“Drink, Wesley,” Rraiec murmured as he held down the human. “It is simply broth to warm you.”

Wesley didn’t respond to the words; it was all he could to do swallow the broth. It was soon replaced by a thicker, sweeter food—still fluid enough to swallow, however. He didn’t even attempt to shy away from the stuff. There was no point—he was far too weak to do anything of the sort.

Rinhe watched as Wesley numbly consumed a mashed soup. Today was the first time in nearly a week that they’d gotten any response out of the man—for the first five days after his madness began, he lay comatose. While his current wakefulness was a good sign, no one put much store by it. Iaka warned that very soon he would lose the use of his senses, one by one, for the duration of his change.

The elder was unhappy with the situation, but there was nothing anyone could do. The change wasn’t something they could control. Most of her worry came from the fact that they had no idea what had caused the madness—and now they wouldn’t until his change was completed. At least he was likely to survive, though. Even though he’d been unconscious for days, they’d been able to force a lot of food into him, so he wasn’t weak anymore.

She wasn’t the only elder in the hold worried about Wesley. The others had fretted and argued about what to do. In the end, they had sent messengers to nearby holds, trying to find some sort of precedent for this situation. So far, nothing had been found. At this point, the only thing they could do was wait—and hope that eventually he returned to sanity. Unfortunately the odds of that weren’t very good—while dalhari rarely descended into madness, once there they rarely recovered. No one knew of any insane human who had been changed, either.

“He’s asleep again,” Iaka whispered to Rinhe. “We should let him rest alone.” Rinhe nodded and gestured to Rraiec. The three dalhari left the sick room, Rinhe instructing the guards to watch over the human and report any movements or changes.

“He will not wake again,” The healer said when they were clear of the room. “Already he is losing his senses—he can barely sense touch, and he did not respond to smell at all.”

Rinhe sighed. “Very well. Rraiec, there is little more for you to do at this point. Perhaps you should return to your studies. We will inform you of any changes in Wesley’s condition.” Rraiec frowned but nodded and left for his quarters. The elder knew Rraiec would much rather watch out for Wesley, but it did neither of them any good for him to simply sit and worry. Besides, the young dalhari was behind in his work.

“Who will claim him?” Iaka asked once they were alone in the elder’s quarters.

“I will, of course,” Rinhe replied. “After all, I was the one who changed him.”

“Not of your own will,” Iaka replied. “Cousin, no one would fault you for letting another care for him.”

The elder grimaced. “I realize that, Iaka. I hold no ill will towards Wesley for his actions. And, once he awakens, he will need the security of those he already knows here.”

“True,” Iaka murmured. “And what will Praiv do?” She inquired, referring to the elder’s mate.

“Whatever she wants,” Rinhe shot back. “She is busy now with Guina, so it should not matter much. Regardless, she and I have talked about Wesley, and she agrees that he should fall under my care.”

“As you wish,” Iaka replied.

•••

The next time Wesley woke, he was greeted by absence. That was the only way he could describe it—a complete lack of anything. He saw nothing—he couldn’t even describe it as darkness. It was simply nothing. Sound, too, was gone. He moved his hands; at least, he thought he moved his hands… but he felt nothing. He couldn’t even feel his own body. That proved to be quite a shock, so he screamed. Except that nothing came out. Not a single sound.

The first thought that occurred to him was that he was dead. /So this is the afterlife. A big expanse of nothing./ Wesley laughed hysterically, although he couldn’t even hear himself think of the laughter. /All those people wondering what comes after death. The atheists were right, sort of—nothing./ Slowly but surely, the man’s panic faded.

Eventually Wesley relaxed in his new environment. As he did, he realized that in fact he wasn’t alone—despite the utter lack of sense-information, there were things there to keep him company. His memories hadn’t abandoned him. He couldn’t see them or hear them, but they were there—these flashes if implicit ‘knowledge’ that he couldn’t make go away. He idly wondered if what he was experiencing was pure thought.

Wesley wasn’t sure what to make of his newfound way of thinking. He was so very used to thoughts being automatically associated with words, or pictures, sounds, smells, even textures. The language that described his memories was still there, but it was too integrated for him to see it. Instead of thinking with words, he had this odd knowledge floating about.

That meant, of course, that he still remembered all of his sins. They were still there, but they had changed. Somehow they had melted and run throughout his mind, melting themselves amongst everything else in his mind. The memories and emotions from one event flowed into another, fluid like water. He couldn’t differentiate the guilt he felt for running over a squirrel from the anguish that Angel’s rejection had brought forth. That was a bit disturbing, since he was well used to clinging to his betrayal-pain. It was his crucifix, his electric chair. A means of torture and of freedom. And now it was gone.

/I am my pain,/ Wesley thought hysterically. /I have become myself./ He knew he should find it odd that he couldn’t tell what was him and what was not. Then again, he wasn’t sure that what he considered ‘not him’ wasn’t really ‘him’ and that he hadn’t been lying to himself all this time. Compartmentalization, while useful for day-to-day operations, did have its drawbacks. Now that those dividers were gone, he was having a serious problem sorting out his mind.

/Not like I have anything better to do,/ He thought. /Might as well get started./ Unfortunately Wesley found that without those separators, nothing stayed in place very well. No, as soon as he teased some memory out and identified it, it slipped back into the morass. /This is not fair! I keep things separate for a reason… a damned good reason!/ He didn’t want these things to become part of him.

Wesley had done a good job all his life of keeping his memories well-organized. It helped him keep his mind clean, helped him be able to present the ‘true’ Wesley to the world. It also let him easily access all the dark, nasty thoughts that he kept hidden away for special occasions, when he needed something to purify him. Those bad memories were useful implements of torture. They kept the good stuff clean, catching all the dross. He never considered them part of ‘him’. No, they were something else, this slimy, oily muck that had its purpose but was easily reviled.

Not anymore, however. Now it was just there—and he couldn’t get rid of it. His failure to escape the stuff made him frantic. What happened if he couldn’t… if he had to exist with all these mistakes, this pain, this disappointment and loss and lust and want and need and all these things that he’d kept locked away so deep… there had to be a way to get rid of it, to take it away, to wipe clean his self and remove the foul specter of his wrongs.

If only he could find that way. Then he would be pure, clean, good. Worthy.

•••

/How long have I been at this?/ Wesley thought. /Days? Minutes? Eons?/ His mind didn’t bother to answer. He was still mired deep in the cesspool that was his self, still trying desperately to get rid of this stuff he did not want. It seemed that the harder he tried, the worse the situation became. All the pain and frustration of Angel’s anger at him seemed to be attracted to his efforts, clinging to him like a lover. It hurt, reliving every second of that debacle over and over in slow motion, watching every twitch and shudder, every word dragged out to infinity, each touch and glare and drop of blood, every whispered curse and ravaged hope dancing around his psyche. He’d stopped trying to scream some time back, realizing that it wouldn’t be heard.

/And screams, they are a cry to heaven or hell, but regardless of their destination, they are meant to be heard,/ Wesley reminded himself. It didn’t matter if you screamed deep in a forest, where no one could hear you, if you gave breath to your pain, you meant for someone to hear it. After all, you didn’t have to do such a thing to tell yourself about your pain. No, you could always still your mouth and listen to your own mind howl its anguish. The only reason to verbalize such feelings was for the benefit of someone else.

/So why scream, when I know I deserve nothing from any quarter./ He’d realized long ago that heaven wasn’t going to help him. Why should it? He’d betrayed their very own warrior. Hell, too, had no use for him. He tortured himself better than anyone there could.

/Or perhaps I want someone else to see me in my pain,/ He admitted. Yes, that was it. He wanted to boast, to brag of his pain. /Look at what I can endure. See what I can impose upon myself, the burden I can carry, the suffering I enjoy. Watch me writhe in the ecstasy of bloodletting./ Masochism as vanity, sex on display hidden so well that only he and his fellow sufferers knew that what his audience was watching wasn’t the purgatory of guilt but a macabre sex show. It wasn’t agony that made him twist on the floor, but the orgasm of knowing that no one watching him could possibly know, could ever hope to feel this exquisite torment. /You can never do this. You aren’t strong enough. Bow to my prowess, my ability, my strength. See this? You can never hope to have what I have. You are weak. You ask for forgiveness and it is given and you never even consider what you have forfeited by taking it./

Still he tried, pulling hopelessly at the contamination in his mind. /I will be pure. I will not let this befoul myself./ He bent to his task. /There is no place for you here. No room at the inn. Begone. You bore me./

•••

Iaka watched carefully as Wesley twitched and shuddered. He was in the final stages of his change and would awaken soon. The muscles and nerves of his body had been broken down and reformed; his eyes were no longer human and his fangs were growing in. All along his back were the beginnings of wings, although it would be some time before they were finished coming in. His spine had changed its curvature, allowing the bud of a tail to grow.

This was all very good—all excellent signs that he was going to fully recover from the stresses imposed upon his body. That was not her worry, and never had been. No, she was far more concerned with whatever was trying to destroy his mind. In many ways, it would have been far kinder for him to have died in the change, unconscious and insensate.

Madness was a painful disease, regardless of its cause. She had seen enough cases to know its courses, it’s symptoms and how degrading it was. In all her years, though, she’d never treated anyone who had carried the disorder through the change. However, she had hypotheses regarding what would happen. Those estimations were very ominous.

One thing she knew about insanity was that it differed between humans and dalhari, primarily because of the differences in how the two species constructed their realities. Humans were more likely to rise out of madness because of how concrete and sense-oriented their minds were. It was as if they could simply ‘fix’ what was wrong and move on—at least in many cases. That was not to say that every human suffering madness simply got better. Many of them died from their torment.

Dalhari had a more difficult time, since their minds were more fluid and less tied to sense. They could not tease out what caused the disorder. The most successful treatments involved a great deal of meditation and thinking, to gain acceptance from oneself. The dalhari who overcame their madness often said that what they had done was simply let go—of whatever it was that drove them to insanity. They let it be part of them, instead of trying to remove it or keep it hidden away. It wasn’t easy, allowing oneself to accept something that the mind considered vile and repulsive. It was, however, the only way she knew of for dalhari to regain sanity.

But Wesley had incredible obstacles to overcome. She suspected that his mind would try to see itself as a human mind instead of a dalhari one—even though it would now function in the way that dalhari minds did. It was well-known that the major difficulty humans had after change was adapting to their new minds. When Wesley began to try to recover, he was going to face the difficulty of trying to correct a ‘problem’ that began as a human one and carried over. That meant that the problem had morphed with the rest of him. To correct it, he would have to tackle it in the way that dalhari did—the human method simply wouldn’t work. Unfortunately, his mind would want to attack itself, to excise the problem, instead of welcoming it.

However, dalhari minds didn’t function that way. Nothing was removed, banished or torn away. Painful or not, what was in the mind was permanent. Trying to remove something would just lead to more pain and problems. That was what Iaka feared—that the change would simply compound his madness into something utterly incontrollable as he tried to tear his mind apart.

They would know shortly, though. He would be awake in less than a day.