(no subject)
Just ... Gah.
Today's wallpaper is: http://www.deviantart.com/view/24770032/
And more words, of course. Just so you know, today's entry is the last post in the first arc. Next up is arc two, which should be set somewhere a little farther along the future.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
~William Blake, excerpted from The Proverbs of Hell
Title: Brother's Keeper, Part Five
Rating: PG-13 for partial nudity and the blatant disrespecting of ones elders
Word count: 2740
Total word count so far: 12950
Author's notes that most likely no one will read: I want to re-iterate again that this is the last bit in the current arc. The next arc should pick up in another three months or so, kind of like the Part Two takes place three months after Part One.
It was kind of funny, to see what could change in a week.
A week ago, Greg would have been grateful for the chance to spend time in someone else’s company. Preferably someone who wasn’t an uncaring, smug, smirking, slave-owning bastard, but as long as it wasn’t Riordan, Greg wasn’t going to be picky.
Now, Greg was glad of the buffer Riordan presented between himself and The Girl.
Thinking about her made his insides twist like a sack of snakes. It was her fault, only it wasn’t. She’d led to his capture, but not facilitated it. Technically speaking, he couldn’t hold her responsible for his enslavement, but he wanted to. If he hadn’t stopped to save her life…
Except… “She is precious to me,” Riordan had said. He’d meant it, too. And God, if he hadn’t sounded just like Adam had. Like having one precious person was enough, because they were all that mattered.
Greg still hated Riordan, but that kind of reckless, all-encompassing love he could respect. He wouldn’t touch The Girl.
Riordan, however, was fair game. Their sparring sessions had become Greg’s only outlet for his chaotic anger, and he didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the chance to vent. For his part, Riordan had temporarily abandoned trying to teach Greg to fight without anger (a major focus of their earlier sparring sessions) and focused more on containing him. Which didn’t always work. Greg got pinned considerably less now - anger gave him speed and strength, but had yet to completely fog his good judgment. The only drawback that Greg could see was that it also exhausted him.
Still, he wasn’t sure which one of them was more surprised when one o Greg’s fists got through Riordan’s defense and slammed into his master’s ribs. Riordan went a sickly pale color, and Greg stepped back warily.
“If you hurt me,” Riordan had said, crouched just outside Greg’s cell in the first day after he’d woken up to slavery. “You’ll feel it too. You can’t keep me out of your head. I can make you feel everything that I do.”
Those were the rules, as explained to him in the beginning to discourage him from trying to escape. He waited expectantly. If Riordan projected onto him, he’d keep fighting. That would be the last straw in a bale of similarly of unjust actions.
“I think that will do for today,” his master observed tonelessly. If his face hadn’t been drained of its natural color, Greg would have thought he was fine from his voice alone. “We can continue this later, Grigori. I’ll see you at dinner.”
“I’ll eat in my room,” replied Greg. He’d retreated back to his room for meals ever since The Girl arrived. He missed the Breakfast Ritual, but he wasn’t sure he could keep himself from doing something retaliatory to The Girl. It was better to avoid the temptation.
Lashing out at Riordan was okay. Riordan deserved it, the smirking, slave-owning bastard. That, and Greg knew Riordan could take it. He was astonishingly resilient. Kind of like a cockroach.
The Girl on the other hand… She didn’t seem nearly as capable of surviving. She was all soft skin and gentle curves. He remembered how light she’d seemed, when he’d picked her up and carried her out of the fire. Though that could have just been the adrenaline.
The thought of hurting her made him feel weird. As much as he wanted to be able to really blame her, he couldn’t. Besides, it went against everything he’d ever been taught. You just didn’t offer violence to the fairer sex. Period.
She messed things up. She made Riordan almost likeable, which Greg did not appreciate at all.
Greg sighed, and headed into the kitchen. He’d fix a sandwich, or something, and just skip dinner entirely. It wasn’t ideal, but it beat feeling rude when he grabbed a couple servings of whatever was for dinner and then retreating back to his room. (It was stupid to feel rude, like he was rejecting their hospitality or something. He was different from them. Nephilim-born, and enslaved accordingly upon discovery. He was a thing, a slave, and he had to remember that as not-bad as life under Riordan’s roof could sometimes be, he still wasn’t a person in the eyes of the Natsar. The fact that he still felt like a brute every time he caught sight of The Girl’s hurt expression every time he walked away from a meal just proved that his subconscious was thoroughly irrational.)
He grabbed chips and soda while he was at it, pausing almost guiltily as he passed Riordan’s door. It was open, just a little, as if whoever had closed it had had other things on their mind.
“Uncle Van…” he heard The Girl say, and that was enough to root him to the spot. However strange The Girl made him feel, she was still interesting.
“I’ll be fine, Sophia.”
The Girl sighed loudly. “Jackass.”
Greg smirked. She had a point.
“Don’t call your uncle a jackass,” chided Riordan. “You’re supposed to respect your elders.”
“Hmph. Try practicing what you preach, Uncle Van. Are you going to let me look at your ribs or not? I saw you wincing earlier.”
“I hadn’t planned on it.” That was Riordan at his most insufferable. How the man managed to seem smug without changing that statue-like expression was beyond Greg.
There was a pause, and then The Girl gasped. “Shit! Did he do all of that?”
All of what? Greg wondered. He hadn’t gotten that many strikes in. And todays had been the only bad one. For the most part, he’d managed to do very little damage, though that wasn’t for lack of trying.
“No. Of course not. He just managed to smack the big one.”
Big what?
“Then…” The Girl trailed off.
When he replied, Riordan’s voice was far gentler than Greg had ever heard it. “The Synod was displeased by my decision to keep them from seeing Grigori. They issued a Combat Challenge in the attempt to change my mind.”
“It’s not right,” The Girl said. She sounded almost close to tears. “Why does it always have to be you? Why are you the only one who hurts for someone else’s sins?”
There was a moment of silence. Greg didn’t want to hear any more. He fled back to his room and tried to ignore the knot in his gut he refused to acknowledge felt a lot like concern. Greg twisted the silver ring, idly rotating the band rather than trying to get it off. The physical reminder of his enslavement usually made him angry, but today he just felt a little burnt out. All that anger was exhausting when the object of your hatred let you do things you liked and made sure your favorite junk foods were in the cabinet, and had even taken it upon himself to stand between you and people who wouldn’t hesitate to lynch you.
Why? Why would Riordan bother? Where was the benefit in keeping Greg alive? Even Adam…
Greg squished that thought. He didn’t want to think about Adam, and he’d been doing so all too frequently since his capture.
A knock on his doorway provided a welcome intrusion to his thoughts. Or it did until Greg opened the door and saw The Girl standing there, at any rate.
“Uh,” he said.
She hefted the tray she held. “I brought you dinner,” she said, her tone defying him to comment.
“…Thanks.”
“I figured that if I was bringing Uncle Van a tray, I might as well bring you one too,” The Girl continued.
Greg wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all.
Fortunately (or was that unfortunately?) The Girl seemed perfectly capable of carrying the conversation on her own. “I’ll just set this on your desk.” She did so without waiting for permission, though he couldn’t bring himself to object to her invasion of his personal space and his territory. “You can bring the dishes down on your own,” she continued briskly. “I’ll be in my room after this.”
“Um,” said Greg. “I can do that.”
“Great.” The Girl paused awkwardly in the doorway.
“You need something?” Greg asked. He knew he was being rude, but he couldn’t help it. She tied him up in knots so big they manifested verbally.
She stared at him. She really did have extraordinary eyes, he noticed again. Clear and bright, in the purest shade of blue he’d ever seen. Right now those eyes looked just a little desperate.
“Please stop hurting my uncle,” The Girl said quietly.
“I-” Had he done that much damage? He felt a pang of guilt and shoved it aside. “He deserves it,” he said harshly.
She slapped him. He had no memory of her moving to close the distance between them, or of her lifting her hand to strike him.
Clearly, Riordan’s freakishly fast abilities were genetic. Greg lifted a hand to his stinging cheek and stared at her incredulously.
“Don’t you ever say that about my uncle,” she hissed. “He’s a good man.”
“A good man who keeps slaves? Who takes away other people’s free will? He’s a shining example of humanity, alright,” he said, voice thick with sarcasm.
“Idiot,” she snapped. “He saved your life. They would have killed you if he hadn’t made you his.”
“Some life,” Greg muttered.
She stared at him, obviously frustrated. Then she took a deep breath and said, “If you need someone to hurt that badly, then hurt me instead.”
“I - You - ” He gaped at her. His expression had to resemble a fish out of water, but damn it, a man needed some kind of warning before he got that kind of shock. “No!’
“Why not?” she challenged. “It’s my fault. If you hadn’t saved me- ”
“That has nothing to do with this!”
“It has everything to do with this.” The Girl looked like she was going to burst into angry tears. “Just tell me what I can do to make us even, or something. Stop taking it out on Uncle Van.”
“You can’t do that!” Greg shouted. “I have no free will unless he says I do. How do you think that feels, huh? We can’t be even.”
“I’ll do whatever you tell me to,” she argued. “If you’ll stop.”
“What if I want to have sex with you?” Greg countered. “You can’t really expect me to believe you’ll just let me.”
The Girl’s chin came up defiantly. She looked a little like Riordan when she did that. It was something about the aggressive tilt of her hand and the very faint narrowing of her eyes. She grabbed the hem of her shirt and yanked it over her head.
“Ack!” Greg spun around and covered his eyes. He could feel his face heat. Damn it, girls weren’t supposed to do that. “Put that back on!”
“I thought you-”
“It was a hypothetical question!” yelled Greg. Oh man. Shirtless niece was definitely something Riordan would kill first and ask questions once he was dead about. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”
“So you-”
“No!”
“Well, then what do you want me to do?” The Girl demanded, frustrated.
“At the moment? I really want you to put your shirt back on before Riordan decides to come in here and kill me by accident.”
“Oh, relax. Uncle Van’s not going to do anything. He’s all nice and mellow now thanks to some stuff Dr. Richards gave me.”
Greg turned around slowly. The Girl had put her shirt back on. (Thank God.) “You drugged him?”
“It was for his own good,” she said mildly.
Being psychotic apparently ran in the family too. “Did you drug mine?”
“Not tonight. I might, if you keep hurting Uncle Van.”
How very Natsar. If bribery didn’t work, try threats.
She was tough. He had to give her that. Only the faintest of tremors gave away how afraid she’d been that he’d take her up on her offer. She had guts.
If she weren’t Natsar and Riordan’s niece, he could almost like her.
Greg smiled slowly. “Alright,” he said, grudgingly admiring. “I’ll stop trying to hurt him. But I’m not going to stop sparring with him.”
“I didn’t expect you to.” The Girl fidgeted. “Do you prefer Greg or Grigori?” she asked suddenly.
“Greg.”
She nodded. “I’m Sophia. Which you already know, but, uh, we were never really introduced.” She held out one hand.
Greg shook it, uncomfortably aware of the faint scarring on his own that marked him as something alien from what she was. “Pleased to meet you,” he murmured politely, if a little ironically.
“Likewise,” she replied. She flashed a fleeting, breathtaking smile at him and said, “Enjoy your dinner, okay?”
“Thanks,” he said.
“No,” she disagreed. “Thank you.”
He wasn’t sure what she was thanking him for. The whole conversation had been really unsettling. Greg bolted his dinner and decided that he wanted company. Male company, since the lady of the house was obviously more dangerous than he or Riordan could ever hope to be. She had him agreeing with her before he knew what was going on.
His options for male company were limited, but Greg went to go see Riordan anyway.
The man didn’t look like he’d been drugged, though he did look perilously close to being relaxed. Riordan reclined against a pile of pillows, and looked up from his book when Greg opened the door.
“I heard Sophia yelling,” was all he said, idly turning a page.
“She said - ” Greg stopped. Reconsidered. “What did they do to you?”
It was hard to pinpoint exactly how Riordan’s stillness changed from simply not moving to something quieter, internal enforced on the external and infinitely more dangerous. Riordan set his book aside and shifted so he could lift his cotton nightshirt up.
“Holy shit,” Greg breathed. Riordan’s abdomen was an ugly mixture of motley yellow-brown and purple patches. It looked like there was a gash (a knife wound, he noted - it was too clean for anything else) along his ribs. Right where Greg had punched him earlier, in fact.
“The Synod hurt you because of me.” It wasn’t a question.
“Actually, it was because I’m a stubborn, annoying bastard.” Riordan smiled, very faintly but it was there if you knew what to look for. “The Synod shares your opinion of me.” Riordan smoothed his shit back into place and picked up his book again. “They seemed to think your ‘lack of adjustment’ to Natsar behaviorisms implied that you were never going to. They wanted to evaluate that personally. I told them to go copulate with themselves, and they took exception to that for some reason.”
Greg had no problems imagining why. Just like he had no trouble imagining Riordan doing just that.
“I wouldn’t let the matter concern you. They’ll try this kind of crap periodically, but I can handle it.”
“How’s the other guy look?” wondered Greg.
Riordan grinned wolfishly. “Beat the shit out of him.”
He sounded a little like he’d enjoyed it. He probably had. Greg certainly would’ve. “Why’d you fight to keep me?” he asked, genuinely curious.
Riordan blinked. He was honestly surprised. “Because you’re one of mine,” he said, like that settled the matter.
Greg’s throat tightened. He felt suddenly and irrationally guilty. For Riordan’s injuries, for being difficult - for everything.
“Why don’t you take a seat and tell me a story?” Riordan gestured vaguely to the foot of the bed.
Greg settled on the floor near the head of the bed, unconsciously mimicking the placement Riordan had taken when their positions had been reversed. “I don’t know any good stories.”
“You could tell me why you and Sophia were yelling at each other.”
“Oh. That.” Greg looked up at the ceiling. “Girls are fucking psychotic,” he grumbled.
Riordan’s open laughter made him smile. “You have no idea,” his captor said. “God, she was such a handful when she was younger. I thought we’d never make it past thirteen.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. See, there was this kid in her class…”
Greg smirked a little. He’d figured Riordan wouldn’t resist the chance to talk about his niece. And this might work as nice blackmail material, if The Girl - if Sophia - got too outrageous again. He leaned back against the bed and settled in for the story.
End Arc 1
Today's wallpaper is: http://www.deviantart.com/view/24770032/
And more words, of course. Just so you know, today's entry is the last post in the first arc. Next up is arc two, which should be set somewhere a little farther along the future.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
~William Blake, excerpted from The Proverbs of Hell
Title: Brother's Keeper, Part Five
Rating: PG-13 for partial nudity and the blatant disrespecting of ones elders
Word count: 2740
Total word count so far: 12950
Author's notes that most likely no one will read: I want to re-iterate again that this is the last bit in the current arc. The next arc should pick up in another three months or so, kind of like the Part Two takes place three months after Part One.
It was kind of funny, to see what could change in a week.
A week ago, Greg would have been grateful for the chance to spend time in someone else’s company. Preferably someone who wasn’t an uncaring, smug, smirking, slave-owning bastard, but as long as it wasn’t Riordan, Greg wasn’t going to be picky.
Now, Greg was glad of the buffer Riordan presented between himself and The Girl.
Thinking about her made his insides twist like a sack of snakes. It was her fault, only it wasn’t. She’d led to his capture, but not facilitated it. Technically speaking, he couldn’t hold her responsible for his enslavement, but he wanted to. If he hadn’t stopped to save her life…
Except… “She is precious to me,” Riordan had said. He’d meant it, too. And God, if he hadn’t sounded just like Adam had. Like having one precious person was enough, because they were all that mattered.
Greg still hated Riordan, but that kind of reckless, all-encompassing love he could respect. He wouldn’t touch The Girl.
Riordan, however, was fair game. Their sparring sessions had become Greg’s only outlet for his chaotic anger, and he didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the chance to vent. For his part, Riordan had temporarily abandoned trying to teach Greg to fight without anger (a major focus of their earlier sparring sessions) and focused more on containing him. Which didn’t always work. Greg got pinned considerably less now - anger gave him speed and strength, but had yet to completely fog his good judgment. The only drawback that Greg could see was that it also exhausted him.
Still, he wasn’t sure which one of them was more surprised when one o Greg’s fists got through Riordan’s defense and slammed into his master’s ribs. Riordan went a sickly pale color, and Greg stepped back warily.
“If you hurt me,” Riordan had said, crouched just outside Greg’s cell in the first day after he’d woken up to slavery. “You’ll feel it too. You can’t keep me out of your head. I can make you feel everything that I do.”
Those were the rules, as explained to him in the beginning to discourage him from trying to escape. He waited expectantly. If Riordan projected onto him, he’d keep fighting. That would be the last straw in a bale of similarly of unjust actions.
“I think that will do for today,” his master observed tonelessly. If his face hadn’t been drained of its natural color, Greg would have thought he was fine from his voice alone. “We can continue this later, Grigori. I’ll see you at dinner.”
“I’ll eat in my room,” replied Greg. He’d retreated back to his room for meals ever since The Girl arrived. He missed the Breakfast Ritual, but he wasn’t sure he could keep himself from doing something retaliatory to The Girl. It was better to avoid the temptation.
Lashing out at Riordan was okay. Riordan deserved it, the smirking, slave-owning bastard. That, and Greg knew Riordan could take it. He was astonishingly resilient. Kind of like a cockroach.
The Girl on the other hand… She didn’t seem nearly as capable of surviving. She was all soft skin and gentle curves. He remembered how light she’d seemed, when he’d picked her up and carried her out of the fire. Though that could have just been the adrenaline.
The thought of hurting her made him feel weird. As much as he wanted to be able to really blame her, he couldn’t. Besides, it went against everything he’d ever been taught. You just didn’t offer violence to the fairer sex. Period.
She messed things up. She made Riordan almost likeable, which Greg did not appreciate at all.
Greg sighed, and headed into the kitchen. He’d fix a sandwich, or something, and just skip dinner entirely. It wasn’t ideal, but it beat feeling rude when he grabbed a couple servings of whatever was for dinner and then retreating back to his room. (It was stupid to feel rude, like he was rejecting their hospitality or something. He was different from them. Nephilim-born, and enslaved accordingly upon discovery. He was a thing, a slave, and he had to remember that as not-bad as life under Riordan’s roof could sometimes be, he still wasn’t a person in the eyes of the Natsar. The fact that he still felt like a brute every time he caught sight of The Girl’s hurt expression every time he walked away from a meal just proved that his subconscious was thoroughly irrational.)
He grabbed chips and soda while he was at it, pausing almost guiltily as he passed Riordan’s door. It was open, just a little, as if whoever had closed it had had other things on their mind.
“Uncle Van…” he heard The Girl say, and that was enough to root him to the spot. However strange The Girl made him feel, she was still interesting.
“I’ll be fine, Sophia.”
The Girl sighed loudly. “Jackass.”
Greg smirked. She had a point.
“Don’t call your uncle a jackass,” chided Riordan. “You’re supposed to respect your elders.”
“Hmph. Try practicing what you preach, Uncle Van. Are you going to let me look at your ribs or not? I saw you wincing earlier.”
“I hadn’t planned on it.” That was Riordan at his most insufferable. How the man managed to seem smug without changing that statue-like expression was beyond Greg.
There was a pause, and then The Girl gasped. “Shit! Did he do all of that?”
All of what? Greg wondered. He hadn’t gotten that many strikes in. And todays had been the only bad one. For the most part, he’d managed to do very little damage, though that wasn’t for lack of trying.
“No. Of course not. He just managed to smack the big one.”
Big what?
“Then…” The Girl trailed off.
When he replied, Riordan’s voice was far gentler than Greg had ever heard it. “The Synod was displeased by my decision to keep them from seeing Grigori. They issued a Combat Challenge in the attempt to change my mind.”
“It’s not right,” The Girl said. She sounded almost close to tears. “Why does it always have to be you? Why are you the only one who hurts for someone else’s sins?”
There was a moment of silence. Greg didn’t want to hear any more. He fled back to his room and tried to ignore the knot in his gut he refused to acknowledge felt a lot like concern. Greg twisted the silver ring, idly rotating the band rather than trying to get it off. The physical reminder of his enslavement usually made him angry, but today he just felt a little burnt out. All that anger was exhausting when the object of your hatred let you do things you liked and made sure your favorite junk foods were in the cabinet, and had even taken it upon himself to stand between you and people who wouldn’t hesitate to lynch you.
Why? Why would Riordan bother? Where was the benefit in keeping Greg alive? Even Adam…
Greg squished that thought. He didn’t want to think about Adam, and he’d been doing so all too frequently since his capture.
A knock on his doorway provided a welcome intrusion to his thoughts. Or it did until Greg opened the door and saw The Girl standing there, at any rate.
“Uh,” he said.
She hefted the tray she held. “I brought you dinner,” she said, her tone defying him to comment.
“…Thanks.”
“I figured that if I was bringing Uncle Van a tray, I might as well bring you one too,” The Girl continued.
Greg wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all.
Fortunately (or was that unfortunately?) The Girl seemed perfectly capable of carrying the conversation on her own. “I’ll just set this on your desk.” She did so without waiting for permission, though he couldn’t bring himself to object to her invasion of his personal space and his territory. “You can bring the dishes down on your own,” she continued briskly. “I’ll be in my room after this.”
“Um,” said Greg. “I can do that.”
“Great.” The Girl paused awkwardly in the doorway.
“You need something?” Greg asked. He knew he was being rude, but he couldn’t help it. She tied him up in knots so big they manifested verbally.
She stared at him. She really did have extraordinary eyes, he noticed again. Clear and bright, in the purest shade of blue he’d ever seen. Right now those eyes looked just a little desperate.
“Please stop hurting my uncle,” The Girl said quietly.
“I-” Had he done that much damage? He felt a pang of guilt and shoved it aside. “He deserves it,” he said harshly.
She slapped him. He had no memory of her moving to close the distance between them, or of her lifting her hand to strike him.
Clearly, Riordan’s freakishly fast abilities were genetic. Greg lifted a hand to his stinging cheek and stared at her incredulously.
“Don’t you ever say that about my uncle,” she hissed. “He’s a good man.”
“A good man who keeps slaves? Who takes away other people’s free will? He’s a shining example of humanity, alright,” he said, voice thick with sarcasm.
“Idiot,” she snapped. “He saved your life. They would have killed you if he hadn’t made you his.”
“Some life,” Greg muttered.
She stared at him, obviously frustrated. Then she took a deep breath and said, “If you need someone to hurt that badly, then hurt me instead.”
“I - You - ” He gaped at her. His expression had to resemble a fish out of water, but damn it, a man needed some kind of warning before he got that kind of shock. “No!’
“Why not?” she challenged. “It’s my fault. If you hadn’t saved me- ”
“That has nothing to do with this!”
“It has everything to do with this.” The Girl looked like she was going to burst into angry tears. “Just tell me what I can do to make us even, or something. Stop taking it out on Uncle Van.”
“You can’t do that!” Greg shouted. “I have no free will unless he says I do. How do you think that feels, huh? We can’t be even.”
“I’ll do whatever you tell me to,” she argued. “If you’ll stop.”
“What if I want to have sex with you?” Greg countered. “You can’t really expect me to believe you’ll just let me.”
The Girl’s chin came up defiantly. She looked a little like Riordan when she did that. It was something about the aggressive tilt of her hand and the very faint narrowing of her eyes. She grabbed the hem of her shirt and yanked it over her head.
“Ack!” Greg spun around and covered his eyes. He could feel his face heat. Damn it, girls weren’t supposed to do that. “Put that back on!”
“I thought you-”
“It was a hypothetical question!” yelled Greg. Oh man. Shirtless niece was definitely something Riordan would kill first and ask questions once he was dead about. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”
“So you-”
“No!”
“Well, then what do you want me to do?” The Girl demanded, frustrated.
“At the moment? I really want you to put your shirt back on before Riordan decides to come in here and kill me by accident.”
“Oh, relax. Uncle Van’s not going to do anything. He’s all nice and mellow now thanks to some stuff Dr. Richards gave me.”
Greg turned around slowly. The Girl had put her shirt back on. (Thank God.) “You drugged him?”
“It was for his own good,” she said mildly.
Being psychotic apparently ran in the family too. “Did you drug mine?”
“Not tonight. I might, if you keep hurting Uncle Van.”
How very Natsar. If bribery didn’t work, try threats.
She was tough. He had to give her that. Only the faintest of tremors gave away how afraid she’d been that he’d take her up on her offer. She had guts.
If she weren’t Natsar and Riordan’s niece, he could almost like her.
Greg smiled slowly. “Alright,” he said, grudgingly admiring. “I’ll stop trying to hurt him. But I’m not going to stop sparring with him.”
“I didn’t expect you to.” The Girl fidgeted. “Do you prefer Greg or Grigori?” she asked suddenly.
“Greg.”
She nodded. “I’m Sophia. Which you already know, but, uh, we were never really introduced.” She held out one hand.
Greg shook it, uncomfortably aware of the faint scarring on his own that marked him as something alien from what she was. “Pleased to meet you,” he murmured politely, if a little ironically.
“Likewise,” she replied. She flashed a fleeting, breathtaking smile at him and said, “Enjoy your dinner, okay?”
“Thanks,” he said.
“No,” she disagreed. “Thank you.”
He wasn’t sure what she was thanking him for. The whole conversation had been really unsettling. Greg bolted his dinner and decided that he wanted company. Male company, since the lady of the house was obviously more dangerous than he or Riordan could ever hope to be. She had him agreeing with her before he knew what was going on.
His options for male company were limited, but Greg went to go see Riordan anyway.
The man didn’t look like he’d been drugged, though he did look perilously close to being relaxed. Riordan reclined against a pile of pillows, and looked up from his book when Greg opened the door.
“I heard Sophia yelling,” was all he said, idly turning a page.
“She said - ” Greg stopped. Reconsidered. “What did they do to you?”
It was hard to pinpoint exactly how Riordan’s stillness changed from simply not moving to something quieter, internal enforced on the external and infinitely more dangerous. Riordan set his book aside and shifted so he could lift his cotton nightshirt up.
“Holy shit,” Greg breathed. Riordan’s abdomen was an ugly mixture of motley yellow-brown and purple patches. It looked like there was a gash (a knife wound, he noted - it was too clean for anything else) along his ribs. Right where Greg had punched him earlier, in fact.
“The Synod hurt you because of me.” It wasn’t a question.
“Actually, it was because I’m a stubborn, annoying bastard.” Riordan smiled, very faintly but it was there if you knew what to look for. “The Synod shares your opinion of me.” Riordan smoothed his shit back into place and picked up his book again. “They seemed to think your ‘lack of adjustment’ to Natsar behaviorisms implied that you were never going to. They wanted to evaluate that personally. I told them to go copulate with themselves, and they took exception to that for some reason.”
Greg had no problems imagining why. Just like he had no trouble imagining Riordan doing just that.
“I wouldn’t let the matter concern you. They’ll try this kind of crap periodically, but I can handle it.”
“How’s the other guy look?” wondered Greg.
Riordan grinned wolfishly. “Beat the shit out of him.”
He sounded a little like he’d enjoyed it. He probably had. Greg certainly would’ve. “Why’d you fight to keep me?” he asked, genuinely curious.
Riordan blinked. He was honestly surprised. “Because you’re one of mine,” he said, like that settled the matter.
Greg’s throat tightened. He felt suddenly and irrationally guilty. For Riordan’s injuries, for being difficult - for everything.
“Why don’t you take a seat and tell me a story?” Riordan gestured vaguely to the foot of the bed.
Greg settled on the floor near the head of the bed, unconsciously mimicking the placement Riordan had taken when their positions had been reversed. “I don’t know any good stories.”
“You could tell me why you and Sophia were yelling at each other.”
“Oh. That.” Greg looked up at the ceiling. “Girls are fucking psychotic,” he grumbled.
Riordan’s open laughter made him smile. “You have no idea,” his captor said. “God, she was such a handful when she was younger. I thought we’d never make it past thirteen.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. See, there was this kid in her class…”
Greg smirked a little. He’d figured Riordan wouldn’t resist the chance to talk about his niece. And this might work as nice blackmail material, if The Girl - if Sophia - got too outrageous again. He leaned back against the bed and settled in for the story.
End Arc 1