Once he’s drunk his tea, Damon leaves, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze and King a good scratch behind the ears.
When I close the door behind him, I find myself unable to move for a moment. I stand by the door, my hands planted on it, fingers splayed out and nails scratching lightly over the dark wood. I let my head hang between my arms and take a second to just breathe.
It doesn’t always work. When my emotions get compacted and threaten to drag me down and drown me, a strange dizzy sensation makes my brain feel like it’s vibrating inside my head, and my lungs feel as if they’re being twisted up into knots. Everything becomes overwhelmingly tight. My throat, my stomach, my muscles. It’s like I’m trying to expel all the bad emotions, but I can’t because they’re temporarily sewn into the fabric of my very being.
I can’t stop it or control it. I can’t will it away. All I can do is breathe, or try to, until that tempest of feeling is pulled back in like the tide.
King seems to know something is wrong because he presses himself against my leg as if attempting to reassure or ground me. To remind me I’m not alone, he’s here too, and he needs me to be okay.
It’s probably wishful thinking, all of that. But it does help me to stay calmer than I would be otherwise.
Afterwards, when it’s over and I feel marginally less crap, I kneel down beside King and wrap my arms around him. King allows himself to be cuddled and doesn’t try to lick my face as a sign of respect for my mental state. He does sneeze on me, though, which is an effective method of bringing me back into the present moment.
I look down into King’s baby-seal eyes and tell him, “You’re really gross.”
King pants at me, his happiness not at all dimmed by my assertion against his character.
“We’re alright, though,” I say quietly. “I’m as mental as Mum, and you’re professionally gross, but we’re alright. Yeah?”
King’s answer is to lick at my chin and pant with even more abject abandon.
That’s about as good as it’s probably going to get.
CHAPTER TWO
JACK
“Dan.”
My brother's name is a gasp, a plea, a desperate shout for ...
For what?
Not mercy. Never mercy. That word means nothing here. It is nothing. I am. Nothing. Here. Anywhere.
But Dan. He's.
Dead.
It hits me. Like a train. Like a comet. Like the world is ending again and again and again,and I'm the only one who sees it.
Dead. He's dead. Dan is.
Dan is. Dead.
My brother is dead, andI'm the one who killed him. I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do.
"Stay still, Agent Jack."
I'm inanother greyroom. This one is larger. But it smells the same. Death and fear and pain. Or that might just be me. It's been weeks since I murdered my brother, and I haven't stopped smelling his blood. I'm beginning to think I never will. I would probably be having nightmares about it if I'd been able to sleep.
I haven't though. Slept, I mean. I can go longer without it than normal people, but I still need sleep. I've passed out a few times, but that isn't the same thing. No nightmares but no realrest either.
After the fight with my brother came to a decisive end, I was dragged away from Dan and taken to anotherOI base. I don't remember much of that. I think they had to shoot me with a tranquilliser tomake me let go of Dan. That was stupid. Sentimental in a way I cannot afford.I slashed himopen. He was as good as dead. There was too much blood toconsider any other outcome. Holding onto his bodywas just weak. Pathetically weak.I have to be better than that. For Dan. I'm alive, and I have to survive for him. I have to survive long enough to forgive him for leaving me. I need time to let the hatred bleed out.
No matter how much it feels like I've been torn apart and stitched back together all wrong, the fact remains,my brother is dead.I will never see him again. I will never hear him laugh manically or snarl in rageagain. He will never tap my nose orstopthe sadness which reaches a place too deep insidemy headfrom swallowing me whole. He won't be there to protect me from myself or anyone else ever again.
This is it. This is the moment I should have been preparing for. A life without Dan. I didn't prepare, though. I didn't even try to think about it, because it wasn't supposed to be me who walked away from that room. I thought I knew howour story was going to end. When they took us to that room, I thought I knew how it was going to play out, step by step. But Dan changed the script without telling me, and now I'm. Just.
