Allie's War Season Four (21 page)

Tears filled Jon’s eyes. He could feel the sickness in the other man’s light, the dense, dark cloud Jon had already spewed all over him. He’d hurt him...coated his light in shit.

“I can take it, brother,” the voice said.

Jon heard more than anger in the other man’s words that time. Hurt. A denser grief. Maybe even tears. He can’t bear to look at that face. He knows who it is, but he won’t confirm it. He won’t fucking confirm it, he can’t take it right now.

“What if we brought her in here?” another voice asked.

Jon flinched, cowering against the muscular body. He’d thought they were alone. He didn’t know someone else was in there, watching the two of them. He couldn’t stand the thought of others here, watching Jon hurt the other man, poisoning him with his light...

Killing him. Gods, he was killing Wreg.

Strong fingers gripped his hair, tightening until they hurt. The other man was massaging Jon’s back, using strong, skilled fingers. He worked over the back of Jon’s heart, the back of his chest, until Jon couldn’t help it, he started coughing again, hacking each breath.

“This is taking too long,” Wreg muttered. “Would he allow it, do you think? Nenz?”

“I think he’d do just about anything to help brother Jon right now,” the other man said. “I’ll ask him, brother... wait here.”

“Like I’m going anywhere,” Wreg muttered.

Jon knew that other voice, too. He knew it. He squinted up at the shadow by the door to the bedroom, that lamp that wanted to burn the lenses out of his eyes. He glimpsed dark chestnut hair, streaked gray at the temples...gray eyes.

“Balidor...” he managed.

Wreg let out an irritated snort. “Your name, he knows.”

The man at the door only smiled, then left, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Wreg,” Jon managed. “Wreg... does he still want to kill me?”

Wreg’s hands tightened on him again, massaging his shoulders, his arms. It hurt, but something about the pain felt so good, Jon couldn’t bear for him to stop.

“No one wants to kill you, little brother,” Wreg said, his voice gruff again.

His light pulled on Jon’s, gently that time, but Jon immediately started coughing. It hurt so badly he thought he really would die, that the coughing alone would crack his spine. He realized a bucket of some kind lay under the edge of the bed, right under where he’d been coughing. When he tried to focus on what was inside it, though, he only groaned again.

“Gods,” he said. “Blood...”

“Yes, brother,” Wreg said grimly. “That’s blood.”

“Mine?”

“Yes.” Wreg’s hands held him tighter, even as Jon felt a shiver of fear off the other man, a worry intense enough that he couldn’t think past it. “And, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer it if there wasn’t any more of that...”

Jon nodded, closing his eyes against another wave of sickness. He leaned deeper into the curve of Wreg’s body and fought to breathe, even as Wreg continued to pull on his light, hard enough that time that Wreg started coughing, too. Thick, wracking coughs, like he was trying to expel something from deep inside his lungs.

“No,” Jon said, groaning. “No... don’t... please, Wreg. Please...”

“Shut up,” the seer snapped. “Gods damn it, Jon, stop fighting me... let me help you!”

Jon only shook his head. It seemed like forever that he lay there, unable to fight off Wreg, unable to do anything to help him, either. He couldn’t even ask him to stop and really mean it. The pure selfishness of wanting Wreg there, even if it was hurting him, was more than Jon could bear. It made it hard to think, hard to do anything but cry until he couldn’t breathe anymore, coughing until he thought he’d die all over again.

Wreg only held him, stroking his hair and arms and neck, massaging the muscles in his back and chest. He didn’t talk, but Jon felt him there, he felt his light with him, every second he managed to stay conscious.

He couldn’t get the seer to leave.

WHEN JON WOKE up next, he felt hot, buried in skin and breath.

He tried to move, and immediately got hit with pain... all kinds of pain that time, separation pain, pain in his lungs and throat, thirst pain, hunger pangs, pain in his bones, his joints, his feet, his fingers. His hand was coiled around a muscular forearm, his head resting on the bicep to which it was attached. A different hand belonging to a different person clutched his fingers.

A small hand. A hand that was so, so familiar...

Jon’s eyes flipped open.

He found himself staring at green eyes he knew, but didn’t know.

She didn’t blink. She stared back at him, her narrow face utterly motionless.

Jon couldn’t tear his eyes off her. Not just the familiarity of her, the
reality
of her, but whatever he could see in that face, in those eyes he knew but didn’t know. He fought to categorize the expression there, make it compute. Her eyes were open.

Fuck,
her eyes were open.

He only realized he was holding his breath when his chest started to hurt for real. He forced air out through his mouth and nose and lungs, even as a voice on the other side of where she lay spoke up, soft, but loud in the silence.

“It’s all right, Jon.”

Jon’s gaze jerked up, away from where Allie stared at him. When he looked back down at her, her expression remained smooth, strangely curious, as if Jon were a species of animal she’d never seen before.

“She won’t hurt you,” Revik added, rubbing his own, lightly-bearded face with one hand. His arm tightened around her as he said it, pulling her deeper against his body.

Jon hadn’t even noticed Revik’s arm until then, but now he saw where it wrapped around Allie, down to the tattooed band of writing around his bicep and the H tattoo on his forearm. It wasn’t the arm that Jon lay on, though. That arm belonged to Wreg, who lay behind Jon’s back and to his left, his other arm wrapped loosely around Jon’s chest.

Jon realized the four of them were all crammed into the same bed.

“Hurt me...?” Jon said. He fought to get more air into his lungs, to get enough spit in his mouth to talk. “Hurt me...?” he said again.

Revik made a vague gesture with his hand, not answering.

Jon felt a pulse of grief off Revik, though, dense enough that he flinched deeper into Wreg’s bulk. He could feel the seer behind him waking up, too.

“What are you... doing here?” Jon said finally.

Revik gave him a wan smile, his clear eyes pulled off where he’d been gently tugging the hair out of Allie’s face. She was still staring at Jon with that unnerving blankness.

“What the hell is wrong with her?” Jon said, hearing his voice catch that time.

Revik frowned at him, his voice suddenly cold. “I’m grateful to you, Jon. I mean it. Really grateful. But watch your fucking mouth...”

Jon swallowed, looking up at him. Seeing the warning stare in Revik’s eyes, he nodded, even as Allie began stroking Jon’s mutilated hand, her eyes focused sightlessly on his skin, studying the place where his thumb had been before Terian cut it off.

“I just meant––” Jon began.

“I know what you meant,” Revik said. Exhaling in a dense, but less-specific-feeling anger, Revik tightened his arm around Allie, pulling her closer to him again.

“I’m sorry, Jon,” he murmured. “It’s been a tense few days.”

Jon barely heard him, though.

He watched Allie’s fingers as they continued to stroke his hand, then as they moved up his arm, almost as if feeling human skin for the first time. She traced the tattoos on Jon’s forearm, the Chinese writing he’d had there since high school, moving up towards his upper arm and chest before Revik reached over her, clasping her fingers in his.

Gently, he pulled her hand off Jon.

Allie frowned slightly, but all Jon saw in her expression was confusion as she glanced back at Revik’s face.

“Not now, baby,” he said softly, kissing the hand he’d pulled off Jon. “Touch me, if you want to touch someone... you can touch me all you want.”

She seemed to understand that.

Winding her body around backwards, as fluid as a snake, she slid her hand immediately under Revik’s T-shirt, and began stroking his chest and ribs. Jon saw pain tighten Revik’s face briefly, but he didn’t try to stop her.

Watching her, Jon felt sick again.

“She needs to touch a lot,” Revik explained. A faint embarrassment tinged his voice when he added, “...It’s not a big deal. If she does anything... inappropriate... just stop her. She might not get it, but she won’t be angry...”

Jon swallowed, unsure how to react to that, even after his mind turned it over.

“Did I do that?” he said.

He spoke before he knew he intended to, his voice a whisper.

Revik’s eyes sharpened, darting from Allie’s face to his. “No,” he said. “Jesus.” He exhaled again, and that time, some of the anger left his face. “Well... yes. But it’s an improvement, Jon. Believe me... it’s a big fucking improvement over how she was before.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Jon said again.

Revik gave a humorless laugh. “What’s wrong with her? She’s a fucking wire junkie, Jon.”

Jon stared at him, then looked at Allie. “What? No.” He shook his head, understanding even though he didn’t want to understand. “No way. You can’t be––”

“We can’t cut her off,” Revik said, his voice holding an overt warning. “We can’t, Jon. It would kill her. Balidor’s looking into ways of tapering it...”

That sick feeling in Jon’s chest worsened. “You’re... you’re letting her...”

“Jon,” Revik warned. He met Jon’s gaze, tightening his arm around her. “Stop. Not in front of her.” He reached down in time to stop her hand as it began roaming below his belt. She slipped her fingers from his briefly, trying to undo the metal buckle, but Revik stopped her again, murmuring against her ear too quietly for Jon to hear.

Glaring at Jon again once he’d finished speaking to her, he held her against him again, his light exuding an overt protectiveness.

“...We’ll talk about it later, okay?” he said, his voice still warning.

Jon nodded, but that sick feeling didn’t dissipate.

He wanted to stop staring, to wipe the look off his face he knew probably lived there as he watched his sister grope her husband, but he couldn’t. He knew he was pissing Revik off, but he couldn’t seem to make himself care about that, either. He jerked his eyes off her finally when Revik smacked him pointedly with his light.

Glancing around at the rest of the bed, then down at Wreg’s arm before he looked around the room, Jon felt his puzzlement return, for a different reason that time.

“What are you doing in here?” he said finally.

Revik gave another humorless laugh. “Trying to save your life, brother.”

“By you and Allie sleeping here?” Jon said, still confused.

“Yes,” Revik said, sighing. He caressed the hair back from Allie’s neck again, closing his eyes briefly as her hand continued to massage his chest under his shirt.

“...She still has the healing ability, Jon,” Revik said. “Balidor thought... well, we thought Wreg could use a hand.” Smiling wryly, he kissed Allie’s temple, squeezing her against his chest before he added, “Honestly, I wasn’t sure it would work. But as soon as we got her in here, she seemed to know exactly what to do. I didn’t have to tell her anything. She cleaned you out, Jon...like, all of your aleimi,
all
of it. Jesus... unbelievably fast. Wreg barely made a dent in you in four days, and she got most of that shit out of you in a few hours.”