The Protector: Hakan & Nisan

Chapter 13

Nisan began to tremble then, unable to process these words, these emotions. She shook her head, dazed, unable to comprehend and believe. It would take more than a few pretty words strung together in a couple of sentences to erase the hundreds of years of sitting in pain, betrayal and bitterness. She suddenly slapped him hard across the face, the smack resounding loudly in the empty room, his head jarring to the side.

"I will kill you here and now if you don't shut up," she spat in warning.  She started to struggle like a wild cat in his arms then, trying to get free of his tight, almost punishing hold.  "Shut up!" she screeched.

His heart sinking, Hakan released her and held his arms out wide in complete surrender. "Do what you want with me," he said quietly, resigned to whatever punishment she needed to dole out. "Do what you must." He was once again handing himself over to her, this time willingly.

She slapped him again and then started beating on his chest, almost knocking him back off his feet but it wasn't doled out with her full power so he was able to regain his footing.  And still he stood there, letting her flail against him and yell and swear at him, his arms flung wide in subjugation.

"I hate you!" she hissed, pounding on his chest that encased his traitorous heart.  "I will stride across the centuries and kill you over and over again.   I'll slay all of your family and friends right before your very eyes while you stand by helplessly and watch. I will have you begging for your own death even while you are quaking in need of me, but I won't let you touch me ever again!" 

Still he stood there quietly as sorrow overwhelmed him, taking it all, trying to absorb her centuries of pent up anguish, trying in vain to somehow make it all right again and yet knowing that he could not.  When her body finally grew tired from pounding on him she pulled away, panting, looking like a wild, cornered, exhausted animal.  The air stilled around them and the rafters groaned as they settled back into place.  Then she hung her head and cried.

He tried to reach out but she pulled away violently as if his mere touch burned her. That pained him much more than her heavy fists a moment before.  He'd never felt such loss and pain, and he'd felt a lot of that these last few years.

"I'm sorry, Nisan," he whispered helplessly, letting his hand fall uselessly to his side, "so fucking sorry. You gave your love, unselfishly and bravely. He was a coward and did not deserve you, but he did love you. I felt it. Don't you understand? That's why I couldn't see your face in my dreams, in my flashbacks. He was protecting you."

And still she just cried, now the broken and annihilated one.

He couldn't take it any longer.  He stepped closer and touched the side of her face. He was surprised when she let him. There was no fight left in her now it seemed.  And that was almost worse.  "He did love you," Hakan repeated hopelessly, knowing it wasn't enough but needing to apply some sort of balm to her burning soul, "as do I.  But he was a coward, a slave to what others told him was his duty. I won't make the same mistake. I'm different, Nisan. I'm not him.  I'm a better man." 

He was begging her to see him, the real him, not the original Protector from the past, though certainly he was always lurking there in the shadows of her heart, in the contours of his face, in both of their dreams and memories, damn him.

Her head was in her hands and she was still crying but softly now. This was madness. This made absolutely no sense. He was playing another cruel joke on her, she was certain of it. This wasn't reality. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. He and the old Protector were cut from the same cloth, the same man more or less, weak and cowardly. Or was he, in fact, a better man? the unwelcome, traitorous voice whispered in her ear.

Suddenly Hakan went down on his knees before her and she was once again struck dumb by him. Her hands fell from her face and her tears slowed to a stop as she looked at him in suspended shock.

"I'm down on my knees begging you," he told her huskily, looking up at her. "Isn't this what you wanted?  I'm begging you for a second chance to prove my love, to right the past and rewrite our future." He reached up and grabbed both of her hands laying limply at her sides. "Nisan, please."

He had no pride left. She'd stripped it all away from him and rightly so. Suddenly, everything was different. Everything was so clear to him.  

As Hakan looked up at her so earnestly from down on his knees before her, Nisan finally at long last saw in his golden eyes what she'd so desperately been looking for all these long bitter, heartbroken years.  Still, she couldn't, wouldn't name it or acknowledge it but with a whimper she threw herself at him down on the floor and pulled him to her hungrily.  She kissed him as if her life depended on it, hard, bruising, still with an edge of brutality and desperation.

They didn't mind the cold, hard floor as they hurriedly undressed each other, starving and urgent, centuries of love, lust and longing driving them to haste.  They needed to mark this moment with the joining of their bodies or chance losing each other forever. 

They made love on the floor, her on top as she preferred it, him barely acknowledging the bite of the unforgiving concrete floor against his back.  Hakan licked his fingers and carefully, generously brought her to climax while he thrust away inside of her, building to his own. His orgasm chased hers and they were once again moaning, shuddering, clinging, falling. They rode the waves down together, bodies interlocked, still connected and kissing as he throbbed inside of her.  

This time the victory belonged to both of them equally.  This time there were no victors or victims.  There were no more secrets and hate between them, only honesty and love.  Or so he hoped.

Hakan pushed her long, dark hair back from her beautiful face as Nisan continued to stare down at him silently as she sat astride him.  He was still inside of her and neither of them wanted to move apart. He could see she was still shocked, still scared. Her world had just been turned upside down once more and she was waiting for it, the dagger through the heart, but it wasn't coming this time.

"Nisan," he promised her gently, knowing exactly what she needed to hear, "I won't hurt you." It was the first thing he'd ever said to her. He'd meant it then and he meant it even more now.  He was happy to repeat it over and over again as the decades rolled on, if she'd let him.

She still didn't quite believe him, though, he could tell. It would take time. But time was the one thing they'd always had.

She slipped out quietly into the haunting hours of the night while he slept.

They'd made love again, the second time slowly and carefully. "I want to please you," he had told her, so sweetly, so sincerely as he'd gone down on her with his scratchy tongue, shattering all of her remaining defenses. They had never been so gentle with each other in all of their shared history. It had been exquisite.

"Why can't we be like this forever?" he'd asked her so hopefully as he'd fallen into a deep, peaceful sleep afterwards, completely satiated and contented for the very first time since taking up the mantle of Protector. He'd understood so clearly in that moment how they could be together, should be together, how they could forgive each other and end the suffering and the war. He had never seen so clearly before the right path to take or felt such peace settle into his bones as he looked toward the future. 

Until he woke up with the rising sun and saw that she was gone.

He searched the tower despite sensing, knowing that she was not there. Neither was the dagger. All peace and contentment evaporated in the snap of a finger, her powerful finger, and in a panic he dressed hastily and fled the tower. He had to find her. He had to find Zeynep and his friends. 

All of their lives were in danger at each other's hands. And he wasn't certain when it came right down to it whom he'd protect if forced to choose.