Chapter Eighteen
Mao
The three journals taken from the eternal fae’s hideout were sitting on the bedside cabinet.
They'd been there for three days, and since unpacking them, Ekon hadn't touched them. Mao had thought that they could’ve spent that time going through the journals, talking through Ekon's feelings about whatever they found there.
Mao was the first to admit, he wasn’t a “talk about your feelings” sort of person, but he was emotionally aware enough to realize those journals were more than just the ramblings of some man who had a record keeping obsession.
In theory, the journals were the last opportunity for Ekon to find his file, which at the bare minimum would give him details about where he came from, and whose DNA they injected him with.
But Ekon didn't seem to be in a hurry to read them.
What had been a pleasant surprise was that after the night Ekon had rocked his world in more ways than one, Ekon’s cat side was coming through more frequently than before.
He seemed content to curl up with Mao on their big bed, the shades open so they could see the tops of the trees of the jungle outside without going out there.
Ekon was also content listening to conversations the others were having around the kitchen table when they went down for meals, but in truth, Mao wasn't the sort of person to talk things to death, and it seemed that Ekon was the same.
He did make it plain through touch and the way he cuddled up to Mao, that he enjoyed being with him, and as Mao felt the same, he was happy to accept their downtime for what it was.
Just something was going on with his mate. It wasn’t anything specific that Mao could point to and think I need to fix that, or we need to get that looked at, but Ekon’s quietness… the odd wince he gave sometimes when he moved… the unnatural amount of time he spent sleeping…
Shifters didn’t get sick, so Mayo didn’t think that was it, but if it wasn’t an illness then what? Is his magic messing with him?
After lunch on the fourth day, as Ekon seemed prepared to have another nap, Mao said, “Are you happy here?”
The surprise on Ekon's face almost made him wish he'd kept his mouth shut. Ekon replied, “Yes,” very quickly.
He had been lying flat on his belly on the bed, dressed just in jean cut-offs, staring out the window. At Mao's question, he pushed himself up and twirled himself around, so he was sitting cross-legged on the bed, much like Mao was.
“I can sense that you feel there's something wrong with me,” Ekon continued. “While it means a lot to feel your concern, it’s not needed. Truthfully, I’m just not used to having so much free time.”
Ekon ducked his head and peered at Mao from under his eyelashes and bangs.
“I’m taking this time to test out my different animals,” he admitted shyly.
“Some of my animals are best at fighting, others are better at tracking, finding people, and assessing threats.” He raised his hands, palms up.
“It’s not like I was trained to relax, or to have days where there was absolutely nothing to do, and I’m trying to work out which animal side handles relaxation the easiest. That probably sounds weird—”
“No, it’s not weird at all.” Mao chuckled.
“That would explain why your cat's been coming through so often. My cat is much the same, and if he had to choose between hunting down some quarry or traipsing over mountains, he would far rather just curl up in a nice ray of sunshine somewhere, having a nap. Cats of all sizes are good at napping, it seems.”
“That’s the conclusion I’ve come to as well,” Ekon chuckled lazily, leaning his elbows on his knees. “There hasn’t been a time in my life when I haven’t had anything to do, and it just takes some getting used to.”
“But didn't you give up working when that whole council thing went down?” Mao was curious. He knew Conrad had given up his work when he met Kylo, and he knew that Nico and Teilo hadn’t been working even before they were abandoned.
Was Ekon still on some roster somewhere, expecting to go to work at a moment’s notice?
That curiosity increased when Ekon shook his head.
“I did continue working originally. Marvin said that some of the council members still had jobs for us. But then, when Ajani met and mated Marvin, and Conrad met Kylo…” He looked down, and Mao was hit with a wave of sadness that wasn’t his.
“I hadn’t found my person when the others did, and I traveled some.
Keeping busy, then six months ago the dreams started and I got to thinking about where I came from and who I am and… ”
“That’s when you decided to try to find your file.” Mao glanced over at the journals, and then looked back at Ekon. “Instead, you found your mate. You still don’t know if you’re mentioned in the journals we saved.”
“I know.” Ekon shrugged. “I’ve been putting it off, and that probably sounds completely silly, but… but…”
He looked frustrated before adding when Mao opened his mouth. “If I open those journals, and if I’m not mentioned in there, then that’s it. There are no more records to be found. I’ll never know who I am or where I came from,” he finished, sadness seeping through the words.
“I understand that,” Mao countered, “if you do open them, and there is something, then you’ll find what you’ve been searching for.” Now they were talking about the journals, his fingers were twitching to open them.
“I was putting off bad news. I suppose, putting it off doesn’t make the outcome any easier to handle, does it?” Leaning over, Ekon stretched, reaching for the top book. It was the first book given to him specifically when they were at the bunker.
Ekon winced, hurriedly sitting back in position and setting the journal down on the bed between them.
For a long moment, both of them just looked at it. Mao wanted to grab it, open it, and then shake out the pages to see if anything fell out. Ekon… hmm. Mao was struggling to sense how Ekon was feeling, but he was definitely hesitant.
“I think I did this wrong.” Ekon ran his hand through his messy hair, and then scratched the back of his head. “We want to learn about my magic, and this book should be able to tell me about it if I ask.”
O-kay. Mao wasn’t so sure about that. “How about you just open it up first, so we can see what’s on the pages?” They could be full of mad utterances for all we know.
Ekon opened the journal. At first glance there was a lot of writing.
Mao wasn't the world's best at reading upside down, but he could see tight, small handwriting in the same language, and a few drawings that looked like sketches and diagrams. As if the eternal fae dabbled as an inventor in his spare time.
Flicking through a couple of pages, Ekon seemed to be impatient with it, and he picked the journal back up again. Holding it in both hands, he closed his eyes—You’re not going to see anything like that—Mao thought until he caught the faintest whisper.
“Show me.”
Mao grinned. Now the behavior made sense, and he liked that Ekon was becoming more comfortable having magic, even if they didn't know what it was intended for.
Putting the book back down, the pages fell open, and there in the middle was a familiar looking file folded in half, wedged in the spine. The file had a number on it, just like the others, but someone had written next to it a single name… Ekon.
Ekon reached for it, but just as his fingers went to touch the paper, he quickly put his hands behind his back.
“I don't know that I can touch it. The journal itself was bad enough. I… I would bear any pain to find out what’s in that file, pain is something I’m well-used to.
But…” Mao realized Ekon was looking at him.
“I don’t want you to feel it as well. Can you…
can you hold up the pages for me so I can read them? ”
Mao reached over and plucked what looked like two sheets of paper from the middle of the file. For a living subject, they didn’t record a lot of details, he thought, suddenly bitter and angry in a way that he hadn’t felt when he and Ekon had been scanning the other records.
The other records were heartbreaking in that most of them recorded failed experiments, and Mao was insulted on his mate’s behalf that the hell in his life was reduced to two flimsy sheets of paper.
Two pages is better than nothing at all. Ekon’s voice in his mind reminded Mao of what was important, and while he desperately wanted to read the page’s contents, he held up the first page. They represented Ekon’s life, not his.
There was silence for a moment, and Mao felt as if there was a sudden door shutting on where their mating bond lived, but he didn’t get upset thinking Ekon was protecting himself. Whatever, wherever Ekon came from, reading his own file was going to be hard.
After a few minutes, Ekon said quietly, “Can I see the other page?”
Mao swapped out the first page for the second, holding it in the same way. He could tell by the way the light shone through the paper that there were barely a few lines of text on the second page, so it didn't take long to read.
When Ekon nodded, indicating he was done, Mao put the pages back on the bed, well away from where Ekon was sitting. “Did you find out what you needed to know?” Mao reached out, resting his hand on Ekon’s knee feeling a sudden wave of anger.
“I don't remember any of that,” Ekon said, nodding at the papers. “There’re no notes at all about my original family. The notes say I was found scavenging for food in some bins at the back of a gas station.” When he looked up, his eyes were bleak.
“Does that mean I wasn't even wanted in the first place?”
Mao wasn't going to get into that conversation because while he’d give anything to make his mate feel better, he wasn’t going to fill him with false hope.
“Something unrelated could’ve happened to your parents,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t a total lie. Mao knew that sort of thing happened, especially with shifters.
“Did the file say where you were taken from, or more specifically, where you were found?”
“Some random little town was mentioned—a name I’ve never heard of before.”
“What is it? I could search for it.” Mao wasn’t going to read the file without Ekon’s permission, but he reached for his phone with his free hand.
Ekon was already shaking his head. “It doesn't matter, because clearly I didn't have a life there as an infant—no one who cared.” He clasped his hands in his lap, and Mao noticed his knuckles were going white.
“You know, after the other assassins found their mates and found their files, they at least had some idea of what happened when they were young—how they were found, who they were taken from.
“Me, yeah, no such luck because,”—Ekon’s haunted gaze met Mao’s—“apparently, I was just a piece of garbage that somebody picked up because they thought it'd be useful to stick needles in me, and it says… failed experiment.”
Ekon’s voice caught, and that door Mao felt before disappeared, allowing the pain to come through. “How can I be a failed experiment? I’m here, living and breathing!”
Scrambling across the short distance between them, Mayo wrapped his arms around his mate.
“You've got no way of knowing, and neither does the person who took you… I refuse to believe you weren’t cared for, and I don't want you thinking about yourself like that either. And you aren’t a failed experiment,” he said fiercely.
“I won’t have you thinking like that about yourself. ”
Ekon’s shoulders rose and fell. “They wrote that for a damn reason. Why? Why did they say I failed, and why did he keep my file like this?” he demanded in utter frustration.
“I suppose it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Basically, it’s all the file says. It lists the animals I was injected with, with just a comment at the end that says ‘failed.’ Yet they listed the tests they did on me during the assassin training, and the date and name of the center where I started my assassin life. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Is that it, nothing else written in there?” Mao mentally winced.
Knowing his mate’s life was reduced to a list of experiments, which were successful despite what the file says.
Thank the Fates, but… it didn’t seem right, and it didn’t indicate why Ekon had always felt different from his fellow assassins. Was the ‘failed experiment’ why?
“There was only one other thing I noticed,” said Ekon wearily, resting his head on Mao’s neck.
“Apparently the last DNA they tested on me came from a fae. Do you think that’s why the eternal fae kept my record separate?
Did the ‘failed’ comment have something to do with him?
If so, do you think there is a part of him in me, and has been all along? ”
“I wish I knew.” Tightening his arms around his mate, Mao dropped a kiss in Ekon’s hair. So many fucking questions and still so many unanswered.