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English
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Part 4 of A Good Servant (Millionsummers flash fiction)
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Published:
2025-09-23
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1,375
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1/1
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"Were you a slave when you were called?"

Summary:

A very young Legato has just been freed & named. Now he is feverishly thinking about the horrors of his past, the uncertainty of his future, and the nature of his own new identity.

Notes:

Title and inspiration for this fic are taken from 1 Corinthians 7:21-22a, Berean Standard translation: "Were you a slave when you were called? Do not let it concern you — but if you can gain your freedom, take the opportunity. For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman..."

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The fortress was submerged under a sea of silence. Death had come, and His hand was as merciful as it was swift.

Now night was falling, purple and cold like linoleum bruises. He’d survived. The boy survived. It didn’t feel real — reality was nausea, hot — sweat-sticky — salty tang of filth — thirst, thirst, thirst — bars of shadow drawn across his scarred nakedness as the sunlight filtered through his cage. Bitter cool spirits that went straight to his head, for which the boy was expected to thank men, on hands and knees. Delicacies too sweet, too rich for a starving-sick stomach.

But this was no dream. If it was, it would never be so cold. Legato’s nights were never cold. His dreams came during the day and wakefulness burned him up.

…He had a name now.

The angel was ahead of him, leading him. Where? Who the fuck cared? It was away. Death or the angel. The angel of death. The boy — Legato had given this avenging, liberating angel a choice and He had chosen the sweeter option. The boy lived to become Legato, and Legato was cold.

Sensation was a dirty prison. The soles of his feet ached, unused to so much walking. Legato shuddered. He was weak. They preferred him weak. Slender and unable to get far should he run. Yet they were ghosts, now, and Death had spared him. He would not spit on that perfect hand that had extended such grace. Choices, grace, liberation, what was all that? Fairytale concepts. Unicorns and knights. Was Legato a princess, was a dragon now slain? Unreal. Almost laughable. But it was huge, not like his cage, not like the rooms where he writhed and moaned most nights. If this was some cruel, deceptively elaborate dream, then Legato would force himself under its thrall for just a little longer.

Just a bit more of these stars

and this whistling wind, sharp like knives,

like whips against his wounds

He would keep on walking. Sure, his muscles ached. His abdomen was a mess. (The wound must’ve been cosmetic, to add pathos to the fucking). His neck still stung where that unearthly blade had touched it. All this made Legato want to whine, to “charmingly” grab the angel’s hand and make a “cute” imploring face, to beg for rest even if he’d have to “work” for it — but the angel was not human. His alien marble filled Legato with awe, with something he could not name. Something that took him far past the prison. Diminished the screaming importance of his soreness and aching and fatigue and hunger. Numbed this body they called beautiful.

I wish he would break it, Legato thought.

What exactly should the angel break? Chains, he had already done. The hellish x-shaped stone structure that always meant a period of blank nothingness in his mind while he bled, pierced and gripped and torn at? Broken too. And HIM? The worst of them all? The one that papers and agreements marked as the rightful proprietor of Legato (not Legato, no; he was not Legato then. But it made him smile that he was already used to the name. Le-ga-to, it sounded stylish, it sounded foreign, he was no Joe or Tracy but rather something MUSICAL in the angel’s eyes). But HE owned the boy and anyone else who wanted him needed permission from HIM. His existence helped define the opposite parameter of so-called beauty, because HE looked nothing like Legato, and was never in pain, always in heaven, while Legato’s lithe olive body and golden eyes and inky hair were beauty itself (so he was reminded constantly)?

HE —

Pieces. Chunks. Slices.

redredred, the opposite color from Legato’s prized, long, grabbable hair. The joy had brought Legato to tears. Hatred had somewhere to go now instead of making him sick.

So what else could the angel break now? What was Legato stupidly dreaming of? He owned nothing aside from his name and the sliced chains still encircling his wrists and — well. Suppose his body was “his”. But the angel owned that now. The angel accounted for it. Legato thought hard, shivering with the desert chill and with concentration. What did Death care for beauty? Death admired death. Death expressed interest in Legato’s threads. Legato lived because of Death and death and death and Death again. The taste of freedom was in Legato’s mouth —  well, freedom was a unicorn, of course, a fat cheeky cherub on a fat cotton-candy cloud — how about liberation, then? Legato twirled one hand around. Felt the icy sting of broken, ineffectual chains against his skin. Liberation was greater, Legato decided easily. Freedom would mean no angel. And no angel would mean Legato would wander through the desert until he either died of thirst or found civilization and fell back on the one thing he knew how to do.

The angel was intrigued by the death Legato could sow and so he kept him and gave him a name. So he might sic him, like a dog, on others who displeased him: “Go, Legato.” “Come with me, Legato.” “Here they are, Legato.” “Legato, kill them all.”

How might he do that if Legato were lost to him? If some other him or they took Legato away and chained him once again. No, Legato would not change hands. The angel liberated Legato to make him his. Days and nights stretched out before the eye of Legato’s mind: he would keep walking through the pain. He would serve death, serve that call that brought tears and smiles to his doll-like face. Power… he would make himself strong so that he would not be a burden to Death. 

How could anyone be so beautiful?

Anything?

Not human. If only Legato could be like that.

He felt,

drunk. He saw nothing. Maybe it was the darkness, had it fallen so fast?

Legato felt himself swaying.

 

Cold

 

When wakefulness bit into him again evening was falling again and

the window that showed him the sky had no bars on it and

Softness. Cloth.

Nothing burned into him except his stomach. Which didn’t feel wet anymore.

Legato’s heart began to race. Don’t look away from this window.

Don’t look away because if the angel was somehow angry at him, the world would end.

because if the angel’s eyes spoke of wanting, of beauty, Legato would scream injustice and betrayal until he died.

And

if the angel was

— worst of all —

not there,

Legato truly would die.

Sick, he felt sick. Head hurt. He closed his eyes. Never looked at Death, at the angel.

Clothes were around him. Hiding him, most of him. Had the angel picked them, “This would look good on you,” ??? Legato couldn’t repress a small sound of revulsion. It bubbled like an infection in his throat; he must look at those clothes.

…

Black. Clean.

Baggy and sensible as could be.

Like what those outside the cage used to wear, not… what was usually put on him, the leather or silks to cling to him and emphasize his nakedness… 

In that moment orchestras he’d never heard went off in his head.

Legato knew that the universe, God, the suns — whatever it was that had been vicious enough to grant him life and feeling — had finally done him a good turn. A master that wanted something else out of him. Something Legato wanted too. They all need to die. Some for their disgustingness. Some for witnessing it and doing nothing. And some, to finally earn relief from their suffering. Legato, he… Legato would join the last of those three categories at some point. But before that he could help and he could wear clothes that protected him from the elements rather than exposing him to humanity.

Legato could think.

Liberated in order to serve. Serving in order to liberate. It delighted Legato. He didn’t know what word to call it but in his mind he knew it was right. Tasted good in his mouth. Living to bring about death. The death of the fortress coming quick and hard so that Legato could live.

 

Legato

 

Legato

no longer felt like

 

a slave, but

 

Soon

 

(i hope)

 

EVERYONE, the

 

whole fucking planet, all of them will know

 

he has

 

a


Master

Notes:

I always imagine Legato as someone with an inquisitive and analytical mind, as well as a rich (though definitely warped and twisted) inner world. Which he represses. Because he would only care to talk to Knives, and Knives doesn't care much to talk to him.
Stream of consciousness felt right for this subject. Exploring what might've been running through his head after being released and spared from death. I hope you enjoyed it ///_0) <3

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