A Vampire's Marine (boyxboy)

Chapter 43: The blue room and the brothers.

Chapter 43

I woke to the find myself warm and wrapped up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room. The walls were blue like the sky and the windows were curtain-less. The only furniture in the place other than the bed, was a rickety, old rocking chair in the far corner by the door and of course the chair that had been pushed up to the side of the bed—the same chair in which Rein sat. He watched me without a word, his expression was—as usual— unreadable.

I sat up in the unusually large bed and ran a hand over my face to clear the initial fogginess.

"You do a lot of stupid shit, you know that?" I questioned him and when he opened his mouth to speak, I shook my head. "And don't tell me about my language, I'm not in the mood."

"I expected you to see it no other way of course, but whatever I do, it has always been for your own good."

"How is letting me mourn my family for my own good?" I asked incredulously.

"The fact that you now call them your family was reason enough."

I looked at him, feeling nothing but confusion...and of course annoyance. "What does that even mean?"

"It means that over the years you had allowed yourself to care for these people, but it was time for you to join me and I knew that leaving them would have been a struggle for you. Allowing you to believe they had died seemed the easier route. It was necessary."

"No. You mean if I knew they were alive it would have been harder for you to keep me with you." I surmised and he nodded without hesitation.

"I knew of your anger toward me and I was aware of the sense of loyalty you had toward these men. Therefore I knew that you would choose your duty to remain by their sides over what we had in the past." He explained. "When your anger rises to the surface you are not easily tamed. Therefore keeping this hidden from you made you more pliant"

When he was done, I could only look at him. "You selfish bastard."

"I never professed to be anything else Tony, however a bastard I am not."

"I swallowed, then took a deep breath. "You said they've been discharged from the army...are you saying that you got me out too? That I've been free this whole time and you've let me worry that I was AWOL?"

"Yes."

I shook my head slowly; eyes never leaving his face. I didn't know why the things he did surprised me anymore. This was Rien. He was a stubborn, selfish bastard who did what he wanted, when he wanted and thought about the consequences later—no...he thought about the consequences in advance, but did shit anyway, just because.

I thought about the weeks I'd gone thinking my brothers were gone forever and how it had eaten me up inside. I thought of how every second without them had hurt like nothing else and how Rien had let me go on hurting just so I could stay with him.

"You always talk about how everything you do is to keep me safe and how you don't want to hurt me." I began. "But you knew how I was feeling this whole time and you let it happen anyway,"

"Yes," he said simply, with no explanation.

"Then I guess all this talk about my protection was just talk huh?"

For the first time, a flicker of emotion crossed his face. "You know that is not the case."

For a while I said nothing. "So where are they now?"

"I suppose they have reunited with their families. I did not care to watch over their lives."

"And what do they think happened to me?"