Thinking about that, I gritted my teeth. “No. I can’t sleep right now.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Me either.”
There was another, longer silence.
Given everything, there wasn’t much more to say.
Of course, at that point, I hadn’t started thinking yet about the specifics of the session itself. I hadn’t really thought through where we’d left things after our last session on Atwar’s boat, or what came next in our mutual timeline. I hadn’t thought about the reality of doing this now, where we might have an audience, even if it was a relatively small one.
I probably would have been a lot angrier at him when he first suggested it, if I’d had time to think about all those things––especially the part about what we’d be looking at.
Once I remembered what happened after he and I were first together at that cabin in the Himalayas, I told Revik I was going first. I told him I had to go first. I said if I didn’t, I doubted I’d make it through this at all.
And fuck him, I’d added, because there was no way it was going to be a short session.
Revik didn’t argue––with any of it.
I also felt him ping Balidor to warn him what was coming. I felt Balidor acknowledge, and tell us to go ahead, that he and the others would do their best to maintain shields over the rest of the cabin.
Grudgingly or not, I could see Revik’s logic. We had eleven hours to kill.
Neither of us was going to be able to sleep for eleven hours, or even seven hours, or likely five, no matter what we told ourselves. We might as well use the time.
We were likely to have a lot less down-time once we reached the other end of the ocean.
So I went first.
And it sucked as much that time as I remembered it sucking the first time.
HE FELT A lot more during that whole experience than I’d expected, truthfully.
At first I thought it was just residual reactions in him from hearing, seeing, feeling and experiencing my end of things. My end was difficult––for both of us. I felt it hurt him. Even before he started crying, I felt the pain that went through him from watching everything that happened to me in D.C. through my eyes.
Not only the end, when I walked in on him playing seer prostitute with Kat and Ullysa and whoever else, but everything Terian put me through before that. I showed him my fears about him dying chained to those cabin steps. I showed him everything about how they’d kept me chained in that basement, and everything I’d endured with the humans there, and from Terian, and from Raven.
I showed him the day Terian nearly killed me. I showed him all of it, even though I’d never let myself think about any of that or remember it since.
I let him see everything Terian did.
I let him hear everything Terian said to me.
I showed him how Nenzi, the child-like, Syrimne version of Revik himself, tried to save my life, and how Maygar tried to help.
I let him see everything.
There might have been a sadistic element to that.
Maybe I was mad at him for making me feel and experience all of that again. Maybe I still blamed him on some level for everything that happened to me in D.C., and not only because I’d walked in on him fucking Kat. Maybe I still saw myself as some kind of martyr for having gone through all of it and let it go, or maybe I’d never really let it go at all.
Maybe I was still angry about all of it, on some level I didn’t like to admit to myself.
I felt Revik take all of that in.
I felt him feel the anger that still lived in me around that, around seeing him with Kat, around what felt like the ultimate betrayal after I’d done everything I possibly could to stay alive for him. I felt the pain in his heart as he looked at all of it, and when I didn’t really know how to comfort him, he cried.
I was still too angry to comfort him. I didn’t want to pretend I wasn’t anymore.
I could feel he didn’t want me to pretend, so he cried alone, and I more or less watched him do it, still resentful that somehow he ended up being the victim in all that, despite everything.
I knew none of my feelings were wholly rational.
I knew Revik himself hadn’t been rational back then either.
I knew this because everyone I knew, from my brother to Chandre to Balidor to Wreg to Cass to Vash had told me Revik hadn’t been rational back then. I’d heard in minute detail just how irrational Revik had been while I’d been locked up in Terian’s White House.
They’d all wanted me to forgive him, from Vash on down to Jon. They’d all wanted me to see him as the victim in what occurred, as desperate, as out of his head with worry for me. And for much of the following few years, I did see it that way. I did so logically––but I also saw him that way because I’d more or less forced myself to see it that way.
In the process, somehow everything that happened to me got lost.
I felt Revik feel that now.
I felt him realize it at a level that maybe I hadn’t, and truthfully, I’m not sure I would have been so angry if it hadn’t been for that. It took him seeing how my whole experience had been erased for me to see it being erased.
He saw how I’d swallowed it, how I’d made it all about him, too.
So when we flipped, turning to his side of things––his memories of everything that happened when Terian took me from the cabin and after––I wasn’t sure how much of what I felt off him was residual emotion from my session, and how much of it had to do with his.
I’d expected his emotional reactions to be somewhat muted, at least compared to mine. From what Jon told me, Revik was already hooked into Salinse’s construct by the time they left Asia, working with Wreg and fully tied into the Dreng. I knew he’d been acting somewhat violent and crazy during that period, but I figured that was more a ruthless kind of crazy, less of an emotional rollercoaster kind of crazy.
I’d been wrong.
I don’t know if it was partly from him being so close to the boy, Nenzi, or that his light and mind were already being fractured by the Dreng and Salinse. I don’t know if it was that he’d already lost a wife to death, and had a near-debilitating fear, unconscious or not, of causing the death of every woman he’d ever been involved with or given a damn about.
Obviously, both of us were suffering from being interrupted halfway into our bond.
Whatever the exact mixture of causes feeding into Revik’s state of mind, Jon hadn’t been exaggerating about how unstable he’d been.
Being in his mind during that period, feeling and seeing what he saw, as well as his attempts to hold it together by being as logical and ruthless as he could be, made his decisions at the time seem almost rational. I felt the skewed perspective of the construct where he lived, the nightmarish quality of it for him, the familiarity of it, the way it threw him back into a way of thinking and perceiving the world that he’d maintained through most of his youth.
I don’t know if seeing all that made me think it really was all about him, or that he’d been more of a victim in that situation than I was… but it definitely gutted the worst of my anger.
Watching him in that staging area they’d set up in a Washington D.C. seer club, his fury with Ullysa for bringing Kat, his near constant drinking in an attempt to control his own mental instability and his lack of sleep––I felt like I was watching someone go insane.
I thought watching him play prostitute in the White House itself would bring my anger back all over again, but that didn’t really happen either.
Instead, I saw him worrying he’d flip out and kill everyone in that room.
I saw him hating Kat and wanting to kill her, hating Ullysa for trying to make it easier on him––terrified out of his mind that I’d kill him, or worse, divorce him for what he was doing.
By the end, I didn’t know how to feel.
I saw him shoot the boy Nenzi, saw him gripping hold of me, losing me all over again, begging me to not let it happen… and my anger at him van
ished entirely.
I don’t know why.
I didn’t really go through the motions of trying to figure out how I felt in terms of logic, or the individual ways in which I could rationalize or not rationalize what he’d done or not done. I just felt it through him––his desperation, his willingness to do whatever he had to do to get me out of there, and somehow, that was enough.
It was finally enough.
It was strange to me that, in the end, the session and memories I’d been dreading the most had in some ways ended up being the easiest.
Well, not during maybe, but after.
Revik spent a lot of time talking to me after we finished, but a lot of what we said is kind of a blur. I think he was relieved to have that part over too, but more than that, he seemed relieved I was feeling about it.
“You’ve been angry at me for a long time,” he said, after it had been quiet for a few minutes.
Curled up against him on those reclined seats, I only nodded.
“I didn’t know I was,” I admitted. “Not really.”
“It’s coming out more now. Even before this.” I heard him smile where his head rested on the cushion above mine. “Since China. Maybe the pregnancy is making you more honest.”
Wincing a little, I nodded to that, too. “Sorry.”
He shook his head, wrapping his arm around me tighter. “Don’t be,” he murmured, sending me a pulse of heat. “No, it’s good, Allie. It’s really good. Honestly, it’s a relief.” He kissed the side of my face, nuzzling his cheek against mine.
He hadn’t started to crash yet at that point.
I don’t know how long we were into the flight, because I’d forgotten all about keeping track. I’d forgotten about him being on a light and telekinesis high. I’d forgotten about the probability of him crashing when he came down.
I just wanted to get this done so we could let it all go––which is why I suggested it.
I suggested we keep going. Do one more session.
He agreed, maybe too readily, just like I suggested it too readily.
I don’t think either of us thought too hard about the next part of our timeline together, either.
“JESUS CHRIST! REVIK! Revik! Put him down! Put him the fuck down! Now!”
I was holding Cass back by the arms, smacking her light, distracting her and knocking her aleimi off-center whenever it started to filter up into her higher telekinetic structures.
I could feel the irrationality coming over her, the panic.
I felt the genuine fear in her light, even as her eyes stared at Revik, watching his face and hands where he held Balidor against the plane’s front bulkhead, not far from where they’d been sitting before Revik made his way to the front of the plane.
I could feel her calculating, too––calculating how tightly Revik held him, whether he was hurting him, how badly he might be hurting him, how serious his intent was to hurt him.
The other seers stood around Revik, Cass, Balidor and me in a disjointed half-ring. Most of them were behind me. I could feel they had no idea what to do.
“Revik!” I snapped. “Put him the fuck down! Or I’m going to have to knock you out!”
He turned at that, staring at me.
His eyes glowed a faint green.
They sparked brighter and dimmer in erratic charges, like a dying battery losing the last of its juice, and I could see the dip and rise of his light, the real grief behind his loss of control. Looking at him, I knew this wasn’t all about me, or about the memories we’d just shared.
He was coming down off the telekinesis.
Everything he’d done in Rome was hitting him.
Feeling that much, I opened my light.
“Hey,” I said, softer. “Baby, come on. Put him down. You’re freaking out his mate. And me. None of that is relevant anymore. None of it matters.”
After a few seconds of holding him in my light, of feeding his, holding his gaze, I saw him begin to really see me. I saw him take in my face, my light, remembering me, remembering himself, remembering where we were.
I felt him realize what I had––about Rome, about what he’d done there.
Briefly, he seemed to be coming back. The sparks coming off his light began to even out, then to soften. Something in his face perceptibly relaxed.
His fingers loosened, right before he stepped back from where he’d held Balidor. I saw in my periphery where the Adhipan leader landed on his feet, then immediately leaned against the bulkhead, gasping, sucking in deeper breaths as disbelief, anger and relief warred in his light.
I never took my eyes off Revik’s face, or off where his gaze held mine.
I was about to approach him, to pull him away from Balidor altogether, when Revik looked past me, over my shoulder.
Without warning, everything I’d seen changing in him abruptly reversed. A flood of colder fury left his light. His expression darkened, his narrow mouth hardening in a line.
I turned my head.
I was already scowling, wondering what or who set him off.
Seeing Feigran standing there, I scowled harder. I felt Revik’s rage build as he stared at the other Elaerian, as he remembered what Terian had done to me in D.C.
Turning back to Revik, I held up a hand.
“No,” I said, firm. “No. We’re not doing this.”
Walking up to him, I took his hand in mine. When he looked down at me, I shook my head, once, holding his gaze.
“No,” I repeated. “It’s Feigran… not Terian. Nothing is the same now. None of this. And you need light. You need light before you’re allowed to beat up one of our friends for something that happened years ago, that doesn’t even matter now. Especially something that wasn’t even their fault. You know the score with ‘Dori. You know he’s with Cass now. And Terian is dead. So we’re going back to our seats and I’m going to give you light. Then we’ll talk.”
It wasn’t until I spoke aloud that I realized how weird I sounded, too.
We really did sound like we were on drugs.
Rather than voice any of that, I just held Revik’s gaze. I watched him struggle to hear my words, even as his jaw hardened, as another cloud of anger left his light.
Turning, he glared briefly at Feigran.
“Motherfucker,” he growled. “I should have killed you.”
Feigran looked bewildered. “Beloved brother, if I have harmed you in any way––”
I held up a hand, first to Feigran, then to Revik.
Feigran fell silent, but I felt that bewildered look expand into something that felt a lot more like hurt puppy. Glancing at him, I saw him watching Revik sadly and frowned.
“Feigran, why don’t you go sit with Stanley?” I suggested.
Feigran exuded a denser pulse of hurt, but didn’t argue.
Turning with his head down, like a sad schoolboy, he wandered over to the other side of the plane, walking around Stanley to slump into the window seat near the front bulkhead. Next to him, Stanley was watching me with a tense look on his face.
I focused back on Revik.
“Come on,” I said, softer. “You need light.”
Tugging on his hand, I pulled him further away from Balidor and towards the far aisle, so we wouldn’t pass directly by Cass, or venture back in the general vicinity of Feigran.
Leading him towards the back of the plane, I felt eyes on us.
I could feel Cass was still pissed off, but also that she was relieved, and angrily jealous once she realized what Revik had been flipping out about. From her light, she was also still struggling to control her fear that Revik might break Balidor’s neck.
I fought not to feel any of that, or to feel any empathy about it.
It wasn’t easy though, truthfully.
I knew part of my adrenaline rush came from her, and the terror I’d gotten off her light when she thought Balidor’s life was in danger.
Pushing that from my mind, I brought Revik back to our original row of seats, and pushed him
down into his, making him take the window seat so he’d at least have to crawl over me if he flipped out a second time.
Once he was sitting there, I crawled into his lap, making him jump violently.
“No.” He turned his face away, pain coming off him in a cloud. “No, Allie. Don’t.” Clenching his jaw, he shook his head. “I won’t be able to say no right now. Don’t push me, please. Please, Allie.”
“I just wanted to kiss,” I told him, curling my arms around his neck. “Can we just kiss for a while? I’ll just feed you light, and we’ll kiss.” I made the seer gesture for a vow. “I promise I won’t try to push you into anything else. Promise.”
He gave me a sideways look, his eyes and light skeptical.
I couldn’t exactly blame him, given how I’d been lately, but I meant my words.
I could also feel his light still reacting to what he’d witnessed of me and ‘Dori.
Honestly, I hadn’t seen that coming at all. I didn’t think the Balidor thing would even register for him, not after all this time––not after how close the two of them seemed since, not given everything Revik knew about why I’d done it.
He hadn’t seemed to react as much to my side of things, though.
It was what he felt off Balidor through me that infuriated him.
He’d gotten out of his seat and headed for the front of the plane before it hit me that he wasn’t fucking around, that he was seriously pissed off.
Half of what he’d said to Balidor before he grabbed him around the throat didn’t even make sense. It didn’t make sense to me, and I had my doubts it made sense to Revik. It definitely didn’t make sense to Balidor or Cass. I heard garbled accusations along the line of,
“You were my fucking friend… I trusted you! I fucking trusted you with her! You mate poaching fucker!”
I’d seen Balidor’s utterly confused look. From his expression, he had no idea what Revik was even talking about.
Cass seemed to understand better than Balidor. She seemed to catch on quicker, at least. She stood up, faster than ‘Dori, stepping to get in between them before I could, but Revik moved her aside as if she wasn’t even there.
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