Present For Today

by W. J. May

  “My sister does.” He cocked his head to the side, struck with the sudden similarities between the two of them. “The others usually stick to wine or vodka.”

  “Yeah, well, wine and vodka are expensive.” She walked into the kitchen, muttering under her breath. “I’ve got beer.”

  She came back a second later with two bottles. Cheap beer. American. The kind that Gabriel hadn’t had in a long time. Before he could offer to do it first she smashed them both down upon the coffee table, expertly popping off the caps before pressing one into his hand.

  “To you,” she clinked her bottle against his, “to your royally screwed up life.”

  He laughed quietly and toasted with her, watching as she downed the bottle in about four seconds flat. When she finished with hers, she took his and downed that as well.

  “You want another one?” she offered, returning to the kitchen to replenish their supply, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she’d stolen it before he could even take a sip.

  “Sure...thanks.”

  He watched carefully as she grabbed two more out of the fridge, took a second to steady her shaking hands, then joined him back on the couch. Determined to keep it together.

  They drank in silence for a while. She kept her eyes on the table. He kept his eyes on her.

  It hadn’t been his idea to visit that memory. But his ideas had very little to do with their direction this morning. From the second they’d sat down together on the couch, she’d taken control. Steered more heavily than she had before, searching for something specific.

  She hadn’t failed to notice the casual manner with which he’d mentioned his bullet wound the day before. The dismissive indifference to the way it had been done. After a night to mull it over, she had come to the only possible conclusion that made sense.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d been shot.

  She was right about that.

  No, it wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the second, or the third, or even the fourth. But he felt no need to share that with her now. The girl was going to have nightmares as it was.

  “So, do you mnemokinetics always drink on the job?” he teased, popping open the new bottles with a casual smile. “Or is this just a special occasion?”

  There was a crack in the ice. A slight relaxing of her delicate shoulders.

  “You know, before you came along the weirdest thing I’d ever gotten was a man who wanted to go back and relive every moment he’d spent with his pet parrot.” Gabriel snorted beer through his nose, and she shook her head with a wry grin. “For weeks, it was just the three of us. Him, me, and Spartacus—that was the parrot.” She smiled for a moment at the memory before the humor faded from her eyes. “...and then came you.”

  The beer went back on the table as she twisted around to face him, reaching without thinking to take his hand, even though the two of them stayed firmly in the present.

  “How old were you in that memory?”

  He glanced down at their entwined fingers, trying to remember and trying to forget all at the same time. “I’m not sure. Maybe twelve or thirteen.”

  She absorbed this like a punch to the face. Cringing with almost visible pain as her eyes flickered down to his leg. When they came back up, they were hesitant. Afraid to set him off. “Were there ever any good times?” she asked tentatively. “I mean...anything at all?”

  Gabriel thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “No.” His voice was quiet, but firm. “There were easier times. He was away a lot—that was easier. Sometimes, it was just me and Jen, or me and Jason.”

  She nodded slowly, her eyes locked onto his every move. “Jason...he’s the guy with the dark hair? The one with the falcon tatù?”

  As if on cue, there was a sudden tug on their hands. Her ink had kicked in reflexively as the man floated into his memory, and before they knew it they were twenty years in the past.

  “Can’t I just stay with you?” A tiny voice floated out of the dark, one that trembled and shook with every word. “Please? Just one more night?”

  “You’ve been there every night for a week,” another voice answered gently. This one was deeper. Reassuring. “It’s time to try it on your own, okay, buddy?”

  Gabriel and Natasha opened their eyes to a truly heartbreaking scene. A man and a child in a room underground. One, trying to ease a transition. The other, terrified to let go of his hand.

  “Please?” Gabriel asked again, staring around the darkened corners with a look of utter fright. His golden spirals shook as he inched closer to the man’s legs. “I’ll be so quiet—”

  “Hey.” Jason knelt to the ground in a fluid motion, putting them at eye level. “Do you know how fast I can be back here if you call for me? Do you have any idea?”

  There was a swish of air, then he was gone. For a second, young Gabriel looked truly terrified. But before the emotion could even settle on his face Jason was back, kneeling in the exact same place he’d been before.

  “That fast.”

  The curls flew back from Gabriel’s forehead as a reluctant smile tugged at the corners of his lips. One that was made significantly bigger when Jason pulled some candles out of a bag and started placing them at various locations around the room. It only took a second to get them all lit, and when he was finished the entire place was bathed in a soft glow.

  “See? This place isn’t so bad. It’s a lot nicer than the one I got when I first came here.”

  Gabriel squared his tiny shoulders and took a deep breath. A lot braver now that there was light. Now that Jason was standing beside him. “How did you get out of it?” he asked. “Your old room.”

  It was a strange question, asked by what was undoubtedly a very precocious child. One who didn’t belong locked away below the ground. So far away from the sun. One who deserved so much better than a dank prison cell nestled beneath a cemetery.

  A muscle twitched in the back of Jason’s jaw, but he kept his face perfectly calm.

  “I promised to do some very bad things.”

  Gabriel nodded slowly. Absorbing it with the blind faith of a child before peering up at him once more. “Will I have to do that?”

  Only someone watching for it could have seen the tiny chain reaction of things that happened next. The dark emotion that flickered across Jason’s handsome face. The way there was a sudden hitch in his breathing. The unspeakable pain that tightened his eyes as he gazed down at the little child staring up at him so trustingly in the dark.

  A second later he scooped him up, setting him down on the bed and pulling up the blankets in a single motion. “Get some sleep, kid. I’m right down the hall.”

  Gabriel watched with wide eyes as he blew out the candles, one by one. His fingers clenched a little tighter around the sheets with each faded flame, and by the time Jason swept towards the door he was in a full-blown panic.

  “Wait—”

  There was a swish of air and the man was kneeling in front of him once more. Eyes twinkling with that endlessly reassuring smile. “I’m right down the hall.”

  This time, it was Gabriel who ended the session. Deliberately shutting down the memory as the world around them brightened, and they found themselves in Brooklyn once more. For a moment, all was quiet. Then his shoulders fell with a silent sigh.

  “Jason did everything for me,” he said quietly. “What he could. Whenever things got so bad that I—” He cut off suddenly, shaking his head. “He was always there.”

  Natasha watched him in silence. Beyond the point of words.

  “He took me to a carnival once,” Gabriel said suddenly, his eyes lighting up with the echo of a grin. “Cromfield had been riding me harder than usual, and he was determined to give me a normal day. A normal kid day. Bought me all the soda and junk food I could eat. Took me on all the rides.” He laughed shortly, shaking his head as he remembered. “I threw up in his car.”

  Natasha’s face warmed with a returning smile, but it was a smile that faded the longer she sta
red at the floor. “So, how did a guy like that...”

  She trailed off, and Gabriel finished the question with a caustic grin.

  “...end up working for the greatest evil mastermind the world has ever seen?”

  Her eyes darted up nervously, worried she had offended him. But Gabriel didn’t mind. In truth, she could have asked the same question about him. He took a long swig of beer and leaned back against the couch, eyes drifting off as he recalled things that happened decades in the past.

  “From what I was told, Cromfield got Jason by drugging his drink at a bar. It would have been the only way to catch him,” he added thoughtfully. “The man was too fast for anything else.” He was quiet for a moment, then took another swig of beer. “The drugs kept him slow until Cromfield could sufficiently sink his teeth into him. It wasn’t long before he got hooked.”

  Gabriel’s eyes clouded as he stared into the past. Looking back as an adult, it was easy to see the things he had missed before. Things that had been lost on the eyes of a child. Times when he’d burst into Jason’s room unannounced, only to find him slumped over his desk, eyes closed with one arm stretched out in front of him. Times when Jason had a hard time waking up. Times when Gabriel would tug fearfully on his sleeve, asking if he was sick.

  “It was the only thing that let him sleep after all the crap he’d seen.” He gazed out the window, peeling the damp paper off the bottle. “The only thing that calmed him down.”

  Natasha looked down at her hands, a small line creasing the center of her forehead. “Yeah, but you can get drugs anywhere. Why stay?”

  For a second, all was quiet. Then Gabriel looked up with a truly heartbreaking smile. “Because of me.”

  It was something he had never admitted. Not to anyone. Not Rae, not Carter. Not even Angel. Most days, he had trouble admitting it to himself.

  “A few years before I met him, Jason lost his little brother in a fire. It was one of those big apartment fires. Nothing anyone could do. Jason was there, but he wasn’t fast enough to save him. He was fifteen.”

  Fifteen. Just one more year, and my entire life might have been very different.

  “It’s why the big brother complex hit him so hard. Why he was so protective. Other people might have seen it as a strength—Cromfield saw it as a weakness. When Jason was first brought in, he flat-out refused to lift a finger to Cromfield’s cause. He was tortured. Held without food and water. Continually beaten to within an inch of his life. It didn’t matter. When Cromfield asked the question, he told him where to go. Said he’d rather die than be a part of it.”

  Gabriel’s voice had dropped to a low monotone. An emotionless narration that had Natasha hanging on every word.

  “Now, when most people say that, you can take it with a grain of salt. Fear of death is a powerful motivator. You’d be surprised the things you’ll agree to with that particular threat hanging over your head. But Jason was different. He actually meant it.” Gabriel took a deep breath, reluctantly adding his own chapter to the story. “Since Jason’s own life wasn’t enough to motivate him, Cromfield found a life that was.”

  Natasha blinked very slowly. Unable to process the depths of the depravity. “Cromfield used you as leverage? Living leverage?”

  Gabriel picked up his beer, downing the rest of it in a single gulp. “He told Jason he’d kill me if he didn’t help. So, Jason helped.”

  For the second time, the tiny living room went abruptly silent. Natasha could think of nothing to say, and Gabriel was done talking altogether. He’d long ago reconciled the fact that there were debts in this world that could never be paid. Sacrifices he could never live up to.

  “I don’t get it,” Natasha finally murmured, shaking her head as her fingers tightened around her beer. “I don’t get why you all didn’t just leave. Just drive away and never go back.”

  Gabriel sighed quietly, bowing his head as his golden hair spilled into his eyes. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Then explain it to me,” she replied instantly, eyes glowing with fierce curiosity. A primal need to make sense of the dark tragedies that had invaded her predictable life.

  Gabriel stared at her for a moment, wondering how to make her understand. How did you make anyone understand? Anyone who wasn’t there. When he finally answered, it was like he was drawing the words from some deep part of himself. A place he had tried to hide. “At first, you always plan to leave. To beat him. Eventually. Somehow. Then, little by little, things start to change. You feel too guilty to leave. Like you’ve done too much, seen too much to just walk back out onto the street like it never happened. You’re ashamed. You feel the need to quarantine, to stay with others like you. You feel the need to mitigate damages. You convince yourself that maybe, if you stay, you can prevent select atrocities. Maybe, if you stay, you can make a bad situation better. Save other people from the things that happened to you.” Gabriel’s eyes burned a hole in the floor, as he lay every last card upon the table. “You’re complicit. But that isn’t the worst of it. Not by far. Before you realize what’s happening, before you can possibly stop it...you start to feel beholden.”

  And now, she’ll hate me forever.

  There weren’t two ways of looking at it. He’d admitting something shocking. Something that, given the context of everything Natasha had just seen, would send her running for the hills. Firing off shots over her shoulder in the hopes that one of them might finish him off.

  What kind of person feels pity for a monster? What kind of person gets attached?

  “...I can understand that.”

  The world around them froze as Gabriel slowly lifted his head. There was a dull ringing in his ears, and as he stared at her in shock he felt certain he couldn’t have heard her correctly.

  “It doesn’t matter how terrible the man was, the things he did...he was still the closest thing to family you ever had. The only thing you ever knew.”

  Her lovely eyes locked onto his, and for the first time in his life Gabriel Alden found himself feeling something he had only ever dreamed of. Absolution.

  “No one has ever understood that before,” he murmured.

  That a part of him would have taken a blade to the chest, just to get a kind word. That when Cromfield died, a part of him had grieved. Grieved, despite the fact that he’d wished for it with every fiber of his being.

  Natasha stared at him for a moment, then quickly dropped her gaze, pushing her hair away from her face as she turned the conversation towards things of a lighter nature. “So, whatever happened to Jason?”

  There was a split-second pause.

  “He died.”

  Her head snapped up as her lips fell open in shock. At this point she should hardly have been surprised, but it still took her a second to recover before she jerked in alarm.

  “When did it get so dark outside?”

  For a second, Gabriel thought she might be speaking in metaphors. Then he followed her gaze to the window. “When the sun went down. About three hours ago.”

  She glanced down at her phone, then abruptly pushed to her feet.

  “Crap! I have to go home.”

  Home?

  Gabriel glanced around in surprise. His eyes flickered to the mattress pushed into the corner of what he had assumed was her bedroom. “I thought—”

  “I don’t live here,” she interrupted, stuffing her arms through the sleeves of her leather coat. “I just rent the space to work. I live with my foster-dad across town.”

  “Oh...” He hesitated for a moment, thrown a little off-balance, then pushed just as hastily to his feet, gathering up his things as she headed to the door. “Want me to walk you home?”

  “It’s cool. I got it.” She rummaged around in her bag, located a taser, and checked the switch to make sure it was on. “See you tomorrow.”

  He cast a wary glance outside, eyes flickering back to the taser. “Yeah...see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 7

  Am I a stalker? Is this technically stalk
ing?

  Gabriel followed along behind Natasha as she made her way through Brooklyn. Head down. Hands in his pockets. Sticking to the shadows. Avoiding street lamps at all costs.

  It certainly felt like stalking, but he was too preoccupied to care. At the moment, he was weighing the chances of an earth-shatteringly beautiful girl making it all the way across town in the dead of night and arriving at her destination without incident. He was not liking her chances.

  Funny, he wouldn’t have felt this way about any of the other women in his life.

  Molly would trigger some typhoon, Angel trolled the streets at night just for fun, and a part of Gabriel would have to pity the man who tried to get the drop on Rae Kerrigan.

  It wasn’t a matter of ink, because he wouldn’t worry for a second about Devon and his tatù, Julian—who had passive ink—or even Luke, who had no ink at all. They’d have protected their girlfriends/fiancées/wives at all costs as well. But there was a fundamental difference between this girl and the rest of the people in his life.

  She’d grown up with danger but, unlike Angel, it wasn’t supernatural. She’d grown up with tragedy, but it didn’t result from epic battles or from being held at gunpoint in Buckingham Palace. She had, quite simply, grown up in an entirely different world. It fascinated him in a way.

  A world free from the same baggage and damage as the rest of them. A world that had somehow remained immune to the whole Cromfield story. She was innocent to it. Untouched by its darkness. She had darkness of her own, of course but, considering she was one of the most fascinating people he’d ever met, her life was surprisingly normal.

  ...except for the army of mutant robots and the ability to pull memories from my head.

  It was the taser that had done it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one of them in practice. He couldn’t think of a single person he knew who would ever think of using such a device. He couldn’t think of anyone who would ever need to.

  It’s not stalking, it’s just common sense. The girl obviously can’t protect herself, so I’ll just keep an eye on things until she’s safely inside. Nothing more to it than that.