We all shared one thing; the same one thing, the love of Sade.
We were all far from home, away from our families and loved ones...far from the ones we loved. For most of us, Sade was always a lot closer than home. We spent most of our time either behind our consoles, our crewmates were just that, they were only comrades. All we had were each other and the hope of picking someone’s pocket, or worse, to bring some comfort to our lives. We slept in quarters chosen at random.
The only person that mattered to us was Sade. Our desire for him was pure and it would be for another hundred years or more. We would give anything, everything to him, but before we could do that we had to survive.
I suppose, in this version of the world, we were less than human beings. Other living things had no choice in giving a life and laboring to become something so that their unborn generation could have a chance of survival, breathing the same air they did. We gave up our lives in the most brutal fashion conceivable.
Our fate, as I say, was to live as twenty-first century slaves from the time we were born to the day we died in the arms of Sade and his sword. Some of us would have seventy years to live as human beings, to feel the sun and the wind, smell the flowers petals and the fresh spring grass, and kiss our loved ones, but Sade had already decided how long we would live even before we existed.
Then again, we were just happy to be there.
Sade was a busy man. Some would argue that he had no time for love and that was why he was surrounded by all those beautiful men. I believe he was waiting for a special someone, someone he had known before we all began, someone he had lost. Whoever it was, he was patient.
Sade stood in between them and us. He was the servant. He fed us. He cleaned and he made sure we had warm beds. He was there, but not like us, he was the boy or the dog we grew up with, without a choice about it. He had his dreams but he had to wait, he too, like the rest of us, had to be patient.
He never asked about our lives before we were recruited into his service. He knew we were all from different places. The rest of us didn’t discuss what we did before we were found by Sade.
Each of his other lovers would make a deadly enemy. They would come and grab Sade and his bed and never return. He only kept me because I promised I wouldn’t try to leave.
I wonder if he even cared. Maybe it was all just a game to him. A game to him and his master. I had never thought about it. To be fair, we all knew his lover had died.
All we had to do was not try and stay in his bed and he would happily send us back to our old lives.
Perhaps, we all had the same dream of Sade. Of sharing something special; something we could only have with Sade. To be in his bed with him, to hold each other and sleep in each other’s arms or to just talk to him. That was all we wanted.
I was a spy, an undercover Second World War lieutenant. I had spent most of the war in the Middle East before being sent to Germany as an agent with the SOE. I did not have to sleep in the basement hole in the ground. Sade had given me a choice, he did not force me to join his men in the basement. I could have my own space in the castle.
I had the freedom to come and go as I pleased.
I can remember the day we met. It was a sunny day, the day I had been sent to be trained in how to be a personal assistant.
The Doctor had not expected me to bring Sade with me. He was in the living quarters assigned to me. He was sitting on the bed with a pillow between his legs, wrapped in a plush, white coat. The coat was a part of his uniform.
I walked to within an inch of his face and tapped him on the forehead.
“What have you been eating?” I asked him.
“Good morning,” was all he said.
Sade’s gold-flake eyes sparkled when he remembered that day; he had recalled what exactly he had been eating. I could see that he was feeling proud of himself. He kept his mouth shut, but his eyes told me that he loved me very much.
That day I met the other brothers. They had been watching us. I had not known about them. They were all sitting in a semicircle. They were watching Sade and I. When I had left, I turned and looked at them and I had seen all of them. They were male. Each one had a different color of the same basic uniform. Unlike mine, it did not include a cloak. I had thought they were alive at first. They had marble-like skin. Sometimes they would hold hands, I thought they were like a commune of some kind, but they did not move.