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Chapter Text

The last glimmers of sunlight were dying on the sparkling sands of Arrakis, before the dawning of the freezing blue night.

Paul was sitting on his golden throne - hands resting on the smooth surface, head bowed in contemplation - when they brought the ghola to him, in the audience hall he walked for the first time as a Fedaykin, a pretender, a liberator, a killer.

A gift befitting to an Emperor, the representative said.

Without moving, he had examined the handsome fleshy appearance of a ghost revived just for him: Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, once murdered, twice born. Gifted by the Bene Tleilaxu to destroy the Mentat Emperor. 

When the ghola drew his first breath, a sudden gust of wind blew a door open, causing the heavy Atreides banner to slide back and forth, casting shadows across the marble floor.

That was when Paul saw it before it would happen.

The metallic eyes of reborn Feyd-Rautha were gleaming in the darkness like the old wound once inflicted on his chest. Paul remembered the dull sound of the knife slicing across his enemy’s tender flesh, the subdued moan of the Harkonnen beast collapsing on the ground.

Before dying, Feyd-Rautha had sought him with mortal fear in his eyes and held him down by the neck with such force that almost made Paul tumble. Then the vengeance he had so ardently craved turned sour within moments, as the steps of a leaving Chani echoed in the hall.

His triumph felt more like a curse than anything. Loneliness became his constant companion, and mystifiers and enemies crawled from their holes to offer him false solutions.

“Walk, boy!” the representative from the Tleilaxu encouraged, almost touching the ghola with his filthy, undeserving hands.

Reborn Feyd-Rautha looked innocent in his clean white vest. His cheeks were flushed with healthy pinkness and his face was surrounded by a halo of golden hair, waving softly on his strong shoulders. 

He was beautiful, and unspoiled.

He slightly parted his tempting, rosy lips as he took graceful, barefoot steps towards his new owner.

The Emperor saw it again: a gentle caress on a freshly shaved cheek, the closing of gray eyes, a blond head thrown back in ecstasy. All the promises of comfort and abandon the Tleilaxu were offering him through the flesh of his revived enemy. He twisted his mouth, hands suddenly clasping on the throne, mind full of memories of what could have been.

The ghola stopped moving, waited. 

Paul sighed.

It would have been different from the first time he had known love. It wouldn’t have been companionship and comfort and grounding touch on the harsh but fruitful reality. It would have been a soul-soothing enchantment, sought for too many years and never reached, a sweet promise of rest after the endless struggle. 

Reborn Feyd-Rautha was pure splendor, engineered for his thirst and desire, made to be a soothing balm on his worn out skin. 

“Take him away …”

“But Sire -”

“TAKE HIM AWAY!” Paul yelled, straightening his posture on the throne. “It’s your Emperor ordering it and you should obey! Your treacherous trickery has no place here!”

“W-we only meant to p-please you …” the representative stuttered, disgracefully. “He carries no memory of his past sins but all the beauty and strength of the former Na-Baron … you once desired him, although briefly.”

A dangerous light flashed in the Emperor’s eyes, a bitter taste invading his mouth. All his most unfathomable instincts were so apparent to the den of snakes surrounding him?

“He once desired you too,” the Tleilaxu continued, heartened by his lord’s hesitation. “Most ardently, Sire.”

“And what am I supposed to do with him? Use him to satisfy an old, forgotten impulse?”

The Tleilaxu raised his eyebrows.

“You shall do whatever you like to him: he’s yours to enjoy, to punish or kill.”

“Kill?”

“We can send him back to eternal oblivion, if that’s what you want.”

Paul stood up, a fiery rage blazing inside his heart and the tempting desire to strangle the snake in front of him with his bare hands. Oh, how he would have enjoyed seeing the spark of life abandon his vacant eyes.

And then he spoke.

The voice was much the same, but softer, uncertain. He was pressing two fingers upon his lips, almost surprised by his ability to express his own thoughts.

“My Lord Sire … please.”

The ghola’s first words were a prayer from a child to a father and Paul froze, turned to him. He saw the innocence, the puzzling budding desire, the unexplicable drive. He saw the hope: of sleep, warmth and friendship. And, for the first time in years, he couldn't help but want. 

He stepped towards the worried, frowning ghola and raised one hand to caress his cheek. He allowed ruination to fall upon them both.

Chapter Text

In the years to come, he knew, the one thing he won’t be able to forget will be the feeling of his fingers sliding across the soft blond hair, the warm pressure of a head resting on his thighs, upon his chest, on his shoulder as he holds the sleeping ghola in a lover’s embrace. Feyd-Rautha, light of his life, fire of his loins.

It happened one evening, along the grassy banks of the newly engineered gardens of Arrakeen - his promised Green Paradise with water flowing underneath the soil. He was walking alongside his sister, planning the next course of actions against a scattered company of rebels who dared to defy his commands. 

A distant golden gleaming, blond hair fluttering in the sandy breeze. He had grown weary of false promises - his own, in the first place - and he didn’t trust the Bene Tleilaxu. Plans within plans, traitors within traitors. Still, his body trembled and his heart beat faster at the sight of that unspoiled, perfect beauty. 

“You want to speak to the ghola,” Alia noticed, lips pursed tight. 

Paul barely nodded, advancing towards the brand new body of the once Na-Baron. Feyd-Rautha was staring at a bush of blossoming flowers, his lips were half-opened in wonder.

“You like them?” the Emperor asked, scrutinizing the ghola’s tender face as he gathered his thoughts.

He was so expressive, bare in his desires, unguarded: so unlike everything Paul was ever taught to be.

“They are so colorful …” the ghola replied. “And the smell!” he added, pressing his nose against the soft petals of a rose. “It’s like perfume!”

For the first time in years, Paul smiled sincerely.

“They are like that, aren’t they?” he whispered, unable to suppress a slight mockery in his tone. The ghola looked back at him, puzzled. “I don’t mean to offend you,” he added immediately. “Your reaction … it was rather sweet.”

Reborn Feyd-Rautha blushed pink. 

Paul would wonder for days about that change of color on his cheeks, faint and bright at the same time. A blush that spoke of embarrassment, innocence, joy. For many, many years now his presence didn’t bring joy to anyone, not to those who once loved him and not to the people who worshiped him, whose fiery admiration was tinted with zealot rage and desire to consume him.

The ghola bearing Feyd-Rautha’s appearances seemed genuinely happy to simply stand by his side, demanding of nothing. 

“What flower do you like the most?” Paul asked, unable to tear his gaze away.

“The roses, maybe … and the ones with …” the ghola blushed again, this time in shame. “I don’t know their names. I don’t know many things,” he said, confused by a vague sadness.

Paul’s heart twisted in his chest.

“I’m sorry about that, I am …” he swallowed his unspeakable guilt and turned on his feet, undecided to step forward and leave Feyd-Rautha to his silent contemplation. Then he stilled and looked up at his silent, waiting companion. 

“Would you like to talk about botanics?” he tried.

Feyd-Rautha nodded. 

The Emperor used to wander in his newly engineered gardens for days, alone, absorbed by thoughts and ancestral memories, listening to the far away sounds of the desert calling for him.

During the nights, when the moons were high in the sky of Arrakis and gentle breeze poured nostalgia into his chest, he craved for his long lost love as an animal craves for a missing limb. He never dared to summon Chani though, for her decision was final and worthy of respect.

They walked together, Emperor and ghola, without touching and yet so close. Paul told Feyd-Rautha all he knew about flowers and trees and planning of gardens. The ghola’s hair shone in the daylight, long and soft and so deliriously inviting to the touch, as he listened and nodded. It almost didn’t seem real to speak to such brand new version of Feyd-Rautha, purged of all the abuse and the violence, amazed by notions of agriculture, geography and history. 

And, before the Emperor could catch himself, he had raised a trembling hand and pushed a strand of locks behind the ghola’s small ear. Feyd-Rautha didn’t move or flinch at his touch, but stared back at him so intently he took Paul’s breath away.

“Thank you, my Lord Sire,” he whispered after a long moment of silence.

It was Paul’s turn to blush.

Feyd-Rautha became his constant walking companion. They would meet at the gates of the new gardens and walk for hours sometimes talking, sometimes in silence. Always moving closely, in perfect synchronicity. 

The ghola had been training - his past fighting abilities barely awakened by his new Atreides masters, who never trusted him entirely. Apart from that, he was often left alone, barely spoken to by servants and members of the court. Upon the ending of his third month at the palace, he started to suffer the silence of his bedroom.

“I wish I could know more … about this planet, about the universe!” he once said to the Emperor and, immediately that night, his room had been filled with filmbooks.

That brought joy to Feyd-Rautha and, as a natural consequence, to Paul. 

“I wish you could stay a bit more,” the ghola whispered once, while sitting on his bed after the ending of a filmbook. The Emperor was already on the feet, face aimed at the door.

“I wish it too, but I cannot.”

“You have to visit your wife,” Feyd-Rautha said. “She’s Irulan of House Corrino, eldest daughter of Shaddam Corrino the fourth and Anirul, born in Kaitain.”

“That’s correct,” Paul replied, making the ghola smile proudly.

“Thank you, my Lord Sire. But … I still wish you could stay more,” he sighed, dropping his gaze ever so gently.

Paul couldn’t help himself. He lowered his body towards the ghola and caressed his cheek, pushing his chin up with a tender, intimate gesture. Feyd-Rautha’s bright eyes were staring back at him, a silent question in them. The Emperor had memorized every detail of his face by now: the beauty mark on the corner of his jaw, the dusty blond eyebrows, the plump lips. It felt like the most natural thing to walk alongside him, watch filmbooks sitting next to him, smelling his faint scent of soap and herbal oil in the air. 

It was soothing and exhilarating at the same time and, before he knew it, Feyd-Rautha’s breathing felt very close to his skin and he had pressed his lips against his own. The Emperor opened his mouth, allowing the kiss to deepen, holding the ghola’s face against his own, fingers tight on the blond hair.

When he had pulled away to breathe - shame and guilt not yet suffocating his spirit - Feyd-Rautha was staring at him with eyes wide open and fingers pressed on his reddened lips. 

“What is this?” he asked softly. “What … did you do to me, my Lord?”

“Are you asking me ... because you don’t know?” 

The ghola looked down in momentary bewilderment. 

“It was a kiss, Feyd-Rautha,” Paul explained patiently. 

“A kiss …”

“It is a token of affection humans exchange. It means that I … care about you, deeply. It means that you are very dear to my heart.”

The ghola frowned briefly, fingers still pressed on his lips. Then a hint of smile grew on his luminous face.

“You too, Sire, are very dear to my heart.”

And Paul kissed him again. 

Chapter Text

Every day since then, the Emperor and the ghola would meet in secret and kiss with the needy abandon of star-crossed lovers. At the end of energetic training lessons or after long boring meetings, they would look for each other, seeking the comfort of physical contact.

The ghola’s bedroom would soon become their refuge and nest. The Emperor would spend hours admiring the changing of light on his lover’s flushed face as he writhed underneath him, the eager trembling of his hands clawing on his biceps, the vulnerable frown on his forehead when pleasure became too overwhelming to be endured, the smiles precious as gems on his reddened lips.

The growing, blossoming desire for Feyd-Rautha made Paul insanely happy. 

He didn’t sate his longing entirely - his last shred of decency urging him not to take advantage of such an innocent, unguarded creature - but found joy in relieving Feyd’s cravings by masturbating him slowly as they kissed. For hours, after their meetings, the Emperor would press his lips on his own open palms, dreaming of Feyd’s warmth and weight, tasting the delicious saltiness of his moisture in his memory.

It felt exciting, freeing, all encompassing, just as visions but without the anguish they carried. Perhaps the cursed circumstances of their breeding weren’t so abhorrent, perhaps his true fate was to be with Feyd-Rautha, to take pleasure in and with him.

Once the tension of his body loosened and he let himself spill in the darkness of his own bedchamber, the Emperor would succumb to a dreamless, soundless, peaceful sleep.

Still he knew: the Bene Tleilaxu had fashioned the ghola just for him. Before him, Feyd-Rautha felt nothing and knew nothing. He didn't exist apart from a single, true purpose.

This knowledge made Paul tremble far more than the thought of the jihad he was unleashing on the open universe: reborn Feyd-Rautha was entirely, utterly and completely his, in a way no human being should ever belong to another.

It was an abomination, it was an unrelentless need.

The Emperor discretely ordered two fairly trustworthy court ladies to educate the ghola of the matters of sex and consent, in order to shut the voice inside him denouncing his sullying of such a blameless creature. He knew that no education could ever fill up the gap of power and autonomy between him and Feyd-Rautha, but he loved to tell himself lies sufficient enough to shut his screaming conscience.

After all, the Mentat Emperor, Lisan al-Gaib of Arrakis, was already on the path of destruction. Weren’t his crimes against the ghola the lesser ones?, he often told himself. When his mind was clear and his heart pulsing true in his chest, he would acknowledge - feel - the harm he was unleashing upon this new Feyd. But when he saw him, when touched his face and kissed his lips, every rational thought would subside in the face of overpowering desire.

He had never wanted anyone more intensely, never felt a purer, deeper feeling.

Perhaps that was the reason why he had given up on his scruples so immediately, like an amateur fighter against a skilled weapon-master. He only cared about Feyd-Rautha and the moments he could share with him.

When they were together, he looked at his beautiful face with incredulous amazement and took care of his needs without teaching the ghola how to reciprocate his caresses, without asking for anything. Feeling Feyd spill under his ministrations was rewarding enough. Yet, his tender lover would often seek him with uncertain, impatient hands, not knowing where to touch or how to stop, trembling with the urge to claim him as he was claimed. 

Once, during another session of all-consuming kisses, Paul heard his beloved beg in their embrace, desperate tears threatening to spill over the corners of his eyes.

“My Lord, please … please …” Feyd-Rautha sobbed underneath him.

“You don’t know what you’re begging for,” the Emperor sighed, arching his torso to leave space between their heated bodies.

“But I do! I do!” his lover objected, pushing his hips up to demand his grounding touch. “They told me and I want it! I want you!”

It was delirium and Paul found himself responding to more kisses, pressing himself against his lover, holding him by his narrow hips.

They started undressing each other, caressing and kissing every piece of bare skin they could find. Feyd-Rautha was a triumph of health and splendor, while Paul’s body was hardened by his years as a fighter and Fremen of Arrakis. Still, his beloved stared at him as if he was the most beautiful sight to behold and the Emperor found himself blushing under the scrutiny of his metallic gaze. 

Then, when it felt too much to even attempt resistance, Paul let his lips run over Feyd’s naked abdomen, licking a wet path towards the flushed, hard cock between the trembling thighs. He spread them wider and wrapped his eager tongue around the cock, sucking it for a very long time, following the rhythm of Feyd’s shaking hips, of the fingers clasped on his curls. He let his beloved come in his mouth and devoutly drank the body’s moisture as he spilled his own.

Feyd-Rautha sighed loudly, almost painfully, and then, when his sire returned to claim his mouth, he smiled. 

They held each other, panting. Paul brought the wet fingers to his mouth and Feyd joined him, sucking them shyly at first and then eagerly. 

“We shall waste no water,” he moaned, joyfully sated. 

Paul wrapped his arms around him, petting his long hair. 

“My Lord,” Feyd-Rautha whispered, after a long moment of peaceful silence. “Do with me as you wish. You’re my Emperor and my whole world, you’re the reason I exist. My life belongs to you.”

Guilt and grief twisted the Emperor’s heart as he attempted to entangle from his lover’s embrace.

“Feyd, this is not what -”

“Please,” the ghola whispered, raising his eyes enough to stare back at him with fiery determination. “It is a gift and I want to give it to you,” soft fingers pressed on Paul’s lips, on his bitter-tasting, undeserving mouth. “Let me give it to you.”

The Emperor surrendered to the soothing caresses until he felt the ghola cuddle back on his chest, pressing a secret smile against his ribs.

“I love you,” he heard him say. “My dearest, gentle Lord.”

Paul turned towards him, holding his face in his hands firmly.

“I’m Paul to you,” he told his lover - commanded him. “You shall only call me Paul, your Paul.”

“My Paul …” the ghola answered readily. “My Paul?”

“My Feyd-Rautha."

Chapter Text

He hesitated for so long before surrendering to his role, to his already dictated place in the painful tapestry of the known universe. He remembered his father promising he would find his own way to live. Yet, he had been searching for years, lost, drowning in nightmares, mapping all the possible paths in the everchanging lines of time.

An endless journey studded with loss, carrying the memories of the hundred voices speaking into his mind. 

So he could know and fear and choose what was about to happen.

“You’re bestowing him too much of your attention. Your wife won’t be pleased.”

It was his young sister speaking, with wisdom beyond her years. 

Paul put down the spoon and turned to her. She was watching him intently - her blue on blue gaze unsettling and unflinching, otherworldly. 

“What are you saying to me, sweet sister?” he was beguiling, he knew that, insincere in fear of what she could reply, of the truth in her prediction. 

“The ghola!” Alia uttered, her shrill tone suggesting a childishness that never belonged to her, for she was far more cursed than her messianic brother. “You spend far too much time with him! Shower him with affection! Don’t you think your subjects are going to see the wrongness of it all? Don’t you know what is he? A true abomination upon our revered sight! You shouldn’t care that much about him!”

“Many people believe that we are the abominations …” Paul sighed. “And still we are ruling over them.”

Alia’s lips twisted in a displeased grimace that reminded Paul of their mother's. 

“Beware of the path you choose, dearest brother,” she said, stepping up from her table seat with all the grace a small girl could master. “The enemies are everywhere,” she added lowly, warm breath tickling his ear.

After breakfast the Emperor walked in his gardens for a long time, Feyd-Rautha nowhere to be seen. They were glorious now, bursting with life all over. Green plants and hard, humid soil beneath his feet.

He still remembered the first days in the desert, the softness and flatness of the sand under his boots, the Fremens’ hospitality. A lifetime ago, when happiness and a deep sense of belonging were within his grasp and vengeance was almost an afterthought. Almost. 

He could never forget the burden of justice upon his shoulders and, perhaps everything was truly already written and no man, no matter how powerful or happy or sated, could ever escape his own destiny. 

The Emperor entered the ghola’s chamber in the early afternoon. He looked at the books and papers scattered all over the floor - Feyd-Rautha had taken an interest in poetry, literature and history - as he searched for his lover.

He found him sitting by a closed glass window: an old book in his hands, forehead twisted by a concentrated frown and blond hair hiding his shining eyes from everyone else’s view.

“Feyd …?”

“This is … can you explain it to me?” the ghola was asking, his voice trembling, avoiding meeting his masters’ eyes. 

“What is to explain?” Paul knelt down in front of him, taking a peek at the book. It was ancient, most beloved by humanity’s ancestors: a tale of a noble hero fleeing from a burning city with his small child and elderly father, searching the lands and seas for the telltale signs of the new place where his glorious empire he was to be found. “What do you want me to explain, Feyd?” he repeated gently, pushing back a lock of hair.

Feyd-Rautha flinched, shook his head in shame.  

There were tears falling from his eyes, tracing paths like rivers on the flushed planes on his cheeks.

“Apologies, my Lord … Paul,” he corrected himself, biting his lower lip. “I’m wasting water … it seems that I cannot help it!”

“What’s upsetting you?” the Emperor asked, leaning more towards his beloved, cupping and caressing his face with tender strokes. 

Feyd-Rautha’s finger was still pointing at the verses that ripped a strange feeling from his chest: agnosco veteris vestigia flammae. He was reading the fourth book of the epic tale, the one about the impossible love between the hero and a queen. A love destined to end in tragedy.

“She loves him,” the ghola explained. “But he cannot stay with her … his destiny is far more important. And I understand, I do! He was chosen to bring forth a new age for humanity, but …” he sighed, biting his lip more forcefully, big tears tumbling on his elegant hands. “I can’t stop wasting water about it!” he admitted in defeat. “I don't know how!”

Paul had to kiss him.

He had to taste the fullness of his tortured lips, the taste of his tears - perfectly salty and sweet as everything about him. He held the ghola’s face in his quivering fingers, pushing the messy blond hair back, letting his tongue savor every trace of moisture on the cheeks offered to him.

“You can’t begin to imagine how much you mean to me,” he found himself confessing, trembling from the unbearable truth of his own words. 

Feyd-Rautha, his only consolation.

“My Lord, my Paul … I need to belong to you,” the ghola moaned in between kisses. “Please, take me and make me yours!”

And Paul was overcome. Kneeling like a beggar in front of his lover, kissing him breathlessly, heart beating wildly in his chest, cock already hard in his trousers.

They undressed as quickly as they could and walked hand in hand towards the bed. Feyd kissed his Emperor one last time, before lying down on the soft sheets, metallic gaze alight with devotion.

Paul admired at his naked body for a long time. He sat kneeling at his side, stroking his face ever so gently, enjoying the feeling of skin against skin. The ghola’s body was as warm as his own, as aroused and open. He took a vial of scented oil to stroke Feyd’s erection. Then, he let his fingers travel down the spread legs, tracing the desired opening only to feel the barest hint of resistance from his beloved. A thought rose in his mind: that he wouldn’t been able to stop not even if he tried. Not when Feyd was moving to meet every stroke of his fingers, begging him with rising moans.

He laid down his weary body above the sweet, welcoming one, and entered him with a swift push of the hips. Feyd-Rautha gasped in his embrace, shading even more tears.

Paul drank them and kissed him once more, drowning in pleasure until every senseless word would die in his throat. It seemed to him that the fire blazing in his soul was coming alive in Feyd-Rautha’s eyes.

Then, after they both came, they held each other, watching the sun turning orange on the far away desert horizon. Paul stared at Feyd’s fingers entwined with his own. His lover’s breathing had become lighter and he seemed to be asleep, but his hand was squeezing his strongly, rhythmically.

“Don’t abandon me, Paul,” he heard him say. “Please, promise me you won’t.”

Chapter Text

It was a time of rebellions, of bloodshed and violence all over the empire, to ensure the stability of the new rule. The struggle against the Atreides’ enemies - disordered hordes of spice bandits, Corrino loyalists, conspiring noble families - seemed never ending to the Mentat Emperor and his generals, like a nightly sandstorm relentlessly beating one’s face and body.

Despite it all, it was also a time of thrilling discovery, of desire and yearning like no other for Paul. 

After that first evening, many more followed. Each time Paul would seek Feyd-Rautha, kiss each pliant muscle of his sinewy, flourishing body and then take him slowly, deeply, until pleasure made him tremble and spill inside him.

It particularly amused him when Feyd pretended to escape his touch, to fight his attentions, only to dissolve every resistance in a happy laugh. Paul would hold him down then and lick his nipples or cock until the laugh died on his lover’s lips and his giggles turned into needy moans. The very fabric of time seemed to stretch and slow down during those moments, when Feyd-Rautha was warm and alive under him.

Of course, Paul knew, time didn’t protect anyone, ever. 

It happened during the military campaign of Naraj, when the Emperor himself had to ship to the icy planet and its moon to break down their resistance. 

Feyd-Rautha, reborn only to serve the Emperor and bring him pleasure, lost his purpose for a time and felt a strange, stinging feeling inside his chest - a feeling that would prevent him from falling asleep. He would walk for hours in the new gardens to find comfort. During the clearest nights, when the moons were shining in the sky above and the desert sands were resting, he almost felt at peace, as if he was walking the familiar paths alongside Paul again. 

He saw them during one of those walks: their faces were illuminated by the diaphanous light of the moons that made them look unreal, like dreamlike images.

“Ghola!” they addressed him, smiling mischievously. Their outfits were similar to the Empress’ servant girls and Feyd-Rautha walked towards them, full of trust. “Ghola, you love your Emperor, don’t you?”

Feyd-Rautha frowned.

“Of course I do,” he replied, puzzled by the strange question. Who could doubt his love for Paul? “I love him very much!” he screamed in the silence of the empty gardens.

The mysterious girls burst out laughing and closed the distance with a few playful jumps, surrounding him.

“You love your Emperor but you don’t make yourself loveable for him,” they said, dancing in front of his eyes. “You know nothing of what he needs or desires!”

“What … what does he need? He never told me … he never said anything about -”

“Of course he never did! He expects you to know already and you don’t! You don’t!”

Feyd-Rautha lowered his face, feeling ashamed and voiceless. The servant girls’ laughs seemed to fade a bit, like a breath taken away by the desert wind, then they became louder once more, confusing and upsetting.

“Power over spice is power over all!” they told him. “Don’t you want to know? Don’t want to know?”

He found himself by the gardens’ river, feet wet with the sacred water, stripped of every piece of clothing he was previously wearing. 

Was he wearing something when he walked into the gardens? 

Naked and silent near the shining, rippling surface. 

“I remember … rivers of snow …” he sighed, closing his eyes.

His fingers were covered in delicious, sweet spice and, when he licked them, the taste blossomed in his mouth and visions exploded in the darkness of his mind.

“And then … a great black sun shining above me …”

He felt Paul’s touch on his shoulders, on his tights and inside him like when they were together. The kisses of his lips, his tongue all over his chest, on his neck. He moaned, in rapture.

“I want … I want you to touch me and suck me and push into me until I feel like screaming …”

He turned backwards on the shore and fell on his knees, grasping the lovely, humid grass between his dirty fingers. He wanted to remember how he got naked in the first place, but couldn’t. The spice flowing in his veins felt ardent, overpowering and unstoppable images were flashing behind his closed eyes.

Suddenly there was a wet mouth between his legs and his erection was growing, ready to spill with the proper suck of the lips.

“Paul …” he called, sobbing. “Paul, please …”

But the mouth was harsher, more selfish and pleasure turned into hurt, like the sweetness of the spice morphing into a bitter, venomous taste.

“No … no …”

There were fingers on his mouth, fat and oily, full of rings that clashed against his teeth, and he wanted to choke, to throw up. 

“Please, don’t …”

The taste was too bitter, too nauseating and he finally managed to vomit all over the green grass. It made him want to cry, made him want to hurt someone or something. He bit back the tears and ran to the sacred river waters to rinse. The visions were endless, spiraling into moans of ecstasy and cries of horror and pain and he knew - he knew it! - that he was the source of such cries.

He cupped the water with both hands, feeling guilty and unworthy for such sin, but defeated in face of the greater need to be clean again. He drank. Drank and spat, until his tongue was freezing.

Then he looked at his reflection lightened by the twin moons: the soft blond hair and gentle features were replaced by an alien, hairless, sneering face with black teeth and cruel eyes. It was him and not him at the same time, it was tearing him apart from his very core.

Feyd-Rautha screamed, then everything turned black.

Chapter Text

They found the ghola at dawn, on his knees by the sacred river, covered only in mud. His blond, long hair was gone and so his eyebrows. A mad light was shining in his unfocused eyes as he fought any attempt of being taken back to the safety of the palace, despite the hotness of the sun already scorching his vulnerable pale skin. 

Only when someone used the Voice on him, forcing his traumatized mind to comply, Feyd-Rautha chased the struggles and fell asleep.

He woke up in his chamber, laying on the bed, entirely cleaned and dressed in fine silk. Someone had put a hat on his obscenely smooth head and Feyd was almost afraid to touch it. His own skin felt different in ways he couldn’t explain, not even to himself.

“What do you remember?” 

The ghola raised his eyes, finding Alia Atreides’ inquisitive ones staring back at him.

“I-I… don’t … I can’t …”

“My brother will be back soon,” she informed him. Despite her tender appearance, the Mahdinate princess was steeped in ancestral knowledge and ruthless in her purposes. In front of her judging stare, Feyd-Rautha felt like a witless child. “He’ll be furious to discover what happened, what they did to you … they wanted to awaken your memories, you see? Awaken the real you who sleeps inside of that replicant body.”

“Am I not … the real me?” the ghola babbled, biting his lower lip. 

He felt the urge to touch the back of his neck up to his shaved head, but he couldn’t, he wouldn’t dare. It terrified him to discover what he had become, what they made out of him and his Lord - his Paul - loved the long hair, he would certainly miss it.

“What do you remember?” Alia asked again. 

Tears fell from the ghola’s metallic eyes, wetting his cheeks, his lips.

“I don’t know what I remember,” he confessed lowly, almost to himself.

Alia stared at him in distaste for his poor water discipline, in distrust of the words he had spoken.

“Unnecessary danger …” she whispered, walking towards the door. “Waste!”

As the Mahdinate princess predicted, once the Emperor knew about the events that occurred at the sacred river, he went mad with rage. Feyd-Rautha had never seen him like that: terrifying in his fury, shouting orders and sanctioning deaths as if nothing else mattered, only the filling of the wound tearing his soul apart with as much blood as he could manage.

Despite his manifested hurt, Paul Atreides didn’t come to seek or comfort his lover. He didn’t come to his chamber, at night, to kiss him and take him in his warm embraces and Feyd-Rautha missed him. 

He missed him more than ever.

Feyd-Rautha was reading in his chamber. All his training sessions were canceled for safety reasons: after the first death sentences, a strange calm had befallen upon the palace, still the Emperor’s rage was like a fire hidden under the ashes, subdued yet ready to explode.  Without his training lessons and the happy hours of lovemaking with Paul, no one would keep the ghola company, except for the strange images that had started populating his dreams.

He couldn’t remember dreaming before the river episode. His slumber had been an empty dark space, peaceful and barren. Now, each time he closed his eyes, unknown yet instinctively familiar faces appeared in front of him, demanding recognition.

It felt confusing, lonely.

He focused all his energies in his readings, in the desperate attempt to erase all memories of the dreams and tire his mind enough to stop producing them. For a time his strategy was successful, although tiresome. 

Still, the loneliness wounded his spirit and undermined his determination.

As he was focusing on yet another document, someone knocked at the door. Feyd-Rautha didn’t bother to raise his eyes, for the servants never spoke a word to him and he had grown tired of their cold indifference.

“Feyd …”

The paper in his hands fell on the ground and the ghola stood tall next to his unmade bed, a smile blossoming in his face.

“My Lord … Paul!” he sighed, happily. 

His first impulse was to run in his lover’s arms, bury his nose in the dark curls he adored and cry out in the warmth of that comforting embrace. He restrained himself successfully, holding his fists tight to the sides of his body.

“What have they done to you …”

The Emperor’s stare was blank, dark circles were marking the emaciated skin under his eyes and he looked older, far more tired than Feyd remembered.

“They shaved my head with a chemical mixture,” he explained, heartbroken at the sight of Paul’s disappointment. “It won’t grow back for a long time, I’m sorry.”

“What …” 

Despite the far away emptiness in Paul’s stare, his hand found Feyd-Rautha’s cheek and his touch was tender, sweet as ever. The ghola couldn’t help but close his eyes, pressing his face against the hand caressing him.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you …”

“Shhh, no,” Paul sighed, his warm breath closer, his lips soft against Feyd’s lips. “It’s not your fault, you don’t have to be sorry for anything …”

The ghola exhaled a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“I thought you were punishing me …”

“Punishing you? Why would I do that?”

“You left me alone,” the ghola whispered, lowering his gaze. 

Paul hugged him tightly, holding on his shoulders with a feeling akin to desperation, kissing his lips as he cupped the blushing cheeks.

“Feyd … my Feyd!” he breathed in his mouth. “You must never do that again! You must never leave the palace alone! The spice … it triggers a bad reaction in you and they … they did it on purpose, you see? They hurt you to hurt me!”

The ghola frowned, trying and failing to decipher words that seemed nonsensical to him. He still welcomed his lover’s embrace, the only thing that gave him the comfort he so desperately craved. 

“I won’t make that mistake again …” the Emperor was sighing. “I won’t let anything happen to you …” 

“Then, please, don’t leave me!” the ghola whined, metallic eyes shining. “Stay with me!”

He turned his face until Paul’s fingers slid against his lips, then he kissed the battle hardened fingertips, before sticking out his tongue to suck them inside his mouth. 

Paul stared at him in silence, eyes darkening. Then, he pushed the ghola on the bed, spinning him around so he could fall on the sweet-scented sheets on all fours. Feyd-Rautha let out a surprised cry, but didn’t protest the unusual rough treatment and pressed his butt against Paul’s groin, shivering in anticipation.

He had always been so pliant, so sweet in his open desire.

The Emperor felt beside himself. He undressed him quickly, functionally, and took his own cock out, fumbling with the lubing oil just enough to avoid any pain or damage, before lining himself up and sinking inside his beloved. If Feyd-Rautha had hair, he would have pulled it now. The fleeting regret was obliterated by the warm grasp of his lover’s yielding body, accepting him, taking him deeply.

The Emperor spooned the ghola to his chest, pushing inside more and more. 

“You must never exit the palace alone …” he whispered into his ear, pressing a wet kiss on the side of his face. He sucked the sensitive uncovered lobe and Feyd-Rautha whined, turning his head. “Stay away from the spice!” he commanded. 

A high gasping cry escaped the ghola’s parted lips and his body started jerking, chasing the impending orgasm. 

“You’re mine!” Paul groaned, feeling himself coming too. “Be mine! Be mine!” he cried, body stiffening, teeth biting the tender skin of the exposed neck. “Be mine ...” he sighed, forehead buried on his lover's shoulder, sweaty curls tickling the pale skin.

Feyd-Rautha took his hand and pressed it on his chest, to his heart.

Chapter Text

Despite the overly displayed fervor and the pleading demands to claim the lover as his own, the Emperor didn’t show up in ghola’s bedchamber for another ten days.

Feyd-Rautha suffered the absence inside his very bones. 

It felt even more excruciating than the previous time, as if Paul had finally chosen to abandon him. The ghola would have begged to be admitted to his presence, to kneel at his feet and endure even the cruelest of touches. In the meantime the dreams got worse, showing him beautiful and terrifying images.

In his dreams Paul would carve kisses as hot crevices into his chest and thighs, staring with deep blue eyes sharp like pins, making love to him so painfully slow until he sobbed and screamed.

In his dreams - oh his dreams! Sweet like old scars and mirrors smashed from side to side - he would feed a shadow with a touch of his fingertips. The shadow would be the hungriest, scariest, sickest of them all and he would smile at it, blood falling from his lips as he clenched and unclenched his jaw and breathed through his nose like a spooked horse.

In his dreams, hands too big would stroke him swiftly, making him explode on bright dark sheets. And he, himselves - in the dreams he had many selves - would look up with pure want and utter disgust. 

Countless realities would stream around his own: hundred lives, hundred deaths. 

Paul would stab him more than once, planting a knife on his shoulder, right above his heart, making his entire world spin and end in a flash, and he would welcome it. 

The knife, Paul’s knife.

Feyd-Rautha would wake up screaming, crying, humping the pillow in a ceaseless rut, begging for Paul to come.

“And, tell me, what are you planning to do with him?” 

The Empress’ voice was cold, distant. 

“I plan nothing, he’s merely a guest in our palace and he deserves to be treated as such.”

“A guest … the former Harkonnen Na-Baron? The enemy you slaughtered in front of a brigade of cheering acolytes?”

“He doesn’t remember that life … he’s innocent now, blameless of all his past sins …”

“Oh. So that’s what you tell yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

Feyd-Rautha woke up feeling sluggish, distant from his own body as if it didn’t belong to him, tongue and lips numb. He could still hear the voices from his dreams, faceless presences moaning and crying and begging desperately. He took a calming deep breath and stood on his feet, catching a glimpse of the twin moons rising over the planet horizon from his glass windows.

It was almost evening and he had spent the entire morning in bed. 

Ignoring a twinge of guilt and fear pulsing in his chest, the ghola walked towards the small bathroom attached to his private chamber. The great oval mirror above the sink was covered with the dark cloth he had found some nights before, when terrified by his dreams and own appearance, he had roamed his quarters in tears.

Feyd-Rautha took another deep breath as he uncovered the mirror and stared at his pale sorrowful face. In his dreams, the reflected image would smile cruelly at him, mocking his weakness and sensitivity.

It didn’t matter much. He had learned what was asked of him to keep the Emperor’s favor, the privilege of his touch. Stories of male concubines were narrated in some old filmbooks he had found in the Arraken libraries. If not beloved, his company could still be pleasurable to Paul.

The Emperor’s bedchamber was unimaginably large. A triumph of opulent golden lines and green finishes that reminded him of his Atreides heritage. Paul loathed it with his entire self, but was helpless in the face of the comfort its loneliness brought. Lately the exhaustion has been carving dark circles under his eyes and all he craved was the numbness of sleep and the soothing emptiness of solitude.

The Arraken palace - a cruel reminder of stolen dreams and unforgotten losses - felt the coldest of nests, yet the most needed.

“My Lord … Paul.”

Feyd-Rautha’s voice was sweeter than he remembered. Paul took a step back, shoulder pressing against the marble threshold. 

“Feyd …”

His lover was sitting on the too large bed - kneeling, waiting. His naked body was covered with a net of diamonds, woven with golden and silver threads. In the dim light of the lonely room, his milky skin seemed to shine and flush on the tips on his perked nipples, on the lips looking fuller with a touch of dark rouge and gloss.

“What are you doing here?” 

“I’ve missed you so much …” the ghola whispered, metallic eyes glowing and legs spreading wide in a silent offering. “Let me take care of you, my gentle Lord. Let me be your servant and concubine.”

Paul closed his eyes, feeling his cock hardening at the thought of his touch, fighting the urge to drop on his knees like a worshiper upon his divine altar. He, the supposed Lisan al-Gaib. 

“I’m tired … I won’t be able to make love to you tonight,” he replied, trying to maintain his tone hollow and flat as best as he could. 

“Then let me stay in your bedchamber and we could sleep together! I miss you so much, my Paul! My Lord. Please … don’t send me away.”

The Emperor opened his eyes to meet his lover’s hopeful gaze. A sharp stab of remorse jabbed inside his chest. 

“We cannot,” he managed to say steadily, mournfully. “It’s not safe for you to be here and we can’t. Not now … not ever.”

Something indescribably painful crossed Feyd-Rautha’s face. He seemed to freeze on the bedding, legs still spread wide but shaking as if he’s been hit. He opened his mouth to protest but nothing came out of it and he seemed lost, bereft, like a child who just witnessed his own abandon.

“Why?” he finally managed to articulate. “Is it because … I’ve been shaved? You don’t find me beautiful anymore?”

“It has nothing to do with that-”

“Then why?”

Paul shook his head, suppressing the guilt hollowing his soul at the sight of Feyd-Rautha’s pitiful expression. He walked towards the bed and leaned in just enough to raise a shaking hand and trace the gentle line of his lover’s jaw, the sweet pouting curve of his lips.

“It’s not fair to you, Feyd,” he sighed, feeling the ghola badly suppressed shivers running through his limbs. “You never had a real choice but to love me and I … I can’t do this to you, not anymore.”

“Why is it wrong? To be made like me, to have no choice?”

The Emperor flinched, taking a step back.

“You don’t even understand …”

“I don’t!” the ghola cried, watery breathy sobs tumbling out of his throat, closed fists coming up to cover his naked shivering chest. “I only know that I love you, Paul! I do!”

“You never. had. a. choice!” Paul screamed through gritted teeth, making him sob harder. “The terrible, dangerous once Na-Baron! You are but a shadow of yourself! Not entirely a monster nor a human! You don’t even realize what they did to you! What I did to you!”

“I don’t … I love you …”

“And you beg like a child. You feel like a child.”

Tears spilled from the ghola’s eyes - the most sacrilegious of the wasting, the most painful.

“Please, don't send me away ... please, please ....”

“Go back to your room and fall sleep,” the Emperor ordered.

Feyd-Rautha couldn’t remember escaping the palace nor the fear coursing through his veins as he ran outside the city walls, down the newly engineered hillsides. The twin moons were high in the sky and the air was thick with the smell of desert spice.

Despite the strong pounding of his heart, all he could do was to keep walking, silencing the voice shouting in his head. 

A ghost, a shadow, a puppet … 

Something Paul didn’t want anymore.

The air grew thicker as he walked onwards, the strength leaching out of him at every step. He stared at the sky above, as the tears fell down his cheeks. His body would have been eroded, desiccated of all waters by morning, but he couldn’t stop walking.

My road leads into the desert … my road leads into the desert …

Whose voice was that? Not his own, not his previous one ...

Feyd-Rautha halted and turned around, towards the old city. A massive shadow approached him slowly, steps resonating in the stillness of the desert and the face of someone he used to know.

“I’ll be damned …”

“Brother?”

Feyd-Rautha was dreaming.

In the dream he was standing upon a hilltop, in a flourishing field lightened by the warm sunshine peeping through the tree branches. Everything was peaceful, not even a slight breeze was shaking the still leaves, and he felt safe and protected, wrapped in the sweetest embrace.

He raised his face to gaze upon her: eyes somewhere in between gray and blue, a smile on her lips despite the deepening lines around her mouth.

“Mama,” he sighed, happily. 

Emmi Rabban. Shining like a beacon above him, raising so high nothing could harm her nor diminish her love for him. Feyd-Rautha - smaller, younger - crawled to cuddle up against her breasts and sighed at the feeling of her fingers trailing down his spine in a shooting motion.

“Mama …” he called, and she readily pressed a kiss on top of his white blond head. “I love you, mama,” he closed his small fists on her robe to tighten his hold on her.

Never let me go, never let me go, he would have begged. 

Once, when he was faultless and complete.

Before everything would turn dark.

He felt the cold bite of a metal chain around his neck, tightening slowly as drool began to leak from the corners of his mouth. A rough hand clenching into a fist around his shaven head, forcing him to raise his bloodshot eyes as his throat spasmed in agony.

“Brother, brother, brother …” Rabban’s voice was reduced to an animalistic cheerful growl. “Remember when you made me kiss your dirty boots?” He held still for a moment before yanking the chain harder. “How the tables have turned, huh? Fucking spoiled cunt!”

The ghola tried to push his fingers in the ever diminishing space between his reddening skin and the metal, gagging for breath.

“Look at the state of you,” his brother laughed, spitting on his face in a mockery of all Fremens’ sacred customs. “Back alive again … and for what? To become the usurper’s whore?! IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE?” he was screaming, deadly temper rekindled with fury. “I should have fucking killed you when you were a babe in our mother’s arms! I should have ripped you apart back then!”

The ghola closed his right hand into a fist and collected all his remaining energies to push back against his attacker. 

Everything turned dark once more.

When he opened his eyes, Feyd-Rautha wasn’t in the desert anymore. Above his weary body there was a stony roof, carved in the recesses of a mountain, under him a straw mattress and some pillows.

The ghola gingerly looked down at his stinging neck: all he could see was the beginning of an angry red mark on his previously unmarred skin. The sign of the metal chain Rabban had wrapped around him.

Brother, he thought, my brother did this.

I had a brother once, I have a brother now.

“How are you feeling?” The woman crouching next to him had a skinny elfin appearance, her blue gaze was piercing his very soul.

“Sihaya …” he whispered. Desert spring, beloved of Paul. He knew who she was: he read the holy tales of revolution and saw her walking shadow in his dreams.

“My name is Chani!” she snapped back, blue gaze immediately hardening. “And you are … Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen!” She was grimacing, a single hand hovering over the ghola’s face as if she wanted to touch it, to feel its fleshliness under her fingertips in order to establish he wasn’t some sort of desert phantom. “I’ve heard that they brought you back but I still … I couldn’t believe it …”

Sihaya - Chani - took a sharp breath forcing herself to look away, hand still hovering, and Feyd-Rautha leaned closer. As he tried to sit up, a wave of nausea passed over him, filling the edges of his vision with white spots. 

“Careful,” she warned. “He almost broke your neck, it’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

A miracle. Wasn't he a waste and a disgrace?

“I was dead once,” the ghola said, his voice barely above a whisper - a sinking feeling in his stomach was making him hold his breath. 

He was already familiar with the notion of having lived a past life, but it felt different back then. A foreign concept, untouched and unremarkable, so very far away from his joyful and incognizant reality. 

“I got killed and then I was alive again … I remember now,” if he closed his eyes he could picture them: tiny splinters of memory falling back into their rightful place, composing the bigger picture. “I had a brother and a mother once … I still have a brother and he hates me.”

“You killed so many brothers and mothers and fathers,” Chani said and he met her gaze evenly, expression open and serious. “So many are dead because of you.”

She finally took the chance to brush a thumb across his cheek: it came away damp with tears. She tasted his moisture, savoring it on the tip of her tongue. Salty and clean. “You feel so human now …”

He tried to reply, but his words were swallowed by Paul’s arrival. His lover had rushed into the cave, knees sliding across the rubble and dust, nervous fingers wandering all over Feyd's body.

“You’re safe, you’re safe …” he was mumbling, chanting, studying his features between frantic touches and stolen kisses. “You’re here and you’re safe …”

It was as if every touch and whisper was involuntarily ripped from his chest: the mighty Emperor of the Known Universe, kneeling in the dust next to his disposable lover, cupping his pale cold face in his trembling hands and thumbing away the tears falling from his metallic eyes. 

Feyd-Rautha leaned in his touch, pressing closer, letting his lover’s hot and needy mouth print brand new bruises on his already livid neck.

Paul was back, back, back and was holding him in his arms. Nothing could ever harm him, not even Rabban.

“He tried to kill me,” the ghola exhaled, pain and fear already forgotten. “But now you’re here,” he added, indulging his deep-rooted need to reassure his frightened lover.

After all, wasn't his very existence pre-ordered time and time again for Paul Atreides’ sake? In the warmth of his embrace such a fundamental truth felt impossible to deny.

Paul’s hands stilled. “Fuck,” he muttered, and Feyd-Rautha’s head jerked up to stare at him in bewilderment. “You’re not safe anymore in the palace. You’ll stay here, with Chani.”

Chapter Text

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” They were walking out from the cave, the sunset was turning the desert sky orange and pink. Chani’s voice was filled with rage and sadness. With disappointment. “Answer me, Paul Atreides!” 

Paul looked over his shoulder: Chani’s eyes were alight with a fire he knew so well. He felt glad for her anger, thankful. For all the things he had broken in his quest for justice - for vengeance - Chani’s spirit was spared at least.

“Answer me!” 

“I know what I’m asking of you but he won’t be safe in the palace. They are plotting against me, all of them … traitors! And the Tleilaxu’s machinations cannot be trusted either. They will have him wiped out or cleansed - as they called it. Deprived of all his recent memories for he’s a faulty experiment now, a damaged good. I can’t let this happen. I won’t.”

“He’s an Harkonnen!” Chani cried out. “He’s Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen! Have you forgotten what he did to my people?!”

“But he’s not!” Paul shouted back, eyes shining with the moisture he wasn’t able to properly retain. As if he wasn’t a Fremen, but just the lost boy from another planet, fighting for his own life - a stranger in a strange land. “He’s not a Harkonnen!” he added softly, trembling. “Not anymore. He doesn’t remember his previous life apart from moments, fleeing fragments of memory triggered by the spice. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He’s innocent, caring. Somehow the Tleilaxu brought back a different version of him … a kinder one.”

“And you took advantage of it.”

The Emperor lowered his gaze in shame.

“Perhaps I shouldn't have crossed that line ... He didn’t even know what a kiss was …”

“Paul!”

“He didn’t commit any crime, Chani!” He said, raising his head to face her judgment. “And he won’t hurt you again, I swear it. His memories are only triggered by spice …” 

She almost laughed, opening her arms to signal their surroundings: the vast desert entirely covered in spice.

“I know but you can control it!” Paul insisted. “You can teach him, as you once did with me.”

“Don’t -”

“You know Arrakis better than anyone else! You can guide him into safety.”

“There’s not much safety in this world … Tell me Paul, do ghola’s eyes turn blue too?” 

“You’re the only one I trust,” he whispered - begged. “The only one. If he comes back with me they will wipe his memory and hurt him. Kill him. And he has done nothing to deserve such fate.”

Chani’s eyes turned to the sky, her head shaking slightly in dismissal. Despite her incongruent body language, he understood that she was allowing it: allowing to grant refuge to her worst, most dangerous enemy.

“Rabban was at the city gates,” Paul said and her breath caught in her throat. “They are planning an attack, I can see it. The jihad will rage and paint the sands red … but I still can save you, and I can save him. With your help.”

The angry spark in her eyes was gone, extinguished like a fire on a winter night. She was accepting his plea, his conditions and his pain, as she did before. The Emperor’s heart clenched with affection and gratitude: the woman he used to love was generous from the first moment he saw her. 

“Thank you.”

“End this war,” she asked him. “We have spilled too much blood already, let it be enough.”

The last remains of light were slowly surrendering to the evening darkness. The Atreides Emperor closed his eyes: he could have traced the fading line of Feyd’s profile in his dreams as he once used to do with Chani’s. Beloveds, he thought, and let the warmth of such consciousness take roots into his soul. 

“I’ll be grateful forever, Chani. I’ll -”

“Don’t,” she sighed again. “Just … go. Fix this mess. Arrakis has paid for too long and too much already.”

It was dark when Chani returned to the cave. The air was still dry and hot even after the sun had long settled, the desert hadn’t started singing its songs and carrying its many voices with the wind.

Feyd-Rautha was curled on a thin mattress, a layer of moisture coated on the back of his neck, bald head translucent.

“He won’t come back to me, right?” he asked.

“No.”

Chani’s attentive sight lingered upon his metallic eyes: there was something akin to sorrow in them, something alike need and nostalgia. She took a deep breath, blinking through the spiteful wet knot tightening in her throat.

“I’ll keep you safe but we’ll have to hide. Your appearance … you look too Harkonnen, no one will ever trust you.”

The ghola frowned as he examined his own pale hands and arms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t! I don’t need your compassionate act, your … new ways,” Chani uttered. “I remember well enough how you used to handle your business here. What you did to my kind, to one of the best people I’ve ever known …” she bit her lip, jaw clenching. “You were the worst of them, the cruelest.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Of course you don’t,” she sighed. “Get some sleep now, it’s too late and I’m tired.”

They started traveling in one of the loneliest, most remote regions of Arrakis. During the nights they would sleep in shifts, mindful of dangers coming from the spice bandits and the rebels now mapping the territory around the capital. 

The jihad was looming over their heads.

Despite the tense atmosphere, the new Feyd-Rautha - the ghola carrying his appearance - seemed to be a gentle creature. He never tried to harm Chani nor did he disobey any of her orders. He would rest in comfortable silence next to her as they ate the dried food, listening to her careful words, staring meekly like a cub would stare at his feline mother.

More often than not, Chani would remind herself that Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen didn’t deserve her pity, much less her kindness. Although at times her assuredness faltered and a strange protective urge clouded her best judgment. 

“I like the colors of your planet, they are shining and full of warmth.”

They were marching on the shaded paths made in jagged lines of stone, climbing on the highest points that repaid their fatigue with a beautiful overview on the great magnitude of the desert.  

“Really?” Chani turned her eyes sideways, incredulous and vaguely amused.

“I lived almost the entirety of my previous life on a colorless planet. I can remember it now, at times,” the ghola replied, tilting his head as if he needed to collect back the memories. “The absence of color made my heart dull. Arrakis is different.”

“I’m glad you like it,” she allowed, flickering with the laces of her mantle. “You might avoid destroying it this time around.” 

“I don’t want to -” the ghola paused, chewing on his lower lip for a long instant, before he felt like speaking again. “If I close my eyes now, I can recall the pain I caused and the enjoyment I felt while I was causing it -” he paused again, staring at the horizon with concern. “I apologize for the damage I've done,” he breathed in a hushed tone. “I don’t feel pleasure in bringing destruction anymore. I don’t think that’s what I want.”

“And what do you want?”

“To go back to the gardens.”

“The imperial gardens?”

“Yes. It’s my favorite place, peaceful and rich with beauty.”

“So many lives were lost and so much blood was spilled in order to build those green gardens,” Chani explained - there was no anger in her voice, only a sort of hollow sadness. “The very water running underneath and beside them is tinged in red.”

Feyd-Rautha lowered his gaze before speaking again.

“I still don’t believe they should be destroyed.”

When they happened to fall asleep at the same time, Chani was careful to keep her body as distant as she could, favoring caves and large closed spaces over the tents. She had once shared her bed - and life, and destiny - with a foreigner only to have her heart broken as a result. Never again. 

In fairness, Feyd-Rautha seemed entirely uninterested in her as a woman, trotting along her sure steps like a child waiting for guidance. In his dreams - that much she knew from his nightly whispers - there was room only for Paul.

Sometimes it was too much. Sometimes it felt as if the grief and remorse were becoming a stinging vicious thing, clawing on her heart and tearing it into pieces. Sometimes she felt the need to be cruel.

“You dream of him,” she whispered casually, fingers digging in the sandy ground under her bedroll. “I hear you call his name when we sleep.”

The ghola blushed. His eyes were still a metallic gray but the desert sun had painted his pale cheeks with a tender pink.

“He’s my love.”

“Your love!” Chani chuckled. “As if you ever had a choice on the matter …”

“What does it mean?”

“The Bene Tleilaxu fashioned your body, your mind … your very spirit for a purpose! You were made to distract Paul, to make him more compliant, less steadfast in his political goals. Perhaps they put too much faith in you.”

“I was made for him … to love him …”

“And you think that’s fair?!” Chani raised her voice for the first time since their meeting. “Being made to please someone else? You never had a choice, Feyd-Rautha! You were used by Paul just as you were used by your uncle!”

“No! No. That’s different … that is not alike at all!”

“Isn’t it?” She retorted.

Feyd-Rautha bit his lower lip, mulling over her words.

When Chani awoke the cave was still soaked in darkness and Feyd-Rautha’s bedroll was empty. She stood up, grabbing the leather-wrapped knife hidden in her pack before walking outside.

The desert was silent beyond the dry swishing of the sands against the mountaintops. Chani closed her eyes until she heard it: a faint noise, like an animal cry. She walked past the half-crumbled stone wall behind the cave and saw him.

Feyd-Rautha rocking on his knees, murmuring something to himself as he cut his own arms and wrists.

“Stop it! STOP!” she screamed, horrified. Much of the blood was already darkened by sand and spice, but some of it was bright red, overflowing from the gushing wounds. 

“Stop it!” Chani lunged forward to snatch a bloody piece of rock out of the ghola’s hands, before attempting to stop the bleeding with her own bedrobes. “What are you doing? Why are you hurting yourself?!”

Feyd-Rautha stared at her in shock, metallic eyes luminescent with tears.

“It’s not like that …” he cried out.

“Like what? What are you saying?”

“He’s not my uncle!” He blurted out, lips reddened and cut by deep bites. “He doesn’t … he never hurts me like that,” he swallowed, choking on his own spit. “I like it when he touches me … I like it, I like it …”

Chani dropped on her knees and, without thinking, pulled him in an embrace. He was shaking violently, body too rigid. But, once she circled his neck with her arms, his shoulders dropped and then his head. He squeezed her back, tightly. 

“I don’t want to remember that …” he was weeping. “Please, don’t make me remember again.”

“Never again,” she swore, rocking him gently.

Chapter Text

The days passed and then weeks, a month. Feyd-Rautha followed Chani’s sure steps over the copper and brown swirls of stones in the ancient desert mountains, the dry breath of wind warm against his cheeks.

One morning, during a surprise attack orchestrated by the spice bandits, he had the chance to prove his gratitude for her company, her comforting and forgiving presence. 

It was a five against two duel, and the last surviving bandit had dared to aim his knife at Chani’s throat. The ghola was quicker than him, far more graceful and lethal than any adversary he had ever met. He buried his blade deep into the man’s guts before he could have harmed his guide.

“She’s my friend,” he explained to the groaning dying man. “The only friend I’ve ever had,” he added, watching the light of life leave the terrified open eyes. “I’d like to keep her safe.” 

He jerked the blade free in a thick bloody splatter that painted the sand red, then turned it on his hand to offer the handle to Chani.

“Thank you,” she whispered, accepting it, knowing that her trust was safely placed in him.

They walked for days and weeks and a month, until the jihad was about to set the universe ablaze all over again and the mighty Atreides Lord had to call for his fedaykins’ legions on the loyal and unconquered Sietches.

“I am Paul Muad’Dib Atreides!” He was crying out from the top of the golden mountain when Feyd-Rautha spotted him for the first time after so many travels, dark and shining like a terrifying vision in a dream. “I am Padishah Emperor of the known universe, Lisan al Gaib and Bringer of the Green Paradise! I command you to follow my lead if you want to be the master of your own destiny! If you want to taste the fresh waters of Dune freely and chase away the oppressors! We shall count the heads of our enemies with our swords alone! And they will die, screaming for mercy!”

A thunderous roaring was echoing at his every word and it seemed like the planet itself had chosen his lean, frail human body to carry on its mighty voice.

Feyd-Rautha looked at him in amazement and holy fear for the substance of dreams and legends seemed to become reality and rise from the sands of Arrakis.

“You liked Paul’s speech,” Chani was sitting in front of him, in a hidden ravine of the ancient Sietch hosting the Fedaykin military summit. Feyd-Rautha’s presence was tolerated since both Sihaya and Usul were vouching for him, but his alien features still roused dread into the Fremens’ hearts. “I saw you staring in amazement!”

“I’ve never heard a speech like that,” the ghola confessed, curling up against the stone wall to enjoy the rough texture against his lightly covered shoulder. “In my dreams … in my memories, no one speaks with such passion. Not even my previous self.”

“You must be careful though,” she warned, casting one hard sidelong look. “Words can be deceitful, and wars are fought in blood and sacrifice.”

“It would be my honor to fight alongside you, to help your quest for freedom and independence.”

“Why?”

The ghola bit his lower lip, thoughtful.

“You deserve it, don’t you? You taught me so much about Fremens' culture and beauty, opening my eyes in more ways that you can imagine.”

Chani swallowed soundly.

“That’s -” her voice seemed to falter mid-sentence. “I wasn’t expecting you to say something like that. Thank you, Feyd.”

“You’re welcome,” he smiled tenderly. “I’m really grateful for all the things I’ve learned in the past month … and for your presence. Despite all the pain I caused to your people, you treated me with dignity and kindness. I won't forget it."

“You should speak to Paul,” she waved casually, changing the subject in order to fight the instinct to blush. “Ask him to join the army, meet him again after all this time .... Don’t you miss him?”

“More than I can say.”

“Then why haven’t you asked for a meeting?”

Feyd shrugged, his lean sunken frame looking vulnerable in the austerity of the high stone walls surrounding him.

“A ghola in love …” he sighed, the shadow of sadness obscuring his smiling metallic eyes. “It’s unheard of, perhaps not even real.”

“You feel things and that is real!”

“Is it now?”

Chani lowered her gaze. She was one of the people constantly questioning the nature of Feyd-Rautha’s sentiments, the authenticity in them, belittling each and every declaration of love, of heartbreak and desire. As much as the oppressors she fought all her life, she deemed herself worthy of judging and dismissing the humanity of another. 

“I was wrong,” she admitted, enduring the bitter aftertaste of the apologetic confession in her mouth. “If my people … If I deserve to be the master of my own destiny, then so do you. I believe in the truth of your heart, Feyd-Rautha.”

The ghola blushed and smiled at her, this time with genuine affection and joy. 

“There,” Chani whispered, pulling a dyed green-blue scarf out of one of her pockets. “The Fremen women - anyone, really … we wrap these around our heads or arms to signal that we are in love,” she explained, offering the worn out piece of clothing to Feyd. “I wore this once, now it’s your turn.”

The ghola frowned, his long pale fingers trembling upon it, hesitant yet eager.

“I don’t know if I can … would he want me to show it?”

“What do you want to do?” she asked him slowly, deliberately. “Start to think about your own goals, Feyd. And, by the way, if you feel embarrassed to show it to the world, you can wear it secretly, against your chest.”

“I could do that,” he blinked, finally allowing his hand to grasp on the scarf. “I want to see Paul now.”

His lower lip was reddened and swollen for how much he had tormented it with his teeth, in the fraction of time between the request to be received and its obtaining. 

Feyd-Rautha marched inside the imperial room with all the determination he was able to muster. He was wearing a Fremen stillsuit but his head and face were still unnaturally hairless and pale. He was unattractive - he feared, he wondered - in his true Harkonnen appearance. Yet, he craved Paul’s closeness at least once before the inevitable battle he would have fought on the desert planet’s soil.

“Feyd …” the Emperor sighed, walking towards him with his mouth slightly open, as if he was dreaming of seeing him again.

“I’ve asked for a meeting,” the ghola began, advancing towards him. “Because I want to fight in your army, by Chani’s side, if you’ll allow me. I believe in the rightfulness of your cause, of Chani's cause. She deserves to be free, once and for all, and I’ll gladly offer my skills … my own life, if this means helping her. It is with a free spirit that I’m telling you these words and I hope you’ll accept them and respect the dignity of my choice.”

He arrested his march and lowered his gaze dutifully a step away from his lord, waiting for his command.

Paul only raised a trembling, eager hand to cup his face. His touch was ever so gentle.

“My Feyd ... I’ve missed you so much,” he sighed, expression easing after days of hardship and cruelty. “I haven’t thought … we have no time to properly discuss this matter, I don't want to put you in danger and -”

“Please!” Feyd-Rautha interrupted, looking up with unprecedented firmness. “Respect the dignity of my choice. It is mine,” he implored.

And Paul realized he was asking more than permission to join his troops, more than the simple recognition as a warrior or the Fedaykin he could never become. He was asking to be seen as equal, for the very first time in his short and tormented new life.

“I’ve traveled this world and seen the beauty of it thanks to the guide you placed at my side," he explained. "She was kind to me and so I wish to ensure her safety in battle.”

“I don’t want any harm to befall upon you,” the Emperor admitted, chin trembling in the futile effort to hide the almighty, all-shaking terror passing through his already tense nerves. 

Feyd-Rautha nudged his head closer until their foreheads were pressing together. 

“It is my choice. I want to make a choice like a proper human, even if I am not one,” his lips curved in a soft smile underneath the trembling fingertips pressing upon them. “Do you know how much kindness matters after you have known so little of it for so long?”

Paul let out a pained hiss. A single tear escaped his tired, beautiful eyes.

“I’ll allow your role in my army,” he sighed in acceptance.

“Thank you,” Feyd-Rautha whispered, smiling brightly in a way Paul had never seen him doing except in the precious and oh-so little hours spent together on their bed. The golden, already gone happiness. “I’ll keep her safe, I promise.”

Chapter Text

As the battle was approaching - a single great battle to inflict the deathblow on the enemies’ joined forces - Feyd-Rautha started to walk around the military camp with a bare face and the newfound certainty about himself and his actions. 

He was a warrior for the Atreides Emperor, a servant of his true and only Lord, and he had taken upon himself the weight of making such a fundamental choice. There was no genetic programming nor Tleilaxu’ witchery behind his decision and he could bravely declare that, yes, it was as good as any other free man’s choice. 

After the initial glances of contempt, Paul’s Fedaykin had accepted his presence among their ranks. They had made their base just outside Arrakeen, on one of the planet’s oldest Sietches, where the air smelled of burned ashes and toasted spice. 

Despite the increasing tension for the upcoming battle, the ghola started to spot hesitant smiles and determined nods that cheered on the warriors’ spirit, infusing unexpected confidence. Faith, in Arrakis, was far more powerful than fear and the Bringer of Green Paradise’s visions were trusted above anything else: even the oppressive, lethal sunlight seemed to smile at his every command, promising a swift victory. 

The night before the battle, the Fedaykin made a great show of dances and songs that Feyd-Rautha could only watch from afar, sitting on the top of a rocky protrusion, nose pointed at the shining stars. 

Against his fingertips he enjoyed the rough texture of intricate rose-like formations made by the desert. Desert roses, Chani had called them, handling some of the peculiar stones to him during one of their solitary walks.

Chani who was now dancing, full of life and brave hope.

Feyd-Rautha had a purpose and a friend. 

He almost didn’t feel him coming, absorbed as he was by the show of beauty unfolding upon his eyes. 

“I dreamed of seeing you here, like this,” Paul whispered, sitting next to him. “Your beautiful face shining in the moonlight.”

The ghola turned to him.

“My Paul,” he greeted with a smile.

Suddenly it felt as if no time had passed from the first time their lips had pressed together, from the last time they had made love, happily and safe in their small alcove. All the humiliations and dismissals of Feyd-Rautha’s dignity and identity were irrelevant and faraway gone, the days of separation meant nothing. 

“There are so many things I should say to you, so many apologies …”

“For what?”

The Emperor’s breath halted on his throat as he let out a joyless, bitter laugh.

“One day you’ll understand how unfairly I behaved in your regards … and you’ll hate me for it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to bear that - your hate.”

The ghola pouted, unsure. He nudged closer, taking Paul’s hand in his own and pressing it against his smooth cheek. He closed his eyes as he felt the slight caress of a thumb on the outline of his cheekbone.

“I don’t believe I’ll ever hate you,” he sighed, opening his eyes again. “Your love has brought me so much joy, a feeling I’ve never known in my previous life … I’ll forever be grateful for it.”

Tears fell down the Emperor’s eyes and he lowered his gaze, hiding the shameful waste from the near celebrating Fedaykin. He had done nothing to deserve such unshakeable loyalty, Feyd-Rautha’s loving devotion.

“You are Paul Muad’Dib Atreides,” Feyd-Rautha whispered, as if he was able to read his uncertain thoughts. “My Lord, Kwisatz Haderach and Mahdi of Arrakis, Bringer of Paradise …” he smiled once more, metallic eyes shining in the darkness. “ All these names mean the same thing to me: that I love you, and I'll forever follow you. Even if this life would end now, right now, it would be the happiest life I’ve ever lived. I can recall the previous one and I still choose this, because you are there. Can you understand?”

A loud sob escaped Paul’s lips and Feyd pressed a chaste kiss on them, briefly, shyly, before lowering his head to stare at the desert roses scattered on the ground.

“I also believe I should save your gardens …” he added. “If your enemies win, if the man who once was my brother wins, they would be reduced to dust and ashes and I don’t think - I don’t want them to be. They are beautiful to me. Even though Chani has taught me a great deal about the bloodshed that they demanded … I still find them beautiful, deserving of existence.”

“The gardens,” Paul sighed, making quick work of wiping out his moist face. “When this will be over, I’ll give them back to the Fremens. They never belonged to me anyway.” 

Feyd-Rautha nodded, frowning. 

“I don’t know if they’ll ever let you …” Paul bit his lower lip, gulping. “In Caladan there are many wildlands where one could grow their own garden.”

“Caladan?”

“My home planet,” he smiled. “Would you like to move there? I could give you a fraction of land in my fief, make you a subject of my duchy. I plan to renounce my claim on the throne once the war is won …”

“That would be lovely.”

The ghola smiled brightly, then resumed his attentive watch at the dances and songs that seemed to grow louder and louder.

“Would you … ” Paul began, coughing awkwardly after a long moment of contemplative silence. “Would you give me one of your desert roses?”

“Which one?” 

“This,” he answered, pointing at the palest rose, a selenite and alabaster crystal one that reminded him of his beloved’s singular complexion. “I wish to bring it with me in battle, as my lucky charm.”

“There you go, my Lord,” Feyd-Rautha chuckled, placing the stone on his waiting palm. “A token of my affection for you.” 

“Your Paul,” he corrected, pressing one last sweet kiss on his lover’s lips, indifferent to the Fremens’ gazes that could have been aimed at them. 

He would have remembered that kiss after the battle, an instant before the final collapsing of the opponents’ forces, when the Fedaykin’s triumphant scream arose high from the desert sands and he had bowed his head, trembling at the thought of having fulfilled his purpose.

He would have seen Feyd - confusedly, in a dreamlike haze - without predicting the nimble sprint of his body, strained in Chani’s defense from the very last, treacherous slash of a knife aimed at her back.

He wouldn’t have recalled screaming or running towards him, only the awakening of his senses when the ghola’s was already bleeding in his arms, staring at him with open-wide, innocent metallic eyes.

His beloved, his true desert rose.

Chapter Text

Paul couldn’t remember what happened after Feyd-Rautha was hit. Flashes of memories piled up behind his eyes like grains of sand in an hourglass: distant yells, the cradling of his lover’s trembling frame closer to his chest, his own panicked whimpering as he stroked that delicate whitening face with dirty hands.

He only remembered a thick dark flood coming out Feyd’s mouth, painting his lips and teeth blood red, and the metallic eyes opening wide in angerless astonishment. 

“I saved her,” the ghola uttered, falling into Paul’s embrace. “I saved our friend …”

It was the last thing he managed to articulate before a seizure shook his body from within and Paul found himself screaming until his throat gave out. He voiced the orders with implacable strength: calling the Fedaykin, ordering life-saving treatments, howling like a madman in the midst of a bloody battlefield, where allies and enemies still lay broken on the ground. 

“I’m the Lisan al-Gaib and I command you to save him!” he screamed. “Obey my command!”

And they did obey: they carried Feyd-Rautha’s body inside the medical chambers and administered all the healing drugs in their possession. Outside the compound, the desert was echoing the winners’ triumphant screams. Inside, the Mahdi himself was curled into a grieving mold.

He sat next Feyd’s body for hours, keeping watch of the faint yet constant rising and falling of his chest, holding a cold hand between his clammy shaking ones. The ghola’s conditions were critical yet stable: with his eyes closed - long lashes shading the pale skin, lips slightly opened by thin breathing tubes - he almost looked as if he was sleeping. 

Paul couldn’t help but remember all the times he fell asleep next to him, during a particularly boring filmbook or happy and sated after their lovemaking. He smiled at himself, allowing his broken spirit the meager consolation of memories. 

“Paul …” he sighed, recognizing the sound of her steps behind him and the consequent predictable request. “You should rest …”

Gracious, brave Chani. 

He often asked himself what mysterious and hidden logic pushed the best human beings in the universe to give themselves without reward and, still, with a heart full of gratitude, to follow a man with poor knowledge and understanding of his way, to even love him - despite the hurt.

“You’ve fought bravely and you need to … you need to rest, please.”

Even with a shaking voice, Chani’s determination and care were shining in every sillabe she pronounced. Beloved, betrayed, lost.

“I can’t,” he whispered, biting on his lower lip as he tightened the hold on Feyd’s hand. “I fear that … if I leave him, I’ll miss the moment his eyes will open again,” he chuckled, staring at his lover’s motionless profile. “I know it won’t happen for days but I still harbor and nourish such fear. Isn’t it wonderful how the human spirit toils?”

Paul heard a long exhausted sigh and almost wanted to mimic it in his bone-deep exhaustion. Instead he chose to speak, opening himself up to Chani’s rightful judgment.

“I let him believe that he and I were so different, so distant in nature … I never let myself get closer, not really, because he was a ghola and I was human and everything I felt had more value and honor than -” he stopped his confession, deepening the bite. “What is the difference, truly, between us?” he asked Chani, turning around to search in her eyes the bare truth. “Do you know it?”

She took a deep breath.

“I used to dismiss his feelings too,” she admitted, trying for an apologetic half-smile. “I told myself that, after all, I already knew who Feyd-Rautha was and how much pain he had inflicted on my people, on me … his Tleilaxu programming must have been a fault in the system or a mask to hide his authentic nature.”

“Did you ever tell him this?”

“Many times!” she chuckled bitterly. “He didn’t understand at first, couldn’t even experience the hurt of my words properly. Then … day by day, like a fast-learning child, he would rethink about those words, weighing truth and falseness in them, recalling and comparing from his growing baggage of memories … He would disagree sometimes: despite the horrific images populating his consciousness, he felt no meaningful connection to the cruelty previously carried out nor he had the desire to commit such atrocities again,” a sigh escaped her throat. “He would agree other times, staring at his hands as if they were still stained with blood. Those were the saddest moments, when he would withdraw from the world around him and hide in a thoughtful silence.”

A shiver ran through the Emperor’s body, the grip on his lover’s hand tightening once more.

“I believe he and I are the same: in different conditions I could have been him and he … Well, now we know,” he clenched his jaw, eyes burning from the tears he could never shed. 

He stood up from his seat and placed something on the bedside table that Chani recognized as one of the Feyd-Rautha’s desert roses, then grabbed the blue scarf the ghola had wore inside his stillsuit, upon his chest: a bloody stain was darkening the fabric, but Paul didn’t seem to notice as he wrapped it carefully around his left hand, ensuring the placement with a tight knot. 

“It’s time for me to finish this,” he whispered, before pressing a kiss on Feyd-Rautha’s hairless brow. 

“What do you mean?” Chani asked as he turned, stepping towards her with an obscure smile. “Paul, what are you about to do?”

The Emperor took her hands with a solemn expression, like he was enacting a vow.

“I’m going to keep my promises to you, your people … and to him too.”

“And how are you planning to do that?”

Another smile, unreadable yet somehow tender.

“I’m gonna leave my dispositions for Gurney and Stilgar, I … won’t be here to read them when he’ll wake up. But he will wake up, I know it,” he said. “And I’m going to make sure he’ll have what he always truly desired. This path - my path - is about to end. Thank you for everything, Chani.”

Chapter Text

Gurney had witnessed many strange things in his life. Unusual, terrifying, heartbreaking things.

After the second battle of Arrakeen and the return to Caladan, after being reappointment as House Atreides’ weapon-master and personal aide for Lady Jessica, he started his duty as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen’s guardian, as Paul wanted him to.

The ghola looked deceptively harmless, apparently grieving for the missing Emperor and willing to abide by his final wishes. 

Before taking off for a mysterious journey to ensure perpetual peace, Paul had finalized a land donation to him: a seemingly trifling gift for the once Duke that almost brought the Harkonnen to tears. Strange, strange things. In the span of a few months, Feyd-Rautha had turned a piece of barren, wild land into something unique and almost magical. 

The garden was more beautiful than Gurney could have ever dreamed of: dozens upon dozens of rose bushes were filling the once empty spaces, thorny branches weaving their way to the sky. Splashes of reds, pinks, and whites were dotting a sea of deep green. 

If anything in the universe could have been the prophesied Green Paradise, perhaps that was it: Feyd-Rautha’s rose garden, gifted to him out of love. 

The Atreides weapon-master could remember all the times he had spotted the ghola tending to the flowers, covered in dirt and sweating up against the freezing winds of Caladan, muscles tense from the exertion but lean fingers gentle on the plants. 

It was a strange sight: the former Na-baron, delicate and caring towards living things. 

Gurney struggled with his duty at first, trying to stay away from the ghola as much as he could, trying to remind himself of the Harkonnens’ real nature: cruel and mindless beasts who enjoyed their game of violence and domination. 

Yet the ghola seemed entirely different from the truth he always knew, perhaps due to a Bene Tleilaxu’s complex deception. 

But the days passed, and then the months.

Reborn Feyd-Rautha was quiet, mostly focused on his gardening tasks. Utterly alone on a foreign planet. 

It was during a nightly rainstorm that Gurney heard him cry for the first time: the ghola was kneeling at the foot of his bed, hands pressed on his mouth to muffle the sobs. 

Deception, illusion, Gurney struggled to remember, despite how painfully real it felt to see that lean chest shaken by grief.

Then, one day, he found the ghola kneeling again, this time with a knife in his hands, blade slowly biting into the soft skin to cause a steady bleeding. He was calling - begging - to be hurt, and Gurney had to shake the pain out of him, hold him in his arms until the panicked shivers stopped. 

It was the first time he had touched a Harkonnen with gentleness and it all started there: Feyd-Rautha would have followed him, mostly in silence, listening to his commands and searching for him like a child would search for their father. The weapon-master’s stubborn resistance crumbled under the weight of newfound pity.

At times Gurney had the clear feeling of caring for another incarnation of Paul, his beloved young pup. Perhaps that was what the Emperor saw in his visions, when he decided to entrust Feyd-Rautha’s care to him.

“These are looking better, kid,” the weapon-master said, walking towards the rose bush currently trimmed by the ghola, boots sinking into the damp muddy ground. 

Feyd-Rautha barely raised his chin to smile, absorbed by his pruning task. 

He was tending to a variety he had renamed “pauline”: a tiny, originally wild, white rose striped with blue and green shades at the root of its petals. After a particularly vicious storm, their snowy white became dull and subdued, and the silky petals started to turn dry and brittle. The ghola put all his energies in the struggle to preserve the roses’ life.

“This planet is harsher than I thought,” the ghola replied. “But I think that I can save them.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Despite the initial unfavorable conditions, Feyd-Rautha had managed to fill an entire garden with roses, each one unique in terms of color and shape for he was an avid experimenter and a devout caretaker.

“Are these new?” the weapon-master asked, turning to an orange and pink bush. “They are quite beautiful.”

The ghola stood on his feet, walked towards him. His appearance had slightly changed in the months spent in Caladan: cheeks perpetually flushed pink by the cold bite of the winds, golden hair grown again.

“Thank you. I tried to create a neat mixing of colors because I wanted to make them look like …”

“.... Like sunset,” Gurney finished the sentence for him. “Like the sunset on Arrakis.”

“Yes.”

He placed a firm hand upon the ghola’s shoulder - a young man’s shoulder - and escorted him towards the castle gates.

“Let’s get inside now, kid.”

They walked towards the ancestral home of House Atreides, shoulder to shoulder - the ghola steps steady on the rocky ground. Before their arrival at the gates, a shadow darkened the sun and both men had to turn their noses up to sky: a small spaceship, likely built to handle great speed and to remain undetected by most radars, was hovering over the castle.

They didn’t have the chance to speak of their questions when they spotted Lady Jessica running towards them, eyes shining with unleashed tears, a happy smile painted on her lips. 

“He came back! He’s here!” she exclaimed, melodious as a song, and together they all ran towards the nearest landing plateau to welcome Paul Atreides back on his land.

Gurney Halleck had already witnessed Paul Atreides’ return from what he believed was the land of the dead. He could recall his body sagging in relief upon seeing the young master - his beloved boy - alive and well: the heavy weight lifting from his chest, urging him to cry.

“Young pup” he breathed wetly. Lady Jessica had already opened her arms for an almost crashing embrace, planting kisses all over her son’s face, pushing his dark curls back on his forehead.

Paul’s eyes were vitreus, unseeing, a long red scar was injuring his perfect skin from brow to cheekbone. Yet he was smiling brightly, as if he was finally free. 

“Old man,” he uttered, holding strong on his mother while his lean, roughened fingers wandered through the mentor’s features. “I’ve missed you,” he smiled in recognition.

Gurney went on his knees, kissing the back of his hand, sobbing in bone-deep relief.

He almost forgot about Feyd-Rautha’s presence, unmoving behind them, sucking on breaths as if he wished to make the slightest amount of sound possible.

“Feyd …”

The former Emperor disentangled himself from his mother’s embrace and took a few hesistant steps forward.

Feyd-Rautha was standing as still as a plant, yet shaking imperceptibly from the strange emotion choking him, welling tears in his metallic eyes. Gurney could only imagine how overwhelming it felt for him - how painfully joyful.

Paul placed an open palm in front of his face, fingertips gently pressing on the tip of his nose, upon the rosy lips he used to turn red with kisses, under his chin. He slowly caressed the new blond locks, marvelling at their soft consistency, and drew the tender curves of his eyebrows with a faint touch.

“You’re more beautiful than I remembered …” he sighed, mouth open in amazement. “I’ve missed you more than I can say,” he confessed, lips curving into a sheepish smile.

Unable to form proper words, Feyd-Rautha jumped into his arms, holding tight on his bony shoulders as tears streamed down his face. 

“I’ve missed you too, my Lord … my Paul,” he sobbed furiously.

Paul laughed in the embrace, pressing a sweet kiss on the side of his neck, soothing his aching heart with loving hands.

“I’m back to you, my darling,” he whispered. “My love,” he added softly. “Let’s go home.”