He hadn’t abandoned him after all.
Chapter 24:
Sila had never felt this way before. Anger, though he was capable of feeling it, was beneath him. A useless emotion that never led anyone down the right path. Anger dulled the senses and made one stupid and rash—just look at his brother who was always a slave to his fury and his ever-changing mood swings. Always quick to lash out, only to regret it once the damage was done.
Sila was the collected twin. The calm one. The smart one. He prided himself on his ability to remain in perfect, impeccable control at all times. It’s what kept him hidden from the world, what helped keep him and his brother safe. He played the pieces on the board, but he wasn’t one of them.
Sila was a slave to nothing, least of all himself.
And yet here he was.
Completely and totally incensed.
It was all the fucking professor’s fault.
His devilish nature was spitting mad, demanding retaliation. In the past, if he hurt someone, it was out of curiosity or boredom. Those were the only reasons he ever did anything. He appeased his darker self, his true self, by keeping it occupied and entertained, because not doing so would be the same as signing his own death certificate. Not doing so would be dragging his brother down with him because they were one and the same.
Only…
His brother wasn’t here.
His brother wasn’t the one currently seething and wrathful. He may have a penchant for drowning people, but his brother had never been all that interested in drawing another person’s blood. That’s why he’d always preferred the blaster as his weapon of choice, unlike Sila who’d had a fondness for knives for as long as he could remember.
Usually, even with their differences it was obvious they were still the same. Sila was Rin and Rin was Sila.
But who the fuck was he right now, in this moment? Who was the person losing his control? Unraveling? He didn’t recognize this role. It wasn’t a part he’d played in the past and it wasn’t his true self without the mask.
Or…Was it?
No. No it couldn’t be because who he was, who he was straight down to his core, was calculative. He was the master of his and everyone else’s fate. He didn’t slip. Didn’t falter.
Sila Varun did not make mistakes.
Killing the professor on the bridge? That would have been a mistake.
It didn’t even matter that he’d stopped himself. It didn’t change anything, not when he was currently sitting in the dark, staring across the medium sized room at the professor’s unconscious form.
It didn’t matter when that he’d come to his senses back there since all he’d been able to do since bringing Bay here was picture all the ways he could take him apart.
Sila clenched his jaw and gripped the sharp blade of the knife in his hold, gritting his teeth at the sting of pain as it sliced through his skin. Blood pooled in his palm but he hardly noticed, trying to chase after that burn in the hopes it would center him. He needed grounding, fast.
Tiberans were excellent at grounding techniques and, even though he’d grown up without access to the full range of Tiberan emotion, Sila had been taught the same as everyone else. He’d rarely needed to utilize those teachings, of course, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
The fact that he was desperate only infuriated him further, however, and with a snarl he shot up from the chair and chucked the knife as hard as he could. The blade imbedded itself in the wall only inches from Bay’s face.
The professor didn’t so much as stir.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Sila hadn’t meant to bring Bay here like this. He’d planned to show the professor over the weekend, calmly, politely. To ease the older man into a false sense of security they both knew was a smokescreen. Sila liked that about Bay.
Bay knew exactly what Sila was, yet he never shied away. He ran when he was told, sure, cried and screamed and bled and begged. But at the end of the day, whether they wanted to admit it or not, that was all by choice.
All of Bay’s actions had been done by choice. It was Sila who’d fooled himself into believing otherwise. Sila who had fallen into the other man’s trap. He’d thought he’d caught Bay?
He chuckled at himself humorlessly.
Bay had been the one catching him. Well and truly.
Sila’s multi-slate went off and he shoved the earbud into his right ear and hit accept hard enough it was a wonder he didn’t crack the screen. “What?”
