Standing off to the side were the surviving members of Hughes’ team, a somber group of men and women who looked how Jamie felt—hurt and broken.
Katie tilted her head in their direction, catching Jamie’s eye. “Be right back.”
She slipped away like a ghost and Madison seamlessly took her spot. The easy way his team moved around him, ensuring at least one of them had eyes on him at all times, was both stifling and comforting at the same time.
As mourners began to peel off in pairs and smaller groups, the crowd around them thinned. Jamie took it upon himself to follow after Katie for once. She and Matthew stood near the oak tree in quiet conversation. They were holding hands, eyes only on each other, and the sudden gut-punch of emotions Jamie felt threatened to drown him.
Katie’s eyes snapped his way, and while she wasn’t an empath and wasn’t merged with an empath, she could make him forget—just for a moment—why he was grieving. Long enough for Jamie to get control of himself.
Matthew watched him approach and slowly nodded at him. “Hello, Jamie.”
In moments like this, sorry seemed so insignificant, but it was all Jamie could think to say. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Matthew’s jaw tightened, and he blinked a little rapidly for a second or two. “Thank you. Kevin was a good man.”
“I wish things had turned out differently.”
“I think we all wish that were the case.”
They couldn’t change the past, and the one man who could change the future was dead. Jamie didn’t know what his own future held anymore. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“I was talking with Matthew about staying with him for the rest of the day,” Katie said.
“The director wanted to see me back on base,” Jamie said.
Katie frowned, her gaze flicking back and forth between Jamie and Matthew. It was Matthew who shook his head and made the choice for her.
“Go with Jamie. I’m standing vigil until Kevin is interred,” Matthew told her.
Tradition dictated that the fallen were never left alone until they rested in the ground. One soldier always stayed behind at the gravesite to watch over the deceased until the earth took them home. Only then was duty done.
Matthew, as with any good leader, would see the people under his command home to the very end.
Katie kissed Matthew gently on the mouth before stepping back. Jamie held out his hand and Matthew shook it firmly.
“Let Katie keep looking after you,” Matthew told him.
“What makes you think I could stop her?” Jamie asked.
Matthew’s smile was fleeting and tinged with sadness. “Should just let the NCOs have the run of the place.”
“Yeah.”
“His royal pain in my ass go back home?”
“Soon as the Air Force could muster an escort. He would’ve come today if he were still here.”
“Pity. He was a decent fighter, even if he was SAS.”
The teasing dig at Liam almost made Jamie smile. “I’ll tell him you said that.”
Liam and his family had departed the United States for England once they could be securely flown home. Like Jamie, Liam had been caught on a live stream using his electrokinesis. That a member of the British Royal Family was a metahuman was the top story on the other side of the Atlantic. Jamie had a feeling it would be a while before he spoke with Liam again. They both needed to come to terms with living yet another different kind of life.
Matthew returned to his team while Jamie and Katie walked back to theirs. He thought about giving his condolences to Hughes’ widow, but the idea of acknowledging a loss that deep threatened to tear him open from the inside out all over again. So when Katie steered him away from the line of people still talking to the grieving family, Jamie didn’t protest.
The long walk back to where they’d been instructed to leave their vehicles was made in silence. They’d driven to Arlington in two SUVs but left in a convoy of three, following after the director. The drive back to base seemed to take forever due to traffic and security checkpoints, but the director’s status got them through each one with no trouble.
Jamie watched as the MDF headquarters came into view, but rather than head to the main building, the director’s vehicle took the wide road around—to Medical.
Jamie blinked. The SUV had somehow come to a stop in front of the emergency room doors. He’d lost time, just a little, because he had no recollection of the last few minutes of the drive. Katie opened up the side passenger door, looking back at him as she got out. Jamie’s gaze skittered past her to where the emergency room doors were sliding open, allowing Gracie to walk outside and greet them, her white doctor’s coat flapping in the breeze.
He didn’t know how he found the strength to move, but he did. Jamie climbed out of the SUV on his own with shaking hands, only dimly aware of the way his team moved in close.
“Gracie?” Jamie got out in a voice that didn’t sound like his.
She drew closer and he could see the tears on her face, the way the whites of her eyes had become just a little red. Gracie was a gifted surgeon who wasn’t prone to emotional outbursts when delivering news, either good or bad, to a patient’s next of kin. Seeing her cry made Jamie believe the worst had happened, and he went cold all over.
“Please, no,” he whispered.
Jamie’s mind whited out and his knees went weak in a way they never had before, but what was left of his team was there to hold him up. They reached for him and held on tight, ready to carry him the rest of the way when all he wanted to do was fall.
Because Jamie had hoped—in spite of everything that had happened over the last seven days—that Kyle would survive. That maybe, just maybe, the man he wanted to spend the rest of his life with would be there to share it with him.
Except Gracie was crying, and Jamie could feel the scream of denial building in his chest, in his lungs, clawing at his throat with the ferocity of a wild animal.
Gracie reached for him before he could give voice to the black grief blotting out the edges of his vision. Her hands shook, or maybe it was his own. Jamie couldn’t tell the difference, but the tremulous smile on her face throttled the scream at the back of his throat just for a moment.
“Do you remember when I said I wasn’t sure I could bring Kyle back? That I thought he might be too far gone for even my power to save him?” Gracie asked in a hushed voice.
Jamie still couldn’t speak, but he nodded jerkily, thinking back to the brief meeting he’d had with her in Medical the morning after the attack. She’d explained to him that the chances of Kyle surviving the wounds he’d sustained while functionally human were slim. Too much blood loss, too much sustained trauma, and no ability to heal were hurdles even Gracie’s power might not be able to effectively overcome.
When Jamie had asked to see Kyle, Gracie had refused. She had banned everyone from entering the stasis room where Kyle was being treated, no matter how much Jamie had yelled and begged and demanded access to the man he loved. Gracie had held firm, and no one, not even Kyle’s parents, had been allowed to see him this entire week while she and her team worked feverishly to save him.
Waiting hadn’t been easy, and with every day that passed, their hope that Kyle would survive diminished. Each day Jamie woke up alone after pulling the trigger he had wondered if that was the day where Gracie would tell him I’m sorry and I did all I could.
If it was the day he would be planning a funeral instead of a wedding.
Gracie squeezed his hand tightly as she blinked away tears. “We managed to measure active brain activity on the EEG for the first time early this morning when we partially brought Kyle out of stasis. I made the decision at that time to remove him from stasis completely. He’s been responding well to the rest of the treatment all morning, but he’s still in ICU.”
The ringing in his ears sounded like a klaxon, but somehow Jamie found his voice again.
“Kyle is alive?” Jamie asked hoarsely.
> Gracie nodded, her words a lifeline he never wanted to let go. “Alive and awake.”
Years later, when people would ask Jamie what his happiest moment was, he’d always think about how he felt right then, standing outside Medical and knowing Kyle had survived. Like he was drowning and flying all at once, a lost soul finding his way home through an impossible raging storm.
21
These Sacred Swaying Anthems
The cold slowly disappeared, replaced by a gentle warmth that started over his heart and flowed outward. He took a breath, then another. Something itched his nose, but when he tried to move his hand to swat at it, his limbs wouldn’t obey.
“It’s okay,” someone told him, that warmth still bleeding through his body. “You’re safe.”
He floated for a while in a dreamlike state, but the warmth in his chest never left him. Voices spoke around him in hushed tones, the sound thick in his ears, as if he were hearing them through water. Just when he started to sink back down, someone coaxed him to the surface, the heat in his chest like a brand he couldn’t ignore any longer.
“Can you open your eyes for me, Kyle?”
His eyelids felt as if they were weighted down by the full fifty-pound pack he’d carry during training runs, but somehow, Kyle managed to open them. Everything was blurry, the room he was in dimly lit, but the light still hurt his eyes. He flinched away from the brightness, closing his eyes again.
“Don’t go back to sleep on me. I need you to stay awake, Kyle.”
More poking and prodding, the sound of his heartbeat echoing in the room, and the warm touch that never went away finally made Kyle open his eyes again.
Gracie smiled down at him, the relief in her dark eyes impossible to miss. “There you go. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
Kyle’s fingers twitched as he realized the weight on his bare chest was Gracie’s hand, and the warmth was her power, the ability to coax another person’s body into healing faster than normal. Which made no sense because his power consisted of rapid healing. He didn’t know what had happened that required Gracie’s intervention.
His mouth felt dry, tongue like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth. A strange chemical taste lingered in the back of his throat. He licked his chapped lips, suddenly thirsty.
Gracie reached for a nearby cup and plucked an ice chip out of it without removing her right hand from Kyle’s chest. “Here.”
She slowly fed him ice chips until the dryness eased. The chemical taste didn’t go away and he swallowed against it.
“Wha’ happened?” he croaked out. His tongue didn’t really want to work, so the words came out a little slurred.
“I’ll tell you in a little while,” Gracie promised.
“Wanna know.”
Gracie touched his cheek with her other hand, the warmth in her skin seeping into his. “I know. But we need to run some tests first, okay?”
Kyle blinked slowly, trying to get his brain to work, but it was harder than it should’ve been. “Team?”
“They’re all okay, I promise.”
Kyle wouldn’t believe it until he saw them with his own eyes. Right now his eyes were closing again from exhaustion and no amount of cajoling from Gracie could keep him awake. He drifted, held in capable hands, until Gracie gently prodded him back to wakefulness however many hours later. The lighting in the room hadn’t changed much, but Gracie had removed her hand from his chest.
“Wha’s that?” Kyle muttered, squinting at the holoscreens layered in the air above his biobed.
“Your brain,” Gracie told him calmly. “And your heart.”
Kyle dragged his hand over his chest, fingers spreading weakly over the electrodes that were now scattered over his heart. “Wha’s wrong with my heart?”
Gracie studied Kyle in silence for a few seconds too long for him to ignore her silence. Her hesitation drove away some of his grogginess, forcing Kyle to focus.
“Gracie?” Kyle asked.
“Do you remember what happened to you?” she wanted to know.
Kyle blinked, his fingernails digging into smooth skin. “Should I?”
“What is the last thing you remember?”
“This a trick question?”
Gracie’s gaze shifted back to the scans of his body and organs on the holoscreens above him. “Try and remember. Please, Kyle. It’s important.”
Kyle swallowed, wishing he had a couple more ice chips to suck on, but did as the doctor ordered. Closing his eyes, he tried to remember what he’d been doing, but his mind was a haze of nothing until a fractured memory filtered through.
“I made Jamie coffee before we left for the base,” he said slowly. “We had an early debrief about where the attack might happen.”
It took him too long to remember why him being with Jamie that early in the day wasn’t information he was supposed to talk about on base. Kyle opened his eyes, trying to fight back the panic, but the biobed was a traitor and sensed his heart rate rising.
“Calm down, it’s okay,” Gracie soothed.
She patted his hand in a gentle manner, but all her efforts did was make Kyle aware of the engagement ring he wasn’t supposed to wear outside his and Jamie’s home. He froze, heart beating faster, feeling like it was getting hard to breathe.
“Kyle, look at me.”
The whip-crack firmness of Gracie’s voice had all the power of a commanding officer behind it and Kyle instinctively obeyed. His eyes snapped open and he stared up at her, feeling warm fingers on his face. The tightness in his chest abruptly eased beneath Gracie’s power, but she couldn’t stop his fear.
“I want you to listen to me, Kyle,” she said in a quiet, firm voice, her eyes never looking away from his. “I will tell you what happened to you when I know your body can handle it. Right now, you need to rest.”
“Why can’t I remember?” Kyle demanded shakily. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I have never lied to you and I’m not going to start now. But you need rest, Kyle.”
“Feels like I’ve been sleeping for weeks.”
Gracie smiled tiredly down at him. “I know. Just sleep a little more.”
Whether it was her power or one of her sneaky nurses, Kyle felt his eyes flutter shut, awareness slipping away from him. It felt like a betrayal even though it wasn’t, and whatever rest she was hoping he’d get, it wasn’t easy.
When he woke again the lights were brighter, until he realized it was due to the sunlight streaming through the window. Gracie wasn’t in the room with him this time and neither were any of her hawk-eyed nurses. Kyle couldn’t tell if he felt better through the exhaustion weighing him down. Healing took a lot out of a person; Kyle knew that better than most.
What he didn’t know was what the fuck had happened and where the hell his team was.
Kyle pressed his hand to the side of his biobed, feeling for the patient control panel there. He raised the top half of the biobed to a sitting position, plucking at the hospital gown he wore. The electrodes were still adhered to his chest and the tug of an IV on the back of his hand drew his attention. He thought about removing it, but didn’t want to face Gracie’s wrath.
While nothing really hurt, he was exhausted, and the blankness in his mind, along with the ring on his finger, told Kyle something had happened. Something he probably wasn’t going to like.
Kyle was poking at the biobed’s controls, trying to find the command that would populate his scans again, when the door to his medical room slid open and someone stepped inside. Kyle raised his head, feeling his entire body lurch as he took in the sight of Jamie standing there in full Marine dress uniform, his face as white as the cotton gloves he wore.
“Who died?” Kyle asked, feeling like his heart might crawl out of his chest, thinking it was someone on the team.
He wasn’t prepared for the way Jamie just broke at his words.
Jamie’s expression twisted, the sudden tears in his eyes magnifying their blue coloring. The rib-
breaking sob that exploded out of Jamie had Kyle blindly smacking his hand against the biobed controls to lower the siding so he could get to Jamie.
“Jamie?” he said urgently. “Fuck, what happened?”
He was kicking the sheets off to free his legs, ready to run to Jamie’s side despite how shaky he felt, when strong arms wrapped around him, holding him so tight he almost couldn’t breathe. Kyle grabbed hold of Jamie as best he could, pressing his face against that broad chest, mindful of his ribbons and medals, listening to Jamie cry.
“What happened?” he asked again, fingers curled into the heavy fabric of Jamie’s Marine Corps dress coat, mindful of the IV in the back of his hand.
In all the time he’d known Jamie, never had he seen his lover look so wrecked. As much as Kyle wanted answers, being there for Jamie came first. The biobed creaked a little beneath both their weights, but Kyle didn’t care. All he could do was let Jamie cling to him and cry until there weren’t any tears left.
He didn’t know how long they clung to each other, but no one came and interrupted them. Eventually, Jamie pulled away just enough to wipe at his blotchy face.
“There’s probably tissue in the bathroom,” Kyle said quietly.
“I’m not letting you go,” Jamie told him in a ragged voice, his grip tightening on Kyle’s body.
Kyle tilted his head back, staring up at Jamie. “I’m not going anywhere.”
It was enough to bring tears back to Jamie’s eyes, though he managed to stave off a second crying jag. Kyle lifted a hand, using his thumb to wipe away some of the tears. Jamie grabbed his hand, squeezing it gently. The glint of the diamond on his engagement ring dragged Kyle’s tired thoughts back to something no one had explained to him yet.
“I’m wearing my ring, Jamie. Why am I wearing my ring while on base?”
He asked the question in a hushed whisper, but Kyle’s frustration at what he didn’t know and fear of being discovered bled through. Jamie didn’t seem to share his fear, judging by the way he pressed a kiss to Kyle’s ring.
In the Requiem (Metahuman Files Book 5) Page 32