Window to the Soul
By Kay
Disclaimer: I don't own Everworld. Just your soul. And you know it.
Author's Notes: Christopher/Jalil SLASH—and some gory stuff, too, though nothing too graphic. This story is kind of disturbing 'cause I'm not sure where it came from. Poor Jalil. I'm so mean to him… sigh.
Enjoy the agony.
Jalil feels nothing but agony.
"I'm going to press down now," a muffled voice soothes him through a cotton of thick, hazy blackness, "so don't move, okay? Just relax. Try and let the medicine kick in."
Medicine. Bitter, acidic taste on his lips, tumbling down into the tiny corner of his mouth where he can still taste its lingering bite. Perhaps Etain's mother's medicine? Or real medicine? You can never tell her, Jalil thinks numbly, wondering if perhaps he should stretch his tongue out to scoop the last of it into his raw throat, let it bleed away the pain viciously pounding into his skull.
He can't see. The world is a pulsing, mad screech of static through the clamped cloth of his brain. He should be screaming. His throat hurts. Maybe he did.
"Here we go," the voice says, and something hard is on his face. The pain shrieks.
Jalil opens his mouth to imitate it, but only croaks out hoarse gasps. Everything washes away in white. His face is wet; slick, dampened, hot and flaring with every pore, his very flesh aching in a way that is wrong, and he can feel it running down into the matted, tangled mess of his hair, this stickiness, this heat. It's coagulating under his neck, cooling and crusting over the sheets of the bed, and he wonders why he can't taste it as badly as the medicine, or if perhaps it was never the medicine all along.
He can't see. He can't speak. The world is overwhelmingly ugly.
"Oh, Jesus," someone is weeping.
'No such thing,' Jalil wants to tell him. There is nothing but the earth and our bodies. You are born into light, you live falling into darkness, and you end in the final failing of your arteries, the last glitch of the system giving up to the inevitable deadness. Then there is nothing. There is pain now, but soon there will be nothing.
It comforts him, that thought. When the Voice presses harder on his face, frantically apologizing under her breath, and Jalil is starting to open his mouth—and the inhumane wailing sound, can that be him?—and the world is white and black and red and green like the leaves of the trees of the park he played in as a child, and he can see the sandbox—
It burns like getting sand in his eyes, he realizes. Someone is holding his hand tight enough to splinter it. It burns like getting—
And then all is lost. The world ends and he can't even close his eyes to it.
THE FIRST WAKING
There is nothing but the sleepy canvas of darkness cradling him.
It comes slowly, in stages: he first becomes aware of the warmth, as though he were lying in a patch of sun in the library after having fallen asleep over the books again. It aches and sighs sluggishly, that warmth, feeding its way into his bones. That is what he feels. Warm.
Secondly, he feels the blankets under his fingers. They feel sensitive—the coarse cover lightly spread over him is not like the sheets of his bed. He's bewildered in some distant, numb fashion. His thoughts aren't moving straight or quickly. He recognizes that, but even that is felt through the wad of chewing gum stretched thickly over his mind, and he's already processed the dull pain in his head and his parched throat by the time it occurs to him. He licks his lips experimentally. His tongue is raspy. The flesh of his mouth is cracked and swollen.
'I'm thirsty,' he says quietly to himself.
For a while, he simply ponders that. His head is killing him. There's something tied tightly over his eyes—they're pulsing, bruised; he can feel a wetness gathered there, a strange feeling of wrong, incredible wrong, something that just isn't right, shouldn't be—
"You're awake? Jesus, go to sleep," and he's hearing Christopher in the silence. Somber, soft. He wants to tilt his head to hear him better, but he can't seem to move.
"U-unh..."
A flash of murmurs draws his attention to the background, and then he looses them. Christopher— 'Is it Christopher? What's he doing here?'— touches his arm, grabbing onto his fingers and squeezing them brutally. It hurts. He wants to rip them away.
"Go the fuck asleep," he's saying. And Jalil, despite all his incoherent anger, finds himself doing exactly that.
WELCOME TO THE LIGHT
He's touching his left eye.
Sprawled across the lower half of the bed, Christopher's mess of golden hair is sticking up in all directions as he sleeps. He snores loudly. Jalil can see flickers of his face, strained even in deep slumber and covered in angry red scratches, but it fades in and out with his strength. Sometimes he wonders if he's even awake.
The room is quiet. There is no window. The candles are dim, casting shadowy apparitions across the stone walls, and Jalil wonders if he's in Daggermouth now.
No one has come yet. Just Christopher, sleeping, who has not seen him. There is a pitcher of water beside the bed. Soiled bandages of garish, soaked claret thrown heedlessly over a chair. A rock and pile of empty medicine vials on the bedside table.
All this in flashes, as he blacks in and out of the room. Sometimes it takes him fifteen minutes just to focus on something. But he has been awake, and for longer than few minutes, which is more than he's been able to do in what feels like a very long time. He wants to reach for the water pitcher, but his fingers are trembling too violently and he isn't sure he could hold its weight. If he spilt it over himself, he'd hate to hear Christopher laugh.
But he's touching his face. It hurts to do so. It stings, fiercely, and his brain feels stuffed with wool still. He wonders if it's drugs.
He blinks slowly. His right eye. It feels raw, but the world is coming back in scattered fragments, bits of color and inky shadow. The light gold of Christopher. The black of stone. The red wax of the dwarf candles.
His left eye is bandaged. Wrapped around his entire head, a huge wad of gauze and wrap overlapping almost half of his face. He can't seem to open it. It feels odd, somehow; wrong.
He can't remember what happened.
Christopher is still snoring. Other than that, the room has no sounds save his ragged breathing and the hiss between his teeth when he prods his bandaging.
He wonders what happened. And then, suddenly, desperately, Jalil wishes this moment could last forever—this ignorance and mystery, the vague outline of a dreamworld, and Christopher would never wake up and lift his arms from where they draped over his legs and warmed them, and he'd never have to know the answer to any of his questions. He'd never have to find out what was wrong, what had happened; what he knew somehow, instinctively, had happened to him.
He wishes, and wishes, and digs his fingernails into the mattress until the scream spills from his lips and brings the footsteps coming.
PLAY NICELYSOMEONE COULD LOOSE AN EYE
"You were fortunate to come out with your life," Etain says softly, her perfumed pale hands smoothing out the bandages he'd torn at so savagely.
Jalil sets his jaw grimly. His right eye keeps drifting shut and reopening, the dark ash of it somehow barren and lifeless. He's been staring at the wall. Always. He doesn't want to see anything else. Still beside him, now awake, Christopher is glaring at the bedspread with his head held roughly in his hands, fingers clutching straw-hand holds of his hair until the knuckles bled dry of color. Neither of them have said a word.
Etain tried to give him some medicine, but he turned his head away. There is no more need for it. He already hates this bed.
"I'll have someone come to your room to change your bandages a few times daily," she was adding hesitantly, as though sensing his chaotic and dark swirl of emotions. "If it's not kept clean, it could become infected. Or worse. You... we'll have to wait for it to heal. For the skin to—to heal a bit more, and make it less sensitive. But then we can... decide what you would like to do."
Jalil wants her to shut up. But he says nothing.
"Thanks for doing this," Christopher is telling her, but it sounds flat. "We appreciate all the work you've put into it." It is something April or David would say, Jalil thinks, but he doesn't look at Christopher to see his face. He doesn't want to. His fingers are still sore; he wonders how long into his sleep the blonde tried to hold them.
"For a friend," Etain says, "there is nothing I could have not done."
Jalil wants to ask if she can give him his eye back.
That might make it even. Yeah, it might make it fucking even with this entire fucking world and what it's done to him. Maybe. Yeah, maybe.
Or not. Never. Oh, god, never.
He wants to do something. Scream. Maybe cry. Find a way to make sense of it all. He knows its not the end of the world—he's seen men here who have lived with wounds far graver than this. This is nothing. This is the toothpick to the red oak tree. This is nothing.
His eyes are burning, both of them. But Christopher is still silently staring at his bed, and there is no rest or peace, just the wall he can see through one eye.
APRIL
She comes when the sun us just beginning to set. Jalil only knows this because he is back in his old room, the one with the softer comforter and the windows, and the good lighting for the books he could no longer read for a good while.
The orange glow was soothing after the midday, and he is resting in a chair by the table, his fingers laying lightly over the maps and diagrams he'd drawn only a week or so before. The ink is dry against the pads of his skin. When there is a timid knock at the door, and the red head of hair peeks through, Jalil only looks at her.
April's face is pale. The dark bruises under her eyes stick out in contrast, but they are concerned, fearful and hurt for him. Pitying. He hates her in that moment, when she saw him at his weakest, still lingering over the past in the dying sunlight.
"Can I come in?"
Jalil shrugs. He takes his hands off of the maps and folds them in his lap. There are bruises still covering his arms that twinge; battle-pains, he thinks to himself tiredly.
She shuts the door behind her quietly, as though afraid to startle him. She sits across from him at the table—carefully avoiding looking at his bandaged face, and instead focusing somewhere on his collarbone. She doesn't mean it. He hates it, anyway.
"I thought you'd be in bed."
"I'm fine," he says flatly. There isn't the irritated bite to it that there would have been in the past, but he is tired. He's been seeing the world from a different point of view all day. "As long as I take it easy, it won't kill me. It's not serious."
Her green eyes are sharp on his suddenly, and for a moment everything goes black again. When it awakens, she's looking back at his chest somewhere, a knot tugging at the pale skin of her throat. "Y-you say it like it's nothing. It's... I'm sorry. I'm really sorry," she blurts out raggedly, anguished, guilty. "It was our fault. I'm so sorry."
Jalil doesn't remember it, but he only shrugs. "It's okay."
It's not. It's not at all. But she bows her head and cries a bit, reaching for his hands—and although he pulls them out of range, his accepting silence brings her the edge of relief she craves so dearly. Once she's cleaned herself up and wiped her eyes, claiming apologies and re-asking how he is feeling, she stays long enough to fuss over him before slipping out again like a ghost.
He wonders if she was only visiting him to be absolved. She's a Christian, after all. He wonders if it matters, and it doesn't. Not at all.
The sunset looks dimmer.
DEPTH PERCEPTION
Jalil knows about disparity and convergence. Depth perception. Retinal images and their relation to the dimensions of the world. Overlay and motion parallax.
He hates them all. Viciously.
His eye almost doesn't hurt anymore. More often, there's a sort of hollow, ugly feeling in his stomach when he thinks about what's under the bandages—he doesn't look at it. He doesn't feel it anymore. He closes his other eye and concentrates on equations and directions to the super market and the Iliad when someone changes his gauze. He tries not to think about how it's just not there anymore, at least in any real sense. If it's a clean hole. It couldn't be, right? Nerve endings. Raw flesh tearing. His eyelid. What was left?
He doesn't ask. Every time he thinks about it, he's violently ill.
No, more than his eye and his nightmares, what really hurts is the problem with depth perception. He's terrified of going outside of his room. He hates to admit it—it makes him ashamed, well up with bleeding thoughts of self-incrimination—but he doesn't want to face anyone else's eyes. He doesn't want to watch them as they watch him fumble around aimlessly. He can't get used to not seeing with both; his perception of the world seems skewed somehow. With practice, he tells himself sternly, desperately, it will be better.
It will be better.
But he has bruises on his thighs from running into the tables and chairs of his room. He misses steps and puts his hand down in the wrong place, or reaches for something only to find it a few inches to his left. It's awkward. He hates it. Added to the purple and black spots littering his arms and face from the battlefield, he's creating new ones to cover them up. It's humiliating.
When people come to visit him, he sits in his chair. That's all. Just sits, his hands in his lap, staring ahead at them with the eye that never closes anymore.
No one really visits him, though. No one except Christopher.
WICKER BY THE WICKED
"You look like shit," Christopher says, but it's followed by a wobbly, exhausted smile. Not a grin. Christopher doesn't grin much anymore.
Jalil wants him to leave. "Thank you. As opposed to you, who looks even worse, I am flattered. What the hell do you want now?"
"Do you remember what happened?" The question is earnest, Christopher's startling pale blue eyes intense on his face. He is the only one to look him, so to speak, in the eye. It doesn't make Jalil feel better, though. He hates him all the more for it. "Do you remember anything at all?"
"Get the fuck out. The answer's the same."
"It's a simple question." Christopher never sits down. He stands in the middle of the room, hands shoved far down into the pockets of jeans that are more shreds than actual pants now, looking out of place and moody. His bad temper is almost as flaring as Jalil's; when they meet now, it invariably ends up in a screaming match and Jalil throwing something at him in anger.
Of course, it always misses its mark. He can't get it right. And Christopher says, 'Your aim sucks, you high-horsed jackass,' and it is sarcastic and cruel, shrewd and correct, and for some reason Jalil can't hate him for this one thing, though he can do so for all the others.
They haven't reached that point yet today, however; Jalil is gearing himself for it, though. His fingernails delve into the sensitive mocha skin of his wrists, greedy, wanting to draw blood. He needs this. He'll never admit it, but he needs Christopher to be the scapegoat. He's so angry. So unbelievably angry. And he hates, and hates, and it's black and raw and shredded inside of him, but all he can do is spit pieces out. But no one else takes it like Christopher.
"Get the fuck out," he tells him again, relishing it. "I don't want to see your face. Or—oops, sorry about that. Half of your ugly face. Wow, maybe something good happened after all when I lost an eyeball!"
"You're sick," Christopher sneers, but now the game is on. "Fuckin' sick, arrogant jackass. You think it's so cute, walled up in your room feeling sorry for yourself? Well, screw that. The world has enough problems without your moody bullshit, Jalil."
He takes the poison in and releases his own. "Like you're the one to talk about being selfish, asshole. You've never thought about anyone but yourself. And you spent goddamn weeks in your room, wallowing in self-pity after Etain married a better man than you. There was obviously no choice in the matter—what did you ever have to offer her?" He laughs, harsh, bitter; caustic. "You've never had anything to offer anyone."
"That's what you think the world is all about," Christopher snaps. "Isn't it? Fuckin' worth? Let's talk about worth, Jalil. When did you have any? A Know-It-All. Brainiac. But when did you ever have anything to offer? Cold as stone. Inhuman. Psychotic, mind all messed up and shit because you have a stick so far up your ass—"
Fury makes the world white instead of black, and Jalil loves the color change of it. "Fuck you, you racist prick, like you aren't better with your alcoholic—"
"At least I'm alive—"
"Instead of Ganymede, too, how could I for—"
"You're a fucking bastard, Sherman, can't you see past your—"
"No! I fucking can't see!"
There is dead silence.
This, Jalil thinks numbly, staring at Christopher's gape of shock, is not how it is supposed to happen.
The moment stretches. Jalil can't think. He doesn't even know how to explain what he screamed. Lost, bewildered—he's looking at Christopher, who is stepping back, eyes wide with something akin to—what?—and that hadn't been what he meant to say at all, but...
"But you can," Christopher finally says. "You didn't loose both of your eyes, Jalil. Just one."
He can't breath. He hates him. He hates himself.
"You completely lost it," Christopher says. "Your left eye. I didn't know if you knew. But you completely lost it. They had to take it out. But the other one will be fine."
He just looks at him. Blank. For a second, it can't touch him.
And then he feels the barrenness he wanted to ignore, and it hurts so much that he's folding over on his stomach and gasping, loudly, strangled in his ears, clutching his chest because he's afraid his heart is going to fall apart and unravel into cords of vein and blood, just fall apart completely, and Christopher shuts the door behind him loud enough to hide the first choked denial, and Jalil is grateful; he hates him, but he's grateful, because he's afraid he'd break apart if anyone saw this.
And he doesn't want to believe it. And he feels worse now that Christopher has told him. Just... worse.
What had he done to deserve this?
DAVID, THE GENERAL
David comes after the battle. After all the soldiers have been rounded up and marched to their homes for a brief respite, after the corpses were carried on wooden carts surrounded by the stench of death and insects, and after his feet were blistering from the boots he walked in for days on end. Because of this, when he comes into Jalil's room like a quiet shadow of wary brown eyes and tiny frown, he looks like Death.
Jalil doesn't want to, but he smiles at him. This is different. He sees the barrenness in David's eyes to mirror his own. This is different.
"I heard about it about a week ago," the boy says calmly. He studies Jalil's face—this twisted smirk and bandaged expression is nothing compared to what he's seen on his men. In fact, something crumples in relief in him, and he sags into the chair with a weary sigh. "I didn't know. I didn't know anything about it until then."
"You were busy."
"I should have known." Bitter self-hatred. But he's almost too tired to use it, and it leaks out of his features like running water down the drain, deep into him again. David rubs his eyes. "I'm sorry." He is. Terribly.
"You didn't fire the arrow, David. Don't be an idiot."
But he still takes too much on himself, their self-proclaimed general. The weight is staggering and nearly unbearable now, looking into the lone dark eye of his friend, the one who carried him across the hurdles with his cleverness and knowledge. His common sense and strength. Jalil, David realizes, whom they relied on for so much.
"I'm sorry," he says, and this time he properly means it. It breaks in his voice. "I was supposed to watch over you all. But I didn't."
"Your duty is to this country, not to us," Jalil reminds him, but it feels alarmingly disgusted in his throat. It sounds normal, but he wants to tell him that yes, it's true; it's his fault. But he can't. He could never do that to David, who takes on so much. And it wouldn't be fair.
It is a curse for Jalil. This desire to blame something and the knowledge, the innate justice, that tells him he cannot.
"How is it?"
"Fine." It wasn't. Jalil smiles, though, and it was an awkward and unpracticed masterpiece that was more lopsided than true. "Seriously... you can't worry about it, General. You have a lot more to take on than just my health. And it is fine."
It isn't.
"Sorry," David whispers again. He wants to sleep. Jalil can see it in every breath he takes.
"You're forgiven," he says lightly, as though it is nothing. It's not. It rips another hole through his head to match the other, but when David's shoulders slump with just a little less burden, he can't help but feel that it might just be true.
COMFORT
"You could wear an eyepatch. You could be like a pirate. Captain Bluebeard. Get a parrot."
"You could shut up," Jalil tells Christopher irritably, but there is nothing beyond that in his voice. After that strange day, the violence has seeped out of their wounds like puss, leaving nothing behind but the soreness that it was once there. Now, they tread the delicate line of rebuilding. "I'm trying to work here."
"You should be resting," Christopher drawls, kicking his legs out on the table. His boots are clogged with mud and Jalil wrinkles his nose in distaste. He uses his ink pen to wave at them, gesturing for the blonde to put them back on the floor, and returns to the texts he is looking over. His bandages are itching. He scratches at them idly.
The pain is only spontaneous; healing shocks. But he refuses to look at it yet. Not just yet.
"Resting, like the good doctors say. But Jalil Sherman knows better than the doctors, doesn't he? Jesus, April's gonna kick your ass if she finds you trying to do battle plans for David again."
"They're not battle plans. They're mining operations going on now. I'm checking some of the routes."
"Boring," Christopher groans. "You're so boring."
"You don't have to be here," Jalil points out, and carefully scrawls a delicate black line of ink from one cavern to the other. This could be utilized. The line is a bit shaky and off mark, but it's more or less on target—his practice has paid off with his aim. "In fact, I'd rather you weren't."
"You're so mean to me."
"I have a hard time bringing myself down to your level."
"My level?" And then Christopher's fingers are on his chin, lifting it up, and he's suddenly on the other side of the table looking down on him in amusement, grinning fondly. For some reason, the curve of Christopher's mouth seems much higher and softer than he'd ever known. And his eyes are blue, bluer than anything in the sky that Jalil can see, and he says, "But you should come down there more often. It's better down here."
"Down here?" He can't process it. Everything is stuck in his throat.
Christopher taps his cheek. Releases his head and steps away.
"Do your mining maps. Cave it all in on the dwarfs. I'll be napping," he says impishly, and sprawls out on Jalil's bed to fake-snore and mess up the blankets. Jalil stares after him, at the smooth strip of golden skin peeking out from under his sweater.
He wonders what just happened. And if he'd have seen the same thing with both eyes as before.
MAROON MOON CRUST
It's a dream and Jalil can say whatever he wants. "You held my hand the entire time, didn't you?"
Christopher is looking thoughtfully at him, head tilted to the side as though searching for something that were wrong. They are lost in a sea of charred sludge, nothing but emptiness surrounding them and the sighs of the sea tingling against the shells of their ears. He reaches for Jalil with an outstretched finger, gently prodding the space where his face should be.
It cracks. Jalil wants to protest, but before he can open his mouth, it splits in half. He is fractured.
"Yes," Christopher says. "I did."
And then he leans in and licks—licks—the sharp edges of the mirror of Jalil, until it is bleeding and torn, red maroon dripping down his chin as he hums in pleasure, rubbing his cheek against the smooth plane of glass. Jalil watches this, and is this at the same time, and he wants to kiss him for some reason, to prove that he's not as broken as he seems, but the heat of his skin is too far away to touch and he's lost to the cold of the reflection.
"Do you remember what I did to you yet?" Christopher asks, and then he wakes.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT I KNOW
"I want to know what happened." Etain looks up from the dinner table, her pretty eyes widening in surprise.
"Jalil?"
It feels odd to be out in the open again. Wrong. Everything is the same, but so different. The corridors have narrowed, the windows have shifted in their places, and the statues carved from the marble of the earth have twisted their heads. But he's there, standing, maybe swaying, on his own two feet, blanching and clutching the table to keep from being overwhelmed. And Etain, who might just know what the others won't tell him, looks about ready to call for a doctor.
"I'm fine," he says to her silent questions. "Everything's okay. I just wanted to get out, that's all. And I wanted to ask you... about what happened. To me, I mean."
"You..." She falters. But it is not a secret; no, whatever subterfuge the others may have been involved in, she has been no part of it. He knew she wouldn't have been.
"What happened? Who brought me back from the battle?" he demands, finally giving into the urge to sit at the table. It feels solid under him, and he relaxes in relief somewhat. He can do this. He intently stares at Etain with his uncovered eye, making her shift awkwardly and knowing it is manipulating her. "I need to know, Your Highness."
"You..." she glances down the table anxiously, flustered. "I don't know what happened, Jalil, I'm... terribly sorry. But Christopher brought you in."
"Christopher?" The deadweight in his chest sinks down into his stomach.
"Yes. He—he'd taken you from the field, the healer's said. He insisted you get on the healing wagons back to Daggermouth and brought you himself to my aid. I just assumed—in battle, I just assumed—"
"I know," he says. For the first time in ages, his mind is working again. It whirls and clicks away greedily, putting random pieces together into a comprehensible puzzle. The gears are turning. It feels good to be back. "Did he say anything about what caused the injury?"
"He didn't have to," she murmurs guiltily, looking more uneasy than ever. "We—it was still broken in your eye. That's why we took everything out. The arrow had completely buried itself. But you were lucky," she says it almost desperately, as if trying to convince herself as well as him, "that it didn't go into your skull, Jalil. It's a miracle from my fathers, certainly. At the usual force, it should have killed you."
"An arrow?" A frown touches over Jalil's face. It seems wrong somehow. "But that's impossible. Anything shot from even a large distance should have killed me. The depth of an eye is fairly small—"
"That's why it was a miracle, my friend," Etain says, and now she is smiling, relieved. She moves as if to pat his arm in the sharing of this great wonder. "We are so very glad of it, as well."
It doesn't add up. Something is burning in the back of his brain, sending off all of the internal alarms he's painstakingly created throughout the years. Searching for the question that must be asked, all he can think of is, "What about the arrow? Who shot me? The Hetwan couldn't have done it. The other men fighting against us were mostly sword-bearers."
Her smile falters and then falls away. "It... well, we don't know what happened or who did it. But there was something odd about the entire thing. But I don't think..."
"What is it?" He speaks more gently than he'd prefer to make the answer tumble our of her mouth.
"Well, it was one of ours."
"What?"
"The arrow," Etain repeats, an uncomfortable blush settling around her neck as she avoided his concentrated gaze. "It was one of ours."
All the gears now working in Jalil's mind stop, and he has no answer. He only looks at her.
She looks away, eyes shadowed. So she, too, suspects.
DARKER THAN DREAMS
He's dreaming again.
The field is flattened, grass slick and wet with blood from the corpses littering it, and he's on his knees in the center of it all. He has two eyes in his dream—it feels strange when he sleeps now, because he never dreams of seeing with one eye, always two, and it disorients him when he wakes up— and all around him, men are screaming, but he can barely hear them. They sound oceans away.
Christopher is saying something in front of him. His face is angry, hideously so. His words disappear into the vacuum between them. Jalil stares.
Christopher has a broken arrow in his hand. He's waving it through the air recklessly. Shaking his head viciously.
Jalil says, "Don't do this. Don't do this." He doesn't know why. It's all he can hear.
Christopher snags his wrist and yanks him viciously to his feet, dragging him so that he stumbles along, tripping over dead bodies and weapons scattered around them. His wrist hurts. He tries to get it back. Christopher is too strong.
He's afraid, so afraid, and he feels it now, rushing through his ears—
Christopher turns, and he screams at him. Inaudible.
His friend—friend?—is grim, dark. He gets close, shouting back in Jalil's face, and his hand is clutching the arrow still free of blood, and then Jalil's hitting the ground and his face hurts, and something clicks in his mind—
Christopher's fist is up. Jalil looks up at that, understands, and then he hears the words coming from his mouth.
"Why are you doing this to me!"
And he wakes in the drowning pool of fear freezing his veins. For the first time, he takes a long look at the bruises on his arms. On his wrist, they are fingerprints. On his ribs, too.
Not from the battle. Not from the battle at all.
TRUTH
Christopher sleeps like the dead.
He studies him in half-dead fascination, perching on the side of the bed and rubbing the steel dagger he'd found laying among his clothes. It was the only thing he could manage to find that was sharp enough in his room—everything else was gone. He doesn't question it; it will do well enough.
Christopher's head glows in the candle that flickers on the table, and he grits his teeth and forces his body to hover over that despicable creature. His arm stretches until it hits the other side of Christopher's broad shoulders, delving into the soft mattress and supporting him so that he could lean over his face. Once balanced, his other hand comes up and presses the blade close to Christopher's eye. It gives him a rush almost—but it makes him feel unaccountably sick, too, and Jalil curses himself for being weak.
"Wake up," he says bitterly. When Christopher only mumbles, he says it loudly, "Wake up, you idiot."
He jerks back the dagger just in time before Christopher impales himself on it by shaking his head and sitting up. But he doesn't make it back himself—the blonde hits him hard, and sends him tumbling back on the floor.
"Fuck!" It stings.
"What the hell?" Christopher demands fuzzily, peering over the side of his bed. "The fuck? Jalil, is that you! What are you doing here!"
Jalil snarls at him, struggling to his feet and searching around him for the dagger, holding back curses. "I should be asking you that—you, you lying bastard. Etain told me everything!"
"What?" Jalil hates him for that word.
Screw the knife; he launches himself at Christopher, grappling for his throat. The blonde swears loudly and hits the headboard of the bed, prying the dark fingers away from his throat with a protesting screech. "What the—let me go, you psychotic pain in the ass!"
"What did you do, Christopher?" Jalil demands in his lowest voice, contempt bleeding through his tongue and over Christopher's suddenly guarded, guilty features. "What happened? Why were you the one to bring me back with an arrow that belonged to our side? Why did I have extra bruises all over me? They weren't from the fight, were they? I didn't even think about it. But I should have. Fingerprints, fist marks... what the fuck did you do to me?"
"I didn't do anything," Christopher says bitterly. "Get the fuck off of me, Sherman."
"Not until you tell me the truth."
"You didn't even ask until now!" Christopher's shouting now, shoving Jalil off, and there's not much he can do about it. He's light-bones and scrawny compared to the blonde's bulk; he surrenders and flies back to the other side of the bed, glaring in suspicion, ready to make another jump if he needs to.
"Well, I'm asking now."
"Jesus Christ." Now free, Christopher just looks exhausted. He rubs his eyes and tries to lean back against the headboard. "Jesus Christ. Couldn't you wait until later? Like morning?"
"No. I want to know now. I deserve to know now, Christopher."
"But you won't want to know," the blonde says quietly. "You're not going to like it."
This is the way of all truths, Jalil wants to answer, but he only nods darkly. He can take it. And if it's what he thinks it is—he'll make Christopher wish he'd killed him when he had the chance.
An eye for an eye, he thinks hollowly. And then some.
Christopher is sitting up now, his hair in all different directions, his blue eyes almost black in the shadowed and dimly-lit room. He watches Jalil warily for a second and then sighs heavily. "Fine. Fine, we'll start this... well, by the truth, I guess. Right? What is it that you want to know?"
"Why did you do this to me?" It comes from his dream before he can stop it. He doesn't try taking it back.
"But I didn't. You did."
TO HELL
"What?" It's all Jalil can think to say through the swirl in his brain. "What?"
Christopher's rubbing his eyes again, weary. "Look, I... I don't know. Maybe we should wait until morning for this? You're pissed off, I'm just tired and getting pissed off, it isn't going to get any prettier, and—"
"Tell me," Jalil demands harshly. "Or I swear, Hitchcock, I'm going to shove this knife right through your fucking skull."
"What knife?" Christopher looks alarmed.
"Don't look like that, just tell me what the hell you did!"
"Fuck you, I didn't do anything!" Fury rises in Christopher's face, red and flushed and pissy. "Look, you were the fucked up one for once, not me, goddamn it. You had the arrow, you were the one who screwed your eye over, you threw the fit—"
"You're lying." Something is hurting in Jalil's stomach, turning over and over and making him want to retch, but he holds it back. "Shut the hell up."
"No, you wanted to hear this, didn't you!" Christopher pushes back the covers and stands, glaring in the darkness. "You want to know the truth? Fine. Fine, Jalil. Let's see if you can handle it. We were in battle. Shit was happening. People were dying. Every day, we took more and more of it, until it made us sick, until we couldn't take it anymore, and we were just living on this fucking string, little boys in a big man's war, and even David, all of us, were just waiting to die because it would have been better."
"Shut up," Jalil says. His ears are buzzing; he's numb. "Don't..."
"You were the first to loose it," Christopher says coldly, ignoring him. He's pacing now, quick and sporatic, limbs jerking in each direction as he speaks, low and mechanically, cruel. "I saw it the snapping point. In the middle of the fight, out there on the field... you picked up some stupid jerkoff's arrow. And you started to say something. And then you—you held it like you were going to—" he stops here, setting his jaw sharply.
Jalil just looks at him, empty now. Just... empty. Listening.
"I took it from you," Christopher breaths, flat. "I took it and tried to take you to a Healer. But you were stubborn, you didn't want to go. We fought. I was stupid enough to think it would end if I just shut you up. But it didn't."
He's seeing it in his mind now—like a flash movie, like his dream, only now he's hearing himself. He's listening to himself say horrible, ugly things, desperate and frightened things, unreal and twisted, all wrong, sounding out of his head and seeing demons that weren't there—and he's feeling sicker.
"You took the arrow. You took it, Jalil. And you fucking skewed your eye like it was a ka-bob. And you fucking laughed," Christopher is saying quietly. "That's it. That's your pretty, adorable little truth. Is it what you wanted to hear?"
"No," he says, but it feels far-away.
"So don't come into my room and ask me what I did, Jalil. I saved your life, you shithead. I made sure you had a life to come back to. So don't get pissed off at me and come making threats."
"You're lying," but it is weak, pathetic. "You have to be lying."
Something in Christopher sharpens and he looks at him. "Lying? Jesus, don't you remember any of it? How can it happen and you just forget it all?"
"I... I'm..." The room tilts. It burns at him. The truth... he can taste that it's the truth in his mouth. He's not lying. It's true. It's true. Oh god, it's true.
"Jalil?" But he can't hear anymore.
He can't feel anything. He slides down the wall, the cold stone shuddering against his spine as it flays itself on the uneven edges, and then he's on the floor, head in his hands, mouth open but silent, horrified, unable to cry or think or protest or scream, but huddle into himself and try to protect the vulnerable, gaping hole that's been carved into his chest. This isn't what he expected. This isn't what he wanted.
"No," someone says, but he's not sure if it's Christopher or him.
It isn't Christopher's fault. It isn't David's fault. It isn't April's fault. It isn't even the fault of the other army. There is no one he could blame for this except himself. Everything, from the wound to the hatred churning inside of him, is a product of his own shameful actions. He has done this. He has brought this life upon himself. Stupid, stupid, crazy Jalil, he's suddenly thinking, half-hysterical, bile raising up in his throat. I've done this all on my own. It's always been that way, hasn't it?
His own sickness. Even in Everworld, he can't escape it.
"Fuck," Christopher mutters through a muted sea between them, and then he's kneeling down beside Jalil, reaching out with one hand. "Fuck, Jalil? For Christ's sake, look at me. Look at me, you jackass."
He can't. Panic bubbles in his chest. How can he ever look at anyone again? He should just rip the other eye out. Save himself the trouble.
"Jalil," he says. Grabs his face and carefully jerks him up to look in the face. Christopher's face is blurred. He doesn't know why. "Oh shit, don't do that."
He sounds almost as frightened as Jalil. It makes him almost laugh. "What?"
"Don't," Christopher says helplessly, and then he kisses him.
Kisses him, and it tastes like salt and pain, the bitter tang of denial spiraling down into Jalil's stomach along with a jolt of unexpected desire, and he doesn't know why, doesn't even think about it, just kisses back urgently, desperately, until he can taste Christopher's teeth and the hot ridge of the ceiling of his mouth, like they're devouring each other. His back is against the wall hard where Christopher's pressing down on him like a deadweight, the blonde's hands already squeezing him against his body demandingly, angrily, and it burns like that, like a trap, but Jalil can only ride it out and cry and taste and feel alive for the first time in weeks.
They're so far into each other that it doesn't matter if he can't see it completely or right. He'd never need to see this. He feels it in his bones. In his blood. In the shaky exhale of his mouth and the cracked skin of Christopher's lips in the corner of his mouth. Like that. Just… blinding.
It's too much. It's already too much, his brain has overloaded and his senses are howling, and then Christopher rasps into his neck, low, "It's okay," and then it all comes apart.
He's so tangled up in Christopher that it takes every ounce of quavering strength he has, but he does it. He pulls away and stumbles to his feet, dashing out of the bedroom, palms slapping on the doorframe to push himself out. And then he's gone. Just gone.
He can't do this now. Just… can't.
He barely makes it to his room before he throws up all over the floor.
FORGET ME NOT
He spends the next few days avoiding Christopher and having nightmares. With the truth comes the memories—only partly, and through tiny glimpses and half-dreamt moments, but enough to piece it together. One night, he wakes up from a sharp blast of pain because he'd been digging his fist into his damaged eye, just pounding at it, and feels queasy with relief when he has it checked: there is no permanent harm.
He remembers the battlefield. It isn't pretty. He'd held a boy younger than himself who'd had his entire lower half ripped away by a sword. It hadn't been an easy cut—they took their time, laughing, as they sawed away at it. The boy couldn't speak; blood fell out of his mouth like a waterfall, all over Jalil's hands, but he never let go of his hand until he was completely gone.
And so much more. Men. Children. Animals whose carcasses had been thrown into the battle to terrify or distract their enemies. It hadn't phased the older warriors, but it'd sent Jalil reeling back.
He wonders how David survived it. If he had at all.
He doesn't remember making the decision, though. Nothing of actually making plans—one moment he'd been struggling through the fight, catching Christopher's eye, and then he'd tripped. That had been all. Just fell over his feet into a sea of bodies, his arm already wounded from an earlier acid-wound from the Hetwan, and then he'd seen the broken arrow.
He picked it up. Some part of Jalil awkwardly thinks of using it on someone. Then he remembers slowly bringing it up to his eye, thinking muddled until he can only pick up, 'I'll bore it out of my head,' and then Christopher is there, ripping it away from his fingers.
He remembers hating him in that moment.
The memory plays as Christopher drags him through the field, but it always stops when he's back on the ground. All he can remember after that is a curtain of blood and pain and a hysterical, frightened sort of laugh that he suspects, sickeningly, had come from himself.
The nightmares leave him sweating and shaking in bed. Nothing has made him so afraid before, so ashamed, not even his OCD. There, he had no choice in the matter.
This is worse. Somehow, in a way he can't explain, this is so much worse. And Christopher, too. He didn't want to see him, knowing what he did. He didn't want to see him at all.
'This is like all the other times, Jalil,' he tells himself every morning. 'Just do what you always do. Go out there and forget it. Get over yourself. You've been through shit, but you can do it again because you're strong and a survivalist. You're going to make it. Raise your head high and walk like you own the place, because what they think doesn't matter. You're being insecure and stupid. You're being a wimp. Take it. Just take it like before, like when there was a crowd of ugly men laughing at you clawing at your face because of your mind, like when Senna caught you in the lab sobbing under your breath, just fucking take it and stand up again.'
He could win this battle. Like with all the others, he could overcome it and get to the top again. It is how he lives.
'Get up and out,' he whispers to himself. In the cold chill of morning, the words glare at him and he turns his head again to stare at the door, waiting for something to come through. Anything.
No one comes, though. Not even Christopher.
CHOICES
One morning, there is an arrow piece sitting on his bed.
He stares at it for a long time. He hadn't heard the door open or close—but his sleeping, despite the nightmares, has been deep and draining. It is gangly and wooden and broken halfway up, but for the pointed end, which seems covered in dull stone. It is stained black. His blood, then.
He knows who did this. And part of him knows why.
For a while, Jalil studies it. When he's taken a few deep breaths, he can hold it in his hands. He remembers how liberating and ugly and insane it felt to have it jammed in his face, from what he can barely piece together of his emotional mind-set at the time. Holding it now, he just feels… tired.
He wants to go back to sleep. He wants to burn this piece of evidence and just turn away again.
"I could take my other eye out with this and solve everything," Jalil says loudly. There is silence beyond the door. He didn't expect anything else, but he relaxes. Looking at it again, smoothing over the metal end with his fingers, he feels oddly at peace with the idea. He really could, if he wanted to. He'd never have to look at anything again. Maybe he'd even bleed to death and never have to think about it again. That would be nice.
But he doesn't really want to. That, more than anything, sends the startling relief running through his head. He doesn't want to anymore. It isn't worth it.
What he really wants is breakfast. Eggs. Ham. Maybe some toast, dark enough to be burnt because that's how he likes it.
His bare feet hit the cold floor, and he stands.
IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
His stomach is full of scrambled eggs and fat ham when he finally leaves to find an answer. It only takes a quick question to David—who had stared hungrily at him the entire meal and now seemed almost ready to cry in relief when his friend finally smiled back, really smiled—and he set off towards the exit of the castle. Just outside of the jagged walls, overlooking the moat, he found Christopher's sullen shadows splayed across the stone pathway.
"You're a hard man to find," he lies, and sits beside him.
Christopher barely glances at him. "Obviously not hard enough. I see you haven't gouged out your other eye yet."
"No. I figured I'd wait for the evening show. Charge for viewers. Make some money off of my pain."
"Always knew you were the genius." They don't say anything else for a while. It's hard to find the words for the entire conversation that must play out. In the end, Christopher turns away from it, letting the uncomfortable gap in the air speak for his own urge to leave or have Jalil leave. But they can't do it. Not anymore. Things need to be said, and it had to be now.
"I'm sorry," Jalil says quietly.
Christopher looks at him sharply. "For what?"
"You saved me." The words are awkward, too big over his tongue. "You didn't let me finish it. You got me to help. You took my bad moods and you didn't even have to. You told me the truth. You made me—"
"Oh, fuck, no," Christopher growls, and then he narrows his blue eyes at Jalil in ill-disguised fury. "Fuck that. Don't even think about it. You aren't supposed to thank me for that bullshit at all."
"What" Bewilderment. Jalil blinks at him, forehead furrowed in confusion. "What am I supposed to do?"
"You should hit me. I don't deal with this stuff very well." He taps the stone floor with his hand meaningfully, arching his eyebrows up. "I've been a jackass to you. Every time you come to me for help, I've just shoved you off or pissed you off or done the wrong thing—"
"But I never came to you for help," he says flatly.
"I took advantage of your memory and your moods. I thought, well—" and he hesitates. "I thought it might make up for it. Because I didn't… I just thought you wouldn't want…"
"What?"
Christopher stares out at the grass pensively, biting his lip as he looses himself in his thoughts. After a moment, he sighs. "You hate it when people know shit about you. You hate being seen… you know, as weak."
It is true. He says nothing.
"I thought you'd hate me for trying to fix you. And I did a shitty job of it."
"You didn't fix me," Jalil says, and slowly he's beginning to understand. "I did that myself. But you helped me figure it out. And… I'm grateful, I guess. I don't hate you for it. Other things, but not that."
"Oh." Christopher looks like he wants to do something—his mouth is twitching uncertainly, as though he's trying to laugh automatically or stop the frown from curving his face downward. "Oh, okay."
"What? Did you want me to say something different?"
"No," Christopher says vehemently, insisting. He doesn't look at Jalil, but stands abruptly to his feet and brushes the dirt off of his thighs. "No," he repeats to himself and makes to leave.
He reaches out and grabs a handful of his jeans. Stops him.
They wait for a second like that—Jalil still staring out over the landscape, dark eyes hidden and shadowed in the bulk of the castle, and Christopher still frozen in his steps with his hands in his pocket, not daring to look down.
"It's going to take time," Jalil finally says, slowly, "to figure this out."
"Yeah?" Christopher's reply sounds hoarse.
"Yeah. I don't know how long. I have no idea what I'm doing." It strangely doesn't hurt to admit it for once. "I don't know what you want from me. Not any of it. But I'm…"
When he falls silent, Christopher murmurs, "You're…?"
"Do you want to come with me tonight? When they change the bandages. And we can find a mirror." It comes out before he's thinking about it, rushed and strangled. "I want to see. And I want you to see."
"Why?" Christopher sounds confused. He finally looks down at Jalil, only to find him looking straight back up at him.
"So you can tell if you still want to try, anyway," Jalil replies simply.
Understanding finally dawns. And Christopher half-snarls, though he doesn't sound angry, "You fucking idiot. You fucking stupid idiot, you're just so—" and then he's bending down and pulling Jalil up by his shirt and they're kissing, badly and sloppily, but it's warm and Jalil keeps his eye open this time and so does Christopher, and when the blonde says into his mouth, "It doesn't matter. Forget the mirror, let's go to lunch," it's all okay, it's all okay.
It's all okay.
WHAT WE BECOME
When he makes the decision, he gets the eye patch. Much to Christopher's delight and utter amusement.
"I'm screwing around with Captain Long Jalil Silver," he laughs, smoothing out the black cloth tied tastefully over Jalil's left eye. He rolls the other one at him.
"Jackass. I hate you."
"It looks good, though. You make black work. Have you thought about a silk one? Black silk would look fucking fantastic." He presses a kiss to Jalil's collarbone, fingers still stroking the fabric until the dark-haired boy calmly swats them away. "You can even terrify our enemies. They'll think you're a bad-ass."
"It looks stupid. But it's better than the other alternatives," Jalil admits ruefully, leaning back on the pillow. Christopher's weight is comforting on him; half-sprawled over his stomach, the blonde's starting to draw swirls and circles over his arms with his fingers. "Stop it, that feels weird."
"I have a surprise for you," the blonde chimes happily.
Suspiciously, Jalil pokes him in the shoulder. "I don't think I want it."
"Yes, you do. Now… close your eyes and promise you won't get pissed off."
Against his better judgment, Jalil obeys. The eyelashes that are left behind tickle against the eye patch. He thinks it will take him forever to get used to the odd, slightly queasy sensation. "This had better not be—"
A strip of cloth hits both of his eyes, and when his head shoots up, Christopher nimbly ties a quick knot behind his head. "The hell—"
"Shhh, you promised," Christopher mumbles in his ear warningly, squeezing his fingers hard enough to send a twist of pain down to the knuckles. "Calm down. You'll figure it out in a second, damn it."
There is the sound of more rustling. The anger is in Jalil's shuttered breath and tense shoulders, the way his mouth is drawn into a thin line, but he doesn't remove the blindfold. His entire world is dark now, much like it had been in the beginning when it first happened, and he doesn't like the feeling.
"Now," Christopher says loudly, and he feels the blonde take the hand he squeezed and raise it. "Check it out. I'm the coolest, huh?"
His fingers meet the warm cheek of Christopher's face. Hesitating, Jalil almost draws back at the sensation. Then, determination flaring, he lets them trace the softness of his lips… the bluntness of his chin… up through to the soft sideburns barely visible at the side of his face…
"Higher," Christopher's saying when his fingers meet cloth. He freezes.
The silence is deafening. Christopher is anxious now, drawn up in preparation for a blast of anger, but nothing comes. Then Jalil laughs. He rubs the blindfold across Christopher's eyes and just laughs, loud and delightedly, as though he's found something absolutely wonderful and amazing, and with the sound Christopher lets out the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.
"It's okay?" he inquires huskily, climbing over Jalil's body. "You don't mind this? I mean, I thought maybe—"
To answer, Jalil pulls him down into a long, lingering kiss.
Then, they do not speak anymore. In the darkness, they meet each other and see the raw truth as it lies between them, brilliant and golden and blinding.
THE END