Brothers in Life, Brothers in Death
A pop, Renfrew’s black clad body falling as Ian lifted his father bodily and threw him into the car. Pain. Blood staining the front of his heavy coat. Get father in the car, protect him. A voice screamed “Drive!” and in the heat of the moment he did not even recognize it as his own. Don’t look back, ignore your mentor lying dead on the sidewalk, nothing you can do. Just get your father to safety before you pass out.
Kenneth Irons was still reeling. His bodyguard, his friend lay dead on the New York City sidewalk, all over in an instant. Ian moved slowly, allowing him to rise from the floor of the limo where he had been thrown. “Ian, what…” he started, looking over at his son. Ian was bleeding from the shoulder, his blood spattering the upholstery like a Jackson Pollack painting, trying to sit up. “Home, instantly.” He called to the driver as he reached for his cell and dialed the house. “Dr. Immo, meet me at the house, Ian has been shot.” He reached out to his son and pulled him across his lap, holding him close as his lifeblood stained the expensive suit. Renfrew was dead… little Jamie, left lying in the street like so much refuse thrown out for the garbage man. His son was wounded; his mind still working in slow motion. Have to stop the bleeding, he thought, trying to move quickly but his limbs seemed frozen in place. He eased Ian up, removing his coat and jacket, ripping the shirt underneath. “Ian can you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.” The voice was faint, as if it were coming from a long distance. Ian, please do not die, do not leave me, the thoughts burning in his head but he could not bring them to his lips. He tore the shirt away and realized that the bullet had passed straight though his shoulder. Blood, so much blood… all the blood he had seen in his lifetime, and here it was again… the blood of his son, the blood of his birth, now the blood of his possible death, coating his hands, soaking into his jacket. Kenneth reached out and pressed his handkerchief to the wound, but it was not enough. He ripped the sleeve off Ian’s shirt and pressed it to the exit wound, pushing Ian back against the seat to keep it in place while he tore off the other one to press to the front.
“Drive faster!” he shouted to the driver.
“Father?” Ian’s voice, soft and faint. Irons let the breach of protocol go; desperately afraid he might never hear the word from his son’s lips again.
“I am here.”
“You are safe, you were not hurt?” he asked.
“No, I am well. Do not try to talk.”
“Then I have succeeded,” he said with a faint smile of pleasure, as he leaned back in his father’s arms and lost consciousness. A tear streaked down Kenneth Irons’ pale face as he looked at his son, a son who would have gladly given his life to save him and he let the tears fall for the first time in years. Do not die, Ian, please, do not die, not like this, not when I now have you with me again. Do not die for me.
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Ian regained consciousness suddenly, coming back to himself in the infirmary, Dr. Immo bending over him. His father was visible over the Doctor’s shoulder, standing calmly in the background, the only sign that something untoward had happened a certain telltale tightness around his mouth that Ian recognized from his youth. His father always appeared so calm, so controlled, but Ian knew him well enough to know that something was upsetting him. He tried to recall the events that had led him here, but everything was still a little fuzzy.
“Lie still, Ian, you have not yet recovered. You lost a lot of blood.” The Doctor placed a gentle hand on his wrist, checking his pulse and referring to his clipboard again. “You are doing well, but even with your remarkable healing abilities, it is going to take a few days.”
“Sir?” his voice sounded a bit weak in his own ears. Blood loss? He tried to put events together again. He accompanied Irons and Renfrew to the office today, some meeting or other, while he reviewed the changes in security that had taken place while he was gone. Walking out with them to the limo, a flash, Renfrew’s hand on his arm as he fell, blood blooming like a bouquet of roses. Pain, pushing his father into the car...Nothing, everything going black. He jerked himself out of the thoughts, attempted to rise, only to be restrained, this time by his father, his hand, the scar showing clear as he pressed Ian back against the bed.
“Do not try to move yet, Ian,” the voice was calm, the command implicit in every note.
“Sir, Renfrew...”
“Is dead.” The words seemed to ring harsh and stark in the bare room. Appropriate somehow, the cold tone in the sterile room.
“What...” he started.
“The details are still sparse, but it appears that he stepped in the path of a bullet that was intended for me.” There was no emotion in the words, but Ian knew that it had affected his father far more than he would ever know. James Renfrew had been a fixture all his life, always a step behind Irons, quiet, more like a shadow than a real man. At the same time, he had been Ian’s role model, his inspiration. Ian tried to put the pieces together, he felt as if he had lost something, someone very important to him. The pain that he had felt upon leaving the Black Dragons’ resurfaced. In its own way, he had lost his oldest comrade in arms, his commanding officer. “It does not matter, it will be dealt with...” he realized that Irons had been talking, and turned a sharp look towards his father, for the first time in his life.
“I will deal with it.” His voice, always soft and respectful when speaking to his father, was hard, commanding. Brown eyes met startled green ones. Lowering his voice, he spoke again. “Sir, Renfrew is dead. It is my place to handle the situation now.” The respect returned to his voice, coupled with a strong conviction.
Kenneth Irons merely looked at his son, the determined gaze held within a body that was still healing from the first volley in this little encounter. Years of careful schooling, the best of training in both mind and body, genetic enhancements beyond the dreams of modern medicine, and still he was a fragile creature, and all too easily broken. He looked into the eyes of his son, and saw in them the flaw in his grand design. Ian stood ready, willing and able to take up the first of the positions that he had been trained for all his life, and now at the apex of it all, Kenneth looked into the face of his creation, his son, and flinched. For the first time in a very long time he remembered clearly the fear, the pain that came with loss. It would be so easy to tell him ‘no’, to hold back and tell him he was not ready. And to face the destruction of all that you have worked for? Could he ever recover from it, from believing that you did not have confidence in him, in his so proudly and carefully developed talent? After holding back, measuring your love and pride with the precision of a miser with his gold, would he believe that you retrained him out of love, out of fear for his loss? More likely you would break him, throw away everything you have worked for in a moment of weakness. Can you do that to him… will you? The whirling voice inside his head was almost overpowering and he bit his lip against the oncoming headache. Carefully keeping his face neutral, holding his son’s gaze he nodded. “Very well, but I trust that you will leave no trail behind you.” Words of caution, chosen with precision to convey only a small reminder, he looked down at the boy grown to a man, almost as if it had happened by magic. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered where the years had gone, and mourned for the child left behind.
“I will not fail you, Sir… or him.”
“No,” he said, allowing for a moment his pride to show. “You will not.” Ian’s eyes shone with pride and confidence at his father’s words. As always, it was such an easy thing to accomplish, when the boy required so little.
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“Sir, Dr. Immo has pronounced me fully recovered. I am prepared to attend to that other matter now.” Ian stood and addressed his father across the large expanse of the desk in his private office. Silently, he checked and rechecked everything he needed, every possible answer to whatever questions his father might make concerning his first mission for him. Stillness, always something of a challenge for him was even more difficult at this exact moment as he waited for the words which would release him to attend to this most personal of matters. While vengeance was sometimes necessary, it was not to be savored, he reminded himself. He would do nothing stupid, nothing to jeopardize the completion of his task. All that stood between him was a final word.
“Ian, show me your arm.” The words were soft, calm, and completely unexpected. For a second he wondered if he had heard correctly. He looked up to meet the clear green gaze.
“Sir?”
“Your forearm. Show it to me.” Ian bit his lip and slowly pushed up the sleeve of the black sweater he was wearing. He had known this moment would come, but had hardly expected it to be now. In his heart, he hoped his father would understand, but his body knew otherwise as he tried to keep his feelings, his fear, under strict control. The black figure of the tattoo stood out sharply against his pale skin, the contrast heightened by the bracket of black-gloved hand and black-clad arm. “What is that?” The voice was still controlled, but there was something else lurking there, some feeling that he did not want to explore. When he had gotten it, he knew his father would not approve, but it had been important, this small symbol of another life he had lived, if only for a brief time. He tried to think of an answer, some way to explain why, what had made him risk the anger and the punishment he knew were coming, for that one small sign of inclusion.
“The black dragon, sir. We all had them.” The we was understood, the reminder all too clear, speaking of things best forgotten. His father looked him in the eyes, cold, hard, disappointed.
“Attend to the other matter. When you are successful, return and we will discuss this further.” The dismissal was clear, as was the fact that this subject was far from over. Kenneth Irons never ‘discussed’ anything with anyone. It would be so easy to give in, to allow Irons to have it removed, the logistics of which he was sure that his father had already dealt with and set in motion. He would not be surprised if the doctor were standing by when he returned to the house. But this time it would not be, he would not allow it. Ian was not sure why he felt so strongly about it. Certainly he had rarely, if ever, gone against orders, but that was something to meditate on later, to concern himself with when the mission was completed. When he returned, he would have to face a bigger and much more dangerous challenge, standing up to his father.
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Sitting in front of the large fire, Kenneth Irons contemplated his son’s life, the changes he had gone through while away. There was a disturbing note of something very like jealousy in his thoughts which Irons strove firmly to quell. His own brief brush with the military had been one of disillusionment and loss. Friends, neighbors, nearly his entire class returned to the dust from which they came in some hell-bitten field in France. Himself, the sole survivor, learning too late that their deaths had been for nothing.
He looked up as he heard the soft tread of Ian’s step. “It is done?” he asked, the slight questioning note a mere formality. Irons knew his son well, was well aware that he would never have returned unless the task had been completed. It was difficult to hide the pride and relief he felt at both the accomplishment and the return. But he did so. Such was his way...always had been, always would be.
“Yes, Sir.” There was a note of excitement, an almost savage pride in his tone. He had accomplished his task, avenged his mentor, and removed a potential threat all in one simple evening’s work.
But there was something else as well. Determination, a hint of independence that told Irons that this evening’s other task would not perhaps be as straightforward as he had anticipated. He immediately began reassessing his options.
“Now, as to this other matter. You will report to Dr. Immo in the morning. I have made arrangements to have that thing removed.” A trickle of emotion slipped past his barriers, expressing itself in extreme distaste.
“I’m sorry, Sir. I will not do that.”
“Ian…” a dangerous edge in his voice. “That part of your life is behind you. Have you forgotten your duty so easily? To me, to the Wielder?”
“No, Sir. But was not the purpose to better prepare me for my duty?” A dangerous game he played, and Ian knew it, but for once the stakes were worth the risk. He could feel his father’s anger rising, but for the first time it didn’t matter. This time, there was so much more at stake. Not just his duty, this time, but his honor and that of the comrades he had left behind as well.
“That part of your life is now over.” His tone of voice more than his words conveyed the command. This was such a small thing. Why did he continue to defy a direct order? Irons could not understand, and as the pressures of loss and anger continued to build, the thought uppermost in his mind was that he could not, no would not lose his son to misplaced patriotism. “It is no longer relevant.”
“Sir, it is relevant. It will always be a part of me.” Ian’s words, spoken quietly, yet with an unexpected strength, tore through the last of his father’s control.
“So, you will continue to defy me in this?” The harsh Germanic accent came out all the more strongly for Irons’ fury, as fear and anger came together in unholy alliance. The pain of Jamie’s death, the fear at nearly losing his son, the stress of his own near-brush with death, the clash of past with present all combined to create a rage beyond logic, beyond reason.
Ian met his father’s eyes squarely, knowing full well what the likely consequence of his actions would be. But for once, he did not care. The pain would be well worth enduring for the chance to keep what had already become a cherished symbol of the world outside. That world which he was so seldom allowed to see, to experience. “I will, Sir,” he replied levelly. Ian waited for the blow to fall.
“Very well. Kneel.” His father’s voice was strangely empty, harsh with loss and pain; the shadow madness in his eyes the only clue to his state of mind.
As Ian knelt before the fire as he’d been bid, taking off his shirt in expectation of the punishment to come, he heard his father’s footsteps echoing on the stone floor as he walked away and returned. Even knowing what was going to come, Ian was still surprised at the force with which the cane cracked down across his shoulders. He shunted the pain down and away, refusing to acknowledge it. As the blows continued to fall, sweat mingled with the blood, adding a stinging torment of its own. Tears ran freely down his face, but he refused to cry out. A sound would mean surrender, and this he was determined he would not do. Death first. He bit his lip until the blood flowed freely, a small act to keep the scream contained for just a little while longer.
Death first… it might well come to that tonight, he was beginning to realize. He had never seen his father this uncontrollably angry before, and certainly never at him. But as he’d refused to back down then, he would not surrender now, no matter the cost. He held to that thought with an iron will as the punishment continued.
Suddenly, the blows stopped, as Ian heard the clattering of bamboo on stone. Ian continued to kneel, unmoving. He would not give in to the pain that was already starting to creep through the numbness, not here. He waited stoically for his father’s next words, torn between the overwhelming desire for forgiveness and the desperate need to hide, to lick his wounds in private.
“Leave me.” Relief and torture both. Ian rose as gracefully as he could manage, grabbed his shirt, and walked out, a certain stiffness about his movement the only visible concession to his pain.
Once back in the safety of his room, Ian stripped the rest of the way and stepped into the shower to rinse the blood and sweat away, gasping with the pain of the water touching his raw flesh. When he had finished, he stood there, letting himself drip until he was dry enough to collapse on the bed face down. Eventually his thoughts of anger, confusion, and fear stilled and he fell into an exhausted sleep.
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Irons walked over to his throne-like chair and fell heavily into it, angry, frustrated, and ashamed. He sat staring at the fire, trying to regain some sense of equilibrium, memories assaulting him from every side. The past, colliding with the present until he could no longer have truly said where he stood. Standing in a muddy trench as the awareness of betrayal sunk into his heart and soul…working the black market to survive, watching what the war had done to what was left of his country…Shifting allegiances somewhere, his heart torn between two worlds, neither of which truly wanted him, choosing in the end to choose by not choosing; sitting in a French café drinking coffee and setting up an arms deal, while behind him, his contact from the French Resistance stood singing her heart out on the small stage, as the customers clapped and hooted their approval; a conversation with a member of the Gestapo, calm exterior belying the pounding of his heart as he explained being in a place where he logically had no business being; trading information for money and concessions through the years, steadily building his empire; holding his new-born son as his mother lay slowly dying; teaching his son the fighting arts, as much of how to guard his heart as his body; sending him away to school, then finally, to the military; secret joy as he heard the Black Dragons program was being disbanded, marred with pain as he looked on his son, changed and yet not, marred with fear as the shot rang out and his son fell into him, blood seeping through the black fabric, making a darker stain…
Fear again… fear that he would lose his son, anger at the fact that it appeared, in some ways, that he already had… and finally, the sickening realization that, in this one moment, he had done what he had sworn he would never do…he had struck his son in anger. The thin lines scarring his own back seemed to burn anew at the shame.
“That was not well done.” Irons jumped, startled, to see the figure of his steward standing there, disapproval written in every line of his body.
“I will deal with my son in my own way,” he said sharply, trying to regain his lost composure. Whatever doubts he might have about his own behavior tonight, he would keep them to himself. And as respected a position as the man had in his household, it was not Wilson’s place to criticize his employer, certainly not in this manner.
Wilson moved to stand directly in front of him, leaving him no room to maneuver. “Not this time. I have bitten my tongue many times over the years, but this time I will not. You crossed the line and you are wrong in this.” There was a fierce look in the old soldier’s eyes, a return to his martial past, that held Irons pinned. “What were you expecting?” he continued harshly. “You sent your son away into a situation that you had barely prepared him for and expected him to fit in. What would you have preferred, failure? Not in all the years I’ve known you. You sent him to be part of a team, and a leader of men. To be effective, he could have done nothing else.”
“He is no longer a part of that life. Why does he continue to defy me?”
Wilson rolled up his sleeve, showing Irons the tattoo of his own regiment. “Once brothers, always brothers. That is why. And that is why you stand to lose everything that you have worked towards… made him suffer for. With Jamie dead, Ian will be the one guarding your back now. Would you have someone there who cannot stand up to you? That could get you both killed.” Wilson lowered his voice further, a small bit of compassion softening the harsh words. “He is not like them. Do you think Daniel would have wanted this, or Jamie? Is this the legacy you would leave them?”
“I won’t risk losing my son now… Renfrew…”
“Then fix this. Now. Before it’s too late.”
Irons bowed his head, saying so softly that Wilson could barely hear, “I would… but I don’t have the words….”
“Then find them.” Wilson turned his back on Irons and walked away.
Irons sat by the fire for a few minutes more before reaching a decision. My son has learned his lessons too fast and too well, he thought, with just a trace of bitterness. But try as he might, he could not deny the truth of Wilson’s words. He got up and left the room.
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Irons slipped quietly into his son’s room to find him lying face down on the bed. He sat next to his son, noticing with shame and horror the extent of the torn flesh. He opened the small jar he had brought with him, setting the lid down on the nightstand beside the bed. Scooping up some of the contents with his fingers, he began to spread them carefully over the ravages of his son’s back, using the lightest of touches. Feeling his son’s inadvertent flinch at even this gentlest of pressures, Irons had to look away for a moment to hide the tears that started to his eyes at the knowledge of what he had done… and of what he had almost done. He knew with a cold certainty that if he had not finally realized the depths to which his anger had gone and forced himself to stop, he would have beaten his son into unconsciousness… or death, for his unrelenting defiance. He continued his work, disgusted with himself. He had never struck his son in anger. Until now.
Ian woke from pain-filled dreams at his father’s touch and froze. What was Irons doing here? The cooling numbness that was spreading over his back as his father worked, answered his unspoken question, although the why still eluded him. Confused, angry, and hurting, Ian did not move or acknowledge the gift of the rapidly diminishing pain, although a traitorous part of his mind was grateful for the kindness. When he had been caned for the first time at fifteen, for sneaking out to see Sara after her father had died, it had been Wilson who had come to him afterwards. So why the change now?
As if in answer, Irons began to speak. “I offer this not as an excuse, for there is no excuse for my actions tonight, but as a poor attempt at explanation. I have a story to tell you. It is up to you whether you choose to accept it or not…”
As his father told his tale, Ian finally allowed himself to give in to his father’s touch, to accept the gifts that he was being offered… surcease from pain, his father’s apology, his time, and his unspoken love. His body slowly relaxed. Irons felt the change and once again had to look away to keep the tears from falling.
When he had finally finished both his story and his work, Irons replaced the lid on the jar and set it on the nightstand. He rose and looked down at his son with a mixture of pain and pride.
“You’ve won, Ian… this time,’ he said simply, fully aware that his son was awake and listening. Irons turned and walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.
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Outside, in the hallway leading back to the library, Irons found Wilson standing there as if waiting for him. Wilson nodded his approval and fell into step beside his employer. “Your son is very strong, sir. He does not give up his loyalties easily.”
Irons stopped at that, and Wilson as well. Irons met his eyes, giving a small half-smile in acknowledgement both of the point and of the unspoken reassurance. “Thank you.” Wilson nodded again and went his own way. Irons returned to the library, to sit by the fire and think… of then, of now… of brothers in life, and brothers in death.