Evenfall (142 page)

"I haven't been with the Agency for months, Sin," Boyd said tonelessly, either not noticing Sin's confusion or not reacting to it. "I can't imagine you left the compound with permission so you're likely just endangering yourself by being here. It's... good to see you're alive, but there's no reason for you to stay. You should go back before they come for you."

Sin's eyes narrowed again, brow furrowing even deeper and he shook his head slightly. Why was he being this way? Why was he talking to him like...

"So since you're not with the Agency anymore, there's no need to see me," he said flatly.

Boyd watched him for a moment. His face was like a mask that Sin couldn't read at all. "Go back," he repeated. "I've seen you, you've seen me. There's no other reason for you to be here. You're just wasting your time."

Ice seemed to seep through Sin's veins, continuing to freeze his insides, his defensive walls desperately trying to rebuild even as he felt something crack and shatter within him. He dropped his eyes, unable to meet Boyd's emotionless stare anymore.

He focused on the carpet, not really seeing it as memories flashed through his mind once again. But he didn't want to remember any of that. He didn't want to remember them together in Monterrey or Boyd smiling at him. He didn't want to remember falling asleep next to Boyd, confiding in him, wanting him, being so fucking open with him...

He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth.

Maybe he'd imagined it all. Maybe it hadn't been real. Maybe it was some fucking extended coma-induced dream that had seemed so real, so fucking real he'd actually thought that for a few months he'd really been alive.

"Why are you being this way?"

"Because I want to be," Boyd said, something almost like anger intensifying his tone and making it turn cool. "Why are you still standing there? Do you not understand English anymore? I told you to leave. I don't want you here, I don't want you to ever come back. Go to the Agency, forget about me, forget about this place. I want you to leave. Or are you just going to stand there until they come looking for you?" The last comment came out almost derisive, as if Sin was a child too incompetent to find his own way home.

Sin opened his eyes but he didn't look up and this time his face slowly drained of emotion until it was perfectly blank. The anger he would have normally felt, the indignation, the need to lash out, seemed like something far away. Something he'd never felt before seemed to be taking the place of those needs. A pain he couldn't quite describe wound its way from the pit of his stomach to his chest and settled there. Every other feeling gave way to emptiness; a void where he had fleeting memories of pleasure.

"Are you sure?" he asked in the same quiet tone, still not looking up.

Boyd was silent for a moment. Just as Sin was about to wonder if there was a chance, Boyd's voice said quietly but firmly, "You need to go."

There was a brief silence, a tension that stretched between them, and then Sin finally looked up at him.

"Fine," he said with a finality that almost gave away his intentions.

He suddenly moved his hand to his back in a blur of motion. The moonlight glinted off steel and the familiar cocking of a gun seemed loud in the otherwise silent room. Sin didn't drop his eyes as he lifted the gun and without hesitation turned it gun on himself. Full lips parted as his finger found the trigger. He saw Boyd's eyes widen and face pale.

He threw himself at Sin, all his weight slamming into him. He shoved Sin's hand to the side violently just as the gun went off, the bullet missing Sin and the crack of the gunshot loud in their ears. Sin crashed onto his back on the floor and Boyd fell on top of him, clutching the gun and Sin's hand painfully, keeping it aimed safely off to the side.

He breathed heavily and stared at him with an expression that was wild with a mixture of alarm, desperation, and something that almost seemed incredulous. At first he seemed too shocked to be able to say much other than, "What are you--
Why..?
"

Sin's eyes were closed, face expressionless even as his mouth set into a thin line. He didn't move, didn't respond for several long moments. Although his hand remained slack, his fingers twitched around the gun.

"It's what I want," he said flatly.

Boyd stared at Sin as if he was still trying to comprehend the situation, but the answer he received only served to increase the emotions already present. He had both hands on Sin's hand and the gun, his fingers tightening against Sin. He shook his head, alarm and frustration intermingling in his expression and voice.

"No, you can't want that," Boyd said, although his tone made it sound as though he was trying to convince himself. "Why would you want that?"

There was no response for a moment but then Sin opened his eyes and locked gazes with Boyd. He opened his mouth to answer but his lips trembled slightly, eyebrows drawing together. He abruptly turned his face away from Boyd, masking his expression in the shadows.

"What do I have to live for if I go back to the way everything was before?" His hand twitched again as fought the urge to lift the gun. He never finished the motion; he couldn't do it with Boyd so close to him and the weapon.

Boyd's eyebrows twisted up and his eyes were intense on Sin. He parted his mouth as if he was going to say something, his expression wavering before he looked down abruptly.

"Give me the gun," he demanded, yanking on the weapon.

Sin didn't let go and Boyd just pulled harder, trying to pry Sin's fingers away while keeping it safely aimed away from the both of them. They struggled over it but the moment Sin realized Boyd wasn't going to give up, he relaxed his hand. He didn't want to unintentionally injure Boyd with their hands scrabbling so close to the trigger.

Within seconds, Boyd had pulled the gun away, released the magazine and tossed it one way before he threw the empty gun in another. He stared after where the gun had skittered across the floor and hit the wall, his eyes narrowed, expression dark. He sat back, almost straddling Sin; the tension in his body was obvious from the way he held himself but at the same time he seemed to be shaking slightly, his chest moving quickly from exertion.

"Sin, you can't--" he started, then shut his mouth. "There has to be something for you to live for. You always found reasons before."

"Something to live for?" Sin asked, incredulity and outrage moving through him. "What the
fuck
did I ever have to live for, Boyd? Being at the mercy of Connors and Vivienne and everyone else in that place? Being forced to kill decent people? Being locked in a box and
an
apartment full of cameras which is just a bigger fucking version of that box where I couldn't sleep or do anything but sit in a corner and wait for the next day to start so it can be the same shit all over again?"

He scoffed in disgust, glaring up at Boyd. "Or maybe you meant the fact that every person that looked my way treated me like a fucking animal that needed to be controlled? And I had nothing else so I didn't know there was anything else. So I just went along thinking that was the way shit was and that was the way it would always be. That that was the way it was supposed to be, because that's what they told me for my entire life."

Boyd leaned back further, his expression turning pained. "Sin..."

"What do you want me to do? I'm not--" Sin broke off abruptly and grit his teeth, swallowing hard as he tried to look away. He tried not to let Boyd see the way he was starting to lose all shreds of control, but he couldn't.

Emotions overwhelmed him. The complete disbelief that after everything, after he'd gone so far down a path he'd never been on for Boyd-- with Boyd-- he was being discarded.

It made his chest tighten, his throat close up and suddenly everything looked blurry.

"I don't want to go back to the way I fucking was. I don't want to go back to being alone and having to be nothing but a weapon. I don't want to pretend that I don't--" He stopped again and realized with a vague sense of humiliation that he was about to display the ultimate form of human weakness.

"I can't do it without you," he grit out. "I won't."

Boyd's eyebrows drew up in the center and his lips parted. His eyes were intense on Sin's face and they seemed to glint faintly in the light. His hand started to rise but then his fingers twitched, curled in on themselves, and his hand dropped to his thigh. He looked away, his eyebrows drawing down and expression somewhat closing off.

"Sin, it can't be that way anymore. You have to forget me."

 
The words made something in Sin snap and suddenly he was on his feet. He grabbed Boyd by the neck, dragging him up and slamming him against the wall with a force that caused the ceiling light to shake. Uncontrollable anger coursed through him, feeding an old need for violence that hadn't surfaced in such a long time that it seemed like that dark part of him was hissing with a phantom voice. Telling him to hurt, to destroy the being that was causing him these startling, unbridled feelings. The person that was threatening the thin thread of sanity that had thickened and stabilized over the past year.

For a moment he wanted to listen. For a moment he wanted nothing more than to pound his fist into Boyd's face until he realized why that was such a fucking stupid, hurtful thing to say-- until he realized how selfish he was being, how fucking, how incredibly--

A growl of frustration escaped him and his hands tightened violently. Boyd's eyes met Sin's and his hands jerked as if he was about to bring them up but he didn't move them. He didn't touch Sin or resist.

"Then why did you
do
this to me?" Sin shouted, eyes flashing with the kind of black fury that usually led to something wilder, something more out of control. He was breathing hard, not even trying to hide the fact that he was crying, not even trying to mask the frustration and hurt as his fingers dug into Boyd. "Why did you fuck my head up and fucking make me believe it was okay to act like-- to fucking feel like a normal human if you were just going to drop me when things got too fucking hard for you to handle? Why did you lie to me?"
His voice wavered and he looked down abruptly, at last making some vain effort to hide the shameful tears that tracked down his cheeks even as he continued to pin Boyd against the wall. "I wish I could hate you. God, I wish I could fucking kill you for doing this to me. Why couldn't you just leave me alone if it was going to be this way?"

Boyd couldn't seem to respond at first; he stared at the tears and, after a moment, brought his hands up to shakily curl around Sin's wrists. His own eyes seemed to shine in the dim light. "I didn't lie to you."

Sin jerked his hands away from Boyd's touch and released him abruptly, letting the other man drop to his feet where he slumped against the wall. Sin turned his back on his partner, his former partner, and covered his face with his hands. He tried to regain his composure; tried to get himself under control.

"You did," he said after several long moments of tense silence. After he'd finally regained complete control over himself and had quieted the phantom and anger. "You said you wouldn't give up and you have."

"I didn't give up," Boyd said quietly. "Not on you." Sin remained faced away from him and even though he dropped his hands, he continued to stare at the floor blankly. He didn't even know how to respond when everything that was happening seemed to point to the contrary.

"Then what do you call this?" Sin stopped and shook his head. "Don't play this game with me again. Don't act like I should know what you're thinking when your actions and words are saying something entirely fucking different."

At first Boyd didn't say anything. He stepped forward and stopped right behind Sin, lifting one hand to hover over his shoulder, hesitating a moment before he touched him. Sin tensed and Boyd withdrew his hand immediately, remaining quiet before he released a short burst of breath.

"Sin-- I can hardly believe you're here. After months of hearing nothing, I knew you had to be dead. I thought even if you weren't, you would hate me." There was a pause, heavy with unspoken words. "But you're alive and that's incredible. And it's even more reason why you shouldn't be here. They're watching; they'll know you're here. You're not safe. They can't have let you off compound so the very fact you're here is a risk not worth taking. I swear I don't mean to hurt you, it's just... There's no point to this. It's better for you to go."

Sin opened his eyes but he didn't turn around, still didn't look at Boyd. He just stood there for a moment before finally moving to sit on the edge of the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees so that he could put his head in his hands. He had a throbbing headache and it was becoming difficult to see straight. The edges of his vision were dimming and spots danced before his eyes, making it impossible to focus entirely. He rubbed his temples idly, trying to gather his thoughts, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do now and not coming up with a very good answer.

"I can't even..." He trailed off for a moment and winced, gritting his teeth as the pain intensified. "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about, Boyd. Why are you even saying this? I don't understand what any of this has to do with anything. Who cares if they're watching? You think I'm afraid of that? Just tell me why you think I should stay away from you, why it's 'better for me.'"