http://clampfix.fanworks.net/re-fix/bf14.txt </head><body><pre> Between Friends Part 14 Eagle woke with a muffled gasp that was half a scream. That dream... too vivid... too painful... He sat up slowly, holding a hand to his forehead in confusion, in half-concious panic. He was barely aware that he was sweating. He hurt... down there, in his stomach, in his nether regions. The dream had been so intense that it had woken old pains, aches in the lower back that he had had for a few years as a child. He lifted his hand away from his face and noted that it was shaking. *He* was shaking. This was getting ridiculous, these nightmares. It was getting too frightening.... "Eagle?" Corona asked, tapping softly on the door before opening it and half stepping in. "Are you--" She took one look at him and her impassive expression immediately became one of concern as she walked over to his bed and sat down, winding her arms around him like she had when he was little and had had a bad dream. "It's all right, Eagle," she soothed, gently stroking his hair. "It's all right. It was just a nightmare. Just a bad dream...." Eagle gave up on his attempt to be stoic like Lantis and keep what he was feeling inside of himself. Like he had as a child, he desperately clung to his elder sister and cried in reaction. He didn't know what was happening to his mind, but it was hurting him, and he was scared. Corona quietly soothed away her brother's tears with the ease of practice. She had nowhere near his incredible skill with Mental Energy, but she did have the knack of knowing when people were in distress and knowing how to make them stop hurting. She considered that to be a greater gift in some ways than all of her brother's genius. He was starting to remember, damn it. She had been afraid of this. Eagle's having a boyfriend was starting to make his mind awaken old, old memories. This could not be good in any way. As it was, she was very glad to know, from what Geo had told her about Eagle's relationship with Lantis, that they hadn't gone "all the way." That would probably have forced it to surface all at once in Eagle's psyche, and he couldn't have handled that. It was very unlikely that his boyfriend would have been able to either, and Corona did not wish hurt on an innocent person. Oh Gods, she wished that she had been allowed to kill Cadillac for what he had done. If only they hadn't restrained the power that had emerged from her raw red fury, he would be dead now instead of sentenced to a life of hard labor in a penal colony. He deserved that, the bastard. He didn't deserve to live. Not after what he'd done to her precious brother.... She closed her eyes and remembered how she's somehow *felt* Eagle's mind, a whirl of confusion/pain/fear, from where she had been shopping with her friends. She still berated herself for being so selfish as not wanting to take Eagle with her that day, not wanting to have to explain a three-year-old kid brother tagging along to her friends. After all, she was thirteen, and it was *so* uncool to have to take care of siblings. If only she hadn't been such a self-centered brat, she would have taken him with. He would have enjoyed the mall. And then she wouldn't have literally dropped everything she was holding onto the floor of the store and raced home as fast as her legs could carry her. She would never have had to open the front door of their home and run into Eagle's room. She would never have seen that bastard *violating* Eagle, raping her little brother. Eagle's tears were something that would haunt her through eternity. Every choked sob of pain that he had cried in her presence was her fault. Her fault for not being there. Her fault for failing to protect him. She had launched herself at Cadillac and ripped him away from Eagle with a strength she had never had before or since, throwing him halfway across the room. Then she had beaten him up, pounding him over and over with thirteen-year-old fists until she was sure that he couldn't go anywhere. She had taken her brother into her arms and carried him into the living room. He had clung to her neck and didn't stop crying. Damn that bastard. She had made only one call on the phone, to their parents. She had only had to let them see her and her brother and say the words "Come home." They had arrived in less than ten minutes, leaving abruptly from the charity ball they had been at. Their mother had tried to take him, but Eagle wouldn't let go of Corona. Corona had known guilt so great at that moment that she knew she would place him first all her life, make sure of her brother's happiness before her own, just so she would never have to feel that horrible, emptying sensation again. Their father had called the authorities, who had come and arrested Cadillac. She hadn't seen him again until the confrontation session after the trial was over. She had refused to be parted from her brother, and her parents had refused to permit Eagle to be subjected to the courtroom. Instead they had both given their accounts privately to the judge in his chambers. But after he had been found guilty, they had had to face Cadillac one last time before he had been sent off to the penal colony. It was an old part of the legal system, supposedly allowing the victims to confront and forgive those who had wronged them. But at the confrontation session, Corona had felt no forgiveness. In the large white room with a door at either end, one of which her family had entered through and the other of which Cadillac and his lawyer had entered through, she felt only hatred. And for the first time in her life, Corona lost her temper and her patience. The rage that had been simmering inside of her, the violation of trust, of peace, had finally reached a boil, and then boiled over. They had had to knock her out to get the white madness that had almost enabled her to kill her brother's rapist out of her system. Cadillac had been eighteen at the time. Only a year older than her brother was now. Lantis looked up from his books. That was odd... he'd felt like someone was calling him. Like someone had tried to reach out to him for help, then stopped. Someone in pain.... But it hadn't been enough for him to identify the touch. There had been no actual contact, only a sense of need. That left very few people. His brother, or the Princess, perhaps? No, it had not been either of them. It hadn't *felt* like either of them. And had it been a general outreaching for help, or a call specifically to him? Lantis didn't know, and though he waited patiently and searched with his mind, he could not find *who*. Disquieted, it was a long time before he returned to his books. ********* Kurama: Ah, here we commence the Kristin trend of things starting to get ugly. Author: Be quiet, or I'll do worse to you in Kurama 1/2 than I already have done. Kurama: A story which you need to work on. Author: Yes, yes. Anything else? Kurama: May I have some more puzzle balls? Author <pointing>: In my closet, below the bookcase, in the black box purse. Leave a couple. Kurama <helping himself>: Thanks! Author: What did you do with the others I gave you? Kurama: Lost 'em. Author: Have I ever introduced you to Sorata, fox...? </pre><p><a href="./">Back</a></p><p><a href=http://www.dreamhost.com/donate.cgi?id=216><img border=0 alt="Donate towards our web hosting bill!" src=https://secure.newdream.net/donate1.gif></a></p></body></html>