BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2) - Page 86
Nijinsky resented it. “What would your brother want?” he shot back. “If we were talking about operating on—”
“He’d want me to make the call,” Keats said. “If he couldn’t do it himself, he’d want me to do it. I don’t know Vincent very well, but my guess is he’d want you to decide, Jin. He’d want you to try and rescue him from where he is.”
“Like I failed to do when it mattered,” Nijinsky said. “When Bug Man had him. Rescue him now like I didn’t do then.”
There was a long silence.
“Yeah,” Keats said finally. Because someone needed to.
The strange thing was, Nijinsky was relieved at the answer. He had needed his guilt recognized.
Wasn’t that what they were fighting for? The right to feel every jolt of pain life had to give? The right to suffer? To not be sustainably happy?
“I’m not the right person to lead this,” Nijinsky said to three blank faces. “Unfortunately none of you are, either. So, I’m it.” He nodded and felt his chin quiver and decided it didn’t really matter if they saw that. “Send your model four out to take on a load of sulfuric,” Nijinsky said to Plath. To Wilkes, he said, “Go make sure Dr Violet is with Vincent. Have her prepare the acid for Plath. Then stay there with him, report to me.”
Wilkes ran off immediately, leaving Plath and Keats with Nijinsky.
After a while Nijinsky realized the awkwardness was all about him. He excused himself.
But he went only as far as the stairs, waited there out of sight, listening. Because that’s what the right person would do. Because the right person would want to know what Plath and Keats said to each other.
He overheard.
“Don’t do this,” Keats said.
“I have to try to—”
“Like hell you do.”
Plath felt like the basement was out of air. She clenched a fist until
the nails cut into her palm and thought, Jesus, just like Wilkes. She said, “I thought you were saying it was the right thing to do!” “For Vincent, yes,” he said. “For you …You have to get out of this, Sadie. I see it in your eyes, you want out.”
“I want us both out,” she said in a near whisper.
She had turned away. He didn’t want to talk to her neck. He took
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p; her shoulders and turned her around. It was not roughly done, but it was more definite than Keats had been before. He wasn’t asking her to face him, he was demanding.
“Together?” he asked. “Yes, together,” she said, shaking off his grip but facing him nonetheless.
“But you said—”
“Don’t fucking tell me what I said!” Her head jerked forward with the force of it, making him back up. “I was making sense. I was being mature. I was trying not to hurt you or hurt me.”
“And now, what? Now you don’t care?”
“Listen to me, Noah,” and all at once it wasn’t Keats, it was Noah. She repeated the name, defiant. “Listen to me, Noah. If this works, if we save Vincent, we may be able to save your brother. And someday we may be able to save each other.”
“Don’t do this for me or for my brother,” he pleaded. “Don’t. You can get out. You can escape. This doesn’t have to be your life.”
She took his face in her hands.
He closed his eyes.
It was not a kiss as prelude to desire. It was a kiss that sealed fates.
Source: readsnovelonline.net