The Síochán Ch. 06

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"Lucas, you have to do something!" Kincaid ground out angrily, appearing in the meeting room with a dark scowl on his face.

The blond Síochán looked up from the book he was reading and frowned. He knew immediately what the other man was referring to. He was just the last in a long line of other Síochán to accost him with practically the same words, all pertaining to the same thing. Summer.

The level of depression radiating from the little blonde was enough to wrench at the hardest of hearts. It had been almost two decades since her last meeting with Nathaniel and nothing seemed to be able to pierce the carefully constructed shield she had placed around herself. Lucas had tried on many occasions only to be politely thanked for his concern and then ignored.

He sighed and put his book down. "I've tried, Kincaid. Do you think I like seeing her like this anymore than the rest of you do? Frankly, I am sure that it's wounding me much more deeply than it's wounding any of you."

The fact that it was wounding the other Síochán at all actually gave him some hope. If Summer could affect them when they were so used to being cold and immovable then maybe her pain and misery would not be for nothing.

"You could visit Nathaniel, talk to him, beat the living crap out of him! Do something, anything to make him see sense!" Kincaid growled furiously throwing himself down into one of the chairs. "This isn't right, Lucas. Summer hasn't smiled properly in nearly a decade. She just does her assignments and then hides in her room. She doesn't interact with us on a personal level anymore!"

Lucas couldn't help smiling as he regarded his friend. "You do know you're supposed to be Detachment," he observed with more than a hint of amusement in his tone. "I would have thought you would have been relieved that she didn't want to interact with you, especially as she's being very emotional at the moment."

Kincaid snorted and looked away, his long brown hair partially covering his face for a moment. When he turned back he wore a troubled frown. "I don't understand why this matters to me, Lucas," he admitted. "I find myself missing our weekly chess games. Her grief is somehow managing to upset me. How is this possible?"

"Because she's worked her way into your cold, icy heart?" Harlan laughed softly appearing at the side of his chair. "My, has even the mighty Kincaid fallen to our little angel's charms? I never thought I would see the day."

"Harlan," Lucas sighed a hint of warning in his voice. He really didn't want Kincaid becoming any more aggravated than he already was. A perfect eyebrow arched in surprise when the brown haired Síochán appeared to nod his head in agreement at Harlan rather than react negatively.

"Harlan, is right," Kincaid sighed. "I.....I care about Summer." It sounded as if it was the hardest thing he had ever had to admit to but he seemed almost relieved to have voiced the words even if he was still puzzled by his feelings.

"It would appear we each have been drawn under her spell," Marcus agreed from the sofa beside Lucas. "The question is what are we going to do about the situation?"

The room fell silent as they all looked at each other waiting for someone to speak first.

"Perhaps we should make this official?" Harlan suggested moving to sit in the chair beside Kincaid. "Declare a meeting and 'limit' the participants? Where is Summer anyway?"

Lucas frowned slightly, not liking the idea of having a secret meeting about the little blonde. "She's on assignment at the moment," he sighed, pursing his lips and wondering if he could talk them out of this 'discussion'.

"Then this is the perfect time," Anton said quietly, appearing on one of the sofas, stretched out to his full length with his eyes closed. "I've closed off the meeting room in case Summer returns," he added.

Lucas' frown deepened as he regarded Anton almost suspiciously. The others didn't seem to notice the look that passed between the two Síochán when Anton opened his eyes to meet Lucas' intense gaze. "It's time," Anton said cryptically and a flash of fear crossed Lucas' face and he swallowed hard.

"What's time?" Marcus asked quietly, his eyes flickering between the two of them, sensing Lucas' sudden tension.

"For decisions to be made," Anton answered with a small smile tugging at his lips. "I propose we remove Summer from the Síochán. She is clearly a liability and causing too much conflict within us."

There was a stunned silence in the room for a second before everyone jumped up and started shouting over each other, everyone other than Lucas and Anton.

"What the fuck do you mean by 'remove?'" Kincaid ground out harshly.

Harlan's dark skin appeared to darken even further and his eyes flashed angrily. "Have you taken leave of your senses, Anton?" he demanded, his tone high pitched with outrage.

"Don't even think about it!" Marcus hissed, his hands fisting into balls at his sides as he glared at the reclining Síochán with rage on his face.

Lucas bit his lip and watched his friends' reaction to Anton's announcement, his own heart thumping heavily in his chest. He waited to see what Anton would do, his fear ratcheting up a notch. He knew he was powerless to stop this if it went to the extreme. He would have to take a side, and Anton knew that.

He rose slowly and signalled the others to calm down. It took a few moments for the room to subside into silence. "We have already lost Nathaniel, Anton," he said calmly. "We cannot afford to lose Summer too. We need her, even you said so yourself."

Anton sat up slowly, his expression carefully neutral as he looked around each of the Síochán before him, his eyes boring deeply into them as they swept past onto their next target. "Yes we needed Summer but I believe she has served her purpose now."

The others looked between them, suddenly sensing something was not as it should be. Despite the lack of hierarchy within the Síochán ranks, they had all looked to Lucas as the final say in matters because he was Justice, because he was the first of them and had the first Scrying Fountain. Now it appeared that Lucas was looking at Anton as if the power rested with the other man.

"Surely this is something which can be discussed further," Lucas answered quietly, his gaze never leaving Anton's, his big body tense.

Anton sighed and rose from the sofa, coming to stand in front of the blond Síochán and placing a hand lightly on his chest. "The time for discussion is over, Lucas. There is only the decision of what to do about Summer left now. You have always trusted me, my friend. I ask that you trust me this one last time."

"What the fuck is going on?" Kincaid hissed furiously, his eyes intent on the two men as he realised there was a subtle shifting of power going on within the room, that Anton was something more than any of them had previously realised. "Just who or what the fuck are you, Anton?"

The question hung heavy on the air as Lucas slowly relaxed and turned to face the others at the brief nod he received from the man before him.

"You all believe that I am the first of the Síochán," he began quietly, a rueful expression on his face. "I dare say that technically I am. Before me there was no Síochán."

That brought startled looks from the others. How could there be no Síochán? How had balance been maintained if there was no Síochán to do so?"

Lucas sighed deeply and moved back to the sofa, sitting down and waiting for everyone else to take their seats. He had to trust in Anton. He had been doing it his entire existence in this life and he hadn't let him down yet.

"I was a young when I 'died' of a lung disease," he explained softly. "I didn't want to die and knew that I was. I had a wife, a young son whom I adored to distraction. I didn't want to leave them but it was inevitable. After I died, I woke up here, in a blinding white room. I'm sure you all remember the feeling of first waking in this realm. I was confused, angry, disorientated. Anton was here to meet me, to explain what had happened, to welcome me to the new world of the Síochán."

Startled gasps filled the room and all eyes turned to Anton. "But you have the third Scrying Fountain," Harlan stammered out, his confusion clearly showing on his face.

Anton shrugged. "I don't use it, Harlan," he sighed with a little smile tugging at his lips. "I only made the Fountains for you because you needed them to help you perform your tasks."

"What are you?" Kincaid asked again, his voice hard with suspicion.

"I don't have a name as such, Kincaid," the other man answered. "I am just Anton. For millennia I have watched over humanity, searching for a sign that there is something worthy within the tortured souls and being greatly disappointed that their need to kill each other, to hurt and maim each other, seemed to be the driving force of their existence. After a while I grew weary of it and considered leaving them to their own devices to allow them to destroy themselves. Then one day I saw Lucas and I felt something deep within me, almost a tiny spark of hope. I could see that he would leave the world below much too soon so when the time came I brought him here to my realm."

Anton paused and smiled at Lucas before he turned his eyes back to the group.

"Are you God?" Harlan asked almost reverently, stunned by what he was hearing but fascinated by it too.

Anton laughed softly and shook his head. "He's on a completely different realm, my friend," he chuckled softly. "I am not The God, no, though I suppose if you must give me a title then I suppose demigod would be most fitting though not entirely accurate. It's the best I can come up with to satisfy your needs."

"So, when you brought Lucas here, you didn't really need him to help you in anyway?" Marcus queried a thoughtful expression on his face. "You are more than capable of keeping the balance on your own."

"Precisely," Anton smiled, his face beaming with pleasure as if he were a proud parent, exulting in his child's intelligent questions. "I brought Lucas to me because I wanted a reason to care, to keep working hard to shape humanity into what it could be. I had become disillusioned, ready to move on to some other task to wile away my time."

He turned to smile sadly at Lucas. "I didn't count on how strong his grief would be though. He missed his family so much, spent endless hours at the Scrying Fountain I made him, watching their lives move on without him. I actually found myself weeping for his pain, he touched me so greatly. It gave me hope too. If such love and devotion could exist in one pure soul then maybe my work wasn't all in vain."

Lucas swallowed hard and looked straight ahead, the memories of his first few years with Anton pressing down on him, the feeling of grief rising strong within him, echoing what he knew Summer must be currently feeling. He had to swallow hard a second time to contain his emotions.

"It was at this point that I decided maybe I was the wrong person to be making the decisions for humanity," Anton continued. "Forgive me, Lucas, for what I now do," he added as a little aside to his dearest friend.

"When Lucas came to me, distraught that he had witnessed the imminent death of his now grown son, an idea occurred to me that maybe a group of humans ascended to become the Síochán would be better guardians for humanity. I offered Lucas the chance to have his heart's desire. He accepted immediately. Nathaniel joined our ranks that very day."

Complete utter silence filled the room as Anton's words slowly penetrated stunned minds.

"Sweet Jesus!" Marcus hissed, all eyes turning to look at the blond Síochán. "Nathaniel is your son?"

A pained expression crossed Lucas' face before he nodded slowly. "Nathaniel is my son," he said dully. "I never stopped to think of the consequences of my agreement when Anton made his offer. He was my world and always had been. As a child there was no father who could have loved his son more. When I was taken from him and his mother, they were all I could think of. Seeing that his life was to be cut short too was more than I could bear. I came to Anton because I wanted to plead with him to allow Nathaniel to ascend. I knew it was a selfish request but I just couldn't stand the thought of never seeing him again. Anton understood my need, my dilemma, and he graciously granted me some absolution by offering to ascend Nathaniel before I asked for it. But I would have asked anyway and we both knew it."

The others were staring at Lucas in complete shock. How could they never have known this after all the time they had spent together? How could Lucas and Nathaniel have kept their relationship secret in all of that time?

"That is why Anton was the one to pronounce judgement on Nathaniel," Harlan finally breathed softly.

Anton smiled. "You skip ahead slightly in the tale, Harlan, but you are correct in that aspect. I would never have allowed Lucas to perform such a distasteful act against his own child." He smiled at Lucas and then sighed softly

"The idea for the Síochán continued to grow inside of me and one by one you all came to join us here. I felt such hope for humanity as you all worked so tirelessly to achieve your goals. Then one day everything changed for the worse. You all stopped trying to find reasonable solutions on how to handle the over balance of good. It felt as if you all turned to stone at the very same moment. One day you looked for options and the next you decided killing the good people was the most effective way to deal with the problem."

Anton pierced them with a sad gaze, sorrow lining his handsome face. "I knew then that I had failed. Raising you up worked only as long as you remembered your humanity. The moment you forgot that, you became cold, detached killers. Look at what you did to Summer. You all professed outrage at my words earlier but look at what you did to her."

The Síochán looked at each other and then quickly looked away. It was clear they all felt uncomfortable, as if Anton's words were forcing them to look deep within themselves and they didn't like anything they were seeing.

"You know what would have happened if she had lived," Kincaid finally said frowning deeply, not liking the way Anton was shaking his head almost wearily at him.

"If Summer had lived the only thing that would have happened was she would have fallen in love with a man who adored her, gotten married, had a long and happy life with four beautiful children." Anton countered softly.

"But those children would have had children and so on until her descendant was born," Marcus argued angrily. "You know what would have happened then. We searched the timeline. Going back as far as Summer was the quickest, least harmful way of resolving the issue."

A touch of anger crossed Anton's face and he glared at Marcus hard as he tried to justify his actions. "One wave of your hand and she would have been barren," he said very quietly. "Not an entirely pleasant solution but one which would have allowed her to live. If that was too simple for any of you to think of then why deny Nathaniel her? If you had gone to him, told him to take her with him that night he would have sired her into the life of a vampire. No meeting of her prospective husband, no children, a completely different future but one where she would have been blissfully happy. Not one of you even considered that, did you?"

The silence after his words said it all. He worked hard to dampen down his anger because he wasn't really angry with them. He was more angry with himself for failing again.

"You could have stepped in at any time, Anton," Lucas said angrily.

"I did," Anton sighed wearily. "Why do you think I spent so much time with Nathaniel, Lucas? I wanted to believe that even the most hardened of the Síochán could remember what it was to love. Nathaniel was my last attempt at teaching the Síochán that their humanity was still inside of them, that YOU had the capacity to change, to realise that you had travelled down the wrong path. If the Síochán could learn that then so could humanity and I would not be wasting my time working so hard for something that was unattainable. So I took Zeal and I whispered in his ear and he unbent slowly. He fell instantly in love with Summer and my hope was renewed once more."

Lucas frowned slowly and looked down at the floor. "Until we stepped in once more," he said quietly. "Instead of learning from Nathaniel's new found humanity we fought against it."

"Precisely," Anton frowned. "You didn't listen to him, not one of you. Oh, your reaction was slightly different, Lucas, because you loved him so much but you still didn't listen to him. You saw his wanting to leave as a betrayal. You'd quite literally moved a form of Heaven to give him this life and he was throwing it away in your eyes. He was rejecting the Síochán, my friend. He wasn't rejecting you. He loved you, admired you, looked up to you and you never saw it. You just saw what you wanted to."

"Stop," Lucas choked out burying his head in his hands as Anton's words struck home and seared his heart. He didn't need his friend to point out where he had failed his son. He was acutely aware of every wrong decision he had made with regards to Nathaniel.

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Lucas," Anton said soothingly, coming to sit beside him and placing a hand on his hunched shoulder. "Even when you erred in your judgement your love for Nathaniel still held strong. I knew you wouldn't be able to see his life end. I chose to place him so far from Summer's timeline to see what you would do. You didn't disappoint me. You gave him the will to seek out a way to live. What you placed inside his head that day was not done out of malice as the others believed. You gave Nathaniel the impetus to find a way to survive. He chose the route of becoming a vampire and you allowed him to retain as much of his Síochán abilities as you could. It didn't make him immortal but it made him stronger than most other beings to walk the world below. It gave him the longevity to meet his Summer, to know her and love her."

He smiled again and patted Lucas' shoulder. "You gave me hope too in that one kindness you did for your son. If you had remained unbent towards him then I think I truly would have given up completely. Yes, you made mistakes but you made them because your humanity was reasserting itself. Unfortunately it was the wrong kind of emotions rearing their ugly head but it was start in the right direction."

Lucas straightened, once more in control of his emotions. He appreciated Anton's attempt to alleviate some of his guilt but he knew his decisions were not so easily forgiven by Nathaniel. He didn't expect them to be.

"So now we are full circle," he said wearily. "What is your decision about Summer?" He didn't look at Anton, afraid to see what may be in this demigod's face. He didn't think he had the strength right now to fight anymore. He was raw and exposed and so very tired of everything.

"Summer has served her purpose," Anton said once more with a small sigh. "She has taught each and every one of you to love again, in many different ways. You all still need a lot of work though," he said slightly ruefully. "You all naturally assumed that I meant some harm to our little blonde beauty when I first arrived. I'm rather disappointed in that but being a teacher is such a hard task at times. It is not I who will make the decision about Summer. It is the Síochán. Her fate is in your hands. I have faith that you will choose wisely."

Anton vanished from the room leaving the Síochán reeling from all that had been revealed. A long uncomfortable silence followed as they each tried not to look at anyone too closely.

"Well, I suppose it's not every day you find out you're surplus to requirements," Marcus finally said with a little laugh. The others looked at him and he shrugged. "Anton doesn't really need us," he explained.