Moving On

[feline_grace]

A continuation from here

Duncan watches Paul rest for some time. The light never truly fades into darkness, merely shifting from something bright into something more subdued. His hand stays in Paul's, thumb brushing slow circles into the back of his hand should he twitch in a nightmare. The shadows creep across features Duncan had long ago committed to memory.

The tug he feels is subtle, just behind his ribs, but it is one Duncan recognizes. The dead have need of him, and when the Atreides call, Duncan will always answer. He will see them to their final rest.

"Paul." Gently he shakes his shoulder. He hates to disturb his rest, but he had promised to stay with him, to not leave him alone. "We have work to do."

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[kwisatzhaderach]

The salute wrenches something inside of Paul. An awful deja vu that comes with slammed doors and trying to bloody his fists to open them. He pursues Duncan with the same ferocity as he had just before his swordmaster sacrificed himself and when Paul chases Duncan's name with the worm's poison, it's those very doors he barrels through.

This time when he beats at them, they open.

What greets him is Harkonnen horror and Atreides compassion in such a dizzying braid of memory that he has to pick through the threads of them carefully. Where Giedi Prime is awash in black and white, Caladan has color. So much of it that the lack is easy to sift through and sort. Harkonnen black, Fremen red, and the lush tapestry of Caladan's landscapes.

Paul sees the bond between Duncan and Gurney and loves his father twice and fiercely for recognizing it and keeping the two of them together. He's heard the stories of Duncan's rescue but to see it firsthand is something else. He's so in awe over the outpouring of love and loyalty that make up Duncan's life that he almost misses when those two evolve into something else when Duncan looks at him.

It's a twin longing that Paul's own memory adds to. Nights where he seeks Duncan out for no other reason than to have his company. The nightmares of Duncan's body in a hallway on Arrakis and how they inspire him to sit outside Duncan's door despite knowing that he's not in. Looking for Duncan beyond the barricade of soldiers who insist he mustn't mingle with them during celebrations. Now he knows why. It's beautiful. All those bodies tangled in adoration.

His own body count is far more gruesome. When Duncan looks through the memory of Paul trying to smash through the door that separates them from the Sardaukar, he'll glimpse the horror that lies beyond it. The first life Paul takes and the guilt that follows. The desperate gambit to join the Fremen instead of lead them. The way prophecy cuts him off from friendship until only followers and foe remain. Chani's kindness and tutelage dot themselves through the bloodshed, little fragments of peace, until he is backed into a corner with only one place left to go: Across the belt to the Southern tribes.

It is there that Paul performs his gallows walk. It is the place that holds the death of his true self, and the rise of the hideous legacy that takes over his corpse. The Kwisatz Haderach, the Lisan al Gaib, the Emperor, the Tyrant. All names for a creature who glimpses all possible futures just as Duncan must be forced to witness them now. Billions dying in so many different ways that when the Holy War comes, it almost looks like a blessing compared to the other possible ways it could have happened.

He gains a throne, suffers the renewed heartache of seeing Duncan again except it isn't Duncan, and then he loses his sight. His sister to other memory. His mother to her schemes. He sees everything and still manages to lose it all anyway. And when the desert refuses to claim him, he lets his sister's acolytes do it instead.

He dies a wastrel, preaching the dangers of the legacy he could not outrun. If Duncan tries to escape it all, he wouldn't blame him. Paul had tried to do the very same in death.

[feline_grace]

Where Paul goes, Duncan will always follow. As the doors are battered down he stands at his side, ever faithful, ever watchful. Harkonnen and Atreides, forever tangled and he hates the Bene Gesserit a little more for what they had done to his Duke, for what the had forced Paul into accepting.

Death. Loss. Loneliness.

Duncan takes it all in, unflinching until he sees Hayt. An echo of himself, a betrayal of his death and sacrifice and his fist slowly opens and closes in silent, helpless rage. They had tried to turn him into a weapon, they had tried to use him to kill Paul and he only breathes easier when his memories return, when he protects Paul. A promise etched into his bones.

Always.

The good and the bad, Duncan takes it all in and he does not waver. Had he been there, at Paul's side, their lives could have been different. Gurney wouldn't have lost himself to rage and revenge. Paul's rule could have been more tempered.

But he does not dwell on the possibilities that could have been their lives.

"My boy. My love." Finally he turns from the other memories and draws Paul into his arms.

He will not fail him now.

[kwisatzhaderach]

To see the entirety of his life with Duncan there to bear witness is agony of the acutest kind. Duncan, whose loyalty was absolute and who had always looked at him with tenderness, should not have to see the atrocities that were committed across the galaxy. That burden should belong to Paul and Paul alone.

But he isn't alone and the arms that sweep him up are a reminder of that. That through all of the horror, he is still permitted love. Paul sinks into the embrace with a helpless sob. A lifetime of sorrow climbs up out of his throat as he howls with an entire Imperium's worth of pain, finally safe enough to let the grief out now that he has Duncan to hold him through it.

Paul clutches at him. A desperate, almost violent ferocity in the way his arms wrap tight around him. When his sobs begin to ebb and the echoes of his past recede, there is only the two of them entwined, standing in the dust of time.

"Please know," Paul hitches as he presses his face to Duncan's chest, burying it there with a shake of his head as he hitches in a ragged breath, "that I tried to do my best." Another broken sob is choked out as Paul fails to suppress it. He shudders against Duncan, weeping in the aftermath of his tyrannical reign and contrast of Duncan's beautiful life of loyalty that had been cut short.

The tears are hot in his eyes, reminding him of the stoneburner's work. Of how the death of his first son and Chani had pulled the water from his body despite the Fremen tradition not to cry for the dead. He cries for them now. For all of them. The billions of lives his reign had cut short so that billions more could live. A terrible destiny no one should have to take part in. That Duncan stood witness to it and can find it in his heart to still hold him? Paul is overcome with love and a twin fealty that is etched into his soul.

"I have loved you all my life. I will love you through whatever comes after it," he whispers with a voice raw with torment and adoration. Able now to finally comprehend the true depths of Duncan's love for him, not just because he's seen it for himself, but because Duncan is still here. With him. At the end of all things even after everything he'd seen. "Always."

[feline_grace]

"It is done." The old crone's voice rings out clear as a bell, cutting through the memories even as Duncan keeps Paul wrapped up close in his arms, heavy fingers in his hair. "You are bound to one another. Soul to soul."

She ties a length of red cord around Duncan's wrist and then Paul's. The cord melds into their skin, becoming an indelible mark of their bond.

Duncan murmurs his thanks to the woman, keeping Paul safe in the shelter of his arms before they can find privacy in a room again. They had both witnessed a great deal and needed time to process.

"Breathe. I'm here. You're safe."

[kwisatzhaderach]

The mark is kept close to his chest, a hand that he keeps tucked between their bodies as the shield of Duncan's own absconds them to privacy. It's harder to close the doors to other memory when all of it is still so fresh, but he takes the opportunity to do as instructed and breathe, locking away the past one atrocity and heartbreak at a time.

When Paul finally straightens from his shrunken posture, it's to look down at his wrist. He reaches for Duncan's and lets their palms join, fingers aligned. Their joined hands with their twin marks soothe him, compelling him to finally breathe out a slow, even breath.

"I'm here," he echoes in turn so that Duncan knows he hasn't been lost to grief even if it will take a bit to shake himself free of it. "You're not alone. Neither of us are." Because after all that Duncan witnessed, he cannot allow him to think he's lost his Duke a second time and Paul too needs the assurance that comes with all of Duncan's tenderness.

When another tear spills hotly down his cheek, Paul turns his face down into Duncan's large hand, trusting him with his most vulnerable parts. All of him belongs to the man and so there's no sense in trying to hide it away.

[feline_grace]

The heartbreak and the loss Paul had endured leaves a hollow ache in Duncan's chest as he walks them towards privacy and time to regroup. They had used him against Paul, taken his body and..

No. He won't allow himself to think about that. His anger has no target.

When he feels Paul turn into his cheek, the dampness of a tear, he turns his attention to his love. His soul mate. Duncan dips his head to kiss away the next tear, and then the next. "Nothing can separate us now."

[kwisatzhaderach]

There is an entire ocean of grief within him that Paul has learned to sail so that he does not sink into their depths. Having Duncan witness the entirety of him, atrocity and all, was like being held under the tide until his lungs filled up. The salt water spills and spills and spills. An endless river of them it seems until the promise of forever helps them to ebb.

He cannot allow himself to drown in the past. Duncan has helped to free him of other-memory, pulled him from the deep where the worst of his sins swam, and now they are finally free to chart their own course. Start their own lives. Paul lets out a slow, shuddering breath as he lets Duncan kiss away the last of his grief and then, with all the gusto of lost youth, he throws his arms around Duncan's broad shoulders, clinging to the safe harbor of his body.

"I will love you for eternity, Duncan Idaho," he vows with the tender ferocity that made the Atreides great.

[feline_grace]

"And I will love you for as long, my love," Duncan promises. He dips his head to kiss Paul, a lingering and slow kiss. As he raises his head, there's a spark of mischief in his eyes.

"You know what we need to do now? We need to escape this transport. We can build a life for ourselves outside of this house of the dead." His knuckles graze lightly against his jaw. "Let's escape. Build a new life that no one can control."

[kwisatzhaderach]

The kiss affirms every good thing that inspired Paul to bind himself to Duncan in the first place. It settles over him like a balm. A gentle weight he sighs into so that by the time they're parting, he once again knows how to smile without the edges of his past cutting into his cheeks.

"A life just for us," Paul affirms with a soft gust of breath that blows against Duncan's hand as he turns his face down into the knuckles that caress him. He kisses the ridges of them then follow the lifeline of his wrist so he can press his lips to the mark there.

When he straightens it is once again with the poise instilled upon him at birth. A regal set of his shoulders. The past is the past and they've both closed the door on it knowing full well what took place on the other side. If all that remains is the love and loyalty they felt for each other, then Paul is certain they'll go far.

"In my wanderings, I would see...slivers. Little gaps in the transports floors where they sometimes met the walls. I bet if we followed those gaps, we might come across a bigger one. Perhaps even one that's pliable." Paul thinks briefly of the stable fences on Caladan, how they would keep the horses penned in while they were groomed. With enough force, those boards could surely be pried off. Perhaps these parts of the transport were no different.