Backstory: This probably needs a little as Lian Shen is not a major character in Marvel. The Shadow King took a host body (around #265) of a CIA agent named Jacob Reisz. Reisz was already dead - The Shadow King needed a doctor to keep the body together. He corrupted Dr Lian Shen "releasing the wicked in her soul" from Cairo, Illinios and then went on to try and take Storm as his Shadow Queen in UXM #266. Lian stayed with Reisz until the Muir Island Saga where Reisz went to Muir, took over Legion and was "killed" by Xavier. No more was seen of Lian, but the Shadow King was resurrected in the Psi-Wars (in Africa) until he was enclosed by Psylocke and effectively removed from the astral plane and, therefore, the only place he truly existed. I hope that's enough. Oh, and Lian had a certain bleak, ironical, self-destructive, cynical sense of humour. That's probably why I liked her.
Disclaimer: Marvel's (though with the things they do with these characters compassion alone means they should be taken off them).
The Third Time I Died
Last night I died for the third time.
It was quick, anyway.
There was a storm as well. Lots of crashing thunder and shattering strokes of lightning across the sky.
At least I was allowed that much dramatic irony.
Not like the first time.
What can I say about who I was before the first time I died?
Dr Lian Shen.
I was - a person.
Not particularly good. Not terribly bad. Paid my bills on time. Earned a good income. Gave a reasonable proportion of it to worthy charities. Helped the odd suffering patient for free. Was kind to kids and animals. Slept with the occasional man - some of them even *gasp* one night stands. Hadn't taken a recreational drug since college. Broke the speed limit almost constantly. Liked the taste of vodka and lemon - occasionally over-indulged. I wasn't the world's most exciting person, but at least I was alive and belonged to me.
Until the day he walked into my surgery.
Ahmal Farouk.
The Shadow King.
My most dread lord and master.
Or Jacob Reisz, as he was at the time.
He walked in and he told me he needed me and then he reached inside my head, inside my soul and he showed me who I was. Who I could be.
Every wicked thought, every wanton thing, every lustful need and fantasy - he dug them all out and spread them out before me, showed me what I could become.
He gave me the choice as I stood before him shuddering, my thighs aching to hold me up as my body quivered in the terrifying pain of pleasure he showed me, as he trawled his fingers through my mind and showed me exactly who and what Lian Shen could be. A Lian Shen without boundaries, without morals, a woman who craved every wicked, sinful thing and could have it, indulge in it - if only I did what he wanted.
He gave me the choice.
I chose him.
That was the first time I died.
I wasn't one of his Hounds. He couldn't make me one of them. He turned them inside out, blasted their minds, seared their souls, made them nothing more than pathetic slaves.
He needed my mind. Needed my expertise. Jacob Reisz was already dead when my most dread lord and master took his body as host. He needed his doctor to make sure the body did not deteriorate too fast - he needed it to indulge his plans against Xavier.
I wasn't his slave. But I wasn't good enough to be his Queen, either.
He made me his Shadow-Witch.
His doctor.
His darling.
His lover.
He loomed above me in the night, then, his body shattering against mine, his mind curled within my own, taking me to heights unimaginable, pleasure unspeakable, pain and delight so intermingled I could never remember why I was screaming.
Pinned me and pierced me with delight, while all the time I knew that the man who straddled me was a corpse.
And always the whisper in my head that told me that this was what I had chosen.
Until the second time I died.
He was far from me, the other side of the Atlantic from where I waited for his triumphant return to Washington. Waited - and indulged myself.
I was doing something reasonably despicable to one of his forlorn little Hounds - the poor little things always drooped about so when their master was gone - when I felt him die.
His scream burned inside my head at the same time it burned inside his - my death followed his within seconds. The Shadow King had died - been killed by Xavier - and even across oceans he took his beloved Lian with him into death.
The Hound was gone by the time I came back to reality. I never knew where - maybe it flung itself howling off a cliff. That's certainly what I wanted to do.
Lian Shen was dead.
Lian Shen was still alive and I remembered every single thing that I had done after I had chosen him.
I knew what I was.
Temptress. Murderess. Torturer. Slave-master. Whore. Necrophiliac.
How do you survive knowing that you did those things?
How do you survive knowing that you chose to do those things?
I don't know how. But I survived.
I came back to Cairo, Illinios, my mid-sized city where I could try and be anonymous, try and re-build my life, could live in my anonymous apartment in my anonymous building and try and repay some of the hurt I had caused.
I worked in my small surgery, helped the poor for free, dispensed expensive drugs cheaply to those who couldn't afford it, gave every cent I could afford to charity, helped as a volunteer in three different urban-youth programs.
You can't buy back innocence.
You can't buy back that smug little place in your soul where you hold your moral values and tell yourself that nothing and no-one could make you violate them.
But I was damned if I wasn't going to try.
I thought I was succeeding, too, thought I was achieving some measure of redemption, some peace from the nightmares.
Until last night.
I was at home, quietly reading some text when his voice came inside my head. Everyone's head, apparently. He drove them to violence. He called me. Called me, wanted me, loved me.
And I threw away everything and blindly went to him.
I came back to myself half-way to New York, driving someone else's car that I didn't know how I got, far above the speed limit on some country highway, throwing myself to him as quickly as I could. I don't know what I would have done when I got to New York. If there hadn't been a boat, I think I would have tried swimming to Africa. Just to be with him.
Until his voice wailed inside my head, high and wounded and terrible, and he grasped at me, tried to meld with me, tried to hold me to him and make me his host - and then winked out into nothingness.
I don't know how I survived the car crash. Lucky, I guess, that I was in the middle of wheat fields - no trees to run into. When I came back to myself, I was clutching my head and sobbing as I finally realised the truth.
Finally realised what I had chosen when I had chosen him.
Finally knew what that whisper inside my head had always meant.
I was his Shadow-Witch.
His doctor.
His darling.
His lover.
His pathetic slave.
Last night was the third time I died.
The nice people who picked me up from the side of the road, who bought me to this nice anonymous city in the middle of god-knows-where where I checked into this unknown hotel, thought they knew why I was crying. Thought it was because of the fact my car was a smouldering heap in the middle of a wheat field and that I was crying from relief and reaction.
If only they knew.
If only they knew that no matter how far I run, no matter how well I hide, when he comes back again, when he calls, I shall go blindly and willingly to his side.
There are no choices left anymore.
It's raining again tonight. No storm, but a steady patina of drops.
The roof keeps the rain off me, but the bricks of the balcony wall are slick and wet beneath my bare feet.
The road is black and wet below me and very clean and so very far away.
Tonight I die for the fourth time.
Please, this time, let it be the end.
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