Chapter Text
Prologue
July, 2011
Hotel Bistrik
Sarajevo
Bosnia & Herzegovina
21:35 Hours (Local)
The long, hot shower did a lot to get rid of the filth of the day, including the sweat, blood stains, and the lingering sensations Bryant had left behind on his skin like a grimy film. It was mostly in his head, Damien knew that, but the fading marks on his skin were still a reminder of things he’d rather forget, and wished to be free of.
His stomach reminded him with a painful growl as to why he couldn’t spend the entire night standing under the stream of water. There were many reasons for him to step out rather than stay hidden inside a rapidly cooling cubicle. Hunger was only one of them.
Damien got out before the water turned completely cold, and had to use the slightly wet towel on the hanger, because… well, it was Michael’s shower. Damien had opted to use it since he was already there. There was also the fact that he hadn’t yet worked up enough courage to return to his own room.
Towelling himself dry, Damien steeled himself to make the short trip anyway. He needed to collect his things if he wanted to spend the rest of the night in Michael’s room. He was pretty certain Michael wouldn’t object to the plan. Even if it was just to sleep since they had already agreed to do things the right way.
Damien needn’t have worried. A pleasant surprise waited for him just outside the shower door. Apparently, Michael had realised his reservations, and gone to retrieve Damien’s duffel himself.
While he was glad for the chance to avoid walking into that nightmare, Damien couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt for having subjected Michael to that. He changed into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt before stepping into the bedroom, intending to make an apology.
Michael was sitting sideways on one of the single couches in front of the bed, his legs draped over one armrest and his back against the other. On the table, there was a quarter-demolished tray of sandwiches, an untouched plate of fries and a steaming pot of coffee with two mugs.
The sight of food reminded Damien once again how hungry he was. He didn’t feel like going downstairs to the restaurant for dinner either. Damien agreed that Michael had the right idea. After all the eventful days they’d had, some peace and quiet away from the crowds of strangers was exactly what they needed.
“Hey,” he murmured, walking over to the chair next to Michael’s. “Thanks for getting my stuff–”
Micheal looked up with a crooked smile. Damien thought he could get used to it very easily. “Don’t mention it,” he shrugged, jerking his head at the snacks, “Help yourself.”
Damien filled the empty mug with coffee, and went for the fries, “What’s that?”
“Oh, this?” Michael turned the file he was reading around nonchalantly so Damien could see the ‘Top Secret’ seal on its cover. “Just some reading material I found on your bed.”
The dry delivery made Damien bark out a laugh. He couldn’t really blame Michael for snatching that, especially when he may very well have saved Damien’s ass by preventing the damned file from ending up in the hands of the housekeeping staff.
Bryant had left it with him, and Damien hadn’t been in his right mind the entire afternoon or the evening.
“Suleiman was one of Twelve’s,” Michael said once he finished the sandwich he had in his hand. “When he went dark for a couple of months straight, Twelve started looking for him. We found Adam Zamani completely by accident. Just like Latif, what we had on him was rather thin too–”
Suleiman was the codename of the asset Damien and Michael had extracted back in 2009, when they had met for the first time and then worked together. “I guess your people wanted to recover Suleiman to find out more about Zamani?’
“Yeah,” Michael nodded, “When I was dispatched to Kandahar for his extraction, the CIA made contact with the Crib and offered to help. Told us they already had an asset in the field tracking Fidai Mahaz.”
“I got there about a week before you,” Damien said. Now that his mind was free of Bryant’s sick meddling, he recalled the details perfectly, “Bryant already knew about your man.”
“And she conveniently forgot to tell us until we found out,” Michael said, “and made the offer for a joint op before you and I crossed paths.”
Damien saw his point. If they had come at the same target from two different sides, they’d have stood in each other’s way or could have gotten the asset killed in the crossfire. Michael’s arrival in Kandahar would have made Bryant realise that she couldn’t extract a British asset right under their operative’s nose.
“She must have found out that you interrogated Zamani,” Damien said, thinking back to Bryant’s half-assed mission brief about an off-the-books asset and Fidai Mahaz’s involvement. Just the name of the splinter group had been enough for Damien to jump in with both feet. “She never told me.”
“I don’t know if she got the information from us or–”
“Or?” Damien prompted when Michael hesitated.
Michael sighed, and shifted, dropping his feet off the armrest to the floor so that he was facing Damien. “She only managed to replace me so perfectly in your mind with Zamani because she knew him,” he said softly, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was fucking him at some point, because of the way she had all those different facial expressions, mannerisms, speech patterns and scents in her mind already. The thing is, she would have kept Zamani tethered to her, the way she did with you. And the moment Zamani died, she would have known.”
Damien stared at him, not sure even where to start unpacking the information in that long statement. Michael had an open expression on his face, and Damien thought it was an invitation for him to ask whatever he wanted.
The violation of his memories was still a raw wound. While Damien was infinitely grateful that he was free of it, and that he had Michael back, he wasn’t quite ready to deep dive into exactly how the woman infected her victims with her influence.
So he opted for the least personal part of it. “When did Zamani die?”
“Before I left London,” Michael said, smiling a little sadly, “Ironic, isn't it? He was long dead before we even met.”
“Bryant never told me.” Damien murmured, feeling his insides twist with an answering wave of guilt, “When I trusted her with you, she had the perfect solution. I’ve never seen Zamani, but he was close enough to Latif, she knew I’d go after him.”
“Zamani was British,” Michael said, his attention back on the CIA file on Zamani, “He looks a little like me on the side, I guess, which made him the best choice for the memory swap.”
Damien had seen the photos Michael was talking about. “Michael,” he said firmly, “What I was seeing looked nothing like you.”
“She’s been messing with your mind for a long time,” Michael replied, his voice gentle with understanding, “It didn’t take much for her to convince you that you were seeing a terrorist, not me.”
He was right. Thinking that he was going after Latif’s right-hand man, Damien had gone after Michael without hesitation or mercy. He had put a bullet in his own damned Guide’s heart and set that shack on fire before the body had even cooled.
It was a fucking miracle Michael survived.
“How–” Damien had to swallow past a painful lump in his throat to get the rest of his question out, “How did you get out?”
“I came online,” Michael murmured, his gaze fixed firmly on the coffee he was pouring into his mug. “I don’t remember much of it. But when my Dad finally found me two days later, he said I had an entire village trying to keep me alive. I was projecting badly…”
Damien grimaced. He couldn’t even imagine how excruciating it must have been to be so wide open to the world for the first time while in so much pain. Even though he had no idea about the full extent of Michael's abilities, Damien knew he was a very powerful Guide. Much more than Bryant. He had known that when Michael had managed to cleanse his memories. He had felt it when he had been channelling Psionic energies into healing Michael and had caught a glimpse of it when Michael had later helped him shore up his shields.
He must have been in hell, Damien thought, his mind resonating with that immense sense of grief he had felt soon after. Even in his altered state, a part of Damien had wept for the loss of his Guide. The entire village around the burning building must have felt Michael’s agony as if it were their own.
To come online thinking that your own Sentinel wanted you dead…
Damien wished Bryant was alive, so that he could go back and kill her slowly and painfully for what she had made him do. She hadn’t deserved that quick, almost painless death after all.
“She wanted you for your power,” Michael murmured, his gaze intense and seemingly able to see through Damien without the slightest aid of his abilities, “The way you killed her, with hardly a thought or a second of your attention… believe me when I say, that was the most terrible death you could have ever given her. She didn’t deserve any more of your time, mind or soul, Damien. Not after what she did.”
Damien was at a loss for words for a long moment, holding Michael’s gaze with his own for the lifeline it was. There was no accusation or blame in there, as Damien had feared earlier, only understanding. The sadness that still darkened his expression was for the time they had lost, and the pain they had both gone through in their own ways, not because he held Damien responsible for any of it.
Damien probably owed the debt of a few lifetimes to fate, destiny or whatever otherworldly intervention that had decided Michael was his Guide. He would pay all of them gladly, however many times over, for the chance he had been given.
“Thank you,” he managed when he could finally speak, “I guess I needed to hear it.”
Michael flashed a small smile and took a sip of his coffee. “How did you make it out?”
“I barely got out of that town,” Damien said, going back to the plate of fries, “Almost killed myself by driving into a ditch. I can’t remember getting out of the country either. Bryant got me out.”
“Backlash.”
A backlash was a negative Psionic feedback that a Sentinel or a Guide was subjected to when they killed someone with whom they shared a genetic, familial or surface bond.
In the case of a truly bonded couple, the aftermath of a Psionic backlash could very well end up killing the remaining Sentinel or the Guide, or incapacitating them permanently in a physical or psychological manner.
Sentinels and Guides who shared such bonds killing each other wasn’t at all a common occurrence. Any kind of bond was a very intimate connection shared by the involved parties, reinforced by the metaphysical energies of the Psionic Plane. Even the thought of hurting someone you shared such a connection with was anathema to a Sentinel or a Guide.
That was why Bryant’s entire fucking existence felt like an abomination to Damien. He didn’t even want to imagine what Michael must have felt when he had seen her true nature with his Guide abilities.
The only reason Damien survived the backlash that could very well have killed him was because his mind had been manipulated. And that, due to Michael’s Latent status, they hadn’t yet bonded.
“Nothing like what happened to you, but it was bad,” Damien said, thinking back to the horrible months filled with debilitating migraines, collapsing spells, zone-outs and random spikes that had followed, “The worst part was I didn’t even know what was happening or why.”
“Where did you go?”
Damien let out a deep sigh. “I ran home.”
“Good,” Michael murmured, watching him, “That was for the best.”
The way he seemed to understand felt as if it were personal. “How did your father get you out?” Damien asked.
“He’s resourceful,” Michael shrugged, “He said getting me out was the easy part. The first few weeks they had me home were terrible. My shields wouldn’t snap back until the gunshot wound stabilised. Apparently, I chased both my Dad and my sister out of the house. Only my Mom could hang around me for longer periods of time. She’s also a Guide, and she shielded me until I pulled through the worst of it.”
Damien knew Michael didn’t want it or need it from him, but he had to say it. “Michael, I don't know where to even begin apologising for putting you through that,” he murmured, willing his voice not to break, “I’m so fucking sorry hardly begins to cover it–”
“I told you it wasn't your fault,” Michael cut him off softly, “It took me a while to figure it out, but I did. I just never knew who targeted us.”
“What do you mean?” Damien asked, at a loss. How would he even know that Damien had been compromised?
“You missed,” Michael flashed his sideways grin again, coaxing an answering twitch from Damien’s own lips without any conscious input from him. “I’ve seen you shoot. You were about seven feet in front of me, and you missed.”
“Zamani was bigger than you,” Damien said, realising what he meant, “I was aiming for his heart, not yours.”
“Yeah.” Michael nodded, taking another sandwich off the tray before draping his legs over the armrest again. “How do you want to handle this?”
“Bryant?”
“The way I see it, we have two options.” Michael said, “One: we leave the body where it is. Let the locals find it whenever. Since none of our DNA data is in any system, all they would have is the forensics of three different people and one body. They might find out she’s a Guide during the autopsy if they decide to do one. That might lead them to take it to the Council from there…”
“Someone might recognise her and claim the body,” Damien added, following Michael's line of thought, “They’ll want retribution if they don’t know what she really is. Like you said, we don’t even know how many more people she’s fucked with.”
“Her husband is one. AD Anderson - she said so herself,” Michael said, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, the sandwich in his hand, forgotten, “And Zamani. I’m sure the list is very long, and I don’t know what her death did to them. Either they’re free of her influence, or they’ve gone insane. I wasn't really paying attention to anything in her head other than what she’d done to you–”
“How would you, Michael?” Damien asked quietly, not liking the guilt he could hear in his tone, “The bitch stabbed you in the chest!”
“Yeah, I didn’t see that coming,” Michael said and turned his head, staring at Damien with curiosity, “That was a fatal wound. I could tell. What did you do?”
“I’m no healer,” Damien replied around the French fries he was chewing on. “I just stuffed you full of Psionic energies and hoped to hell you’d pull through.”
“Well, it worked,” Michael smiled, “Thank you.”
Damien nodded, swallowing the food to force back another lump he could feel forming in his throat. It was another raw wound, still flayed open - one much more painful than anything he had gone through for the past two years. He had been holding onto the fading life of his Guide with nothing but willpower. Damien had done everything to heal, but he had been ready to die trying.
I’ve almost gotten you killed too many fucking times, Damien thought, staring back at his Guide silently, feeling grateful all over again that he could. It’s about damn time I started doing everything I can to keep you alive.
“What was she trying to do to you?” Damien needed to know.
“To take my memories,” Michael said quietly, “She probably wanted more templates to refine the story she had planted in your head,” then he flashed Damien a tiny smirk, “Unfortunately for her, I had a surprise of my own.”
“She didn’t know, did she?” Bryant wouldn't have recognised Michael as another Guide. His shields were notoriously deceptive. Damien knew it from experience. “Your shields still make you seem like a teetering Latent!” Damien couldn’t keep a light note of accusation from leaking into his tone.
It was another moment of realisation for Damien: he had complicated feelings about Michael’s mental shields. On the one hand, by hiding him so completely, those shields had done more to keep Michael alive and safe than Damien had ever done. On the other hand, they were hiding him. The Sentinel in Damien wasn't too pleased about it.
“I know,” Michael said, smugly. It wasn’t a bad look on him either. “I keep them that way.”
“Jesus, Michael,” Damien exclaimed, seeing the man in a whole new light suddenly, “You did the same thing with Mahmoud, and that freak, Rana–”
“And like I said, I had a lot more information, control and weapons in my arsenal than any of you knew.”
Michael had a point, and he had wielded the element of surprise brilliantly to their advantage both times.
“But, why all the hiding?” Damien asked. He was surprised that even Michael’s own Unit didn’t know about the change in his status.
“Mainly because I didn't know who targeted you and me,” Michael replied, “When I learned we were going to meet again, I had no idea what it would do to you if you realised I was your Guide. I wasn’t prepared to take that risk while we were in the field…”
Damien understood his caution and was grateful for it. But there was also a faint note of self-consciousness in his tone that Damien couldn’t ignore. “That's not all though, is it?” He prodded.
“It never occurs to anyone that I could be a Guide,” Michael said, his voice low and a little hesitant, “Anyone who probes my shields thinks I’d come online as a Sentinel. A male Guide isn’t a common thing, is it? There aren’t many like me.”
“There’s no one else like you,” Damien asserted. He was certain of it. “And no, I'm not just saying that because I’m biased. You’re a lot different than the other Guides. In the best ways possible.”
He would know. Damien had met his fair share of Guides during all those Council get-togethers he had been forced to endure every time he had gone home during leave. His mother was also a Guide. He knew what their shields felt like. Michael was a whole new, and different creature, and in Damien’s biased or unbiased opinion, Michael was a one-of-a-kind, and he was an incredible Guide.
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I’ll never be able to hide from you after a bond,” Michael murmured, not quite able to hide the pleased sparkle in his eyes or the faint rush of colour along his neck from Damien. “Not that I’d ever want to. I have no issue changing my status officially either. But, I’d rather keep my shields the way they are for the rest of the time. You’re going to have to trust me and my instincts on this.”
Michael clearly wasn’t comfortable announcing what he was to the rest of the world. Damien could understand. After everything he had been through, Damien supposed he felt safer that way. There was also the fact that Michael was effectively a unicorn even among the minority. He would definitely attract attention, both the right and the wrong kind.
“Guess that’s fair,” Damien agreed lightly, before letting his voice become serious, “And Michael, I do trust you.”
Michael nodded, smiling, and brought the discussion they had started earlier, back on track. “Regarding Bryant, the other option is that we inform the Council ourselves,” he said, going back to nibbling on his sandwich, “We face the inquiry and the trial…together.”
“You do know what that would involve, don’t you?”
The death of a Sentinel or a Guide at the hands of another Sentinel or a Guide was a serious issue unless it happened during a retribution hunt which had the Council’s blessing. Or as was in Latif's case, a globally known terrorist with a mile-long list of crimes.
Bryant’s case was different. She was a registered Guide on top of the fact that she was a CIA Station Chief for the Middle East. Depending on the circles she had moved while she was alive, a lot of people would have opinions and demands about her abrupt death.
Not that Damien had any doubts that he and Michael would be able to survive an inquiry. It was just that they would both have to live through a lot of unpleasant interrogations, mental probes, a process of testimonies, evidence and trials to get there.
“I do. I’ll back you up, either way.”
“I’d rather not have this come back to bite us in the ass when we least expect it,” Damien said, feeling quietly reassured by Michael’s simple declaration. “We should do it ourselves, get through this now, and move on with our lives.”
“Alright.”
“Just not now,” Damien added, “We’ll get out of this hellhole of a country first. Then I’ll make the call once we’re in my territory.”
“You want to do this before or after…”
“After,” Damien said resolutely, “I don’t want anything standing in the way of our bonding. We’ve lost enough time as it is.”
Michael’s crooked smile was all the agreement Damien needed. He watched as Michael uncurled out of the chair and got to his feet, stretching like a lazy cat. He grinned with a gleam in his eyes when he caught Damien staring.
Damien stood up, his hands settling on the patch of bare skin on Michael’s hips where the t-shirt had ridden high, and smiled to himself when Michael closed the distance, moulding themselves together easily.
“Stay?”
The question was a muffled sigh since it was aimed at Damien’s neck where Michael had ended up burying his face.
Damien tightened his arms around his waist, drawing him in further, not wanting to let go. “Wasn’t planning on going anywhere, Michael.”
Not now, not ever.