Bane

March 25, 1980

Jonathan woke, shivering and weak, his wrists bleeding where rusted makeshift iron shackles sat loose on his ragged skin. Nida sat next to him, stroking his hair, crying on his shoulder. Jonathan reached for her, but the weight of his shackles, and the pain in his wrists left his arms flaccid at his side.

"All you have to do is take the black glass." Nida's whisper was hot in his ear, soft like Nadjia's. Jonathan could smell her skin in his nostrils, like Nadjia's, her shoulders soft on his bare flesh.

"...all you have to do is kill me."

"I could never kill my son. Nadjia whose flesh was your flesh, whose blood was your blood. Whose life inside her belonged to you..."

Jonathan had no tears left to shed, no saliva in his mouth to spit. The wounds in his wrists seeped thick blood that clotted, and dried quickly. "Nadjia is dead. If you do not kill me, you are all dead."

Nida drew back, and kissed his forehead, his temples, his nose, and his chin. "My love for you is my love for my child, my son - a son I never knew until you - and my love for you is as was my daughter's."

"No." Jonathan turned his head away from Nida, and she kissed the side of his neck.

"I can feed you. Give you water. Give you life."

"You can give me nothing. Your flesh belongs to Amir, your water, your food, Amir's. When The Order finds what you are become, you will all be slaughtered. You'll watch as they cull out your numbers, and kill your last daughter. They'll do murder to Amir, and you will watch, and when he draws his last breath, they will cut your throat and bleed you out over your family. The last thing you will ever see is your family soaked in your blood, and then you will die, a lifeless thing. They will heap your worthless carcasses into a pile and you will burn with your house, and all your silly toys, and baubles. Everything you fought for will be gone, and you will have failed Nadjia, and Suheila, and me. Kill me. Kill me, because if you do not, they will find me. The Order. Or those sons and daughters of Driftwood. Whoever finds me, you will die."

Nida drew away from Jonathan, her eyes locked on his. "Or, I help you regain your strength. I release you, I show you freedom, and you show me mercy. We put them down, all of them."

"That won't happen."

"You give me a new family, and fulfill your order's accord."

"That will not happen."

"You are bound, Jonathan. It is but by the grace of your present weakness I do not take what I want now, what you gave to my Nadjia... what you will give to me. When you're strong. When your strength is returned. I will take what is promised. What Amir could not give to me."

"Idiot woman." Jonathan coughed, and grimaced with the raw pain in his throat. "I belong to Nadjia Sharif - Nadjia Walker - and no other. I will die before I give it up to you."

"We will see, boy."

✟ ☧ ✟

Jonathan...

"Jonathan, wake up."

"Nadjia..."

"Jonathan, come with me. Please."

"I'm so weak. They burn me with hot metal, they cut me with white hot knives. They put cigarettes out on my skin."

"How long will you suffer needlessly?"

"Your mother..."

"My mother betrayed us."

"Your mother wants... she wants..."