that wouldn't exist if it weren't for me and my money. And my direction, dammit. I'm gonna direct these shows and they're gonna be my shows, aren't they? I'm gonna create these shows. ..” He drained the glass of another drink. Was it the fifth? Sid wondered. Or the sixth? He couldn't remember, and it didn't seem to matter anyway.

"If it weren't for that," he heard Dennis mumble, "I might still try to fly off a roof. Man's gotta create… gotta create something

… make something before he… before he dies." And then Sid heard Dennis start to cry softly. "Poor Harry," he said between gentle sobs, "Aw, poor Harry…"

~* ~

Although he knew it was a dream while he was dreaming it, that made it no less frightening. He was wearing his costume, the costume of the Emperor Frederick. He held a fat pocketknife in his right hand, and with the other he held down some kind of animal on an altar of black metal. Was it a sheep? It seemed to be, for the eyes were the eyes of a sheep, dull and mild. The body was docile, yielding, like one would expect a sheep's to be as one held it down to be slaughtered. Even its cry, a pitiful, braying lament, was sheeplike.

But its cry had no effect upon the Emperor, who demanded his sacrifice, the sacrifice to the God among men, to Dennis Hamilton who was the Emperor, to the Emperor who was Dennis Hamilton, to both, to neither, but something made of both, and he was so confused, was he still drunk even in his dream?

No, he was more than drunk, he had to be, for even drunk he would never have taken the knife and driven it in, not into the heart, but lower down, where what he savaged told him that this was not a ewe he butchered, but a ram.

Then the sheep transformed beneath him: the bloodied wool became flesh, the wide, wet, terrified eyes eddied from brown to blue, the tortured snout shrank, the pumping forelegs turned to writhing arms, and there, untouched by the knife, the skin whole and unmarked, she lay, still twisting in agony as though an unseen blade was channeling through her from within.

"Ann…” he whispered, and it seemed to him that he spoke with two voices. "Ann…” He was struggling now, trying to bring himself up from the dream, knowing that to end it would end her torment.

"Ann…”

And he was free. The brutally honest light was gone, and all around him was the darkness of night and its reality, and he turned to the warm, living body by his side, that sweet body free of pain, and he held it and murmured, "Ann…"

And Robin stiffened, awake, next to him in their bed.

"What?" she said in a voice muted with interrupted sleep. "What did you say?" The distance in her voice made him tremble, and he could not answer her. "What did you call me?"

"Robin…"

"You called me Ann. You called me by her name."

Light blinded him, and he pressed his eyes closed. When he opened them again, he saw her sitting up in their bed, staring at him with wide-eyed fury, as though her anger were greater than the pain of the light. "Tell me, Dennis," she said, and there was no sleepiness in her voice now. "Tell me everything."

He coughed, tasted the scotch far back in his throat, swallowed, coughed again. "I'm sorry," he said. "There's not that much to tell."

"Are you… seeing her?"

"You mean having an affair? No, Robin. And we never did."

"You never did."

"No. But I loved her. I admit that."

"You admit it."

"Yes. She was the first woman I ever loved, and… and I guess I still feel some of that."

"You do."

" Yes." Her repetition unnerved him. "I'm sorry, I don't want to, but I don't seem to have any choice in the matter. But I swear to you I haven't done anything about it and I don't intend to."

"Oh. You're just going to use her name when you fuck me in the dark?”

“Robin -"

"Fire her, Dennis."

"What?"

"I want you to fire her. I want her away from here."

His mind raced. "No, I can't do that, it wouldn't be fair."

“Be fair? Be fair to who, to her? Jesus Christ, Dennis, you just tell me you love this bitch -"

"She's not a bitch."

"Bull shit she's not! Why do you think she came here? For the love of the thee- a -ter? She came because her husband died and she thinks maybe she can get something started with you again, never mind the fact that you're already married. Jesus, Dennis, are you blind?"

He wasn't blind. He saw all too well how Ann Deems felt. And, what was even more disturbing, he saw beyond a doubt how he felt as well. He could not let Ann go again. Now that she was finally back in his life, he could not let her go. There was, he thought simply, no choice involved. He needed her like he needed air. Even if they never touched again, he needed her.

"Nothing is going to happen," he said to Robin. "If something was, it would have already."

"And you're telling me it hasn't."

"That's right. Never. And it won't."

Robin tossed back the sheets, leaped out of the bed, and threw on a robe. "You know what I hate most, Dennis? I hate it that this bitch is back, and I hate it when you tell me that you still feel something for her. But I hate it most when you lie to me -"

"I haven't -"

"When you lie and you tell me that you never fucked her, that Dennis Hamilton, the young stud emperor – oh hell, yes, I've heard all the stories – never had her the way he had every other woman that crossed his path, well, if that's what you want to tell me, that's what you expect me to believe. " She yanked open the bedroom door, then turned back to face him. “… then you must think I'm the dumbest cunt you ever had!"