He sat in the tall rolling chair, bare feet perched on the circular rung underneath, head resting heavy against the heel of his hand.  There was clear tubing dangling down from under his chin.  It was wound up around the top of his ears and settled under his nose where it could deliver oxygen from the large tank sitting next to the high desk.  In his hand rested a stylish metal pen that had remained static for several long minutes.  He couldn’t concentrate.  Aedan could scarcely remember what it was that had brought him down to the lab in the first place.  In his current state, what he should’ve been doing was resting in bed, possibly after undergoing another breathing treatment.<br/><br/>In the end, he realized he’d rejected that notion because it felt too much like giving up.  He had become the type to rage against lying down and taking it.  At one time, he’d been passive.  He’d given up on ever having a life, because at a very tender age it had been faced with the cold realization that he was unlikely to have one.  Then, after a small reprieve, everything had been taken away from him in the most unpredictable way, the coldest way.  His parents’ brutal murders were only some of the scars he walked away with that night.  The evil that had swung in and left nothing but devastation couldn’t be completely blamed for the way he turned out, but Aedan laid a good portion of the blame at the assassin’s feet.  The physical scars that were still displayed on his torso after the many years were an embarrassment and a testament to the time when he wasn’t a fighter.  To break free from them, he’d become bitter and shut off from so much.  The only one he could consider himself close to was his mentor, and even him he wasn’t always pleasant with and had a tendency to rant and scold him for things that weren’t worth his own precious breath.<br/><br/>So there he sat, motionless and empty-headed at his desk, two-thirty in the morning, with a cold mug of herbal tea staring him down.  Weary green eyes lifted to stare back.<br/><br/>“What’s left…?” he suddenly uttered aloud, breaking the dead silence of the cold yet messy space around him.  It was an honest question, though he knew there was no one there to help answer it.  The state of his lab was disheartening in that regard, because it was a tribute to how much work he’d done, how many possibilities and combinations he’d tried.  Cardboard boxes were filled with papers, other hand written and printed pages left strewn about without care.  The metal table where he sometimes stretched out to give himself blood infusions and other experimental treatments was even piled with records of his failures.  Treatments that he’d come up with that had some success all eventually lost effectiveness and became no help at all in time.  That was his problem this time, his most recent bout of inhalers, vaporizers, and orally administered medications not able to keep him out of the sorry state he was in right then.  Even on good days he found himself out of breath after activity, coughing and in agony.  If life was a flame, then his was at the end of a short wick in a deep candle, and he felt that at any moment he would calmly snuff out for good.<br/><br/>He forced out an angry sigh and threw his pen against the hard surface of his desk, then leaned back in the chair and rubbed his hands over his face.  It dislodged the tubing, and he yanked it the rest of the way off and tossed it to the floor in frustration.  His pen was down there somewhere, too.  It was just like his life, his luck only ever enough to kill him going, but never a true saving grace.  How much fuller might it have been had he not gone down this path?  Aedan had wondered that time and time again, questioning himself and his decisions.  He could’ve had a deeper romance with Raffaello instead of cutting him off.  He could’ve went out and seen the world with wide-eyed wonder instead of making shady deals on the deep web.  It would’ve been brief, and he’d be long dead, but at least he would’ve<i>lived</i>.  This was merely surviving, and the thought had popped into his head on more than one occasion that it would’ve been much easier to not only submit, to but hurry his reaper on his way.  There were more than enough toxins in his lab to end his life with a small injection, or an overdose of pills.  There were more immediate ways, too, like the numerous guns he owned that were strewn about his home.  Even then, in the drawer immediately to his right.  All he had to do was take hold of that simple, silver knob and open it up to find his salvation and end his suffering.<br/><br/>After all his suicidal thoughts, however, Aedan had realized that he was more coward than that.  The truth was that he didn’t want to die at all, not slowly, not quickly.  Even if it meant spending the rest of his life pursuing a cure, finding new ways to keep his body from caving in on itself, he’d rather do that than wind up in a box somewhere in the ground, or on Raff’s fucking mantle in a pretty little jar.  Fuck death and fuck life, too, right?  Right.<br/><br/>He hopped down out of his chair and grabbed the mug of unwanted tea.  It had been a gift from Raff, the mug, and it was the ginger’s preferred one.  It was a simple white and had in equally simple black, block letters on one side, THIS IS MY CUP OF CARE, and then on the other, OH, LOOK, IT’S EMPTY.  It was his attitude in a nutshell, and Raff had only said that it had reminded him of his feisty student.  Unfortunately, Aedan was right handed, and the mug forever faced him in the most appropriate way.  All he ever saw was one side, really.<br/><br/>OH,<br/><br/>LOOK,<br/><br/>IT’S EMPTY<br/><br/>The oxygen tank was turned off and secured, though he left the tubing and pen on the cold, hard floor.  He shuffled out into the dimly lit hall and pressed in the security code to secure his lab, then proceeded down to the elevator.  The environment down there was all clean and hospital-esque, and he’d had enough of it for the time being.  Once on the main floor, he dumped the tea and refilled his mug with the contents of an expensive bottle of whiskey.  He wasn’t usually such a heathen when it came to fine Irish whiskey, but he was in a foul mood and didn’t give a shit about pretty glasses and frozen stones.  There wasn’t even the will to put the bottle away.  He figured he might very well end up back at it soon enough, anyway, so it was left to sit next to the bowl of fruit on the marble topped island in the middle of the kitchen.<br/><br/>The stairs would’ve been a bother, so he settled down in a chair in a front room.  It was black leather, oversized, and well worn.  If he wasn’t in the lab, his greenhouse, or his study, that was his preferred spot.  It was nice in the winter to sit there and stare at a fire in the broad fireplace, listening to something mellow and destressing.  When had been the last time he’d done that?  Even at that moment, Aedan was too angry at the world and everything in it to give a damn about warmth or music.  Alcohol was the preferred companion in those strange hours between night and day, and he relished in it until he finally passed out in a less than dignified heap.<br/><br/>Hours later, he started awake, gasping.  There had been a loud chime, an alert that someone had passed through a sensor he’d set up on the path leading to his home.  It had radiated through the entire house in alert.  Looking at his watch, the redhead grumbled and pried himself up out of the chair.  He still smelled of alcohol, and the way he’d slept had left his unbuttoned shirt wrinkled.  The striped pattern on it didn’t lend him any help in that, only bringing more attention to every imperfection.  He cursed, his fist curling around the grip of a handgun resting on the deeply stained cherry wood beside him.  Always ready to threaten, he didn’t think of pulling the trigger lightly.  In a real life or death situation, he’d do so immediately and have no regrets, but he wasn’t the cold and brutal murderer that an outsider might’ve seen him as.  Still, he felt safer when holding a weapon, so he took it to the front door with him.<br/><br/>A monitor set into the wall in the entry gallery showed him the car as it pulled up.  It was Raff, but he wasn’t alone.  Bright green eyes narrowed on the electronically conveyed figure, a stranger.  Raff knew damn good and well that he hated visitors, so why would he go through all the fuss of bringing someone new there?  How did they knew this man could be trusted?  What if he was there for some darker purpose?  Immediately, Aedan didn’t like this blond man, nor the situation.  By the time he disabled the security system and opened one of the imposing double doors, he’d worked up a small bit of rage.  It burned through him and lit up his eyes into more than the dull and overworked mess they’d been the previous night, and he leveled that scathing glare on both men, though to his credit he left the gun down at his side.<br/><br/>“What do you want?” he asked, his deepened voice a little on the raspy side and Irish accent in full swing.  Raff was being careful to remain in his way, so he couldn’t really assess this new man, but that only made him like everything less.<br/><br/>“Were you sleeping?”<br/><br/>“No,” came the sudden and angry lie.  “It’s none of your business, anyway.”<br/><br/>“Of course not.  May we come in?”  There was no immediate reply.  Aedan was trying to figure out what the hell they were really doing there.  Raff never brought company with him unless it was dire, and this guy looked like he was standing on his own two feet just fine.  It wasn’t for treatment, then… unless it was something a little more sinister, an illness lurking inside, unseen.  “It’s not for him,” Raff spoke up then.  The Italian had the most annoying habit of reading his mind.  “It’s for you.”<br/><br/>Aedan’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief, and he actually scoffed.  For him?  What could this kid offer him?  They were maybe about the same age, but Aedan’s life had been medicine.  What would some regular fucker like him know about his pain and suffering, his impending death?  What would he know about curing the incurable?<br/><br/>“At least let us make the proposal,” Raff asked, his voice softening.<br/><br/>Between that and the desperate plea in the giant Italian’s eyes, it was enough to finally get him to relent, though Aedan did so with less grace than socially acceptable.  Rolling his eyes, he motioned –with the gun –for them to get inside.  Once that simple task was accomplished, the door was shut and the security was being set back on.  He didn’t want to take the chance that someone had followed, or that this guy Raffaello had brought along would go snooping into areas of the house he had no business in.<br/><br/>“Govannon Cherish.”<br/><br/>Aedan froze, not turning around to look at either of them.<br/><br/>“I see you’ve been at least listening to the news,” Raff chuckled.  “Hear us out before you make any snap decisions.  I know it isn’t like you, but you should try to have at least a little bit of patience.  It’s important, now more than ever.”<br/><br/>The redhead finally turned and tried to get a better look at this Cherish.  So, this was the man that had the scientific and medical communities in an uproar?  He looked younger than expected.  Better looking, too.  Many considered him a monster for what he’d done, an immoral criminal who had no value for human lives, or at least those he’d sacrificed in his search for… what, immortality?  It was all a little fuzzy.  He’d probably been a little drunk while listening to the reports.  Aedan hummed, though it was hard to say if it was a sound of annoyance or interest.  His toes curled a bit against the plush, grey carpeting at their feet as he thought.  It wouldn’t have been<i>terrible</i>to at least read this guy’s notes, but if he was thinking of recruiting Aedan to be his next test subject, he’d end up with a few bullet holes for his trouble.  Why would Raff even risk any of this, anyway?<br/><br/>“Whatever,” he sighed, moving past both of them and heading toward the room with his favourite black chair.  There was no sense standing there by the door and being uncomfortable while he heard them out.