NC-17, eventually PG for now.
Keith is confused; picking up clues is never easy, nor painless. And what if it's not a dream?
Crashing the Gates/Interlude
He awoke coughing hard, feeling terrible, a bitter burning deep in his stomach he didn't understand. His mouth felt and tasted like a chickenyard. Oh, God, but being without healing magic sucked SO bad. He'd forgotten.
His head was pressed into something hard---a rock?---and someone was shaking his shoulder. 'Keith? Come on, wake up. Please. Time to go home now."
Home. That sounded delightful. "Jalin?" he mumbled groggily. "We got a ride home? Is Nightwolf coming?" Shit, he better be. I am *really* drained. Changing you back from a dragon took it all outta me, kid. Next time you go lizard on me you're just gonna have to stay that way.
"Yeah, get this clown outta here, Lori. No, I'm sorry, I know he's been through a lot. But I got a business to run."
Keith jerked upright and was immediately sorry for it. The world spun around his shattering skull like a crazed merry-go-round, all rattling calliope music and wild-eyed beasts he would never dare to ride. He nearly fell off the high narrow rock he was perched on, was steadied by the person who'd spoken to him first. He pressed his hands to his eyes, waited until the violent beasts of red and green behind his eyelids snarled back into their caves. "What am I doing on a rock, dumbass, fall off shape I'm in---"
He opened his eyes cautiously. He could see nothing but dimly lit darkness, and two blobs of color that might have been people. It wasn't a rock, though definitely as hard as one. A rickety stool, he could feel the rungs beneath his feet.
His heart began to hammer crazily; automatically, as a healer would, he sought to steady its beat and succeeded. Some things he could do, then.
"Here." Familiar light pressure, of someone gently settling his glasses on his face (Carse does that, sort of apologizing for ripping them off in a frenzy. Funny, how he won't screw me with my glasses on. Pretty Freudian---)
The world tightened into focus.
It shouldn't have. He really didn't need glasses anymore. Just wore 'em to annoy Carson, and to try and hide his face from the astonished perverts who'd never seen an elf before. Stole a whole rack of them from Sears and no major backlash, since he took them from off the sample frames section with the plain glass in the lenses they weren't worth a whole lot---
"Is that better? Can you see now?" The voice was affectionate but with an edge of exasperation. He knew the tone, but not the voice.
He stared at the smartly dressed woman with the short dark hair, blinking. "I---I see better than I want to." Nobody in the Tribes had hair that short, men or women.
She smiled at him; a nice smile, but her lips were too red. "Well, there's the charming flatterer I know and love. C'mon, Keith; it's two thirty and this poor guy needs to lock up. I'll take you home---my home, this time. You don't need to be alone, that's for sure. But you seemed so rational, just this morning."
"Wait a minute." He ignored her gentle tug, floundering for sense. "Where the hell is Jalin? Do'nar? What'd you do to them?" Illusion magic, it had to be. The only thing he was still weak at---well, right now he was weak at everything, thanks to being in battle for the first time in his life. Who knew that Southerners could be so dangerous? Well, admittedly there'd been a whole nation of them---gawd, how he hated those fuckers! And as for the Eastern illusionists---
He shivered without meaning to. He still remembered Do'nar---
Do'nar---what?
The woman shrugged, beginning to look uncomfortable. "Never heard of 'em. Christ, McIntyre---"
"You fucking Easterner!" Rage and terror took him, and he slid off the stool to stalk towards her.
"Hey, buddy, watch the language!"
"I may not be able to see through this bullshit, but Carson--the Nightwolf, I mean--he'll kill you, you dumb fuck! Let me the hell out of this!"
"Hey! I said watch the---"
"It's okay, Dane." Ha! The woman's face had changed, at the mention of Carson's name. So right, he/she/whatever had better fear the Slayer.
"Keith, it's been three days. You can't keep doing this, you'll kill yourself. It's not your fault."
"Not my---what?"
"Yeah, who would've known a guy as respectable as Ravenstreet was such a creep?" the man behind the bar chimed in. "I guess they shoulda listened to you, hair or no hair. But it sounded so crazy, buddy. You weren't exactly convincing. No offense."
Keith turned to bite the head off the big, bald asshole---at least that was his seeming---and froze. "Ravenstreet? Carson?" How did these bastards know the Nightwolf's Earthly name?
"The kid's been dead for three days, buddy. No, don't yell at me, Lori, I'm sorry for him but he's gotta face reality. Every night he's in here with this, all over again like it's news to him. Yeah, his dad offed him Wednesday night. After doing what he accused you of doing. Sick bastard. In the slammer now and don't worry, he won't last long. I'm not gonna even go into what else he did to the kid, you don't wanna remember. But even jailbirds hate sick creeps like that; surprised he hasn't already been eighty-sixed."
"Well, thanks, Dane," the woman said sarcastically, as Keith began to shiver violently. Staring over the bartender's shoulder as if seeing a monster.
He was. Oh, he was.
In the bar mirror, a wide-eyed, bespectacled man of about twenty-six stared back at him. Mustache, unkempt mop of faded gold-red hair. Even behind the glasses, the brown eyes just faintly touched with green looked tired, more than slightly drunk.
"Not his father," he muttered, watching the lips in the mirror move, wondering what had happened to muddy his eyes, and where the graceful swoop of his pointed ears was hiding. "Darkangel. Soul reaper."
"Keith, don't start. Come with me, baby. Please."
"But I saved him. Didn't I save him? I remember. I---they, relatives. Took him away, never saw him again until he came looking for me. Five years. But I SAVED him!"
The woman took his arm gently, and he ripped away as if a brand had been laid to his flesh. The fury now lifted on an overwhelming tide of anguish. He would have laved them both in fire if he could.
"YOU LYING PRICKS! How can he be dead, we were fucking just a day before the battle!? And let me tell you, that 'boy' can get it on in spades. 'Boy' my ass, not in Khesh he isn't! Wanna know how big his dick is? Well, I'm not telling, 'cause you'd think I was lying. Except I'm not---you are! DEAD? You Eastern BASTARDS!"
The bald man flung his towel on the bar and stepped out, face grim. "Now that's damn well enough right there. Is everybody in San Francisco a pervert or totally nuts? Shit, I shoulda stayed in Pasadena. I'm calling the cops!"
"Noshit, Dane, call the hospital---he needs help---mental breakdown---I knew this would happen---"
He didn't throw off the hands that gripped his arms this time. He was shivering harder, staring at the familiar stranger in the mirror. Almost having forgotten the other two. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
"I always knew it was just a dream," he confessed sadly to his reflection.
He'd start screaming in a minute.
He'd scream until his mind broke.
Then, it would be okay. He'd never have to think about it again.
Of course, it was never that easy.
///Keith? Firehawk? Gwai'vharn! Damn you!// Voices in his head again, very strong now.
He dropped his backpack in the hall, and wobbled towards the bathroom and the medicine chest where his pills waited, neatly tucked inside a package of laxatives. Not that he had many people over these days, but he'd gotten in the habit of camouflaging drugs. If someone wanted to take a shit bad enough to raid a box of stool softener, he supposed they needed the anti-depressants more than he did.
A hard day. Therapy session, new medication. He'd just scored a job as a high school history teacher, and he'd probably fucked up already. But looking at all the bored faces, like cows in a pasture chewing cud, he hadn't been able to resist.
"I know you're coming in here thinking history is a bore, names and dates and a bunch of crap that doesn't concern the real world at all. Well, don't think of it that way here. Think of it as teevee, as rock and roll. Think of it as angels and demons, serial killers and crusaders of light. I promise, I will never quiz you on a date something happened. I just insist you get to know the people these things happened to. And I don't fail anyone. If I don't make you love this shit, it's my bad, not yours."
He'd put it almost exactly that way---to Carson. Years ago. He knew Carson had existed, even if none of his memories surrounding the boy had not been real. Sometimes he dragged out the newspaper stories, the obituary, just to prove it to himself.
Oh, he'd been smoking along in class all right! When common sense clicked in he might have shut up, except for the startled faces that actually looked up at him, wondering if he was gaming them. No dates? No failing? What the---hell? About half a dozen of those faces were intrigued with the rest of what he'd said, and that was really what got him going.
Keith fumbled with the knob of the bathroom door---funny, he usually left it open. Oh, gawd, had he *really* mentioned the Adam Sandler film and what comeuppance Hitler had received in hell, for being the greatest serial killer of all time? Sure had, and the members of the class who'd seen the film had been snickering. When the bell rang, there were groans of protest instead of the usual jubilant student exit.
And that had made him feel better, until he exited himself and practically fell over the damned principal. The man had eyed him mighty curiously. Good lord, how much did he hear and do I still have a job left after day one? Fuck!
//Damn you, wizard! How could you have believed that I would let him take you?//
Keith moaned, and yanked the door violently. It came open with sudden, laughable ease. He overbalanced, felt himself falling backwards in what felt like a slow series of movie takes.
Not to the floor, though. He fell into arms that cradled him effortlessly. Oh gawd, how could this be happening when he'd scored a job, proved he was normal?
"Wizard." The voice was soft, deep. Dark hair fell across his chest, and he stared helplessly into eyes as blue as gas flame. "Remember three things."
The eyes altered, turning swiftly amber. Rich melted topaz. The harsh face changed, into someone unknown to him. There was a clash of black metallic wings behind the creature who held him so gently.
"First, the dragons. Second, the elves."
"Tyr." Going so fucking crazy here. And I was just worried about losing a job?
A hand brushed his face, smoked with paint. His could feel his cheek blaze with crimson light.
"And thirdly---the game. Remember the game. And that you are more healer than killer, no matter the fire that you command."
"None of this is happening," Keith told himself out loud, desperately. If he could just get to his medication! Stupid, not to carry it on him; very stupid, to have forgotten the morning dose in his new-job flurry of nerves.
The nightborn creature smiled at him, almost with sympathy it seemed. "And remember you are Firelord," it finished softly, touching his forehead with lips that burned and froze at the same time. "Or soon will be. Do not let power make you less strong, elven warrior."
And then, before he could laugh bitterly at the way his mind flattered itself, the eyes turned blue again, studying him with serious concern.
And against the blueness, he was helpless to hide.
He awakened, instead.
TBC
