TITLE: Try To Remember, Avon's POV

AUTHOR: PEJA

RATING: NC-17

SERIES: Sequel to "You've Got A Friend"

SUMMARY: Avon gives his impression of the time spent with Tarrant to his current lover.

DISCLAIMERS: No ownership of these guys, but I wish.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This piece came together when Diana (at least I think it was Diana) put forth a challenge on her list. The requirements, to have a couple tell someone of thier first time together. It just seemed right for this series since I'd been leaning toward this direction just couldn't get it to gel.

Since this piece is threatening to take some time, I will be posting it as a WIP, as I did the first part. I'm hoping this bit will be enough to get someone to come back for the continuing saga.

Lastly, this is a companion piece to YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND. If you haven't read that one yet it could really mess with your head, since it contains major spoilers for that piece. It also contains some minor spoilers for the B7 eps, Star One, Aftermath, and Powerplay.....(did I get that right)

AUTHOR'S WEBSITE: http://internetdump.com/users/daltonavon

EMAIL: daltonavon@yahoo.com

FEEDBACK: Seldom received but always welcome.

********

Vila woke to the mewling stirrings of his bed partner. Pushing up with one arm, his warm hazel gaze roamed the tortured expression on the dark, brooding face he adored. A grimace of shared pain crossed his own features as he brushed the blue-black hair off his lover's forehead.

Avon was in distress.

"Kerr," he murmured, placing a soft kiss on his ear. "Kerr, it's all right. You're safe."

"Master, no. Don't leave me."

Bittter disappointement flooded Vila's mouth. "Kerr, wake up," he commanded in his sternest voice.

Avon stiffened and his eyes flickered open. "Master?"

"No, not master," Vila said, dropping a gentle kiss on Avon's forehead. "Not yet, anyway."

"I don't understand."

"You were dreaming about the bad time, Avon. About...."

"Valdar," Avon filled in.

"And the other one."

Avon's gaze skittered away and for an soul destorying instant Vila thought he would deny it.

"Yes, and Tarrant."

Vila cupped Avon's pale cheeks between his hands. "You still love him, Kerr? Would go back to him if he were to come for you?"

"No, Vila..."

"Because if you need to be with him, Jenna knows how to contact...."

Avon cut off the stream of words with a tender kiss. "Master, no. Don't leave me."

Vila gazed into his lover's anxious eyes "That's what you said in your dreams."

The ghost of a smile flitted across Avon's lips. "Yes, master."

Understanding brightened Vila's taunt features. "You were dreaming about me, too?"

"You sound like that surprises you, my sweet delta."

"But you love..."

"You, Vila," Avon murmured. "I love you."

Vila stared into his lover's eyes for a long moment. "As much as the other?"

Avon cuddled close to Vila, letting his lover feel the tensile strength that lie in his body, waiting to be released. "I love only you, master. The other....Tarrant, stole me out of Valdar's slave mart. He claimed me as his own, and I accepted his ownership as my training had dictated."

Vila leaned back to study Avon's open features. "Tell me about that time, Kerr. Tell me so I can understand."

A veil fell, closing Vila out as Avon shook his head. "Can't. Don't want to remember." Avon opened his mouth to protest, but Vila silenced him with a ravishing kiss. "You need to talk it through,' Vila said when he finally broke off the kiss. "And I need to hear it. All of it."

Avon's eyes took on a wildness and he shook his head. "No, please. I....."

"Avon, you asked me to accept you as slave just a moment ago. You've been addressing me as master ever since," he paused, gazing deep into haunted eyes. "You claim to love me."

"I do."

"Then you must trust me. Completely and absolutely."

Avon opened his mouth, his lips moved soundlessly, until finally he admitted, "I do."

"Then tell me about the bad time."

Pain bubbled out of every pore in the older man. "Vila...."

Vila stopped him with a finger across his lips. "If you don't...won't....it will stand like death between us. It will destroy what we could have together," he told him. "Kerr, trust me to accept your hell and make it better."

Silence.

"Avon, we're gonna be landing on Star One in a couple hours. We could die destroying this Federation stronghold. I'd like to face that knowing I'd eased some of your pain."

Avon shuddered. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything. Your time in prison with the crimos....but that can wait. I think it's more important we talk over what happened with Valdar....And the other." He waited until Avon met his gaze. "Do you love me enough to trust me with all your horror?"

Trembling harder yet, Avon closed his eyes. Vila sighed, waiting for the death blow that would signal the end of their time together.

"Valdar rigged a vid in the shuttle so Blake would believe I was on board when it blew. He set the craft on autopilot and sent it out empty. I was already drugged and hanging from chains."

Relief rippled aong Vila's spine as those soft spoken words rose between them. The veil of loss wrapping itself around the wily thief poofed from existance, bringing a ray of hope to his tired gaze.

Avon loved him, but more importantly, he trusted him. That knowledge was a heady drug.

"He left me chained in the darkness for what seemed like forever. No one came. No food. Only a bit of liquids pumped into me through an I.V. That only enough to keep me alive." A bitter laugh escaped him. "That's what really scared me. Knowing they wanted to keep me alive."

Vila ran a comforting hand down Avon's quivering thigh, the touch a pledge in and of itself.

Avon met his glance and smiled. "I kept thinking, 'Blake will come. He'll find me.'"

"You trusted him."

The soul-crushing laugh again. "Stupid of me, wasn't it? I just kept waiting.....hoping....believing, until...." The words vanished, swallowed up in the dark silence.

"What, Kerr?" Vila prompted. "What happened to take away your belief?"

"The vid," Avon answered, his voice dead. "Valdar telecast the vid that showed the shuttle explosion. It was then that I realized that I was on my own. Totally and completely alone."

"Oh, god, Kerr."

"After that the darkness returned. An unending blackness that ate into my being. Until he replayed the vid. It became something of a pattern. The dark, then the horror, followed by the dark. Over and over until I thought I would lose my mind."

Vila wrapped his trembling lover in a tight, comforting embrace. "It's all right, Kerr. It's only a memeory."

That seemed to bring Avon back to the present and he smiled, "A bad one." he confirmed. "After awhile of that, they began coming in. That's when the true horror began. That's when I knew what they intended to do to me before they killed me.

"They cut the clothes from me. Taunted me with what small future I had. A bed slave, they said. To be used, abused and killed when I lost my pretty looks." He snorted. "Pretty looks."

"You are beautiful, my Kerr," Vila whispered against dark hair. "Breath-takingly beautiful."

"I fought them," Avon droned on as if Vila had never spoken. "Thier hands were all over me, but I fought them. And they beat me unconscious for me efforts. When I came to, it started all over again. A new pattern blended into the first."

Vila contained his own shudder of horror, wanting to stop the flow of words that tore both him and his lover apart. But that would be the worst possible thing he could do. He'd opened the festering wound. Now he had to draw out the poisons that were slowly killing this strong man he loved.

"I began planning my escape after seeing the vid for the first tme. If I'd been thinking straight....It looked so damn simple. Sometime during my imprisonment, a pin had worked it's way lose on the wall that I was chained to. It was a bit of a stretch, but I managed to get it completely lose and picked the lock. It was nothing to knock out the sleeping guard and slip past the few in the courtyard and I was free. Free. And heady with the joy of my escape."

His words stopped but before Vila could encourge him to continue Avon spoke again. " So stupid. I never saw the trap they'd set. Never imagined my escape was simply one more part in the pattern....Until the dart brought me down. I came to the first time unable to move. The second, I was chained...naked...on a stone table with his new batch of toys surrounding me. Clamps, whips, cock rings."

Avon's hand toyed with the tiny nipple ring. "I don't remember when I was pierced for his pleasure. Don't even remember if it hurt after all the past pains blended together." Avon leaned up on his arms to sample the tears streaming down Vila's pale cheeks. "Your tears are sweet, Vila."

"Love you, my Kerr," Vila vowed, gathering him into his arms. "Always."

Avon smiled against Vila's neck. "You once acccused me of responding to Valdar. Of wanting what he did to me. God help me, when he began using the aphrodiasaics on me, I did. I needed the sex. Needed it until I thought I would die if it stopped. He knew. He did stop.....I was so close...So close..."

"Hush, my Kerr, "Vila crooned, rocking the man in his arms. "I've got you."

"He turned me out, then. Gave me to two trainers who could have apprenticed under de Sade. They took me back to my cell, strung me to the ceiling by chains and kept me in that heightened state of arousal for several hours before they tired of making slice and dice on my body."

"These scars?" Vila asked tracing the maze of healed cuts that decorated Avon's torso.

"I think I went a little insane after that began. I lost track of what was going on around me. I just remember the blood...the semen...the pain I couldn't control."

Another pause, this one longer, but Vila waited it out, certain Avon would talk now until the words ran out.

"Occasionally the trainers would get a call from upstairs to bring me to the main hall," Avon said finally. "On those times, I was allowed to clean the filth off my body. Funny, even the water couldn't make me clean. Not inside where it counts.

"Valdar didn't want me coming to him with the evidence of me training clinging to me." Avon's eyes drifted shut as he continued. "He said those trips upstairs were to check my progress. That I controlled how long I stayed below. But I didn't. It was just another mind game."

"It was on one of those trips upstairs that the other found you?"

Avon nodded. "He was sprawled on those blasted cushions Valdar put out for his paying customers." He laughted softly. "I was so far into my own mind by that time, I didn't notice him. I'd learned early on that any outward appearance of awareness of my surroundings tended to set me up for punishment. So I let them march me in." A low chuckle. "I suppose I was stumbling more than walking that night...My trainers had been pushing me too close to the edge. They shoved me down onto my knees before Valdar. I don't know how I managed to stay upright, but if I'd fallen at his feet......It doesn't stand up to contemplation."

Vila pressed a kiss against Avon's neck. "I don't know how you survived."

"I wish I hadn't," Avon muttered.

Vila Stared at him feeling anguish lodge deep down in his gut.

"Tarrant must have been bothered by my condition. He shouted across the room that he'd found the bedslave he wanted.....Me. That angered Valdar. He ripped out more than a few strands of hair jerking my head up and said it was impossible. That I was his. Tarrant was like a huge tawny cat striding across the floor to untangle Valdar's fingers from my hair. Then he soothed the pain with a gentle caress. It was the first pleasent touch I'd known in a very long time." He gave a small bitter laugh. "I got lost in his touch. Next thing Iknew, Tarrant was settling me in to his quarters."

"I knew want was expected. Knew I was only alive as long as I pleased my new master. My last one had sold me because I wasn't good enough. I had to please this man or I'd be back in Valdar's hands and he'd punish me for displeasing Master Tarrant."

"That wasn't true, though," Vila said. "You know that."

Avon shrugged. "Now I do. Master said my past....the memory I had of my past, wasn't true. Since I've returned to Liberator, Blake has shown me mission vids that seem to confirm that, but..."

"But the false memories are strong?"

"Decidedly strong," Avon admitted. "When Tarrant refused to have sex with me I realized I wouldn't be on his ship much longer. I tried to do anything that would gain his approval, but he demanded something of me that I could not give. He wanted me to love him. He said he wouldn't take me to his bed unless I could tell him truthfully that I loved him."

Avon plucked at the bedspread. "I couldn't. I knew my value. Knew I was simply a vessel to be used and thrown away."

"God, tell me you don't still believe that, my Kerr," Vila begged.

Avon rubbed his thumb over the worried crease between Vila's eyes. "I love you, mas...Vila. I accept your need to value my worthless hide even though I don't undetand it."

"Avon, I need you to find value in yourself, in us."

He nodded. "I know. I will. I....do, or I couldn't love you."

A huge grin broke over Vila's face. "Yeah, you do love me, but what about the other?"

Avon shook his head "Not in thought," his hand moved to pinch Vila's nipple. "Or action."

Vila arched into the unexpected touch, shivering as pleasure jolted through his body into his groin. "Ah, so sweet." he groaned. "Love your hands on me, my Kerr."

Avon grinned, tracing a path across Vila's chest to lave the other nipple with similiar attention. "Only good thing about being held in the slave mart, Vila," he whispered. "I do give good sex."

Vila caught Avon's chin and forced him to accept his kiss. Backing away from the kiss, he corrected, "Make excellent love, my Kerr. Excellent love."

A slow, sweet smile curled Avon's pouty lips. "Yes, make excellent love." His hand swirled tiny circles down Vila's chest, pausing to enact a mock penetration in his navel. "Want to be the best for you, mas....Vila. Want to wear your collar."

Vila drew Avon's hand up to his mouth, sucking a finger deep down his throat. The slid the finger back out of his mouth and kissed the tip. "I want that too, my Kerr. Just not quite yet."

Avon's gaze dropped and he nodded. "I understand."

"No, Kerr," Vila told him. "You do not understand. Not at all, but you will."

Avon tilted a seductive glance at his lover. "You said it already. There may not be much time left for us."

"Star One won't kill us, my Kerr." Vila asked, the fears he'd been keeping at bay emerging with a rush. "We've done this sort of thing hundreds of times, right?"

"It is most likely we will get out of this alive," Avon assured him. "But I intend to break with Blake once it's over."

"Break with Blake?"

"Will you come with me, Vila?"

"Leave Blake?" Vila asked again, contemplating the idea. "I really hadn't thought about it. But without the Liberator and it's....."

"I mean to take command of the Liberator, Vila."

"Mutiny?"

"Not hardly. I mean to take command with Blake's blessings."

"You think so? How you gonna pull that one off?"

Avon chuckled. "You'll see. Just remember to act your part when the time comes. I don't want Blake knowing just how far our relationship has evolved. It's better he thinks we are still wary advisaries."

A familiar frown tugged Vila's brows together. "Are you ashamed of being with a delta, Avon? Is that why....."

"If I were ashamed do you actually think I would be asking you to take me as slave, Vila mine. I am proud of being the man you chose to share your life with. You are the good in my life. My reason to get up in the morning and go to bed at night. Blake would see that as a way to control both of us. I won't let him muddy our love to better his cause. I value you to much to make you a pawn in the struggle between him and me."

"And the other?"

"Tarrant?" Avon snapped. "What has he got to do with anything? Why does it always come back to him?"

"You tell me. You're the one dreaming about that bad time almost every night. What hold does he have on you?"

Avon shrugged out of Vila's arms and the bed. "It's not important."

"It is important."

"I don't want Tarrant, Vila."

"You begged him to let you stay. Swore you would love him if he just didn't send you away."

Avon glared at the man in bed for a long moment, then seemed to collapse in on himself. "Vila, I was in a slave mentality. Hell, man, I thought I was being passed on to a new master. One I didn't have any reason to believe was any better than Valdar. Tarrant had been good to me."

Avon turned away, gazing out the observation window at the stars dashing past. "I'd failed to please my master, Vila. The only other time I'd failed my master, I believed I'd been sold to Valdar. In my mind Blake was there to reinforce my training. I was scared. The memory of what Valdar had done to me, to fresh."

"So rather than leave a man you only tolerated in bed, you nearly died."

His shoulders shuddered. "Why don't you call it what it was? I whored for him. You'd rather I deny it? I won't. And I won't apologize for it. I am what I am."

Vila erupted to his feet and whirled Avon around to face him. "On your knees."

"Wha...."

"On your knees, now."

The older man sank instantly down before his lover, his head bowed. "Yes, Vila."

Smiling, Vila made a slow circuit around the suddenly subservent man. "Don't move from there," he commanded, then glided to the night stand. "My slave is not a whore," he said, pacing back to stand before the kneeling man. "Look at me, slave."

Avon lifted his head. His eyes widened as he stared at the jewel encrusted chain in Vila's out-stretched hand. "Vila?"

"If you accept this, it is for life. Do you understand. A commitment. I am not buying you. I am asking you to join your life with mine because you....You, not anyone else, want it."

A gleam of purest pleasure lit Avon's gaze and he reached for the collar. Vila's slender fingers closed over the chain, denying his possession. "You accept my terms?"

Avon dropped his hand back to his side. "Yes, master."

Vila nodded, then bent to secure the collar around Avon's neck. He stepped back to admire the picture of his lover wearing nothing but the jeweled chain. "You are beautiful, my pet," he murmured letting himself drink in the broad shoulders, the lean waist and finally the ridged cock glistening with desire. "But I think you have a problem that need my attention."

Avon quivered, but remained silent.

"Am I right, pet?"

"Yes, master."

Smiling, Vila ruffled his lover's dark hair. "Stand up and kiss me, my Kerr."

Avon rose and Vila swept him fluidly into his eager arms. Avon's hands plunged into into Vila's thinning hair. Vila, groaning deep in his throat, tightened his embrace. His lips crashed down on Avon's. Avon opened under the passionate assault and tongues clashed....danced.....mated.

The kiss broke. Vila hooked a finger under the collar around Avon's neck. "Bed."

Avon allowed himself to be led without protest to the rumpled bed.

"Lie down, my pet," Vila commanded.

Avon did.

"Zen, spotlight him," Vila snapped. "Strobe black light."

The lights began an erotic hide and seek dance over Avon's silvery form. "Silence, my pet," Vila ordered. "Touch yourself. Move for me, love."

Avon obeyed immediately. His slender fingers wrapped around the base of his straining cock. His other hand trace the crown, spreading pre-cum over the pulsating head.

The slow strobing gave the illusion of a constant stream of freeze frames. A passion filled growl parted Vila's lips as he watched the show his beloved was putting on for him.

A seductive smile pulled the corner of Avon's lips and he lavished more of the liquid essence over the lenght of his cock. His hard length glowed silver-blue in the the strobing light.

"Stroke your cock, pet," Vila husked. "Show me what you like."

Avon's fingers glided in a smooth up and down stroke. A whimper erupted from his lips and he bit down on his lower lip to contain the pleasured sounds.

"Let me hear you, pet. I want to hear you pleasure yourself."

Avon's whimpers became full throated purrs of delight as his hand squeezed, pumping faster. "Master, I need.....I want your mouth on me."

Vila didn't need a second invitation. he settled down next to his lover, replacing Avon's hand with his own lips, taking Avon's cock deep down his throat in one torturous breath.

"Ahhhhh...." Avon purred, his hips thrusting.

Vila threw an arm over Avon's hips, holding his lover still under his ministrations. After a moment, he began a timed upward caress, his tongue tracing the prominent vein along the underside of Avon's cock.

"Vila, please...."

Chuckling around the warm flesh in his mouth, Vila continued his wicked love-making until the man under him suddenly stiffened. An unrestrained bark of pleasure signaled Avon's cumming and Vila tastd the bitter salty fluid as it throbbed against his tongue and throat.

"Share?" Avon whispered.

Vila slid up Avon's shuddering, repleated body. HIs mouth came down to claim the pouting lips and share a passionate, sex flavored kiss.

Avon lifted sleepy eyes to the man above him. The man who owned him body and soul and a smile curved his glistening lips. "Love you, master."

Vila grinned. "Oh yeah."
*********

and so ends Avon's POV. Tarrant's thoughts in the matter will follow if you think it's worth the time.