Allie's War Season Four (159 page)

The others had been smoking too, so it must have been on my clothes. I knew the smell might be there from later joints they smoked, Sasquatch and Jaden and Frankie. It could have lingered in my hair and clothes, long after it left my system. I couldn’t think through everything else in my light well enough to decide what would be the most truthful answer to his question, though. I thought maybe I had been stoned the night before.

I know I stopped accepting joints when I got dizzy. I waved all of the offers off after that, but I couldn’t remember how long ago that really was.

Subjectively, it felt like days.

When I didn’t answer right away, Revik exhaled. I felt another pulse of anger leave his light, although again, it didn’t feel aimed at me.

I don’t know if he read my light for the answer to his question, either, or if he just made up his own mind, based on my silence and maybe the expression on my face. In the end, I felt him decide to let it go, although it seemed to take him more than one try. Clicking under his breath, Revik shook his head, seer-fashion, as if pushing it once and for all from his light.

He took my hand then, his fingers firm.

“Come on,” he said, his voice gruff.

He tugged on my arm gently again, his light asking me to go with him down the green and gray corridor, back towards the middle of the ship.

I didn’t try to fight him.

The thought of fighting him never crossed my mind, really. I didn’t feel angry, or anything much at all, not towards him.

I didn’t ask him where we were going.

HE BROUGHT ME back to the tank.

We passed people on the way who stared at us. The seers manning the security station outside the tank itself stared at us, too, and I took in their faces and eyes without really tracking any one of them.

Revik spoke to them, but I didn’t really listen to that, either.

Mostly, I heard him tell them to leave us alone.

I felt them resist that request, although I didn’t probe that very deeply, either.

I heard Revik talk to at least one person on the comm on the way there, too, but I only heard a handful of those words. I heard him say to someone, “Yeah, I have her,” not long before he clicked off, glancing at me, as if to make sure I was still the one holding his hand. I don’t remember him saying anything to me directly, though, as he led me down the corridor and to the stairs leading to the lower floors.

I think the lack of sleep was seriously catching up to me by then.

Even so, when we finally got past all of the security protocols to get us back inside the locked down construct of the tank, he didn’t let go of me after he brought me inside and they swung the heavy door shut behind us. Instead, he led me straight to the washroom, through the door that stood to the left of his desk.

Tugging me in there with him gently but insistently, he didn’t let go of my hand as he leaned down to punch in keys to turn on the water and then to adjust the temperature controls.

He didn’t say anything after he got the shower water on, either.

Frowning slightly, he just turned to me, and made a motion with one hand, a seer’s shorthand for asking permission.

Seeing him looking at my clothes, I nodded.

He didn’t wait, but started undressing me right there.

I found myself flinching slightly, feeling pain on him, and on myself, but I didn’t shy away from his fingers. He got the combat shirt off me and started unbuckling my belt, tugging my pants down past my hips and then squatting down to take the last of my clothes off my feet and ankles.

I saw sand fall to the floor from when we’d been on the beach. I saw it from the pants, and then from my underwear, too. I saw him look down at that, as if stuck on that single fact for a few beats of time, even as more pain left his light.

He still didn’t say anything, though.

Instead he regained his feet, after stuffing my clothes in the chute in the wall. He remained in front of me as he started to undress himself, beginning pretty much the instant he had me naked. Realizing he intended to shower with me, I tried to decide how I felt about that.

But I didn’t really...feel about it. Not right then.

Not enough to have a strong opinion. So I just stood there, watching as he shoved his shirt and then his pants through the same hole in the wall that he’d used to get rid of mine. I watched as he unhooked the hose from the shower then, and washed the sand into the drain on the tile floor with warm water. I watched it go, still not moving.

Then he took my hand.

He led me into the cubicle and under the hot water. I stood there as he washed me off with soap, then with the same hose he’d used on the floor. He washed my whole body twice, then stood behind me and shampooed my hair.

He still didn’t really talk to me. I heard him as he muttered a few times, mostly about me smelling like smoke, but I couldn’t tell if that was directed at me particularly, either. I felt pain on him, too, but he seemed to be trying to control that, or at least to keep the worst of it out of my light. The third time he started muttering under his breath, that time in Russian so I couldn’t understand him, I glanced up and back at him.

When he didn’t meet my gaze, I just looked at his face, then his body, then down at his erection. He didn’t try to hide it from me, not exactly, but he took hold of my chin, and moved it gently away so that I wasn’t looking at him there, either.

Then he went back to scrubbing sand and smoke out of my hair with his fingers.

He shampooed it three times before he seemed to think it was enough.

After he’d rinsed off all of the soap and turned off the water, he wrapped me in one of the big towels. He steered me into the other room, his hands still light on my shoulders and back, but holding a denser purpose again.

I felt better. A lot better. But yeah, still pretty weird.

And now I felt like I was supposed to talk to him, too, and I wasn’t sure how, or even if I had anything to say. I wondered if he’d let me sleep first, but when he sat down next to me on the bed, also with a towel wrapped around him, but only his waist, he didn’t lay down, or move in such a way that would have made it easy for me to lay down, either. I would have had to climb over him to the other side of the bed, essentially, and pull back the covers on that end.

I didn’t, though. I could feel him wanting to talk to me, so I just sat there instead.

After another pause, he motioned for me to turn around again, and I realized he was holding one of those spiky brushes for my hair.

I just sat there again, while he combed the tangles out of my long hair.

I was thinking again, though...as well as I could, anyway. That pain had come back to my chest, but everything else still felt pretty numb. Maybe that’s why it seemed like a good idea to talk then, before the rest of my light came back for real.

“I need to sleep,” I told him, facing the wall as he sat behind me.

He didn’t answer.

Feeling that pain in my chest worsen, I exhaled again, fighting to think about what to say, the words that had been in my head off and on for the past few days.

“I’m sorry I left,” I told him.

He stopped brushing my hair. He didn’t say anything, though, so I swallowed, still not looking back at him.

“I’ll do whatever you want, Revik,” I said. “I just...I don’t know how to...end this.”

“End what?” he said.

I glanced back at him that time, in spite of myself, frowning. “This,” I said, a little at a loss. “This...thing I created. Leaving like I did.”

He only looked at me, wearing his infiltrator face.

“You think that’s the problem?” he said. “That you left?”

I looked down at his body, at the dark towel he wore around his waist. I had a sudden impulse to ask him to turn around, so I could see his back, so I could look at what Ullysa had done to him. I didn’t, though.

Instead I looked up again, meeting his gaze.

“I want to talk about it,” I told him. “Just not now.”

“Talk about what?” he said. “What do you think we need to talk about, Allie?”

I blinked, then looked down at his chest, thinking about his back again. Not wanting him to hear that either, I shook my head, bringing my eyes back up to his face again.

“Maybe she could show me,” I said finally. “...Next time. Maybe I could go, and she could show me how. We could talk about that.”

Pain flickered over his expression.

It hit him suddenly...intensely enough that he winced, looking away from me. I felt him fight to control it briefly, right before it worsened. After a few more seconds, when he didn’t speak, I laid a hand on his leg over the towel.

“Revik,” I said, at a loss again. “It’s all right.”

He shook his head, gripping my wrist in his hand.

“I’m just tired,” I said. “Too tired to talk about this. But I will. I promise I will. We’ll figure it out...okay?”

For a long time, he just looked down at where he held my wrist, his expression unmoving. I felt him fighting with his own feelings. I felt him thinking, too, even as those feelings grew more intense. I couldn’t untangle any of it, though. I couldn’t even be sure if he was thinking about me, or if something else was bothering him about what I’d said.

I didn’t want to deal with his shame though, or any of the crap we’d already been over and over again in the tank.

I wanted to help him with this, though.

He let out a strangled laugh.

When I looked up that time, he wiped his eyes with his free hand, gripping me tighter around the wrist with his other fingers. He didn’t meet my gaze, but I felt something go through his light again, what felt like anger. He still didn’t aim it at me, at least not directly, but I felt the frustration wound into that, and a denser want.

“You’ll do anything I want?” he said then, his voice gruff.

I felt my chest clench a little.

A flicker of Ditrini slid through my mind and light, there and gone.

I couldn’t fight him anymore, though. I knew I couldn’t.

“Yes,” I said, simply.

He nodded, his mouth set in a harder line. For a long moment, he just sat there, and I felt him thinking again. Or maybe just hardening his resolve, I don’t know, wrapping his mind around something he’d already decided to do.

I was still watching his face when he startled me, pulling me towards him and onto his lap.

He didn’t do it roughly, not exactly, but he did it firmly, without really asking permission, or being cautious like before. He still wasn’t looking at my face, either, even as he pulled me against him. He didn’t want me to sit in his lap, though.

He yanked me over his thighs instead, so that I lay prone across his lap on my stomach. His fingers coiled into my wet hair then, holding me down, even as his light wrapped into mine, winding rapidly and insistently into the structures above my head. I felt him slide into those parts of me that I’d used against him in the past, the ones the Lao Hu had trained me in. He gripped those same structures in me, tightly in his light, until he controlled the telekinesis...then pretty much every other part of my light after that.

I fought him briefly, but he sent a hard pulse of light. I felt the meaning there, too, the reminder that I’d given him permission, that I’d told him he could do this. Realizing he was right, I fought to let go, to let it happen. Seconds later, I felt him gripping me harder, both with his light and his hands.