Page 71 of Sidhe
“Can’t you accept where you belong?” Malak asked almost tenderly. “You are mine, Nathan.”
“No…I’m not. Not anymore.”
“Oh, you will be. You will.”
Nathan didn’t have another comeback.
Malak had won and it showed on the bastard’s face as he moved back to Solrin. “You have done so well,” he said to him. “I have much work for you now. Nathan will join us in the end.”
“Yes.” Solrin nodded, wholly devoted. He looked at Nathan and smiled as if it didn’t matter that Nathan had tried to shoot him, that he hadkilledone of Nathan’s friends. “You will join us. It is what you were destined for. I know it.”
One last flash of Malak’s too white smile, his hand coming down to rest on Solrin’s shoulder, and they vanished right there on the spot.
Nathan didn’t move for a whole minute. When he did, he made for the others, who had gathered by Iain. They looked at him and there wasn’t accusation on their faces, not for Nathan having wanted so badly to prove Malak wrong and save Solrin. There was only pity.
More fucking pity.
Nathan threw his gun to the ground.
Alexreturnedtoosoonafter their fight with Solrin to find Nathan and the others burning Iain’s body over a pyre in the backyard. She didn’t ask what had happened. She understood. It was Walter who looked on with deeper remorse and blame he turned on himself.
“You couldn’t have known,” Nathan told him. “Solrin made his choices. You couldn’t have helped.” But at the same time Nathan understood why those words did little to ease the grief from Walter’s face, because he would have felt the same way. He did feel the same. He’d failed Iain, because he’d failed Solrin and let Malak win.
Later that night, having already spent perhaps more time than he should have alone, Nathan let his feet carry him until he found himself stepping into the library at the end of the upstairs hall. It was empty. Of course it was empty now. Taking a seat on the large sofa, Nathan fiddled through the piles of books on the coffee table.
There was one pile that wasn’t occult or fae-related at all, just regular fiction, probably something personal of Iain’s. Nathannoticed a collection of short stories and started to page through it. It was a textbook for a literature class, but it wasn’t college or even high school age. It seemed to be more like middle school or even elementary. Nathan would have snickered but he didn’t have it in him to laugh.
Some of the short stories and snippets from larger novels were things Nathan recognized, even some he vaguely remembered from school himself. He was a bit surprised when he paged to a tiny section of science fiction and stumbled upon Vonnegut. HisfavoriteVonnegut short story, “Harrison Bergeron.”
Jim would probably shit a brick if he ever found out that Nathan had pretty much read everything Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote. There weren’t many authors Nathan could say that about. Hell, there wasn’t much of any writing Nathan had ever given as much of his attention to, but Vonnegut, well, that guy just…got it.
Nathan read through “Harrison Bergeron” from the textbook, smirking at the deceptively simple language, the jokes, the epic moment when the Handicapper General came in with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun and took Harrison and his ballerina chick out in two seconds flat. Kind of deep for fourth graders, morbid too, but then Nathan supposed that was probably the point.
Gunned down in their prime, because they’d been something different…
He didn’t notice the tears until they dropped onto the last page of the story. He tossed the book onto the table and sat back, wiping fiercely at his face. He had never wanted to be anything special, anything more than anybody else, but he’d be damned if he’d ever let someone tell him to be something he wasn’t. The thing was, he wasn’t so sure anymore who or what he was supposed to be. If he was supposed to be a savior then why couldn’t he save Solrin? Save Iain?
Nathan sat on the couch, alone, for what must have been an hour. Sasha never once called for him or came looking for him, and neither did anybody else, not even Wally. He needed the time, he supposed, and the others probably knew that, but it bothered him too. Even when he wanted to be alone, he neverreallydid. That’s why it hurt so much when people walked away.
He wanted to fix what was now broken between him and Sasha. Maybe he had been hoping the incubus would come to him, but now wasn’t the time to sit around waiting for anything good to just cross his path.
Slowly, Nathan got up, feeling stiff and sore from sitting for so long, and from the whole damn day beforehand. He closed his eyes and clutched the back of the couch as he came around it. There was a prayer on his lips, a plea, like he wanted to just collapse and maybe have Walter catch him, maybe ask the Spirit Guide to make things better somehow, but even Nathan knew that prayers weren’t supposed to be about that. He couldn’t ask for help every time things went sour.
Out in the hallway, Nathan turned to walk down to his room where he could only assume Sasha had hidden himself away, but he came face to face with Iain’s room first across the hall from the library. Iain had wanted this life, or so he’d said, and it had been the death of him just because of what he was, because a lost and broken man saw something in him that wasn’t normal enough to be allowed to live.
Nathan pressed a hand to Iain’s door and willed the ready tears in his eyes not to fall. He had to make things better, that’s how he’d make this up to Iain. He had to win. And he had to start with what was wrong right in front of him that he still had a chance at fixing.
With slow, patient steps he finally made it down the hallway to his and Sasha’s room. He didn’t see the redhead when he first went inside, closing the door behind him, but he could feelSasha, feel his presence like a beacon, something he often took for granted. He walked to the bathroom, pleased to find the door slightly ajar, and pushed it open.
Sasha righted himself in the bathtub, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes that looked like he had been crying too. There was still steam rising from the water in the tub, but the water was clear and Nathan could make out easily the lean well-defined body of his love beneath the surface. His heart jumped at the sight, but then plummeted that much further into his stomach.
“I got…kinda cold,” Sasha said, his voice betraying just how weak he was as he pulled his knees to his chest. He didn’t look at Nathan but the redness around his blue eyes was obvious.
Nathan didn’t have enough of his heart left to break anymore. He sat down on the toilet, hands clasped. “You need to feed. You don’t need a bath.”
“I thought of looking for you earlier, when it started to get…bad,” Sasha said, head bowed on top of his knees, “but then I just wanted to cry so hard I couldn’t move so I just…” He waved his hand like it explained everything. It sort of did.
Nathan turned to look at Sasha, reached out to take that smooth pale face in his hand.
