Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  I thought all that, even as Angie finally shut the door behind me.

  As soon as that door shut, the anger on Revik seemed to dissipate. He stopped walking in the corridor, looking me over with his eyes and light, maybe twenty yards from the door to the room that housed what remained of my old life, and the people I’d known before I met him.

  As he looked me over, his eyes and hands reverted back to that hesitant caution.

  I saw him notice my clothes, and probably how I smelled from the look on his face.

  When he spoke, he said the last thing I expected him to say, though.

  “Are you stoned?” he said, still looking me over.

  I tried to remember when I smoked that joint with Sasquatch, and frowned.

  The others had been smoking, too. I knew the smell might be on me from later joints they’d smoked: Sasquatch, Jaden and Frankie. It could have lingered in my hair and clothes, long after it left my system. I couldn’t think through everything else in my light well enough to decide what would be the most truthful answer to his question.

  I thought maybe I had been stoned the night before.

  I knew I’d stopped accepting joints when I got dizzy. I waved all their offers off after that, but I couldn’t remember how long ago that actually was.

  Subjectively, it felt like days.

  When I didn’t answer right away, Revik exhaled.

  I felt a pulse of anger leave his light, although again, it didn’t feel aimed at me.

  I don’t know if he read my light for the answer to his question, or if he just made up his own answer, based on my silence and the expression on my face. In the end, I felt him decide to let it go, although it seemed to take him more than one try. Clicking under his breath, he shook his head, as if pushing it once and for all from his light.

  He took my hand then, his fingers firm.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice gruff.

  He tugged on my arm gently, his light asking me to go with him down the green and gray corridor, back towards the middle of the ship.

  I didn’t try to fight him.

  The thought of fighting him never crossed my mind, really. I didn’t feel angry, or anything much at all, not towards him.

  I didn’t ask him where we were going.

  37

  SMASHED

  HE BROUGHT ME back to the tank.

  We passed people on the way who stared at us.

  The seers manning the security station outside the tank stared at us, too. I took in their faces and eyes without tracking any of them.

  Revik spoke to them, but I didn’t hear much of anything he said.

  At the very end, I did hear him tell them to leave us alone.

  I felt them resist that request, although I didn’t probe their reactions very deeply.

  I heard Revik talk to at least one person on the comm on the way there, but I only heard a handful of those words. I heard him say to someone, “Yeah, I have her,” not long before he clicked off, glancing at me, as if to make sure I was still the one holding his hand.

  I don’t remember him saying anything to me directly, not after that first handful of words. For most of that walk across the ship, he led me by the hand, silent.

  I think the lack of sleep was seriously catching up to me by then.

  When we finally got past all the security protocols and back inside the locked down construct of the tank, he didn’t let go of me. He led me straight to the washroom, through the low door that stood to the left of his desk and into the narrow cubicle.

  Tugging me in there with him gently, he didn’t let go of my hand as he leaned down to punch in keys to turn on the water and then to adjust the temperature controls.

  He didn’t say anything after he got the shower water on.

  Frowning slightly, he just turned to me, and made a motion with one hand, a seer’s shorthand for asking permission.

  Seeing him looking at my clothes, I nodded.

  He didn’t wait, but started undressing me right there.

  I found myself flinching slightly, feeling pain on him, and on myself, but I didn’t shy away from his fingers. He got the combat shirt off me and started unbuckling my belt, tugging my pants down past my hips and then squatting to take the last of them off my feet and ankles.

  I saw sand fall to the floor.

  I saw it from the pants, then from my underwear. I saw him look down at that, as if stuck on that single fact for a few beats of time, even as more pain left his light.

  He still didn’t say anything.

  Instead he stuffed my clothes in the chute in the wall and straightened back to his full height, facing me. He remained in front of me as he started to undress himself, beginning pretty much the instant he had me naked. Realizing he intended to shower with me, I tried to decide how I felt about that.

  But I didn’t really––feel about it.

  So I just stood there, watching as he shoved his shirt, then his pants through the same hole in the wall. He unhooked the hose from the shower then, and washed the sand on the tile floor into the drain. I watched it go, still not moving.

  Then he took my hand.

  He led me into the cubicle and under the hot water. I stood there as he washed me off with soap, then with the same hose he’d used on the floor. He washed my whole body twice, then stood behind me and shampooed my hair.

  He still didn’t really talk to me.

  I heard him mutter a few times, mostly about me smelling like smoke, but I couldn’t tell if that was directed at me or not. I felt pain on him, too, but he seemed to be trying to control that, or at least keep the worst of it from my light. The third time he started muttering under his breath, that time in Russian, I glanced up and back at him.

  When he didn’t meet my gaze, I just looked at his face, then his body, then down at his erection. He didn’t try to hide it from me, not exactly, but he took hold of my chin, and moved it gently away so that I wasn’t looking at him there, either.

  Then he went back to scrubbing sand and smoke out of my hair with his fingers.

  He shampooed it three times before he seemed to think it was enough.

  After he’d rinsed off all of the soap and turned off the water, he wrapped me in one of the big towels. He steered me into the other room, his hands still light on my shoulders and back, but holding a denser purpose again.

  I felt better. A lot better.

  But yeah, still pretty weird.

  Now it felt like I was supposed to talk to him.

  I wasn’t sure how, or even if I had anything to say. I wondered if he’d let me sleep first, but when he sat down next to me on the bed, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, he didn’t lay down, or move in such a way that would have made it easy for me to lay down. I would have had to climb over him to reach the other side of the bed.

  I didn’t, though. I could feel him wanting to talk to me, so I just waited.

  After another pause, he motioned for me to turn around, and I realized he was holding one of those spiky brushes for my hair.

  I just sat there while he combed the tangles out of my long hair.

  I was thinking again––as well as I could. That pain had come back to my chest, but everything else still felt pretty numb. Maybe that’s why it seemed like a good idea to try to talk to him then, before the rest of my light came back for real.

  “I need to sleep,” I told him, facing the wall as he sat behind me.

  He didn’t answer.

  Feeling that pain in my chest worsen, I exhaled, fighting to think about what to say, the words that had been in my head off and on for the past few days.

  “I’m sorry I left,” I told him.

  He stopped brushing my hair. He didn’t say anything, so I swallowed, still not looking back at him.

  “I’ll do whatever you want, Revik. I just…” I fought to think. “I don’t know how to… end this.”

  “End what?” he said.

  I glanced back at him, in spite of mysel
f. “This,” I said, at a loss. “This… thing I created. Leaving like I did.”

  He only looked at me, wearing his infiltrator mask.

  “You think that’s the problem?” he said. “That you left?”

  I looked down at his body, at the dark towel he wore around his waist. I had a sudden impulse to ask him to turn around, so I could see his back, so I could look at what Ullysa had done to him. I didn’t, though.

  Instead I looked up, meeting his gaze.

  “I want to talk about it,” I told him. “Just not now.”

  “Talk about what?” he said. “What do you think we need to talk about, Allie?”

  I blinked, then looked down at his chest, thinking about his back again. Not wanting him to hear my thoughts, I shook my head, bringing my eyes back up to his face.

  “Maybe she could show me,” I said finally. “Next time, I mean. Maybe I could go, and she could show me how. We could talk about that.”

  Pain flickered over his expression.

  It seemed to hit him without warning––intensely enough that he winced, looking away from me. I felt him fight to control it, right before it worsened. After a few more seconds, when he didn’t speak, I laid a hand on his thigh over the towel.

  “Revik,” I said. “It’s all right.”

  He shook his head, gripping my wrist in his hand.

  “I’m just tired,” I said. “Too tired to talk about this. But I will. I promise I will. We’ll figure it out… okay?”

  For a long time, he just looked down at where he held my wrist, his expression unmoving. I felt him fighting with his own feelings. I felt him thinking, too, even as those feelings grew more intense. I couldn’t untangle any of it. I couldn’t even be sure he was thinking about me, or if something else was bothering him about what I’d said.

  I didn’t want to deal with his shame. I didn’t want to deal with any of the crap we’d already been over and over again in the first tank.

  I wanted to help him with this, though.

  He let out a strangled laugh.

  When I looked up, he wiped his eyes with his free hand, gripping me tighter around the wrist with his other fingers. He didn’t meet my gaze, but I felt something go through his light, what felt like a stab of anger. He didn’t aim it at me, but I felt the frustration wound into that, and a denser want.

  “You’ll do anything I want?” he said, his voice gruff.

  My chest clenched.

  A flicker of Ditrini slid through my mind and light, there and gone.

  I couldn’t fight him anymore, though. I knew I couldn’t.

  “Yes,” I said, simply.

  He nodded, his mouth set in a harder line. For a long moment, he just sat there, and I felt him thinking again. Or maybe he was hardening his resolve, wrapping his mind around something he’d already decided to do.

  I was still watching his face when he startled me, pulling me towards him and onto his lap.

  He didn’t do it roughly, but he did it firmly, without really asking permission, or being cautious like before. He still wasn’t looking at my face, even as he pulled me against him.

  He didn’t want me to sit in his lap.

  He brought me over his thighs instead, so that I lay prone across his lap on my stomach. His fingers coiled into my wet hair, holding me down, even as his light wrapped into mine, winding rapidly and insistently into the structures above my head. I felt him slide into those parts of me that I’d used against him in the past, the ones the Lao Hu trained in me.

  He gripped those same structures in me, tightly in his light, until he controlled the telekinesis. Once he had that, he slowly extended that control over pretty much every other part of my light.

  I fought him briefly, but he sent a hard pulse of light.

  I felt the meaning there, too, the reminder that I’d given him permission, that I’d told him he could do this. Realizing he was right, I fought to let go, to let it happen.

  Seconds later, I felt him gripping me harder, both with his light and his hands.

  Then I felt him testing that control over my light as I lay there, panting.

  His mind flickered over how I’d fought him in the past––with my light, even my body. Once he seemed satisfied that he had total control over my light, he started unwrapping the towel from around my body.

  Fear darted through me, but his fingers only tightened in my hair.

  “Revik…” I began. “No… no. Please…”

  “Don’t move,” he said, gruff.

  “Revik… please…”

  “Allie. Trust me. Please. Trust me.”

  Pain slid through his light, worsening until I closed my eyes.

  I found myself thinking he was going to fuck me, that this was going to be some rape fantasy of his, but as soon as I thought it, I felt that anger in his light worsen, along with a hurt that nearly blinded me when I felt what lay behind it.

  I was naked now, lying across his lap on the towel he still wore.

  I could feel that he was hard, but most of his light was still wrapped into mine, focused on holding me still, and the emotions I felt there weren’t about sex.

  I felt pain on him, but that felt less and less like sex pain, too.

  “I’m tired,” I told him. “Revik. I’m really fucking tired. I haven’t slept––”

  “I know,” he said.

  His fingers and hands massaged my muscles, my skin. I felt fear on him, what might have been guilt, or maybe nerves and guilt and fear wrapped into one. He caressed my hair, blowing warmth on me with his light. I felt a sick tiredness in him now––what felt closer to exhaustion––prominent enough to leak into his voice.

  “I know you’re tired, wife,” he said, softer. “I know. But that’s why this can’t wait. I want to do this while you’re tired. I want to do it when you’re too tired to fight me, Allie. When we’re both too tired to fight each other.”

  I didn’t really understand his words.

  I felt his fear again, though. Something about that feeling caused my own fear to return, until I was fighting him again with my light, and where I could, with my body. He was right, though. I was too tired to fight him, and the longer he held me down, the more that tiredness turned to something that felt a lot closer to despair.

  I couldn’t fight him. I could never fucking fight him.

  I couldn’t fight any of them.

  Tears were running down my face by the time that much sank in, but I couldn’t make sense of that, either.

  The first time he hit me, I sucked in a breath, more in disbelief than pain.

  He held me down, testing my light.

  Then he hit me again, right on the ass, using his bare hand, and I cried out, writhing against his hands and his light. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t move. I felt his pain worsen as he hit me again. Then again.

  The pain got worse, not better.

  It got harder to endure, not easier.

  At some point, I started yelling at him.

  I couldn’t make sense of my words. When he didn’t stop, no matter what I said, I stopped trying to censor those words… or even to track them.

  A few things stood out more than others, though.

  I called him a piece of shit, like Angeline had done.

  I told him he didn’t give a fuck about me.

  I told him he didn’t want me, that he’d never wanted me. I told him they were right about him, that he was an abuser, and a rapist. I told him I didn’t care what he did anymore, that I knew I’d never be enough for him, no matter what I did or how much of a whore I made myself for him. I told him he could fuck whoever he wanted, that he could fuck Ullysa or Dalejem or my mother, that I wouldn’t try to stop him.

  I told him I didn’t want to be married to him anymore.

  I told him he wanted someone weak––someone soft, someone not me.

  I yelled at him for lying to me, for breaking vow––for being a coward who never told me the truth, who was incapable of telling the
truth to anyone.

  I accused him of fucking other people on the ship.

  I accused him of wanting Dalejem, of wanting Ullysa, of fucking her after she beat on him, of lying to me and to himself about why he went to her.

  I told him he didn’t love Lily.

  I said other things. Some were about Kat. Some were about him being just like Ditrini. I accused him of wanting to hurt me, to break me, like Ditrini wanted, so I’d be soft, too.

  I felt some of my words hurt him, but he didn’t let me go.

  He also didn’t stop.

  The pain worsened after I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

  I felt him in my light. He was deeper in my light by then, pulling on it, pulling and tugging on me, coaxing me open. He didn’t stop, even knowing it might mean me hating him more. I felt him slide into the cracks forming around my shield––around that pain that had been throbbing in my chest for the past two days, the one that started on the beach before I’d gone on that walk with Kali. I’d tried to force it down deeper, but it just sat in my chest, smoldering, not going out but filling my light with smoke.

  The pain flared hotter.

  It started to hurt more than his hand.

  It started taking over my light, hurting me, hurting my chest and belly and throat, blindingly hot, until I couldn’t speak past it, couldn’t breathe.

  I remembered Kali on the beach. Pain twisted my insides, what must have been memory. I remembered them, both of them. I remembered––

  Gods. I remembered Dalejem.

  I remembered him leaving me under that overpass.

  He left me there.

  I loved him, I trusted him––and he left me there.

  I remembered screaming, crying for him in the dark. And then I was in the dark again, after Cass cut me open and left me. I remembered her face, her smiling face. She’d been so happy about hurting me. It made her happy to cut me open, to leave me like that.

  I remembered Revik reading to me, trying to reach me through that dark––

  Revik let out a gasp over me. I realized it was a sob, but I almost couldn’t hear him.

  I was lost there again, lost in that place, that darkness and pain with no end. I remembered being lost, of being so far away, from everything and everyone. No one came. There was no light. I screamed for Lily, screamed for Revik.