Page 9 of Sidhe
Nathan looked over his shoulder and tried to smile. “Next up is watching paint dry. I’m sure it’ll be just as riveting.”
There was a knowing smile on the young man’s face as he walked into the room, wearing earth tones again, like Nathan remembered: a pair of brown corduroy pants and a green sweater. “Got everyone freaked as fuck out there. Including me. I didn’t think you’d want to be alone after…” He trailed, a weak hand-gesture failing at articulating what he meant.
“Yeah…don’t wanna be alone,” Nathan admitted, shifting to put his feet back on the floor as Iain came around to join him on the couch, “but it doesn’t seem I do much better with everybody around either, so…”
Nathan kept staring at the shiny black screen of the turned-off TV with Iain sitting beside him, and after a few minutes of silence, damn it if he didn’t want to spill everything as if Iain had been goading him the entire time.
He didn’t need to say that he was messed up. That was implied. He didn’t need to tell Iain any details about the Veil, because the librarian wouldn’t push for it and probably guessed that whatever Nathan had been through was too dark for him to imagine.
“You think…this is what all those Vietnam vets felt like when they came home?” Nathan half-grinned, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together like he was praying. He wasn’t. Who the Hell would he pray to?
Iain didn’t say anything at first. He didn’t seem the soldier type himself, but Nathan knew he would understand what he meant. If getting out of war was like getting out of Hell, then getting out of the Veil had to be like…
Something. Nathan should know. But he didn’t. Part of him was still there.
“I don’t expect you to talk about it,” Iain said after some time, voice steady and calm, “but Jim and Sasha…they do. I’m not usually one to give advice about something I don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of understanding, but, Nate…I think you need to tell them whatever you can about what happened while you were…gone. Otherwise you’ll just keep getting lost back into it and they’ll keep floundering around not knowing how to help.”
“They can’t help,” Nathan deadpanned, certain of that with every fiber in him. Only he could crawl out of this. “And what happened…” He looked up, looked over and saw his new friend gazing back at him with every bit of understanding that alifelongfriend could offer. It almost broke him to instantly remember when that same figure had been so brutally…no. “I…I can’t,” Nathan breathed like he was choking, like he was fighting a sob he refused to allow.
Iain didn’t press. Didn’t counter. But he stayed. Nathan was grateful for that. Maybe it was a good thing that in Nathan’s corner of the Veil, Iain had died so early. It meant there were less of those memories to haunt him.
“You notice any…powers creeping up?” Nathan asked, not meaning to turn things on Iain, but unable to forget that the young man was a changeling. “We never really asked.”
“Jim did, while you were gone,” Iain said, relaxing back into the cushions of the sofa. “I knew what I was; certain things have always come easy to me, which I guess could be supernatural, but never anything big. I didn’t even know about doorways until…well, after that sidhe took you, a doorway was how we got out of Colorado. They said you’d used it to get there?”
Nathan nodded.
“Yeah, well…Jim let me feel it out when we got close. Fucking sweet to travel like that, I’ll admit. Said something about dimensional storage lockers called Veil Slips? But we’ve been alittle busy to discuss much else. Frankly, I was never in any hurry to have superpowers. Scary shit like that never turned out too well for the X-Men.”
A laugh choked out of Nathan, a poor excuse for his usual mirth but at least natural. “Well, if you ever do notice any powers, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Jim proved True Awakening doesn’t have to be bad, right?” At least in this world—the real world.
“Right,” Iain beamed brightly.
Jim was Awakened but he was still Jim. That had to mean something.
Later, when Nathan had had enough brooding, alone or in Iain’s company, he ventured out again to see what the others were up to. He just had to keep telling himself that he could do this. He could. This was his life. He had to live it if he was ever going to make up for the last one.
Nathan hung back a little in the hallway, peering around inside the bar area. Iain had left Nathan to join the others a little earlier and was talking amiably with Shiarra at the bar. Alex wasn’t there, probably in the kitchen preparing something for dinner if Nathan’s growling stomach was any indication of the time. Sasha was hovered around his laptop on one of the small tables, looking distracted and pensive. Wally was curled up still in cat form right there on the table behind the laptop, dozing contentedly in the path of the machine’s heat.
Nathan saw Sasha glance several times toward the main entrance, probably assuming that Nathan would come from there should he resurface. He really had to hand it to the incubus; he would have thought it impossible for Sasha to actually give him space. It was clearly weighing heavily on Sasha that he hadn’t yet rushed off gallantly to Nathan’s side. Nathan was surprised Jim hadn’t done the same either.
Jim. Where was Jim…?
“Nathan?”
That voice suddenly behind him jolted Nathan and he had to grip the nearby doorframe. He wasn’t cold, he wasn’t really cold, so why did he feel like shaking?
A firm hand accompanied the voice. “Nathan,” Jim said again.
The insistency, the soft tone that was right there, right there behind him, pulled Nathan back into the fold he was struggling so hard to escape.
Chapter 4
“Nathan,”Jimsaidwithsomething that might have been love once but was too perverted now, “why do you do this? Sit in here all day, barely eating, barely talking. You can always talk to me.” It was like some awful parody that was never funny. Jim that wasn’t Jim. But itwasJim now. The Jim that Nathan had known and loved was gone.
Stuck in the house, that strange place, Nathan had lost track of time. It was filled with monsters and horrors around every corner. Jim was slowly building his army. He wanted willing servants, but when someone—human or otherwise—refused him, he would simply force them with his powers or make them wish they had chosen him on their own.
“I need you, Nathan,” Jim said, crouched down with him where Nathan was leaning back against the wall below the window of his bedroom—his; like anything belonged to him anymore. “I need you to choose me, Nathan. You, I can wait for to be willing.”
