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The Jungle in Our Hearts

Author's note: I know that everybody and their dog has written something about the wonderful "turn it back on" scene in the power core of the Leviathan, but I just had to offer my own interpretation. I think one of the major forces in this scene is the interesting power play of submission and dominance between Monkey and Trip - indeed, this theme spans the whole game - so that was what I wanted to convey the most. If you're interested, this fanfiction ties in with another Enslaved fic I'm writing, entitled "Mon Cœur Glacé", which is a series of vignettes about the pair's journey and their growing relationship.

This contains big spoilers. Oh, and it's also terribly gooey and unspeakably happy, but I just had to go all out on this one. You've been warned!

The power core was curiously warm with the drone of electrical circuitry. In the dome above their heads a thousand tiny lights flashed in sequence, commencing their own rhythmic pulse to mimic the beat of Monkey's heart. They had finally found a moment of respite after a frantic, gruelling day, and it was perfect. He wanted to lay here forever upon the cold metal floor, Trip sitting beside him, with nothing to disturb them and no future to face up to, just him and her trapped in a timeless bubble of their own making. The twisted skeletons of a hundred mechs were heaped just outside the core, a solid memory of brutality and distress, but none of that seemed to matter in here. Such negative thoughts could not penetrate the languid, humid atmosphere. It seemed almost alive, droning quietly with mechanical beeps and clicks like a chorus of insects, the dome twinkling like the night sky, hot air bridging the small, snug space between Monkey and Trip. The blinking lights stared back at him and lulled his mind into a promise of beauty and simplicity.

Monkey listened to his own exhalation, and was almost surprised to hear the sound of Trip exhaling in time with him. It had always been just him, breathing alone.

Now he turned his head to look at his companion, and what crossed his eyes may have been something like tenderness, something like contentment. These were feelings mostly alien to him. He would have spoken, would have moved: but the stillness was so complete it felt wrong to break it. If he spoke, he would have to acknowledge the passing of time. If he moved, the world would move too. Better to remain frozen, caught in the disarming tranquillity of pure sensation, the unexpected bliss of unhurried emotion revealing itself slowly and piece by piece, like a sultry tropical flower opening its petals. Monkey didn't think he had ever felt this way.

It was Trip who spoke first. In his serene state Monkey had not fully realised that she looked pensive, perhaps a little ill at ease. She was sitting with her hands in her lap, and she would not meet his eyes. "I've been wanting to talk to you, but there never seems to be a time." The words came out with a certain rushed hesitance. Trip was flustered, perhaps disturbed by the heat of the room, shaken by the exhaustion of the long day, or the unspoken understanding in the air separating them. Monkey watched with a newfound patience. The lights continued to flicker high above.

"When I found my father dead…" But she couldn't continue. It was too recent, too fresh. She brought up her holographic armband and proceeded to fiddle with it, doing something with data and programming that Monkey could not appreciate. "I'm not trying to excuse what I've done. I know it was wrong." It was painful for her to say the words, and she closed her eyes as if they brought her actual physical discomfort. She felt like a child again, admitting to her father the error of her foolish ways, burning with the knowledge that she had got it all wrong. But even worse was the disloyalty to herself. There was a guilt in her voice that quavered audibly: she should have known better, should have honoured the values which she was raised by and which were the only last, desperate vestiges of principle remaining on this wasted earth. The search for revenge had consumed her. She had enslaved another human being, broken her word, become no better than the slavers whom she had sworn vengeance upon. Trip swallowed her pride, almost swallowing her tongue in the process. "I have no more right to enslave you than anyone does."

He could not deny that she was beautiful at that moment, ravaged by remorse. Monkey was no judge of wonder or loveliness in the world, but he knew that whatever beauty might be, Trip was it. One strand of hair fell across her face and her eyes held reflections of fantasies and promises. He wanted to reach those unreachable places which were swimming in her gaze, to tell her that he understood and that he forgave her. And although the blue hologram obscured the particulars of her appearance, although she was hiding like she always did behind her technology, he had never felt closer to her, never felt more certain that they could communicate in a way that did not need tools or gear, or barriers, or restrictions, or shackles, or anything more than the absolute intimacy of two people breathing as one.

Trip turned her armband off, and the hologram slipped away. Before Monkey could decide on how to react, a flash of intense colour burst simultaneously across his forehead and his retinas. In an instant the icons clouding the peripherals of his vision were gone, and his head felt lighter and looser, almost as if it was going to float away. It was like the subsiding of a lengthy headache, but it wasn't entirely pleasurable, as if a force he had not been aware of but which was as crucial as the gravity weighing him down was now suddenly absent. Monkey sat up, a little too quickly, and saw white spots dance across his eyes. He brought a hand to his head as he tried to grasp at the consequences of this single act. "What have you done?" he murmured.

"There's nothing controlling you anymore," Trip said, and as she did so she shook her head slightly, because she was trying to make things right and she needed for him to allow her to do so.

Monkey's throat was dry. Now the warmth of the power core throbbed at his temples, caused the surface of his skin to grow sticky with sweat. What was she trying to tell him? If only he knew more about social norms, about the tricky workings of the human mind. He barely wanted to comprehend what Trip was saying. "So I can… I can just leave?"

"If that's what you want," she said. Her voice sounded like a surrender.

She was freeing him. She was fulfilling her promise. This had been what he'd wanted all along, the elusive end to their illusive bond, his hard-earned ticket to freedom. He had been planning for this moment weeks in advance. Then why did it feel like a betrayal? He could stand up and leave right then and there, he could return to the solitary but familiar life he had once known. There would be no invisible force fields stopping him - no inexplicable urges in his head forcing him to turn back. And that thought was scarier to him than all the mechs and all the slave ships in the world. Monkey's face was a mask of unemotion, a stone wall suppressing the warm ocean of feeling which was more than he had been permitted to experience in his entire life. That was when he truly felt it. That was when he knew. Because he was terrified that without the headband, without a leash around his neck, he would feel a shameful and relentless desire to leave, and if he did so, if he failed, if Trip was hurt or harmed or killed whilst he was still alive, he would never be able to handle it. That was when he sensed deep in his chest the petals in bloom, the intoxicating draw of being tied to someone and of no longer being afraid of the fact, the hot summer rain of staring her in the face and knowing that she was his future, his perfection in the wasteland, his Trip, the only one who could tame the untameable jungle in his heart.

"Turn it back on."

She was staring back at him with doe eyes. She heard the words in his demand that was almost a plea but did not really comprehend them, was not yet ready to recognise the depth of the waters running under the surface. "But I -"

"You heard what I just said, turn it back on." It was a loaded command, firm, harsh and assertively masculine, but desperate, lonely, restrained, expressive in the only way Monkey knew how: through active dominance. Trip thought she could hear the myriad hues of emotion in his voice. She lowered her head and dutifully reactivated the headband.

It was all too much for her. He was giving in. Through his dominance he was submitting, was yielding himself to her, this huge beast of a man wilfully giving all that he was to a defenceless young girl. The Monkey was asking to be caged. When she looked at him all she could see was his sacrifice, and the only thing strong enough to fuel it - his devotion, his steadfast loyalty, his determination to stand by her through everything. She could hardly bear to look any longer. Every bone in his body was fighting for her, every wish focused on her, every fragment of pure, simple resolve which drove everything he did was now perfectly attuned to her, and she almost felt like crying. But instead she became aware of the stifling closeness of their bodies and the moisture in the air which she could almost taste. She needed him then, as much as he needed her. She had never known heat like this, such clammy dampness lingering upon the hair and the skin and permeating the heart and setting her whole body into a spin. Trip inched closer to him. He would not take his eyes off her. She felt a raging desire up her spine, and she knew that if he was going to stay, if he was giving up his freedom and pledging himself to her with such sublime gentleness and faith, she had to respond in turn.

Trip leaned towards her silent companion, so close he could feel her swift breath on his chest. Her eyes kept flickering up and down between his face and the floor, betraying her youth and her naivety. She tried to edge her lips onto his, tried to place her soft hand onto the side of his coarse and unshaven face, but he gripped her wrist in his massive palm and halted her before she could touch him.

She looked at him. He looked at her. The synthetic stars in the dome shone overhead and the machinery continued to hum. Her eyes, screwed up in turmoil, pleaded with him for an answer. When he did not give one she tussled briefly with him, attempting to wrench her arm free, but he would not allow it. In desperation she tried once again to confirm the emotions erupting in her heart like butterflies from a cocoon, tried more strongly this time to place a kiss on his lips, and yet again she was thwarted. His expression was pained.

Breathlessly, she said, "Kiss me, Monkey."

He wished he were able to. But he was her protector and guardian. He could never leave her, he knew that now, and yes, he was attracted to her, urgently, and yes, in a subconscious recess he had fantasized of being more than just her platonic partner, but all of it was wrong. Monkey did not like to confuse things which did not need confusing. The reality was that she was a young woman, barely more than a girl, and if the world they lived had been anything other than a chaotic, ferocious wasteland then there would be no chance of them ever being together. She was the blazing dawn and running water: he was a collection of tendons and scars held together by sheer grit. In any rational society she would never be with a man like him.

But Trip did not make it easy for him. He could feel just as well as she the allure of their connection, the sparking of electricity in the gaps between them. He wanted so badly to admit defeat on this final front, to lie down with his arms open, his heart gaping wide, ready for her to step into his skin and claim his body, his spirit, his everything, as her own. Numbly Monkey noticed that he was still grasping Trip's wrist. Flowing between them was a rush of impulses, a tropical river in their veins. Even as he looked into her eyes he felt himself falling, pieces of him chipping away and letting go and succumbing to what neither dared to voice.

Trip stared Monkey down. If he was surrendering, she would dominate, and she would conquer. "Command: kiss me," she said, as hard as stone.

And he was drawn hopelessly forwards, whether by the relentless tug of yearning or an electronic signal permeating his brain he could not discern. It barely mattered. He only knew that their coming together must be inevitable, inescapable, as fated as the war, as the death of the Old People, as destined as everything that had ever occurred in the grim history of this dismal world and everything that ever would happen. If their existence was ordained to be desolate and bleak, why waste this precious chance at happiness? Why not cling to one of the few remaining flashes of life? He could no longer disobey, and he no longer wished to run from what he could not escape. He was her slave.

Their lips met. Trip pushed into him feverishly, her hands moulding to his chest, desperate to convey all the gratitude she held. She was inexperienced. He did not care. He handled her delicately, like a flower in his hands. The smell of her skin was heat and mechanics, the weight of her body supple as she clambered into his lap. Though Monkey had been stuck in a quagmire for most of his life, it had never felt so heavenly as this, never felt so right for all their complications and apprehensions and their odyssey to end here, together, knotted until he didn't know where he ended and she began.

Monkey slipped a hand away from the small of her back to brush at the hair across her forehead. She was panting gently, cradled in his broad shoulders. He used this interval to plant a row of kisses along the side of her face, down her angular cheeks, her proud chin, her pale and dipping neck. And with each kiss came something akin to a blessing, a whispered prayer of thanks for this miracle dropped into his life in the shape of a girl formed of light, hope and passion. Trip placed her long arms around his neck. Neither of them knew what the future held. But in that moment the future seemed to fade away to a placid glow, like the lights in the ceiling, too vague to matter when they had the here and now, when they had their promises, now they would never be apart. Trip smiled and tried to hold back tears when she thought of how lucky she had been. Monkey held her tighter than any dream he had ever held.

They were a tangled mess on the floor, entwined inseparably like jungle vines, enslaved to each other, and it was perfect.