Allie's War Season Four by JC Andrijeski

from the gods. They viewed him as the wrath of the Sword incarnate these days, handling him, and his somewhat overly-taciturn moods, with a kind of reverence rather than concern for Revik himself.
    It bothered Jon, but he didn’t know what he could do about it, either.
    Anyway, after Revik’s little visit of the night before, Jon felt even more wary of approaching his brother-in-law than usual.
    Jon also knew that, despite the occasional appearances at the bar and Revik showing up at Jon’s door barely able to stand, Revik likely only drank when he got desperate. Meaning, he drank when he was already on the verge of losing control. Jon had seen Revik sober far more often than not in the past few months, perhaps as sober as Jon had ever seen him, for any extended period of time, so he knew getting drunk wasn’t Revik’s primary coping mechanism these days. Probably, he didn’t want alcohol interfering with his work.
    That also meant that, when he went for the bottle, it was because the other coping mechanisms had already broken down.
    Really, from what Jon could tell, Revik didn’t seem to want to waste time on his own mental state at all, not even to numb things, as he had in D.C. Knowing Revik, he brought the telekinesis back through the sheer power of his own will. He’d also likely been honing those skills a lot more than Jon had been privy to, meaning more than solely during his sessions with Maygar. Jon found it a lot more likely that Revik spent his ‘free time,’ such that it was, on things like that, as well as in the ring and running and whatever else...not nursing a bottle with Wreg and the other infiltrators.
    Then again, Jon probably wouldn’t know, even if he was.
    Jon hadn’t exactly been going out of his way to hang around Wreg, either.
    He knew it was hurting the other seer.
    Jon couldn’t seem to do anything about that, either, though.
    The idea of getting near Wreg now, before he’d helped Revik do whatever it was Revik would end up doing to neutralize Cass, brought up a near revulsion in him. Not a revulsion towards Wreg himself, not directly...more around the whole idea of doing anything so self-absorbed and self-indulgent as screwing around to get his rocks off, no matter who it was. Given everything going on, sex felt like it should be the furthest thing from Jon’s mind. It felt like a sick kind of betrayal to even think about it, given what Revik and Allie were going through.
    Or maybe, really, what Jon felt was guilt.
    Maybe he felt a guilt so intense it only felt like revulsion...a guilt for even letting his mind go there, no matter what his feelings for Wreg, or even how what happened to Allie and Revik might be affecting Wreg himself.
    Revik’s visit of the night before, as weirdly sexual as it had been, hadn’t lessened that feeling––if anything, it only strengthened it. Revik hadn’t just seemed desperate that night. He’d seemed like he’d lost his mind entirely, like he didn’t know who he was anymore. Even then, Jon knew exactly what lay behind his brother-in-law’s request. He’d been looking for Allie. It always came back to Allie for Revik...to find some way, any way, to connect with his wife, no matter how remote, no matter what that connection entailed.
    Jon blamed himself for that, too.
    He got the irrationality of it, in a sense.
    He knew a shrink would probably have a field day with him, explaining patiently how this was all just some wank-fest coping mechanism on Jon’s part to displace feelings of helplessness or whatever else about what Cass had done to him, using him to get to his own sister.
    Truthfully, Jon didn’t give a shit.
    He wasn’t in the mood to spank his emotional monkey on that score, or even to ask Yumi to help him ‘sort out his issues,’ as she did for a lot of the seers. He didn’t much give a shit whether the feeling had ‘merit’ or not, or what he might be displacing or not.
    He’d handed Allie to Cass.
    Even the thought of