Title: Continuity
Author: scy
Feedback: scynneh@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Not mine
Fandom: Children of Dune/Heroes
Pairing: Leto ll/Adam Monroe
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up through the entirety of 'Children of Dune' and assuming spoilers through 'Powerless'
Summary: Leto hears a rumor and finds its source.
Author's Notes: The pairing is one that the_grynne suggested in passing some time ago.
February 2008

Men did not walk out of the deep desert, untouched, eyes clear and dare to say that they were the conquerors. Fremen and off-worlders alike knew as much, and even the Harkonen had kept to their 'thopters when they pillaged the spice patches that rightfully belonged to the tribes of Arrakis.

But there was the odd rumor of such things, the account whispered from sietch to city, the tale's improbability making its foundations as malleable as dry sand. Some such stories were passed all the way inside the palace and up to the throne.

"They say there is a man, not of the desert, who walks into sandstorms as though they cannot hurt him," Leto said.

"It is also said that the ghosts of Fremen haunt the southern sietches," Ghanima answered. "Not everything that comes to our ears is true"

"That there are so many witnesses has to mean something," Leto said, the sound of his body shifting on silk sheets like rough paper against air.

Ghanima ran a hand absently down her brother's arm and caught her fingers on his wrist. "There are other ways for you to occupy your time, I have many sensitive matters that would be best seen to quietly."

Leto snorted. "I think you might be usurping Stilgar and Gurney's territory. Without intrigue they rest poorly."

"I won't tell them you said as much," Ghanima promised with a smile and then sighed. "In all seriousness, Leto, you know how few men actually survive what the desert offers up."

"We did."

"Don't quibble, brother," Ghanima said. "Logically, you have to know that it may be true, but likely that it's only a story."

"Do I have the permission of the crown to investigate this specter?" Leto asked, reaching up to tap Ghanima's cheek playfully.

Ghanima snorted, clasped his hand and rubbed Leto's scales the wrong way. "I give it knowing you would go even if it was denied."

Leto's eyes narrowed, and he sat up, ducking away from Ghanima's hands. "I shall go, and see what I can learn."

"Do not forget caution," Ghanima called in the wind and when the air was still, her brother had gone.

The most basic of lessons was that nobody should think to venture out onto the sands of Arrakis alone and not be prepared for the elements to scour the spirit clean. Only Fremen, and the animals suited to the harsh climate had a hope of doing more than finding cover and pinning their hopes on nature's kindness.

Leto knew all of this implicitly, and moreover, understood it as a only a desert creature could. He stood on a ridge of rock and listened to the hints spread with the breeze. Much of it was gossip, mountains and worms brushing up against each other and the footfalls of every living being were tracked and met as they deserved. What most interested Leto came from the south, in the deep desert, where worms numbered higher than even Fremen.

The Naibs and their tribes that skirted those lands were traditionalists, set in their ways and superstitions. They would believe stranger things than the city-dwellers, safe behind walls and shields. Many of them had not approved when Paul Muad'Dib had given the Arakeen people so great a resource that they squandered what had been someone and precious for untold generations.

The desert had been suppressed and battled, and now whatever was left had to be saved. Those men who had lived through Harkonen, Atreides and Alia's rule did not expect to see a return to the ways of their ancestors, but they would not permit there to be another man who could shape the world. If there walked someone who was different than those around him would not be sought out for his insight, but hunted as a threat and a heretic.

Both of those reasons made the discovery and questioning of such a man a priority, and if he was a danger to Ghanima, the throne or the dynasty that they sought to solidify for the salvation of the planet, Leto would see to it that the desert swallowed another soul.

The sand didn't feel solid when one knew how easily it could be parted. Few understood such truths; they struggled to tame the elements and wondered at their failure when they were buried. But Leto let his consciousness drift unhurriedly, and went in the direction the wind suggested.

He found signs of another on the sand, footsteps that echoed more than was prudent, but then, where there was worm sign, Leto discovered the improbable evidence of tracks veering off toward the solid footing of the rocky hillside nearby.

There was a man sitting on the highest point, and as Leto ascended the slope, he could tell that the stranger was neither dead nor Fremen. He was clad in stillsuit, but his posture did not put him in line with his surroundings, he stood out, unbowed by his apparent isolation, and when he turned to face Leto, the man smiled.

"You made a sand crossing alone," Leto said, a question laid under the statement,

"It's not uncommon for me to spend a fortnight without seeing anyone else," the man said. He pushed the hood of his 'suit back, and tugged the mask off, leaving white blonde hair ruffled, and turned the force of his naturally blue eyes on Leto. "This is an expected meting." He caught the flash of light off Leto's scales and added. "May I ask, is there a royal decree that forbids one from fully experiencing the desert?" the man asked.

"When they are foreign and their intentions obscure, yes." Leto said.

The man had been scrutinizing Leto. "You're the brother of Empress Ghanima, you're Leto Atreides, the son of Muah'Dib.

So the man's stay on Arrakis was long enough that he'd learned about its people and the royal family. Leto wasn't put at ease, that knowledge meant that he wasn't merely a traveler going through.

Leto could see the way through every kind of season and storm that had or would ever spring up on Arrakis or could threaten it, but this man wasn't a part of this planet or one that Leto had ever heard of, and that should have been an impossibility that never came true.

"What is your aim?" Leto asked, not needing another word because this man would not relent until his goal was achieved.

"I wanted to see where it began, the jihad that swept across the known worlds on the word of a single man."

"Muah'Dib is gone, and his legacy is not the one you speak of," Leto said."

"No, you are," the man said, his eyes perceptive and lingering on Leto's exposed skin as it shifted, though he stood still.

The lives of those who had come and gone, leaving their memories were within Leto every moment. he did not call on them the way Alia had, he would not permit such a loss of his faculties, but he could call on them when need arose. Although this man was a stranger to Leto in this moment, he was certain he knew the man.

"What are you called?" Leto asked.

Head titled back, the man answered deliberately. ""You don't want to know my name?"

"I sense that you don't yield such things lightly," Leto said.

"That innate instinct," the man paused, "is apparently one trait that carries through generations. Now I am called Monroe."

"You're not a member of the Landsrat, or an agent sent by the Spacing Guild," Leto said, eliminating the chance of shared knowledge being contested.

"At present, I have no loyalty to either," Monroe said,

"Can anyone claim you owe them fealty?"

"My credentials are not so easily verified," Monroe said. He gave Leto a longer perusal.

"You are more easily recognized."

"I am asking you, why are you on Arrakis?" Leto compelled Monroe to answer, spinning the words over with a touch of the Voice, and watched the other man straighten up as if he'd been caught out in the open by a lightening storm.

"I have my reasons," Monroe said. "And I know quite a bit about persuasion, try it again, and I'll take it as end to our pleasantries." He shifted and the sword on his back and moved into easier reach. Where there had been weariness, Leto now saw attentive waiting, a stillness that could spark easily into deadly motion.

Leto knew how little the limits of normal men meant to him, and it seemed that Monroe had a like detachment.

"If you speak falsely, I will know," Leto said,

"I haven't yet," Monroe said, with more meaning than Leto thought the words should carry between men so newly met.

"We do not know each other so well that I can believe your assurances," Leto said.

"A part of you does," Monroe said. "I know you. We've never met in your lifetime, but there have been others."

Leto allowed some of the years he carried to settle around him and searched the layers for a recollection of this man. "You have gone by another name," he said, testing the knowledge that rose up.

"Many."

"One of them was Kensei," Leto said.

Monroe's face cleared, "Yes."

"Here and somewhere else, many centuries ago," Leto said. Somewhere, someone whose life he carried had heard parts of Monroe's story, and their experience directed Leto's words.

"You haven't been on Arrakis since then," Leto said.

"No." Monroe shook his head. "There were reasons, some which you may remember, and I will keep the rest of them to myself."

"Yet you have returned, and at a time of upheaval, I imagine that was not coincidence, but careful planning."

"The opportunity is not one I thought would come sooner, and not again for longer than you can perceive."

"You waited all that time, and you look exactly the same," Leto said. "How is that possible?" Humans changed with the years, grew old and died, sometimes before their time, as Leto had seen, but this man's image in his mind was that of the person in front of him, nothing changed that Leto could see. "Are you a ghola, then? Is this the Tleilaxu working to undermine the Atreides hold on Arrakis?"

"There have been plots and attempts on your life and that of your twin, but I am not involved in any of them," Monroe said. "Proving as such would be time consuming and I doubt that your suspicions would be allayed without interrogation."

Monroe, a man who looked solid and who Leto knew he could capture, was fully realized in his memory as a greater chameleon than even the most adept Face Dancer. He couldn't alter his face or body to take on the appearance of another, his deceptions went deeper and encompassed his entire identity instead.

"You must be a proficient liar," Leto said. "What could be wrested from you would need to be confirmed and you make nothing simple on purpose."

"Mainly out of necessity," Monroe said. "Not all of my aims are so obscure." He gave Leto a frank stare again, undeterred by the reaction it inspired.

"I am not the person you made time with," Leto said. "They have gone to the desert, and whatever your abilities, you cannot resurrect that which Arrakis takes."

"And still I make the same trek every generation," Monroe said. "I have gone to some trouble, but I always emerge out the other side,"

"You shouldn't be able to," Leto said. "No one human can."

"Here we stand, and you contradict your own words," Monroe said.

"I have chosen a path that takes my humanity as the price for passage," Leto said. "What did you pay so that time would leave you untouched?"

"Death," Monroe said. "I can buy and steal innumerable riches, and have done, but I may never have death."

"Do you seek it?" Leto asked. He had seen where he would be forced to travel in the salvation of his people, and never doubted that his sacrifice was a choice, even though it robbed him of nearly everything. He too could not deny life, and he'd barely begun to explore the meaning of his decision. Monroe had lifetimes to dwell on what everything meant.

"At low moments, I have lingered on the thought," Monroe said. "But I am not a man who wastes a chance to live."

"How long has it been?" Leto asked.

"I was ancient before Arrakis was settled by nomads who called themselves Fremen," Monroe said, and smiled, amusement softening the frigid blue of his eyes. "I know of the Golden Path, Leto Atreides, and that eventually one man would have to take it in order to save this planet."

"You've waited that long for a possibility to come to fruition?" Leto asked.

"I have kept busy," Monroe said. "A man such as myself never goes long without being useful."

Leto didn't doubt that Monroe could be "What do you hope to gain here?"

Monroe stood and moved closer to Leto. "Rebellion and revolution are predictable cycles," he said. "I have seen them and know where you stand and how very near you are to the brink."

"If you know what is happening, then why bother involving yourself?" Leto asked.

"You have been breaking taboos and disregarding all pre-ordained obstacles since your birth and now your very existence defies every prophecy the Truth Sayers would like to see enacted." Monroe reached out, his palm cupping the air beside Leto's cheek, but not transgressing a boundary that Leto would enforce. "Destiny allows little room for a man to find peace, but there is usually enough space to share."

"You're offering intimate counsel?" Leto asked.

"Of a kind," Monroe said.

"For how long?" Leto asked.

"Until desire and reason diverge," Monroe said, and for a moment only, put his fingers on Leto's face, and they breathed in unison.

-end