Chapter 20 #2
“She was a military operative. That’s how they met. He asked her for a favour, help with a private contract, put her in a… a situation. And she died. She was…” He takes a deep breath, steels himself. “She was killed.”
Nathan scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm, one side followed by the other. The tears barely have a moment to form before they’re swept away.
The picture tilts crazily as Will scrambles upright. “Can I come over?”
Nathan nods, not trusting his voice.
He steps back when he answers the door a short while later, automatically giving Will his space.
They trudge upstairs to his room in silence, settling cross legged on the bed with the safety of distance between them.
“I’m so, so sorry, Nate.” Will’s voice is sombre, brimming with empathy and concern. “I don’t even… do you want to talk about it?”
“I kinda hoped we wouldn’t need to talk about it.
I don’t like talking about it.” Nathan sighs heavily, dragging his gaze from the dark blue cotton of his duvet to meet Will’s eyes.
“I only found out six months ago. I always thought… I always thought she was sick. That some disease took her. I assumed.”
“How did you find out?”
“The woman I was protecting, Emily… she’s a politician.
One of the good ones. We got to know each other a bit.
She said I was desolate, asked why.” Nathan leans over, grabs a tissue from the box, crumpling it in his fist and smoothing it out again.
A wry smile crosses his face briefly, there and gone like a brief burst of sunshine clawing through the clouds.
“She needled me until I opened up. About you. About my dad. About… me.”
“Oh.”
It’s amazing, all the emotions that can imbue a single word. Nathan reads curiosity, a hint of discomfort, more than a little care.
“Yeah. I told her about us, about the bond breaking. About my dad sending me away, how he was so focused on my Gift that he didn’t see me underneath it. I told her about Mum, everything she used to say about Gifts. And it turned out… she knew my mum. Knew of her, I mean.”
Will shifts on the bed, dark eyebrows lifting upwards. “That’s… a coincidence?”
“Nah. I was following in two sets of footprints, I just didn’t know it.
” He draws in a deep breath, the truth crackling on the tip of his tongue.
Looses a ragged breath, words catching on the jagged edges of the chasm in his chest. “She had two Gifts. Her kinetic Gift was quite weak, apparently, but she had a strong empathic Gift. She could shield people. She did shield people, powerful people. Made sure they couldn’t be manipulated or corrupted. ”
Will chews his lip thoughtfully, giving him space to talk.
Nathan feels his throat thicken, hears it in his voice a moment later.
“It was meant to be a routine meeting. Low risk. Emily couldn’t share much, she was already breaking the rules telling me anything, but something happened.
An enemy operative killed them all. He was a ten, apparently. She didn’t stand a chance.”
“Fuck, Nate.” Will’s voice carries a tremor, his face sombre.
“Yeah. So there’s that.” He fumbles blindly for the water bottle on his bedside table, washing the bitterness away.
“Obviously I confronted my dad. He told me he was protecting me. I told him every fucking thing he’s done to protect me has hurt me and this was just the same.
And then I quit, and then I… I came back here. ”
Will reaches out, fingers drifting nearly all the way to Nathan’s knee before he pulls back.
“Emily had convinced me to start seeing a therapist a while before we talked about Mum, so I was starting to realise that there were some things that weren’t lost forever.
You. Me. Mum’s a different story, but the truth was the push I needed to stop just…
existing.” Nathan hears his voice crack, bracing himself as the well of sadness deep within him overflows, drowning everything else.
“I thought about it a lot. She would want me to be happy.”
He looks up, catching Will’s gaze. Tears are already dribbling down his face, hot and thick like blood and loss.
Will makes a soft noise, fingers disappearing into the sleeves of his hoodie. A flash of something—determination, maybe?—flitters over his face and then he’s moving, crawling the short distance across the bed and wrapping an arm carefully around Nathan’s shoulders.
“It’s okay. Cry if you need to,” he murmurs, the warmth of him seeping slowly through the fabric of Nathan’s T-shirt.
He turns, clinging to Will with both arms, careful not to let the bare skin of his hands and face rest anywhere they shouldn’t.
He lets go, every scrap of emotion boiling to the surface, erupting in a wordless sob. He lets the chasm howl like never before, lets it take over, spilling tears like he spilled secrets, holding nothing back.
Part of him recognises a difference; letting the violence of his emotions flood freely, safe in Will’s arms, so different from talking about them with his therapist. A different kind of release, primal and visceral, a world away from setting his emotions out in neat little rows to be examined, turned this way and that.
He gives in to it, letting it subsume him. Letting every scrap of emotion hit him, every memory overwhelm him, the pain as sharp as it ever has been.
“It’s okay,” Will murmurs, fingers stroking meaningless patterns between his shoulder blades. “It’s okay, Nate. I’m here.”
Eventually the pain sublimates into catharsis, fresh and weightless and clean.
Safe. He's safe with Will. Safe in his arms.
Nathan burrows closer, sinking deeper into the comfort of Will’s embrace, his head thick with the aftermath.