Chapter 22: Two Fathers

Chapter 22: Chapter 22: Two Fathers

Ren sat alone on the edge of his bunk for a long time after Alouis left, one hand still pressed against his cheek, watching the swelling grow more pronounced with every passing minute, the skin hot and tender under his fingers. He didn’t bother getting up to check it in a mirror. He didn’t need to. He could feel it well enough, the ache spreading slow and deep beneath the surface, a physical reminder of exactly how little his life here was worth to the man who’d just walked out of the room.

’My father would never hit me,’ he thought, and the thought arrived so suddenly, so unexpectedly sharp, that it caught him off guard entirely, cutting straight through the fog of exhaustion and pain currently occupying most of his attention. ’My actual father. Back home. He never once raised a hand to me in my entire life, not even when I deserved it, not even the time I wrecked the car three weeks after getting my license and cost him half a year’s savings in repairs. He just sat me down and asked if I was okay first, before he even asked about the car.’

The memory arrived uninvited, vivid in a way most of his old life had started feeling increasingly distant and faded since waking up in this body, his father’s voice steady and worried on the phone that night, are you hurt, forget the car, just tell me you’re okay. Ren pressed his palm harder against his stinging cheek, and something in his chest ached in a way that had nothing to do with the bruise forming there.

’I wonder what he’s doing right now,’ Ren thought, and the question settled over him heavy and strange, because he’d spent so much of the last week simply trying to survive whatever new disaster this world kept throwing at him that he hadn’t once let himself sit with the actual, full weight of what had happened back on Earth. He was dead there. Actually, genuinely dead, hit by a truck on an ordinary street while reading a stupid novel on his phone, and somewhere back in that world his father was almost certainly grieving a son who wasn’t coming back, who’d simply gone out for instant noodles one evening and never come home at all.

’He’s probably drinking,’ Ren thought, the image forming clear and unwelcome in his mind, his father sitting alone at the kitchen table with a bottle he rarely touched under ordinary circumstances, staring at nothing, unable to sleep, unable to process the sheer senseless randomness of losing a child to something as stupid and mundane as a red light nobody had bothered to stop for. ’He’s probably not eating properly. He’s probably blaming himself for something that was never his fault at all, the way parents always do, running through every conversation we ever had looking for the moment he should have said something different, done something different, kept me home that one particular evening instead of letting me go out for noodles.’ Ren’s throat tightened, and he had to blink hard against the sudden, unexpected sting building behind his eyes. ’He loved me. He loves me. Present tense, wherever he is right now, whatever he thinks happened to me, because as far as that world knows, I’m just gone, and there’s no version of that story that ends with him not caring.’

The contrast landed with a fresh, bitter weight settling into his chest, because sitting here now, cheek still throbbing from a slap delivered with the same casual, calculated coldness a man might use disciplining an underperforming employee, Ren found himself grieving two fathers at once, one he’d genuinely lost and one he’d simply inherited, and neither loss felt remotely fair in its own particular way. ’This is so stupid,’ he thought, dragging the back of his hand roughly across his eyes before any actual tears could fall, refusing to let this particular grief win out over everything else currently demanding his attention. ’I don’t even get to properly mourn him, do I. I don’t get a funeral, I don’t get to see him one more time, I don’t even get the small mercy of dying somewhere he could actually find out what happened to me. I just get to sit here, in someone else’s body, getting slapped by someone else’s father, missing a man who has no idea I even exist anymore.’

He sat with that for a long moment, letting himself feel the full, complicated weight of it, grief and anger and homesickness all tangled together into something he didn’t have a clean name for, and eventually, slowly, the sharpest edge of it dulled enough that he could breathe properly again. ’Okay,’ he thought, finally lowering his hand from his cheek, the ache there settling into something manageable instead of overwhelming. ’Okay. That’s enough of that for today. I have training. I have an outpost full of people who apparently either want to claim me or execute me depending on the hour, and dwelling on grief I can’t actually resolve isn’t going to help me survive any of it.’

He forced himself up off the bunk, moving stiffly, and crossed to the small mirror mounted beside the washing unit, taking his first proper look at the damage. The bruise had bloomed into a deep, mottled purple along the curve of his cheekbone, swollen enough that it pulled slightly at the corner of his eye when he tried to blink normally, and he stared at his own reflection for a long moment, Rafayal’s sharp, beautiful, borrowed face staring back at him marked with proof of exactly how little that beauty had ever protected him from the people who were supposed to care about him most.

’Fine,’ he thought, reaching for a clean training uniform, movements deliberate and a little more forceful than strictly necessary as he pulled it on. ’Fine. Let it show. Let everyone at that training session see exactly what the head of the Miller family thinks of his own son, because apparently that’s the reputation this family actually deserves, whatever polished, powerful image they try to project everywhere else.’ He caught sight of his reflection again as he adjusted the collar, wincing slightly as the fabric brushed too close to the bruise, and something stubborn settled into his expression despite the lingering ache underneath it. ’I’m not going to hide in here feeling sorry for myself all day. I’ve got a session with Reven, and unlike everyone else currently orbiting my life making demands of me, at least training gives me something concrete to actually focus on instead of grief and family politics and whatever tangled mess is happening with Yegard.’

He finished dressing methodically, lacing his boots with more attention than the task strictly required, using the small, mundane routine of it to settle the last of the rawness still sitting behind his ribs. By the time he reached for his watch, fastening the purple band back around his wrist, he’d managed to push most of the grief back down into something manageable, filed away for later processing whenever his life next allowed him the luxury of actually sitting with it properly instead of shoving it aside in favor of the next immediate crisis.

’One thing at a time,’ he told himself, checking his reflection one final time, the bruise stark and undeniable against his pale skin, a visible reminder of exactly where he stood in this family’s estimation. ’Training first. Grief later. Family politics somewhere in between, whether I want to deal with them or not.’ He straightened his shoulders, forced his expression into something steadier than he actually felt, and headed for the door, already bracing himself for whatever reaction Reven was going to have the moment he got a good look at his face.

He didn’t have to wonder long. The walk to the training wing passed in a blur of forced composure, nods exchanged with the few Sentinels he passed who seemed to genuinely not know what to make of him this morning, some of them still clearly processing the news of his father’s arrival, others too preoccupied with their own duties to spare him more than a passing glance. Ren kept his chin up regardless, refusing to give any of them the satisfaction of watching him shrink under the weight of a single bruise, no matter how much it actually still throbbed with every step.

The training chamber door slid open at his approach, and Reven was already inside waiting, back turned toward the entrance, adjusting something on the room’s diagnostic panel with the same unhurried confidence he brought to everything else. He didn’t turn immediately, and Ren used the brief moment to steel himself further, running through exactly how he intended to handle whatever questions came next.

He didn’t get the chance to decide. Reven turned, and the moment his gaze landed on Ren’s face, every trace of his usual composed amusement vanished entirely, replaced by something sharp and immediate and considerably more dangerous than Ren had ever seen from him before.

"Who did this," Reven said, voice gone flat and cold in a way that made the temperature in the room feel like it dropped several degrees at once.