Jabberwocky - 1. Pain and Needle

Jabberwocky

Brandon couldn't see. Could barely breathe. Could hardly think.

He only knew two things: the pain and the needle. The pain never left. It took up residence in the front of his head, where Jordan's psychic connection would sometimes dock, blurring his vision and drying his mouth. It wasn't constant, it would come and go, ebb and flow, rise up so that sometimes he would scream instead of whimper, cry instead of sleep.

The needle helped with the pain, dulled it down so he could breathe a little, let the muscles in his body unclench. It also brought with it a slew of images, pictures inside his head. Some were hopeless nonsense, but most of the time it replayed flashbacks and memories.

Like the time he was still very young and squirming under his older sister's tortuous hands as she dug them into soft flesh, tickling him mercilessly as he squirmed and laughed so hard that it hurt his stomach and he was begging her to stop. She just laughed and tickled him some more and he begged her to stop again, laughing even as tears streamed down his face because his stomach was aching and hurting and all the laughing made it worse and he couldn't breathe, until something in his stomach gave and his sister was jumping away with a cry of disgust.

He knew what had happened without even having to look, felt the looseness of his bowels and felt the heavy, sticky warmth, smelled the stench. And he started to cry in shame until his father had come to see what was wrong and had picked him up to carry him into the bathroom to clean him up. He could feel every single particle of the memory, from the scratch of the carpet, to the coolness of the bathroom tiles, his nose was full of the smell of shit and he could see the perfect blue of his father's eyes.

Other times it was nonsense in his vision. He saw amazing things, saw how life pulsed through inanimate objects, how it crawled through everything, infusing it with a soft light. Heard beautiful music in the sound of his breath. He left the place where he was bound, flew through space, with stars spilling from his fingernails, and galaxies bursting out of his eyelashes every time he blinked. He was Creating now, on a grand scale, needing nothing but his mind. He could create millions of worlds with a single thought, endless realms that flipped before him like the pages of a book.

Then that would fade away and the pain would come again. It ebbed and flowed like the tide, and like the ocean, never vanished completely.

During the low periods, after the needle slid its strange sweetness into his veins, he would sometimes be aware enough to eat the food pushed insistently against his mouth, even though he mostly thought it a helpless endeavor. He would just throw it back up again when the pain got bad enough. He once or twice got a look of his savior, a rather plain looking human girl, older than himself. She was the one that slid the needle into his arm when the pain got too agonizing, left him gripping the sheets and screaming into the mattress he was lying on, too exhausted to cry, never mind wondering where he was or what was happening to him. All he knew was the pain and the needle.

He was floating. The needle had come and the pain had faded and now he was just floating, caught in the dreamy trapping of another memory.

This one was snatched from the very back of his mind, from when he was smaller, younger, going on a hiking trip with his family. His dad had stopped them near a spring that was spurting up from the ground, had brought his children over to see it and taste the water. Brandon could remember the shock of it; it was so cold, it made his teeth scream, his lips go numb and turned his tongue into a cold useless lump in his mouth. But it had been so sweet and so cold, like liquid ice, and he hadn't been able to stop drinking, drinking, drinking, gulping down mouthfuls that burned his throat and iced his stomach, until his mother gently pulled him away, and he had smiled at her with his blue numb lips and wished he could have taken it home with him because he had never tasted something that felt so beautiful.

He came out of the memory slowly, still floating, shivering and cold. The pain still pounded there, behind his eyes, but it had taken on a different sensation.

Brandon tried to fight his way out of the memory and into the present, feeling an uncommon surge of desperation. Something was happening. He could hear something... voices, arguing, violence… and something... something... important. He couldn't tell.

A heavy weight was on top of him. The pain faded and diminished. He reached out, wrapped his arms around the weight on top of him. The something… the important something… He had it here, in his arms. He held it, stroked it, and for the first time in a too long period of time, knew everything felt right again.

* * *

He woke up later, blinked, and opened his eyes. Usually he woke up because of pain, blindly holding out his arm in hopes for a shot to take him away. Right now, he did hurt, felt a little sore and stiff with a low level headache, but nothing near what he used to feel. And that weight was still on top of him. He stared at it and something warm and beautiful swelled up inside him. It took a minute for his drug and sleep muddled brain to place a name to his soulmate slumbering on top of him.

Jordan.

He tried to say his name, to croak it out, but instead exploded in a fit of ragged, weak coughing. Bile filled up his throat and he turned his head to spit it out.

Quick footsteps crossed the room and a pretty face moved into his field of vision. "He's awake."

"Which one?" a voice from somewhere else asked.

"The new one," the pretty face said. A second later, there was a straw at his lips and Brandon sucked water greedily. "Easy," the pretty face said, pulling the cup away. "What's your name?"

"Brandon," he answered, too exhausted and confused to even attempt lying.

"Do you know where you are?"

"Not really."

"Do you know how you got here?"

"No." His voice broke. Now that the fog was beginning to clear, he realized that he was scared. He felt helpless, lost, and wanted another shot; something to fog his brain and let him slip back into the comforting haze of dreams and hallucinations.

He sat up slightly, Jordan still resting heavy against his chest. He stroked his lover's hair, kissed his brow. Jordan's face was tired and drawn, pale and eerily similar to the way that he first looked when they first crossed over.

"Hey. Hey." He shook Jordan lightly, then pulled him closer, cradled him in his lap. "What's wrong?"

"We don't know," pretty face said. The voice had a faint feminine lilt to it and Brandon spared her another glance. She looked fairly young, not a whole lot older than he was, and probably close to Nikki's height. She had glossy strawberry blond hair that waved around a perfect oval face with light blue eyes and a shiny white set of teeth. She reminded Brandon of one of the princesses in the Disney movies his sister used to favor--too pretty to be real. He turned his attention back to Jordan.

"Jordan. Jordan. Hey, come on, beautiful blue eyes, you've slept long enough." Brandon ran a light hand over Jordan's face, neck, through his hair. "C'mon baby. Everything is alright now."

"He's not going to wake up," a brusque voice interrupted. The pretty girl looked over, a slightly annoyed expression marring her features. The new girl who approached them wasn't classically pretty, but was short and slender, with wide, muscular shoulders. Her face held small, narrow features, highlighted by a pair of deep indigo eyes and capped by a short messy mop of black hair.

"Why not?" Brandon asked. "What's wrong with him?"

"Have you ever heard of bond strain or mind separation?"

"Yeah," Brandon said. "Bond strain, I haven't heard of that other thing. Are you guys a team?" His mind was clearing, bit by bit, and he found himself curious--he and Jordan hadn't come across another team since they got here.

The pretty girl nodded. "But keep quiet about it," she cautioned in a whisper.

Brandon frowned. "Who are you guys?" he asked, knowing how rude it sounded and not caring.

"Hey, we just saved your ass, so don't-"

"Calm down," the pretty one said. “He's confused and frightened, rightfully so. You know what he's been through." She turned back to him. "My name is Sumna. I'm a Creator."

The other girl rolled her eyes, but approached. "Jassa. Enabler," she said.

"I'm Brandon." He wanted to introduce himself formally since they had done so. "I'm a Creator. And since he's not awake to introduce himself, this is Jordan." He nodded to the body he was still cradling in his arms. "He is my Enabler."

He saw Jassa's lips twitch, like she might be smiling, but that disappeared quickly.

“Where are we?” Brandon asked. First things first. He needed to orient himself.

“Near Silver Falls,” Sumna offered in her pleasant, musical voice. “Do you know where that is?”

“In relation to what?” Brandon asked.

“To the palace where you were hiding,” Jassa said. Brandon looked up and saw that she was studying him carefully… looking for something.

“Vaguely,” Brandon said. He shut his eyes again, briefly. His head was still aching and pounding. “Is L--The Queen okay?”

“No,” Jassa said abruptly. “She didn’t survive giving birth.”

Brandon stared at her. She didn’t survive…

“We are curious as to what you were doing there,” Jassa continued as if she hadn’t just shattered his heart. “Are you allied with the Queen and the court?”

“Who are you allied with?”

“Creators and Enablers, of course,” Jassa said. Sumna, who was looking nervous, nodded. “If you weren’t allied with the Queen, then why were you in the palace?”

“Look, I don’t know anything about political alliances,” Brandon said. “I was trying to help the Queen. Take her home.”

“Why?”

“She’s my best friend.”

Jassa and Sumna exchanged wary glances. Jassa sighed.

“Listen, I’m not sure whether we should kill you or take you with us. We thought you were with the Queen and her group. But then Sumna saw you attacked by the Creator that brought the Queen here. So it seemed like you were an enemy to them. That’s why we took your companion-”

“You took Jordan?” Brandon asked.

Jassa nodded. “Yes. We thought if Keith got him, he would be killed. And we still had some questions. "Besides-” Jassa grinned. “It’s kind of our mission to save Creators and Enablers.”

Brandon shook his head. “I’m confused.”

“Keith--do we have his name right?” Sumna asked.

Brandon nodded.

“He has been locating Creator and Enabler teams here in Charion, and dispatching people to destroy them.”

“Destroy?” Brandon asked weakly. “How?”

“The same way he tried with you and your Enabler,” Jassa said. “Separation. You two are bonded, correct?”

Brandon nodded. “Yes.”

“If you take a bonded team and separate them quickly, and by a great distance, it strains the bond between the two until it breaks. It’s gruesome and incredibly painful from what I’ve seen. It’s also extremely effective. It can kill a Creator and an Enabler within hours, sometimes minutes.”

Jassa’s words gave Brandon chills and he checked on Jordan, to make sure he was still breathing and his heart was still beating. “But we are still alive,” Brandon pointed out.

Jassa nodded. “Yes, we know.”

“Why?”

Sumna glanced at Jassa and she frowned. “We’re not one hundred percent sure,” Jassa admitted. “We think the fact that Jordan was asleep when this happened helped a lot. When they sent you off, I followed as best I could, but with a human boy to keep hidden…” Jassa shrugged. “It slowed us down.”

Sumna glanced up from where she was kneeling at Brandon’s bedside and gave Jassa’s forearm a gentle squeeze. “You did the best you could."

“Yeah, whatever,” Jassa said, shaking her hand off. “If he hadn’t been unconscious when you were sent out of town, you both would probably be dead by now.”

Brandon swore right then he wouldn’t yell at Jordan for taking that potion when he woke up. He would kiss him. A lot. And give him oral everyday if he wanted it. “How do you know this?” Brandon asked cautiously.

“Jassa is especially attuned to Enablers,” Sumna said. “When an Enabler dies, because of bond separation, she’s going to feel it.”

Jassa nodded, then as if to prove a point, started rattling off names. “Amaneen, Daline, Savina, Dathilda, Harishka-”

“Stop," Brandon said, holding up his hand. “Dathilda?”

Jassa nodded. “Yeah, she was one of the Enablers that passed.”

“Was she a psychic healer?” Brandon asked.

Jassa shrugged. “I don’t know. She lived in Vinez and lost her Creator. I can tell you when and how she died, that is all.”

Brandon asked for the time of death and it added up. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She was an Enabler and he didn’t even know. “She lived alone. There was no Creator nearby.”

“Enablers and Creators don’t have to live together,” Sumna said. “We didn’t. Usually.”

“Listen,” Jassa interrupted. “I know we both have plenty of questions for each other. But as soon as both of you are safe to move, we need to haul ass out of here. Keith knows exactly where to find you if he needs to, and we are sitting ducks here.”

“Jassa’s right,” Sumna said. “It’s too late to head out now, but maybe in the morning. We’ll see how everyone feels.” She smiled at Brandon. “Get some sleep. We’ll keep watch.”

Brandon settled down and wrapped himself, arms and legs around Jordan's body. He knew he wouldn't be able to do what he wanted to do, which was to stay awake and watch him, so he settled for just holding on. Because he would be damned to hell and back if he ever let anyone take Jordan away from him again.

He heard what sounded like an argument between Jassa and Sumna when he was about to drift off.

“You rest, too,” Sumna was saying. “You need it as much, if not more, than those two.”

“I’m fine,” Jassa insisted.

“No, you are not. I’ve seen how hard you’ve been working to keep that boy alive. Get some rest.”

There was some silence and Brandon had assumed that they were done talking and was about to relax and fall asleep himself, because damn he was tired.

Then, in a strained whisper, “What if he doesn’t wake up?”

More silence.

“Then they’ll both die.”