When we got to the other side of the river and lake, it was becoming overcast once more, although the sun had risen high in the sky by then. From the walking and the rowing and the jumping out of planes, everyone felt pretty exhausted. Revik ordered five hours of rest, told Wreg to assign a rotating sentry duty and stay in touch with Balidor's team...then promptly walked me a good half-mile out into the woods with blankets, both of our guns, and a satchel of food along with a few skins of water.
It shouldn't have surprised me.
I'd felt pain on him for hours...days, really.
We hadn't been alone at all since we'd left New York, and even then, given everything that was going on, even right after the wedding, we hadn't exactly been given the luxury of lying around in bed for hours on end, or going entirely without sleep. I'd actually thought he was dealing with that whole thing better than me, given how focused he got during military ops...so when he found us an alcove sheltered from the wind and without snow, I thought he just wanted some privacy to sleep, since we didn't have our own tent. I just stood there, watching as he spread four blankets out on the grass, half-dazed from walking through mountain passes for most of the night, and then rowing across that ice-cold lake for another six hours into morning.
I was still standing there when he threw the backpack on the ground, walked over to me and promptly pulled me into his arms. He started undressing me before he'd even kissed me, his hands close to rough as he tugged at the armored suit I wore, fighting to get the catches undone down the front. Once I understood what he wanted, my own pain worsened, even as I caught hold of one of his hands.
Half awake or not, it wasn't easy to make myself stop him.
"Hey," I said. "Should we really be doing this? You need sleep, right?"
He shook his head, his eyes on mine. "If you don't want to...or if you want to sleep, tell me that, Allie. But don't tell me what I need right now...please..."
Thinking about his words, I found myself agreeing.
I also realized that as tired as I was, I needed this more, too.
My hands reached for the front of his armored pants, fighting with the catches around the heavier vest he wore. He tensed as soon as I started undressing him, helping me by unhooking the front of his vest so I could get to the side fasteners on his pants. His own hands grew more insistent when they returned to my armored suit. He already had most of the fasteners undone on the top when something else occurred to me.
"We're in his construct now," I said, fighting a little for breath. "We are, aren't we? Shadow's? Isn't that a problem?"
"You can shield us."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." He kissed my throat, putting light into his tongue as he let out a low groan. "I'm really fucking sure, Allie...I'm positive you can..."
I found myself nodding. "Okay."
Barely waiting for my answer, he lowered his weight, yanking the rest of the suit down my legs. He paused long enough to yank at the buckles on my boots, tugging them off my feet one by one as I balanced with my hands on his shoulders. Then he unzipped and tugged the suit off my ankles. He had his hands on me even before he brought me the rest of the way down to the blankets. He barely got off me long enough to pull off the tank top and underwear I'd worn under the armored suit. Unlike mine, his outfit broke into a shirt and pants, mostly because they hadn't had enough of the other kind, but also, I knew, because of his height. Even so, I found myself struggling as I unhooked the last few straps of his vest, fighting to get it from around him. He still wore the gun, too, so I fought with the velcro straps of the shoulder holster before I shifted my attention to tugging his pants the rest of the way down his legs.
He didn't wait for me to finish. I was still trying to get his shirt off when he slid his body between my legs, using his hand to position his cock. He let out another low groan, kissing me hard, right before he angled it inside of me. I forgot everything in those few seconds...even before it occurred to me that I was supposed to be shielding us. I did the best I could, but it was hard to concentrate, and Revik was pulling on me even more than usual, fighting with any part of me that resisted his light. Pain shot through my body, and as the wave built, he gasped against my neck, fighting to get at more of my light even as his hands pulled me against him.
It hit me again how little time we'd had together. When he slid into me harder, I cried out, wrapping my legs around him.
I forgot about Shadow, about the fact that we were in the middle of a military op, about Jon and everything that happened in San Francisco, all the things and people I worried we might still be forced to give up. I found myself remembering the skydive instead, that feeling of peace...his relieved laugh, the way he held me once we reached the ground.
His pain worsened.
He held my wrist and arched into me again, winding his other arm around my waist to pull himself further inside. I fought to rebuild the shield that time, but his light half-fought mine, seemingly in reflex as he tried to open up more of my aleimi. I felt that urgency again, a near compulsion as he tried to get my body and light to submit. I didn't even want to fight him really, and I found myself letting go, letting myself soften under him.
He let out a low sound as he moved into me again, fully extended now. I could feel him fighting to hold back, moving with a deliberateness that worsened the pain, even before he started talking to me, his mouth by my ear, punctuating his words with groans. His light felt completely out of control, even as he controlled his body, holding me tighter and slowing more whenever he got close. The pain on him worsened the longer we went, until I couldn't feel anything else, or really care about anything else, either.
Then, out of nowhere, it changed.
I should have seen it for what it was. I should have known...sooner, I mean.
But in my defense, I was distracted...and it crept in, slow at first, not enough to throw me out, much less make me want to stop. Even so, I felt reactions sparking through my light, a near-panic I couldn't at first identify. The pain made it hard to think about what it was, to pinpoint the cause...until I felt that dark space open under him, a near futility.
That abyss. I knew that abyss. I remembered it from the tank.
Emotion wove into his pain and I felt that cascading over me, too, losing me in everything he'd thought and felt for the past few days. I felt him looking at the same in me, until I was feeling my own worry about Jon reflected back, as well as what I'd felt in San Francisco, that fear that Ditrini might really kill Revik, or hurt him badly before I could stop him...
His pain worsened, and that dark feeling worsened, too.
I found my fingers digging into his back as his emotions slammed into me harder.
Ditrini. Gods, he hated Ditrini...
More lived there, more than he'd let me feel, even before the wedding. I saw images of what he'd seen, flashes from Beijing mixed with that despair from that other place, the separation pain weaving into a feeling closer to self-hate. The walls he'd maintained around me thinned, leaving that space of nothingness below his feet, the feeling from him that he'd never leave that place, that nothing would ever change, that he'd never climb all the way out. I felt him there, felt him lost inside that vision of himself and the end of his life...that compulsion I'd nearly forgotten, that need to be touched and be safe that never felt sated. Separation pain mixed with a fear of abandonment, worse than I'd felt on him in months...really since we'd arrived in New York. His pain worsened in that, turned into a near-anger.
He hated what Ditrini had done to me. He hated how submissive I'd been with him, how much I'd let him do. He hated it, but it turned him on, too...and he hated that even more, hated himself and me for where his light wanted to go. Logically, he knew it wasn't my fault. Logically he understood...he'd submitted to worse over the years, but he still wanted to kill him.
He wanted him dead.
He was jealous of Wreg.
Both feelings hurt me, badly enough that I dug my fingers into his back
, then into his hair. When it only worsened, I couldn't remain silent.
"No!" I told him, staring up at his face. "Revik...no! No! Stop this! Stop...!"
His pain worsened when I forced him to stop what he was doing physically. It got bad enough that the light behind his irises ignited, turning them a sharp green. I made him look at me, and he groaned, closing his eyes longer than a blink before he ground into me with his hips.
"It's all right," he said. "It's all right, Allie..."
"No...it's not all right...what's the matter with you?"
"Gods, let me finish...please..."
"No," I said. "Tell me why first. Do you really think I'd ever leave you?"
He shook his head, gripping me tighter with his hands, but it didn't feel like an answer to my question. His eyes glassed behind that shock of green light. For a long moment, I didn't think he'd answer me at all, but when I didn't look away from his face, he let out an angry exhale, tightening his hand in my hair.
"Do you mean Wreg?" he said, his voice short, angry now.
"Sure," I said. "Start there. You can't really be jealous of him..."
"Of course I can," he said. "He's older...better with his light. I've seen him with it...I've seen him with Jon." His eyes met mine, and I saw a coldness there, something that made me flinch, that I hadn't seen in him for longer than I cared to remember. "...You're attracted to him, Allie. He's attracted to you. That's been true of both of you since you lived with us in the mountains. He watched you the whole time when we fucked in front of them...he watched you come." His expression hardened more, even as another shard of pain made me wince. "...Stared at you in those fucking clothes. For weeks. Months..."
Looking up at him, I felt completely lost.
Not just from what he'd said, but from what I felt on him, the way his eyes shone like mirrors, even filled with all of that light.
I found myself wrestling with words, then realized that nothing I said would really help. Instead, I opened my light, gripping his arms to hold him against me. I opened my heart, and fought him when he refused to let me in, fighting my own fear when I remembered this, too, how closed he could be once he decided I couldn't be trusted. I felt embarrassment on him, too, what felt like a harder anger at himself. Flashes came off his light, enough that I knew he was angry that he'd told me anything...angry that he even felt the way he did. Shame lived there, but also resentment, a colder anger that I could hurt him so deeply, that I seemed to care so little about what I'd done, either in New York or in Beijing.
I felt him trying to get me to leave him alone, too, to let him finish fucking me...assuring me that I didn't have to do anything, that I could stop trying to make him feel better...
I hit him in the chest, hard.
Hard enough that his eyes shifted to mine, even as his pain returned, sharper than before. I saw that predatory look return to his eyes, even as his back arched, seemingly against his will. His cock hardened inside me, enough that my own pain worsened.
Even so, I felt my jaw clench as I looked up at him.
"You'd rather I hit you than show you how much I love you?" I said. "Seriously?"
He only looked at me, his expression unmoving.
Staring back at him, I felt a pain in my chest, realizing I knew that look, too. A young, vulnerable pulse came off his heart, but it didn't feel open...it didn't feel right. He was in pain, but it was more than that. I felt that self-hate slide deeper into his light, finding the place where it lived for all of those years, the certainty that I would betray him, lie to him, fuck with his head. The certainty that all he could do was try to manipulate me or force me to stay...
But something in that expression was too familiar, too close to what I remembered at the rebel base...but more than that, in the tank. He'd looked at me the same way after that private meeting he had with Salinse. He'd looked at me like that when he'd been hurting from his disconnect from the Dreng, too.
And then, in a flash, I understood. Once I did, my mind cleared. Not entirely...but enough. Enough to feel the wrongness of all of this.
The construct.
Something in the construct was fucking with us.
More to the point, it was fucking with him.
As soon as it hit me, I realized that light was in me, too, pulling at me, exacerbating all of his fears, making them seem real to him through the articulation of my light. My thinking Wreg looked good since he'd fallen for Jon translated into my wanting to sleep with him. My fear of confronting Ditrini translated into my wanting to keep him safe. My wanting Ditrini dead translated into passion...a love-hate attraction that told Revik I hated him because I wanted him.
"Revik." I gripped his hair, caressing his face. "Baby, it's all right. This isn't you...it's not you. Listen to me, okay? We're being played right now..."
"Played?" His voice came out gruff, almost pained. "What the fuck are you talking about, Allie? Played by who? Ditrini?"
"Baby, no...no. Not Ditrini. Shadow..."
I saw that look in his eyes again, and it scared me.
I knew now why it was so familiar, even beyond my memory of him under Salinse. That same look lived in his face and his light the whole time he'd been a kid, during most, if not all of those sessions in the tank. Forcing him to relive the worst parts of his childhood brought that expression to his face even between sessions, until he was half out of his mind trying to avoid the pain that lived in those years. His light felt the same as it had then, too, strangled and pulled sideways in all the wrong ways. The light remained mostly his, but distorted, twisted, as if stretched too thin and viewed through a thick, cracked glass. He felt drained and manic all at once, as if he didn't have full control over who he was.
I fought the gray strands out of my own light, first...trying to get them out so I might be clear enough to help him. Fear exploded over my own aleimi as I felt my own buttons being pushed. I fought to breathe as a cascade of voices surrounded me, telling me that Revik belonged to them, telling me they would wear me down, wear us down...wear him down...no matter how hard I tried to keep them out. I held him tighter, feeling the hatred behind that clutch of silver and gray clouds, feeling that how badly they hated me, how much they wanted me dead. More than dead, they wanted me smashed, buried, annihilated. Most of all, they wanted me away from Revik. They hated me for interfering with him, for being in his light at all.
Overwhelmed, terrified, I screamed upwards through the Barrier.
I screamed for help.
I felt like I was drowning in the silver strands. I wanted Vash, but the feeling of him being gone overwhelmed me, too. Pain lived there, but more than pain, fear. I hadn't admitted to myself how much I counted on Vash to pull me out when I got lost in the dark, but that realization hit me now, too. I couldn't do it alone...I needed him. I was lost without him.
I tried to find him anyway, to find anyone who might help us.
Throwing up a packed cry for help, I managed to punch through the ceiling of that cloud. Fear had me half out of my head, but a part of me remained steady enough to go still, to search for that feeling of clarity.
I felt Balidor briefly, but kept going up, looking for an even clearer light...
When suddenly there it was.
A blue-white sun, intersected with a sword.
I'd never seen it before, not like this. I'd never seen it in the Barrier, never felt the shocking clarity of that sharp, white light. It felt so high up, I feared I would lose it...that I would fall and not be able to hold on to the utter stillness that hung there, so distant, yet somehow so close. When I looked for that other place I knew, the one Revik first showed me on that cruise ship all those years ago, the place of red clouds and diamond-studded ocean waters, it felt somehow connected to that blue-white sun, as if one reflected different aspects of the other.
In those few seconds, that white light burned those silver strands off.
Maybe not all of them, but enough that I could see again. I felt like myself, and I could
see the tangle of threads below and know them for what they were.
I held on to that instant of clarity...fought to keep it with me as I came back to Revik.
Even as I did, I knew. Without thinking it consciously, I knew what I had to do. Still holding onto that sword and sun behind my eyes and somewhere high above my head...
...I slammed a shield around both of us, locking it as tightly as I could, connecting it to that clear, silent space. My arms tightened around him as I did it. He didn't fight me, but I felt him tense, even as tendrils of pain coiled off his light as I cut off that space he knew...that he hated and feared but knew so well it seemed completely real to him when he got lost there. I just held him while I wove the light of that higher clarity over and around his light, forcing out the strands I could still see fighting to slide into him all sides. The subtlety there frightened me, as much if not more than the power behind it. I feared those small resonances it found and tapped so silently, connecting with him from the lightest of touches before winding into deeper resonances below those. It made me think of water slowly filling a set of tiny cracks.
I wove the shield back and forth, again and again, for what felt like a long stretch of silence.
I couldn't let it go. That fear remained, even when I could feel I had finished...even when I could no longer find any holes. I went over it again. Then again.
I went over it another time after that.
By then, Revik was caressing my face, his expression softer, but tired now, looking more drained than I'd seen him in months. He held me tighter, without pulling his body or his light out of mine. I felt understanding on his light, along with a deeper fear.
When I finally managed to calm down enough that I noticed I'd dug my fingers into his back, I forced myself to relax. He winced as I did, but kissed me in the same moment, pressing his face against mine. Love pulsed off his light, along with a gratitude that was harder to let in for some reason. He kissed me again, his fingers soft on my face and hair. After a long moment, we were just looking at one another.
"Do you think the others are okay?" I said finally.
Allie's War Season Three Page 70
