Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction ❯ Suite on Rte. 86 ❯ Complicated ( Chapter 6 )

a.n.  This part begins the second arc of the Suite, which was written separately, and is much darker. From here on, the rating jumps from hard R into NC-17, for graphic sex and violence.     Complicated    None of them are afraid of us. Jordan, I think, can't feel fear, and Bran was too out of it when it happened to see what we did. I have a feeling that even if he had seen, he wouldn't fear us. He's too calculating. Kiran says Shane is afraid for us, though I don't see it. But Kiran always somehow knows things that no one else does.   Whatever was on that dart had dropped me for almost a full day once it kicked in. I woke up some time in the late afternoon, my body too heavy and stiff to move.  I lay on the floor of the camper for a long time, stared at the water-stained ceiling, and listened until everything made sense again. Kiran was wedged in the bunk with Bran and Jordan, trying to keep them calm and still. Shane drove until around 5 AM, when the deceleration woke me again. He ordered Jordan to keep driving and passed out half across the passenger's seat. I managed to stand and shook her awake to tell her. Shane is lighter than he looks, his tall thin frame just whipcord and bone. He snores when he's really tired.   None of them are afraid of us, but they probably should be. Once Bran was feeling better, he wanted to teach us Aikido, but I wouldn't spar with him. It would be too easy to hurt him, even if he wasn't still healing, so Kiran and I spar with each other and they watch. Kiran thinks it's fun but I'd rather not have to do it. But maybe, if I learn to fight when I'm not- when I'm myself, then it- that won't happen again. Kiran wants to try Shane's gun but he won't let us touch it.   I am sore a lot because I'm growing so much. Moving around helps, so it's good to wake up and do some katas and spend all day walking. I'm always hungry and usually sleepy. Kiran and I have to find food because we're starting to run low on everything. We've been walking for days and days. It's hard on Shane and especially Bran, who still tires easily and needs to find the easiest way up over each of the long, sheer hills we've been crossing and down into the next green-choked ravine. Last night, from the top of a ridge, I caught sight of a distant, dull expanse of parking lots and roads, cross-hatched by telephone poles. I don't think Shane and Bran are really aware that Kiran's been showing them which way to go, just like they're not aware that he helped Bran heal faster.     Every couple of days Bran or Shane used to sleep for a long time and Jordan would change. Lately we just find the three of them tangled together some mornings. They don't really talk much on those mornings and Shane won't meet anyone's eyes at first. Then he shakes himself a little, Bran answers his challenging glare with a bland little smile and then they eat more than usual and we walk extra far.   Kiran and I are faster than them even when they make us carry the packs, so we get to explore. I like to be alone with him. Even when they're arguing, which is most of the time, the four of them are comfortable together in a way that I am not. It makes me feel weird.   I feel weird a lot lately.   Sometimes the world seems so thin that I could poke a hole through it with one finger. Whatever is behind its surface is too important to forget and too horrible to remember. Bran and Jordan and Shane become familiar-looking strangers. Kiran shines on the outside but roils with power and violence underneath. When it happens I have to get away and be alone and think.   Sometimes I am very angry with them, though I don't understand why.   And then there's what we did to those men and that icy blankness while I was doing it. It's frightening now, though I wasn't scared at the time. And then there's the fierceness that unfurls across Kiran's face sometimes when we spar. He nearly broke my wrist once, even though I'd told him it hurt.   Everything is so complicated.   The hard part is that I can't talk to Kiran about it. Being around him lately starts a strange itch under my skin, this sort of gnawing want for something, something him. And somehow it's like the looks Jordan gives Bran and Shane and other people, but I'm not sure how, or how it is I identify it as that.   I ask Jordan about the things they do. It takes me a while to work up the nerve for some reason, and when I finally do, I loose the words I'd planned and "It's more than just eating, isn't it," falls out of my mouth. He looks startled, glancing back toward the fire where Kiran is draped over Shane and Bran is busy with his notes. Then he gets his 'mom' look, the soft/bemused/ironic one he gives Kiran and I when he helps us out, and he tells me about it. And after that some things start making more sense, except I still don't know what to do> about it.    We don't touch as much as we used to; it means something more now and I shy away from it. I don't want us to change, but I do, desperately. I am afraid to put a word to the thing between us because that might somehow make it less, make it something other than it is.     He doesn't or won't understand why I want to leave them, but when I do he comes with me. I tell myself I didn't doubt he would.   I double back along our route from this morning and turn south on a rocky rise that won't show our passage. Kiran paces beside me tirelessly, looking as if he's listening or thinking hard about something.   As the sun falls behind the scrubby hills he says, "What will we do?"   "I'd've liked to go back to the lake, but they might look for us there."   "They're going to look for us anyway."   "Yeah." I say, "How long until they realize we're not coming back?"   He looks sad and fierce. "At least a day."   My stomach growls. He takes my hand, fingertips fitting warm in the spaces between my knuckles. "Come on," he says, but he doesn't look me in the eye.   When I get tired, we make a nest of leaves in the shelter of a shallow overhang. I wake just before dawn half-sprawled across his lap. He combs the twigs and tangles out of my hair with his fingers and braids it to keep it off my face. I lean into his hands.   We find a deep canyon around noon and are exhausted by the time we reach the bottom. The cattails growing in the wide, brown shallows are good to eat, crunchy and green-tasting. Kiran worries that we won't be able to find enough food for me, that the ground feels restless and the birds are nervous with us here. A gibbous moon rises and we turn downstream and keep walking. We don't talk much because mostly we don't need to.   When we come upon a road, the people in their cars give us odd looks for being near it. We stick to the trees, but follow it until we find a raft of stores and restaurants. Their fluorescent lights are harsh in my eyes after the subtleties of the night woods, the dull yellow of streetlamps. There is a larger town to the southeast. We can tell from the sickly purple glow it throws onto the sky. We hop some fences and break the locks off a few dumpsters then head back into the hills with a couple trash bags of pastries and some outdated juice.     She sneaks up on us the next day while I’m asleep. I wake when Kiran tenses beside me, hear footsteps, keep my muscles deliberately loose and still.   "Who are you?" Kiran asks. They haven't found us yet, then. He shifts uneasily as silence stretches across the clearing, hand landing briefly on the inside of my elbow to reassure himself. He knows I'm awake.   "Who are you?" someone echoes, though she says it like she already knows. Kiran pulls himself to his feet with the walking stick I found him, adjusts his grip on it. I slit my eyes open but can't see anything useful. Her voice had come from behind me.   "We're just out for a hike," Kiran says.   This feels wrong, but I'm invested in feigning sleep now. I close my eyes again, try to focus on the sounds she might be making, try to place her location in my memory of the clearing.   When she charges Kiran, I aim a sweep kick to her legs, turn the motion and roll to my feet just in time to get punched in the face. I stumble back a step but don't fall and she's still right there, a blur of red hair and heavy blows I start blocking without conscious thought. Time begins to slow down as Kiran rises behind her, breaks his walking stick across her shoulders. She whirls on him, but moves as if she hadn't felt it at all. Time slows further as he dances out of the way of her open-palmed strike. Something behind my sternum crystallizes.   The enemy is highly skilled, fast, perceptive. She neatly anticipates and dodges my punch, somehow ending up behind my ally with a snap kick he barely evades. My ally and I fight well together, he seems to anticipate my actions and moves to complement them. However, his speed and strength appear to be increasing exponentially as his style gets sloppier and sloppier. She is nearly as strong as him, has the advantage in height and reach and is much more focused. I wish I had my sword.   We win by lucky accident. I manage to catch the enemy's fist just as my ally attacks. She is thrown into the rock face and slumps to the ground, unconscious. Neutralized for the moment, but still a potential threat. I move to correct this, but am forced to defend myself when my ally leaps for my throat, sinks his teeth into my blocking arm.   I throw him off me, assess the injury (five shallow puncture wounds, bleeding sluggishly, won't effect combat-readiness), ignore it. The enemy rolls into a fluid crouch, comes at me again in that utterly unconscious style. If he weren’t so fast he’d be leaving himself wide open. I dodge, meaning to land a disabling blow as he passes. He anticipates as if he can see my thoughts and we go down in a heavy sprawl, his hands locked around my throat.   Situation critical. The enemy squeezes, closing my windpipe. A fierce joy plays across his features just like-   Kiran.   Shit. Shit.  Kiran.   "Kir-" The last of my breath is expelled when I try to say his name and I cannot draw in more. I raise my hands to his face as my vision begins to blur.   Please-   I choke as I try to draw in too much air at once, curl around my lungs and cough.   He is staring at his hands, jaw clenched, trembling.   "Come on," I rasp and shake him lightly. I glance at the red-haired woman, still sprawled in an unmoving heap against the rock. My throat is aching and will be bruised by sundown.   "Come on, Kiran," I say, "let's get the hell out of here."      We don't stop walking until I'm too tired to continue. I sleep a few hours up a fat-limbed tree as he keeps watch, perched above me. We continue as the night wheels over the mountains, zig-zagging north and east. We wade up every river and stream we come to, using them to confuse our scent.   The weight of his silence hurts more than my bruises and finally I stop around daybreak, wait for him to notice me again. He looks worried and determined, focused inward or somewhere else I cannot look.   "Kiran," I say and take three deliberate steps forward, into his personal space. I look down, wishing I had some kind of plan. The left knee of my jeans is ripped from climbing rocks.   "I would've-" killed her if you hadn't- killed you if you hadn't- "I don't-" want to hurt you- anyone- like to see you like this- "You didn't," I finish, lamely, and wait while his brow creases and his lips twist.   "That was scary," he says, and finally meets my eyes.   "Yeah."   We laugh with relief and fear and because there's really no other way to react. I touch his face and he grins up at me, sad and raw and starting to maybe feel like himself again.   "I'm glad you're OK," he whispers.   His hand covers mine and my breath stalls in my throat. When he says my name, my real name, something in my chest twinges and pulls tight. I am fixed on his smile, the thrum of his skin under my stilled fingertips.  I want to touch him so badly, to be touching as much of him as possible.   "Can I-?" slips between my lips though the rest of me is frozen, waiting for his words.     "Yes," he says.   His hands slide up under my shirt, tug me forwards. I drift down toward him helplessly, breathing in his breath.