Fic: Sinnerman, Prophet, Saint (9/?)
Title: Sinnerman, Prophet, Saint
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Chase/OMC, House/Chase
Summary: The marks of the saints and a past he won’t remember force Chase and House to face religion head on. They won’t get his fellow without a fight!
Spoilers: Up to season 4 Finale.
Genre: Drama, Supernatural
Disclaimer: I don’t own House. I’m not making any money off this story.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): Language, Adult Situations, Violence, M/M relationships. Do not read this story if any of these bother you!
Chapter 9: The Unknown Truth
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---H/C---
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Antolovich took a step back. House glanced around at the sharp indrawn breathes.
The bright glow that had only shone from Chase’s eyes began to seep out through the rest of him as well until finally the room was so brightly lit that the observers’ eyes watered. The radiant man remained on the ground, his presence making hearts beat faster and minds reel. At his back three sets of translucent and brilliant, nested wings folded out of his back. They passed through the garments as though either they or the wings didn’t truly exist in the same realm --each set a little offset down the length of the man’s upper back.
The wings relaxed down gracefully, spreading like a shimmering blanket across his back.
Ethereal in his splendour, this was indeed a heavenly host, and not just an archangel, dominion, or virtue. If what they’d heard was true, this was Mastema, a seraph, locked in the body of a mortal man.
“Robin,” Mayes moaned forlornly. He didn’t expect what he thought was Mastema to turn to him. Excited at the prospect of his friend still existing somewhere in there Mayes forgot himself and his situation, and tried to move forward. His injuries brought him to all fours, his bound hands barely holding him up. Jordan’s boot to his stomach brought him to the ground.
Air shifted in sorrow and torment as the seraph called out. “Warren!” He attempted to stand but both the body and soul were tired. He stumbled and crawled over, the assembled religious dignitaries parting for him as he went.
“Robin?” Mayes asked of the being that reached his side. Chase nodded, unfamiliar luminous eyes and face still conveying the conflicted and shamed expression that he’d seen too often on his friend’s face. “Mastema?” he then asked more cautiously.
Mastema hung his head and nodded.
Cautiously, as though afraid he might scare him off Chase reached out. His fingers fell lightly on the bruised face. His touch tingled with warmth and comfort. Mayes took a deep breath and closed his eyes as the relief from his injuries washed over him, spreading outward from the ghostly touch on his skin.
Standing close by, House watched everything happening with disbelieving eyes. This Mastema-thing was in his fellow and now it was taking away pain. House lowered himself to kneel next to the man he knew only as Chase, who turned to look at him. When their eyes met House felt a heavy weariness lift off him. The creases of mistrust and misery relaxed into simple lines on his face and flicker of something that resembled hope surged for a moment.
Lost in a trance House didn’t notice Voorhees and Antolovich approaching Chase’s back. Cruel hands slipped around the smooth neck, bringing with it the cold touch of a metal choker. It clasped shut and the moment it did the light from the uncommon man dimmed and he closed his eyes as though in pain.
Chase tried to remove the collar but his hands couldn’t even touch it without a terrible burning.
The light from him and from his eyes faded and Chase felt stronger as the other part of him receded leaving just the human male behind.
“No, Mastema,” Antolovich chastised. He was handed another brace, smaller than the one he’d fit around Chase’s neck. This one went around his right wrist, over the smears that remained from the wounds that had spontaneously healed. As the bracelet snapped closed Chase recoiled. House was there to catch him but neither could get the bracelet off.
“Take it off!” House yelled. Chase was in such a panic that House felt his own anxiety climb in counterpoint.
“Please, take it off. Please…”
“We can’t allow that, Mastema.”
The fight drained and House had to use both his arms to keep Chase up. The resplendent wings on his back had dimmed and vanished. The brush of them against the back of House’s hand faded like a breeze.
“The last one,” Voorhees prompted. Antolovich nodded and attached the last bracelet to the other wrist. And in half of a sudden, it ended. The glow from the young man and the light that filled the quarry grew fainter until they were both nothing. The candles relit and provided their soft light once again.
“Chase…Robert, come on.” House gave him a bit of a shake. He shifted the smaller man, getting the head that was tilted back to loll to the left and rest on his shoulder. “Chase…” His hair was damp with sweat, making it stick to the pale forehead. The darkness around the once gleaming eyes was back. The bright creature of grace and passion was lost again in the frail body that housed it, they thought.
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---H/C---
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Foreman was nearly to the patient’s room, his half-finished coffee in one hand, some notes he’d made in the other. An eerie normalcy had descended upon him. The day had started with the review of Angelica Brown’s medical history and proceeded from there like any other day and any other, solvable case. He’d taken a break to get a coffee, since none had been made in the conference room, and was anxious to see if Cameron had garnered anything new from the patient. What he found was a state of panic.
“What’s going on?” Foreman jumped to action, assisting the nurses in strapping down the thrashing and screaming woman.
“I was talking to her and suddenly she starts talking to people who aren’t here!” Cameron explained over the fray.
“It’s not time yet! Don’t give up! Please give in! Don’t let them hurt you! Accept the pain! Let go! Let go!” Her contradictory statements were not understood and the final pleas went unheeded. The straps were tightened.
“She’s never been like this,” one of the nurses added. “Her medication has always kept her delusions pretty tame.”
After a few moments of fruitless struggle against the padded restraints, Angelica calmed, smiled even, as though comforted by something. They were halfway through a collective sigh of relief when she began to seize. The uncoordinated contractions throughout her body had her flailing as much as was possible while tied down, and perhaps a little more. The jerky movements pulled and twisted at her restrained limbs, threatening to do significant damage. Once again the medical staff tried to hold her in place while she rode out the episode.
“Get the Ativan!” Cameron yelled. Foreman abandoned his hold on her legs and dashed over to a supply cabinet. Expertly the clear liquid was loaded into a syringe. He returned to the bedside quickly, ready to administer the dose. Very quickly the seizure ended. The patient seemed to have fallen asleep. Curious and confused glances flitted between the doctor’s and nurses.
Cameron sighed, straightening herself. “Well that worked quickly.”
Foreman wanted to respond, but wasn’t sure how to. He met his colleagues eyes and held up the syringe, which still contained the clear solution with the powerful sedative.
“I didn’t give her anything.”
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---H/C---
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Something was going to happen, House was certain. From the spot against the wall where Mayes had been sequestered, he kept glancing at House and giving him meaningful stares. Were this a gay bar House would have thought the man was coming on to him. However, this was a very holy church and Mayes wasn’t coming on to him.
“Chase, what’s my name?”
“Gregory Pain-in-my-ass Jonathan House,” the man next to him mumbled into his knees. He had his legs drawn up, his arms wrapped around them and his face buried in his knees.
“What day is it?”
“Christ, House! I have no idea!” The mild profanity turned a few heads but Chase didn’t notice and House didn’t care. His concern was Chase, who had awoken from his unconsciousness twenty minutes ago and had been withdrawn and irritable ever since.
They were still in the Calvary, seated on the floor at one side of the main foyer. Mayes was at the other. House would have been there too, separated from Chase like the Deacon had instructed everyone. It was the unusual unconsciousness that worried those assembled and thus the doctor was allowed near the patient -couldn’t have him dying just yet.
“Chase.”
“What now?”
“Look at me.”
The white clad shoulders rose and fell in what was likely an aggravated sigh. Chase looked at him. House leaned in closed.
“Your pupils are still dilated,” House told him. He had assumed the powder that stirred from the garments Chase wore was some sort of drug to aid in the ritual -possibly a sedative to make him more relaxed, but maybe a stimulant given the twitchiness.
“How long was I out for?”
“Nearly an hour.”
“Guess it’s not enough time for the stuff to wear off.” Chase buried his face back in his knees. He was sounding more coherent and more like himself than he had been when he first woke. Twenty minutes ago he’d looked lost and scared, and so agonizingly confused that House had wanted to go to him. Nobody had been allowed near him though, and when House tried, he was forcibly withheld. Eventually they did let him near but he wasn’t allowed to touch. When Chase had reached out for him they pulled House back.
“Take your clothes off.”
“What?”
“Think, Chase,” House implored impatiently. “There powder is in the fabric.” Chase grabbed a bit of the cloth and shook it. He watched carefully and as the powder passed through a ray of light, both were seen. “If it can get through your skin you’re not going to get any better.” Thankfully the garments had pooled at his waist and hips, leaving his legs exposed such that he wasn’t constantly inhaling the powder when he leaned forward. Still, it was wise to remove it.
Chase started to. His trembling hands and weak arms gathered the fabric ready to throw it over his head and off.
“No, Mastema.”
Chase stopped. His eyes were frozen forward as he fought the internal conflict. His arms fell to his side when he lost.
“Chase, take it off,” House ordered again but Chase remained staring forward.
Seeing that his order was being obeyed Voorhees turned back to the group with which he had been conversing. They were discussing the ramification of what they had just discovered and were as buzzed with excitement as stoic old men could be.
House stared at Chase then to Mayes, who gave him a sad look in return before looking away. House had been and was still hoping that what he’d seen was a hallucination of some sort -or water spiked with LSD, a head injury, anything. He’d been seeing some strange things these last few days but that last episode truly trumped them all. House wasn’t sure what to believe. His own eyes could deceive him, his ears could mishear, his brain could misinterpret. But his heart -not cold, frozen, dead, or made of stone like so many would like to believe -his heart could not lie. Heart, mind, soul, whatever the designation, it was telling him that what he’d experienced was true.
House slipped his eyes to the dulled man next to him. The dishevelled hair fell across his eyes, stains of blood still marked his body and his clothes, and dust stuck to sweat. With exception of the turbulence in his eyes, nothing else hinted at the seraph Voorhees and the others claimed to have taken residence in Robert Chase.
A soft clunk punctuated the end of House’s reverie. From the doorway to the right of him a metallic canister rolled over to him. He couldn’t see it but he could hear a gas seeping out. A glance at Mayes confirmed House’s suspicion. Making sure no one had noticed House rolled the canister over to the group of clergymen. The soft touch he’d given it put it closer to them but it didn’t hit them and they didn’t hear it. House held his breath, Mayes did the same. House covered Chase’s nose and mouth to make sure he held his breath too.
When the first person began to sway Mayes sprang into action and House followed. Siva Jordan was quick to notice the motion but his body was already being affected by the gas hissing out of the canister. He never had a chance to duck the two handed blow that Mayes struck across his head.
House was hurrying Chase to the exit and the young man went docilely. They met their help at the narrow stairway that led to the church from the main entrance; four men with gasmasks over their faces and guns in their hand. They escorted them out. House grit his teeth as he took the stairs down. Eighteen of them and getting up them had been bad enough. Now he had to get both himself and Chase down them in good time, with armed men urging him to go faster and Mayes yelling it from behind.
They burst out of the church and into the afternoon sun. Two black cars were waiting. Mayes jumped into the passenger seat, one of their rescuers took the wheel, while the others went to the second car and took off before all the doors were even closed.
“Mastema! Stop!”
House cringed. He was nearly at the car, just a step more. Chase was just a step behind him, but was suddenly frozen in place.
“Chase, come on!” House urged. He saw the internal conflict in Chase’s clenched jaw and the fisting and relaxing of his hand, but he couldn’t move.
“Robin!” Mayes called from the car.
“Chase,” House held out his hand, somehow knowing that for Chase to take another step he had to chose to do so. He’d have to go against an order issued to him that he was bound -for some reason House didn’t know -to obey. “You have to choose for yourself.”
Behind him, moving clumsily thanks to the gas they had inhaled the people with the depressing plan for Chase approached.
“Please-” House was ready to beg and curse but Chase raised his arm slowly, like the bracelet on his wrist weighed fifty pounds. He grasped House’s hand. House didn’t have time to reflect on the look in Chase’s eyes. He yanked, hard enough that Chase’s shoulder would probably hurt. It had the desired effect of getting Chase to stumble forward. In spite of whatever forces he felt weighing him down, House didn’t feel anything but the weight of his body as Chase fell into him and he landed them both in the back seats of the car.
“Go! Go! Drive!” House ordered though the driver had already gotten the idea and was off the moment they were in. House scrambled to help Chase and get both their legs into the car before their maniac of a driver came too close to something harder than their limbs. When the door was at last closed House lay back and breathed. His heart was racing, his leg was aching like mad but he and Chase were safe, for now.
In the front Mayes used the knife the driver handed him to cut the plastic ties that had bound him. He twisted to look at the other two passengers. House was recovering. Chase was ensconced in the older man’s arms dazed and upset. His left arm was shaking. Mayes strained further so that he could hold the shaking hand and examine the bracelet.
“What is it?”
Mayes took a moment to think before he responded to House. “There’s a symbol on the bracelet. It’s what makes him obedient to them.”
“Almost obedient,” House corrected and wasn’t able to help the squeeze of reassurance he gave Chase. Chase responded by looking briefly into House’s eyes. “Can you take it off?”
“Not right now.” As though it pained him to do so, Mayes let go. The quivering limb dropped and Chase didn’t move it. The difficult angle was bad for his shoulder, and House didn’t think Chase needed more aches. He reached over and grasped the hand pulling it to rest between them.
The wild driving had toned down to simply breaking the speed limit. Not too long after, they stopped in a more sparsely populated neighbourhood. The driver got out and after a last goodbye he dashed to the car he’d been following, the one with the others responsible for their escape. The first car tore off, their job done. Mayes crossed the console between the front seats and took the wheel.
Chase, meanwhile, took no notice of what was going on around him. His thoughts were repetitive and tormenting. He’d disobeyed. He’d disobeyed. He’d disobeyed. His left arm continued to shake and his insides clenched. He’d disobeyed.
He was supposed to stop but he hadn’t; he’d chosen to move. He could feel the heat of the symbol on his wrist. It was a dull ache, not nearly as bad as the nail-wounds that had been their not too long ago, but the hurt echoed in his head, making it worse. He’d chosen this pain. He’d done this to himself. Actually, he reasoned depressingly, this situation was entirely his fault. He’d chosen this life and he was paying for his disobedience.
“It’s okay, Chase,” a deep, sure voice told him.
Chase. That was his name. Robert Chase, a physician, an Australian, a man who had to answer to no one but that whom he chose. Free will, not God’s will.
His left arm stopped shaking. He returned the pressure on his hand.
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---H/C---
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The winding trip through the central Judean Mountains took them vaguely north-west. Mayes’s destination was a city on the outskirts of Tel-Aviv where they would be able to blend in for a little while.
House felt the motion of the car change. “Why are you stopping?”
“He’s covered in blood. We need to blend in where we’re going, not stand out.” Mayes pulled the car off the road and put it into park before turning off the engine. “Under that bridge,” the rickety one just ahead, “there’s a small river. It’s calm. He can clean up there.”
Chase began to right himself to sit up in the back seat. House did the same, precipitating a protest in the form of an ache from his left shoulder. While he rubbed it away House took in the new surroundings. Untamed wilderness from the gravel shoulder onward, into the unfamiliar flora of this alien country. With no choice but to brave the unknown House opened the door. A gust of cool air made him shiver. He took off his blazer.
“Here.” He draped it over Chase’s shoulders. The garment wrapped around his hips barely covered his privates. It would do even less to ward off the cool breeze.
Any word of thanks was useless, as House stepped out before Chase could utter it. Following slowly, Chase pulled the clothing tighter around him. He had nothing to protected his feet from the rough, cold ground. As they trekked down the gentle slope to the river bank he could feel the dampness of the earth chilling his soles. He stared down at them as they walked.
“What?” House asked from over his right shoulder. “Yeah, you have great feet,” he said, though that was not the body part he’d been trying, with only minimal success, to tear his eyes from as he’d followed behind Chase down to the river. Yes, he knew the situation was serious, but he’d taken a reprieve in the simple topic.
“It’s nothing,” Chase eventually replied. He removed the jacket House had given him and draped it over the nearest sturdy branch near the river’s muddy bank. He stepped barefoot into the cold river. The temperature pricked at his skin while the silky currents flowed over his feet and past, taking with it the red taint of blood. The fluid clothes he’d been made to wear at the Church in Jerusalem had adsorbed the blood it contacted and smeared it up his arms, legs and down his back. He crouched to dip his hands and wrists into the water, rubbed them and began to clean the stains.
While Chase cleaned himself, Mayes and House talked.
“Where’s the nearest airport. We need to get out of here before they find us.”
“In ten days it’ll be too late for them to follow through with their plans. We just have to lay low until then. I know a place where we can go. It’s not far.”
“You don’t even know what they’re planning for him or why,” House hissed.
Mayes shrugged, the motion carrying nonchalance he didn’t feel. “I know enough not to trust them. I know he won’t survive whatever they have planned.” House looked away. A not entirely appropriate sense of guilt nipped at his conscience. The conversation he’d overheard during their stay in the mansion in Jerusalem had convinced him of, if not of the insanity of these people, their determination to see this through.
“What exactly is he?” House had to ask. He’d ignored the events in the church, mostly because, save for the one moment in the stone chapel, Chase continued to be his annoying, unsociable self. The analyst in him, however, would not allow him to avoid evidence just because he could not dream up a scientific explanation just yet.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“He says he’s Mastema. Mastema is a soldier of heaven, among the highest rank of the heavenly hosts. Some attribute the plagues of Egypt to Mastema. When Jesus was tested in the desert some say it was Mastema who tempted him.”
“Sounds like Mastema does all the dirty work,” House said bluntly.
How could Mayes not agree? “I just don’t understand what he’s doing here.”
“Maybe Chase is possessed.” Shouldn’t he have said that with a laugh? It seemed the kind of suggestion at which House would have usually laughed.
Mayes treated it like a serious option -having seen possessions before he didn’t doubt the possibility -but didn’t agree. “I don’t think so. You saw what I saw. It was one body, one soul. No conflict over who owned the body or mind.”
“What I saw was a bright figment with wings hugging his evil twin and other equally unbelievable people.”
“I think those were other…players -from both sides.”
“Heaven and hell?” House deduced with no small amount of misgiving. “Most bosses would frown on fraternization with the enemy.”
“You’d think,” he muttered. “But non-corporeal politics aren’t my expertise. And they weren’t always on opposite sides.”
“Or so the legend goes,” House scoffed in a parody of an eerie voice.
“Fine, you tell me why Mastema, a soldier of heaven, looks so much like Azazel, a soldier of hell, if they aren’t related.”
“So, you really think he’s…Mastema.”
“He said he is.”
“Everybody lies.”
Mayes knew things House didn’t. He knew what those prayers and chants and symbols on the ceiling of the chapel meant. “He couldn’t lie. We just can’t interpret the truth correctly yet.” Warren abandoned his conversation with House and went to Chase who needed help washing the blood from his back.
Watching the two of them, House felt like an intruder. He’d been more of one at other times and never felt like this. On this occasion, where Warren cupped cold river water and poured it over the smooth back, using the contact of his hand to ease some of the chill that made Robert shiver, House wanted to turn away. He held fast though. Because with the clothes over his hips now saturated, the sunlight gleaming in the droplets of water that clung to the curves and planes of flesh and his hair bright as a halo in the natural light, the image was not worth giving up.
He could almost see the wings.
Suddenly Mayes whipped his head to the side to look in the direction of the highway from which they’d just come.
“What’s wrong?”
Mayes wiped his expression away and replaced it with an easy smile for the benefit of the other man. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Chase looked down at his hands in the moving water. “I know when you’re lying.” A cool, wet hand brushed his cheek removing the last trace of blood, then worked quickly and removed the metal braces adorning Chase’s wrists and neck. A previously ignored ache vanished when he was free of the bindings, allowing Chase to breathe easier. With one last light caress Mayes stood up and walked out of the river shallows to the bank, unconcerned about his soaked shoes. He kept his eyes turned to the highway above them and listened to the sound of the passing cars that couldn’t be seen through either the foliage or over the bridge’s side-barrier.
After several seconds of useless observation, Mayes’s shoulders set. His eyes were sad, glassy with tears even.
“I have to go,” Mayes said to House as he approached. “Watch out for him.”
“Where are you going? He’s your job, not mine,” House emphasized. He didn’t bother trying to hide his suspicion. Mayes took a deep breath. House watched his shoulders shudder as he forced the air out of his lungs. When Mayes went to go past him to go back to the car, House raised his cane, blocked his path. They were shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye, and House could read people.
“Don’t leave without saying good-bye. You might be the first one to bother,” House informed simply. Eye contact was lost when Mayes looked away. Thinking that Mayes didn’t want to make it harder on himself, since Chase always seemed to care about people who didn’t care enough about him, House removed his wooden obstacle from the dark-haired Aussie’s path. Mayes didn’t take it.
It took several seconds to sturdy himself. Finally he was strong enough to face his Robin. Reluctantly, House turned his back and studied with feigned interest the flora nearby.
“I have to go.”
The tone of voice put Chase on guard. “Go where?”
What came next? Mayes didn’t know, but he’d brave the undiscovered country for this man. “Just to see some people.” He smiled softly and traced along the brow and down the face.
“You’re lying,” Chase stated. His head was tilted a little to the left, his expression set with annoyance.
“Yeah, I am.” He continued to smile.
Chase’s frown deepened. “Are you going to tell them where they can find me again? Did they promise more money this time?”
That stung. Like a vulture with razor-sharp talons, Robert knew the most vulnerable parts to strike.
“I’d never do something so stupid again,” Mayes returned.
“Then stay.” Chase stepped closer. He met Warren’s eyes. “Prove it.”
But Warren couldn’t allow himself to be manipulated. He cupped Robert’s face with both hands. “I love you. You know I’m not lying. That has to be proof enough.”
Chase’s hands drew into fists. Before he could beg Warren not to go, or threaten bodily harm if he tried to, Chase was being kiss. Warren was taking no prisoners, forcing his mouth open and wrapping his arms around so tightly Chase might bruise. There was no way he could not kiss back. The anguish encouraged them closer, strengthened the heat, and deepened the embrace.
“Do you love me?” Warren asked moving his kiss across the face, skimming his hands over the most intimates of areas.
“Yes,” was the choked reply.
“Please…” Warren carded a hand through the soft, gilded hair. “Please, say it”
“…I love you,” Chase confessed, his eyes to the sky. “…always love you.” And for a moment the blue eyes dimmed to be overtaken by a searing white. A blink and the blue and green returned. “I love you.”
Warren would take those words with him, wherever it was he went. They would be his paradise, his dream of ever after.
He touched their lips together one last time, in a kiss so sweet and natural Warren’s resolve firmed. He grasped Robert by his arms and broke the kiss with a shove that sent the shorter man into the shallow river. Chase would never let him go unless Warren forced it and Warren was not strong enough to fight the argument his eyes would hold. He marched away without a look back. The splashes and the sputtering that followed had House turning to face them. His surprise at what he thought would be a peaceful goodbye turning into a fight written clearly on his shadowed face.
“Warren!” Chase called and was ignored. Warren stalked up the hill, quickly disappearing in the brush. “Warren!” His haste caused Chase to slip on the muddy embankment. Dark patches clung to him but he barely noticed. His remaining strength had been sapped by the river’s cold. The blood loss, the forced fasting, the emotional turmoil culminated in the deepest heaviest fatigue Chase had ever felt.
Still, he forced himself up.
“God damn it, Warren, don’t do this,” Chase intoned in a pair of laboured breathes.
“Chase, let him go.” House tried to take him by the arm but Chase pulled away, so violently that it sent him to the earth again.
“Don’t touch me you wretched, old, bastard!” Watching him petulantly wiping some mud from his face, House couldn’t take Chase’s insult to heart. The glare misdirected at him, evoked sympathy rather than annoyance. But Chase was determined that Mayes would not leave and House knew without knowing that he had to. One wouldn’t believe how much the grunt of pain and the following look of betrayal wounded him, when House tripped the boy with his cane, ending his last viable effort.
An uncovered outcropping of rock had skinned his knees and hands. The hair darkened with river water dripped down his face. A desperate flush to the otherwise pallid skin, matched the desperate, stubborn eyes as the most natural colour to the young man’s complexion. This wounded, muddy, shivering, nearly naked mess was what Mayes had left behind and entrusted into House’s care.
Greg was out of his depth. The most important thing he’d ever cared for was his rat. Most days he didn’t really care for himself.
Yet even in under the scourge of his own shortcomings and in the contempt and anger in his subordinates eyes, Greg felt a part of him stand tall, honoured by the trust from someone he’d grown to respect in his own way.
He wanted this -this reason, this licence to care. He wished only, that it had come in a different way.
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---H/C---
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Warren Mayes had come to a realization that sealed his fate. They were following him. It was what he’d hoped. But they weren’t just following the car he drove. Even when he lost them in the labyrinth of narrow streets of a small town, they turned up around the next corner. They were following him. Somehow they knew exactly where he was.
He stopped the car. He was just outside a town, a cliff to a river on his right, oncoming traffic to this left. Behind him two cars pulled off the road as well.
“Giving up?” Jordan’s voice mocked as he and Antolovich stepped out of the nearest vehicle.
“You have an unfair advantage.” He peered into the cars but the glare from the windshield and the tinted windows didn’t allow him to see much. “She’s in there, isn’t she?” The nun, the woman that had been his pesky shadow for longer than he could remember.
“Where is he, Warren?” Antolovich asked.
“I was wondering how she got into a convent. She’s not one to follow the rules and she has no redeeming qualities.”
“You’d be surprised,” Jordan remarked -a sly smiled on his face.
Mayes didn’t think he would be. He’d sampled those carnal luxuries with her, at a time when the one with whom he was truly infatuated was too young to do such things. They had fit together seamlessly, known each others bodies with an almost factual knowledge. When they were spent she had clung but Mayes slipped from her grasp and ran; never far enough, because she always found him, and now she was finding him for hire.
“What is she?”
“She’s a person, but like you, she has a mission,” Antolovich explained.
Whatever she was, whatever he was, they were connected.
“And you’ve used her to try and complete your mission. I find Robert, she finds me, you find Robert.”
“Well, we knew you wouldn’t betray him twice. We needed another method. You three are bound together…Where is he, Warren?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“You can’t stay away from him.” A knowing smile accompanied the Priest’s words. “You crave your sin and sully each other. You can’t live without him.”
“But he can live without me.”
“Are you sure?”
He wasn’t, but Robert was a survivor.
“This world is very dangerous for a being such as him. What will he do without his guardian?” Antolovich gave a slight cock of his head to Jordan and immediately the Tenth Order’s henchman pulled out his firearm and aimed at Warren.
Jordan smirked. “Don’t tempt me.”
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---H/C---
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“He could come back,” Chase reassured himself, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“Yeah, he might,” House agreed softly. He didn’t sound convinced either. Using his cane he retrieved the jacket Chase had hung over a branch. He draped it over Chase’s shaking shoulders. With the sun beginning to set the early spring chill was creeping in.
Chase pulled the covering around him without comment and was also silent when House sat down next to him. His anger had ebbed away. He was too tired to hold onto it for very long so House had deemed it safe to approach.
“He’ll lead them around, and then he’ll lose them…and he’ll come back.”
House nodded slightly. It could have been mistaken for an idle rocking motion of his whole upper body, but he was really showing his support of Chase’s scenario, despite how unlikely he felt it might be.
Chase hugged his knees tighter and kept his gaze on the moving river. House kept his sidelong gaze on Chase and, after some internal debate and a few false starts, laid his hand on the other man’s nape. House let Chase buy in to his lie, and so did he.
Everybody lies. But more important than the falsehood was the reason why. In this moment House lied to protect Chase, because this meagre hope was better than none. And Chase would forgive him.
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“Our plan doesn’t have to end with his death, if he co-operates.”
Warren was almost completely sure that was a lie.
“All we need from you is a location.”
“You may as well just shoot me. I’m not going to beg for my life.”
“Will you beg for his?” Father Antolovich slowly stepped forward but remained out of the line of fire. “You see, I can make his body do whatever I want with those metal braces on him. But you…you can make him believe what you want.”
“You mean these?” Mayes held the adornments out in his hands before carelessly tossing them over the cliff. He watched Antolovich’s face fall slightly. “And he doesn’t trust me.”
“No, he loves you. And that is even worse.”
Mayes glared at the cleric. “You disgrace your title, Father,” he hissed venomously.
“And you disgrace your brethren, demon.”
A deafening pop suddenly filled the air, chasing away all sound for a moment after it passed. Mayes jerked and brought a hand to the bloody hole in his chest. Antolovich recovered from his startle and dropped his arms from the shielding posture they had taken.
The taste of blood filled his mouth and the smell filled his nose. His legs and feet unable to hold him any longer, he stumbled backward, looking for support on the low guard rail of the highway. His uncoordinated muscles had him missing the target and before he knew it, Warren was tumbling over the edge of the rail and down into the sharp ravine. His last image, taken by his dying eye, showed a being standing over Jordan’s shoulder, its hand guiding his murder’s on the weapon.
“Why did you do that?” He heard the faint echo of Antolovich’s voice.
“It had to be done.” The voice that started as Jordan’s became the soft and melodious caress of an otherworldly being.
Finally, darkness swamped him, and cold arms stole this life from him.
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---H/C---
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A chill spread throughout Chase. His limbs lost feeling and his muscles relaxed, so much so that he nearly stopped breathing. With Chase leant against him and his arm around the shorter man, House felt the change.
“What is it?” he ventured, and wasn’t surprised by the answer.
“…he’s gone…”
End Chapter9
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- - - H/C - - -
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Cast and Characters
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Chase/OMC, House/Chase
Summary: The marks of the saints and a past he won’t remember force Chase and House to face religion head on. They won’t get his fellow without a fight!
Spoilers: Up to season 4 Finale.
Genre: Drama, Supernatural
Disclaimer: I don’t own House. I’m not making any money off this story.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): Language, Adult Situations, Violence, M/M relationships. Do not read this story if any of these bother you!
Chapter 9: The Unknown Truth
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---H/C---
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Antolovich took a step back. House glanced around at the sharp indrawn breathes.
The bright glow that had only shone from Chase’s eyes began to seep out through the rest of him as well until finally the room was so brightly lit that the observers’ eyes watered. The radiant man remained on the ground, his presence making hearts beat faster and minds reel. At his back three sets of translucent and brilliant, nested wings folded out of his back. They passed through the garments as though either they or the wings didn’t truly exist in the same realm --each set a little offset down the length of the man’s upper back.
The wings relaxed down gracefully, spreading like a shimmering blanket across his back.
Ethereal in his splendour, this was indeed a heavenly host, and not just an archangel, dominion, or virtue. If what they’d heard was true, this was Mastema, a seraph, locked in the body of a mortal man.
“Robin,” Mayes moaned forlornly. He didn’t expect what he thought was Mastema to turn to him. Excited at the prospect of his friend still existing somewhere in there Mayes forgot himself and his situation, and tried to move forward. His injuries brought him to all fours, his bound hands barely holding him up. Jordan’s boot to his stomach brought him to the ground.
Air shifted in sorrow and torment as the seraph called out. “Warren!” He attempted to stand but both the body and soul were tired. He stumbled and crawled over, the assembled religious dignitaries parting for him as he went.
“Robin?” Mayes asked of the being that reached his side. Chase nodded, unfamiliar luminous eyes and face still conveying the conflicted and shamed expression that he’d seen too often on his friend’s face. “Mastema?” he then asked more cautiously.
Mastema hung his head and nodded.
Cautiously, as though afraid he might scare him off Chase reached out. His fingers fell lightly on the bruised face. His touch tingled with warmth and comfort. Mayes took a deep breath and closed his eyes as the relief from his injuries washed over him, spreading outward from the ghostly touch on his skin.
Standing close by, House watched everything happening with disbelieving eyes. This Mastema-thing was in his fellow and now it was taking away pain. House lowered himself to kneel next to the man he knew only as Chase, who turned to look at him. When their eyes met House felt a heavy weariness lift off him. The creases of mistrust and misery relaxed into simple lines on his face and flicker of something that resembled hope surged for a moment.
Lost in a trance House didn’t notice Voorhees and Antolovich approaching Chase’s back. Cruel hands slipped around the smooth neck, bringing with it the cold touch of a metal choker. It clasped shut and the moment it did the light from the uncommon man dimmed and he closed his eyes as though in pain.
Chase tried to remove the collar but his hands couldn’t even touch it without a terrible burning.
The light from him and from his eyes faded and Chase felt stronger as the other part of him receded leaving just the human male behind.
“No, Mastema,” Antolovich chastised. He was handed another brace, smaller than the one he’d fit around Chase’s neck. This one went around his right wrist, over the smears that remained from the wounds that had spontaneously healed. As the bracelet snapped closed Chase recoiled. House was there to catch him but neither could get the bracelet off.
“Take it off!” House yelled. Chase was in such a panic that House felt his own anxiety climb in counterpoint.
“Please, take it off. Please…”
“We can’t allow that, Mastema.”
The fight drained and House had to use both his arms to keep Chase up. The resplendent wings on his back had dimmed and vanished. The brush of them against the back of House’s hand faded like a breeze.
“The last one,” Voorhees prompted. Antolovich nodded and attached the last bracelet to the other wrist. And in half of a sudden, it ended. The glow from the young man and the light that filled the quarry grew fainter until they were both nothing. The candles relit and provided their soft light once again.
“Chase…Robert, come on.” House gave him a bit of a shake. He shifted the smaller man, getting the head that was tilted back to loll to the left and rest on his shoulder. “Chase…” His hair was damp with sweat, making it stick to the pale forehead. The darkness around the once gleaming eyes was back. The bright creature of grace and passion was lost again in the frail body that housed it, they thought.
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---H/C---
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Foreman was nearly to the patient’s room, his half-finished coffee in one hand, some notes he’d made in the other. An eerie normalcy had descended upon him. The day had started with the review of Angelica Brown’s medical history and proceeded from there like any other day and any other, solvable case. He’d taken a break to get a coffee, since none had been made in the conference room, and was anxious to see if Cameron had garnered anything new from the patient. What he found was a state of panic.
“What’s going on?” Foreman jumped to action, assisting the nurses in strapping down the thrashing and screaming woman.
“I was talking to her and suddenly she starts talking to people who aren’t here!” Cameron explained over the fray.
“It’s not time yet! Don’t give up! Please give in! Don’t let them hurt you! Accept the pain! Let go! Let go!” Her contradictory statements were not understood and the final pleas went unheeded. The straps were tightened.
“She’s never been like this,” one of the nurses added. “Her medication has always kept her delusions pretty tame.”
After a few moments of fruitless struggle against the padded restraints, Angelica calmed, smiled even, as though comforted by something. They were halfway through a collective sigh of relief when she began to seize. The uncoordinated contractions throughout her body had her flailing as much as was possible while tied down, and perhaps a little more. The jerky movements pulled and twisted at her restrained limbs, threatening to do significant damage. Once again the medical staff tried to hold her in place while she rode out the episode.
“Get the Ativan!” Cameron yelled. Foreman abandoned his hold on her legs and dashed over to a supply cabinet. Expertly the clear liquid was loaded into a syringe. He returned to the bedside quickly, ready to administer the dose. Very quickly the seizure ended. The patient seemed to have fallen asleep. Curious and confused glances flitted between the doctor’s and nurses.
Cameron sighed, straightening herself. “Well that worked quickly.”
Foreman wanted to respond, but wasn’t sure how to. He met his colleagues eyes and held up the syringe, which still contained the clear solution with the powerful sedative.
“I didn’t give her anything.”
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---H/C---
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Something was going to happen, House was certain. From the spot against the wall where Mayes had been sequestered, he kept glancing at House and giving him meaningful stares. Were this a gay bar House would have thought the man was coming on to him. However, this was a very holy church and Mayes wasn’t coming on to him.
“Chase, what’s my name?”
“Gregory Pain-in-my-ass Jonathan House,” the man next to him mumbled into his knees. He had his legs drawn up, his arms wrapped around them and his face buried in his knees.
“What day is it?”
“Christ, House! I have no idea!” The mild profanity turned a few heads but Chase didn’t notice and House didn’t care. His concern was Chase, who had awoken from his unconsciousness twenty minutes ago and had been withdrawn and irritable ever since.
They were still in the Calvary, seated on the floor at one side of the main foyer. Mayes was at the other. House would have been there too, separated from Chase like the Deacon had instructed everyone. It was the unusual unconsciousness that worried those assembled and thus the doctor was allowed near the patient -couldn’t have him dying just yet.
“Chase.”
“What now?”
“Look at me.”
The white clad shoulders rose and fell in what was likely an aggravated sigh. Chase looked at him. House leaned in closed.
“Your pupils are still dilated,” House told him. He had assumed the powder that stirred from the garments Chase wore was some sort of drug to aid in the ritual -possibly a sedative to make him more relaxed, but maybe a stimulant given the twitchiness.
“How long was I out for?”
“Nearly an hour.”
“Guess it’s not enough time for the stuff to wear off.” Chase buried his face back in his knees. He was sounding more coherent and more like himself than he had been when he first woke. Twenty minutes ago he’d looked lost and scared, and so agonizingly confused that House had wanted to go to him. Nobody had been allowed near him though, and when House tried, he was forcibly withheld. Eventually they did let him near but he wasn’t allowed to touch. When Chase had reached out for him they pulled House back.
“Take your clothes off.”
“What?”
“Think, Chase,” House implored impatiently. “There powder is in the fabric.” Chase grabbed a bit of the cloth and shook it. He watched carefully and as the powder passed through a ray of light, both were seen. “If it can get through your skin you’re not going to get any better.” Thankfully the garments had pooled at his waist and hips, leaving his legs exposed such that he wasn’t constantly inhaling the powder when he leaned forward. Still, it was wise to remove it.
Chase started to. His trembling hands and weak arms gathered the fabric ready to throw it over his head and off.
“No, Mastema.”
Chase stopped. His eyes were frozen forward as he fought the internal conflict. His arms fell to his side when he lost.
“Chase, take it off,” House ordered again but Chase remained staring forward.
Seeing that his order was being obeyed Voorhees turned back to the group with which he had been conversing. They were discussing the ramification of what they had just discovered and were as buzzed with excitement as stoic old men could be.
House stared at Chase then to Mayes, who gave him a sad look in return before looking away. House had been and was still hoping that what he’d seen was a hallucination of some sort -or water spiked with LSD, a head injury, anything. He’d been seeing some strange things these last few days but that last episode truly trumped them all. House wasn’t sure what to believe. His own eyes could deceive him, his ears could mishear, his brain could misinterpret. But his heart -not cold, frozen, dead, or made of stone like so many would like to believe -his heart could not lie. Heart, mind, soul, whatever the designation, it was telling him that what he’d experienced was true.
House slipped his eyes to the dulled man next to him. The dishevelled hair fell across his eyes, stains of blood still marked his body and his clothes, and dust stuck to sweat. With exception of the turbulence in his eyes, nothing else hinted at the seraph Voorhees and the others claimed to have taken residence in Robert Chase.
A soft clunk punctuated the end of House’s reverie. From the doorway to the right of him a metallic canister rolled over to him. He couldn’t see it but he could hear a gas seeping out. A glance at Mayes confirmed House’s suspicion. Making sure no one had noticed House rolled the canister over to the group of clergymen. The soft touch he’d given it put it closer to them but it didn’t hit them and they didn’t hear it. House held his breath, Mayes did the same. House covered Chase’s nose and mouth to make sure he held his breath too.
When the first person began to sway Mayes sprang into action and House followed. Siva Jordan was quick to notice the motion but his body was already being affected by the gas hissing out of the canister. He never had a chance to duck the two handed blow that Mayes struck across his head.
House was hurrying Chase to the exit and the young man went docilely. They met their help at the narrow stairway that led to the church from the main entrance; four men with gasmasks over their faces and guns in their hand. They escorted them out. House grit his teeth as he took the stairs down. Eighteen of them and getting up them had been bad enough. Now he had to get both himself and Chase down them in good time, with armed men urging him to go faster and Mayes yelling it from behind.
They burst out of the church and into the afternoon sun. Two black cars were waiting. Mayes jumped into the passenger seat, one of their rescuers took the wheel, while the others went to the second car and took off before all the doors were even closed.
“Mastema! Stop!”
House cringed. He was nearly at the car, just a step more. Chase was just a step behind him, but was suddenly frozen in place.
“Chase, come on!” House urged. He saw the internal conflict in Chase’s clenched jaw and the fisting and relaxing of his hand, but he couldn’t move.
“Robin!” Mayes called from the car.
“Chase,” House held out his hand, somehow knowing that for Chase to take another step he had to chose to do so. He’d have to go against an order issued to him that he was bound -for some reason House didn’t know -to obey. “You have to choose for yourself.”
Behind him, moving clumsily thanks to the gas they had inhaled the people with the depressing plan for Chase approached.
“Please-” House was ready to beg and curse but Chase raised his arm slowly, like the bracelet on his wrist weighed fifty pounds. He grasped House’s hand. House didn’t have time to reflect on the look in Chase’s eyes. He yanked, hard enough that Chase’s shoulder would probably hurt. It had the desired effect of getting Chase to stumble forward. In spite of whatever forces he felt weighing him down, House didn’t feel anything but the weight of his body as Chase fell into him and he landed them both in the back seats of the car.
“Go! Go! Drive!” House ordered though the driver had already gotten the idea and was off the moment they were in. House scrambled to help Chase and get both their legs into the car before their maniac of a driver came too close to something harder than their limbs. When the door was at last closed House lay back and breathed. His heart was racing, his leg was aching like mad but he and Chase were safe, for now.
In the front Mayes used the knife the driver handed him to cut the plastic ties that had bound him. He twisted to look at the other two passengers. House was recovering. Chase was ensconced in the older man’s arms dazed and upset. His left arm was shaking. Mayes strained further so that he could hold the shaking hand and examine the bracelet.
“What is it?”
Mayes took a moment to think before he responded to House. “There’s a symbol on the bracelet. It’s what makes him obedient to them.”
“Almost obedient,” House corrected and wasn’t able to help the squeeze of reassurance he gave Chase. Chase responded by looking briefly into House’s eyes. “Can you take it off?”
“Not right now.” As though it pained him to do so, Mayes let go. The quivering limb dropped and Chase didn’t move it. The difficult angle was bad for his shoulder, and House didn’t think Chase needed more aches. He reached over and grasped the hand pulling it to rest between them.
The wild driving had toned down to simply breaking the speed limit. Not too long after, they stopped in a more sparsely populated neighbourhood. The driver got out and after a last goodbye he dashed to the car he’d been following, the one with the others responsible for their escape. The first car tore off, their job done. Mayes crossed the console between the front seats and took the wheel.
Chase, meanwhile, took no notice of what was going on around him. His thoughts were repetitive and tormenting. He’d disobeyed. He’d disobeyed. He’d disobeyed. His left arm continued to shake and his insides clenched. He’d disobeyed.
He was supposed to stop but he hadn’t; he’d chosen to move. He could feel the heat of the symbol on his wrist. It was a dull ache, not nearly as bad as the nail-wounds that had been their not too long ago, but the hurt echoed in his head, making it worse. He’d chosen this pain. He’d done this to himself. Actually, he reasoned depressingly, this situation was entirely his fault. He’d chosen this life and he was paying for his disobedience.
“It’s okay, Chase,” a deep, sure voice told him.
Chase. That was his name. Robert Chase, a physician, an Australian, a man who had to answer to no one but that whom he chose. Free will, not God’s will.
His left arm stopped shaking. He returned the pressure on his hand.
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The winding trip through the central Judean Mountains took them vaguely north-west. Mayes’s destination was a city on the outskirts of Tel-Aviv where they would be able to blend in for a little while.
House felt the motion of the car change. “Why are you stopping?”
“He’s covered in blood. We need to blend in where we’re going, not stand out.” Mayes pulled the car off the road and put it into park before turning off the engine. “Under that bridge,” the rickety one just ahead, “there’s a small river. It’s calm. He can clean up there.”
Chase began to right himself to sit up in the back seat. House did the same, precipitating a protest in the form of an ache from his left shoulder. While he rubbed it away House took in the new surroundings. Untamed wilderness from the gravel shoulder onward, into the unfamiliar flora of this alien country. With no choice but to brave the unknown House opened the door. A gust of cool air made him shiver. He took off his blazer.
“Here.” He draped it over Chase’s shoulders. The garment wrapped around his hips barely covered his privates. It would do even less to ward off the cool breeze.
Any word of thanks was useless, as House stepped out before Chase could utter it. Following slowly, Chase pulled the clothing tighter around him. He had nothing to protected his feet from the rough, cold ground. As they trekked down the gentle slope to the river bank he could feel the dampness of the earth chilling his soles. He stared down at them as they walked.
“What?” House asked from over his right shoulder. “Yeah, you have great feet,” he said, though that was not the body part he’d been trying, with only minimal success, to tear his eyes from as he’d followed behind Chase down to the river. Yes, he knew the situation was serious, but he’d taken a reprieve in the simple topic.
“It’s nothing,” Chase eventually replied. He removed the jacket House had given him and draped it over the nearest sturdy branch near the river’s muddy bank. He stepped barefoot into the cold river. The temperature pricked at his skin while the silky currents flowed over his feet and past, taking with it the red taint of blood. The fluid clothes he’d been made to wear at the Church in Jerusalem had adsorbed the blood it contacted and smeared it up his arms, legs and down his back. He crouched to dip his hands and wrists into the water, rubbed them and began to clean the stains.
While Chase cleaned himself, Mayes and House talked.
“Where’s the nearest airport. We need to get out of here before they find us.”
“In ten days it’ll be too late for them to follow through with their plans. We just have to lay low until then. I know a place where we can go. It’s not far.”
“You don’t even know what they’re planning for him or why,” House hissed.
Mayes shrugged, the motion carrying nonchalance he didn’t feel. “I know enough not to trust them. I know he won’t survive whatever they have planned.” House looked away. A not entirely appropriate sense of guilt nipped at his conscience. The conversation he’d overheard during their stay in the mansion in Jerusalem had convinced him of, if not of the insanity of these people, their determination to see this through.
“What exactly is he?” House had to ask. He’d ignored the events in the church, mostly because, save for the one moment in the stone chapel, Chase continued to be his annoying, unsociable self. The analyst in him, however, would not allow him to avoid evidence just because he could not dream up a scientific explanation just yet.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“He says he’s Mastema. Mastema is a soldier of heaven, among the highest rank of the heavenly hosts. Some attribute the plagues of Egypt to Mastema. When Jesus was tested in the desert some say it was Mastema who tempted him.”
“Sounds like Mastema does all the dirty work,” House said bluntly.
How could Mayes not agree? “I just don’t understand what he’s doing here.”
“Maybe Chase is possessed.” Shouldn’t he have said that with a laugh? It seemed the kind of suggestion at which House would have usually laughed.
Mayes treated it like a serious option -having seen possessions before he didn’t doubt the possibility -but didn’t agree. “I don’t think so. You saw what I saw. It was one body, one soul. No conflict over who owned the body or mind.”
“What I saw was a bright figment with wings hugging his evil twin and other equally unbelievable people.”
“I think those were other…players -from both sides.”
“Heaven and hell?” House deduced with no small amount of misgiving. “Most bosses would frown on fraternization with the enemy.”
“You’d think,” he muttered. “But non-corporeal politics aren’t my expertise. And they weren’t always on opposite sides.”
“Or so the legend goes,” House scoffed in a parody of an eerie voice.
“Fine, you tell me why Mastema, a soldier of heaven, looks so much like Azazel, a soldier of hell, if they aren’t related.”
“So, you really think he’s…Mastema.”
“He said he is.”
“Everybody lies.”
Mayes knew things House didn’t. He knew what those prayers and chants and symbols on the ceiling of the chapel meant. “He couldn’t lie. We just can’t interpret the truth correctly yet.” Warren abandoned his conversation with House and went to Chase who needed help washing the blood from his back.
Watching the two of them, House felt like an intruder. He’d been more of one at other times and never felt like this. On this occasion, where Warren cupped cold river water and poured it over the smooth back, using the contact of his hand to ease some of the chill that made Robert shiver, House wanted to turn away. He held fast though. Because with the clothes over his hips now saturated, the sunlight gleaming in the droplets of water that clung to the curves and planes of flesh and his hair bright as a halo in the natural light, the image was not worth giving up.
He could almost see the wings.
Suddenly Mayes whipped his head to the side to look in the direction of the highway from which they’d just come.
“What’s wrong?”
Mayes wiped his expression away and replaced it with an easy smile for the benefit of the other man. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Chase looked down at his hands in the moving water. “I know when you’re lying.” A cool, wet hand brushed his cheek removing the last trace of blood, then worked quickly and removed the metal braces adorning Chase’s wrists and neck. A previously ignored ache vanished when he was free of the bindings, allowing Chase to breathe easier. With one last light caress Mayes stood up and walked out of the river shallows to the bank, unconcerned about his soaked shoes. He kept his eyes turned to the highway above them and listened to the sound of the passing cars that couldn’t be seen through either the foliage or over the bridge’s side-barrier.
After several seconds of useless observation, Mayes’s shoulders set. His eyes were sad, glassy with tears even.
“I have to go,” Mayes said to House as he approached. “Watch out for him.”
“Where are you going? He’s your job, not mine,” House emphasized. He didn’t bother trying to hide his suspicion. Mayes took a deep breath. House watched his shoulders shudder as he forced the air out of his lungs. When Mayes went to go past him to go back to the car, House raised his cane, blocked his path. They were shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye, and House could read people.
“Don’t leave without saying good-bye. You might be the first one to bother,” House informed simply. Eye contact was lost when Mayes looked away. Thinking that Mayes didn’t want to make it harder on himself, since Chase always seemed to care about people who didn’t care enough about him, House removed his wooden obstacle from the dark-haired Aussie’s path. Mayes didn’t take it.
It took several seconds to sturdy himself. Finally he was strong enough to face his Robin. Reluctantly, House turned his back and studied with feigned interest the flora nearby.
“I have to go.”
The tone of voice put Chase on guard. “Go where?”
What came next? Mayes didn’t know, but he’d brave the undiscovered country for this man. “Just to see some people.” He smiled softly and traced along the brow and down the face.
“You’re lying,” Chase stated. His head was tilted a little to the left, his expression set with annoyance.
“Yeah, I am.” He continued to smile.
Chase’s frown deepened. “Are you going to tell them where they can find me again? Did they promise more money this time?”
That stung. Like a vulture with razor-sharp talons, Robert knew the most vulnerable parts to strike.
“I’d never do something so stupid again,” Mayes returned.
“Then stay.” Chase stepped closer. He met Warren’s eyes. “Prove it.”
But Warren couldn’t allow himself to be manipulated. He cupped Robert’s face with both hands. “I love you. You know I’m not lying. That has to be proof enough.”
Chase’s hands drew into fists. Before he could beg Warren not to go, or threaten bodily harm if he tried to, Chase was being kiss. Warren was taking no prisoners, forcing his mouth open and wrapping his arms around so tightly Chase might bruise. There was no way he could not kiss back. The anguish encouraged them closer, strengthened the heat, and deepened the embrace.
“Do you love me?” Warren asked moving his kiss across the face, skimming his hands over the most intimates of areas.
“Yes,” was the choked reply.
“Please…” Warren carded a hand through the soft, gilded hair. “Please, say it”
“…I love you,” Chase confessed, his eyes to the sky. “…always love you.” And for a moment the blue eyes dimmed to be overtaken by a searing white. A blink and the blue and green returned. “I love you.”
Warren would take those words with him, wherever it was he went. They would be his paradise, his dream of ever after.
He touched their lips together one last time, in a kiss so sweet and natural Warren’s resolve firmed. He grasped Robert by his arms and broke the kiss with a shove that sent the shorter man into the shallow river. Chase would never let him go unless Warren forced it and Warren was not strong enough to fight the argument his eyes would hold. He marched away without a look back. The splashes and the sputtering that followed had House turning to face them. His surprise at what he thought would be a peaceful goodbye turning into a fight written clearly on his shadowed face.
“Warren!” Chase called and was ignored. Warren stalked up the hill, quickly disappearing in the brush. “Warren!” His haste caused Chase to slip on the muddy embankment. Dark patches clung to him but he barely noticed. His remaining strength had been sapped by the river’s cold. The blood loss, the forced fasting, the emotional turmoil culminated in the deepest heaviest fatigue Chase had ever felt.
Still, he forced himself up.
“God damn it, Warren, don’t do this,” Chase intoned in a pair of laboured breathes.
“Chase, let him go.” House tried to take him by the arm but Chase pulled away, so violently that it sent him to the earth again.
“Don’t touch me you wretched, old, bastard!” Watching him petulantly wiping some mud from his face, House couldn’t take Chase’s insult to heart. The glare misdirected at him, evoked sympathy rather than annoyance. But Chase was determined that Mayes would not leave and House knew without knowing that he had to. One wouldn’t believe how much the grunt of pain and the following look of betrayal wounded him, when House tripped the boy with his cane, ending his last viable effort.
An uncovered outcropping of rock had skinned his knees and hands. The hair darkened with river water dripped down his face. A desperate flush to the otherwise pallid skin, matched the desperate, stubborn eyes as the most natural colour to the young man’s complexion. This wounded, muddy, shivering, nearly naked mess was what Mayes had left behind and entrusted into House’s care.
Greg was out of his depth. The most important thing he’d ever cared for was his rat. Most days he didn’t really care for himself.
Yet even in under the scourge of his own shortcomings and in the contempt and anger in his subordinates eyes, Greg felt a part of him stand tall, honoured by the trust from someone he’d grown to respect in his own way.
He wanted this -this reason, this licence to care. He wished only, that it had come in a different way.
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Warren Mayes had come to a realization that sealed his fate. They were following him. It was what he’d hoped. But they weren’t just following the car he drove. Even when he lost them in the labyrinth of narrow streets of a small town, they turned up around the next corner. They were following him. Somehow they knew exactly where he was.
He stopped the car. He was just outside a town, a cliff to a river on his right, oncoming traffic to this left. Behind him two cars pulled off the road as well.
“Giving up?” Jordan’s voice mocked as he and Antolovich stepped out of the nearest vehicle.
“You have an unfair advantage.” He peered into the cars but the glare from the windshield and the tinted windows didn’t allow him to see much. “She’s in there, isn’t she?” The nun, the woman that had been his pesky shadow for longer than he could remember.
“Where is he, Warren?” Antolovich asked.
“I was wondering how she got into a convent. She’s not one to follow the rules and she has no redeeming qualities.”
“You’d be surprised,” Jordan remarked -a sly smiled on his face.
Mayes didn’t think he would be. He’d sampled those carnal luxuries with her, at a time when the one with whom he was truly infatuated was too young to do such things. They had fit together seamlessly, known each others bodies with an almost factual knowledge. When they were spent she had clung but Mayes slipped from her grasp and ran; never far enough, because she always found him, and now she was finding him for hire.
“What is she?”
“She’s a person, but like you, she has a mission,” Antolovich explained.
Whatever she was, whatever he was, they were connected.
“And you’ve used her to try and complete your mission. I find Robert, she finds me, you find Robert.”
“Well, we knew you wouldn’t betray him twice. We needed another method. You three are bound together…Where is he, Warren?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“You can’t stay away from him.” A knowing smile accompanied the Priest’s words. “You crave your sin and sully each other. You can’t live without him.”
“But he can live without me.”
“Are you sure?”
He wasn’t, but Robert was a survivor.
“This world is very dangerous for a being such as him. What will he do without his guardian?” Antolovich gave a slight cock of his head to Jordan and immediately the Tenth Order’s henchman pulled out his firearm and aimed at Warren.
Jordan smirked. “Don’t tempt me.”
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“He could come back,” Chase reassured himself, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“Yeah, he might,” House agreed softly. He didn’t sound convinced either. Using his cane he retrieved the jacket Chase had hung over a branch. He draped it over Chase’s shaking shoulders. With the sun beginning to set the early spring chill was creeping in.
Chase pulled the covering around him without comment and was also silent when House sat down next to him. His anger had ebbed away. He was too tired to hold onto it for very long so House had deemed it safe to approach.
“He’ll lead them around, and then he’ll lose them…and he’ll come back.”
House nodded slightly. It could have been mistaken for an idle rocking motion of his whole upper body, but he was really showing his support of Chase’s scenario, despite how unlikely he felt it might be.
Chase hugged his knees tighter and kept his gaze on the moving river. House kept his sidelong gaze on Chase and, after some internal debate and a few false starts, laid his hand on the other man’s nape. House let Chase buy in to his lie, and so did he.
Everybody lies. But more important than the falsehood was the reason why. In this moment House lied to protect Chase, because this meagre hope was better than none. And Chase would forgive him.
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“Our plan doesn’t have to end with his death, if he co-operates.”
Warren was almost completely sure that was a lie.
“All we need from you is a location.”
“You may as well just shoot me. I’m not going to beg for my life.”
“Will you beg for his?” Father Antolovich slowly stepped forward but remained out of the line of fire. “You see, I can make his body do whatever I want with those metal braces on him. But you…you can make him believe what you want.”
“You mean these?” Mayes held the adornments out in his hands before carelessly tossing them over the cliff. He watched Antolovich’s face fall slightly. “And he doesn’t trust me.”
“No, he loves you. And that is even worse.”
Mayes glared at the cleric. “You disgrace your title, Father,” he hissed venomously.
“And you disgrace your brethren, demon.”
A deafening pop suddenly filled the air, chasing away all sound for a moment after it passed. Mayes jerked and brought a hand to the bloody hole in his chest. Antolovich recovered from his startle and dropped his arms from the shielding posture they had taken.
The taste of blood filled his mouth and the smell filled his nose. His legs and feet unable to hold him any longer, he stumbled backward, looking for support on the low guard rail of the highway. His uncoordinated muscles had him missing the target and before he knew it, Warren was tumbling over the edge of the rail and down into the sharp ravine. His last image, taken by his dying eye, showed a being standing over Jordan’s shoulder, its hand guiding his murder’s on the weapon.
“Why did you do that?” He heard the faint echo of Antolovich’s voice.
“It had to be done.” The voice that started as Jordan’s became the soft and melodious caress of an otherworldly being.
Finally, darkness swamped him, and cold arms stole this life from him.
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A chill spread throughout Chase. His limbs lost feeling and his muscles relaxed, so much so that he nearly stopped breathing. With Chase leant against him and his arm around the shorter man, House felt the change.
“What is it?” he ventured, and wasn’t surprised by the answer.
“…he’s gone…”
End Chapter9
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Cast and Characters