Little Brother

by Alicia McKenzie

Discipline.

It was more of a problem than Rachel Summers had ever anticipated when she'd begun the work of founding the Askani for a second time, here in the twenty-first century. Simply setting down rules and boundaries didn't work, not when you were dealing with a group of fractious, strong-willed psis. She had to enforce discipline, far more often than she would have liked.

In her more uncharitable moments, she wondered if training both men and women had been a mistake. In the two years since she'd returned to this time, she'd fully integrated the memories of the Mother Askani, her legacy of a future lost, into her consciousness. Her understanding of the thirty-eighth century gender roles that had led her other self to make the Askani a Sisterhood was as complete as it was going to be. Still, she often asked herself if there hadn't maybe been another reason for the exclusion, one much more fundamental.

After all, men could be so--unreasonable, at times.

The example to end all examples was currently kneeling on the floor of her bedroom, wearing heavy chains and a thoroughly disgusted expression. She closed the door, firmly, and Nathan looked up at her. The sheer force of the hostility he was projecting might have been amusing under better circumstance.

"Hey, little brother," Rachel said, making the effort to keep the words relatively light. She had the advantage. There was no point in rubbing it in, especially given what she wanted out of this. "Been a while."

Saying nothing, Nathan continued to glare at her. Rachel felt her jaw clench. He'd better not be planning to play the wounded party, here. She honestly didn't think her patience would stretch that far today.

Instead of moving further into the room, she stayed right where she was. No matter how much she itched to do it, walking over there and punching him in the head wasn't going to be productive. Before she made a move, she needed to decide how to handle this.

Nicole, the leader of the team Rachel had sent out to retrieve him, had reported - rather apologetically - that they'd had to be a little rough with him. The physical evidence of that was obvious. His clothes were torn and disheveled, there were bruises rising anywhere there were more than a few square inches of exposed skin, and blood trickled from a gash in the side of his head. The retrieval team had given him an inhibitor shot, and his eyes were just a little hazy--a good thing the T-O virus wasn't an issue anymore, or this would have been a lot more awkward. All in all, he was a sorry sight.

And she didn't feel the slightest bit of sympathy for him.

Well, maybe a little. She couldn't help it. Even if she did wish she had the Phoenix-force back just so that she could go cosmic avatar on his aggravating, self-righteous ass, he was still her brother. But the situation they were in now was his doing, not hers, and she wasn't about to let him forget that.

Nathan finally broke the silence. "You could've just told me you wanted to talk," he growled. "Or would that have been too easy?" Unfocused or not, his eyes roamed the room, assessing his surroundings, taking everything in.

Rachel knew that look. He was trying to figure out how to get himself out of here, preferably doing as much damage as possible along the way.

Time to nip that thought in the bud. She focused briefly, and the chains tightened, squeezing a noise that was half-hiss, half-groan from him. "I did," she pointed out coldly. "Or I told Nicole to, rather. She tells me you told her to go flonq herself."

"I said YOU could tell me," Nathan snapped, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment and then opening them very wide, as if he were trying to get his vision to clear. "Not send one of your empty-headed flunkies to fetch me."

"One? Give yourself due credit, Nate." Letting her lips curve in a lazy smile, Rachel advanced on him slowly, taking her time, just to reinforce the fact that she was in control here. Nathan stiffened, but managed not to flinch away as she moved around behind him and laid her hands lightly on his shoulders. "It took ten of them to drag you in here." Several of whom looked as bad or worse than Nate himself did, which was just one more reason to be annoyed with him.

"I wasn't counting," Nathan grated, shifting uneasily. Rachel could sense him wanting to pull away, but fighting the impulse. Not wanting to give her the satisfaction.

So stubborn, she thought, fighting back a flash of anger. Not that she'd expected anything else, but that wasn't much of a solace. "You mean you weren't in a position to count," she said sharply, tightening her grip on his shoulders. Warningly.

"I meant what I said," he retorted coldly.

Rachel sighed, and deliberately relaxed her grip. "You're hopeless, you know," she murmured. Time for a change of tactics. She let her hands slide downwards from his shoulders to his chest, ignoring the way he winced at the pressure against bruises. "If you'd just smiled at Nicole and told her to lead on instead, we could be sitting here drinking bad coffee and catching up. But you always have to do things the hard way--"

He jerked violently as her hands wandered a little too low. "Rachel!"

His shields wavered just a bit, but stabilized again before she could take advantage of the opportunity."Yes?" she murmured wryly. Well, it had been a good try--and just a first try. Before this conversation was over, she'd have the information she needed. She wasn't going to let it end any other way.

"What do you mean, 'yes'?" His voice sounded ever so slightly strangled, and he WAS trying to pull away this time. "What's the matter with you?"

"Oh, settle down." Rachel sighed and brought her hands up to rest on his shoulders again. "I'm not that far gone." Anger crept into her voice. "But if your opinion of me's sunken that low, I should point out that the feeling's mutual."

"Is that supposed to hurt, 'Mother Askani'?"

"I see. So this has all been easy for you, since you don't give a damn." Rachel took his medallion in her hand, feeling a fresh surge of rage at the fact that he was still wearing it, considering what he'd done in the past few months to inconvenience, harass and outright undermine the new Askani. "I would've expected you to have stuck this in a drawer somewhere," she said venomously. "Or are you trying to make some kind of point?"

"We all need our little talismans." His voice had gone cold again as he recovered his composure, and he looked up and around at her, a nasty little smirk playing on his lips. "Reminders of the good old days."

Rachel hissed and pulled hard at the medallion, snapping the chain. "Don't push me, Nate," she snapped, lashing out telekinetically as she rose.

Nathan toppled forward, hitting the floor hard. He didn't make a sound at the impact, but was painfully slow to get back up. "I'm glad we didn't grow up together, Ray," he said thickly. Blood ran freely from his nose, and he spat to clear his mouth, then gave her a unpleasant grin. "You play rough."

"There's the pot calling the kettle black," she said icily, her hand clenching around the medallion so tightly that she could feel the details of the carved Phoenix biting into her hand. "I play rough? What do you call getting my people captured by the Russian military, Nathan?"

"'Getting them captured'?" The bastard was still laughing at her. She let herself vent again, this time with the telekinetic equivalent of a fist to the jaw. Nathan reeled, but didn't go down this time. And he was still smiling. "They were sloppy, Rachel," he managed a bit disjointedly, working his jaw. "I gave them the chance to get out of there. Not my fault if they were so fanatical about getting the job done that they didn't take it."

"Let me see if I can explain this to you using small words, so you understand me," Rachel said very coldly and clearly, ignoring the rage that bubbled inside her, screaming to be let out. This was just too much irony for words. NATHAN was accusing someone ELSE of fanaticism? "We were trading technology in return for certain concessions. I want to settle some of my people in that area, and I needed to make sure they were going to be safe."

Bashkortostan wasn't the most stable place in the world, but it had definite advantages for what she had in mind. The only drawback had been the ongoing conflict between government forces and the locals. So she'd made a few contacts, offered something useful in trade, and  gotten certain assurances in return.

Not that she'd really needed cooperation from the locals, not when she could have enforced it so easily, but this way would have been so much better. The settlement would have been absorbed into local society, camoflauged by the low-level chaos.

A ideal solution. Only Nathan had sabotaged the exchange, bringing the army down on the heads of the rebels and her people alike. Now she had eight of her Askani in the hands of what passed for the authorities in that part of the world these days, and no idea whether the agreement she'd made would still hold. Six months of work down the drain, and members of her 'clan' in danger, all because he'd disapproved of what she was doing and taken matters into his own hands, instead of coming to her to talk things over, or any of the other, saner ways he could have dealt with this.

Nathan shook his head doggedly, as if trying to clear it. "Let's not play with euphemisms, Rachel," he growled. "You were ARMING them. With technology from two thousand years in the future. You would have destabilized the whole area--"

She snorted in disgust. "Nathan, don't make me laugh. I know too much about your days as a mercenary to believe you care about the stability of the area." Another possibility occurred to her, and she smiled thinly. "I'd be more likely to buy the idea that you're running around sabotaging me because I swiped some of your toys. That's it, isn't it?"

"No," he grated. "I'm running around sabotaging you because you're being a manipulative bitch, and someone needs to do it."

Not even the faintest trace of sarcasm to his words. They were completely serious, pronounced like judgement from On High, and Rachel's temper slipped again. She didn't pull the next telekinetic blow quite as much as she might have. Nathan's head snapped backwards and he crashed to the floor, the chains rattling loudly. He laid there wheezing, showing no signs of getting up.

The last of her patience ebbing quickly, Rachel leaned over and hauled him back up to his knees. "You're really doing your best to piss me off," she hissed. "Why?"

Nathan coughed weakly, sagging back against her. "H-Habit," he rasped. "Piss--people off, they make mistakes--"

"I'm not 'people', Nate," Rachel said, biting off the end of each word as she bent over him. Her hair fell forward, obscuring her vision, but she ignored it and let her hands drift down over his chest again, closing her eyes. "And you really don't want to piss me off," she murmured into his ear. He flinched, and she deliberately slid one hand lower, feeling his breath catch in his chest.

"Thought you said you weren't this far gone." His words were a bit shaky. Satisfyingly so.

Not such a bad choice of tactics after all. "I'm not," Rachel murmured. There were a few sizeable holes in the black t-shirt he was wearing. She smiled tightly and slid a hand past the ragged edge cloth and along the bare skin of his chest. "I'm making a point." His heart was beating so loud that she half-expected it to burst out of his chest, and she could sense his increasing agitation. His shields were still holding, but she was definitely making some headway. "You take too many chances, little brother. You're reckless."

He tried to pull away, but she didn't let him. "I've been going about my business, letting you tilt at windmills to your heart's content, but I'm afraid I have to draw the line when you start screwing with my plans." Coldly, she let her other hand slide just a little farther down, and he made a ragged sound that was half-protest, half-something else. Her conscience quietly keened a protest, but she stepped on it firmly. She needed past his shields, and this seemed like her best shot at the moment, to provoke an opening she could use.

Besides, he had to learn. She loved him, but she wasn't going to put up with this sort of destructive meddling on his part. "It's about control," she whispered. "What I do, I do to make my people safe. You don't like my methods?"

"Your methods or your goals," he gritted, his voice definitely shaking now. "You're--setting up your own society--your own fucking cult, again."

"Oh, I see," Rachel said softly, mockingly. "I should follow your example, then? Pay lip service to Xavier's stupid dream of integration but toss the few principles the X-Men still have out the window?" This 'fifth power' philosophy he'd been following the last couple of years was sheer idiocy. His no-holds-barred methods did not harmonize well with Xavier-style ideals of integration. There was a reason the X-Men had always done things the way they had. Rachel shook her head when Nathan showed no signs of answering her question. "You complain about my methods," she murmured, "but I don't have half the blood on my hands that you do, these last couple of years."

Nathan twisted in her grip, a snarl escaping him, and she shook his head. "Truth hurts, doesn't it?" she said a bit sadly, drawing her hands back up to his shoulders and rubbing at the tense muscles there gently. "You're lying to yourself, Nate. At least I'm building something here. You're just reacting--overreacting, little brother. I thought I taught you to be more subtle than that."

"You didn't teach me anything!" he spat, shrugging off her hands. "Try and keep your timelines straight, Rachel."

Oh, he'd walked right into this one. "What is, is," she said, with a perfectly straight face. He growled a few words in Askani questioning her sexual habits, and Rachel threw back her head and laughed.

The humor of it all faded pretty quickly, though. She sighed and let her hands fall back onto his shoulders. "Nathan," she said quietly. One more try. Maybe he'd go completely against character and decide to be reasonable after all. "I need you to tell me exactly what you did in Bashkortostan, so I know who I'm dealing with when I go to get my people out." He tensed, but Rachel went on inexorably. "I also need the details of any other operations against me that you've got ongoing."

Nathan laughed, a low gravelly sound that had no humor in it at all. "I suppose that would be terribly obliging of me, wouldn't it?" he said harshly, laying the sarcasm on thick this time. "What's the matter, Ray? Can't get in past my shields?"

Damn him for being so stubborn. "I could if I tried," she said very precisely, knowing that he would take her meaning. She reinforced the threat with a deliberately brutal poke at his shields. "Do you want me to have to resort to that?" she asked ruthlessly.

All he did was twitch. For a moment, she considered going back to her earlier tactic. At least that had gotten some sort of reaction out of him.

"I don't have much choice in the matter, do I?" Nathan retorted. "You've already demonstrated that you're the one in control here." He laughed again, and the sound was even harsher than the last time. "Tell me, are they calling your Mother Askani yet? Worshipping you?"

Rachel let go of him. "I learned from her mistakes," she said coldly. That had stung a little more than she was willing to admit. Certain memories had been more difficult to reconcile than others.

"And made worse."

She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and glared down at him. "So uncompromising. So sure of yourself." He shifted, and her eyes narrowed as she felt a flash of something odd from him, a curious mixture of emotions that made her think she'd hit a sore spot. "Only you're not really, are you?" she prodded, and watched as his shoulders sagged, just for a moment, before he got control of himself again.

Tired, she thought, examining what she'd sensed in that instant. He was tired, and not nearly as sure of himself as he seemed. "Just tell me what I need to know, Nate," she said more gently, moving around to stand in front of him again.

The walls slammed up behind his eyes, so totally that she almost heard the echo. That moment of near-vulnerability was gone as if it had never happened. "Not if you had a gun to my head," Nathan said very clearly. And smiled at her.

Rachel could have screamed. Of all the stubborn, irrational, unreasonable--

He was still smiling. Any inclination she'd had to go easy on him ran screaming for cover as she lost her temper entirely. A rage-fueled telekinetic shockwave erupted from her, before she'd even made the conscious decision to strike out at him. It threw Nathan across the room, and he hit the floor so hard that he actually bounced. Breathing heavily, Rachel stared down at him for a moment, just long enough to make sure he was still breathing.

Then, she whirled and stalked towards the door, not thinking about anything except getting out of the room and finding somewhere to vent her frustration in peace. Flinging the door open, she stepped out into the hall and nearly ran right over Nicole, who at least had the decency to look guilty at being caught eavesdropping.

"What?" Rachel snapped when the younger woman lingered, clearly wanting to say something.

Nicole blinked. "Uh--what should we do with him?" she asked tentatively. "If he won't give us the information--" She faltered, eyes widening slightly as Rachel gave her a hard look.

"He is my brother, and if there's anything to be done with him, I will do it," Rachel snapped, opening her shields and letting Nicole 'see' what would happen if anyone got overly ambitious and decided to take things into their own hands. Nicole gave a jerky nod. "Call me when he wakes up."

***

It was fifteen minutes, no more, before Nicole sent someone to fetch her with the news that Nathan was awake and coherent. Frankly, Rachel had hoped he would stay out a little a longer. She took her time returning, not having figured out exactly what she was going to do when she got there.

The whole situation was ridiculous. She should have just taken the information from his mind while he was unconscious. His shields would still have been solid - good Askani training, there, her own people could probably take lessons - but he wouldn't have been in any position to fight her. She'd have been in and out with the information, and there would've been nothing for him to do but glare and sulk.

There was just something about the idea of invading his mind that bothered her, though. Rachel laughed bleakly. Right. Smacking him around telekinetically was all right, but forcing her way through his shields wasn't. Her idea of morality had gotten particularly bizarre, these last couple of years.

Nicole was standing outside the bedroom door, expression carefully neutral. Ignoring her, Rachel swept through, shutting the door firmly behind her as she donned her best imperious demeanor.

Inside, Nathan was sitting up, more or less. Slumped against the wall, he watched her closely as she came in. There was something in his posture that made her think of a wounded animal. A cornered wounded animal.

She pushed the thought out of her mind. "Headache?" she asked crisply, noticing the way his jaw was set and how he was narrowing his eyes against the light, as if it hurt.

"Fuck you," he rasped.

"Manners," she said, rattling his chains telekinetically, just to remind him that she was still the one in control here. "You keep talking to me like that and I'm going to lose my temper with you again."

Nathan's eyes narrowed further, and his lip curled in something a little too close to disgust. "You're not going to beat it out of me, you know."

"The information? I wasn't planning to." Rachel knew him too well to imagine that sort of tactic could ever work. Besides, she'd break before he did, if she ever tried it. She knew her own limits.

"Not the information. The--impudence." He straightened a little, the movement causing him obvious pain, and gave her a ghastly smile. "Isn't that what it's about? If the information was all you really wanted, you'd have taken it while I was unconscious."

Damn him. He was too fucking perceptive at times.

"But you want to discipline me too, don't you? Teach me my place, when it comes to the two of us." The smile vanished from his face, and there was something close to open hatred in his eyes as he watched her. "The Mother Askani commands, and the Askani'son obeys." He spat the words out, as if they'd left a bad taste in his mouth.

She could almost feel his anger, reaching out to her, tugging at her. Almost inviting her to taste it, so that she'd know she wasn't the only one angry--

--hurting, here. "Maybe I do," Rachel murmured, turning away. "Maybe I think I have the right."

Bad choice of words. Not the right, the responsibility. All the lives the Mother Askani had blighted weighed heavily on her conscience--his, most especially. One of the most horrible of those memories that were not-quite-hers was the recollection of standing in his mind with him when he was fourteen years and dying of the T-O virus, and telling him that he would never have a home.

The mistakes her other self had made haunted her nightmares. Why else did he think she'd taken the new Askani in the direction she had, made them outsiders in more than just name? The only way for people like them to find safety and happiness was to be in the world, not of it--to live in peace, outside the boundaries of a baseline human society that would never accept them. To believe otherwise, to cling to a hopeless dream, was wishful delusion, nothing more.

So maybe she did have something--a right, a responsbility, an obligation, whatever name you wanted to put to it, to repair the mistakes she could. To change him, break the mold she'd cast him in. And if she had to use the moral authority the Mother Askani had possessed over him against him, to help him--then she'd do it. Without a second thought.

She was so lost in her own thoughts that she nearly missed the sensation of power gathering. In the end, she had only enough time to act reflexively, throwing up a shield as Nathan exploded up off the floor, the chains flying away from him in pieces.

"I see I should have given you another inhibitor shot," she grated. His telekinesis licked at the edges of her shield like living flame, and she took a step backwards, altering the shield, wall to wave-front, passive to active defense. He might be stronger than she was, but she had the memories of nearly a century's worth of experience.

"Forgot how fast I metabolize drugs, did you?" Nathan growled. His telekinesis flared, probing for weaknesses in her defenses, and she could sense him doing the same telepathically, concentrating just as hard on trying to get the upper hand on that level. She matched each probe, reflecting it right back at him.

The door flew open. "Rachel!" Nicole shouted. There were others in the hall behind her, summoned by the commotion. The cavalry. Rachel reacted instantly, giving the only order she could.

"Out! All of you, stay out!" she snapped. "This is between me and him." She must have inculcated some sort of obedience into them after, because they didn't come rushing into the fray. One flicker of telekinesis - all she could spare - slammed the door shut, and then she was free to focus on him again.

"When did you start hating me, Nate?" she demanded, circling slowly. He matched her movements, mirrored every little jab she took at his shields, just as she'd done with him. He was a frighteningly fast learner in some respects. "You time-jumped across all those millions of years to save me from Gaunt--"

"That was before you threw away everything we believed in!" he snapped. His left eye was blazing, golden fire spinning out from it in what looked bizarrely like a pinwheel. "You gave up, Rachel! And now you're hiding in the shadows and weaving webs--"

He couldn't have sounded more incensed if she'd confessed she'd been leading the Askani in ritual murders. "What WE believed in? Listen to yourself, Nate!" She'd think he was going naive in his old age, if she didn't know there was more to it than that. "What the fuck is wrong with what I'm doing? I want to live in peace and protect my people! That's all!" She threw the words at him, willing them to penetrate his thick skull. Why couldn't he understand? Why was he so fixated--all right, so she knew the answer and it was to some extent her fault, but why couldn't he SEE?

She saw an opening and reached for it, only to have him spot what she was doing and meet her halfway. The air blazed gold and rose between them as they grappled, seeking leverage. Rachel tried to push through his shields, into his mind, while she had him occupied on the physical level. She connected, and heard/sensed/felt something crack, but his reaction was surprisingly swift. He disentangled himself, almost ripping himself free, and pushed her away hard.

He was retreating, she realized as she watched him stumble backwards, clearly dazed. She'd managed something there, created a vulnerability, maybe.

Now all that was left to do was exploit it. "You and your fifth power! Did you ever stop to think you've got it all wrong, Nate?" she challenged him.

"Stop talking and fight!" he snarled, a nimbus of golden light forming around him and then reaching for her, great golden claws ready to tear into her shields and pull them apart.

Her turn to stumble backwards, dizzied. Damn, there'd been an awful lot behind that attack. "Oh, did I hit a sore spot?" she asked, breathing hard. He'd been too aggressive there. Her words were having some effect. "The dream's just that--a dream! Even if it wasn't, you can't make it real by trying to beat the world into submission!"

Features twisted with strain, Nathan launched another attack, a stronger one she was barely able to parry, even though it came in slower.

His reaction time was definitely slowing. Sheer rage alone was driving him, she suspected. If she could just push him far enough, have him wear himself out, she'd have her opening. His usual stamina wasn't an issue, not with the battering he'd already taken today.

"How can you have all her memories and still understand so little?" he shouted at her, his voice actually breaking. "She would have hated what you're doing!"

He was defending the Mother Askani. The self-loathing she'd felt when she'd first examined those memories from the future came rushing up to choke her, and only anger let her drive it back. "You never understood anything!" she cried. "Don't you get it? You weren't supposed to understand--you were just supposed to do what you were told!"

For a moment she was overwhelmed by the memories, unable to separate her own emotions from those of the Rachel who had been. "Do you have any idea how much she hated herself for that?" she choked out, finally managing to push them back into the distance. "For leaving you at Sanctity's tender mercies?" She hesitated, then threw in the trump card, knowing what effect it would have. "For creating Stryfe, knowing what he'd do?"

The taboo subject. Even when she'd first come back with all of the Mother Askani's memories, he hadn't asked, and she certainly hadn't volunteered anything.

He had to know why she'd chosen to break her silence on that now, of all times. Even so, it didn't seem to make much difference. Her verbal sally had precisely the effect she'd expected.

"Shut up!" Nathan screamed and threw everything he had at her, too enraged to focus, let alone direct his attack.

It was a killing level of psi-energy, enough to annihilate her mind on impact--if it had connected. But she'd known what her words would provoke, and was ready, interlacing her TK shield and her own mental defenses to shunt the energy away, rendering the attack nearly harmless.

It caught him off-guard. Before he could try again, she straightened, her mind singed and stinging but all her own anger gone. "The dream's a death-trip, Nathan," she said wearily. "Didn't what happened with Apocalypse show you that?"

And then she launched her own counter-attack. He'd put all his reserves into that last blast, and while his defenses were still there, they were weakened. It was almost too easy to demolish them and smash his mind down into semi-consciousness. She even had enough telekinesis left to catch him as he crumpled, and lower him more gently to the ground.

Rachel gave herself a moment to catch her breath. Her legs were trembling, as if they were debating whether or not to hold her. That had been--strenuous, as far as psionic duels went. If only she'd thought to have Nicole give him another inhibitor shot--well, what was done was done.

She went over and knelt down beside him, cradling his head on her lap. "I think you know I'm right," she said, wheezing just a little. "I just don't think you want to admit it, because you don't have anything else."

Slipping into his unshielded mind, she extracted the information she needed as delicately as she could. It was some consolation to see how spur-of-the-moment his decision to interfere had been, how uncertain he still was about all of it, despite his bravado earlier.

Uncertainty. It ran so deep in his mind, everywhere she looked. Weariness and disillusionment were wrapped around his thoughts like thick gray fog, bleak and cold to the touch. Biting her lip, Rachel sifted gently through two years worth of memories, all of it only reinforcing the impression of dull exhaustion. She saw how his initial conviction and determination had been worn away by the constant, fruitless conflict. No confidence in his methods or his goal, no faith that he'd created any change for the better in all of this. Not even a glimmer of hope.

So tired. Tears blurred her vision, and she stroked the side of his face gently. She'd known this would happen. It wasn't merely that he'd been obsessed with his mission. His whole personality, his whole sense of self-worth, had been tangled up in it, and when Apocalypse had died--

This fifth power nonsense, his whole life for the last two years, had been him grasping for something to fill that void, some cause to reconstruct himself around. Deep down, she could sense the same desire she'd had to 'lay down the sword' and just live, but he hadn't known how to do it.

So he'd turned to Xavier's dream, idealism in its purest form, and tried to 'reconcile' it with his own realism, his soldier's mentality. Only it hadn't worked, and he knew it, she could SENSE his despair at the knowledge, even thought it was buried deep, as if he'd been trying to hide it from himself.

Hiding from himself. Hiding from the truth. Rachel took a deep, shaky breath and reached out tentatively, stripping away the defenses he'd created against his own emotions, peeling away the layers of denial and stubbornness one by one and bringing the truth up to the surface of his mind where he couldn't ignore it, couldn't wish it away. Forcing him to face it.

"Let go," she said hoarsely as he started to struggle feebly. She overcame his resistance easily, soothing him as if he were a fretful child. "Let it go," she whispered, forcing the words out past the tightness in her throat as she took away the last of his illusions and forced him to see, to understand. "It's not real. You can't make it real."

There were tears running down his face now. She bent over, kissing him on the forehead. "Shh," she murmured. She'd be here for him. She'd help him understand. "It's all right, little brother."

fin

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