The Last Place On Earth

Author: Kerry ~Aja
Pairing: ViggOrli, Harry/Orli (Yep, that's m/m slash. Don't like, don't read. Easy Peasy.)
Series: Last Place On Earth
Rating: PG
Summary: Harry goes exploring.
Note: Originally written for a challenge from dh, this fic was 'finished'. Now, thanks to Nisi, it's being expanded, so I've changed some things in order to fit four new chapters in.
Warning: AU fic. May be angsty in parts. Mentions of non-con, suicide and death/reincarnation (not of present day characters!) in later chapters. Cheery stuff. ~grin~
Feedback: If you've got something constructive to suggest, please suggest it.. This story's been edited and changed a lot, it won't hurt to be re-edited. Other comments also welcome, though please don't tell me you don't like AU or slash. Because it says it's an AU right here in the headers, so.. y'know.. if you don't like it, don't read it. It's pretty simple, no?
Disclaimer: Totally made up. All of it's lies.

WAITING FOR HIM

CAIRO, PRESENT DAY


The streets were swollen, bruises of humanity. Harry lived for it. Oppressive body heat, odours he didn't want to think too hard about, personal space invasion and a clamour of voices all around him. And he was loving every second. Music rose from a car radio somewhere, the sound of it tinny and muffled. He swept his tongue over his top lip, tasted the heavy promise of rain.

An elbow caught his side in an unexpected shove, he simply let his body be turned, found himself facing a hotel. Dilapidated now, it had that look of faded elegance about it that suggested this was once a g pla place. Harry took a few steps closer, spotting a rat poking its head out through a splintered hole in the door. Another impolite shove, a foreign obscenity muttered to the "white-eye" who didn't look where he was going. Harry said nothing. He just turned back to the hotel, curiosity getting the better of him. It wasn't like anyone was going to stop him, was it? The rat darted away when Harry reached the top step, he felt the brush of its long tail against the cuff of his trousers. With a last glance behind him, he pushed at the door. The wood protested, so he shoved harder until something gave and it just seemed to crumple open. He stepped inside, and did the best job he could with closing the door behind him.

Blinking, Harry stood still for a minute, lng hng his eyes become accustomed to the dim light. A dusty reception desk was exposed in fractions when he finally moved, light snaking past his shoulder through cracks in the door behind him. He walked towards it, looking around at the rest of the room. A cobweb hung in dainty decoration from a chandelier, a pale spider scuttled down the chain holding it in place. Lined up along one wall were three seats. Harry could make out patches of green leather and dark oak amid the faded, yellowed fray of age. He wondered idly, if he were to dust them off, would they hold his weight? Wiser not to try, he knew, so he left the reception and moved towards the stairs.

He lifted his foot to the second step, pressing as much of his weight down as he could without losing his balance. It creaked, but not so much that he thought it couldn't bear his weight. He thought this must be how explorers feel, just delving into the unknown. Not quite knowing what awaits. He grinned, looking down at himself. Hardly Indiana Jones. The wood continued to creak as he ascended the stairs to the second floor. That's when he heard it.

"-go..? Is that you?" a voice called out. Harry was almost knocked out by the desperation in those words, far more than he was at the thought of there being somebody else out there. He swallowed hard as he saw that one of the doors to his left was slightly ajar. He thought that was where the voice had come from, so he took a few steps towards it.

"Who's there?" he asked.

Silence.

Harry wondered if he had just imagined the voice, until it called out again, "Is that you, Viggo?"

Definitely, it had come from that room. Harry stared at the door, the strip of light just beyond it, and pushed.

He tried to say something, anything, but he had forgotten how to breathe. The young man curled on top of dusty, stained sheets was nothing short of beautiful. Far, far beyond beautiful. Smooth, dark skin wrapped gracefully around tight muscle, slender limbs a tangle of apprehension. To Harry, he looked naked, tired, out of place.

Eyes a bittersweet shade of dark chocolate followed Harry as he walked across the room, though the young man barely moved. "Who are you?" he asked, when Harry stopped beside the bed. "You're not Viggo. So who are you?"

Desperation had turned to disappointment, and again, the strength of it nearly knocked Harry off his feet. "I'm Harry," he said, simply. "Who's Viggo?"

"He should be here. I've been waiting for him." The young man lifted his hand from the sheets. Harry saw an odd mark on the back of his arm. He looked closer and realized it was a scar. An old wound, closed over now, though it seemed the boy had been scratching at it. Long fingers reached for him, and Harry involuntarily took a step back.

"Water. Is that fresh water?" the stranger asked. Harry followed the path of questing fingers to the bottle of water he still held loosely at his side. He nodded dumbly and held the bottle out, watching each digit carefully wrap around the plastic as if it were the most delicate glass. Limbs unfolding gradually, the stranger sat up, twisting the lid from the bottle to let it drop. He tipped it to his lips, sighing softly as he drank. Harry watched the movement of his throat, thinking of a swan. At his sides, his fingers twitched. He suddenly wanted, more than anything, to touch the bobbing adam's apple. To taste that flawless skin. Instead, he just watched. The stranger drained half of the water befoowerowering the bottle. "Thankyou," he whispered. "I don't know where he could be. He should have found me by now."

Harry looked around the room. He saw something on a plate, what looked to be a moulding half loaf of bread and a glass of something faintly brown. He frowned. "How long have you been waiting here?" he asked.

The stranger looked at Harry, gaze penetrating the very fibre of Harry's being, looking for something. Apparently, he found what he was looking for, because he moved over on the bed, and patted the edge of it for Harry to sit down. "My mother brought me here when I was five."

Harry sat carefully, hands folded and cupped in his lap. "What, and she just left you?"

"This place closed sometime in the early twenties. It's been owned by my cousin's family since, and as he can't bear to let anything of his go, it's remained standing since then. So, yes. It was safe enough for her to leave me here."

"Why did she bring you all the way to Egypt?" Harry asked.

The stranger shrugged. "Because everyone said I was insane."

Harry frowned. "Insane? I'm sorry, but.." Harry trailed off from his question, asked another instead. "What's your name?"

"Orlando."

Orlando. The name made Harry think of endless deserts and violins in the rain. He wanted to say it out loud, to hear how it sounded, to feel it roll off his tongue.

"I thought I'd seen him. Viggo. So I told my Mother, and when she asked me who Viggo was.." Orlando ground his palm against his chin, resting it there as he pointed out the mark Harry had seen on his arm. "She did this to me."

"Who is Viggo?"

"He's.. It's difficult to explain. He's the other half of me. He's always been there, every lifetime I've spent on this earth."

Harry said nothing, but thought that if that's what Orlando had told his mother at five years old, it was little wonder he was considered insane. He couldn't help his curiosity, and Orlando seemed eager to tell his story, so he turned a little more to face the young man.

"How long have you lived here?" he asked.

"I've been waiting for twenty years."

"My.. God.." Harry breathed.

Orlando gave him a slightly puzzled look. "Waiting for him, and he hasn't come. I thought he'd have come by now. I thought he would have worked it out and found me, because he always finds me."

"These.. These past lives. How many of them have there been?"

"I've lost count. So many. I've lived so many different lives over the years. Human and animal. I was a pirate once, and a whore right here in Cairo. But it wasn't called Cairo then."

Harry closed his eyes. Opened them again. That impossibly beautiful face was still there, achingly innocent eyes still looking at him. Orlando was waiting for him to say something, Harry realized. "I.. How did you know? How did you know it was him?"

Orlando smiled, and Harry's heart hurt.

"We've always looked mostly the same. Even when we weren't human. The names, the places might change, but we're always the same. He's always older than me, more creative than me. It's the things that make us who we are that never change. I can't explain how it works, but we always find one another."

"But.. why?" Harry wanted to know. "Why are you drawn together?"

"We have to be together, to become whole."

"What happens if he doesn't find you?"

Orlando licked his lips, the darting tongue like a hummingbird's wing. He blinked, and when his eyes opened again, there was something there. A sort of.. sadness, Harry thought. It made him want to gather this lost child into his arms and never let him go.

"I don't know. Because he's always found me."

"You said you've been here in Cairo before."

Orlando nodded. "It was the first time I lived. The first time I met Viggo. Though his name was Pamiu then."

"And yours?"

"Ankh-Hebeny. Hebeny," Orlando said. "It was usually a girl's name, but my Father kindly made the exception for me," Orlando told him, with a soft smile.

"Why?"

"Ebony, the colour he said that my eyes were. And because I looked more like a girl than a boy, I suppose. Though that would do me well when I came of age."

Harry took a sip from his bottle, watching Orlando watching him. "What do you mean?" He tried to remember what the young man had said about his life in Cairo, thought of a blind beggar.

"I became a whore not long after my sixteenth birthday. It wasn't until I was twenty-one that I met Pamiu."

Harry nodded, changed his question again. "Cairo.. You said it wasn't called Cairo then? What was it?"

"It was around fifteen hundred years before.. well, before the modern calendar began. The city was known as Heliopolis, the city of Re." Orlando smiled. "City of the Sun."

continued in 'City Of The Sun'