A/N: shinobi's challenge

It's almost ironic how it's a draw that serves to decide whom the country is going to extend its prying hands for, destroying lives as if it truly owned them. It was the last painting Mike Shinoda left behind before disappearing off the face of the earth - countless prying hands tugging at a man's body, just barely starting to rip it apart to bloody shreds. By the time it was acclaimed by the critics as a striking example of a protest against the war, Mike was so far away from any kind of a civilized place not to know anything about how he was becoming a model rebel.

Truth to be told, even while being an artist, he wasn't particularly rebellious by nature and if it were solely up to him, he would have succumbed to the official will and dutifully went to Vietnam in the end, deluding himself that it was an exotic and different and moving experience and maybe even something he might have just needed and truly should have been doing.

"My first son won't die for a country that has been holding me in a detention camp like some sort of a criminal throughout most of my youth." His father stated this as a simple fact though.

His mother shunned away, even though she was white and as American as they come and she might have just wanted for her son not to be a deserter the military police was looking for all around.

"You won't go." His father told him one of these nights spent over cups of killer strong coffee in his parent's house's kitchen, musing over the past, the present and the future over sprawled pages of newspapers covered in greasy smudges from being read that intently. He sounded terribly serious and within minutes Mike found himself being ushered into a run-down pickup waiting with its lights off right in front of the house, a single suitcase his mother had packed for him forced into his hands and frantic hugs from all the remaining family members assaulting him, complete with his mother's and grandmother's tears.

The car's interior was smelling of weed almost as strongly as its driver.

"Hi, I'm Phoenix." The guy introduced himself, stretching a freckled hand towards Mike.

Mike couldn't help but smile faintly, taking into his auburn hair sticking out in random directions and unruly beard and somewhat unintelligent expression, contrasting with the obvious wit shining in his eyes.

"Phoenix, huh ?" Mike mused, wondering what kind of a secret operation that was and if it truly required codenames. "I'm Mike."

"Seriously ? Your father has been calling you Kenji."

"He's Japanese. I'm not really." Mike shrugged. "Besides, Kenji's a lame name."

"Whatever you say."

"Where are we going ?" Mike asked a while later, looking out at the neighborhood he'd spent all his childhood in passing by in a blur behind the car windows, feeling strangely calm and only the slightest bit wistful, even though this might have been well enough the last time he was seeing this place.

"Believe it or not, but we're going to paradise." Phoenix answered, smiling mischeviously at Mike's dumbfounded expression he picked up on in the rear view mirror before they headed towards the highway and out of the city in a direction Mike had never traveled in before.

So this place was a paradise, Mike thought to himself, having been left all alone at the side of a narrow road in the middle of nowhere by the early morning after a night on the road, heavy rain pouring in rivulets from the gray sky, the water flowing freely down his soaked body and his drenched clothes clinging uncomfortably to his skin. Phoenix had left a few hours ago, leaving him here with his suitcase and a halfway full gas can that was meant for whomever was supposed to pick him up from here.

Mike sat down in the mud resignedly, not caring anymore about getting all dirty, thinking back to the cozy interiors of small cafés filled with cigarette smoke where the artists collected to discuss abstract matters nobody was concerned with anyway where he would have spent such a rainy, inspiration-stifling afternoon with no good light for painting on any other normal day of his life.

For hours not a car and not a person appeared in sight and the faint sound of an engine roaring loudly far in the distance had Mike instantly alert and back up on his feet, ready to go hitchhiking just to ease the boredom and misery if it happened not to be the car he was waiting for.

"Hi." The guy in the driver's seat drawled to him through a wide open window, having stopped the sorry wreck of a vibrant pink fifties Cadillac Eldorado right in front of Mike, taking into his miserable soaked appearance and starting to giggle as if it was the most amusing thing in the world. The blissful expression on his face and the way he was squinting his strangely dark eyes behind granny glasses that had slid down almost to the tip of his nose wasn't looking quite natural at that. "Good thing someone remembered that you were coming, isn't it ?"

"You know Phoenix ?" Mike risked the question, taking into the shaggy appearance of the guy in the car, his curly dark hair sticking up haphazardly, held in place by a not quite clean looking headband, complimenting the smudges of dirt on his cheeks and a nasty bruise forming at the side of his face.

Mike needed to step back to give the guy some space to open the car door wide enough to drunkenly stumble out of the interior, made to be obnoxiously pink as well, proving to be scrawny and wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt almost reaching down to his knees and grungy jeans. His forearms were all covered in an assortment of various beaded bracelets, almost blending in with the colorful tattoos on his upper arms, making for a multicolor combination that was really bad taste by Mike's standards.

"Pretty, am I not ?" The guy commented happily on Mike's scrutiny of him, looking him up and down too. "Of course I know Phoenix. You don't even want to know how close I do know him. Hop in." He motioned to the other side of the car.

Mike hesitated.

"Come on. We need to hurry some. Wendy has just started giving birth to her first child when I was leaving. Damn it, I'm excited. Fuck knows who's the father but I'll know when I see it."

Of course, Mike had come upon some hippies before. Most young people these days were those in a way, as the fashion dictated. He'd been always too preoccupied with his art and his studies to be paying close attention to them though. Most of the time, the surrounding world was but a blur he fished out noteworthy things from to paint them after turning them around in his mind for weeks. Small things, like the way freshly washed spoons were shining while drying up on the kitchen counter in his parent's house or the way his girlfriend was stroking the sheets in her sleep after sex, nothing big and groundbreaking like protest or cold war or Vietnam. He didn't even want to think about those.

The letter informing him dryly that the army wanted him came as a rude awakening.

But with the way this guy, Chester was his name as Mike had finally gotten to know, was singing to him in a drugged voice about peace and love and San Francisco while they were riding through the rain in a pink Cadillac to wherever their destination was, a peace symbol swaying under the rear view mirror, he thought he was starting to dream yet again.

The narrow road ended at some point, changing into an unsurfaced one disappearing altogether at times and changing to twin trails of car wheels barely visible in the grass. Chester was driving off-handedly, doing nothing more than following the barely-there road at a painstakingly slow pace, his throat having gone raw after hours of singing, he resolved to humming some off-key tune to himself.

"Want a joint ?" He offered, nudging Mike in the ribs to wake him up from an uneasy slumber he'd fallen into.

"No, thanks." Mike declined sleepily, looking around and seeing only green fields on all sides, stretching up right to the horizon and blending in with the intensely azure skies there. Such a serene and natural place. Paradise. He thought how he was starting to understand what Phoenix had meant earlier.

"Ah... A nice boy." Chester commented in a know-it-all voice, taking a deep drag out of the joint he'd taken out of the glove compartment, which proved to be full of those, all rolled up neatly and just waiting to be lit up. "Have you ever tried one ?" He asked, purposefully puffing the sweet-scented smoke right into Mike's face.

"I did." Mike admitted with a shrug. "I just don't think that it's something people should be doing on regular basis."

"What do you mean ?" Chester squinted his eyes curiously behind his glasses.

"Making themselves loose control."

"Well..." Chester grinned. "You won't be thinking that anymore in a week."

"Look, where are we going anyway ? When are we going to reach that place ?"

"Soon enough."

In fact, it took some two hours more. The road just ended in a clearing in the woods with an assortment of tents and small makeshift wooden houses scattered around, colorful laundry flapping in the wind and a noticeable stench hovering all over the place.

"Welcome to paradise." It was the first thing Brad said to Mike, opening the car door for him when he made no move to get out even when Chester had already sauntered off to see Wendy's newborn child and the gas can was retrieved from the backseat, its contents going to be used for the electricity generator.

"Hi." Mike answered, getting out of the car and looking around uneasily, taking into the sight of half-naked girls and women and men lying sprawled on the sparse grass all around, most of them barefoot, or sitting cross-legged beading or doing macrame. The surroundings had the look of an uncivilized African village crossed over with a warm spring afternoon at an university campus and things seemed to be so languid around here it was making Mike feel strangely calm even against his will.

So this was the hiding place his father had thought up for him. He wondered how many people outside of this place actually knew about its existence and what were the chances of some kind of officials going to look for him here. He thought how slim these were and it made him feel almost safe, something he'd missed in the past few weeks spent dreaming nightmares about bloody war awaiting him at the other side of the world every single night.

"A nice place, isn't it ?" Brad asked conversationally. "Was Chester bothering you much on the road ?"

Mike shook his head, looking more closely at the guy in front of him, even more scrawny than Chester, his thin body ending in a big round afro even though he was obviously all white, a thick beard covering his face. His clothes were all indiscernible brownish color and adorned randomly with fringes, a peace sign pendant shining proudly on his chest. Mike noted with relief how he didn't seem drugged in the slightest which might have just made him a right person to answer quite a few questions he had.

"It's so fucking not mine." Chester announced loudly, approaching them again in bouncy steps. "It's half fucking black. Probably that black guy who..." As if realizing he was saying something he didn't really want to say, he went silent, ending the sentence with exaggerated hand gesture. "Nice boys teaming up already, huh ?" He asked, looking at Mike and Brad meaningfully. "Mike, don't you waste your time on him, he's no fun."

Brad smiled apologetically, motioning to Chester with a move of his head.

"Can I stay here ?" Mike risked the question, somehow feeling as if Brad held some kind of authority around here.

"Everyone is welcomed to stay here." An answer sounded well practiced and cliché, even though Brad obviously meant it literally. "There's a spare tent you can take over for now. I'll show you around the place."

"Have they told you who I am ?" Mike asked when they headed towards the edge of the forest, Chester having fallen down to the ground next to some girl by then and squeezing a wandering hand between her bare thighs.

"They've told me you're on the run from being forced to become a murderer. Don't worry, even though the authorities know of this place by now, they aren't controlling who's staying here. We're just a bunch of rebellious kids after all. We ought to get bored of this soon enough." Brad's eyes were shining with resolve when he was saying that.

The strange thing was, even while being an artist, Mike didn't like idealists. He thought the world was a place one needed to get by in, nothing more than that and that there was no way to change that, no matter how right one's beliefs were and how dedicated they were. The best thing one could do was make his own life acceptable by his own standards. Without trying to change the world.

"You probably understand it by now, how valuable freedom is. In a free world, no government could have told you that you should go to Vietnam and kill."

Yet, Mike didn't understand. But he chose to keep his mouth shut.

Talking about freedom, its sense and meaning and importance was proving to be one of the few things one could be doing around here to ease the boredom that was an integral part of all these warm early autumn afternoons though and him and Brad engaged in lengthy discussions that lasted for hours and nights on end. Mike was easing himself into this life slowly, gradually getting used to sleeping on the bare ground in a thin tent and eating mostly vegetables and mushrooms and berries, his stomach protesting frantically at first, but having settled down eventually. He got used to the thick beard that had covered his face soon enough, to his clothes getting dirty and the fleas settling down on him even.

A month later, sitting by a crackling campfire, scratching the skin on his forearms raw, his body generating a fair share of the stench hovering around that he'd learned to ignore eventually, he was feeling almost comfortable, if bored out of his mind. Chester had been right in the very beginning. He was starting to understand the interest in sex and drugs ensuing around. It was all intermingled, that simple a life had not much more to offer to fill the time and people who were into drugs and illicit sex were coming here to join them in the first place. The girls were having sex with whomever asked and giving birth right on the damp ground, talking about how this was making them free, while it was one of these things that were making Mike think how nobody was free around here. Not with all the addictions almost all of them shared either.

"Freedom is an ability to make one's own choices and decisions, good or bad. If someone chooses to get addicted, it's his own decision. Some people may be happy wasting their life away like that. We can't know if the epiphanies they're getting on drugs are just not worth it all in the end." Brad was saying in a passionate voice, keeping his hands stretched over the fire, warming them up. "In the end, it's their life. Their life to waste too."

Mike didn't answer to that, taking a deep drag from the joint he was clutching loosely between his greasy fingers, letting the sweet smoke lull his mind into a stupor in which he didn't care anymore about how he was wasting his life away here too, the future so uncertain it wasn't even worth thinking about, and none of this had been his decision in the first place.

He was proud with himself though for getting himself hooked on weed only so far. It was just so common and so easily obtainable around here that there was no way not to really. He still needed to get to know from where were the harder drugs coming at all. The weed they were cultivating in the nearby woods themselves. Chester was bitching about its quality too. Mike didn't know any better so that didn't bother him at least.

"You're quiet tonight." Brad observed.

Mike shrugged. Throughout the last month, they'd managed to form kind of an easy camaraderie with Brad, probably drawn together by the simple fact that there weren't all that many people around here with college diplomas and any kind of eagerness to share philosophical discussions during all afternoons and evenings. Chester had dubbed them the nice boys and the nickname stuck. Brad had these strange rules of his - no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no casual sex, no meat, no nothing that had to be depraved of life to be eaten. Mike wondered if it wasn't some kind of an obsession actually, but he didn't pry. People around here were messed up royally by the outside world's standards anyway, all of them, most likely him included by now.

Lately, he'd been thinking how he would've liked to start painting again. He still didn't know his way around well enough to be certain whom to ask to buy him painting supplies though. As far as he understood, the money they had was all coming from selling bead decorations and macrams they were fabricating. Phoenix was obviously playing some part in distributing those, too. Mike had never seen him again after the night he'd brought him here, but he knew for a fact that Chester or Brad or both of them were taking the pink Cadillac and driving to meet him about once a week.

"Homesick ?" Brad risked the question, looking into Mike's eyes closely.

"No, not at all." Mike smiled, shaking his head. Home was on his mind a lot indeed - his old comfortable life, his girlfriend, his art, but not in the evenings. He was only truly starting to miss all of that during the lonely nights spent all alone in a small tent, the great forest looming just behind thin layers of groundsheet.

"You seem off lately." Brad observed.

"I miss painting, I guess." Mike admitted, taking another deep drag from his joint. "Out of all the things I miss, it's one I could actually have here."

"I guess..." Brad agreed thoughtfully, running a hand through his unruly afro.

"Besides... I wonder about the future. About when the war will be over and they will let my desertion go." Mike admitted. "And about how we're going to live through the winter here in the first place."

"It'll be my third. We'll manage." Brad said, smiling a small smile.

"You've been here for three years ?" Mike asked incredulously. "Why ?"

"I've rejected the outside system." Brad explained, making a sweeping hand gesture. "Because it was stifling my freedom."

Mike was becoming exasperated with how Brad was only ever talking in clichés. This feeling was replaced with unadulterated gratefulness though when next week Brad had brought him painting supplies back from his trip out of the camp in a pink Cadillac, offering him a place in one of the wooden houses to store them in too.

The first thing he painted was but a maze of colors, all swirling and moving and yet strangely still.

"Fucking great. I see things like this on heroin." Chester commented enthusiastically, even though Mike had assumed at first his mind wouldn't grasp something like that. "Paint me ?" He asked, pointing to himself.

Mike laughed at how self-centered he was before nodding. His next painting was another maze of colors, this one making up Chester though, with his tattoos and tie-dyed shirt and dead flowers pinned to it by some girl, his eyes bloodshot and irises wide. It took Mike a week to complete. Chester was hanging out with him in the wooden hut for the time, not really posing but walking around and picking things up and setting them aside and loosing consciousness and mumbling drunkenly in his drug-induced sleeps.

A blurred maze of color, Mike thought, spraying paint randomly over the edges of the painting. It was shining so brightly, but never for long. Just like fresh paint.

"He's actually jealous, you know ?" Chester said to him conversationally one of these days.

"Who ?" Mike inquired patiently, having been assaulted with all kinds of rumors about everyone in the camp for the last week by Chester, who for someone spending most of his life not quite aware of his surroundings, was miraculously well informed about what was going on around him.

"Brad. He's jealous about you painting me instead of talking with him."

"You're silly." Mike shrugged. He doubted Brad would have been that petty. He struck him as the serious and responsible one around here. "By the way, for how long has this been going on ? This camp thing ?"

"Ohh... Three years, I think ? I'm here since spring only." Chester answered. "Practically free drugs, you know. And truly free sex. Nothing permanent to bother you. This place is a fucking paradise."

"Aren't you afraid of the winter though ?"

"If they give me more heroin and meth, I'd stand anything." Chester shrugged.

"They ?" Mike inquired.

"Yes, they."

Lately, Mike had been thinking how there were some things going on around here that were kept hidden from him on purpose. He didn't dare to pry though. It was their good will that they were letting him stay here in the first place.

"So you've been here since the very beginning ?" He asked Brad the other night, after Chester's portrait was already done. Brad had taken both of his paintings away, promising to return them to him when everything was going to be over, but for the time being taking them to a dry and moderately warm and safe place to be stored so they wouldn't go to waste in the camp. Mike thought how it was kind of making sense.

"What do you mean ?"

"Chester told me the other day that the camp has been here for three years. As long as you've been here." Mike pointed out.

"Don't you know ?" A girl sitting at his side, leaning on his shoulder comfortably asked incredulously in a slurred voice. "Brad has started this camp."

"Really ?" Mike asked, even though he didn't feel all that surprised.

"He's been taking part in the students' protests at UCLA a few years back." The girl explained, taking out the joint from between Mike's fingers expertly and claiming it for herself. "And then a few of them decided to come here and start this camp. All of them but him are out of here though by now."

"Why haven't you told me ?" Mike asked, addressing Brad.

"All of us here are equals. It doesn't matter who came first and who came last."

"Equal my ass." Chester grumbled, nudging a snail passing by with a twig he was holding in his hand. "There are always those who take drugs and those who have drugs, aren't there, Brad ?" He asked accusingly, his eyes giving away that he was having a rare moment of relative sobriety. "Those who fuck and those who are fucked. Those who die and those who kill." He crushed the snail with his boot with a sickening crunch that made Brad wince visibly. "No equals."

"There are things you have to yet understand, Chester." Brad said calmly in a patronizing manner that made Mike's skin crawl for some reason.

The next day Mike started to paint yet again, letting the act of artistic expression clear his mind and occupy the empty hours of the autumn days getting gradually chillier. It was actually feeling really good - being able to paint whatever he wanted, in whatever way he wanted to paint it, no external pressure on him at all. No critics, no galleries, no customers, no other artists with their critical eyes, just him, the canvas, the small camp and the endless woods all around.

There was something that wouldn't let him concentrate though and so the next time Chester came over to see his progress, which so far was painting whole the canvas vivid red, he started to ask him questions again, even though Chester was all too visibly swaying on his feet and would've probably preferred not to be bothered with meager matters of this sorry world.

"Chester, what did you mean ? When you said to Brad that there were those who took drugs and those who had these ?"

Chester shrugged, sniffing and wiping his face with the back of his hand.

"From where are the hard drugs coming at all ?" Mike kept on asking, not taking his eyes off the canvas though.

"You want to..." Chester hesitated. "I'll show you one of these days." He said in the end. "Or maybe Brad will. There were weeks, you know... when he wasn't speaking to anyone. Only Phoenix and the people outside. Nobody around here interests him the way you do."

"What do you mean ?"

"Hmm... Anyway, he's right. You're really hot. If you ever want to fuck..."

"Not this again, Chester." Mike interrupted him in a pained voice. Chester was throwing pick-up lines at him regularly, as he was at everyone else for that matter, more or less successfully. Generally more, too.

"Brad's stuck on a `no` like a broken record too. Maybe you should ask him that. I wonder what he'd say to you."

Mike only scowled in disgust.

The fall was progressing and it was getting cold in the early mornings. It seemed to Mike like the suitcase he'd brought with himself couldn't have accommodated quite enough clothes for him to sleep in now in his thin tent. He was waking up in the mornings so freezing cold it was feeling like death itself and the winter hadn't even come.

"Most people you see around here still at this time of the year will leave before the true winter comes." Brad told him. "It's like that every year. Their resolve to overthrow the stifling outside world is only strong enough to let them spend a pleasurable summer away from it. They don't understand how it's living through the nightmare of winter that truly proves how much more important freedom is than physical comfort. That it is exactly what's making our protest so much louder and more dramatic." He said with a sweeping hand gesture.

"I don't understand you." Mike pointed out. "What are you changing or proving to anyone by living out here for years even anyway ?" He asked matter-of-factly. "I don't think people in the outside world care. I don't think you can truly influence them or anyone, for that matter. One can only make changes to his own life in the end, if one's lucky. It's the very extent of true influence. Everything else is just an illusion." He spoke solemnly, thinking back to his own life and to how he, of all people, didn't have the choice to leave this place before the winter would come at all.

"It isn't." Brad shook his head. "Controlling others is well possible. And not even that difficult to achieve." His glance traveled down as if he wanted to avoid looking Mike in the eye all of a sudden. "For instance, let's take the least complicated example - the drugs. People who live here need those badly, as you're well aware. Some of them even only come here in the first place because of drugs being given away for free around here. And then there's the person who's giving them their drugs. The person who can make them do bad things or good things with the influence he has on them."

"Who's that person around here, exactly ?" Mike asked, even though he was sure of the answer at this point already.

"I am." Brad answered simply, a small wistful smile appearing on his face. "I only do this because I have no other choice, though." He added. "They need drugs. And they honestly want drugs. Besides, even a camp like this requires a bit of money to go on. Our weed isn't top-notch, but it sells well enough." Brad spoke hesitantly.

Mike averted his gaze when Brad looked back up, thinking how he'd been right about never ever believing in any idealist being as pure as he seemed to be in the first place. The most glorious ends always required not so pretty means and the more passion one had for those, the lower he was sinking attempting to make them true.

It was indeed all bullshit that people in this place were natural, free and equal. There was a very tangible reason in the end for that authority Brad seemed to be holding around here. He was bringing hard drugs here from the outside world in that pink Cadillac of his and then deciding who was going to get some and what for. And only just like every other good dealer there was, he wasn't touching drugs himself.

The things going on around clicked in Mike's mind at least and that realization, combined with the nights getting colder and colder and girls leaving this place one by one with their malnutritioned children who were never going to know whom their fathers were were making Mike start to think how this wasn't a paradise at all.

"Oh fuck..." Chester was giggling happily to himself. "Look, look..." He said to Mike excitedly, ripping out pages from a thick book, looking old and worn out. "Look what I've found in front of Brad's house." He presented the bible to Mike before proceeding to rip out more pages and hide those in his ripped pants pockets. "That's a whole lot of a fine toilet paper." He mused happily before sauntering away to put the book back where he'd found it.

Mike didn't even feel bothered by that, which proved how much certain things he'd been seeing around here had numbed down his sensitivity. It was more like hilarious in a way. A ground-breaking way.

He'd found something nice last night too - a cracked mirror left behind by one of the girls. It showed him his appearance for the first time in months way more clearly than the lake in the woods ever could. He surveyed his thick beard and bronze skin and hair sticking out randomly of their own accord, glanced down at all the beaded bracelets decorating his wrists that he'd gotten from the girls around here and hadn't found it in himself to refuse wearing and decided that he was looking almost like regular inhabitants of the camp already.

He wondered if his father would have been happy seeing him looking like that, even though it was him who had put him here in the first place.

Which made him wonder in turn when and if he was going to get out of here and see his family again. It could have so happened that someone from his closest family might have even died by the time he would be able to stop hiding. This realization he would've rather not thought about at all hurt a lot, the uncertain future lying ahead of him scaring him quite a bit. He needed to resort to smoking his third joint on this day even though it was barely late afternoon to numb it some.

"You're really talented." Brad praised another one of his paintings the other day, even though Mike wasn't proud of it in the slightest himself. The painting supplies he had around here were only half-professional and uncertain about the later fate of his paintings he wasn't working so much on making them absolutely perfect. On top of that the cold air was numbing his fingers lately, making it painful to even move them and impossible to paint masterpieces. In the end he wasn't thinking about his current paintings all that highly and was only grateful that the usual public wasn't ever going to get to see these. Brad's praise felt misplaced. "You must have been famous back in the outside world." Brad ventured a guess, still standing right behind Mike and looking at his drying unfinished painting right over his shoulder which was making Mike strangely uncomfortable in an indescribable way.

"Not all that much. But yes, I was." Mike admitted, putting the brush away and rubbing his hands together to generate some kind of warmth.

"Your escape from going to Vietnam is probably making a lot of people think about the important things. It's such a way louder protest coming from a recognized artist." Brad pointed out, a trace of pride sounding in his voice.

"It was my father, you know." Mike blurted out, suddenly feeling in the mood for a little bit of honesty himself. "He's Japanese and still all bitter about detention camps during World War II and it was him who said I shouldn't go and put me here. I would have gone." Mike shrugged. "If it was all up to me I wouldn't have the fucking guts to stand up to whole my country like that."

Mike turned around only to see all the respect Brad's eyes had always been holding for him dissipating, replaced with animosity.

"But you would have had the guts to murder people in Vietnam ?! If they just fucking put a gun in your hands you would ?!!"

It was the first time ever Mike was seeing Brad loose his calm. And it was terrifying him. All that pent-up anger, as if every notion of the world's cruelty was hurting him personally.

"I don't know." Mike shook his head. "Maybe I would have been enough of a coward to just put it to my own head instead."

Brad's eyes softened.

"It's good you are here, then." He amended softly a while later. "At least this..." He pointed to the canvas. "...won't all go to waste."

Mike nodded hesitantly.

"This..." Brad motioned towards the canvas one more time. "...and this." He added, his hand resting briefly on Mike's forehead. "You know... At first I thought it was going to be all different. This camp." He continued in a barely there voice. "I thought it was going to attract people like you - artists and intellectuals and the discussions will continue late into the night and we will tell the world all about our ideals through brilliant works of art... But..." He shrugged. "It never worked out like that. But at least you're here now."

Mike didn't know how to answer to that confession, but it left him feeling weird, the crushed hope in Brad's eyes coming back to life thanks to him making him think how all kinds of wrong things were being expected from him here.

Ever since then, Brad made it his habit to watch Mike painting and throw in various remarks about what and how he should paint to match the spirit of this oh so special place.

"You're so lovey-dovey with each other." Chester commented the other day, pointing out how they were spending all days together.

It was getting more and more difficult to paint though what with the days becoming dark and cold and Mike's fingers getting unwilling to get warm and moving even by late afternoon. His newest paintings were dark, full of barbed wire and syringes and random splashes of color, speaking of fear and anger and despair. Brad praised that anger in them. Anger Mike wasn't even feeling and was left wondering from where it was even coming in the first place. It must have been Brad telling him all about how utterly awful and detestable the outside world was that was influencing him like that.

It was becoming dark and cold in paradise. Chester kept getting into binges and Mike wasn't seeing him around nearly as much anymore. The pink Cadillac came back from its weekly trip to the outside world the other day all filled with drugs stocked on the seats right up to the roof. Brad said this amount had to be enough for the winter months because soon enough the barely-there road leading to this place was going to become impossible to cross by any regular car.

Waking up day after day Mike wasn't feeling as if he was waking up indeed at all. It was so unreal, being stuck here with a dozen other people, mostly high on drugs all the time and Brad, who was preparing portions of heroin while glancing up at his paintings in the making from time to time and smiling reassuringly at him, urging him to keep on painting despite the discomfort.

Mike actually started to wonder lately what Brad was even doing with his paintings then and where exactly he was taking these away to. He had a right impression, but he couldn't have known for sure how these paintings were adding up to him becoming even more widely known in the outside world, a model rebel for everyone who was feeling trapped in there with how they kept on coming out of nowhere and appearing at the top galleries, veiled in romanticism unlike any other.

The military police was running rabid with their search of him, terrifying his family and his newfound admirers, but not him, blissfully unaware of the situation. Brad had decided long time ago that it would be better not to inform him of anything. If it was all he could do, he was going to put himself as a buffer between the outside world and the people inside his camp and make it a paradise for them to the best of his abilities, shielding them from information, knowledge and responsibility for their acts and addictions alike.

"I can't do this anymore." Mike said in the end, dropping the brush to the floor which was in fact just bare ground, his fingers hurting badly from how utterly cold they were, warming them up for longer amounts of time proving to be impossible at this point. "I can't fucking take this anymore." He added, referring to the stale food and cold nights and no electricity during too long evenings and no nothing to do not to feel as if he was wasting his life away in here, referring to everyone else's glassy eyes and Chester loosing weight dramatically lately and starting to look like a walking skeleton, all his colors and brightness long since gone.

"I'll make you feel better." Brad offered calmly, still busy with portioning the drugs, not even looking up at him.

"With fucking what ?!" Mike found himself screaming at Brad against his own will. "A dirty syringe full of that shit ?!" He asked accusingly, pointing to the stacks of portioned drugs lying on the floor all around them.

"I would have gotten a clean one for you." Brad amended calmly. "But no, it wasn't necessarily what I had in mind."

"Then what ?" Mike asked in a voice starting to sound weak and tortured.

"I think with how cold it's getting at night, we should start to sleep in here, together."

"And that's going to help me how ?"

"I'm not sure."

Mike looked down numbly at the white powder that had been spilled on the ground by Brad's trembling hands.

"Chester told me you've been keeping away from people. Or even wouldn't speak to them for weeks." Mike noted. "Why is it supposed to be so different with me ?"

"Because you're different." Brad shook his head. "You don't want anything from me."

"It's no wonder they turn to you for help. It's you that's started this fucking camp in the first place. It's your responsibility."

"I know. I've just never thought it was going to turn out to be quite like this." Brad said, attempting to get the spilled powder back inside a packet the best he could.

"So... I'm supposed to bring my things here ?" Mike asked with sudden uncertainty. "You want to sleep in here ? With all the drugs around ?"

"They need to be kept close watch over anyway."

"Chester would have jumped at the chance, you know." Mike suggested, smiling faintly.

"He would have jumped at the chance and be gone the next morning to screw someone else. Besides, is he in a good enough shape still at all ?" Brad asked, shrugging, as if he was stating the most natural fact of life, as if he was forgetting all about his own input into Chester's demise.

"You're taking things in a very matter of fact way." Mike noted.

"But isn't it a virtue ?" Brad asked, something indescribable sparking in his dark eyes.

It made Mike shiver for some reason. He went out into the pouring rain to reach his tent and take his moldy suitcase out of it with a sinking heart, for some reason feeling as if things were only taking a turn for the worse. He was reaching the depths of the deepest despair he'd ever felt in his life with the evening getting close. He thought how he was going to loose something important on that night, in that makeshift wooden hut filled with drugs worth insane amounts of money. Money that might have well enough not existed in this camp because it held no value whatsoever around here.

The atmosphere was so heavy Mike presumed Brad meant more than plain cuddling to get warm or at least it seemed to Mike as if things were progressing in that direction. Besides, even cuddling with a guy was unsettling enough, especially if said guy was making him feel so weird and uneasy and sorry for the world being the way it was so much.

Mike was setting his things aside next to the stacks of drugs and painting supplies, wondering where Brad had wandered off to while pawing his way through the darkness getting thicker and thicker. It was then that he heard it, an unmistakable sound of a flute. He'd never seen a single flute around here and it sounded foreign and unsettling, making him wonder if someone from outside had come which had him instantly up on his feet and alert. The sound was drawing closer too.

"Brad ?" He asked hesitantly, attempting to recognize the shaded silhouette that appeared in the doorway. The unmistakable halo of hair surrounding its head seemed to prove that it was Brad indeed, but the sounds of a flute coming right from it were still making Mike uncertain about that.

"I've thought I've lost it two years ago." Brad said in a strangely excited voice, pointing to the thin object in his hand. "It must be a special day for Chester to dig it out today."

"You've never struck me as a type who could play any music."

"You should see me with a guitar." Brad clearly boasted. "I was even thinking about going professional with playing it at some point, if there was going to be a chance." He said with unusual enthusiasm.

"But the protest has been more important ?" Mike asked matter-of-factly, instilling the resignation right back into Brad's posture and voice.

"The protest has always been the most important." Brad agreed. More important than his passions, his morality and his friends alike, he thought, and even now, forcing Mike down to the ground which took every last ounce of strength his scrawny body held and whispering to him that he loved him and playing flute to him to make his eyes turn the least bit soft and unguarded he still hadn't told him and wasn't going to ever tell him how he'd marketed him as a rebel to the whole outside world and redefined his career and made everyone think so many false things about him.

A talent like Mike's shouldn't go to waste though not serving a purpose, not being a tool of protest.

Mike was feeling stifled when Brad finally leaned down to kiss him. His mind was running in frantic circles, wondering what was even happening. Was it a case of homosexuality spawned by the lack of women ? It almost made him laugh out loud because there still were and always had been willing girls all around here and getting one for a night would have been a piece of cake. It would've never felt this real and this tragic with her though.

Brad was almost as far from being sexually desirable by Mike's standards as one could get, his scrawny body blatantly lacking any nice curves or cuddly softness, being just poky bones and wiry muscles, his bushy hair and beard getting in the way and unmistakable disgust instilling itself firmly right in the pit of Mike's stomach with him getting that close. And yet he was letting this happen, resolving to only clawing weakly at Brad's back.

"Wait..." Mike whispered though, feeling Brad's dead cold hand sneak into his pants. "Are you even gay ? What the fuck are we doing ?"

"Taking our minds off things ?"

"I don't think so." Mike shook his head in the darkness, his muscles starting to move, exciting Brad all of a sudden in a way he didn't even remember being possible. It was one swift fluid motion and he had Brad on his back trapped under his larger body. "You should eat more before attempting to force any guy into sex with you."

"Whichever way you prefer it." Brad smiled faintly in the darkness, wrapping his legs around Mike's waist with practiced ease. "I've been gay back in the outside world. Maybe just to spite my Jewish family bathing in the centuries old respect, but I've been."

"Doing everything the opposite way to how normal people do it isn't freedom, you know."

"Then what is ?"

"This." Mike said, disentangling himself from Brad's clutches, standing up and clearly heading outside, tripping on something in the darkness on his way out and almost falling down, his hands working on zipping his pants back up.

"Where are you going ?" Brad asked uneasily, sitting up, wincing at the neglected erection trapped in his own pants.

"Out."

"Wait."

"What ?" Mike asked from the doorway, having already opened the door and let the chilling air from the outside inside. "It's not like you have anything to bribe me with to make me stay."

"Just close the fucking door." Brad grumbled, realizing that what Mike was saying was true indeed, before falling right back down on the makeshift bedding arranged on the bare ground with a dissatisfied sigh.

It'd been a really long time since he had last reached out for someone and getting refused at his first attempt in years didn't feel any great. Then again, it was all his fault that he didn't want a breathing doll that would have been doing this just to get drugs. He knew well enough how he wasn't really desirable and how people around here hated his guts deep inside when one got right down to it. People always hate those who have power over them.

Mike didn't hate him, at least. He was merely playing with him. And he was going to be back, sooner or later. Not like he had anything else to do or anything to think about to take his mind off this, Brad thought with a small smile, forcefully willing his erection down and almost succeeding with that without the slightest help of his hands. Self-control was something he was priding himself on.

It only took five more weeks indeed. In the meantime Mike had fucked every single willing girl in the camp, but that was a minor fact Brad felt like overlooking.

"Whoa, you've gotten into heat or something ?" Chester just had to ask though when Mike came over to visit him. His legs wouldn't carry him anymore because of his overall weakness and he was sitting propped up on dirty clothes in his own hut, alone and bedridden, amusing himself by tugging at his hair coming out in fistfuls and watching fascinated how they were falling to the ground.

"You're jealous ?"

"You mean it which way ? Because I am. Both fucking ways." Chester exclaimed with an exaggerated gesture. "I'd like to be able to fuck all those girls again and I'd tap you too, while we're at it. It's too late though, I guess..." He mused with a weak smile.

"It's never too late." Mike shook his head. "I think I have one wish to make, you know." He said, taking Chester's skinny hands into his and forcefully making them let go of the pitiful remnants of his hair. "Guess what it's going to be ?"

"What fucking wish ?" Chester asked incredulously in a barely audible mumble before promptly falling asleep, his breath hitching in his throat with painful sounding whistles.

"I want you to take him out of here. And save him." Mike told Brad as soon as he found him, sitting by the lake in the woods and staring at it with eyes that weren't really seeing anything. "You can do whatever you want to me then."

"I thought you didn't have a price." Brad mused, reaching down and dipping his fingers into the unbearably cold water. He prided himself on his self-control. And it let him not to jump at the chance right when it appeared.

"It's my free choice to have it for the time being."

"All right." Brad agreed reluctantly, withdrawing his hand from the water and standing up with Mike still sitting next to him. He dropped his hand to Mike's head, ran it through his jet black hair, shortened by one girl or another barely last week, but still refusing to keep down. "It hasn't been raining for a while. I think I'll be able to get out of here."

They went back to the camp to carry Chester to the car and put him half-lying in the backseat, so scrawny these days he appeared small like a child. He didn't even wake up until halfway to reaching the closest city, late at night on the road in the middle of nowhere.

Brad was back the next day, his eyes bloodshot badly after a sleepless night on the road and the pink interior of the Cadillac all soiled with blood Chester had been vomiting continuously on their way there. Phoenix told him at the destination how the military police was getting closer and starting to figure things out slowly, but he chose to forget all about it on his way back and walked around the camp like a lunatic searching for Mike only to claim his prize.

"How is it in the outside world ?"

"What do you mean ?" Brad shrugged. "It's the same as always. Stifling." He said, scowling with all too obvious disgust.

"I mean the war. Isn't it ending ?" Mike kept on asking questions.

"Why do you need to know ? So you could jump at the chance to get out of here ?"

"You don't honestly think I wouldn't, do you ?" Mike asked, avoiding looking Brad in the eye.

"As much as I'd like that, no, I don't." Brad agreed. "But then again... I don't think you would've been all that happy in the outside world at this point..."

"What's that supposed to mean ?"

"Nothing. You feel like paying back now or at night ?"

It was Mike's turn to shrug, as if he didn't even care. For some reason, it made Brad almost furious and the ferocity with which he pushed Mike into the thin wall of the closest building astonished them both. The sex was quick, rough and dirty and hurt a fucking lot. A few onlookers passing by stopped to watch, but left before Brad came to his senses, afraid of the retribution. It was too cold to get naked in the first place or even stay in unbuttoned pants for the too long and they parted quickly. Mike limped away to paint. Brad did nothing to stop him.

They spent the night lying next to each other, paying attention not to touch, their breaths shallow in the freezing cold darkness.

"Has it felt good for you ?" Mike risked the question hours into the night with neither of them falling asleep.

"More like real."

"Have you been feeling lonely ? These past years ?"

"Yes." Brad admitted shakily, just a bodiless voice hovering in the darkness.

"Do you still..."

"No, not anymore. But I don't want you to go."

"Haven't you ever thought that we could go together ?"

"You don't even really want that." Brad scoffed, turning his back to Mike.

And he was right. Mike didn't want that. It just felt like a right thing to say.

"It's fucking cold." Mike observed, unwilling to stop talking just yet.

"It is." Brad agreed in a muffled mumble.

"Paradise, was it ? This is fucking hell." He noted, sitting up. "Unbearably cold. And everyone's just wandering around waiting to shoot up this or that. And even you're not happy with it, even though this place was your dream. I would've long since called it quits."

"That's only because you can't take defeats patiently." Brad observed fondly.

"I will be out of here as soon as this will be possible."

"I won't."

Mike's hand found Brad's body in the darkness and he cuddled close to him with a sigh to get the least bit warm on this hellishly cold night. He wondered briefly about Chester but assured himself he must have been somewhere safe and taken good care of and that he was going to be all right, now that he was away from this place with its free drugs and an illusion of no consequences.

Brad wouldn't tell him how Chester was dead by the time he reached the city and Phoenix shook his head at his stupidity meeting up with him, wondering why he would've been so stupid as to risk so much getting out of the secluded camp just to attempt to look for help for someone so far gone.

"But isn't it against all of your philosophy ?" Phoenix mused, helping Brad to put Chester's body at the side of the road in a convincing pose for some driver to find him and call the police. "Was it his own decision ?"

"No. But Mike's... messing with my head, I guess." Brad admitted thoughtfully.

And he was indeed, because Brad couldn't seem to get enough of him in the next weeks, him and his frantic, psychedelic paintings he loaded into his car and was taking to the city one by one, mindless of the risks, exclaiming his protest with them, loudly, gloriously, the way he'd always wanted.

The police came to the camp right the first day when the air started to smell of spring. It felt like being woken from yet another dream for Mike, having to explain himself to the policemen who had circled him right in the center of the camp even though everyone, him included, knew well enough that he was guilty. Brad disappeared somewhere. Mike saw the remnants of the portioned drugs that were still left after the winter being carried away from the hut they'd been sharing, but he hadn't seen him before being ushered into the police car and taken away from paradise.

"Fucking hippies." A policeman muttered dissatisfactorily, nudging the scrawny body lying face down in the water of the lake in the woods with the tip of his boot, smiling crookedly at the ridiculous afro adorning its head.

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