Khal was giddy, ecstatic even. Here was Rene, his precious Rene, finally agreeing to work with him. To put his abilities to use. He fought to temper his happiness at Rene’s request to dispose of Mr. Davis in a most unsavory way. He knew if he showed too much excitement, it might put Rene off the whole thing. How innocent sweet Rene still tried to be. Khal didn’t even bother telling him of the other horrible things Mr. Davis had done, things his only son would never be able to forgive him for. There was no point. 

They had left the hospital, leaving Mr. Davis writing his suicide note, after Khal had ensured that no one would find out they had been to the cretin’s office by having the nearest tech wipe the security footage. 

Rene looked thoughtful as they drove. Khal wanted to ask him what he was thinking, but he knew it was best to wait. Rene would open up to him when he was ready. And besides, he was talking to him now, and no longer looked like he wanted to rearrange Khal’s guts with a hot poker. Khal knew he had fucked up when he hit Rene with the kettle. He had been so hurt, and so angry, and the fear and panic of abandonment overwhelmed him as he was vividly reminded of every time Rene had hurt him before in former lives. Khal had admittedly overreacted. He could have taken it slow, could have won Rene back, but the moment had gotten away from him. 

Now he had a chance to make it right. He was going to do everything in his power to make Rene love him again. 

Before it was too late. 

“The things you must see on a daily basis…” Rene muttered, startling Khal out of his stream of consciousness. “How do you even deal with all of that?”

Khal glanced at Rene, then looked back at the road. He shrugged. 

“I’ve dealt with it for over 500 years. It doesn’t really faze me anymore. People have been rotten to the core as long as there have been people. Not all of them, of course. But enough. Humans are capable of such atrocities that it’s a wonder we manage to get anything done in order to lead a productive society.” Khal said. 

“Are we a productive society?” Rene asked. “I mean, global warming, wars, greed, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny…men like Davis who don’t even see the rest of us as humans. Can we really be productive with all of that, that, awfulness?”

He had a point. He had many lifetimes of points. But Khal realized it was a slippery slope to drop into the depression of all humans are garbage that Rene was quickly adopting. It would soon begin to seem like there was no point to keep going, and that was an incredibly dangerous thought process. 

“You’ve always strove to make the world a better place.” Khal said, slowly pulling into the driveway of their house. “Every life I’ve known you, you’ve always done well for others. Looked out for the little guy. Stood up for the victims. You have always tried to do what’s right.”

Khal turned off the car and looked at Rene, “Since I’ve first known you, I’ve envied and loved you for that.”

“What good did it do, though?” Rene asked, staring blankly at the dashboard with those mesmerizing green eyes of his. The most beautiful eyes in the world to Khal. “I’ve tried to save so many lives in the past, and I’ve done nothing to make the present any better. Just watch the news. The world is fucking doomed.  Everything is on fire, getting hotter, getting drier. Famine, flooding, storms on scales that we have never experienced as humans. and that horror is what I get to leave to my daughter? Because some greedy psychopaths like Davis want more money than they can spend in several lifetimes? Innocent immigrants drowning as they bleed to death from razorwire in the Rio Grande, and being trapped in cages, dehumanized to create a non-existent bad guy to keep the imbeciles engaged in fighting to hide the real threat? The people in charge? The people that pull the strings, and are responsible for the murder of innocent children all over the world? Those fuckers would have us sacrificed outside their apocalypse bunkers to feed their spoiled families as the Earth dies. For money, for power, for a perception of being greater than, or gifted by God to be special and worthy and it’s all fucking bullshit. Greedy, psychopathic bullshit!” Rene growled. 

So he wasn’t depressed, he was angry. That was good. Khal could definitely work with that. 

Khal hesitated before he said, “As we speak, Mr. Davis is driving to the coast. He has a destination in mind. He’s going to take his boat and tie himself to the anchor, throwing himself into the deep Pacific. When they reel up his body, I wager there will be great chunks missing from any number of sea creatures having a delicious meal. For once in his disgusting life, Mr. Davis will have done something to benefit another creature.”

Rene blinked, and Khal wondered if he was about to have a change of heart. To take it all back and demand Khal stop and spare Mr. Davis. Thankfully, he didn’t do anything of the sort. 

“I almost wish I could see it. He deserves so much worse for what he’s done.” Rene said. 

“I could make him flay himself alive first.” Khal suggested. 

Rene shook his head. 

“We could do so much more, you know?” Khal said. “We could actually change the world.”

Rene looked him in the eye now. 

“Change the world?” Rene repeated softly. 

“Yes. The whole fucking world.” Khal said. “I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but it’s very much doable. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. And honestly, I think it’s what Aset would want. She wants to come back and create peace, and we could be the start of her revolution. Why else would she give me this gift?” Khal stated. 

“Because you asked for it?” Rene pointed out. 

“She looked into my soul and saw that I was worthy of it. She must have seen, or why would she give me a blessing so powerful?” Khal asked. 

“Perhaps she misread you?” Rene pointed out. 

“She’s a goddess. She outsmarted Ra, the freaking sun god. She knows exactly what she’s doing.” 

“And a goddess could never be infallible?” Rene raised an eyebrow. 

“Are you questioning our goddess?” Khal asked. He was starting to get angry. 

“I question a lot of things.” Rene pointed out. “Your blessing is dangerous. In the wrong hands, perhaps even in your hands, it could be made to do a whole lot worse to the world than has already been done. I mean, look how you used it on me. And you claim to love me.”

Khal flinched. The fact that he loved Rene being ever in doubt made his stomach turn. 

Rene shook his head and looked up toward the house, “What if this goes too far? What if I don’t know when to pull back, and I become a psychopath too? What if I already am one? I mean, the lives I’ve lived, the deaths I’ve experienced, to learn that they’ve been real. That I’ve been all of those people. And I’m remembering now. Remembering more every time I sleep, and even sometimes in my waking moments. Those lives will all have had an effect, and I’ve done some terrible things…”

“Admittedly, most of the terrible things were directed at me.” Khal pointed out. 

Rene flashed him a dangerous look, and Khal put up his hands in a gesture of ‘well, it’s true.’

“You pretty much deserved them.” Rene stated.  

“And now I know of some very terrible people who also deserve to have terrible things directed at them. And I know of some powerful people who hold a lot of influence, and can be persuaded to use that influence for good. We can make a very real change to the world if we let the past go and focus on the present.” 

Khal took in a deep breath, “I’m sorry. Rene, I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. For every desperate situation I put you in. I only ever did it to bring us closer, and I see now how utterly fucked up it all was. But from the day we were born, I’ve needed you. You keep me grounded. You keep me doing the right thing, and I can’t seem to give you up. I’m not able, or our goddess won’t let me. Perhaps she keeps me tethered to you, searching you out in every iteration because you keep me grounded. Because you can question what the right thing to do is, whereas I would jump right to the most gory and heinous death imaginable for even the smallest crimes. In wanting an eye for an eye, I became the monsters. You saw it in me in every lifetime, but in this lifetime, you saw the past for the first time. You saw all of the happy loving moments between us. All of the moments that meant something special in our relationship. You got to live it all over again.”

“I saw the rotten moments too.” Rene pointed out. 

Khal nodded, “Two sides of the coin. The curse of this blessing. I need you to even me out. To make me do the right thing. Rene…I can’t die. Believe me, I have tried. I’ve survived things no mortal could ever survive. If you were to pluck out my eye right now, it would grow back, likely right here in this car. My healing has gotten faster and faster. Chop off my arm, and same thing. My wounds healed the day we got to the hospital from Jeff Aquino’s basement. I wore makeup to fool everyone. I influenced nurses and doctors to believe they were real. I don’t need to eat, or sleep. I can, of course, but I could literally go years without them without an issue. I’ve gone decades without oxygen, and I remain living. I tried killing myself more ways than Phil in Groundhog Day, and it never took. I anticipate an eternity alone, walking the world like a madman, seeing all of the evil that humans have to offer with a simple glance into the eyes of a crowd. My one small ray of hope is you. Is for you to finally choose to be with me. To choose eternity. We can live immortal together. If you accept that life within the next 23 years, we could be bound forever, and I would use my blessing any way you saw fit. We would forever change the world for the better. The eternal guardians of this planet.”

Rene took a moment to process what Khal had told him.

“And…I believe that Emory will walk with us.” Khal went on. “In our new world, she too will live eternal.”

Rene’s eyes flitted to Khal’s. 

“Your dreams began with Emory’s birth, didn’t they?” Khal asked quietly. 

Rene’s eyes widened.

“Wh-what do you mean?” Rene stammered.

“Your memories, of past lives, you never had them before Emory was born, did you? You attributed them to reading books at the library, but little by little they all came back to you starting in September of 2017. A tsunami here, a slave ship there, an Irish farmer. These didn’t exist before Emory came wailing into this world, did they?” Khal asked. 

Khal wondered if this thought had ever occurred to Rene. He could sense that Rene was currently wondering the same thing. 

“What does she have to do with it?” Rene practically whispered. 

“I think, I may be wrong here, but I believe she may be your blessing.” Said Khal. “I’ve suspected from the moment I looked into her eyes and saw that her thoughts were blocked from me, that I couldn’t even begin to drop a pebble of influence into her mind. She is your child. Your very first child. You never had one in any other life. Not as far as I can tell from my, err, extensive reading of your dream journal. Emory is special. And I believe she will be with us when we are together, when you’ve chosen immortality, per our goddess’ blessing.”

Khal stared at the steering wheel for a moment before speaking again. “I want you to think about it. I want you to think about the world we could create eternally for your little girl. She exists now because of so many coincidental past events. Her great-grandmother was saved by you. Well, by Adam. Thus having Ari’s mom, who had Ari, who gave you Emory. I have reason to believe that when you were a Russian soldier fighting the Prussians, and you saved a young soldier named Misha, that was meant to be. That soldier lived, and went on to have a family, and somewhere down the line, a father looked back at his distant family names and decided on Misha, a brave Russian soldier who fought against the Prussians and lived to tell the tale. I don’t have to tell you that that was one crimson battlefield, and your remains lay upon it for a time. Were it not for you saving that man’s life, you, as Rene now, would not have married his great-great- whatever grandchild and decided to have a baby together. 

And of course, dear Aidan, perpetrator of one of our harsher breakups, helped to relocate a certain family across the little pond between Ireland and Wales. After a few generations, a member of that family had you. Little Rene. Dropped at the orphanage. You had a sickly little mother. She deeply regretted leaving you, but your father had passed in a freak accident involving an inattentive driver and he, the unfortunate pedestrian. Your mother was dying from cancer, and didn’t have a chance to find you a good home before she passed. She felt the orphanage would do right by you.  I did some research. When I went on a “business trip” in June, I was actually visiting your orphanage. Sorry, my bad, very creepy, I know. But all of this to say that Emory came to be from some very specific events throughout your lives. She is meant to be. And she is meant to be with us. Saving the world, for eternity.”

He was startled to see tears in Rene’s eyes. He was hoping he would be happy, hopeful. This was not it. 

“She never asked for this.” Rene said quietly. “None of us asked for this.”

“You did. Many lives ago, you asked for a blessing. To be able to protect the ones you love. What better protection than living forever?”

Rene was looking at nothing now, completely lost in thought. “She’ll have to watch everyone and everything she knows and loves die around her.”

“She’ll be with us to watch things change for the better. She’ll live in a world free of lead pipes and noxious fumes. Rivers will sparkle turquoise as they run fresh from the mountains, unencumbered by trash and poison. Fish will flourish, fires will become manageable, children will breathe the fresh healthy air they should always have been promised. Together, we will make that reality.”

Rene’s eyes traveled to Khal’s, his expression unreadable. Was he considering it? Was he shutting down at the existential horror of immortal life?

Did he suspect that Khal wasn’t maybe telling the entire truth about Emory?

Chapter 30 https://storiesfrommontana.com/2023/08/27/chapter-30-look-what-youve-done-warning-graphic-content/