The Protector: Hakan & Nisan

Chapter 9

Hakan slept hard and long that night as he hadn't slept in weeks, months even. Thankfully, though, he did not have any flashbacks. When he slowly, groggily came awake the next morning, he was disappointed to find her gone, thinking of how she'd given him the best night of his life. It was more than just the incredible mind-blowing sex, more than just the blessed respite he'd found in sleep. It was all of that and more... something more. He couldn't analyze it for long as he soon found himself drifting back into a deep slumber.

This time when he awoke she was there beside him, sleeping unguarded and utterly beautiful in one of his t-shirts.  A feeling of undiluted happiness flooded through him. It was a rather startling, foreign feeling.  He reached out and gently ran the back of his knuckles down the curve of her cheek, not wanting to wake her but simply unable to resist the overwhelming urge to touch her.  

Suddenly a memory flashed in his mind's eye, of him doing this very thing previously, several times before actually, by the feeling of familiarity that overcame him. But that was impossible, he thought to himself, confused by the emotions this one gesture invoked. They had never slept together before last night. He had never woken up beside her before this morning. So why the deep-seeded flash of déjà vu? Why the overwhelming feeling of familiarity? Why the startling alarm bells?

He shook his head as if to clear away the cobwebs. He'd slept too long, too deeply, is all. He just needed water, and coffee, and he'd be fine. He quietly slipped from the bed and went to the bathroom for a quick shower, then to the kitchen to make coffee. He was still damp from the shower, shirtless and in jeans, as he drank a big glass of water and waited for the coffee to brew. He had all but shaken off the uncomfortable feeling of eerie familiarity as he finished his cup of black coffee.

Unfortunately, he also began to lose the feeling of joy and contentedness from the last twelve hours as well. As the peacefulness started slipping away, he once again recalled the horrified looks on his friends' faces the day before, Burak fighting for his life in a hospital bed and all of the goddamn failures and losses that had led up to that point and never seemed to stop coming. The weight of it all found its way back to his shoulders, his heart.  He felt that damned anguish and despair creep back in, settling into his bones and seeping into the very hollows of his being like an old familiar ghost with surprising weight.

He could only do one thing now to make some amends. He had only one tool left in his arsenal to defeat their enemy. He went back to Nisan's lab and resolutely walked to the cabinet, withdrew a vial of medicine and tossed the whole thing back in one motion knowing full well he was taking too much. He righted the slim bed against the far wall that he'd upended the night before and quickly laid down on it, already feeling woozy. Within moments, his eyes shut on their own free will and he drifted off, far off into the distant past.

He was in the tower overlooking the sea once more but this time he felt something different. He looked down at his body and saw the original Protector's body. He lifted his hands, the Original's hands, and studied them in shock. He was the original Protector now, they were one and the same, no longer separate.

All of his senses started to tingle as he felt more than heard someone approaching. He turned slightly and stiffened in anticipation. He knew it was the Vizier before he even came into view, centuries of duty and training telling him so, warning him in every awakening, burning nerve ending. It was, indeed, the Vizier in hooded robe, entering the room, crossing the threshold and slowly advancing on him.

It was the Vizier, his dangerous enemy that had to be stopped at all costs. He was near to him now, nearer than he'd ever been and Hakan held his breath in anticipation. Then finally, after all this time, Hakan connected eyes with his enemy.

His heart leapt in terror and he gasped. Wait...it wasn't the Vizier.  It was...he shook his head in confusion, denial, there in the memory and here now as he lay almost lifeless on the cot in the present.  His heart raced as he saw her face within the hood for the very first time. Nisan?  No, wait. That couldn't be. Something was wrong. Why was Nisan there? Why was Nisan wearing the hood?

"My soul," she whispered there in the tower, coming up to him, the original Protector, and kissing him gently, lovingly. It felt...right.  It felt familiar.

He could only stare at her in disbelief, his heart racing and a panic attack starting to clutch at the edges of his distressed mind. She searched his face, saw his anxiety and immediately sought to comfort him.

"Come here, my love." She led him to the nearby straw bed in the corner of the room and carefully undressed him, while he looked on helplessly, mutely, in a fog.

"Nisan?" he finally asked weakly as she took off her own robe and he looked down upon her naked, newly familiar beauty. 

"Everything is going to be alright, my love," she assured him, gently pushing him down onto the bed. She climbed on top of him and he immediately hardened in anticipation for her. Memories centuries apart crashed together in chaotic waves, making his ears ring as she guided him inside of her with a steady hand.

He looked up at her in bewilderment, as flashes of the night before but a century later collided with this moment in the past. Then all rational thought left his mind as she rode him hard and he quickly began to build towards his climax. He closed his eyes and groaned in need and frustration and want and desire.

Then suddenly she stopped. His eyes flew open and he looked up at her in confusion, and then something very much like understanding and fear.

"Say please, my love," she whispered with almost a sneer.