by Deanna Chase
Cass frowned. She put her hands on her hips.
“I have a boyfriend,” she said.
“Would serve him right,” I returned, undaunted. “You told me what he did just the other night. With that girl at the bar. He’s an asshole, Cass. He’s not even hiding it from you anymore.”
She waved me off, but I saw her mouth tighten.
“He didn’t mean anything by that,” she said.
“He never does,” I muttered, taking another sip of the beer to hide my frown when she looked over at me. “Doesn’t make him any less of an asshole.”
“...Besides,” Cass added, clearly deciding to ignore my snide remarks. She smiled. “This one’s not my type, Al...I like blonds, remember?” Her grin widened, even as she wrapped her cleaver-holding hand and arm around my shoulders. “If I was going to find someone to play with tonight besides Jack, it wouldn’t be a dark broody gothy type with pretty eyes. It would be a hot, hung, kung fu instructor who happens to be between boyfriends...”
I rolled my eyes at the reference to my adopted brother, Jon.
Cass had been crushing on Jon since we were kids. She couldn’t seem to get it through her head that it was never going to happen. For a lot of reasons.
“Jon’s gay, Cassie,” I said, sighing. “Jeez. Get a grip. I’ve known Jon was gay since I was twelve. So have you.”
“Cass,” she corrected, frowning deeper. “Don’t call me Cassie. I hate that.”
I fought the impulse to roll my eyes a third time. “Sorry. Forgot.”
“It’s only been...what? Five years?” she grumbled.
Taking another sip of beer, I didn’t answer.
I glanced again at Mr. Blue Eyes instead, who’d clearly been watching our little back and forth. His eyes shone with overt curiosity, like he was trying to figure out what we were talking about, or maybe like something in the dynamics between us fascinated him.
Either way, he wasn’t bothering to hide his interest at all now.
I was just about to drag Cass off to some other corner of the room, maybe just to get a breather from all of the staring and silent back and forth...when Mr. Blue Eyes surprised me. Almost as if he knew I was about to leave, he started walking straight toward us, sidestepping a few other groups along the way to reach where me and Cass stood.
Clusters of costumed party-goers ignored him walking and me watching him walk.
I glanced behind me, maybe just to stop staring, but only saw the ugly, shit-brown couch we’d been standing next to for the last twenty or so minutes. Someone had pushed the couch against one wall, presumably to make room for more people. For me and Cass, it had been a reasonably safe spot compared to the chaos in front of the stage itself. On the other side, a few groups of people stood near the dance floor, closer to the band.
The guy with the black hair and the blue eyes didn’t seem bothered by the noise. Or the people in the nearby dance pit.
He walked right up to me.
He moved confidently, like Cass said, almost like we knew each other.
The next thing I knew he was holding out a hand, giving me this killer, sexy smile under his disheveled black hair. I admit, I felt that smile and the light of his blue eyes somewhere pretty far south of my brain.
Cass was right. I did have a thing for dark-haired guys.
“Hey,” he said, right as I took his hand. “...I’m Jaden.”
2
AVOIDANCE
She met someone... he says into the blue sky.
Revik’s thoughts are carried briefly by a Barrier wind.
Even so, he mutters the words almost, using his light and mind to speak into the nonphysical space. He looks around, unsure if he is alone or not.
Barrier spaces can be confusing like that.
According to his perceptions, he stands alone in a grassy field filled with wildflowers.
It looks like places he remembers, if only at a distance, lurking at the edges of his conscious memory. Definitely Asia. Tibet maybe. Or maybe some part of India, the northern part, like Kasmir. The high parts of Asia, in other words, but not the Pamir.
He pushes aside emotions that want to rise, even as they come.
Here, inside the Barrier construct Vash built, the view stretches further off into the distance than Revik can perceive. He imagines he sees a lake in the distance, sparkling in Barrier sunlight, and a steep canyon beyond that. Forests live there, what feel like animals.
Revik knows if he concentrated, he could be there, instead of here.
He remains where he is.
The land and its accompanying flavors feel so familiar, so visceral with presence, that just being here at first catches his breath. Jagged, snow-topped mountains jut out of the plain in the distance, but here, in the valley below those peaks, it feels like spring, like new growth and buzzing warmth, like he can feel the roots themselves growing under his feet.
The familiarity hits him like a punch to the chest.
The same thing happens every time he lands here...and even though he knows the field and lake and the snow-covered mountains behind them aren’t real.
Moreover, Revik can’t even clearly remember what place they depict...although some part of him feels strongly that he should...that he should know this place specifically, and not only the country or broader mountain range. He doesn’t know if the fact that he doesn’t is from losing part of his memory when he left the Rooks, or if he never knew it at all.
Regardless, this place calls to him. It feels like home.
He knows it’s likely why Vash summons him here, for their regular check-in meetings. Knowing Vash, it could also be some means of assessing his emotional state, giving him a place and a frequency of light likely to create an emotional reaction or opening in Revik’s aleimi, or living light. Or, also knowing Vash, he might have done it as a courtesy.
Regardless, knowing the old seer, or not-knowing him, as it were...Revik knows it could be either thing, or some combination of both...or some other thing entirely.
That is the problem with a seer like Vash. It is nearly impossible to know his true motives for anything, given how far he sees, how much he knows.
Vash himself would only laugh, however, if Revik were to voice such a thing to him.
Revik also strongly suspects the old seer would call him paranoid.
He would further point out how Revik was reading a myriad of motives and meanings into something that was, at base, little more than a pretty landscape.
In any case, and whatever Vash’s motives or not-motives in summoning Revik here, no one could build a Barrier construct quite like Vash.
Not a lot of seers built constructs like these at all, anymore.
During his time in the Pamir, Revik learned that such Barrier-only constructs used to be commonplace. That had been particularly true during what is often considered the height of seer civilization, around three thousand years prior to First Contact, when a number of famous barrier architects lived. Some spent decades designing and building Barrier-only environments, to capture particular Barrier flavors, to relive historical periods or to increase different forms of psychic vision. Some were created purely for the beauty of it...to evoke emotional or intellectual reactions, or simply to stretch the bounds of the architect’s vision.
Unlike Barrier constructs of the modern era––meaning those used for more functional purposes, generally purposes related to the physical world on Earth––those past constructs had an element of pure art to them, of creating a space wholly removed from physicality. Those old constructs were designed to change consciousness itself.
The value of that had diminished over time, particularly in the younger generation of seers. Revik’s generation, especially. The post-First Contact seers.
They wanted to survive. More and more, they also wanted revenge.
Waxing philosophic already, brother? a gentle voice says from behind him.
Revik turns. Really, he shifts the attention of his light, but that trans
lates as him turning his Barrier head, focusing on the tree beneath which he stands.
Vash sits against the trunk of that tree, barefoot, wearing a sand-colored robe. He tucks part of that robe under his feet, looks up at Revik and smiles.
Would you not rather sit, brother? he says politely.
Revik hesitates...just long enough to see the old seer’s dark eyes flash with gold-tinted light, reflected from the setting sun. Even where he stands, he sees bleached hairs on the old seer’s arms, a scar on one forearm that Vash told him once that he’d gotten as a child in the physical world, back before humans knew about seers as a race and just called them devils.
Once more, the sheer detail awes him.
He walks over and feels the grass crushing under his feet. When he reaches the same spread of roots, he sinks down to cross-legged, sitting directly across from the old seer.
She met someone, you said? Vash’s eyes now hold a glimmer of humor.
Revik tries to smile back, but the other male’s words make it stiff, unconvincing.
Yes, he says only.
Vash reads something behind his silence, however, even though Revik shields his light now, at least in part.
You do not approve. It isn’t really a question.
Revik clicks softly, already irritated. I didn’t say that, he mutters. It is not really for me to approve or not approve, is it? She is an adult.
And yet, your demeanor...implies it, Vash says, gently. Am I wrong in thinking that you dislike her choice in suitors?
Revik shakes his head. No.
The silence between them deepens.
Vash chuckles.
It will be difficult to report back on the wellbeing of your charge if your thoughts on this matter are a secret, brother. Is that all you plan to tell me of this new development? His voice holds a faint rebuke, but it comes through mostly as teasing.
It irritates Revik anyway.
Even so, he shakes his head.
I haven’t had time to do a thorough assessment yet, he says, noncommittal.
But you don’t like him.
No, Revik says, giving the old seer a harder look. No, I don’t like him.
May I ask why? Vash inquires politely.
Revik feels another flush of irritation, but this time, he attempts to answer the other honestly. He is...arrogant. But it is more than that. I don’t... He looks up, seeing the older seer watching him closely. He feels his light close. ...I don’t trust him, he finishes. If you expect me to defend that, I cannot. I have nothing tangible at this point. I will report back when I can provide you something beyond my own initial impressions.
Revik stares at the Barrier ground, watches a honeybee circle lazily over wildflowers. The bee stops to pull nectar from a bright orange blossom. Revik keeps his attention on it, noting the detail down to the pollen collected on fine hairs on the tiny thing’s legs.
He purposefully keeps his mind blank. He knows it might not work––probably won’t work––with a seer at Vash’s level, but he does it anyway.
He knows, too, that it is technically breaking their agreement.
Vash warned him from the very beginning that full disclosure would be required, if Revik were to accept the post they’d given him in overseeing the wellbeing of the Bridge. Disclosure of his more volatile and negative feelings is also technically required of his penance. At the time, both things had seemed easy promises to make.
Back then, he felt stripped clean. Nothing to hide.
Lately, it grows more difficult.
Brother, Vash says, his thoughts gentle that time.
He lays a light hand on Revik’s arm, pulsing warmth towards his chest. Revik flinches. He has to fight to let the other seer’s affection in.
Have a care, brother, Vash says only.
I am, Revik retorts.
Are you?
Revik gives him a hard look. I take my position seriously enough.
Of that, I have little doubt, Vash returns with a smile, undaunted. Are you also still telling yourself you dislike her, brother? That you have no interest in her wellbeing, or who she chooses to take to her bed?
Revik feels his light clench as his mind fights the old seer’s words. More than their surface meaning, he dislikes what he feels behind them. He struggles to blank out his mind again, but it grows more difficult the longer the ancient seer’s light pulls at his.
He feels the rebuke there, louder than before.
The reminder that he is in penance, that they are watching him.
Thinking about this, Revik lets out a bitter-sounding laugh.
Bitter-sounding to him, anyway.
So you’re monitoring my sex life now, too? he says only. Is monastic life really so dull?
But Vash pretends not to hear his words.
It is not particularly safe, he says. ...This confusion you are feeling in regards to your charge. It is clouding your judgment, brother Revik. Worse, it is causing you pain. But more than either of these things, I fear it is part of a larger pattern of avoidance with you. Avoidance of things that you should not avoid...not if you are sincere about wanting to change the things about yourself that caused you to join the Rooks in the first place.
Avoidance? Revik looks at him, fighting another dense flush of anger. Avoidance of what?
Of forming more meaningful attachments in your life, Vash replies at once. Attachments and connections that you are able to express in more healthy and appropriate ways than you have in the past. At Revik’s silence, the old seer prods him again. Has there been anyone at all, brother? Anyone since Dalejem?
Revik flinches at the name.
I really don’t want to talk about that, he says.
And yet I am asking you.
Yes, Revik says. But I would still prefer not to answer.
Revik keeps his directed thoughts as polite as possible those last two times, but even he hears the edge as he sends them into the Barrier space. He winces a little from that, feeling the other seer do the same, but he doesn’t apologize.
You know it is my duty to ask you these things, brother, Vash reminds him.
Revik gestures an assent with his light hand. I know.
Even as he does it, Revik feels himself continue to resist. His light is already beginning to close down, to withdraw even more from the other seer’s...to avoid, as Vash has already accused him of doing. Vash must feel it, too. Even so, Revik resents the intrusion, more than he has in as long as he can remember. More than he has since he left the Pamir.
He hears the old seer sigh, clicking softly.
Vash is disappointed in him.
Somehow, that understanding is the thing that shifts Revik’s light. Maybe because it is more than he can stand right then, in addition to everything else.
More than his temper can stand, anyway.
Do you really want to hear about my masturbation habits, brother? Revik sends, flushing with fury that he knows is half embarrassment. Or shall I simply record my few liaisons for you, so you and the rest of the Council can watch and discuss at your leisure? Would that convince all of you that my equipment is working properly? Or does it not really count, if I am forced to pay for it? When the other doesn’t speak, Revik lashes out again with his light. I could document my sexual fantasies as well, brother, if you require it of me ––
I know she features in far too many of them lately, brother, Vash returns unflinchingly.
Revik flinches, however.
He also feels his anger worsen.
Brother Revik, Vash sighs. You can pretend you dislike her all you like.
He does not sound angry, Revik notices. If anything, the old seer seems relieved that Revik is being more honest.
...I know you are growing possessive of her, Vash continues. And that your light is becoming more entangled in hers as a result. You must complete the tests with her, so the danger of entanglement already exists, purely in the nature of your relationship...
Revik doesn’t answer.
It is making her too visible, brother... Vash adds, hammering the words a little harder that time. It risks her life. I know you do not want that, whatever you say you think of her. It also risks awakening her too soon. She will become too aware of you, and we will be forced to separate you...something else I would very much rather not do. But not all of the elders agree with me on this point. Some in the Council have already advocated such a separation.
As if feeling Revik’s reaction, Vash hesitates before adding, ...They believe she already feels your presence in her light. More than she should.
Revik doesn’t answer that, either.
Vash watches his face, patient, as always.
I understand, brother, he sends finally, touching Revik’s arm. More than you perhaps realize. Perhaps more than you do, in certain respects...given your determination to dislike her, whatever your light’s reaction to hers. But the timing must be correct in this.
At that, Revik lets out a disbelieving laugh. He can’t help himself.
He doesn’t voice his thoughts explicitly, however.
He strongly suspects there is no need.
Revik opened his eyes, staring up at a high ceiling above the leather recliner.
It was the same view that met him whenever he returned from a Barrier jump these days, since he had a tendency to work from roughly the same spot in any home he inhabited. For this house, in this city, that spot was here.
Even so, his mind stuttered briefly, reorienting around where he was.
Old habits, he supposed. It wasn’t the room he got used to outside of Moscow, which had been a dingy white, colored with water stains, smoke stains, even cracks. That ceiling had been equally high, in an equally old building, but one that hadn’t been anywhere near as well maintained. In Russia, unlike here in London, he spent far more of his time in his shabby, Party-maintained apartment.
Here, he did not have that luxury.