Page 46 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
"As much as I can."
At least that sounded more like Damien.
"Flattered. Just to pieces." Shudder put a hand to his heart, fluttering his other in a pretend fan.
"Shut up. We're talking around you now."
Shudder laughed, but he dropped the affectations. "Blaze, look. I know you hate me. You don't have to like me, though. You know I'm good in a fight."
He couldn't dispute that. The problem was that between the two of them, they had often started the fights. "This is Damien's show. Can you follow someone else's lead? For once in your rotten, selfish life?"
"I'm only as rotten as I have to be." Shudder's smile was softer now. "Blazey, if you can, then I can. Heaven forbid you'd be better at something."
"I'm better than you at everything."
"Not at making the earth move." Shudder waggled his eyebrows at Damien and got one of those strain-choked laughs.
Blaze managed to glare and eat pancakes at the same time.
The redoubt bustledwith activity by the time they left the longhouse. Damien estimated the population of the canyon at around fifty people, though he wondered if there were more foot soldiers out on assignments for Shudder. A group of young people hurried past, too close, and Damien edged half-consciously toward Blaze.
It was probably cruel of him to have agreed with Shudder's suggestion that he accompany them. Blaze's anger toward him had a different flavor than his general anger at the world. There was pain there, bone deep, he suspected. It pointed to an equally deep love in the past, one that, as far as Damien could tell, had ended in lots of shouting.
Maybe the only cruelty was to him, throwing Blaze and Shudder back together with a common cause. Maybe Blaze still loved Shudder, and that would be the end of evenings in Blaze's arms.
Not that he had any business being there. Not that he was acting in any sane and responsible way in that regard.
"Damien?"
"Hmm?"
"She took you in, didn't she? When you were ten and alone."
No need to ask to which "she" Blaze referred. Damien let out a soft puff of breath. "Yes."
"Why?"
Yes, why? He'd asked himself the same question many times back then. Why would Dr. Parma want to take a murderer into her own house, a raw, ruined child with savage instincts and questionable mental health? Over the years, though, he had managed to piece the odd quilt together. It wasn't something he discussed with anyone, not even Dr. Parma. But this was Blaze. It was different with Blaze.
"At first, I think, it was equal parts guilt and intrigue. Guilt, because she had known about me and, I'm sure, the fact that my uncle should have been investigated. But she had hesitated. That was before the Variant Children's Protection Act, so the Guild interfering in private family life would have been a political and public-relations disaster."
"But, c'mon! Child abuse? They could've had enforcement come in."
Damien pulled in a shivering breath, grateful when Blaze's hand squeezed his shoulder. "It was… difficult, I think. There has to be cause. I never went to school. No one saw me. No doctor. No neighbor. No one to report the irregularities."
"Not the word I'd use for it. Fuck. I've seen the scars."
"Yes. Well." He knew they were there. He simply didn't think about them anymore—or he tried not to. His jaw clamped tight, and all the easy words evaporated like sun-scorched morning mist.
"Hey." The hand turned into an arm around his shoulders. It should have felt confining, but it eased some of the iron bands around his heart. "I blurt shit out. Foot-in-mouth disease. And I got some big feet. You know what they say about men with big feet, right?"
"Big shoes."
"Exactly. So tell me why Doc Parma was intrigued by a kid she'd never seen."
As simple as that, Blaze had calmed the threatening horrors and unlocked his voice again. "There were records of me when I was in the state system. The standard three-year-old tests came back with some odd results. They knew I was vari. Didn't know what kind. They started to figure it out when I was maybe five or six."
"So she must've heard about you then. Why didn't she take custody when you were little?"
