Allie's War Season Four (26 page)

He had trouble watching them together, too, truthfully.

Since Revik already reamed him a new one on that score, and more than once, Jon tried to
make
himself get used to it, regardless of his own feelings. He didn’t know how successful he’d been, though.

Revik remained beside her even after he had all of her limbs restrained. His fingers remained on her at all times, too, Jon noticed...caressing her hair, touching her shoulder, touching her neck or cheek. He talked to the other infiltrators without missing a beat, even as his light remained entwined with and mostly focused on hers.

What might have touched Jon before, only brought a pain to his chest now. The grief that lived there, in those small, insignificant touches, the careful and gentle uses of his light, the looks he gave her, the patience...all of it and none of it could take Jon’s breath, without him even being able to articulate why exactly. The very normality of it made it worse, perhaps, the feelings he glimpsed from Revik...at least, when Jon let his mind go there...the sum of all those subtle and delicate threads, the complete lack of any feeling of sacrifice on Revik’s part himself.

At times, it struck Jon as one of the most profound examples of unconditional love he’d ever seen.

At others, it seemed so deeply deluded as to constitute a kind of sick parody of their marriage, whatever Revik told himself.

Jon still couldn’t even bring himself to think of her as Allie.

He didn’t know precisely who the woman was who lay there now, looking up at Revik with those clouded, confused eyes, but he didn’t see his sister in her anywhere.

She wore Allie’s face, and Allie’s body. At times, she even seemed to move like her, at least in those brief moments where nothing in her mind determined the nature of how that movement occurred, where it happened more like muscle memory than directed action. Those movements ended up feeling like ghosted echoes of the woman he remembered...the movements between moments, what took place in the spaces between where the cloudiness of her light would catch up with her body well enough to affect the way she took up space.

Mostly, though, Jon looked at her and saw a stranger.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Jon receded deeper into the corner of the room, wondering again what exactly he was doing there. He knew his personal connection to Allie must be why they’d asked him to be a part of this, but he didn’t really want to think about that, either.

He looked at Maygar, instead, maybe to distract himself.

Revik’s son had gained back some of the weight he’d lost while he’d been held captive in Shadow’s house in South America. He still looked thinner than Jon remembered from when they’d first met, but his shoulders looked broader again, and his biceps bigger. Maygar looked taller, too, which threw Jon at first, until he remembered that the same thing happened to Allie when she discovered she was a seer...and even to Jon himself, to a lesser degree. In addition to recently finding a father he never knew he had, Maygar had only just started exploring his ‘crossover’ status, too, which might have accelerated the changes in him.

Jon also happened to know that Maygar was still relatively young for a seer. He wondered if some of the height change came more as a function of normal seer aging, since Maygar still hadn’t reached full maturity.

Whatever the real reasons, the changes in Maygar had definitely accelerated, probably due in some part to the extensive work he’d done with Revik and the time spent in Revik’s light, working on the telekinesis. Jon remembered something similar happening to Allie not long after she and Revik got together...especially after she and Revik finally consummated their marriage.

But Jon didn’t really want to be reminded of that, either.

The combined effect on Maygar was sort of interesting, though, in that it seemed to make him resemble Revik a lot more than Jon remembered him looking like Revik before. Maygar still had the more Asian features of his mother, Elan Raven, who looked more or less like a Chinese human––a tall Chinese human, with shocking, turquoise-blue eyes, but a Chinese human, nonetheless––only now Jon could see a lot more of Revik in Maygar’s face, too.

Maygar’s own eyes were significantly darker than either of his parents’, a chocolate color that could contain surprising depths. His black hair hung long now, wound into a male seer’s clip at the back of his neck, and his chest still looked broader than his father’s, too, stretching the dark green T-shirt he wore under a thicker black flannel.

Maygar’s body had grown more and more to resemble Revik’s, however, Jon noticed, even though he still stood a good four inches shorter than his father and wore a much more compact frame. Something lived in the shape of his face that reminded Jon of Revik, too, particularly around the cheekbones and forehead, and to a lesser extent in the shape of his jaw. His mouth was markedly different...full where Revik’s was distinctly narrow...and Maygar’s face still appeared significantly wider than Revik’s angular features...but their noses were similar in shape, and they had similarities around the eyes, as well.

Realizing suddenly that Maygar was watching him stare, and now frowning at him in some irritation, Jon flinched. He saw Maygar’s dark eyes flicker down Jon’s own body in the pause, and when Maygar glanced up next, Jon gave the male seer a kind of half-assed smile.

Snorting openly, Maygar rolled his eyes.

Really, Jon couldn’t blame him.

“Sorry, brother,” he murmured.

“You’re not my fucking brother...” Maygar shot back, his voice equally low.

Irritated in spite of himself, Jon held up a dismissive hand, averting his eyes. “Yeah. Well. Technically, I’m your uncle-in-law, dickhead.”

“Technically, you’re a worm.”

“Not exactly...” Jon muttered.

“...You’re a worm to me,” Maygar said coldly. “And to the rest of us, too, or you wouldn’t have gotten your ‘sister’ fucking killed.”

Jon felt the words like a punch to the face.

No one had said that to him. Not to his face. None of the other seers had so much as mentioned to Jon his role in how Allie had been taken by Shadow and Cass. The closest had been Revik himself, in one of his drunker, darker moments...and even he had bitten back his words, walking out of the room when he couldn’t seem to control his own mind.

Jon could only look at Maygar for a moment, feeling sick to his stomach.

“They should have killed you on the spot,” Maygar added, his voice dangerously low.
“He
should have killed you. He probably would have, too, if your name wasn’t on that fucking list...”

At that, Revik looked over from where he stood next to Allie.

“Shut up, Maygar. Now.” He gave Jon a hard look, too. “And you. Eyes to yourself. We’re starting in two minutes...get your head in the game, or else.”

Jon nodded, feeling his face warm.

Looking away, he happened to catch a look from Wreg, who stood on the other side of the room with Yumi and Gar. Seeing the darker thread of anger there, nearly on the surface, Jon felt a flood of disbelief pervade his light when he realized what the look meant. Wreg had seen him staring at Maygar, too. Jon almost couldn’t let himself believe how Wreg had interpreted that stare, but he could feel it, almost on the surface of Wreg’s light.

Jesus Christ. Wreg thought he’d been checking Maygar out.

Feeling his face go from warm to hot when it occurred to him that Maygar might have taken his stare the same way, Jon winced, clicking under his own breath. As he did it, a warm hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped, turning his head.

Jorag smiled down at him, giving him a sympathetic look.

“We don’t want you dead, brother,” Jorag said.

Jon let out a surprised grunt. “Yeah. Okay. Great.”

“I mean it,” Jorag said, sending him a harder pulse of warmth, even as he opened his light, making sure Jon could feel that he meant it. Squeezing his shoulder tighter, he leaned by Jon’s ear. “As for your other problem,” he added softly, nudging Jon’s mind towards Wreg. “Well, you’ve got our sympathy there, too...believe me, little brother.”

Jon shook his head, clicking softly, but somehow, Jorag’s words managed to amuse him.

“Fucked if you do, brother,” Jorag added, still by his ear. “...No matter what you do, right now. And don’t think the rest of us don’t know it...” Grinning, Jorag patted him again. “Poor bastard. You didn’t pick an easy one, brother.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Do you? Do you know I’m risking my life right now, then?” Jorag grinned.

Jon couldn’t help it. He let out a surprised half-laugh, even as he gave Jorag an over-the-shoulder grin. “All of you seers are just a bunch of mental cases, aren’t you?”

“That we are, little brother,” Jorag added, sending him another pulse, that one holding a pale breath of cheerfulness. “...And damned fine-looking ones, too, the lot of us.”

Jon let out another snort and Jorag winked at him, giving him a last pat before he moved off, aiming his feet in the direction of the door.

Jon watched the seer leave, feeling an almost irrational wave of affection for the other man, who’d taken it upon himself lately to try and keep morale up, given the fact that Revik had hardly been in a mental state to take that role. Jon knew that Revik himself got pissed off at Jorag on occasion, mostly for his being a little too focused on Allie, and seeming a little too interested in her body at times, too. Jon had seen the thing with Jorag and Allie firsthand, so he understood Revik’s complaint, and even sympathized.

He couldn’t help liking the other man, regardless.

Thinking about the last time Jon had seen Jorag staring at Allie, in that armored truck on their way into the quarantine zone in San Francisco, Jon felt his chest clench again before he shook it off. As he did, he caught another dark look from Wreg.

The ex-rebel didn’t stare at Jon long that time, but Jon saw the hardening of the other man’s jaw, felt the pulse of anger leave Wreg’s light. Feeling more of that emotion seething behind the dense shield around Wreg’s aleimi, Jon fought a wave of frustration that made him want to leave the room entirely.

Jorag really hadn’t been kidding. Wreg hadn’t liked their interaction much, either.

Seeing the continued tension in Wreg’s Chinese features, even through the other emotions clouding the room, Jon felt the last remnants of his brief levity with Jorag dissipate.

In their place, that darker feeling returned, the background noise in Jon’s mind that had scarcely left since they’d arrived in San Francisco. The only good thing about that was that it made it easier not to care.

About any of it.

“All right,” Revik said, glancing over at Jon and Maygar, his clear eyes narrow. “You’d better sit down. We’re ready to start.”

JON HADN’T KNOWN what to expect... not really.

He knew his role would be nonexistent, in terms of mechanics. His light constituted one of three ‘hubs’ that would be used to stabilize and connect to Allie’s light. Really, he would pretty much be sitting there while other seers made those connections happen. Maygar would be doing essentially the same, even though the thought was, they’d connect him at several different levels then they would connect Jon himself.

Revik, who already had a light-bond to Allie, would be connected more specifically––meaning, structure to structure––primarily at the level of the telekinesis.

Maygar would be connected to Allie at the telekinetic level, as well, although most of the connections with Maygar would occur through Revik himself.

Jon would be connected at lower structures than the other two, the thought being that it would help stabilize the connections between the four of them overall, and also potentially strengthen Allie’s ability to connect to all of them down here, as well as to her own structures.