Jon never ceased to be amazed at what seers knew how to do, or had no qualms about figuring out how to do on the fly, when it came to adjusting to circumstances that would have left most humans hungry, cold and without any ability to pretend at civilization.
Then again, seers had lived at the fringes of human society for over a hundred years. Maybe scarcity didn’t panic them so much, in general.
Even Revik could be coaxed to the bar now and then.
The bar provided one of the few opportunities to get near him when he wasn’t actively working...although truthfully, Jon had his doubts about the not-working part, even there. Revik rarely spoke to anyone at the bar, either, and could often be seen sitting alone, sketching on napkins when he wasn’t staring off into space, a concentrated look in his pale eyes.
Most of the seers and humans left him alone...instinctively, maybe. Or maybe out of that sense of hierarchy that all the military seers seemed to share.
Occasionally, though, someone would approach him.
One of those people had been Yumi.
Jon watched her do it. He’d found himself weirdly fascinated to see her try, even as her approach caused Jon to tense involuntarily.
He needn’t have bothered with either reaction, as it turned out.
Without even looking at her, Revik shoved the pad of paper he’d been writing on into the inside pocket of his jacket. He then grasped the neck of the bottle he’d been pouring drinks from at the bar, recapped it, and walked straight for the front door, his half-filled glass caught between two fingers of the same hand. He didn’t even bother to explain his actions with a semi-vague hand gesture, much less actual words.
He hadn’t looked angry.
Mostly, to Jon anyway, Revik just looked sort of blank.
Maybe blank verging on puzzled...as if Yumi and the rest of them constituted game pieces to be moved around while he worked...a semi-irritating television set he hadn’t quite figured out how to turn off when he didn’t need one of them specifically.
From his face, Jon got the impression Revik hadn’t even considered whether his actions might be rude. He’d been borderline unsteady on his feet, but his focus on the door never wavered. He left without seeming to notice any of the eyes turning to watch him go.
Jon ran into Revik later that same night, too...purely by accident.
He’d opted to walk through the park at around one that morning, and saw Revik only when he passed within a few feet of where he stood. His brother-in-law had just been standing there, leaning his back against a tree, staring up at the sky. Jon hadn’t really understood the expression on the seer’s face, but he’d understood the tears.
He considered approaching him that time, too.
When Revik lifted the bottle, however, drinking as he continued to look up at the stars, Jon thought better of it.
Revik could be unpredictable when drunk, Jon knew.
Well, if he got drunk enough, anyway. That had been true even before Cass tortured and nearly killed his wife, wiping out most of her mind with the wires or whatever it was Cass had done to Allie exactly.
Cass, who used to be Allie’s best friend.
Cass, who’d been Jon’s friend, too...and Revik’s, for that matter.
From what Jorag told Jon, Revik’s telekinesis started working again pretty much the same day they found Allie’s body in their mother’s old house. Whatever Balidor might believe, Jorag and some of the other, more myth-oriented seers, seemed to treat Revik’s sudden ‘recovery’ as a nearly apocalyptic (or perhaps more apocalyptic) sign from the gods. They viewed him as the wrath of the Sword incarnate these days, handling him, and his somewhat overly-taciturn moods, with a kind of reverence rather than concern for Revik himself.
It bothered Jon, but he didn’t know what he could do about it, either.
Anyway, after Revik’s little visit of the night before, Jon felt even more wary of approaching his brother-in-law than usual.
Jon also knew that, despite the occasional appearances at the bar and Revik showing up at Jon’s door barely able to stand, Revik likely only drank when he got desperate. Meaning, he drank when he was already on the verge of losing control. Jon had seen Revik sober far more often than not in the past few months, perhaps as sober as Jon had ever seen him, for any extended period of time, so he knew getting drunk wasn’t Revik’s primary coping mechanism these days. Probably, he didn’t want alcohol interfering with his work.
That also meant that, when he went for the bottle, it was because the other coping mechanisms had already broken down.
Really, from what Jon could tell, Revik didn’t seem to want to waste time on his own mental state at all, not even to numb things, as he had in D.C. Knowing Revik, he brought the telekinesis back through the sheer power of his own will. He’d also likely been honing those skills a lot more than Jon had been privy to, meaning more than solely during his sessions with Maygar. Jon found it a lot more likely that Revik spent his ‘free time,’ such that it was, on things like that, as well as in the ring and running and whatever else...not nursing a bottle with Wreg and the other infiltrators.
Then again, Jon probably wouldn’t know, even if he was.
Jon hadn’t exactly been going out of his way to hang around Wreg, either.
He knew it was hurting the other seer.
Jon couldn’t seem to do anything about that, either, though.
The idea of getting near Wreg now, before he’d helped Revik do whatever it was Revik would end up doing to neutralize Cass, brought up a near revulsion in him. Not a revulsion towards Wreg himself, not directly...more around the whole idea of doing anything so self-absorbed and self-indulgent as screwing around to get his rocks off, no matter who it was. Given everything going on, sex felt like it should be the furthest thing from Jon’s mind. It felt like a sick kind of betrayal to even think about it, given what Revik and Allie were going through.
Or maybe, really, what Jon felt was guilt.
Maybe he felt a guilt so intense it only felt like revulsion...a guilt for even letting his mind go there, no matter what his feelings for Wreg, or even how what happened to Allie and Revik might be affecting Wreg himself.
Revik’s visit of the night before, as weirdly sexual as it had been, hadn’t lessened that feeling––if anything, it only strengthened it. Revik hadn’t just seemed desperate that night. He’d seemed like he’d lost his mind entirely, like he didn’t know who he was anymore. Even then, Jon knew exactly what lay behind his brother-in-law’s request. He’d been looking for Allie. It always came back to Allie for Revik...to find some way, any way, to connect with his wife, no matter how remote, no matter what that connection entailed.
Jon blamed himself for that, too.
He got the irrationality of it, in a sense.
He knew a shrink would probably have a field day with him, explaining patiently how this was all just some wank-fest coping mechanism on Jon’s part to displace feelings of helplessness or whatever else about what Cass had done to him, using him to get to his own sister.
Truthfully, Jon didn’t give a shit.
He wasn’t in the mood to spank his emotional monkey on that score, or even to ask Yumi to help him ‘sort out his issues,’ as she did for a lot of the seers. He didn’t much give a shit whether the feeling had ‘merit’ or not, or what he might be displacing or not.
He’d handed Allie to Cass.
Even the thought of going psych 101 on that just made Jon angry.
He knew the truth. He’d been the weak link. Cass knew that. Now Revik, Wreg and the rest of the seers knew it, too. Sure, they claimed they’d gotten all of that out of Jon’s light now. They’d spent weeks...months...teaching him shielding, how to access the shields in the construct, how to feel foreign lights interfering with his. He still took two hours of private lessons from Balidor every day to improve his ability to shield and spot leaks.
Jon worked hard, making sure he learned all of it. But all of it was after the fact.
<
br /> Nothing he did now changed what happened to Allie because of him.
Jon honestly didn’t know if anyone, Revik included, could ever make it right, in terms of Allie herself. But that felt irrelevant, too, at least in terms of Jon’s own priorities. Even if Allie woke up tomorrow, Jon doubted that feeling would change. He would be damned if he didn’t do everything in his power to balance the scales in some way, however inadequately, and however long it took.
That meant, Revik owned his ass.
That meant doing pretty much anything Revik told him to do, without question, hesitation or complaint...and sure as hell without giving Revik shit for his emotional state.
Really, the only times Jon had even spoken to Wreg in the past few weeks had been during infiltration training. He hadn’t wanted Wreg for that, either, knowing it wouldn’t do either of them any favors, but somehow, Balidor kept finding things that Wreg could teach Jon better than he could. Balidor seemed to know Jon didn’t want it. Jon even wondered if Balidor was attempting to force the two of them together on purpose, maybe to help them resolve their issues in some way. What Balidor didn’t seem to realize was, as far as Jon was concerned, there was nothing to resolve.
This wasn’t Wreg’s fault. Jon wasn’t angry at Wreg at all. He didn’t blame the other man for anything. There wasn’t anything to explain.
At base, this wasn’t even Wreg’s problem.
Jon asked Balidor to keep him out of important discussions, too...really anything that might jeopardize the mission Revik had planned. After a few months, Balidor told him how ridiculous that was. He told Jon that his shielding abilities rivaled that of some of his top infiltrators now, partly due to structures Allie had influenced in his light as they’d grown up together. Balidor showed him those things, and explained how the openings that Shadow and Cass used before no longer existed in his light, that they were all repaired.
Jon didn’t care much about that, either.
He would never be Cass’s way in to Revik, Allie or any of the others again, even if he had to put a gun in his mouth.
When Jon glanced over that time, Revik was looking at him.
The seer’s angular face hadn’t moved.
“Sit,” Revik told him.
Jon realized only then that he was just standing there.
Feeling his face warm, he slid down onto the second recliner, easing his weight into the worn, dark-red leather. He pushed at the arms to recline it backwards manually, only then noticing the two seers standing on the other end of the chair, waiting for him.
They began working over him, as soon as he’d reclined.
Ignoring them, too, Jon turned his head, choosing instead to watch Loki and Gar go through the motions of checking Revik’s stats. Both frowned down at portable monitors, recorders that would monitor Revik’s brainwaves and aleimi while he was in the Barrier. Jon watched them check Revik’s transmitter, too, as well as what Jon recognized as an ‘emergency-terminate’ charge, essentially an electrode that could shock the user hard enough for their base, survival instincts to kick in, jerking them out of the Barrier.
They would use that only if Revik ran into something he couldn’t handle. Like if he and Jon got jumped by a few dozen of Shadow’s infiltrators, for example.
Feeling that sick feeling in his gut worsen, Jon looked away from Revik’s face when he saw those clear eyes slide back in his direction.
“Jon,” Revik said, his voice quiet. “I’m sorry about last night.”
Jon flinched. He felt his face grow hot, too, without being able to do a damned thing about it. Taking a breath, he forced himself to relax, clicking softly. Shaking his head, Jon glanced at the other man, only to quickly avert his eyes.
“Forget it. Nothing happened.”
There was a silence. Seers continued to work over Jon, tugging at straps and placing electrodes on him. All of them pretended not to notice when Revik spoke again.
“Did you tell Wreg?” he said, his voice as flat as before.
Feeling his face heat up more, Jon shook his head. “No.”
Pretending he hadn’t noticed the other seers’ stares, Jon resettled his head on the cushioned headrest of the recliner, staring up at the ceiling. Jorag continued attaching electrodes to his temples and chest, opening the front of his shirt as he and Illeg felt over his skin. Noticing the inscrutable looks that had come over both seers’ faces at Revik’s words, Jon frowned, glancing around the rest of the room.
Thank the gods, he didn’t see Wreg anywhere.
Jorag chuckled, patting him affectionately on the shoulder.
“Boss isn’t stupid, little brother,” Jorag told him softly, leaning down by Jon’s ear.
Jon didn’t answer that, either, but felt his jaw harden more.
Illeg and Jorag finished wrapping the same type of organic bands around him that Loki and Gar had already put around Revik, and Jon winced a little at the touch of the slick and cold skins. Like with most organics, they felt like they should be wet, but were dry to the touch, like the skin of an amphibian, or some breeds of snake. A jolt of a different kind of pain expanded over Jon’s light when hands continued to feel over his body.
That time, it caught him off-guard.
Jon gritted his teeth, trying to pull it back, even as Jorag and Illeg hesitated, glancing at one another that time, their fingers hovering over his bare chest and abdomen.
When Jon wouldn’t look at either of them, they continued their work.
In those same few seconds, Jon felt a harder pulse of anger.
Turning his head, Jon looked over his own shoulder. He saw Wreg standing there that time, his obsidian eyes as hard and dense as their color implied. Wreg looked away at Jon’s frown, but his massive shoulders didn’t relax, and his expression continued to look so warlike that Jon almost didn’t recognize the man he knew underneath. Enough pain and anger stood there that Jon couldn’t look at him for very long, either, though.
He didn’t miss the harder look Wreg aimed at Jorag, though.
Gods, Jon couldn’t help thinking. Jorag better be right.
It occurred to him in the same breath that both Revik and Jorag spoke aloud so that Wreg wouldn’t overhear them in the Barrier construct they all shared.
Focusing deliberately back on the plaster-covered ceiling, Jon bit the inside of his cheek as he fought to distract himself, too. His eyes fell on iron sconces holding white candles, likely recreations from the original style, back at the turn of the previous century. Jon knew most of the houses on the Square had been refurbished at some point in the 1990’s to restore them to their original condition...some campaign by the politicos to increase property values.
Mostly all it did was change the demographics of the city.
“You know what you’re doing here,” Revik said to him, jerking Jon’s mind back to the present.
Jon stared at him. Revik’s words didn’t sound much like a question, which also constituted the norm for his brother-in-law lately. Everything that came out of Revik’s mouth phrased itself closer to a demand, like anything but an unequivocal ‘yes’ simply wasn’t acceptable.
Jon hoped he did. Know, that is.
“Yes,” he said, meeting that colorless gaze.
“Follow my lead,” Revik said.
Jon nodded, realizing only then that Revik didn’t really want him along on this, either.
It didn’t occur to him why until a few moments later. By then, Illeg and Jorag had finished checking his vitals, and were giving the thumbs up to Balidor and Yumi, who sat at the main console of the control room through the organic-paned window.
By then, it was already too late.
JON HADN’T BEEN on any combat-type jumps.
Meaning, he hadn’t been tasked with any Barrier jumps that had a specific target, one with actual stakes attached...stakes that Jon cared about, anyway.
He’d done a few spying, remote-viewing type things.
He’d even been brought along on a few trips out to
look for Cass and Terian, paired with members of Yumi and Balidor’s infiltration units. Mostly, he’d been there to provide resonance...not to actually do anything. He’d been paired with Jorag for the first few of those, Balidor himself for the last one. They’d tapped his aleimi with his consent, using his childhood memories of Cass to try and track her. Balidor also attempted to utilize Jon’s connection to Terian/Feigran, who Jon had spent more time with than most of the other seers, apart from Revik himself.
Neither thing had yielded much.
Jon suspected both Cass and Feigran were locked behind a Fort Knox type shield run by Shadow and his people by now. Resonance alone wouldn’t be enough to crack it.
Jon also suspected that both Feigran and Cass resonated on pretty different frequencies these days, anyway. Compared to when he’d known them, that is.
Even so, for those few, serious infiltration forays to which Jon had been invited, Jon took an utterly passive role. He was just...there. For the most part. He lingered near enough to watch the others do their thing, but far enough away to avoid interfering with any of their light. Mostly, Balidor treated these as training exercises, instructing Jon to follow along with his own aleimi as best he could, in the hopes that Jon might understand what they were trying to do, in the event they ever needed him to attempt something similar.
Jon couldn’t even really tell how successful the jumps had been, not until the debriefing after the fact. As for following what Balidor did behind the Barrier, Jorag smiled when Jon told him he’d tried, clapping him sympathetically on the back. Jorag didn’t say much, but Jon got the message; he had about as much hope of following Balidor during a hunt as he did of flying off the roof of the four-story Victorian mansion by merely flapping his arms.
Even before he closed his eyes, Jon realized this would be different.
He wouldn’t be able to just ‘hang out’ in the background for this one, letting seers scan him for resonances of various kinds.
Allie's War Season Four Page 7