Scribbles and Drabbles

Notebook Drabble 28 - Death Gods

Miles slept deep. 

Ren did not. This had been stupid. An impulse that his boss wouldn't approve off but Ren saw something that most ignored. Miles was eighteen, his friends were eighteen, they were all far too young to be wrapped up in this mess, but the world wasn't kind. The organisation wasn't kind. It was pragmatic and sometimes practical. Miles and his friends, aged eighteen and not out of education, had walked into the organisation and attempted to rescue a friend who did not deserve to die. 

The chaos that ensued would go down in the organisation's history. No one expected them to be worth more than the chewing gum they spat on the ground. Instead, conspiracies got uncovered, harsh truths saw the light of day, and scooby-doo meddling kids put some of the most well-trained psy users back into place. 

Too young to be bound to the organisation's way of life. It recruited people from university, not kids who hadn't even glanced at their application forms. The Grandmaster looked at them all with his blank face of judging. No one knew the answer yet.

Their friend lived. The traitorous pawn escaped into the night. The truth emerged, and her ticking time bomb ended. Their friend, Nene, was Ren's friend too, even if he let her go to her death - things blurred in the organisation. 

Miles slept under Ren's watchful eye. 

"Ren."

"He hasn't woken up yet," Ren answered an unspoken question while ignoring the demand. "Mutters sometimes."

"His friends are recovering. The girl is helping the 4th," Ciaran said, Ren's boss sitting on the bed to look over Miles with a considering eye. "Nene's home safe." 

Meaning Nene slept a few floors above in the bedroom that had been unofficially hers since she met Ciaran. Nene wasn't recruited after university, either. Nene was 21, young enough that the fact five eighteen-year-olds chased after her wasn't too worrying, but not a child. However, they snatched her up at eighteen once she legally could sign the dotted line. They could do the same to Miles and his friends. Maybe the organisation liked to say they did a university drive to cover up the ages they wanted. Perhaps the organisation was as bad as the gangs that ran drugs and weapons on the streets. Ren shivered and tried to rub the ache out of his neck. 

Eighteen, and in the final year of school, was too young. 

"Do you think the Grandmaster is going to dragoon them?"

Ciaran didn't answer. He waited. Ren clenched his fists. "Darius looked at him wrong. I don't trust him not to make a move."

"Darius is bloodthirsty, not a rapist."

Logically, Ciaran knew that. Darius had removed people from the organisation for such things, but the problem with that was, the people who screamed the loudest often had something to hide. Given Ciaran wasn't immune to his own stirring of interest, he was being hypocritical, but he knew he wouldn't. He didn't know that about Darius on a power high.

"He'll be offended that was your concern," Ciaran noted, opening his phone as it buzzed. "Unless you have a better reason to voice?"

"Miles beat him. Darius doesn't treat being defeated well." A weaker reason, but no less accurate. If Ren let himself be honest, that look could be the lust for a good fight rather than lust. Darius liked to fight. Maybe this was in Ren's head, and he was projecting. "We're less likely to hurt him out of spite." 

"We can use that," Ciaran nodded. "He beat Darius?"

"Daruis got a little too eager with a worthy opponent," Ren's lips twitched. "Plus, you know. He didn't care about what was happening. Miles was hardly here to take down the organisation."

"Just save Nene," Ciaran put a hand on Ren's leg, comforting even as he typed with one hand. "Something we couldn't." A dagger to the chest would have been less painful, but nothing they discussed was new or unknown. Despite the tension that hung over them like a fog, they hadn't verbalised the words. 

"We knew she was innocent." That was no excuse.

"We let her go to her death." Not so much daggers this time as a thousand needles digging into his skin. Ciaran and Ren almost let Nene die rather than go against the organisation. The idea of looking Nene in the eyes after this didn't make Ren's stomach rumble. His stomach clenched painfully, and Ciaran had a similar look. They'd failed Nene. 

Miles continued to sleep. 

"As your superior, kidnapping an intruder from the clinic rooms and placing him in my house breaks more rules and regulations than I care to think about," Ciaran said, putting the phone down and turning to face Ren head on, eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder. 

"I should have broke more."

"Possibly." One of Ciaran's rare smiles slipped through. "I told the Grandmaster I would punish you after he's publicly apologised for attempting to execute an innocent, loyal member of the organisation."

Ren shuddered. "Dangerous."

"I obeyed his orders, and he is not immune to the knowledge that a rat tried to ruin us," Ciaran's hand weighed on Ren's leg. He squeezed. 

The air fizzled with a different type of tension. Ren swallowed, mouth dry and cracked his knuckles. They'd danced around it before. It vanished when the Grandmaster named Nene a traitor. Now the pull returned, fiery and fierce knowing that the person who connected them slept safely above their heads. His eyes flickered to Miles and met brown eyes.

Miles was awake. 

His eyes fluttered open, brown and filled with confusion at waking up in a strange room with two men. His eyes moved between the two of them piecing together what he remembered and the fact that neither of them were in their uniforms. 

"Nene?" But of course, the first thing the redhead would ask would be about Nene. 

"Safe and asleep," Ciaran said, the air returning to the softness of night. The kind of atmosphere where any noise could be too loud and grating against the sense. "The Grandmaster deliberates your fate tonight. Ren decided you were better off here than in the prison."

"That bit I was awake for," Miles side-eyed Ren. "He didn't quite vanish me into the night."

"You slept most of the way!" Ren grumbled, pushing Miles back down as he tried to sit up. "You have a torso injury, stay down. The healers will kidnap you back if you don't follow their orders." Entirely true. The healers weren't above sneaking under windows to listen in to patients and knocking everyone else out in the room to retrieve a wayward patient. They'd let Ren steal him because they equally agreed that Darius looked too eager to get into another fight with Miles. 

"If you're not allowed up with a torso injury, what's his excuse?" Miles said, gesturing at Ciaran.

"I have a name," Ciaran warned, standing in a smooth motion that masked a hesitation to anyone who didn't know him. "I would ask you to remember it while you are in our care."

"Sir?" Ren said, a little more focused on his boss. 

"It is nothing, Ren. I'll leave the two of you to sleep." Doing the thing where he walked away without acknowledging someone that pissed a lot of people off and made his former teachers roll their eyes. Ren had served with Ciaran long enough to know his tricks. Getting the man to not play them was not something he'd mastered despite Nene doing it successfully. 

"Wait, he's sleeping with me?" Miles frowned, his nose wrinkling.

"Sir, maybe you should lie down too," Ren rolled off the bed. Chasing after his superior wasn't dignified. He'd do it. He'd do it and continue to deny ever needing to do it to the other secretaries, but none of them worked as right-hand men without being able to do what was needed. 

Ciaran ignored him but when he opened the door Hannah stood there with a healer grin on her face. Ciaran closed the door. 

"You didn't go to the healers did you, Sir?"