Through Empty Eyes

It's a strange experience, seeing your own corpse.

But see it I do. Two corpses, actually. One male, one female. One a man whose name no longer matters. A body that was once mine, before I left its mortal bonds to become this creature of smoke and shadow. The other, the woman I called mother. The woman who murdered by real mother, and whose life I took in turn. Both of their skeletons are lying here in the caves, looking up at a stone sky. Looking up at me. Both of them victims of murder. Neither of whom I shall mourn. But that is not to say I'm without emotion, as I turn my gaze to my brother, standing beside me.

"This is where you took them?"

"You and Mother, yes."

"She wasn't our mother."

"But you're still my brother."

Does he think to sway me with those words? It won't work. The magic our mother wove ensures that neither of us can harm the other. If it wasn't for her, there'd be a third skeleton in this cave, and no man to look upon them.

"How long has it been?"

"Fifty years, give or take."

I kneel down and look at my own corpse. It's a skeleton, I tell myself – I'm not going to find any pearls of wisdom from my old body. I'm still me, at least in mind. Or at least, that's what I tell myself. My own brother tried to kill me, and I'm the price he paid for his defiance. A ghost that can haunt him, but still do no harm. I suppose that's the reason why I'm certain I'm still the same man who wanted to leave the island then, and wanted to leave it now, and not some copy. The desire to leave is the same. The loathing for the other corpse beside my own is the same. The desire to spill my brother's blood and decorate the walls of the cave with it? That's stronger than ever.

"Why didn't you bury us?" I look back at my brother, and he shrugs.

"Does the reminder hurt you?" I continue. "Did you not want to see a marker?" I stand up. "Why now, Jacob? Why bring me here?"

"Fifty years is a long time," he says.

By every god of every man and woman who has called out to them on this island, I want to strangle him, even if I know that this island is a realm beyond any deity. "You don't need to tell me about the passage of time."

"Actually, I think I do."

"Why?"

"Because you still want to kill me."

I take a step toward him. He stands his ground. Standing there as surely as the statue on the beach. But a step is all I take. Were I to act, fate would find a way to save him. He can stand there in the knowledge that I can do no harm, and lecture me on issues such as time and murder.

"I thought maybe seeing yourself…and her…might help," he says. For the first time in decades, he sounds sincere. "She raised us. You killed her, I tried to kill you."

"Look how well that turned out."

"But now, fifty years on, seeing you with our mother-"

"Don't," I snap. "Don't you ever call her that." I turn back to the corpses and kneel beside them. "She wasn't our mother, Jacob. She even told you that herself."

"She did." He kneels down with me. "But she raised us, and loved us. That's all I know."

"You just said that you also know that our real mother is dead."

"I do, but I can't love what I don't know."

I fall silent. I don't tell him that I did see our mother. Our real mother, in her wisdom and beauty. It's her hair, that I'm reminded of most of all. Long black hair, similar to that which once fell over my brow. My brother looks nothing like her, and I tell myself that the reason he's never seen her is that she has no reason to appear to him. Tell myself that, while wondering why my eyes have never beheld her since I became this…thing.

A thing I turn into. A creature of smoke and shadow. Through unhuman eyes, I see my brother take a step back. He knows I can't harm him, but seeing me like this still gives him pause. Good, I reflect, as my shadow washes over the bodies. Good, I think, as I see him recoil before me, as I once again take human form.

"There," I say. "Now they're like me."

"What?" he whispers.

"Fifty years," I say. "That's how far they're along in decomposition. That's how far along they'll ever be. A thousand, two-thousand years from now, that's how they'll appear to anyone who comes to these caves. They'll be here, and they'll see your handiwork."

"And yours," my brother says.

"Two murderers, murdered," I say. "How long before the scales come for you, Jacob?"

I don't use his name much. He refuses to use mine, so in turn, I refuse to use his. But Jacob, I name him. Murderer, I call him. Monster, I shun him. For he knows he could let me leave. Knows that he could live out his days on this forsaken piece of rock, bereft of my presence.

"Go," he says.

In silence, I walk away, feeling the stone upon my feet, the wind in my hair. I go, walking as mortals do. Daring to dream that I too, am like him.

But I'm not. And never shall be again.

A/N

So, it was a bit of a mindscrew to learn in season 6 that the skeletons in the caves from season 1 are of the Man in Black and his mother. What kind of diminishes the impact is that the corpses were meant to be 50 years old, a tidbit cut out in the flashback in season 6. Not a dealbreaker mind you, but that, coupled with the idea of the MiB seeing his own body, got me to drabble this up.