pleasuretoburn (pleasuretoburn) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-11-09 10:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | noah restic, npc, rhiannon lee |
Nostalgic
Who: Rhiannon/Noah/Various NPCs
What: A Confrontation
Where: Las Vegas
When: Present
Content Warnings: Violence, Language, Bodily Injury
For close to twenty years, the magic user and dealer who went by the name of Jonas lived in a crumbling house on East Colorado Avenue in the neighborhood of East Las Vegas. The home had been painted a bright, sunny yellow over its stucco facade when he had purchased it with cash. He had it covered with a nondescript ash gray that flaked over the years, revealing the original color beneath it. The main thoroughfare running perpendicular was the busy Lamb Boulevard, which helped draw traffic to a Golden Corral Buffet, a Home Depot, and a Jack in the Box. The only thing that marked the place out as different was the metal gate that Jonas had installed over the front door, with a slot at eye level that he could slide open. That was how it had been when Noah had last visited to seek his power back, and Doherty before him to take it away. In that span of time, someone had removed it and replaced it with a woodsman type front door, painted an incongruous pale blue. Only the pyrokinetic would understand the significance; it was the same kind of door that had hung on the front of the row house he had lived in until age twelve, in his family’s block development in Kyiv. Even the hue was identical.
He stood on the sidewalk next to Rhiannon, a bronze key pressing into the palm of his hand. Ever since Ivan had suggested to her that he had orchestrated the vampire attack, Noah knew that it would only ever end this way, with a confrontation. He was surprised to find the anger had abated and been replaced by something else he couldn’t quite name. He didn’t even know if Jonas was alive or not, or if Ivan was playing mind games when he said the magic user had siphoned some of his power away for his own use. Who knew if the moment he put that key in the lock, police would be on their way to find them hovering over a dead body. Either way, it felt like a trap. “He’s changed things,” Noah remarked aloud to his girlfriend. “The door. It’s the same one from my old house.” The windows on both stories of the home were dark and inscrutable. No light shone from them.
Rhiannon chewed her lip.
She felt eyes on her. She took a casual look in both directions of the wide, residential street. In the 1970s, it had been a nice neighborhood. New, planned, each homeowner allotted an equitable plot along the gently winding road between a commercial area and the foothills to the east of the city. The interceding decades were not kind. Both houses and cars showed their age in unrepaired damages, cracks, and fading colors. Some people had given up on plants and filled their yards in with pebbles or concrete. An easy metaphor.
Would anyone have noticed, or cared, if Jonas didn’t come outside, as long as the trash was regularly hauled to the street? The homeowner’s association had bigger concerns than the outlandish paint on the door.
“How nostalgic,” she said. She stood with her feet crossed at the ankle, her fingers in the hip pockets of her pants. It wasn’t a great position to stand in, strategically speaking, but Rhiannon didn’t think Ivan wanted to play window sniper. If the location and key had been a cheeky invitation to come over, the door was a bright, neon sign that said ‘come inside.’ “Are you sure you want to go in?” Rhiannon turned to him. “I wouldn’t judge you if you set it on fire.” In fact, she’d volunteer to go around to the other side and hold the back door. Make his brother scramble from the building like an animal.
Noah considered that. He stared at the door and turned over the key. Ivan didn’t seem to be about to announce his presence, and there were none of the fancier automobiles he preferred parked anywhere near the house. There was something about standing there on the sidewalk that made him feel as if he were looming over a chessboard. The opening move felt significant. “I feel like that’s what he expects me to do.” The fact that his brother had intended to break into his apartment gave him the sense that he was being goaded into something. As long as he’d known him, Ivan had never done anything by accident. And if he could see them standing there right now, the pyrokinetic knew he’d be amused at his indecision. By now, he’d also probably figured out the connection between Noah and Rhiannon. The pyrokinetic looked at her once more. He was nervous, not for himself, but having her there. Even though he trusted her and her decision to accompany him and her ability to take care of herself, if something happened…But letting doubt creep in wasn’t the solution, either. “I’m going to use it.” He opened his fingers to reveal a flash of bronze, and approached the door.
When the metal teeth entered the lock, Noah’s hand tightened around the key in shock. Something hot coursed through his wrist, up his arm, and he saw dark spots float past his vision. Before he could even ponder what was happening, the door swung open, seemingly of its own accord. At the entrance, Noah could see down a short foyer, but the metal banker’s box full of cash that Jonas had kept there was gone. He looked back at Rhiannon and slowly stepped inside, turning the corner into the main living area. Everything inside, the wallpaper, the mismatched furniture, had been replaced. It was like stepping into a time capsule from the early 1990s. The floorplan was much different, but some of the elements in the room were almost identical to what Noah had grown up with.
Except for the five strangers that stood there watching him and Rhiannon, blocking their path out of the room.
Rhiannon turned, a slow pivot to put herself at a better angle to watch the figures behind them and get a better read on the setup. Five on two. At first glance, Ivan’s men looked like off-brand mafia, paid to beat the shit out of people or kill but not think. Smug. She didn’t immediately pinpoint anyone supernatural among them but it couldn’t be ruled out with the darkened windows. The furniture didn’t fit the style of the house or look like anything a modern American home would have, but it was ordinary, unalarming, not some chair in the middle of a room with restraints. The air in the living room was strange, not by scent but a current that fizzled under her skin and made her want to rub her arms and the back of her neck. Magic, she thought. Thinking about Jonas and Ivan’s magical manipulation of Noah’s power and to Lux where her own abilities were muted, her stomach dipped, but she reminded herself that without speed and strength, she was still an exceptionally well-trained fighter and she didn’t mind shooting someone if it came to it.
Her shoulder touched Noah’s.
It was quiet. Somewhere in the house, the air conditioning came on.
“Should we have brought a covered dish?” she mumbled.
There was no sign of Jonas or Ivan. Noah had never ventured further than this room, didn’t know the layout or where his brother would be likely to hole up. If he was even in the house at all. Maybe this was the extent of it, to get him inside the house and alone with the hired muscle. But that didn’t make any sense, why inject him with something that made him more powerful if he wanted the pyrokinetic killed? No, something else was going on, and a sense of dread was building inside him. He looked at Rhiannon. “So…where is he? Your boss,” he asked finally, eyes sliding over to the man standing near the narrow staircase that went up to the second floor. Was it his imagination, or did his eyes dart upward when Noah mentioned Ivan? There was the creak of a footstep from the floorboards above their heads. The man didn’t move or speak, only nodded his head.
“I have to get up there,” Noah murmured to Rhiannon. He looked down at his hands. There was a concern about using fire in these close quarters, especially after witnessing what he had done outside the Palms. But maybe he could do something small, non-fatal, if he was close enough. Something to allow him to slip upstairs without interference. “Distraction?”
What went on upstairs with Ivan was Noah’s world. She’d make sure what happened down here was hers. “I got it.” He could trust her. Nothing made a distraction like pain. There was a small, odd figurine of a cat on a narrow table. It was white and red, ceramic, out of style enough to be of another decade, and it had caught her eye immediately when they entered the room. Rhiannon snatched it off the table and smashed it into the face of the man by the stairs. The porcelain head of the cat shattered, its sharp edges and tiny, coarse grains grinding into the socket around the man’s eye.
She shoved him. He fell back and batted at his eye, trying to see through the stream of blood to find out if his eye was intact. Then one of the others was on Rhiannon, pulling her back by the throat and hair, which created a void at the entrance of the staircase. ‘Go!’ she thought. Someone else was in front of her going for her legs and stomach. She struggled to gain some traction and kicked him in the balls, then under the chin when he hunched forward.
With a backward look at Rhiannon, Noah dashed to the staircase, his feet nearly slipping as someone grabbed at his arm. The pyrokinetic half-turned and latched his fingers around the wrist that kept him from pulling away. It only took a split second of focus, and the man’s skin was burning beneath Noah’s fingers. There was, however, an intensified version of what he had experienced at the front door, his vision swimming as invisible fingers dug into his temples. The man recoiled in pain, slumping against the wall and holding his arm, swearing under his breath. Pushing through the spinning in his head, Noah ascended the rest of the stairs, pausing for a brief moment on the landing. There was a hallway that split off into three doors, two on his left and one on his right. In the semi-darkness, a wave of disorientation took him over. He thought he heard voices coming from the closed door closest to him, strange droning tones that burrowed into his subconscious and made their home there. On the walls hung framed photos of Noah when he was younger, his parents flanking him on either side. None of them were smiling. He didn’t even remember posing for these.
With another look back over his shoulder, he stepped forth and turned the doorknob. It crept open at his touch and he entered a small bedroom. A single bulb overhead illuminated the space, a double bed up against one wall. A slapdash replica of his childhood room. What was Ivan doing? It all felt like a distraction, but an elaborate one. The anger was back. Noah tried to keep his breathing calm, ordered, even as he was tempted to sink onto the plaid covers of the bed. It was hard to think, harder still to remember he needed to find his brother.
Downstairs, Rhiannon regained her feet. The fingers in her hair ripped a few strands out by the roots and her oxygen supply was running thin because of the forearm pressing into her throat. She stopped clawing at the man’s arm and pulled a knife from her belt. The hunter turned it in her fingers and made two quick, awkward jabs into the man’s side. He was behind her, so she couldn’t tell how much damage she was doing, only that the first attempt hit bone and the second one went clean into his abdomen; it wasn’t meant to kill him, just get him to let go without accidentally stabbing herself or losing her weapon in the process. He cried out. His grip on her windpipe loosened. Rhiannon coughed. She twisted out from under his arm and dislocated the shoulder.
The relief didn’t last long. The fifth figure in the room plowed into her. The pair of them tripped over a coffee table and fell into the narrow space between it and the couch. Rhiannon landed on the bottom. She felt her knife bounce out of her hand and she struggled to kick it under the couch where the man couldn’t reach it. The hunter was stronger but he had the positional advantage of straddling her waist. It was a wrestling match to try to hold her in place and pull a cushion onto her face while Rhiannon squirmed and worked a knee up into the space between them. She launched him a few feet back and rolled onto her knees to scramble away.
Fingers crossed around her ankle and yanked. She flipped over and kicked him in the mouth. When he spit, she saw blood and broken teeth.
The sound of fighting from beneath him was what yanked him out of the trance-like state the bedroom seemed to be putting him in. Noah wanted to run back downstairs to Rhiannon, but the sense of urgency that accompanied his mission of locating his brother won out. Ivan was planning something, and was probably setting something in motion at that very moment. One door down, two to go. He exited the room and crossed the hallway to the second door. Just a bathroom with a dripping faucet and a towel strewn over the shower curtain. One left. The pyrokinetic approached the last doorknob cautiously, as if it were a cornered animal and any sudden movement could see it lashing out. His fingers wrapped around the chrome, and he was surprised to find that the metal was hot, just enough to be uncomfortable but still tolerable to handle. He twisted it, but it didn’t give. Locked. Of course it would be locked. Noah took in a deep breath and stepped backward into the hallway. Something seemed to heat and shift in his pocket; he pulled out the bronze key and held it up in the dim light. Could it be that simple?
The key slid into the lock, a perfect fit. That same feeling of disorientation, almost weakness. Something clicked audibly and Noah was able to open the door. He was greeted by the sight of Jonas, his skin pallid, beard growth around his face as he walked around the pyrokinetic in a shuffling gait. In the corner with his arms crossed and a smug smile was Ivan. There was a silver knife clutched in one hand, the flat side of the hilt rested against his bicep, the sharp point directed toward the ceiling. Dazed, Noah looked down to realize that Jonas had drawn a circle around him in thick, white chalk. Magic. Shit. He needed to...but whatever it was that he needed, he failed to grasp as his feet gave out beneath him. His hands hit the smooth wooden floor, his knees scraping as he tried in vain to regain his footing. Jonas opened his mouth to speak, his voice almost a dry croak. “We just need the blood,” he told Ivan wearily. The pyrokinetic watched, transfixed, as his brother unfolded his arms and crossed the room, standing behind the magic user. It wasn’t until the blade sliced into Jonas’s throat that Noah found his voice again, but it was too late. Blood flowed downward and Ivan let the man’s body hit the floor with a loud, weighty thump.
Thunk.
Mid crabwalk away from a guy who now needed a ton of dental work, Rhiannon heard the sound of a heavy object hitting the upstairs floor. She looked at the ceiling. It was a noise like dead weight. The brunette wanted to call out Noah’s name to see if he answered, to be reassured that he was conscious, but to do so was not advantageous. Instead she looked at the man whose testicles she’d bruised, who had regrouped and looked ready to kill her whether those were the instructions or not.
She stood up and got into a fighting stance. Things were easier when her opponents weren’t human. When it wasn’t as big a deal if she hit too hard or spilled too much blood. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she thought, watching the man telegraph what he was thinking with a downward look and backwards twitch of his arm: he had a weapon on his hip. It didn’t matter if it was a gun or a taser, she didn’t want any of it. Rhiannon kicked the underside of the coffee table and sent it flying at him. On instinct, he brought his arms and whatever he was holding up to block the table. A handgun went off. The gunfire was loud in the living room. Rhiannon’s ears rang as she ducked and watched him fall backwards. When he didn’t move, she rushed over to take the gun and saw he’d shot himself in the earlobe. The bullet had grazed the side of his head, too. “Idiot.”
She straightened up, put her back to the wall, and pointed the gun around the room. “Get out!”
The sound of the gun shot pierced through his confusion, tearing his gaze away from Jonas’s face long enough to crawl toward the edge of the circle. He had to get to Rhiannon. This had all been a giant mistake. But his hands wouldn’t go past the white chalk line no matter how hard he heaved himself forward. Panic bubbled up in his chest as Noah looked up to see Ivan walking around him, eyes on a piece of paper as he spoke a language that the pyrokinetic didn’t recognize. He looked down at the floor as if he could visualize a way through it. The panic was only slightly relieved when he heard her shout. His brother stopped and crouched down until he was eye level with Noah, and smiled. “You acted like my gift was a burden,” he said. He wiped bloody fingers across the dark material of his pants, leaving a wet stain near the knee. “So I’m just taking it back.” And Ivan lifted up a hand, palm facing upward. Both their eyes glued to it as a small flame began to sprout from his skin.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Noah told his younger brother. Inside, his heart was racing, blood rushing to his ears as he watched in horror at his power being stolen away once again. This time felt worse. He would rather it dissipate into nothingness again than to see it wielded by Ivan. The flame grew, the radiant heat getting stronger against his face, but still he didn’t recoil back, only kept his eyes locked onto the younger man.
“I obviously do,” Ivan answered with a smirk and got to his feet. The blade clattered to the ground, just out of reach of Noah’s fingers. The fire grew in intensity, it began to travel over Ivan’s limbs. That was different. He was slowly becoming engulfed in the flames, but stayed contained to just his body. The floor beneath him, the rest of the room was unaffected, almost like something was protecting the house. He began to panic, looking back at Noah as if silently asking for help. But stuck in the circle, there was nothing he could do. The blaze raged on.
Rhiannon had her back to the staircase wall. She crept up the steps as quietly as she could with the gun held in front of her. There were plenty of rounds left in the magazine. She had checked it as soon as the last of Ivan’s men staggered out the front door. From the upstairs landing, she could see three doors, but only one of them shone with a strange light. She swallowed past the swollen tissue of her throat and kept going, checking her six, and the closer she got to the room, the warmer the air became.
Fire. Noah’s fire, the kind that burned without needing the fuel of gas, wood, fabric, or flesh, and therefore had no smell. Rhiannon remembered the blinding, blue light that hovered above his palm like a star that night in her trailer. A thin layer of sweat broke on her face as she listened to a roar that was either his power or her pulse slamming in her ears. The brunette took a breath and made herself look around the doorframe into the room. She saw the dead body on the floor, a dark-haired man kneeling, and another one engulfed in flames. For a heartstopping second, she couldn’t tell the brothers apart.
Then she saw the chalk circle on the floor and realized what they walked into. “Noah…” She looked from him to Ivan. What did he want her to do?
Noah turned and looked up at Rhiannon as she entered the room. His mind was a blank expanse of nothing, he couldn’t make sense of what was in front of him. None of it felt real. It wasn’t until Ivan collapsed onto his knees, then slumped onto the floor, that the reality of the situation crashed full force into the pyrokinetic’s consciousness. “I can’t get out of the circle,” he told her, voice and movements edging into the frantic as he pushed himself to his feet. He knew next to nothing about magic, and Jonas was dead, and it looked like his brother was about to join him. He remembered the black empty room, the form made of pure fire that reached out and grabbed him. Noah tried once again to step out of the circle; there was less resistance this time, and he was able to get part of his foot past the white line before being pushed backward. Was it weakening because Ivan was dying? An idea occurred to him then, a last ditch kind of effort that made it feel like his heart was beating in his throat.
The fingers of Ivan’s left hand barely grazed the line. If he moved a fraction of an inch, he would be inside it and Noah could grab it. Through the flames, he realized that Ivan’s gaze had landed on him, and their eyes met; the younger man’s hand twitched forward. He crouched down, his own fingers edging as far past the circle as he could despite an intense wave of pain and heat that accompanied the attempt. And then he was just able to pull his brother’s hand toward him, the chalk smudging with a streak of red from the spellcaster’s blood. The pyrokinetic watched, unconsciously holding his breath as some of the flame began to transfer to him. Visible roots grew from the conflagration and wrapped themselves around Noah’s forearm like a creeping vine. A jagged sound escaped his throat as he saw what was left of Ivan’s skin. When he glanced back up at the other man’s face, his eyes had closed. He wasn’t moving, even as the fire transferred back to its rightful owner and sank into his own unblemished skin. Once the haze and heat left the room, the pyrokinetic crawled out of the now broken circle toward his motionless form. “We can move him,” he told Rhiannon. “I think we need to...just get him out of the house,” Noah murmured, grabbing Ivan’s shoulders.
Rhiannon blinked. God, he had burns, as if the fire overwhelmed Ivan and he roasted from the inside out. She looked from Ivan to Noah and saw the look in her boyfriend’s eyes, one she’d never seen him wear before. She engaged the safety on the gun and dropped it. She knelt beside them. Blood was all over the floor, seeping into the knees of her pants. “Let me do it,” she said, coaxing Noah’s fingers from his brother’s torso. “I can get him out faster.” The hunter pulled Ivan’s body into a sitting position and ducked her head under his armpit. It was with urgency, rather than a gentle touch, that she put his torso over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry and made a break for the hallway beyond the bedroom door. Her feet moved rapidly, putting as much distance between Ivan and the ritual area as possible. Rhiannon eased into the narrow staircase and took the steps down and out the door as quickly as she could.
He was able to step free of the circle and follow her down the stairs, one hand pressed against the wall to steady himself, his head still aching and spinning. Noah was surprised he could even feel it; the rest of him had seemed to have gone numb, pins-and-needles in his hands and feet as he perceived himself moving in slow motion. He urged himself to move faster, to...what? Call an ambulance? Police would almost certainly follow. Something deep in the pit of his stomach seized painfully, and he nearly had to pause and hunch over. Ivan tried to, no, succeeded -- albeit briefly -- in stealing his power. What had his brother been about to do next? Kill them? His eyes watched Rhiannon’s back as they exited the house. If she had been hurt or worse...A potent and confusing mix of rage and grief swept over the pyrokinetic as the night air enveloped them. Part of him wondered if it would be better to leave him, and then he was angry at himself for having the capability to even think like that. “I don’t know what to do,” Noah spoke quietly. His hands were trembling as he removed his phone from his pocket. “Is he…?” The rest of the question got stuck in his throat. Ivan hadn’t moved, hadn’t made a sound. Maybe he couldn’t finish the inquiry because deep down, he already knew the answer.
His vulnerability made her heart hurt. Rhiannon laid Ivan on the ground and leaned over him. No breath stirred the tendrils of hair near her cheek and she couldn’t see any up and down movement of his chest. She pressed two fingers into the soft spot beside the Adam's apple and felt for a pulse, waiting longer than she needed in order to know. There was nothing. The condition of his body made her think Ivan was better off not being alive.
She searched for Noah’s eyes to make steady contact with them. “We need to go,” she said, getting to her feet. Her voice was hoarse but firm. “I need to get my knife first. Tell me what you touched. I’ll wipe it off. Where’s the key?” She was thinking of door knobs, railings. A look around didn’t reveal a camera on the property and she’d have to pray they were out of range of the neighbors’.
Noah recognized what Rhiannon was saying on a logical level, but it still felt like running on autopilot as he reached into his jeans’ pocket and pulled out the key. Whatever magic it had contained was most likely gone, and only ever meant for him in the first place. He swallowed, unable to speak at first. When he did, his voice held a slightly hoarse unused quality. “He put some pictures on the wall in the hallway, upstairs,” Noah informed her. “I’m in them.” His gaze strayed toward Ivan’s inert form before swinging back to her. This entire situation had been designed to hurt him and confuse him. That familiar anger flared up, but that way lay a dangerous line of thinking that threatened to split him open if he dwelled on it just then. Looking at her instead was safe, and he was tempted to grab her hand as he pressed the key into it, to keep her from leaving even for just a moment. The pyrokinetic stood and shrugged out of his jacket, removing the items of value from its pockets and draped it over his brother’s face and shoulders. He stood there for a moment, uncertain and unmoving, before checking to make sure he didn’t feel eyes on him. Bending down into a crouch, Noah reached into Ivan’s pockets and pulled out a wallet, a set of keys, and a cell phone. Despite the abundance of fresh air around them, it was difficult to breathe properly.
Framed pictures in the hallway. Rhiannon noted that and made up her mind to wipe the stair railing, the front door knob, and all three upstairs just in case. Noah had created more crime scenes than she’d dreamed of, but he was out of it. She knew it from his dazed expression; how much was attributable to the shock of what happened to Ivan versus whatever was done to Noah in the circle was the only mystery. The hunter reached over and touched the side of Noah’s face, guiding him to look at her. “Go to the car,” she said. “If anyone comes, drive. Don’t wait for me. I can outrun the cops.”
Rhiannon swapped keys with him and went back into the house. A hurried trip into the kitchen produced a cloth she could use to wipe surfaces and she began rapidly cleaning each one they’d approached. She ground the unbroken portion of porcelain cat under her boot heel, fished her knife out from under the couch, and ran upstairs, wiping the railing and lightswitches as she went. The gun she took because it was easier, and something about seeing the knife that had been used on Jonas made her think it was best to take that, too. The photos gave her only a moment’s pause. The small, young face of Noah as he’d been, moody but not yet betrayed by the adults beside him, made her feel sick to her stomach. Rhiannon stacked them in her arms and headed outside. Relief overtook her at not being confronted by law enforcement with weapons on her person, two bodies on the premises, and blood from assorted henchmen all over the living room.
He gathered Ivan’s belongings and Rhiannon’s keys. By some stroke of luck, no one had driven down Colorado Avenue. There was no sweep of headlights that would have picked them out in the semi-darkness. Noah walked, head down, to his girlfriend’s Challenger and unlocked the doors. He slid behind the steering wheel, though he didn’t feel like he was in any condition to drive. He had a police scanner app on his phone and turned it on, listening carefully for anything in the vicinity, but it was hard to focus through the fog that had taken up residence in his head. The pyrokinetic started up the ignition and stared at the rearview mirror. No sirens in the distance. No signs of nosey neighbors. From where he sat, he couldn’t see Ivan’s body splayed across the grass. He didn’t want to pull off without Rhiannon. He didn’t trust himself to be alone. His hands gripped the wheel. There was no one left of his family, no matter how loose the term, but him. No one to punish for what happened because the person who caused it was already dead.
Rhiannon came into sight ahead of him. She opened the small trunk of her car and stowed the items in a container she used for dirty weapons, one that could easily be cleaned. It also kept Noah from having to stare at any of it. When she was done, she closed the trunk and opened the driver’s side door. “You ride shotgun,” she said. What she wanted to do was grab him in a hug and not let go, but right now the bigger act of love was to take care of what she could. That started with getting the fuck out of there and not getting pulled over by the cops with blood all over the place, bruises on her throat, and Noah looking like he was one irritating question away from setting a fire. “Do you want to go home or someplace else?”
There would be no argument from him. He slid across the center console and into the passenger seat. Static and muffled voices issued from his phone. It seemed strange that something so catastrophic could happen and go unnoticed by most of the world. Noah supposed that was how a lot of his past victims had felt, and there was a wave of nausea that accompanied this thought. He let his head fall back against the seat and watched her hands move. If he looked at the bruises on her neck for too long, he didn’t know what he would do. “Home, maybe,” he told her quietly. The pyrokinetic tilted his head, looking out of the window. “He was so fucking stupid,” he muttered. Whether he was referring to Jonas or Ivan or both, Noah didn’t elaborate. “And maybe I am, too. I never considered him a real threat. In my head, he was always a kid.” He fell silent and closed his eyes as they left East Las Vegas, the lights from various businesses reflecting against his face in a kaleidoscope of neon hues. There had been some comfort in knowing that a part of him was alive and in the world. Before Rhiannon, that was all he had.
He already knew the answer, but there was an urge to speak the words out loud. A need for reassurance, maybe. “Stay with me tonight?”
Noah was right not to consider Ivan a threat, Rhiannon thought, but didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t have Noah’s ability to look at a situation objectively and recognize the challenges it presented, or that he had limits. Their world, and the magical world, had ways of balancing things; someone like Ivan couldn’t be allowed to wield that gift.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised. If Noah told her he wanted to be alone, Rhiannon would have curled up outside his apartment door just to make sure. As she navigated the transmission and watched the mirrors, Rhiannon took a moment to reach over the console and touch him. It was his left hand she took in hers, a squeeze of the part of Noah’s body he had used countless times to burn things with the part of hers she’d used to hit. There was nothing she could say. In an infinitely small way, she could imagine feeling as if the last connection to your old life was gone, and that they’d gone while trying to take something from you. But where Rhiannon’s hunting family was alive and her father was alive, Noah’s was not.
No matter how much a family wounded a person, where there was life, there was a sense of a chance, even if it didn't make rational sense. There was comfort in having something that rooted you to the earth. She’d give anything to return a fraction of that to Noah. To tether him to her. In such a short span of time, he’d become part of her. She thought about the poem she sent him about a river flowing into the sea. There was no going back.
“I love you,” she said.
Rhiannon returned her hand to the gear shift.
The second her fingers wrapped around his, the stream of disjointed thoughts that filled his head quelled somewhat, smoothed out and Noah turned his head away from the window to give her a look of deep gratitude. Gratitude for her willingness to go into that house with him, and for the way her presence and proximity calmed him. And there was a bit of awe, too, that would never fully go away no matter how long they were together. The pyrokinetic was hoping for the kind of ‘forever’ that was allotted to people like them. He squeezed back before letting go. “I love you, too.” Noah watched her for a few moments more before letting his head fall back again, and shut his eyes.