Section Author: 'Peredhil'

Chronos grasped her shoulder tightly and pointed to her foot. "At times we need to look away," he murmured.

Tearing her gaze away from the mockery of order in the Tapestry of Souls, she looked dully at her foot. Her silver Shears. Her eyes teared slightly and her hair hung lankly around her face. In the blur she noticed a flaw overlaying the scissor blades. Bending, she squinted to see Graeson's translucent thread sprawling in untidy coils. Beside her she felt Chronos wolfish smile.

"It is Time," he said simply, and stepped back to let her work.

Quickly yet smoothly she coiled the thread, feeling the opportunities of a thousand lives slip between her fingers. Grasping the shears, she hesitated as she Searched deeply the Patterns gone awry.

Chronos stepped up behind her and supported her with a gently clasp around the waist.

"All beginnings worthwhile are birthed in blood and pain," He coaxed gently, the weight of knowledge laden in his voice. She trembled with the anticipation, but felt the love of eternity in his reassuring touch.

Pinching the base of the Black Thread, where it already had begun to twine about the Temae strand, she scissored the blades. Finely she cut, so closely that she clipped the skin from finger and thumb. Her smoky blood spread like the mist of dreams absorbing into the Black Thread and etching it like acid.

She quickly wove the Tapestry together in the wake of the Black Thread's disintegration until a puckered seam was all that remained in the Tapestry to mark the passage of Time's Nightmare. A puckered seam and a new slender thread, once translucent with Time, already infused with the blood of Dreams, and now fused irrevocably with the darkness cored thread of Yui Temae. As she released Temae, Aegon's thread sprung like steel to the magnet to close the final gap. Together they embraced the new thread that ended, yet began between them.

She slumped into his grasp, and suffered him to carry her to her chair. She looked the ancient hag until Time's touch lifted and her ageless beauty returned.

"We've done what we must to stop the madness. Is it enough?" His voice grated roughly; Time gives its strength to Dreams not lightly.

"He'll be born with the salmon knowledge, the knowing wisdom, the wise weird. He is ours and theirs, a bridge belonging to all and none. Can even Time tell what we've done?" She smiled slightly and began Weaving again. "We'll have to wait and see what the Tapestry Weaves."

With a gentle caress that pained them both for it's passage and finality, he strode from her chamber lest he Dream again...

*******

Ayden looked at Aegon carrying Graeson and his heart thumped in his throat. Aegon's face was intolerable. Transfigured by wrath, it terrified him and he felt unable to resist. Leading the way rapidly up the tower, he fled to the comfortable horror of the Master and it's known pain rather than face the unknown possibilities that followed him.

It struck him with the force of a thousand hammers as he opened the door to the Forbidden.Aegon wore the face of his father, dead in the accident, relived in nightmares.

Graeson watched Ayden crumple in the doorway, and let Aegon slide him down his arm to stand alone. The haunting warmth of Aegon's hand ruffling his hair contrasted with the rigid tendons of the other hand clenching bare steel. He wondered briefly as Aegon rushed to leap Ayden at Aegon's ability to be tender at a time like this.

Moving forward, he bent to help Ayden. Green eyes fluttered open and locked onto his in terror. He felt himself falling. Or was Ayden flying up? As his hand touched Ayden's face, he felt Ayden's hand touch his. A silent explosion of golden-edged white with a core of darkness rushed to encompass them both.

*******

"One, we are One," crooned the Master as he loving reached for the final prey. The circle was closed, this was the ONE. He spun with viperish speed as the door crashed open. His Slave lay crumpled in the doorway and a sword-bearing man leapt the body to confront him, only to freeze at the sight of Yui's blood-runed body.

The Master, laughing at the blade, moved for this last snack before the feast. Behind him, Yui's eyes went wide in shock as she blurred with mist.

"Aegon," she moaned in torment, caught in the crucible of Dream and Time.

Batting the Master out of his way with the sword's flat, Aegon rushed to her far side, and knelt to grasp her hand as he still eyed the Master. Psychic and Spells rose to hover ready at his shoulders as he mustered all his weapons.

The Master leapt forward.

Aegon's sword left a crimson smear of fire in the air as it swept in a vicious arc - over the Master's head. The momentum of the missed swing left him off balance as he lunged desperately to intercept the Master's strike at the true target - his wife. Master's hand touched Yui's hand as Aegon's hand covered both - a fractional second too late.

In the doorway, Graeson screamed. Reality shifted with his unleashed power - and finally the Nightmare ended.

*******

Yui woke lazily and stretched in contentment. She gazed greedily at Aegon's naked body, tracing his powerful lines with hungry eyes. That was all that was hungry, for the Morning Sickness was clenching her stomach again. Slipping from bed, she thought longingly of Aegon's warmth. The ridges of patterned scars puckered slightly against the morning chill as she belted a long robe over her rounding form. Moving to the balcony, she greeted the lemony morning sun with an upturned face. Her fingers gently massaged her the still taunt stomach muscles guarding her womb.

"Are you aware in there? I had the strangest dream last night, that I was caught in your dream. Sometimes there will be the darkness rising inside me. But you need never fear that, my little tadpole. Daddy and I will always guard you with our love."

She sighed in pure joy as Aegon's arms slipped around him. She leaned back into her sunshine man was like a furnace to her touch. His voice rumbled through his chest and she felt as well as heard it.

"How's our little man this morning? I had the strangest dream last night."

"I also."

"He'll be named Graeson."

"Yes." The stood silently, comfortably together. It was with a certain sadness that Yui felt the baby move and realized although she would share everything with Aegon, this secret feeling was hers alone.

As Aegon's hands cupped and pressed, trying to feel the activity from the outside, she covered his hands with hers and whispered defiantly warning to any who would try to part the three of them.

"We are One..."

Finis