It took him back to another time, to
home, when he was still too young to fully understand just how differently he
was being treated. In those days, when the flashes of the future he glimpsed
showed moments of sadness, he did everything he could to cheer the other person
up. When he caught glimpses of troubled times, he attempted to give warnings,
going so far as to throw himself between his older brother and a heavy piece of
iron seconds before it fell. His leg had been broken for his efforts, but it
was better than the vision he’d received of his brother with a huge, bloody
gash in his skull, twitching in the hallway.
Blinking back the memory, he drew away
from her touch and its warmth. “It only seemed to scare them more,” he
admitted.
“But that was no fault of yours,”
Kaandhal insisted. “The fault lay with them. Everything you attempted to do was
out of love for them, and they repaid that love with scorn and fear, pushing
you aside for it. You did not deserve that. Now we are giving you a second
chance, but this time, it is up to you to take it. You can hold on to the pain
that you carry, you can continue to lash out at the world over the actions of a
handful, or you can stand up and be a man and do what you were born to do.”
He was silent for a moment, studying
her.
“And if I choose not to use my gifts?” he
asked. “If I choose to keep burying them, then what? Your brother seems
convinced that someone is going to come hunting me. I’ve got nowhere to go.
Will you throw me out of here if I don’t do what you want?”
Tight lipped she shook her head,
regarding him sadly. “No. This is your home for as long as you choose to live
in it.”
The shock must have registered on his
face because her expression changed. “I am so sorry that you’ve grown up to be
so skeptical of people.”
“I…” he stammered, shocked at the
honest emotion in her voice. “Thanks.”
She smiled then, a soft one, honest and
kind. “I have faith in you, Darian. You are capable of great things and I know
you will help us bring Zxex back home where he belongs.”
“I wish I was as sure of that as you
are,” he admitted. “Kyle…Zxex and I had one hell of a falling out.”
“Might I ask what it was about?” she
asked.
Another heavy sigh escaped him as he
sank down on the edge of the bed and buried his head in his hands. “He saw me
the same way that you do, but more than that, when I looked into his eyes I
accidentally saw the future, my future and how it related to him.” Darrell shook
his head. “I couldn’t handle it, the trust, the expectation. You do know what I
do for a living, right? Why there were guns all over my place?”
“Yes,” Kaandhal acknowledged. “You are
a bounty hunter, or were, you will not need to make that kind of a living
here.”
“And you know that I use my gifts to
help me find the people I’m chasing,” he prompted. “That I dig around in the
heads of their friends and family until I find the clues I need to locate them.
Then I bring them in and I collect on their misfortune.”
“You regret it.”
“How can you tell?” he asked. “Reading
my mind again?”
“No, it is in the sound of your voice
and the sorrowful look in your eyes. It’s in the way you are curling in on
yourself as if you wish to hide. You do not have to be ashamed here either,
Darian. None will hold your past against you. This is a clean slate. All you need
to do is embrace it.
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