Of Boys and Blades

Part One

Chapter 6

I was in the Abbey, surrounded by cold stone and bars. And there was Wyatt, staring at me with dead eyes, his body covered in blood. I couldn't look away from him, yet I couldn't look him in the face. "Why? Why wouldn't you help me?" he kept asking.

Closing my eyes, I pressed my hands to my ears in hopes of suppressing the sound but his voice was in my head. I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I fell against the wall to the floor. The voice stopped and slowly I opened my eyes. I was in ruins. There was blood. There was death. And there was me.

Black Dranzer was above me, staring down with Wyatt's dead eyes. You're nothing, Kai. All you do is destroy. Just like me.

xXx

I awoke to the soft caress of fingers along my back.

"Kai," Tyson's voice purred purred in my ear. "You okay?"

I was curled up with Tyson's pillow in the middle of the bed. Rolling over onto my back I found Tyson sitting next to me, freshly showered and fully dressed. I didn't want to talk about last night. I was embarrassed by it. The need to not be alone.

Tyson smiled at me. "Hey, sleepyhead. You all right? You were having a bad dream."

"I'm fine," I muttered.

He was chewing on his lip again nervously. "The guys are gonna be here in an hour. I thought you'd like a shower. Gramps saved you some breakfast."

"You didn't tell him-"

"What? About our crazy make-out session. Of course I didn't." He leaned down and kissed me.

I pushed him away. "We can't do this." The events of the day before came back to me and I felt sick. Wyatt...

In an instant Tyson was on top of me, pinning me to the bed. "Stop saying that. You say that and yet you keep coming to me. You obviously want this." His face was inches from mine. "I like you. And you like me. Just. Get. Over. It."

I pressed my lips against his. Taking advantage of catching him off guard I wrestled him off me and we ended with me pushing him against the bed. He didn't let me win easily and in our struggle we managed to knock over his nightstand. At some point we started kissing again.

We both heard the knock at the door. "Everything okay in there, Ty?"

Tyson broke the kiss. "I'm fine!" he yelled. After a moment he started giggling. "Are you going to stay on top of me all day?"

"No." I kissed him again.

Okay. So I liked him. I didn't know why and I didn't know how long this would last. All I knew is that I wanted him. Fuck, I didn't really have a choice in this, did I? Though I won our wrestling match Tyson had won the battle. He was right.

"I have conditions," I said between kisses.

He laughed. "What? Are we negotiating?"

"Not negotiating. You have to agree to my terms."

He struggled underneath me, unable to keep a straight face. "Go on," he said with a laugh.

"We keep it simple. No titles, no labels. I'm not your boyfriend, I'm not your lover. We're just...together."

"Okay."

"And you can't tell anyone."

"Bummer. I was so looking forward to telling Max how hot you are without a shirt on." He tried to kiss me again but I pulled back. I was practically sitting on him.

"I'm serious."

"Fine. I accept your stupid conditions. But the guys will be here soon. If you want to keep this a secret, you should probably go take your shower."

Begrudgingly I got off him.

He smiled up at me, blushing softly.

He's never going to be able to keep this a secret.

"There's a towel in the bathroom for you," he told me.

"Thanks." I thought about saying something else but my mouth stayed shut. I left the room.

What the fuck did I just do? I'd just entered into some weird relationship with Tyson. When I was with him it felt...right. But out of sight I couldn't help but wonder what the hell I was doing. This wouldn't end well. I knew I was going to hurt him. And...and he didn't deserve that. Tyson could be an obnoxious, annoying ass. But he was genuine. He trusted. He cared, he accepted. After the stunt I pulled in Russia he'd welcomed me back with open arms. For some reason he thought I was worth his time. I just couldn't comprehend him.

I'd spent my whole life being hurt. By my mother and father, by Voltaire, then Boris, and...Tala. He'd done something. There was a story there I couldn't remember but we'd been friends once. But I had learned not to trust, not to care. And then along came Tyson.

I'd been in the shower a long time.

Before I used up the entirety of the hot water supply I got out. After dressing and drawing in my shark fins I headed towards the kitchen.

"..friends will already be here, so why not, homie?" I overheard Gramps saying. I paused outside the door.

"I just don't want to celebrate, ok? After everything that went down yesterday it's the last thing I want."

"I already got you a cake. You only turn fourteen once."

"It's fine, Grandpa. Please, just drop it."

Tyson's birthday. Wasn't it his birthday when he'd beaten me at the preliminaries? Had it really been a year?

I saw Grandpa sigh and go back to preparing food. "Tyson?" he said after a moment.

"Yeah."

"Did Kai stay in your room last night?"

"Yeah. He came back late. We talked a bit and he crashed in there."

"Is he alright?"

"Define alright."

I bypassed the kitchen and went straight to the dojo. I took a seat against the wall and waited.

Max was the first one there. He smiled when he saw me. "Hey, Kai."

"Hey."

He sat down beside me. "I'm sorry about your friend."

"He wasn't my friend," I said flatly.

"Well, he was an acquaintance of yours, wasn't he? And I am sorry. He didn't seem like a bad guy. It's a terrible thing that happened. We told the police everything we know about Psykick, and so did Mr. Dickinson, but they looked at us like we were crazy. I don't think they're going to pursue it."

That made me angry. Here was a kid dead because of those monsters and nobody cared!

"They want to talk to you."

"Why?"

"Because you knew him."

"Barely. I was at that school for all of two weeks."

"Two weeks?"

"I have a habit of getting kicked out of schools."

Max chuckled. "That doesn't surprise me." He paused. "We're going to take care of this, Kai. We're going to find Psykick and expose them. This doesn't end here."

I didn't say anything else but I didn't have to. Not to Max. Tyson came in and then Kenny, Rei, and Hilary arrived shortly after. They discussed many things, mostly about Team Psykick. I could see they were trying to not mention Wyatt by name. And I appreciated it. A lot.

xXx

The next couple nights I awoke to find Tyson in my bed beside me. He never mentioned it. In the mornings he just slipped back down the hall to his room without a word. I didn't mind.

Three days after Wyatt's death Tyson stood at my door beckoning me to attend the funeral. It was weird to see him dressed in black.

"You might feel better if you go," he was telling me.

I was pretending to be thoroughly engrossed in a manga I'd taken from his room. "I doubt it."

"I really wish you'd come."

"I wish you'd leave me alone."

"Fine," he sighed. "Have it your way." I watched his back disappear down the hall.

I tried to focus on the nonsense I was reading but eventually that fucking curiosity got me out the door. I couldn't do the funeral. The image of my mother lying in her casket kept popping into my mind. She'd been a sleeping beauty whose prince had never come. I remember approaching the coffin slowly with trepidation. I'd touched her hand and jerked away in revulsion. She was cold and waxy. Even at the age of four with the vaguest conception of death I understood my mother was gone. I didn't want to see Wyatt like that.

I hugged my arms against myself. I missed my mother. I missed her terribly. How different would my life have been if she'd been alive?

So I wandered. I followed my feet and they eventually dragged me to the cemetery Wyatt's funeral was being held in. It was out of the way. Large and full of trees. I snuck in easily and hung back watching the others. I knew they couldn't see me. I was far enough away I couldn't hear what the minster was saying but I could tell he was speaking in English. Wyatt had been English after all.

I watched everything. The casket was thankfully closed. I watched the attendants pay their respects to the deceased and to his parents. I watched them leave. I watched Wyatt's parents grieve over their son after they were left alone. I felt strangely detached, as though I wasn't the cause of all this. A mother and father separated from their son by death.

After an eternity the husband led his wife away. I'd been there for hours. Finally, I stepped before the casket, staring at the mound of dirt he would soon be buried beneath.

Death.

It didn't seem real, any of it. It didn't seem real that just three days ago Wyatt had showed up armed with Cyber Dranzer and fell victim to its power. Three days ago he was alive.

I stood there for a long time, not really thinking anything, not feeling anything. Just staring at the casket and the casket stared back. I didn't feel sad, not even guilty, just...empty.

"I thought I might find you here," Tyson's voice came from behind me.

I didn't acknowledge him. Then he'd be real. Then this all would be real.

"I'm not going to leave unless you come with me."

He stayed quiet after that, standing beside me. I didn't know he could keep his mouth shut for so long. I felt his hand brush against mine and before I knew our fingers were lightly entwined.

"What are you doing?"

Tyson looked a little annoyed. "I care about you. I don't know how many times and how many ways you're going to make me keep saying it, but stop acting surprised."

"You shouldn't."

"What? Care?" He waited for a reply that never came. Instead he just squeezed my hand. I let him.

"My mother's buried here," he told me after a moment.

That caught me by surprise. I didn't know his mother was dead. I guess I'd assumed she was traveling with his father. "Mine, too," I let slip.

"How'd your mother die?"

"It's complicated," I replied, thinking of all that Lidiya had told me. "Yours?"

He didn't answer right away. "She shouldn't have had me. Her doctors told her not to have any children... She never recovered after having me. I was premature. She died when I was four months old. Complications from childbirth." He let out a breath. "Can we go home now? I don't like being here."

I relented. We went back without words. The dojo was empty when we got there. "Gramps is out with some girl. He said she wouldn't let him cancel." I followed him into the kitchen.

It was a bigger kitchen than one would expect in a house this old. Tyson had told me earlier in the week that his grandfather loved to cook and had it remodeled a few years earlier. There was a peninsula with barstools in the middle.

"Are you hungry?" Tyson asked me.

"Not really."

"You've barely eaten in three days."

"I'm fine."

He was pulling things out of the cabinets. "Do you like brownies?"

"Not really."

"Well, you haven't had mine." He smiled at me.

"Do you know how to cook?"

"You really think someone who loves to eat as much as I do doesn't know anything about cooking?"

He had a point.

"I've never been to a funeral before," he was saying. "Well, I guess I must've been at my mom's but I was so little. It wasn't like I thought it'd be. It was way sadder. I knew you were there."

"Did you see me?"

"No. I just knew you'd come." He held out his mixing spoon. "Do you want to lick it?"

"What?"

"The spoon. Do you want to lick the chocolate off?"

"Why would I do that? Didn't you just put raw egg in it."

Tyson rolled his eyes. "Just lick the damn spoon, Kai," he demanded.

I did. It wasn't horrible.

xXx

Author's Note: An update already? Hell must've frozen over. These things come so much quicker when I don't have to watch the show. I want a picture of Kai licking brownie mix off a spoon. Thanks again for all the reviews and follows! I love you guys. You inspire me. Hope you enjoy this chapter.

AN 2022: Grandpa has a very active life. When he's not teaching classes or cooking for Tyson and his friends he has old friends he hangs out with that he's known since his teens with and often goes on dates with divorcees that are usually around 10-15 years younger than him. There's an older widow who fancies him that he's been trying to hook Mr. Dickenson up with. Mr. Dickenson keeps turning him down.