Coming Home (BoyxBoy)

Jason's Truth

*Trigger warning, forced drug use and descriptions of unwanted sexual acts

Noah's POV

I felt like shit. For the second time in my life I felt completely lost. I had no idea what I cared about or what was more important: this future I was supposed to help create or the past I ran from so hard, I was sure everyone in it thought I was dead.

Shit, I hadn't even thought about my practice, potential wife and pretentious friends I had walked out on in months. All of it seemed far away, like each version of my life was on an island behind and in front of me but I was stuck wading in the water, unable to reach both.

I looked up at Jason, still startled by his mismatched blue and brown eyes.

"I fucked up. You couldn't handle all the magic and energy in gramps's study and I should have known better," Jason shook his head, "I would have gone with you... I really should have fucking been there when you left for the reconnaissance mission."

For the umpteenth time something heavy had landed between us. Maybe, I was also stuck between two people, both of them representing my past and future.

"I know," my voice was all croaky, "but you were avoiding me. I'm not mad at you though, I opened up a deep wound and you don't just recover from something like that without taking your time."

"You're so... " Jason exhaled, "I fucking hate you and then I find my stupid chest constricting at the thought of you dying and I still know that I'm never..." Jason didn't finish his sentence.

"Fuck it Noah. We're going to train harder than we have been. If you want to save Nate and I want you alive, then hell, I might as well make sure you won't die bringing that asshat back to you."

I wanted to tell him about Nate but Jason already looked determined. He grabbed my hands and there was a brief second where I could see the sadness in the smile on Jason's face and then It was gone. Everything disappeared.

The vision took me to a time or place that I could hardly recognize. Gold adorned the building I was in, accenting the marble as if rivers of the metal swam in it.

"Your father's dead," a woman said as she sat on an ornate throne, "your whore of a mother hasn't come to collect you. Where's her power now? She took your father from me and tossed him aside on the battlefield and now she won't even collect her useless abomination?"

I watched each word slice through a boy hardly in his teens. He wore the same pretty clothes as the queen but they were hanging off him, ripped and tattered.

"There's one gift your mother gave you boy, fortunately she made you pretty," the queen snarled, "Oh and well endowed." She cackled as she motioned for the guards to take the blue and brown eyed boy.

The vision jumped. Jason was a little older, I could tell but his body looked sickly. He was still beautiful but there was no corded muscle and sweat dripped off of him.

"He was wonderful, I wish I was marrying him instead but... at least I'm prepared for my husband," a brunette smiled and thanked the queen. When the woman left the queen turned to Jason.

He was trying to wipe himself off with a towel, that's when I saw them, long chains fitted to gold bands on his arms.

"Did you like it? Lady Marissa is very sought after and you just got to be her first. You might have thought I was rewarding you huh?

Sir Dalvis is up next and he wants to take you on the swing so get your asshole ready," the queen barked.

I didn't want to see this but I couldn't fast forward through it. I watched the queen laugh as she forced a vial of something down Jason's throat. The effect was immediate, his pupils grew huge as his heart sped up. My heart broke into a million pieces. There wasn't any fight in him, just resignation.

The vision jumped to one of confusion. Jason was woken in the night. The look of fear was apparent as guards filled his quarters.

"Is the queen summoning me to entertain?" Jason asked but no one answered.

A guard shook his head as he released him from the chains. The skin on his wrist where the bands had been, were discolored and raw from the constraints.

Roughly, the guards helped Jason up and brought him to the throne room. On the throne waiting for him, sat Nikkal. She was beautiful and the anger swarmed around her in cracks of raw energy.

The vision ended and I was back in our room clutching Jason's hands. Tears were already making my cheeks feel itchy. I understood why Jason pushed me so hard and why he hated watching me put limits on myself. He had survived when he thought he couldn't.

"I'm not showing you all that so you can feel sorry for me. To be honest I'm not sure why I'm showing you that," Jason let go of me and stood up. He ran his hands through his hair and I could tell he was surprised that he'd let me in.

"Nikkal isn't perfect. She left me with my step mother because my father had gone into battle when she told him not to. She felt hurt and betrayed so she shut me out but she didn't think that I'd go through what I did.

When Nikkal came back... I was broken, but she did something I could never forget, she held my step mother by her hair and ordered me to slit her throat. The queen begged me for her life. Her usually perfect hair sticking out every which way as she stunk of fear.

I wanted to kill her. Anger, that had been numbed for years by the drugs that woman force fed me, returned. I imagined her mouth gargling with blood and the warmth that vengeance would give me, but I couldn't. I shook my head and refused. For years, I thought that I was weak and that in some sick way I loved that bitch.

Nikkal slit her throat and I watched. Years later I asked what Nikkal thought when I refused to take her knife and end the queen. She said she remembered my father and she knew that only her son could balance her out and calm her irrational  tendencies. Nikkal knew that because I had my father in me as well as her that I'd be able to keep her sane.

I know you're struggling with finding a reason to help the Nosti. Nikkal is as much to blame for the fighting and the pain but she's not evil just like the Nosti aren't. Everyone expects you to kill Delenae and vanquish the dark king, but there are times when understanding the other side does more than any violent act could.

The queen was broken and fucked up to the nth degree but on some level I understood her anger. I chose to be better than that anger. Whatever you choose to fight for, just make sure that it doesn't make you lose sight of the goal."

Jason grabbed his workout bag but just before he left he told me to get some rest because the battle was still ahead of me.

I watched him leave and I couldn't help but think that maybe it's not as simple as, "we're good and they're evil." Maybe we're all just too stubborn to see that both sides are hurting and doing what they can to survive.