The Demands of Prescience

The Padishah Emperor was not permitted to make mistakes.

It was said often thus. The mistakes of ordinary men could be quickly righted; their consequences immediate and short-term. The mistakes of Emperors were an entirely different beast altogether. Whole worlds could be plunged into the darkness of chaos with the errant stroke of a pen, a word uttered carelessly in council.

For Paul Muad'Dib, eighty-second Padishah Emperor, this was doubly true; the mighty Muad'Dib quite literally held the Universe in his calloused fist, through which the sweet scent of melange flowed. But this man was also the Lisan al-Gaib of the Fremen, the Voice of the Outworld. The Messiah foretold for generations. No one could dance that hair's breadth line between salvation and catastrophe with such grace. Perhaps most crucially, he was the Kwisatz Haderach of the Bene Gesserit witches; mistakes should have been impossible for him. With absolute prescience came absolute power, and the ability to succeed utterly where lesser men so often failed. Muad'Dib did not stumble in the dark, because there was no dark. Not since the spice agony. It revealed to him the truth that had eluded so many: that salvation and catastrophe were birthed of the same mother, which was Prescience.

He found himself clinging to these lofty pronouncements as of late, even as they utterly terrified him. Everywhere he turned, jihad whispered to him. It shone in the melange-stained eyes of fanatics, of Fedaykin and naibs. That was the dark side to the blinding light, the one he still flinched from. However, on one cool spring morning some few weeks after his ascension, that was the last thing on Paul's mind.

There was a far more immediate matter. That, of course, was the Matter of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. There were many unkind Fremen words for that matter.

Prescience was something oft-misunderstood, particularly by those who claimed to know it best, the Sisterhood. In that Place from which even the most cunning of Reverend Mothers trembled, there lay infinite futures. It was a great web of possibility. At every nexus lay a crossroads. Every choice led to a different path; but some paths converged down trackless roads across the stars: many paths, many truths, many futures. And it was within the Many Futures that Paul saw the crossroads which encapsulated the Matter of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. Within one, the na-Baron lay dead at Muad'Dib's feet, his water spilled upon Arrakeen stone to purchase Atreides victory even as it sealed the fate of his own house. But there was another path, a twisting path that intrigued Paul, filled with light and darkness, with great possibility and unfathomable danger. Perhaps it could lead him away from the seemingly inevitable madness of jihad; that was unlikely--humanity would not submit to the will of Prescience lightly--but perhaps that one act, that one choice, would open another path.

And that was why Muad'Dib spared the life of Feyd-Rautha.

Stilgar, Fremen to his wise old bones, would not dare question the wisdom of his beloved Mahdi. Loyalty demanded unshaking compliance. But words were not necessary, not for Paul and his Bene Gesserit training. His wrinkled face was an open book, fraught with concern, with anger, spoke thusly: Harkonnen scum did not deserve the mercy of Muad'Dib. Only the blade for ones such as these that raped women and tortured children, who held reverence for nothing, not even the ways of the desert. Fremen justice demanded his water, and by refusing to take it, Muad'Dib angered many. Lady Jessica, less a Fremen than Reverend Mother, nonetheless shared such a view. But she was an Atreides and these sentiments ran strongly. Irulan, so versed in politics, counseled fiercely against letting the Harkonnen live. Surely kanly had something to say about this; with the death of his uncle Vladimir, Feyd-Rautha was the undisputed Baron of his House, and to be held prisoner in such a fashion would not sit well amongst the Great Houses. Already there were formal protests planned before the Landsraad; well-placed spies suggested a Bill of Particulars would be brought shortly by Count Fenring. Muad'Dib was above such petty political chicanery, however. Prescience assured it; jihad demanded it.

Then there was Chani, his sihaya, his beautiful desert rose. You should have killed him, beloved. They were Chani's words, echoed a thousand times, in quiet moments. And they were words which were echoed a thousand times by everyone around him. However, no one could understand that Prescience demanded it, that Paul's vision compelled it. Muad'Dib's ways were mysterious to all. That did not mean they had to like them. They merely had to comply.

So, on that cool, early spring morning, Muad'Dib walked to the apartments set aside for his ancestral foe, high in the central tower of the imperial palace at Arrakeen. His own Mentat calculations posited a seventy-percent chance of treachery that day. Paul almost wanted to laugh. Seventy was still preferable to seventy-two. Still, he felt the disapproval of the pair of Fedaykin flanking him, pouring off them in waves of sand. It was a foolish thing Muad'Dib was doing, keeping this devious snake in the palace. If he had to live, better a prison, not in the sort of luxury a Baron was accustomed to. Checking the double doors for traps, the Fremen declared them secure, and Muad'Dib unlocked them with a wave of his hand against the hidden panel above the food slot.

A security precaution, to be sure. Only Paul's distinct energy signature would open the doors. Make no mistake, despite the comfort, Feyd-Rautha was a prisoner in every sense of the word. His every movement was tightly controlled and monitored. Paul was not so foolish in this as was commonly believed.

When the doors were open, they revealed a windowless series of chambers high in the tower. They were spacious and comfortable, with every amenity needed. When Paul entered, it appeared that his prisoner had taken advantage of at least one of them only moments before. Feyd's dark, red hair was still wet, clinging to his brow in tiny ringlets, and he wore a simple vest and billowing trousers of crimson silk. He lay outstretched on the bed, picking at the remnants of a plate of spice muffins.

"Good morning, Baron Harkonnen." Paul's voice was level, emotionless, as always. Feyd, for his part, utterly ignored him and kept at his breakfast.

"Muad'Dib speaks to you, wretch!" the guard on Paul's left barked.

Without looking up from his plate, Feyd snickered, and replied in a voice dripping with contempt and muffled by pastry: "Fuck Muad'Dib."

Enraged at this blasphemy, the Fedaykins' hands immediately flew to their weapons, but Paul swiftly raised his hands, bringing them kindly--but firmly--down upon each of the Fremen's kris-arms.

"Stand down, Karim, Nazad," Paul said, tightly controlling his inflection in the manner of the Voice. Obediently, both men lowered their weapons, returning them to the sheaths. Paul continued: "Leave us." Before they could even glance at him with unease or unspoken protest, the Fedaykin withdrew, closing the doors behind him, compelled by the Voice's power.

Alone with his enemy, Paul was alert but weary. He sincerely prayed that Arrakis would temper Feyd as it had all who traversed its sands. As it stood, the last Baron of House Harkonnen looked more like a spoiled housecat at the moment, petulantly tossing the earthen plate to the floor for no apparent reason. It shattered, spraying crumbs everywhere. "Why in Hades are you here," Feyd sneered. "Is this another of your precious, backward Fremen superstitions? That you come to torment me daily?"

"I do no such thing, Feyd-Rautha," Paul replied, folding his arms behind his back. "I'm simply here to make sure you are comfortable and well cared for."

"Not Fremen superstition then. That vaunted Atreides honor. I should have guessed." Feyd rolled his eyes. And then his pouting lips curled into that trademark Harkonnen smirk. "A lot of good that did your father."

For a brief, split second, the face of Muad'Dib the Emperor crumbled to reveal that of Paul Atreides, the boy who still grieved for his lost Duke, and his hands clenched into fists. As soon as it overcame him, however, it passed, suppressed by his rigid training. Every morning, Feyd goaded him in such a manner. There was a purpose to it, naturally; one did not need a Bene Gesserit education or the gifts of spice vision to see the transparency of his words. It was not the first time in ten-thousand years that an Atreides had utterly humiliated a Harkonnen, after all.

"I see you've been eating. You've changed your mind, then?" Paul asked rather conversationally. Feyd snorted in response.

"What choice do I have?" Feyd's tone was rather bitter. "It's not as if I can escape the shit. It's everywhere. I consume it with every breath I take. Better I build a resistance for when you actually do decide to poison me with it."

Of course, the fact that Paul had been lacing his food with extra quantities of melange was quite irrelevant. When he requested the henna dye for his hair--a concession to that maddening Harkonnen vanity--Paul made sure it too was filled with spice. It was not for the purposes of poisoning, however; that would have been far more mundane. Feyd had to be tied inexorably to Arrakis, and to him, if he were truly to remain a prisoner. The simplest method was via spice addiction. Already, even after three short weeks, the man had begun to exhibit the tell-tale signs. Feyd's sparkling blue eyes, so naturally resplendent, had already deepened to that signature cobalt. Soon, the whites would follow.

"Solid Harkonnen logic." Paul was faintly, gently mocking.

"They tasted like sand, you know."

"I'll instruct the kitchen."

If Paul had been anyone else, he'd have been distracted enough by the conversational banter that he would not have seen Feyd palm a thin, razor-sharp shard of plate as he rose from the bed and slip it into one of the loose folds of his pants. Paul, however, was not anyone else. Paul was Muad'Dib, the Kwisatz Haderach possessed of the mental training of a Mentat and the prana-bindu conditioning of a Bene Gesserit, with the reflexes of a God.

Seventy-percent.

Paul watched Feyd cross the room, casually, as though the Baron were looking to adjust the glowglobe in the corner. A heartbeat later, he struck, lunging at Paul with the shard. However, Paul was ready. Using his Weirding Way, he easily dodged the precise blow with preternatural speed, bending to the side as though he were a branch in the wind. Feyd attempted to stab him a second time, but Paul feinted to the other side, then spun to bring his elbow down upon his assailant's arm to disarm him, and quite simply swept him off his feet with a hook of his leg to bring him crashing down upon the limestone tile. The Harkonnen gladiator would not be bested so easily however. With a single fluid motion, he kicked Paul hard in the gut and tucked a roll, bringing him down to the floor with him. There was a momentary struggle as the two practiced fighters scuffled, but soon Paul had Feyd pinned to the floor by his wrists.

"You're out of practice, Feyd," Paul chuckled a bit contemptuously. "Perhaps I should schedule some sparring time for you, so you don't embarrass yourself against me yet again."

Feyd howled in rage and broke free of Paul's grasp, showing off the tremendous strength he'd honed in the fighting pits of Giedi Prime. However, he could not escape. Paul was too quick, too strong. It was a long stalemate, with neither able to gain the upper hand. Something, however, changed; with each attempt, with each movement in the struggle, adrenaline heightened Paul's senses. Feyd was writhing beneath him, no longer a sparring combatant. And when Feyd arched into him, brushing against his skin to reveal a large and utterly solid erection, Paul's breath nearly stopped.

"What's the matter, Muad'Dib," Feyd laughed, the sneer still evident in the way he spat out the sacred name. "Your precious visions didn't let you see that, eh?"

A fatal miscalculation. A mistake. Of course, among the many properties of melange, it was an aphrodisiac when ingested in large amounts. The sort of amounts Paul had been lacing Feyd's food with for the last three weeks. He turned his eyes away from his laughing opponent sharply, unable to bear the lust in his glare, and the lascivious way he licked his full, pouting lips. Feyd-Rautha was a Harkonnen to the core.

Muad'Dib was crumbling. Startled by his inability to account for this very likely possibility. It had been proven once that Feyd could not best him in singular combat. That stinging humiliation, of course, had festered within him. That, Muad'Dib knew, and accounted for. What he did not factor into his calculations was the depths to which a Harkonnen would resort when driven to such utter desperation. The violence was accounted for, certainly, but not this. That Feyd would share his late uncle's well-known urges and hedonism did not surprise him. That he would attempt this with an Atreides was something he did not, could not fathom.

Muad'Dib was still human. The fullest, most complete measure and realization of human potential was still utterly, painfully human. And now the very human man behind the prophecy, Paul Atreides, was faced with the terrifying prospect of his most hated enemy writhing beneath him like the women of the sietch during a spice orgy.

It was during this moment of psychic turmoil that Feyd was able to finally break free of his grasp, knee him in the gut, then roll with him into a tackle that left the tables turned, with Paul helpless and pinned beneath him. The Baron was straddling him. Paul had completely lost his focus.

"You can't see everything, can you?" Feyd taunted him, taking a long, languid stroke of his tongue to Paul's neck, inducing a very unwanted reaction. "You couldn't fucking see this, could you?"

"Shut up," Paul growled. All his elaborate training--gone, like dust in the wind. Every time he attempted to use the Voice, it became stuck in his throat. His heart pounded in his chest when Feyd grinded against him. Everything in his mind screamed out to him that this was wrong, this was hedonism, this was everything his family--his blood--was not.

Feyd bit his neck, and Paul arched up off the floor with an involuntary moan. Whether it was the melange in his blood or the adrenaline of the struggle, he could not deny the stiffness, the arousal. Harkonnen hands slid into his mantle, drawing languid circles about his nipples, and he bit his lip. Again he called upon the prana-bindu in his cells, in his genetic memory, and again it was in vain. His own body was betraying him with every caress of Feyd's tongue down his chest, every stroke of his hand across his thighs. When the Baron hovered in a predatory fashion above Paul's groin, the heat of melange-tinged breath brushing against his erection through the porous silk fabric, he clamped his eyes shut.

"I must not fear," Paul rasped aloud, clinging to the one defense he had left. "Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death--"

"I'll show you a little-death," Feyd breathed in retort. "A thousand of them."

Paul's body was crying out for him to give in, just this once--to give into the pleasure he could not know as Muad'Dib, with the crushing weight of jihad waiting in the shadows. But to surrender to Feyd would mean worse than failure. It would mean the betrayal of everything he had worked for. It would mean a Harkonnen had won.

Perhaps that was the truth behind this path, behind this choice. Perhaps that is what it meant to let Feyd-Rautha live. That Muad'Dib was human. Feyd had slithered back up to face him. His cock was pressed tightly against Paul's thigh, the friction maddening and wonderful. "You want this," Feyd practically purred into his ear with a seductive whisper, his breath rich with the cinnamon scent of melange. "As much as I do. No one has to know."

Paul could not deny it, not when Feyd's hand slid into his pants and clutched his own painfully hard erection, stroking it. The objections, the Mentat calculations, the logic and the vision flew out of his mind. All he could sense, all he could feel, was incalculable lust. His answer was given when Feyd slipped his tongue into his mouth and kissed him, hungry and yearning, his lips as soft as any woman's. Paul did not fight. To the contrary, he wrapped his arms around Feyd and returned the kiss with a ferocity of his own.

It did not take long for either man to shed his clothes and cast them aside. They became a tangle of tightly-muscled limbs, with Feyd clearly taking control. Paul's distinct lack of experience in this arena almost demanded it of him, and prisoner soon became master over the warden in short order.

Paul laid back and let the other man's tongue dance across his skin, bestowing kisses and bites with equal fervor. The paradox of soft and hard, pleasure and pain, was deeply arousing to him. He felt himself tense in anticipation as Feyd's tongue trailed down his abdomen to the object of his desire. When the Harkonnen took Paul into his practiced hands and took said tongue around the tip, suckling it ever so slightly with those beautiful, pouting lips, it was difficult for Paul to remember this was a man he was fornicating with, much less his sword and hated enemy. The pleasure was indescribable. Paul moaned softly, enraptured as much by the sight of Feyd as by his work. But then he was overwhelmed by a sensation of intensely soothing warmth and moisture, as Feyd took his cock entirely into his mouth.

"God..." Paul hissed involuntarily, and grabbed his impromptu lover by the hair, as if to direct his movements. Feyd was sucking him off in all earnestness now, the seductive playfulness of his lips turned to a starkly contrasting urgency. Paul had never felt anything like this before, not even with Chani. The legendary hedonism of House Harkonnen was evident in every skilled movement of Feyd's tongue, in the way his cobalt eyes stared up at Paul filled with naked lust so powerful it made the young Emperor even harder. His hips unconsciously rose up to meet the rhythm of Feyd's mouth, and before long Paul was as much fucking his mouth as Feyd was working his cock. It went on for a wondrous, agonizingly long time, until finally Paul was brought to the precipice. When at last he could take no more, he cried out an incoherent Chakobsa oath, shooting his seed into Feyd's eagerly awaiting mouth. The Baron swallowed it to the last drop, his eyes half-closed as though in the savoring of it, his own arousal grew.

It was then that some measure of Paul's faculties returned, even in the midst of this wonderful bliss. He would show Feyd the same mercy, the same release. It was not within him to deny such a thing when it was offered so freely. He could never be that selfish. For his part, Feyd looked stunned when Paul guided him back to his mouth, for another kiss; this one tender, warm. Doubly stunned when he was taken to the bed, and Paul eased down atop him, running his hands through tangled red hair and smothering his taut body with kisses.

"I am not your uncle," Paul whispered into his ear. "I am an Atreides."

That single, simple statement of fact had much the same effect as if Paul had struck Feyd in the face. A thousand cuts were made. Vision revealed to him. Feyd had never known anything but lust and cruelty. He sought to use the former to his advantage even now. Paul was not foolish enough to believe love had anything to do with this. It was a power game to Feyd. A way to twist the situation so that he was in control, and not his captor. But Paul would not be manipulated so callously. Not Muad'Dib. And now, he began to understand the vision, the thing which made him spare Feyd's life.

"But." Feyd did not understand, he could not understand. Paul was going to make him understand.

"Now who is blind, Baron?"

Paul's hand slid down Feyd's stomach to his erection and tugged gently at first, making a pleasant gasp escape the man's lips. Of course, the Emperor had never lay with a man before that day, but he did not need to. His training returned, his instincts. His hand stroked Feyd's cock the way it did his own when he was overcome by spice ecstasy. It was a simple thing to do, yes, and Paul was a fast learner as always. He varied his pace, increasing to blistering speed and then dropping to agonizing slowness. Feyd's toes curled, his breath grew labored, and all he could do was arch into Paul's hand, jerking his hips in some frenetic attempt for more friction, for the release he so badly craved. His moans were delicious to Paul, loud and soft, a hundred little whimpers and hisses as he lay helpless beneath the Emperor, a prisoner once more to this hand jerking across the shaft of his cock. And then he too cried out, screaming Paul's name as he orgasmed, the sticky white evidence of his pleasure shooting all over both of them.

For a long, blissful few moments, it seemed everything had finally, truly faded away. All of Muad'Dib's burdens, all of the demands of Prescience, gone in the worship of his prisoner's mouth upon him, the Emperor's hands upon his prisoner. There was simply Paul Atreides and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, naked and vulnerable and tangled in each other's arms, covered in each other's sweat, not giving a thought or care to what any of it meant, if anything.

"It appears...we are at another stalemate, Atreides." And when Feyd finally spoke those words, Paul suddenly wanted to laugh.

"It appears so."

"Remember, though, when your councillors speak against me, that I alone can do this for you. I gave you pleasure not even your Fremen woman could. Remember this, Emperor."

The smile faded from Muad'Dib's lips. The Baron Harkonnen had not learned anything it all, it would seem.

"And remember the man who showed you kindness you have never known, when he did not have to."

Muad'Dib gave his enemy a final kiss, and rose from the bed to wipe himself clean and clothe himself once more in the white mantle of the Emperor. When he exited the chamber, however, his vision showed him something entirely different.

Another crossroads. Another choice made, another path taken. And the future was changed, again. How, Muad'Dib could not see; Prescience would reveal it in time.