Greys III - Revelations

Chapter 17 - No New Friends

Kael was still on his knees, his head hanging, his hands in his lap. And by the way his face was bowed, it looked like he was praying. Something about that made me pause, made me freeze, if just for a moment. And then Nevaeh was there, cradling her brother, petting his hair back and murmuring that she was there, that he was okay, and that he shouldn't have run off without her. Just another picture of how Nevaeh had changed, how she had softened, and how close she and Kael truly were. Even if I had never seen her show it before.

Kael looked up over his sister's shoulder as she held him, and I wanted so badly for him to look like he always did, or at the very least have his perfectly in-place mask on, but he didn't, not this time. He stared out into the woods unseeing, his black eyes glistening, tears leaving clean, wet lines down his dusty face from the destruction of our cabin and the ambush. I had never seen the black eyes of a Shift cry before, and it struck something in me, broke something in my view of Kael, of who he truly was, how deep these wounds went.

I could see Nevaeh's back trembling as Kael's sobbed breaths shook through her too. And as much as I wanted to help, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to go to him, but I couldn't get my feet to move. I couldn't look away either, couldn't tear my eyes from the vision of Kael sobbing on the forest floor, even through the strength of his Shift, the damper of Heaven or Hell still not enough to comfort him. That was the price of love lost, what it could do to even the most powerful of beings in the world. That's how our emotions, our hearts, could ruin us all, break us. I tried to shake the thought.

Seeing him like that, my friend, the jester with the booming laugh, the jubilant puppy, pouring out his broken heart, looking like Nevaeh's hold on him was the only thing keeping him from crumbling apart - it opened something in me, unlocked something far back in my mind, further than my physical form went. I felt an ache start, a stretching, a pulling, and I welcomed it, opened it wide. I pulled the anguish and sorrow and suffocation in with it, pulled it from Kael and into myself. I had done it before, done it for James. I had thought it was because we were Pairs, but now I knew it wasn't some Blood Twin connection, it was something in me, some Gift or curse I held. But regardless of if it was a Gift or something less desirable, I called on it and pulled his pain into myself, holding it in my chest, letting it fill me.

I felt my breath come harder, uneven, and shaking, my eyes burning, but I kept pulling it into me. And I knew I would do it a thousand times over if it saved Kael from feeling a torture he didn't deserve, the shattering Ambriel had caused him by being too weak to fight her nature, to choose him over James' father. The only thing I felt beyond the heavy sadness filling me was my hatred for her, for what she had done to him, to someone so kind, so deep and so selfless. I hated her for everything she had done...and for the things I knew she would still do that would hurt him further. And so I pulled at his grief harder, locking it deep within me as I clutched at my chest. I deserved to feel it, to suffer and know loss, but not him, not someone so good, so light.

His eyes found mine then, melting away from black to his warm puppy brown. Our eyes met and I saw him steeling himself, putting on his mask, that impenetrable mask that had always convinced me and everyone else that he was the happy, shallow, joking member of the Clan, that he was carefree and simple and easy. I saw him pull it up like walls behind his eyes, but the pain in my chest stayed.

Even as he stood, as he pulled his sister to her feet with him, as his breaths came out even and smooth, the pain I had pulled from him stayed, proving that it wasn't new and it wasn't temporary, but something he always carried, something he always hid. It lessened by a few degrees as he straightened and dried his face, becoming more manageable, but it didn't leave. Instead, it lingered behind my rib cage like an old wound, reminding me that it had been real.