"Jordy we can't!"
"Sav, we have to! He's so advanced, we need all the help we can get! Look at what they're doing!"
Sav sighed, brushing tangled hair from weary eyes. What Jordan was suggesting was unthinkable, unforgivable. Yes, he understood their plight. He couldn't argue that. Their long time guarding of what they cooly referred to as "long time affairs" was as fraught with rules and regulations as the most stringent military, and it was no wonder that a new crop of adepts had come along, rebellious and free spirited, protesting the rules, proclaiming them archaic and controlling.
It was just as clear that they were wrong, the rules put in place to protect the adepts, and the universe in general, the consequences of uncontrolled psychic use on a dimensional level extreme, unimaginable, and had to be rigidly goverened.
The guardians would do what they had to to maintain that order, but dragging the withdrawn back in... that... that was just horrible.
"Jordy, do you know what it would do to him? He was so hurt before, you can't do that to him now!"
"He was hurt! WE didn't hurt him, we made him well! Sav, we NEED him. He can bilocate. None of us can do that, think of it! He can be two places at once! He could tell us what people were doing..."
"So you want him to be a spy? Jordan, the boy has a life. He has one HELL of a life, and we have no right to take that away from him, just because we found him!"
"Found him and saved him, Sav. He owes us."
"I can't even believe you're talking like this. He owes us nothing! The kid was in pain, he was broadcasting, Cara picked him up and brought him to us and yeah, fine, we helped him. But we scared him too, and he scared himself. He's unstable, Jordan! He wanted out, we told him he could go, and we need to let him alone!"
"We need to ask him to help, Sav I'm above you on this, you know that."
"Don't even think about pulling rank on me, bud. You're my teacher, fine, my superior whatever, you're still Mike Goldwood's mad kid brother and I don't have any intention of letting you railroad me into going along with this. Leave the kid alone."
"Sav, you got pulled back and it didn't hurt you!"
"Hell it almost killed me!"
"It's ironic you know..." Jordan helped himself to more coffee, glancing up at the scowling face of his friend.
"Dannon's bunch is using you as their primary defense."
"Using me?" Sav's eyes reflected his bafflement, and Jordan mentally patted himself on the back. He'd diverted him already.
"They're using the attacks on you as proof the rules are dangerous and unnecessary."
"Are they using you're upbringing too?"
"They are, but they're concentrating on you. I mean, it makes sense when you think about it."

Sav sighed, thinking back. It did make sense. Lifetimes of long time work had earned him his retirement. Not his last life, just a life free of the painful responsibility of a guardian. He'd remembered none of it, had no idea such things even were, and then it had happened... an accident of chance, changing his life, destroying his peace.
Two friends, with a spellbook and a candle, playing at being witches. Struggling without success to light the candle without touching it. He'd walked in on them, laughed at their mad request.
"Sav, light this from over there" and had done it. Without a blink of an eye, without a thought in his mind, the dormant talent had flashed out, lighting the flame without any effort at all. He'd been shocked, excited, frightfully pleased... and fallen under attack, ages old rules coming suddenly into effect. The rule that prohibited all but the most well taught adepts from using the powers of the guardians.
The watchers who saw the little trick and sensed its effect on his memories, who saw the dormant talents suddenly drawing near the surface, accessible to him but not understood, flaring unpredictably. The watchers who knew the rules. He could return to them, have his memories returned and take up his place as guardian once more, or he could die, removing the threat of uncontrolled use, half understood knowledge, insanity producing flare ups of uncontainable power that would ultimately take his life anyway, or the life of someone else.
They'd known he'd refuse to come back, his essence communicating it clearly. They'd attacked then, attempting to end this life before the power could become uncontrollable. Horrible sounding, ultimately for the protection of all. Stated simply, those who didn't understand what they were doing could either be taught... or stopped. It was the only way. As a non employee is not allowed into the employees only areas of a supermart, for fear of injury or disruption, neither was an untrained, confused, uncontrolled potential adept allowed access to the power. It was a law for the good of all.

He'd been sixteen years old when they'd come after him, fallen prey to unmanageable seizures, horrific illnesses, shattering injuries... and yet he had survived, instinctively fought back, and finally, finally, been picked up by the very people he was now fighting, people who found it unforgivable that one of their own should have his many lifetimes of service rewarded in such a manner. Found his very tenacity a sign of his strength and his value.
They'd contacted Michael, and Michael had recognized him, saved him, taking him and forcing him to understand what was happening, demanding an end to the attacks, giving him over to Jordan, who had spent his entire 14 year existence locked in an insane asylum, recently released into Michael's care.
Given to Jordan under the guise of becoming the disturbed teenager's guardian, Jordan who had blown his mind apart, releasing all of the dormant knowledge, unleashing all of the power, and who had then sat with him, through the unending pain and sickness of a horrible backlash, as burned mental channels healed themselves, as his psyche, raw and wounded, tried to come to grips.
Jordan, who he hated for so long, but now loved more than anyone breathing. Jordan who had dragged him back from a promise of peace. This was their argument then, and it was a good one. He'd be dead if the rules hadn't been circumvented, but in reality what would it have mattered? He'd died before, many times. It would simply have wiped out the years of this particular incarnation, in effect rewinding him back to infancy and making him start again as someone else. With a better lockdown on those old guardian powers. Annoying yes... but proof that the rules were wrong? Hardly.
He looked up, pale eyes weary, creased with tiny lines of exhaustion. He was feeling too old for this.
"Jordan, why do you think you need him? And no, you didn't distract me away from the question, how stupid do you think I am?"
Jordan flushed slightly, eyes skipping away. "I want to at least ask him. State our case, see what he says. Michael already said that was alright. And you know he's leaving, we haven't found a new oversear yet, maybe the kid is the one."
Sav laughed in spite of himself. There was no way. Oh, the boy was good, there was no doubt, advanced and obviously a fledgling guardian, but he didn't have the emotional fortitude to be oversear.
"You damn well know better. I know it's ultimately your decision, but... Jordy... please." The note of argument dropped from his voice, replaced with pleading. "Please... be gentle. Just tell him what we need, and don't force him. You don't understand what I do."
"And what's that?"
"How much it hurt. You were born to this, you had uninterrupted training for fourteen years! Being pulled in HURTS, and there's never any real need to do that to someone else, unless their life is in danger. Please..."
Jordan's gaze turned to alarm at the tears he saw shimmering in his friend's eyes, and he reached out, his hand closing gently over Sav's.
"What do you think I am that you think I'd hurt him? I promise you... and him... I will only ask, and if he says no, I will back off. No question. Besides..." He tapped the back of the older man's hand sharply. "Cara has him now, you think I could get by her?"
Sav giggled in spite of himself. Cara was a formidable opponent when her protective instincts were challenged, and if she'd taken the kid, he was almost safer than God. 
Shaking his head, wishing he could just go back to work and forget it all, he shoved his chair back, moving to refill his mug.
"Jordy, we are living in interesting times."

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