Chosen One - Chapter 18

[madbottoms]

 Title: Chosen One - Chapter 18
Summary: Our favourite tortured boys are back in this third and final instalment in which they try to outrun Hell.
Notes: See chapter 1 for disclaimer warnings and related info. Apologies for the delay in posting this next chapter. Enjoy!

18

Silver-tongued Devil

*~*

JACK

My heart pounds at the thought of leaving with Ianto. But how can I leave John? He’s kept me safe all along. He doesn’t want anything to happen to me.

Ianto lifts his hand again, threading his fingers into my hair, and for a second I think he’s gonna kiss me. But he squeezes the back of my neck gently and gazes at me with fire in his eyes. “Trust me, Jack. Please.”

I reach for my doorknob as he slips through the bathroom door. He pushes the door shut but the latch doesn’t catch and the hinges spring it open an inch. The showerhead hisses to life as Ianto turns the water on and I wait for him to push the door closed.

He doesn’t.

My hand is still on my doorknob but I can’t take my eyes off the bathroom door.

I know I told him I couldn’t be with him. I know I was right when I said it. But my heart aches more every minute that we’re together, but not together. I want to feel his arms around me. I want things to be how they were.

I think of Hope. To love someone so much for so long, but not be able to be with him …

I’m still an emotional wreck from everything she told me. I know that’s what the tear trickling over my lashes is about as I pace slowly across the room. I slide up to the bathroom door and hear the change in the pulsing water as Ianto steps into the shower. I think I mean to close the door for him but instead, I just stand here, wanting so badly to push it open and join him.

What would he say? Would he be embarrassed? Ask me to leave?

Wrap me in his arms and love me?

Adrenaline thunders through my veins as I stare through the crack in the door and pull my shirt over my head. I can make out Ianto’s form moving behind the shower curtain, and my pulse pounds deafeningly in my ears. My hands start to shake and I take a shaky breath, grasping the top of my track pants and slide them off.

My heart slams like a caged animal against my ribs as I push open the door.

The burning sensation in the centre of my chest takes me by surprise and I gasp. When I reach for the spot the pendant lying on my sternum buzzes with electric heat.

I grasp it tightly in my hand and glance at Ianto’s outline through the thin curtain, my heart aching. With one last longing glance at Ianto, I back out of the bathroom, pulling the door shut and scoop my clothes off the floor. I slip through the door to my room and drop into the armchair in the corner, clutching my clothes to my chest, my heart still hammering, just as the front door swings open.

“Jack?” John calls.

“I’m changing!” I call back from the safety of my room. “I’ll be out in a minute!”

I draw a deep breath and hold it for a second, waiting to see if he knocks. He doesn’t. I let out the breath and realise my hand is still curled around the metal object. There’s a momentary pang of guilt as I pull it up by the leather strap and rub the pendant between my fingers for the hundredth time. I should tell John it’s back. But I’m desperate for him not to take it away again.

It’s electric. I don’t know how or why, but I can feel the buzz under my hand. It feels good. There’s something comforting in it and I feel safer just holding it—like I’m connected to something powerful.

I tug on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt then sink back into the armchair and try to think.        I dangle the pendant in front of my face and poke at it with my finger. It twirls at the end of the strap, catching the few rays of muted afternoon sun managing to trail through the heavy cloud cover. Despite the dark, worn metal, it reflects the faint light with every turn, mesmerising me.

I run my finger along the edge, which cuts through my skin like butter. Something in me knew it would—wanted it to. I watch, fascinated, as a bead of blood seeps onto the metal. I press my cut finger to my jeans as, with the other hand, I try to smear the blood off the pendant with my thumb. But before I can, it seems to be absorbed into the metal—as if the metal is drinking it in. And then there’s a sound, so faint I can barely hear it, like the hum of a tuning fork. I cradle the pendant in my palm feeling the hum, and bring it up to my ear, listening.

There’s a noise outside my door and I glance in that direction, feeling suddenly defensive. I listen to the sounds of the house—the creaking pipes and the beating water of the shower; the quiet drone of the TV that John must have turned on. My senses are humming right along with the metal of my pendant, wary of any threat.

John wants it.

But he can’t have it.

I’m so dialled in, tuning into the faint sounds coming from outside my door, that the tap on my window makes me jump out of my skin. I loop the strap over my head and tuck the pendant quickly under my shirt.

I wait for a minute without breathing. Listening.

Nothing.

The rain.

It was just the rain on my window.

My heart is pounding, adrenaline sending it into a frenzy. I lean back into the chair and breathe, slow and deep. Just as I’m starting to relax, the second tap sends my heart leaping into my throat. I stand and inch slowly across the room to the window.

At first I see nothing, but the next instant Gray’s face is pressed up against the glass.

“Oh my God!” I gasp.

I rush the last few steps to the window and throw it open. “Gray!”

“Don’t be scared, Jack,” he says softly, backing off a few feet.

Rain pelts my face as I lean out into the swirling darkness of the diminishing storm.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

“You never asked before,” I say, a shake in my voice.

“I have to now,” he answers, and something dark passes over his face.

“Um … okay.” I back away from the window but it turns out he’s not coming through that way. He disappears from the dune and then I hear him clear his throat behind me. I jump, my nerves totally shot, and spin in his direction.

“You’re really here?” I breathe, unable to get any air behind the words.

“I am.”

“What happened? Where have you been?” I’m pretty sure I know the answers, but I can’t help but hope I might be wrong. In the dim light I see those glowing red eyes regard me and I feel something cold claw up my spine.

“Hell.”

Even though I expected it, I still gasp. I think about Ianto in the bathroom and John on the couch. One scream would bring them both.

I open my mouth but then I feel the cold press of guilt.

Gray stares at me, his gaze intense and his smile angelic, and I’m suddenly crushed by what I’ve done to him. An image flashes in my head: seven-year-old Gray twisted on the ground, and it’s like a dull knife is carving its way through my insides. I wrap my arms around myself and groan.

I can’t scream.

I have to help him. There has to be something I can do—with my Sway, maybe—to help him get away from Lucifer.

At best, John and Ianto would scare Gray off. At worst, John would blast him into oblivion.

“Wow,” he says. “That’s a whole lot of guilt.”

I look up at him, still squeezing myself against the pain. “What?”

“I can sense it—your guilt,” he says, and I get the feeling there’s more to it. “It’s a handy talent that I just found out I have.” He looks hard into my eyes. “Don’t feel guilty, Bro. Everything has worked out.”

But as he says it, I see him with Lilith and the knife cuts deeper. I double over and hear a cross between a whimper and a gasp leaves my throat. He lowers his gaze and the pain stops instantly.

I stare at him as I catch my breath, trying to figure out what just happened.

“It’s okay, Bro. It wasn’t all your fault.” He reaches for my hand but when he touches me, he’s a thousand degrees.

My elbow cracks sharply into my dresser as I jerk my hand away, sending a jolt of zinging electric pain down my arm into my hand, which instantly goes numb. I rub my elbow and flex my fingers, slowly realising that stuff like funny bone pain doesn’t happen in dreams.

This is real. Gray is really here.

I wasn’t sure until just this second.

I look back up at Gray feeling a new kind of fear creep through my gut.

He moves closer. “Please don’t be scared. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“How did you find me?” My voice is stronger but it still shakes.

He quirks a cocky smile. “I’m your brother. Your twin. I did what any brother would do. I spied on you.”

“Spied on me?”

He nods. “How else was I supposed to follow you?”

“You followed me? Here?” And then I remember. In my dream … or at least what I convinced myself had been a dream, when I saw him here in my room and out on the dune, I’d thought I’d seen black wings.

“You can fly,” I whisper.

He nods.

The image of a shadow gliding over the surface of the clouds below our plane skitters through my memory. I remember thinking it was our shadow but it seemed too small. “You got your wings back?” I breathe.

His face darkens. “Not the way you mean.” When his eyes connect with mine, they’re hopeful. “But I want to.” He holds his hand out to me again and I take it lightly, getting used to his heat. “I really want to come back—to earn my real wings back.”

“Hope said that once you chose—”

“I didn’t say it was going to be easy,” he snaps.

I breathe deep. “How?”

“Maggie needs our help. She’s in … trouble.”

“What’s wrong with Maggie?” The words slip out of my mouth but I barely hear them because suddenly there’s a cyclone in my head. Whirring thoughts swirling with panic and fear and dread.

“It almost worked last time…” Gray trails off, his eyes troubled.

“What? What almost worked?”

“Naburus,” he says simply. “And Elle is helping him.”

The image from my dream, Maggie and a boy, cuts through my out-of-control emotions. “Russell has Maggie?” I hear the hysteria in my voice and know I’m on the edge of losing it.

Gray nods, his face solemn.

Oh, God. My baby sister.

Panic knots my chest. I can’t breathe as the image of Owen, bloody and dying in my arms, slaps my senses. “No,” I whisper.

“She needs our help,” Gray says, studying my reaction but making no move toward me.

“I need to go.” The words are choked as they leave my mouth. “I have to help her.” Maggie can’t die.

“We both do,” Gray answers.

“John,” I say, finally able to pull some air into my lungs.

“No, Jack. He won’t let you go.” There’s an unmistakable current of panic in his voice.

“We need his help, Gray!”

His eyes flare, blood-red. “He’s known all along.”

My stomach drops to my knees. “About Maggie? I don’t believe you.”

“Think about it. His job is to keep you away from danger.” His eyes lock on mine, intense. “He won’t let you go back. Now that I’ve found you, he’ll drag you off to some other hidden place and keep you locked away.”

“He wouldn’t…” I start. But I trail off as I remember him saying he’d do exactly that. I drop my face into my hands and try to think. John can’t lie, but I’ve never asked him directly about my family. I’ve never asked if they were safe. And when I’ve asked him to look out for them, he’s always said he would do what he could. No promises.

I start to move toward the door. “I need to talk to John.”

Gray’s eyes flare again and his gaze becomes unbearable. “He can’t know I’m here.”

I look harder at Gray. He’s different now. His blue eyes are dark and he just seems coiled so tight. He’s not an angel anymore. He’s a demon. Demons lie. What if he’s trying to lure me away from John?

But as I think it, I feel the sharp stab in my gut as guilt takes over my thoughts again. I picture his wings being ripped from his body. “I won’t tell him,” I groan.

His expression becomes hard as stone, set and determined. “Then what’s there to talk to him about? Just come with me.”

The pain becomes sharper, more intense, as he stares into my eyes, and I sink onto the bed, wrapping my arms around myself.