After the Calling

<<<< Betray All: Part III

“Shit.” It was the first word that any of them had spoken in the six hours that Dresden had been driving, and not even Ryan had been prepared for it. It took her a moment to realize that it was she who had spoken.

“What do you mean, ‘shit’?” Dresden bristled in the driver’s seat. “What does ‘shit’ mean? You know him? Is he one of them?”

They had been travelling for the better part a month, back tracking, moving in circles, erasing any hint of their passing, but Ryan had only told Dresden of their actual destination the night before. “We’re going to the Timekeepers. The cognitives,” she had said. He had managed to keep his apprehension silent, but Ryan knew he was on edge. As far as Dresden was concerned, the cognitive psychics that his father had led and loved for many of Dresden’s younger years, Timekeepers as they were once called, were the ones responsible for his death. Ryan could never say for sure whether or not this was true.

She stared through the windshield at the man on the road ahead of them, leaning casually against the car that was blocking their path. Yes, she knew him. Yes, he was one of them. From the little she had heard of him over the years, he was the person holding the fading vestiges of the cognitive stronghold together. But instead of providing these answers to her sons, she pushed open the passenger side door. “Both of you stay in the car.”

“Ma!” Dresden protested and promptly disobeyed her order.

“Dresden, please, just stay with your brother,” Ryan said, frowning when Jericho tumbled out of the back of the rented minivan behind them. “I’ll handle this.”

“It’s what you’re handling that I care about.” Dresden peered over at the stranger who was still sitting calmly against his blockade, completely disinterested in their bickering. “Jericho, get back in the car,” he huffed to his brother.

“You get back in the car,” Jericho replied.

“Both of you get back in the car,” Ryan said, turning away and attempting to put together a sustainable, if false, sense of calm. “I’ll be right back.”

The offending vehicle and its owner were no more than 100 feet away, but the walk seemed to take an hour, Ryan feeling unusually self-conscious. She had not seen the man before her in almost 20 years. He had been no more than 16, a bright, serious boy, who had a difficult laugh and a quiet nature. His gravity had not made him easy to get along with, but those who were able found him to be ever so giving, and possessing an insatiable desire to learn. It was no doubt that desire that had brought him so close to Jericho Sr. who did nothing if not teach, and made Llewell willing to do anything to please him.

But it was this same man, the incarnate of that young boy, who became the reason why Jericho Sr., with Ryan and Dresden in tow, left the Timekeepers and never looked back.  Ryan had never really understood why, but Jericho certainly hadn’t left choice in place of explanations.  As foreign as it all seemed now, the guilt she had felt then was still alive in her. She had loved this man in his youth as she loved every child, like one of her own. But then, would she have allowed one of her own to be left behind?

“Hello Llewell.”

“Ryan.”

She sighed. “I suppose I should have expected a welcoming party.”

“Well, the welcoming party expected you.” Llewell dusted off of the shoulder of his jacket. “I saw you coming years ago.”

“Years ago?”

Llewell smiled faintly and his aura seemed to grow brighter for a moment, or maybe it was Ryan’s senses playing tricks on her, piquing against the powerful cloud of psychic energy tautly governed behind the cool mask of Llewell Isa. The one she left. The one she had let Jericho leave.

“Jericho always said that you would be a force,” Ryan said quietly, but Llewell merely blinked at her. She wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say. “I know that my being here isn’t the most comfortable thing for you, but I… you already know why I’m here, don’t you?

He shook his head. “I trust my visions for the concrete. The objective. Sometimes not even that. But I learned a long time ago not to trust them to tell me the motives of others.” He shook his head again. “I don’t know what you’re here for, Ryan, but I’d be uncomfortable with your presence no matter what the reason.”

“I am sorry for that.”

“Don’t be. It really has nothing to do with you.”

Ryan, trying to recover from the chill in his voice, baritoned with age, found herself studying him, trying to become reacquainted with the features that had sharpened in his adulthood. So familiar, his face. “Llewell, Jericho may have…” She tried again. “Whatever you’re holding on to, it’s making you forget all that Jericho did for you. For the Timekeepers.”

“He made me. He set my future in concrete. He did for cognitive psychics what no one else could have done,” Llewell agreed matter-of-factly. “He also put a bullet in his brain. He did that for us too.”

Ryan flinched and looked away as a forgotten pain re-lit in her core.

“And you, the one person who could resolve his death with the hundreds who stood behind him, chose to keep secrets in the name of hope. Delusion. He’s dead, but there are many out there who still believe he’s alive somewhere. Doing something. Fighting for them. And in that belief, they’re doing absolutely nothing for themselves.” His cool tone hadn’t faltered once. “I was one of those people for a stupidly long time. But that isn’t your fault. You believed in him the way everyone believed in him. Blindly.”

“You’re being hurtful.” Ryan had let the familiarity of his face comfort her, but that had been a mistake. This man was a stranger, a Llewell that she had never met before, and she could not rely on the sentiments of a past life. Particularly not with a person who had a heavy psychic involvement in the future. She should have known better.

“This can become hurtful to both of us if we let it.” Llewell said softly. “What do you want?”

“Your help.” She looked up, fuming. His barb had stuck and bridged the gap between sadness and vehemence. “But I’m not going to ask of you anything that you’re unwilling to give. And if I’m not welcome among you and yours, then that should have been the first thing you said to me. The first thing! I didn’t need to hear your disrespect for my husband. I didn’t need to feel it.”

“Jesus, Ryan,” he murmured. The break in his veneer was apparent and he looked down, it seemed, to hid it. “You’re always welcome. I have no authority to say otherwise, and I meant no disrespect.”

“Maybe it wasn’t meant for me, but you did mean it.” Ryan said. She dug a knuckle into her hip, letting the discomfort slow her down. “You have to know that I wouldn’t inflict myself on you, on anyone, if I had any other choice. I wouldn’t dredge up old ghosts if I could help it.”

“I do know that.”

“Then you’ll help me?” When Llewell didn’t look up, she said. “Not help me. Jericho.” She paused. “Junior.”

“Your son.”

Jericho’s son, she wanted to say, but she was not here to fight battles for the dead. She had enough battles among the living. “His ability… I can’t help him. He’s got no control. No understanding. It’s come to where he –”

“He fears his visions.”

“Yes. He blocks them until the pressure behind his aura builds and they break through. And when they do break through – ”

“They completely consume him.”

Ryan lifted her chin. “You do know why I’m here.”

“No,” Llewell said, still keeping his gaze on the ground. “I only know what I’ve experienced myself.”

“Llewell, if this will be difficult for you –”

“I’ll take him in”, he cut her off. “And you as well, if you need it, but your other son, Dresden, he has no place with us.”

Ryan felt a spike of alarm. “You said we were welcome!”

“I said you were welcome, and you are. You always will be. You’re cognitive. Your youngest is cognitive, and he too is welcome. Dresden is not.”

“He’s an intuit, it’s merely latent!”

“Nothing about his aura is psychic, Ryan.”

It struck her silent that the one thing that Jericho Sr. had so prized in Dresden, his lack of psychic ability and the safety it provided him, was barring him access to the very sanctuary his father had built.

“The city is big. He’ll have no problems finding a roof somewhere nearby. It simply won’t be the roof of a psychic.”

“I can understand exclusivity, but turning away someone at your doorstep?! Jericho would have never – ” She bit down on her tongue, and caught hold of her temper. She had to get out of the past. But not before she learned something from it. “I’m sorry. It’s clear that the years have been rough for everyone.” She spoke up a little louder, for Llewell’s silence was deafening. “I’ll leave Junior in your care, with all my gratitude. Dresden and I will find someplace to stay within reach.”

“Okay,” Llewell replied, indifferent.

“Now hug me.”

He looked up, finally, nonplussed. “What?”

“It’s been almost two decades since I’ve seen you, and whether you appreciate my being here or not, I’ve missed you. So hug me.” She reached out her arms toward him.

A surprised smile spread slowly across his lips followed by a chuckle so rarely used, it sounded forced. “I’m not good at hugs.”

“Well, I’m excellent at them. I’ll school you a thing or two.” She gave have a smile as warm as she could muster without giving him the impression that she could be gainsaid.

There was a brief survey of her, spread arms under the smile of a woman determined to touch him, before Llewell pushed himself off the hood of his car and let himself be hugged. But Ryan’s arms had hardly enclosed around him before he stiffened, no doubt remembering what Ryan was and what touching him would bring her. His past.

“Don’t look,” he said, but didn’t pull away.

Ryan rubbed his back soothingly, “It’s too late, honey.” And it was. The vision was falling over her, blanketing her senses from the physical world and echoing the reflections of a grieving soul. She closed her eyes and let it take her.

Under the stairs was the hiding spot of a small, frail little boy, whose tears spoke aloud to Ryan, warning her away.

She shook her head. “Show me.”

“Llewell!” A woman’s voice thundered over the tears from beyond Ryan’s senses. “How do you always know when Mommy’s leaving? I always come back.”

But the voice and presence behind it were gone as quickly as they had come, leaving soulless words lingering in the ether. Something else was here now. Something so wrong.

Ryan could not see the man’s face or form, but she could sense him there in the darkest shadows of her vision. She could smell the leather of his belt, hearing it slid against the denim of his pants. She could feel his criminal lust, the heat of his erection, just as she felt the pain of leather cracking against a 5-year-old’s skin.

“No,” she whispered, and closed her eyes. She couldn’t see this.

“I’m sorry.”

“Jericho?” Ryan opened her eyes, her husband’s voice carrying her out of a child’s hell.

“I’m sorry for everything.” Jericho was kneeling over the boy, older now. Tall for his age, but the youth in his face was still apparent. “I swear I’ll fix this.”

Ryan scanned her surroundings anxiously. The cold air attacked her lungs and formed icy lumps in her chest. The alley was dank and steeped in the odor of urine and burning chemicals.

“When did this happen?” she asked aloud, trying to place the city. The year. She couldn’t. This had happened, sometime in the past, without her knowledge. She wondered where she had been, likely warm and happy with a chubby, toddling Dresden, while Jericho was out saving a child from the cold. “Jericho, why didn’t you tell me?”

But her husband’s spectral form did not answer her. Gingerly, he pushed the boy’s matted hair off his forehead. “How much did you take?” Jericho asked the boy, searching for consciousness in the dilated brown eyes.

Ryan’s own eyes had fallen on the track marks that dotted the youth’s inner arms. A hypodermic needle lay near his leg. She could hardly imagine what drug had once occupied it. “Christ, Jericho, why didn’t you tell me.”

“How much? Where did you get it?” Jericho persisted.

The boy made a slight, suggestive movement with his crotch. “Fifteen dollars, I’ll suck your cock.”

Jericho cringed. “Llewell.”

The brown eyes focused at the sound of the name. “The fuck are you?” he slurred. “You cop?”

“I’m not a cop.” Jericho replied. “I’m a friend of your mother.”

“That… fuckin’ bitch.” The eyes were falling closed. “Telling cops my fuckin’… my fuckin’ name.”

“Don’t call your mother names.” Jericho took hold of the boy under his arms and lifted him to his feet. “And watch your mouth.” The young, abused body fell limp against him, but Jericho held up feeble figure effortlessly. “I’m taking you home.”

“I don’t… have a home,” the boy mumbled.

“I’ll make you one. Let’s take care of you, okay?”

Ryan stared after her husband, half carrying his charge off into the darkness, to some place that her aura couldn’t show her. Although the alley was fading, he was still here, she could sense him. But, something was different. Wrong, again. Hadn’t he fixed it?

“Llewell! Stop!”

Ryan turned around. It was warmer now, cozy. She knew this place. This used to be her home. It was a basement apartment near the core of the city in which the cognitives began growing their refuge. It was in this apartment that Jericho bore the Timekeepers, a vibrant network of cognitive psychics who, together, through connecting with the past and learning from it, while keeping tabs on the future, could protect the present.

“Why?!” The little boy from under the stairs was not a little boy anymore. Nor was he the empty vessel perishing in an alley. He was robust and healthy, cared for. Loved. But still pained. “So you can go back to ignoring me?!”

“I never ignore you!” Jericho bellowed. “Not once at any moment in the years that I’ve known you have I ever ignored you!”

The young man squeezed his eyes shut, gripping his head. “No, no, no, you just ignore what I feel for you. What I need from you. What I’d do for you.”

Jericho’s jaw seemed unable to close. “This isn’t right. You can’t…”

“What?!” The young man tore at his hair and his eyes flew open. “I can’t what?!”

“Lew, listen to me when I say no. When I say stop. Please believe that I know best.”

“Oh, you don’t know shit!” the young man exclaimed, but his outcry morphed seamlessly into a whimper. “This is why I’m begging you to let me show you.” He reached for Jericho’s crotch, but was caught roughly by the shoulders and pushed away.

The tears came in a torrent then, again calling warnings to Ryan, but she wouldn’t listen. The young man’s voice, hurt and broken by sobs, was all she could hear. “Is it Ryan? It’s Ryan isn’t it? But she’s like a mother to me, I would never hurt her. I swear I would never tell her. It would be our secret.”

“It’s wrong.” Jericho replied tragically.

“Because I’m 16? That doesn’t matter, it’s a number.”

“Everything about it is wrong.”

“Because I have a dick?! What the fuck?! Just tell me what’s so wrong about it! What’s wrong with me loving you?!”

Ryan watched, tearfully, as Jericho pressed his fingers against his own lids. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered to him.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, as if answering her. “I did everything wrong.”

The room went very still, the only movement came from the young man’s tears and they fell from his face onto the carpet. Jericho stood stiffly with his hand to his eyes for a long time before letting his arm drop and striding abruptly to the tortured figure before him.

“Llewell,” he said, gripping the young man’s face between his hands, “I love you more than this earth, but not in the way you want me too. And I never will. I am incapable. And I cannot tell you why. It is unfair for me to do that, I know, but there is only so much suffering that any one person should have to bear in a lifetime, and you surpassed your limit a long time ago.”

“It’s because I’m trash. A dirty penny that was lucky enough to fall in your path.” The tears that had stopped briefly for Jericho’s touch restarted with renewed vigor. “You found me in the dirt and I’m not good en –”

“Llewell! Shut up!” Jericho gave his head a small shake. “You know what you are, the strength that you have! You know what I see in you, because I’ve told you more times that I can count! You have been, are, and will always be your own hero, and it is me who was lucky to have had a chance to know you. And you had better start believing that right this second, because it’s the only truth I can give you.” Jericho pressed his lips to the young man’s forehead. “There is nothing else that I can give you, but I will always make sure you’re taken care of.”

The young man jerked back. “What does that mean? I am taken care of. You take care of me enough, what does that mean?”

“Remember everything that I’ve taught you. Don’t ever trust the future more that you trust yourself.”

“Wait, wait, what are you talking about?” The young man struggled to break free from Jericho’s grip. “What are you doing?!”

“I want you to understand that I’m not doing this to hurt you.”

Somehow, the young man had once again become the little boy under the stairs. “Wait, Jericho,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop. I’ll – I’ll leave you alone.”

“I’m doing this for your own good. I’m doing this because I have to.”

“Please, please, please, don’t. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s not your fault. It’s mine. This is all my fault. Everything. Please believe that.”

“Jericho, please.”

“Goodbye Lew.”

“I asked you not to look.”

It took Ryan a minute to reconcile the new voice within the disarray of her senses. The vision was over, having only lasted a few seconds, although it felt like she had been gone for hours, and her psyche was slow to return to the physical world. It had been a long time since she had gone that deep into anyone’s past. But then, with Llewell’s past, she hadn’t had to dig at all. His aura had simply handed it over.

“I had to,” she said, although she wasn’t convinced. “I had to… understand.”

He shot her a wary glance, before looking away. “Whatever you saw, it’s the past.”

“But it still affects you. The things I saw were so vivid, right on the surface of your psyche. Those memories wouldn’t be sitting there within such easy reach if you didn’t –”

He pulled away from her. “Did you ever consider that I have so much buried that there wasn’t any room left for what’s sitting on top? The stuff on the surface is child’s play. Daydreams. I don’t think you want to go digging in my psyche.”

“Llewell, I’m sorry.”

“I hate apologies. They don’t mean much.”

His words were cold but his voice was incredibly sad. Ryan couldn’t help herself, even though she knew she might be making things worse. “You have to know that you were so loved.”

“I’m not too fond of love either, Ryan,” he shot over his shoulder. “Follow me into the city. It’s maybe two hours more of rural land before we hit the border.”

“Ok,” she answered solemnly, not wanting to continue to say the wrong things. “We’ll be right behind you.”

He looked, for a moment, like he may say something else, but he swallowed it and turned away, climbing inside his car. It wasn’t until his engine rumbled in ignition that she remembered what she was supposed to be doing.

“Ma.” Dresden stared at her suspiciously when she managed to hurry herself back to her sons. “You okay?”

She nodded, not bothering to wonder how dreadful she might look. “Let’s go,” she tried to shoo them into the car. “We have to follow him.”

“Who is he?” Jericho spoke up, not making any move to climb back in the van. “Why are we following him?

“He’s… a friend of your father.” Ryan tried to pull open the passenger side door, hoping that her entry into the vehicle would hush the parade of questions, but her fingers were having trouble getting ahold on the door handle. She couldn’t coordinate muscles in her hand to grip and pull at the same time.

“Mom, you’re shaking.” Worry had crept into Jericho’s face and his posture lost some of its obstinacy.

Ryan tried to wave off his uneasiness and recompose herself. She had never lost anything in front of Jericho, not even an eyelash. Today wasn’t the day to start. But her hands refused to still themselves enough to function before Dresden was behind her.

“Ma, okay, stop,” he said. With a gentle hand on her shoulder, he eased her away from her fight with the car door handle. “You have to tell us who he is and what’s going on. We’re not going anywhere until you do.”

“Oh, God.” She sighed her defeat and closed her eyes, but unlike her visions, this did not reset the world around her. “He’s your brother.”

<<<< Betray All: Part III                                                                                                     Betray All: Part V>>>>
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Author’s Note: Llewell is the product of a slightly reckless relationship between Jericho and Llewell’s mother, a woman who was not at all malicious but still hadn’t learned how to think about anyone other than herself by the time Llewell came around. I doubt we’ll meet her, because I don’t really know who she is, and I’m too lazy to go about inserting her into the story. The coupling that conceived Lew happened way before Ryan was in the picture, and Jericho had no idea he had an older son until Llewell was almost in his teens. Jericho was able to track him down and take him in before he killed himself on the street, but he kept his parentage a secret from Llewell out of guilt. Jericho felt that he had no right to come into Llewell’s life as “Dad” when he wasn’t there when it had mattered most. Granted, had he known Llewell existed, he would have sought him out from the get-go, but Jericho blamed himself for the state of Llewell’s childhood. 

As soon as Jericho was aware that he had an older son, he made Ryan aware. So Ryan always knew who Llewell was, but respected Jericho’s wishes to keep his parentage a secret. However, she did not know how badly Jericho’s plan had backfired. Jericho never let her in on Llewell’s feelings, and also did not give her any reasonable explanation for why they were leaving the Timekeepers. Ryan suspected that it had something to do with Llewell, but she didn’t question what. In her mind, Jericho always did what was in the best interest of everyone, so she packed up and left with him, despite feeling ill at ease. But life continued and managed to keep her distracted from the matter for 20 years.  

Also, I know it’s been a while! Sorry! Thanks for the support!

<<<< Betray All: Part III                                                                                                     Betray All: Part V>>>>