This might be the last update for a while. Sowwie! :(
Inspired by: A 'Criminal Minds' episode that I can't remember the name or plot of. :/ Oh well.
"Well I've seen sunrise
Seen the love in my woman's eyes
Feel the touch of a precious child
And know a mother's loooooooove!"
Kim and her father laugh as the song finishes, having made no attempt whatsoever to sing the notes right and therefore resulting in lots of laughter. The radio moves onto another song that they both recognize, but neither of them can even attempt to sing it through their laughter.
"Ok, I gotta calm down before I run us into a ditch or something," Chuck Crawford says, turning down the music. "Let's turn this down so I can see better."
Kim (who had previously calmed down to the occasional giggle) starts laughing all over again. "That doesn't even make sense! How doesn't turning down music help you see better?!"
"Everyone does it, just ask your mother," the man says in response with an amused gleam in his eye.
It's late. The elder Crawford is driving his daughter home from a party her sensei had thrown to celebrate their dojo winning another tournament. Chuck, who decided the ride was too silent, had turned on the radio. He turned it up upon realizing that one of his daughter's favorite songs was on, and they had both sung it together in the most ridiculous way possible.
The inside of the truck falls silent once again (minus the country music playing softly in the background), but not for long.
"The sad thing is that I actually tried on the second chorus."
The confession serves to push his daughter into another round of guffaws. "Really?!" she gasps through her laughter. "That was *laugh* the worst *laugh laugh* one!"
"Well," the father says, with mock indignation, "I think it was good enough for Broadway."
The girl laughs even harder. It gets to the point where the man is a little worried about the fact that she doesn't seem to be breathing. He takes his eyes off the road for a split second to look at his daughter. "Uh… you alright, pumpkin?"
Kim gives him a silent thumbs up. A few seconds later she takes a deep breath and sighs a little, giggling now and then. Chuck's concern disappears. He lifts his eyes back to the road.
There's a figure in the street.
He slams on the breaks. With a loud screech, the vehicle comes to an abrupt stop, and both of them jolt forward. Chuck hears a small bang and "ow!". A look at his daughter reveals that she's rubbing at an angry red mark going diagonally across her collarbone. The seatbelt must have dug into her skin harshly, but it's better than having her head go through the front window.
"You alright?"
"I'm fine," she responds. "Wha'dya do that… for?…" The teen trails off upon seeing the figure in the road. Chuck looks back up as well; the person is walking, no, staggering across the road, not giving any indication of noticing they had almost gotten hit. Chuck turns on the headlights to get a better view (they were previously turned off because the full moon provided ample light to see by). All he can make out is just-above-shoulder-length brown hair and a bruised and bloody form before the person collapses.
"Oh my god…" the girl whispers.
Chuck makes a split second decision. "Stay here," he tells the girl, unbuckling his seat belt and getting out of the truck before his daughter can protest.
Once outside of the vehicle, he turns back to his daughter and points a finger at her, wordlessly warning her to obey him. She already has her hand on the button that will release her seat belt. Seeing her father's stern gaze, she sighs and crosses her arms, pouting.
The father turns back to the still form on the street. The person had fallen with their back facing the vehicle. He slowly approaches, wary of any sudden movements or attacks. The apparently unconscious person does neither.
He finally reaches the the person's side. Various bloodstains litter the back of the person's light shirt, standing out against the pale green fabric like vibrantly red roses in dead grass.
Some of the roses are still blooming.
His breath hitches at the numerous injuries on the person's muscular arm (the only skin visible due to long black pants and a short sleeved shirt). It's covered in bruises, cuts, and… is that a cigarette burn?! Chuck only recognizes the mark because of when Kim was little, and found a lit cigarette that her uncle had set down; she ended up accidentally burning herself on the leg with it. The mark looked exactly like this one, only this one is darker, as if… as if it had been pressed into the sickly pallor of the skin.
The man doesn't want to think about that. He gets down on one knee and cautiously places an arm on the person's shoulder. (He's watched way too many of those crime shows with Kim's friend Milton.) After a moment of indecision, he rolls the person onto their back.
It's a teenager; a male one at that. Other than two little mole things on either cheek, and blood running from an unknown source right above his temple, his face is strangely unblemished. The man's eyes continue down, scanning the teen's wounds. His stomach lurches sickeningly at the hand-shaped bruises on the other's throat. On his torso, the various injuries bleed through the cloth of his shirt. The left side of his midsection seems oddly caved in. Chuck is no doctor, but he has no doubt that it signifies a broken rib. Or three.
The one arm that was visible before is resting on the teen's stomach since the man rolled him over. He gingerly picks up the teen's (disturbingly cold) wrist to check his pulse, but the inner wrist is slick with blood. He flips the limb to examine it, and what he sees chills him to the bone.
Words. Each letter is about three-fourths of an inch tall. The first two, "PROPERTY OF", are clearly old scars. But the third word is bloody and scratched out, completely illegible; underneath it, "ME" is etched into the skin, and these letters are fresh. The man just knows that the teen himself did it, and can only imagine what horrors the young person has faced…
The father carefully lies the teen's hand back on his stomach (as if he were conscious enough to feel the pain that would have resulted from Chuck doing otherwise). Fearful of what he may find on the other wrist, he presses his fingers against the other's neck instead, hoping, praying for a pulse.
His relief when he finally finds it is overwhelming; it's weak, but it's there, fluttering defiantly against his fingers. After checking to make sure the teen is breathing, the man bends over and slides one arm under the teen's back and hooks the other underneath his knees. With a grunt, he stands up and starts walking back to his truck.
"Your dad tells me you need a pick-me-up."
Kim looks up, smiling when she sees her best friend Grace entering the hospital room. "Hey."
The brunette walks over to her friend and sits down in the chair next to her. She searches her best friend's face for a moment, before turning her gaze to the sleeping teen on the bed. "Do they know who he is yet?"
"No," Kim responds softly, as if afraid to wake him up. "He's not in their records. They're looking through a bunch of missing person stuff to see if anyone reported him missing, but they're hoping he'll just tell them when he wakes up."
She has to admit, he looks a lot better than he did when she and her father found him yesterday. Color had returned to him, showing off his tanned skin. Now that he's all cleaned up and there's not blood everywhere, he actually looks kinda… handsome. She doesn't want to say 'hot' or 'cute' because that doesn't seem to do him justice.
"Okay, that's good." Grace waits, knowing that the beat of silence (save for the beeping of the EKG machine) won't last long.
"I just… I don't want him to wake up alone, ya know?"
"Yeah. I get it."
"He's been through a lot, Gracie." Kim hasn't called her that in years. Grace looks over at her friend in concern and notices that the blonde's eyes are trained on the teen's bandaged wrist. "A lot of bad things. I really hope he gets better soon."
"I do, too."
"…woah, did his finger just twitch?!"
"Uh, I didn't see anything."
"…"
"…"
"…maybe I was just imagining things." Kim sighs and rests her head on her friend's shoulder.
He is roused by voices.
He identifies them as female. He's never heard them before. Who do they belong to?
No. He doesn't want to know. He'd rather just stay in his comfortably murky bubble of unconsciousness, floating and cushioned by oblivion.
But the voices…
The voices can wait.
Darkness envelops him once more.
"…the doctors say that they think you'll wake up soon," Kim says to the unconscious teen. She absentmindedly plays with his fingers, weaving her fingers in and out of his. She doesn't seem to notice what she's doing as she keeps speaking. "Which is good, because we really wanna help you, but we can't do much without knowing who you are."
A smile tugs up the corner of her mouth. "The guys and Grace, they've all been trying to guess what your name is. Have I told you about them? I don't really think I have. Grace is the girl came and visited you last week. She's my best friend. I've known her for as long as I can remember. She says your name is Hart, 'cause you're a 'heartthrob.'" She rolls her eyes, but then cocks her head to the side and studies his face. "You don't look like a Hart."
"Milton, he's my best guy friend. He's really smart, but he's really weird sometimes. His guess is Leo. I guess I could see that, but… not really."
"Eddie's another one of the guys. He's really sweet, and he loves food. He says your name is Logan." She chuckles. "He and Milton both think that it starts with an 'L.'"
"And then there's Jerry. Jerry…" She hesitates, searching for the right word. "He gets confused sometimes. He's not really the brightest, but he's a good friend. He insists that you have some Spanish name that I can't pronounce." She rolls her eyes. "I doubt it, though. You don't seem like a Spanish person."
"Milton, Eddie, Jerry and I all take karate at the Bobby Wasabi dojo after school. Our sensei, Rudy, he's like a kid trapped in a grown man's body." She laughs. "But he's serious when it counts… for the most part. We've all gotten into a bunch of insane stuff over the years."
She falls silent for a while reminiscing about her various adventures with her friends.
"Grace doesn't take karate with us. She's a cheerleader, but she hangs out at the dojo sometimes when she doesn't have practice."
"Please wake up soon, alright?" She leans forward a bit and squeezes his hand gently. "We really wanna help you. Mom and Dad say you can stay with us if something happens and we can't figure out where you live. You'd stay in the guest room. Mom makes makes lasagna every Friday, and it's great. And my little sister Morgan is either gonna love you or hate you. You don't want her to hate you."
Another silence, this one a lot longer than the last as she once again loses herself in her thoughts. She almost misses the little groan.
Upon hearing the sound, she sits up straight and stares intently at his face. "Please tell me I just heard that and I'm not imagining things." She can't help the grin that practically splits her face in half when the teen shifts.
He's listened to the voice for a while now, in his hazy state of unconsciousness. Her voice is soothing and runs over him like a warm tidal wave. But now it's rousing him, waking him up.
He teeters on his indecision. He doesn't want to wake up, doesn't want to leave the darkness for the pain that he somehow knows is awaiting him. But she seems so sad…
He lets his bubble of darkness fall away.
Brown eyes flutter open, and Kim's breath catches. Should she say something? Wait for him to wake up more? Call the doctor? She doesn't know. So she just stays put and watches as he surfaces from his slumber.
He stares at the ceiling for a couple of seconds, before his gaze flickers over to her. She flashes him what she hopes to be a reassuring smile. "Hey."
He looks at her, his eyebrows furrowing in apparent confusion (an expression that Kim finds oddly adorable). Suddenly he's panicking, and the heart monitor is going nuts and he's sitting up and scrambling to get away from her—
"Woah, woah, woah," Kim says, quickly standing up and backing away from the bed. He falls back onto the bed, probably in pain from his sudden movements, and watches her every move. She raises her hands in surrender, showing that she doesn't intend to hurt him. "It's alright. I'm not gonna hurt you, I promise."
He stares at her, not responding.
Kim hesitates, debating what to do. Now what? Does she try to talk to him and calm him down? Or leave, and tell a doctor so they can handle it? She decides on the former, reasoning to herself that having more people in the room would probably make him panic even more.
"My name is Kim," she says slowly. "My dad and I were driving one night when you started to cross the road and passed out. We brought you here. You're in a hospital right now. No one's going to hurt you here."
His eyes quickly scan the room, before darting back to her. She slowly backs away while approaching the door.
"I can leave if you—"
"Wait!"
She stops.
"P-Please don't leave, miss." His voice is quieter, a lot quieter. He seems terrified at his own outburst. He shifts in the bed, avoiding her eyes and sitting up a little straighter.
"Okay." She slowly approaches her chair again and sits down.
He swallows, still not making eye contact. "You… Y-You're the voice."
She cocks her head to the side slightly. "'The voice?'"
"I heard you… talking."
She blushes a little bit. "Oh. Yeah, then, I guess that was me."
A silence falls between them. He stares at his hands. Kim notices that he seems like he's in pain. "Here," she says, pressing a button and holding it. The upper half of the bed rises to meet his back. She releases the button and he gingerly leans back against the bed, now in a half-upright position.
"Thank you, miss."
"No problem… You know, you don't have to call me 'miss.'"
He doesn't respond, and another, longer cease in conversation falls between them. The beeping of the heart monitor slowly lowers in frequency until it's back to normal.
"I'm going to call the doctor, alright?" she finally says, moving her hand towards the call button. "He's gonna wanna know you're awake."
"O-okay."
She bites her lip. She doesn't know if this is appropriate, but it might help… "You can… hold my hand, you know, if you're scared."
He doesn't look affronted, like a normal teenage male would be at the offer. Instead, he just nods silently.
She presses the call button. The doctor comes in a few minutes later, smiling when he notices that the teen is awake. Kim didn't realize the teen had relaxed until he tensed up upon the entrance of the doctor. "Hello. Glad to see you're awake."
The man sits down in his little rolley chair and grabs the clipboard and pen in front of the teen's bed. "Can you tell me your name?"
"Jack, sir."
The doctor writes it down. "Last name?"
"It's…" Jack trails off, eyebrows furrowed. "I can't remember." His heartrate skyrockets again. He squeezes his eyes shut and clenches the bed sheets in his fists. "I can't remember! Why can't I remember?!"
"That's alright," the doctor says. "It looks like you have amnesia. That means you're not gonna remember a lot of things right now. It's okay."
Jack shakes his head. He releases the sheets and pats the bed, searching for Kim's hand without looking. She places it within his reach. He grabs it and squeezes. He takes a deep breath, and then releases.
"I apologize, sir."
"You apologize?" the doctor echoes, frowning. "For what?"
"I showed weakness in front of others. Weakness is bad. I must never show weakness or my enemies will exploit it."
His words chill Kim down to the bone. It seems as if he's reciting them from memory. She stares at him, suddenly glad that he probably can't remember what he's gone through.
The doctor frowns and writes something down on his clipboard. "Jack, it's okay to show weakness sometimes. It makes you human. Everyone feels weak sometimes, but that's why they have friends and family to support them."
Jack looks confused. He moves his head, as if to look up at the doctor, but then jerks it back down again. "What? No, that's not right— sir. Weakness is bad, he says weakness his bad, his word foregoes all."
"Who is 'he', Jack?"
Jack frowns. "I… I don't know." He squeezes his eyes shut. "I don't know. I should know. I'm sorry." His hold on Kim's hand tightens a little.
"It's alright," the doctor says, putting hand on Jack's arm. He removes it when the teen tenses up even further. "Jack, it's okay if you don't remember anything right now. It'll probably come to you later on."
"Yes, sir," Jack whispers. He sounds so meek and scared that Kim's heart just breaks.
"Are you hurting anywhere?" the doctor asks, moving onto a different topic.
He hesitates. "No, sir."
Kim doesn't think he's telling the truth, not after seeing him try to sit up earlier. The doctor apparently suspects the same thing. "I want to help you, Jack, but I can't if you don't tell me how bad you're hurting."
"Pain is the ultimate weakness. Weakness is bad."
"Jack, look at me," Kim says. Jack quickly shakes his head, murmuring something about 'eye contact' and 'confidence' and 'challenge.' She urges him again, telling him it's alright. Jack's eyes flick to hers, before looking down again. She gently grabs his chin and directs his face up to look at her, ignoring his wide eyes and the immediate tensing."Tell him what's wrong with you, okay? Please? He just wants to help."
He stares at her for a moment. "My chest… it really hurts when I breath," he says, as she releases his chin.
The doctor scribbles something down on his clipboard, nodding. "That's to be expected. Three of your ribs were broken. Anywhere else?"
"I'm a little sore in some places, but… not really, no. Sir."
The doctor nods, writing down one last thing on his clipboard. "Alright," he says, standing up. "At this rate, you should be able to go home with the Crawfords in a few days if we can't find where you live."
"Crawfords?"
"My family," Kim explains. Jack nods, and the doctor exits the room.
Saturdays are for sleeping in. It's a universal rule. Kim thought everyone knew and respected it. The weekend is a time for surrounding yourself within the heavenly blanket that is slumber, burrowing yourself into it and wrapping it tighter around yourself at even the slightest notion of it being disturbed.
Something is disturbing it now, alright; the heavenly smell drifting into her room. It tugs at her slumber blanket insistently, enticingly, beckoning to her to unwrap herself and follow it.
She fights against it, her body torn between going back to sleep and going after the beautiful scent. She put up a valiant fight, but in the end the blanket is dragged off of her. She groans and rolls out of bed (quite literally; the impact from landing on the floor helped to banish the last remains of sleep from her form. The drowsiness then stubbornly returns, and Kim doesn't try to do anything to get rid of it.)
Being the half-asleep teenager that she is, instead of attempting to stand up the traditional way, she rolls onto her stomach, lifts herself up to her hands and knees, and then plants both feet on the ground, one after the other. Her hands are still planted on the ground, though, and for a few seconds she just stays there with her rear-end high in the air, before pushing herself upright.
She wobbles, unsteady for a few milliseconds, before finding her balance. The blonde blinks and glares at the morning sun filtering in through her window. Stupid sun. So yellow and bright and… stupid. She grabs her phone from her nightstand and shuffles out of her room, unconsciously following the smell as she unlocks her phone.
Kim stares uncomprehendingly at the numbers on the screen for a few seconds. 7:46. Did she actually willingly wake up at this ungodly hour?! How?! Why?! Walking into the kitchen, she gets her answer.
Jack.
At the stove.
Cooking.
And shirtless.
(Kim won't admit that she's pictured this exact same scene, happening somewhere in the distant future; waking up to her shirtless and gorgeous husband one day making breakfast. This is usually followed by some heavy kisses and—)
"Jack?" she asks, jumping off that train of thought before it could leave the station. Her voice is still a bit rough from sleep. "What are you doing?"
He whips around, brandishing the spatula as if to attack her. He stands back in a normal position so fast that it might as well not have happened. Her sleep-addled brain does not catch the split second of panic on his expression. "My apologies, miss. If I had known you got up at this time, I would have had breakfast set out earlier. I'm finished, I'm just adding a few things."
She blinks slowly, owlishly, completely missing that he called her 'miss' again. "Jack… This is sweet and all, but you don't have to cook us breakfast."
He frowns. "But… it's my day."
"'Your day?'"
"My day to cook breakfast. Yesterday was…" He frowns, and his eyebrows furrow in concentration. "Was…"
"Don't worry about it," Kim says, waving a hand dismissively.
He frowns. "Oh. Is it not my day?"
"'Your day'?"
"My day to make breakfast," he repeats. He clears his throat. "Cooking duties circulate between all of the—"
"What? Jack, no. You don't make breakfast at all. You're a guest. We should be treating you."
The poor guy looks genuinely confused by the information, so Kim tells him to sit down. He frowns, but takes the pan with him as he walks towards the dining table. Kim absently wonders if he's developed some sort of attachment to the cooking tool, until she realizes he's dumping its contents onto a large stack of pancakes on the table.
Kim gapes at what Jack had set up. In the middle of the table is a vase filled with a fresh bouquet of wildflowers, flowers that Kim recognize as ones from a field near her house. Surrounding it are plates of food; sausages, unidentified things shaped like triangles, a glass pitcher (since when has that been in the house?!), half-slices of oranges with a strawberry artfully placed in the middle of each, a bowl of fruit, cinnamon buns, a pitcher of milk, a small glass of what could only be honey, a plate full of items that one could use to make a sandwich with a sliced loaf of bread beside it, a few boxes of cereal, boiled eggs inside fancy egg holders… in all her years of living here in this house, Kim has never seen a larger gathering of food on that dining table.
Just how long has he been up?
Jack, who she doesn't realize had been looking at her, mistakes her expression for horror. "It's inadequate," he says, his voice void of emotion. She turns to him at the sound, slightly worried by his tone. His expression is masterfully blank. "I apologize. I did not know how much to prepare, and—"
"Jack, stop," she says, now fully awake. He immediately stops talking. "This—" She gestures to the table. "—is absolutely amazing. I… It's…" She struggles for words to describe the ensemble. "I don't even know how to describe it!"
He nods, a small smile on his face. "Thank you, miss." He turns, Kim realizes, to face Morgan, who is standing at the entrance to the kitchen with eyes as wide as saucers. "Good morning, Miss Morgan. Please have a seat, and I will attend to you shortly."
Wordlessly, Kim's little sister walks towards the table. She takes in the sight before her, before turning to Jack and eyeing him suspiciously. "Are you a Food God?" she asks, "'cause if you are, you should be wearin' a chef hat." She look him over, from his head to his shirtless chest to his his feet. "And glowing."
Jack purses his lips, clearly not knowing how to respond to the four-year-old, while Kim just laughs. At that point, the Crawford parents also come down the stairs. After they had their own "Holy crap, you did this? You shouldn't have" little freakout, Chuck Crawford takes Jack upstairs to give him a shirt to borrow ("Come on, let's go get you a shirt."), and Olivia Crawford marvels at the quality of everything Jack made ("This bread is fresh! He actually baked a loaf of bread!"). When the two males return, the family sits down to dig in.
Kim notices that Jack doesn't sit down. Instead, he stands by the wall with this hands behind his back. She also notices that he hadn't set out a place for himself. "Aren't you going to eat, Jack?"
His previously neutral expression morphs to reveal confusion. "'I don't deserve to eat with those above me.'"
The Crawford family stares. Kim thinks his voice sounds suspiciously like he's quoting something again.
"But we're not above you," Morgan says. She looks at her father. "Well, Daddy is a little bit above you, but you're waaaaaay above me!"
It takes them all a second to realize she had completely misunderstood Jack, and is referring to height. "He's not talking about how tall he is, sweetie," Olivia says. She shifts her attention to the male teen. "Jack, we're all a family here, even our guests. Come sit with us."
Jack, after a moment's hesitation, draws up the fifth chair, one that he had set to the side. Kim moves her chair over, closer to her dad's end of the table, so Jack can scoot in next to her. He walks off, returning with a plate and some utensils, and sits down.
"Ding ding ding!" Morgan says loudly.
"What are you doing?" Mr. Crawford asks his daughter, a small smile on his face.
"Ringing a bell so we can eat."
"Hey, Jack, wanna come to the dojo with me?"
Jack looks up from where he's wiping down the display case in the living room. He seemed to be accustomed to doing household chores; cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, etc. The elder Crawfords and Kim had all told him not to, and he obeyed them without protest. But, after noticing how jittery he gets from sitting still and having nothing to do, they agreed to let him clean whatever he wanted. Hence, the wiping of a case that was spotless in the first place.
The amnesiac teen had to have come from a place where he was treated as a servant of some sort, that much is certain; it's in the way he addresses the Crawfords, in the way he holds and treats himself, and in the way he acts in general. He remembers a set of "Morals" that he's supposed to abide by, but not who taught them to him or where he learned them.
He also apparently got punished when he broke them.
Just the other day he was washing the dishes, when Morgan and her father came in without him noticing. Morgan exploited this fact and loudly announced their presence. Startled, Jack dropped the plate he had in his hands and it broke.
According to Mr. Crawford, the teen had been terrified; it was in his face. But then, his expression went blank, he left the kitchen, and returned with one of Mr. Crawford's belts. The adult had been mortified upon discovering what Jack thought was going to occur, and the teen seemed genuinely confused when Chuck quickly explained to him that he wasn't going to be punished for something that was obviously an accident.
It only adds to the list of incidents that make Kim grateful that he didn't remember what had happened to him. But, then again, Jack deserved to know about his past. It's what defines him, what defines everyone. Your past is what makes you who you are. It's just one of those situations where you have to pick the lesser of two evils; knowing and not knowing, two different kinds of torture.
"You wish for me to accompany you on an outing?" Jack asks, blinking. She'd finally gotten him to stop calling her 'miss', but she wonders if she's giving off a 'holier than thou' vibe because he still acts like she's better than him or something.
"…Sure," Kim responds. She mentally debated for a split second about whether or not going to the dojo could be considered an 'outing.'
"And… I have a choice?"
That catches her off-guard. The people that he was with before… did they not give him freedom to do anything? "Of course. No one's gonna force you to go somewhere you don't wanna go."
He falls silent. "I'd like to accompany you," he finally says. She smiles at him. He smiles back.
"Hey, Kim! Where've you been for the past few…"
Rudy's sentence is left hanging as he notices Kim's companion. "Oh? Who's this?"
"This is Jack," Kim says, "the guy that Dad and I brought to the hospital a few weeks ago." Eddie and Milton have, by this point, stopped what they were doing and moved forward in curiosity. Jerry is nowhere in sight, but Kim assumes he is in the bathroom or locker room or something.
Jack bows. "Good afternoon, sir."
Rudy pauses in surprise, then turns to Milton. "You see that! He bowed before me! I AM royalty!"
Something makes Kim think that is a past argument being reopened, and she rolls her eyes.
"Just because he bowed to you doesn't mean that he knows you're royalty, Rudy," Eddie says.
"Yeah," Milton speaks up. "It could just be a part of his culture, from wherever he was before." The redhead walks over to Jack and places his palms hands flat against each other, before bowing. "Namaste."
Jack bows back. "Namaste. Āp kā nām kyā hai?"
Milton blinks. "Uh… Namaste?"
"Namaste!" Jerry's voice says. He walks out of the hallway leading to the locker rooms and stands next to Milton, seeming confused when everyone looks at him. "What? Is that not what you're supposed to say?"
Beside her, Kim hears Jack let out a whoosh of breath. She looks over and sees the brunet staring at Jerry with an unreadable expression on his face. "Jack? You okay?"
"I… I thought I recognized him…" He moves a little closer to the Latino, who looks curious and weirded-out at the same time.
"Um…hi?" Jerry says awkwardly, after a few beats of silence.
Jack backs off. "I'm sorry. I've made you uncomfortable." His tone suggested he was about to call Jerry 'sir,' but a quick glance at Kim is probably what deterred him. "Hopefully I remember who you are, or at least who I think you are."
"I think I'm Jerry," the Latino says helpfully. "Everyone else seems to think so, too." A goofy grin spreads on his face, one which Jack returns.
"Why must you insult the plastic man?" Jack asks, looking at the dummy Rudy asked him to hit in befuddlement. Kim can't help but laugh at his cluelessness. She finds his confusion adorable.
"What? I didn't insult him," Rudy responds.
"You called him a dummy, sir," Jack says.
"I called him a— oh, no, I wasn't insulting it. That's what it's called."
"Really?" Jerry speaks up. "I thought we called them that because they were really dumb."
"Ok…" Rudy says. "Well. Just… pretend the dummy is attacking you."
"Why?"
"Well, you wanna join the dojo, right?"
Jack looks over at Kim. "I… should I?"
Kim shrugs. "Why not? It'll be fun."
"Ok…" He turns to the dummy. "So I just have to pretend it is attacking me?"
"Yep," Rudy says.
Jack takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. After a few seconds he jerks as if avoiding an assailant, and then viciously attacks the dummy. Seconds later, after a relentless assault that consisted of various punches and kicks, he's pinned the dummy to the lockers by the neck. The other Wasabi Warriors stare in shock.
"Remind me to never try to jump you," Milton says, finally breaking the stunned silence that resulted from Jack's unexpected display.
Jack blinks, and the angry expression on his face disappears. He drops the dummy (which he had lifted a few inches above the ground) and steps back. He turns to the others. "Was that… okay?"
"Amazing!" "Perfect." "Awesome!" "Scary."
"He's in, right?" Eddie asks. "He has to be."
"Oh, he's definitely in," Rudy responds.
"What is going on?"
Kim had forgotten that Jack was at the dojo. All other thoughts flew out of her head as soon as the Black Dragons walked through the door.
"Oh, look!" Kai says mockingly as Jack goes over and stands by Kim's side. "The Wasabi Warriors really do have a new punk!"
Kai and the four Black Dragons laugh, and Kim grits her teeth. "Why are you here, Kai?" she growls. Of course Rudy has to leave and run an errand right before the Black Dragons arrive. Then again, Kim figures that Jack has to have his first encounter with the Black Dragons at some point. It might as well happen now. She only wishes they'd thought to warn him about them. Having the other guys there with her to back her up would have been nice, too, but Eddie and Milton had to leave to see some war reenactment and Jerry said something about enchiladas.
The male blonde pretend pouts. "Aww, no need to get like that, Kimmy. We just wanted to check out you guys's newest loser." He raises an eyebrow and scans Jack from head to toe, clearly criticizing, before his eyebrows furrow. "Do I know you, punk?"
"I don't believe I know you from anywhere," Jack says. Though his voice is even, his posture betrays his hostility. Kim is glad that she isn't on the receiving end of his glare. "But I do believe that something bad will happen to you and your friends if you stress Kim any further."
Kim blinks, surprised. Jack wants the Black Dragons to leave, not because they seem hostile, but because they're "stressing" her. She didn't realize how much he cared about her. Then again, she was the first face he saw after he woke up. Maybe that made him trust her on another level, sort of like the way a newborn automatically trusts and depends on its mother.
As much as she agrees with Jack's sentiments about Kai's presence, she can't help but wonder. Kai recognizes Jack, or at least appears to. Jack hasn't shown any sign of regained memories, besides the "Morals" that had apparently been drilled into his head. As much as she hates to admit it, Kai may hold the key to figuring out where Jack came from.
"Threatening someone you just met?" Kai says, smirking. "That's not the way to make friends." His arrogant expression drops, though, in favor of seemingly genuine confusion.
"You sure we haven't met at some point?" he asks. He slowly walks over to Jack as he speaks, squinting at the brunet when he arrives in front of him. By this point, Jack seems as tense as a coiled spring, and Kim isn't sure that he won't attack the blond male if she doesn't stop him. Behind Kai, the other Black Dragons shift uncomfortably, unsure of their roles.
"Hold on," Kim says, stepping forward and placing a hand on his shoulder. He relaxes infinitesimally. "Kai, this is Jack." She notices Jack shoot her a look out of the corner of her eye, but she ignores it. "My dad and I found him out on the road and hurt pretty bad when we were driving home one night. He has amnesia, so he can't remember anything about where he came from or who he is. Have you met him before?"
The Black Dragon looks down at something. Kim follows his gaze and finds that he's staring at the bandage on Jack's wrist. The angry cuts into the skin are still healing, so he bandages them to help the process. However, Kim suspects that he doesn't like looking at the words.
"Jack," Kai says, his voice disbelieving. "You actually managed to escape that hellhole."
Jack frowns, apprehensive but less tense. "'Hellhole'? What hellhole?"
Kai looks back up and makes eye contact with first Jack, and then Kim. His mocking sneer has disappeared, replaced with a serious expression. "You say he has amnesia?"
Kim raises an eyebrow. "Yeah."
"Then it's better that he doesn't remember."
"I didn't know you played guitar," Kim says, surprised when Jack picks up her dad's old instrument and tunes it with apparently experienced fingers. The two of them are bored, and Kim decided they sort through the storage and dig up a few old memories (the irony of that statement is not lost on her).
"I didn't, either," Jack responds honestly. He experimentally strums a few chords, then starts playing. Kim realizes that she recognizes the song, and starts singing along to his playing when it gets to the first verse.
Tired of being what you want me to be,
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface
Don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
Jack grins at her. He doesn't sing, but he plays the rest of the song.
"It was our song," he says softly, as he strums the last few chords. Kim stays silent, hoping he'll reminisce and not realizing he's actually remembering until he says it. She finds that she sometimes when she just lets herself talk, she is surprised at what comes out of her mouth.
"Our theme song, our anthem… it defined us." A small smile makes itself known on his otherwise distant expression, and he lets out a single little chuckle. "We were expected to be these great, awesome fighters, but we didn't want to be. So we planned and plotted, got the others in on it, too." His smile fades. "But then… he got hurt, and…" Jack closes his eyes. "Deuce…"
He looks down at the guitar, his expression one of deep sorrow. "I didn't want to leave him, I swear I didn't. He just… he was dying and I…" Jack's words are thick with emotion. Kim wants to put a comforting hand on his arm, but she's afraid that by doing so she'll break the spell. "He told me to say hi to his girlfriend, and his cousin, if I ever met them. Dana and—" His eyes widen and lift to make contact with Kim's. "Jerry."
-I'm sorry, I don't know what a hospital would do with an injured John Doe, so I just made it up.
-When Jack is talking to Milton, he says "What is your name?" in Hindi.
-Kim's mom's name is Olivia because in real life, Olivia Holt's mom's name is Kim. She also has an older sister named Morgan, so... yeah. :)
This most likely won't be continued, but you guys are welcome to adopt if you're interested. Just PM me first, and I'll give you whatever half-baked ideas I had on Jack's backstory and why Kai knows him and how Deuce (*cough*Shake it Up!*cough*) got hurt. :)
And EB, if you're seeing this, MAKE AN ACCOUNT! I wanna talk to you! :D
Some of you might have noticed I uploaded like fifteen or sixteen oneshots in a row yesterday. All of them (except one, which is 'Waiting For Superman'; it doesn't show up in the Kickin' It category because it's a crossover with My Babysitter's a Vampire) were from Inspired By. I decided that Inspired By wasn't getting enough attention, so I uploaded all the one and two-shots from that as separate things, and then deleted Inspired By.
IMPORTANT: I'M SOON GOING TO BE CHANGING MY SCREENNAME TO 'Baby Hedgehog-Cute but DEADLY' BECAUSE MY AVATAR PIC IS ACTUALLY A BABY HEDGEHOG. Also, vote on the poll on my profile please! It's for a future fic. :)
Until next time,
~BP