For his part, Jonathan was intensely aware of Zeph's scrutiny. He kept his gaze from wandering toward the boy too frequently. There was an unexpected ache in him when he did. The boy was about the age of Hikari. The boy bore an uncanny resemblance to what he had sometimes thought might be the result of combining his own looks with Aki's. Seeing the mental image fleshed out was disquieting. The boy's silence was equally unnerving.
Zeph went to bed without protest at 10pm. Normally, he would have tried to stay up later, but tonight he was tired. Between the long trip and his own fears, he was exhausted. Tonight he was too tired to care about being a dignified teen and let his mother see him to bed. He let her brush his hair and braid it back so that it would be untangled in the morning. He caught her hand as she put the brush on his desk, meeting her gaze directly.
"Dangerous."
She considered this. "Yes. He is. But not to us."
He nodded, but not in agreement. "To us. To him."
"Zeph, you're being cryptic again."
Usually that got a smile. Not tonight. He tried to read her face. Did she like him? Was he of interest to her? "You like?"
"I've only known him a couple of days."
"He's here."
"He's Hero's friend."
"Hero?"
"Yep."
Zeph considered this. "Hero likes him."
"Very much. They've saved each other, more than once."
He let out a shuddery breath. "Trouble. OK."
Cal smiled at him and folded him in her arms for a hug. "Did you bring your trunks?" she asked in Vietnamese.
"To swim with dolphins," he responded in the same language.
"Go to sleep."
She left the door cracked open and turned off the light behind her. "I will always watch over you," she murmured the familiar words under her breath.
Cal rejoined Jonathan, Kaitlin also pleaded travel fatigue and retired for the night.
"Shouldn't you be settling in?"
"No."
"Not tired?"
"Dead on my feet," she admitted, putting a cassette into the stereo and turning it on to play softly.
"Then why -?"
She turned to face him. "Zeph will probably have a nightmare in the next hour or so," she told him matter of factly. "He's worn out, he's someplace unfamiliar and I expect it to trigger bad dreams."
"Sit with him?"
"He won't put up with it. Fourteen or so puts a boy extremely on his dignity, especially with his mother."
"So you wait."
"Yep. So, just exactly when did you meet Ski?"
Loaded question, that. Without going into much detail, Jonathan talked about his friend. It was easy to talk to Cal. Almost too easy. He found himself tracing the curve of her cheek with his eyes; trying to decide just exactly what the shade of color her riot of curls was; wondering if her mouth would meet his again and how he would respond if it did.
For her part, Cal kept coming back to the burning dark gaze of her guest. There was so much he kept under wraps, so much hurt he seemed intent on setting aside and ignoring. Ski had told her very little about the Jonathan's background. She presumed it was like Ski's, too much time covert and covered by the National Secrets Act. NSA. No Such Agency. Although he spoke at length, he told her only about their friendship, not how it had become established. The reserve saddened her, yet was not unexpected. What could she trade him for secrets that deep? Her own secrets? What would he think? What * could * he think? Madness? Insanity? Could she bear either the sympathetic or the total disbelief? Probably not.
Midnight came and went without a peep from Zeph. Cal looked at the clock on the entirely foolish fireplace mantle in the living room and looked surprised. "Well, so much for nightmares," she muttered and grinned at her guest. "I think I'll take a look in on Zeph and take myself to bed. Good night."
He stood politely, nodding. For just a moment she wanted to take his face in her hands and kiss away the forlorn look in his eyes. Then it was gone and the easy warmth was back. So much practice hiding who you are, she thought.
She took a look in on her son as she headed to bed. He seemed fine. Not even a frown creasing his forehead to reveal unpleasant dreams. Maybe things were healing, in spite of her reservations. She went on to fall into her own dreamless sleep.
Zeph was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming. He floated along the streets of Tokyo, searching. He was looking for his house, the home he has shared with mama, papa and two sisters. He was looking for them because he was lost, and he was so small. But he couldn't find his home, all he could find was the cold stone walls of the place he had been taken; the place where he was not a person, where they hated him, wanted him to be - to be -
No. He wrenched himself away from that place and time to more pleasant memories. The cold alleyway where Cal had found him. Pleasant? He remembered a pale face surrounded by loose curls, the tears on her face as she recognized the hurts on his body, the fire he shared with her, the fire that warmed him, kept his pain at a distance, kept him alive when all he had wanted was the darkness and death. He reached out his hand and touched that fire. It did not burn, it touched his hand, warmed his skin, flared across his fingers. He was entranced by the fire.
/ I will always watch over you. / The words were warm, alien, and he knew them by heart. Not 'I will always be with you.' But 'I will always watch over you.' She had never said them in English, or Japanese, or any other language, but always in Vietnamese. He had never questioned that, until now. Why always in Vietnamese? Why were her truest words in a language foreign to both of them?
/ I will keep you safe. I will always watch over you. / And the flame of life within them both. It was enough. It was enough.
A shadow he had not seen before. He looked at it hard. One of his tormenters? Trying to break the bond? No. He sensed no hate in this shadow. He sensed - sadness, great sadness. Need. Fear. But over all, sadness. Then the shadow was gone. The dream kaleidoscoped and changed. He was flying with birds, free.
Jonathan walked Cal to her room, watching with a touch of jealousy as she stopped to check on Zeph. They parted easily. He wasn't certain about sharing a house with Cal and her family, but it seemed - comfortable. He looked at Zeph and wished he saw his own son. The boy's history brought home how hard Hikari's life could have been, how short. He might be looking for a boy who was dead, or worse. He had lost months while he hid from himself and the world. Yet, what were four months when he had a decade and more separating him from the son Aki had borne him? What if the boy was damaged as Cal's son was?
The flip side of that coin was the "what if" he never wanted to really face. What if the boy had a happy family? What if Jonathan's finding him would only be endangering the boy? What if - He took a deep breath and released it. He recognized that tormenting himself with these questions was foolish. There was no way to judge until he found the boy.
And when would that be? Aki's letter had reached him - what? Two, three years after the fact? The boy should be - twelve? Thirteen? Fourteen? He wasn't even certain at this point. Damn. Was it all for nothing? Would it be wiser to give up the search, to let the boy go? Yet, Aki had trusted him to find their child, to protect him, to give him the home she would not survive to give him. Did he dishonor her sacrifice if he turned away from his self-imposed quest? Somewhere he had a son, a boy named Hikari. Somewhere that boy needed to know his father, needed to be warned about the forces that threatened him, if he didn't already know. If he never found that boy, would those forces even be important to him?
He rubbed his forehead. Maybe it was too soon to try to think these things through. He undressed and lay down on his bed. Comfortable. Just the right firmness. Surprising. He yawned, stretched and closed his eyes.
The dreams started the usual way, standing in the doorway to his parent's room, the bloodstains; the body outlines; the marks on the wall that proclaimed this the work of the Black Dragons. He felt the fear, the anger, the grief welling up within. He felt the burning dryness of his eyes. He could not cry. He was too old to cry. He was twelve. He was caught in that no man's land between childhood and manhood.
The scene shifted, he spoke to his sensei, beginning the path that would lead to the downfall of the Dragons. And there was Aki. Not the most beautiful of the young women who trained with his sensei, but the one who caught his eye as he caught hers. Sweet Aki, the only person to penetrate the walls he built around his heart.
Then there was the night of his initiation into the Black Dragons, when he exacted his revenge for the death of his parents. His sword ran red with their blood. He had killed, and killed, and killed - and they kept coming and coming and coming. Only it hadn't been that way. There were no more than two dozen ninjas there that night. Twenty-four lives lost in his anger, his hatred, his need to avenge the deaths of his parents. Twenty-four lives for two. The balance was uneven. Even now, he didn't know if the Dragons responsible for the murder were in that room.
Cal wandered sleepily out of her room to check on Zeph. She could sense his - hmmm? She looked in on the sleeping youth, sprawled carelessly across his bed. He seemed at ease, not even frowning. Kaitlin? Kaitlin never had nightmares. Then who? Her eyes turned down the corridor.
She padded silently back down the smooth wooden floor to the shoji screen. She hesitated, her fingers not quite touching door frame. This was an invasion of privacy, yet she sensed a major disturbance behind the door. Silently, she slid the door open a crack.
Her guest lay twisted in the black silk sheets. One hand clutched a handful of the fabric, his knuckles white he held so hard. He frowned and shifted. She could see the faint sheen of sweat on his skin in the flickering light of the candle he had left lit. He shifted again, turning his back to the door.
She blinked. The tattoo. She had forgotten he had a tattoo. She couldn't quite make out the dark pattern against his pale skin, and she hadn't paid it much attention when they first met. She'd seen it again at Ski's. What was it? A dragon. Yes, a black dragon against his pale skin. It was a striking contrast.
He shifted again. For a moment, she considered waking him. No. He was not that close to her yet. It would be an invasion of his privacy, and he was very, very private.
She slid the screen shut again and went back to bed. For a while, she lay there and thought. She knew so little about her guest. Ski had told her no more than she needed to know to get to him and bring him back from wherever he had gone mentally when he thought Ski dead. She wasn't certain he completely back from that place. But then, she wasn't exactly certain where he'd gone in the first place. She wondered about him as she drifted off to sleep.
Cal became aware of - of images. She saw images of death, a room with outlines on the floor of bodies no longer there; of a room in disarray; of symbols on the wall written to let whoever came know who was responsible for what had happened. She looked around for an explanation of what she was seeing. The shadowy figure of a youth moved swiftly from the doorway and deeper into the darkness. She watched curiously and then followed it. There was a charming Japanese girl, warmth in her eyes as she looked at an unseen companion. She could feel the emotion in the girl, and emotion from the companion, but not as deep. She probed gently. The companion remained in the shadows, protected and protecting himself.
She pulled back, trying to get a perspective on what she was seeing. It became dark. Very dark. Flickering, fitful candle flames lit the scene. Dark figures in dark robes moved silently in the candlelight. Flame on steel. A sword blade flashed, slicing through robes and flesh, splashing blood across the floor, the walls. One figure stood out, stood alone. Finished, he pulled back his hood. Sweat dampened curly hair against a pale face, eyes like pits of blackness - Jonathan Raven.
He was young, very young to her eyes. Anger and hatred flamed within him; she could feel the heat of his anger, the heat of his hate, the heat of his pain. He met her gentle gaze and flinched away from it. There was nothing in his eyes; they were flat, opaque, dead; yet life burned within him, burned hard and hot. He ran.
She stood there looking at the room, the bodies. Here and there she could see tattoos on the arms of the dead. Dragons, all of them. Black Dragons.
Black Dragons? Jonathan was a Black Dragon?
The dreams faded to the usual flow of color and incomprehensible pieces that she usually had to pull together for answers she frequently didn't really want. She let the dreams flow. She saw Zeph as a small child in the hospital, his pain and hurt such strong walls that it took all she had to get through them. She drifted back to her own childhood, the day she was grabbed off the street as she walked to high school. She heard the language again that she had first heard that day from the mouths of her captors. She heard the words that struck cold fear into her heart even now. / She is of the chosen. We have found a true daughter of darkness for our God. /
Something out beyond the edges of her dreams stirred, stretched, opened sleep closed eyes and watched. She felt it, old and ominous, out there, waiting. She came awake, her eyes wide open, her heart pounding, her pulse racing. She knew that feel. She had first felt it while she was being trained in Saigon. The feeling receded when she and the others were rescued by Ski and his friends. It stayed almost out of range of her ability to sense for many, many years. Now, it was closer, much closer, and she feared it as she feared nothing else in existence. She also welcomed it. Soon, very soon, so much would be clear, so much would be changed.