Title: but one day he'll be older (and he will hate you)
Summary: A very young Ricardus finally meets Jacob. AU.
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Richard (Ricardus), Jacob, Esau/Smokey/Un!Locke/You-Know-Who, some OCs.
Spoilers: to be safe, whole series
Notes: Originally posted on livejournal after "Dr. Linus" and before "Recon" in March 2010, more importantly before Richard's canon back story in "Ab Aeterno" and the series finale—so now this is completely AU.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost, or anything related to it.
"You came from the ship, didn't you?" It had been a while since he used Latin, but the sound came smoothly on Jacob's tongue.
The mortal child's arms remained firm around the spear poking lightly (but with warning) into Jacob's chest. Jacob held up his arms to placate the boy; he was clearly unarmed. Still, the child's dark eyes were serious and suspicious over a very severe frown. There was a settled level of grime all over the boy; he had wild dark hair, slightly too long. He wore a threadbare shirt and vest and trousers, almost rags. A makeshift bandage pinched one arm, though it was bleeding through already. His feet were bootless, instead wrapped up in scraps of cloth.
"I'm Jacob," offered the adult politely.
The boy's eyes widened, his spear jerking-but he took care not to pull it away, instead pushing it in deeper, and Jacob heard the white fabric tear slightly.
"He mentioned you," muttered the child bitterly.
"Oh? What did Esau have to say about me?"
The boy's dark eyes flashed, catching Jacob's blue ones. "That thing has a name?"
"Everyone has a name." Jacob favored the still silent boy with a smile. "That would be your cue to tell me yours."
The child doesn't bite.
In a swift gesture, Jacob grabbed the spear, and pointed it away. He didn't pull it out of the boy's hand, but he saw his restrained fear-Jacob's grip was strong, and the child couldn't properly maneuver his weapon now.
"I did not mean to worry you, Ricardus. I was just passing through."
The boy's grip on the spear almost slackened in disbelief, but he again managed to reverse the gesture into a sustained defense.
Ricardus managed a response that, though it shook, managed to have some bite in it, "Why did you ask when you already knew the answer?"
Jacob actually chuckled good naturedly at that; he had expected 'how did you know' before a variation like that. Still chuckling, the older man left the bewildered boy all alone again in the woods.
###
After one year of being stranded, Ricardus was still exploring the Island. All of it just seemed too big, and once he had seen from a cliff that it had a twin across the water.
A few days after meeting the man the Monster had made cryptic and threatening remarks about, the boy had kept out of sight and followed him straight to a statue he had never seen before.
Ricardus found it fascinating, and wondered who built it-had it been Jacob? He couldn't have done it on his own, he must've had a team before, there must've been other people on the Island before-there must still be more on the Island now.
Ricardus hadn't seen another living human around since the Monster had killed his Sis-everyone else from the ship. So his fear and weariness were soon replaced with interest in Jacob. He had always thought that he was something like the Monster, but he looked human-but no, the Monster could do that too. This Jacob was probably just pretending to be human as well. Still, maybe he was harmless instead.
Still trying to hide, Richard hung back from the coast line to observe the blonde adult. The boy felt rather foolish when he witnessed the man fish with some wooden basket device that made the whole process look a lot easier and more efficient than his stabbing at the water with his makeshift spear. How many days and nights had his stomach ached when he was too slow and inaccurate early on with the weapon? If he had something like Jacob's tool, things would've been simpler.
Ricardus noticed that Jacob left it out, and realized things could be simpler now.
When the man retreated inside his statue or was gone into the jungle at night, the boy would go out and use the thing to catch food, great pink fish that made his stomach light up with eagerness. But he took care to save some for later, he had gotten better at preserving his food.
Ricardus outright stole thread and needle from Jacob. He had spied the man return to the statue one afternoon with a basket fool of a weaver's supplies: fabrics and such, but the boy had noticed a needle poking through amid the thread.
The boy had watched Jacob long enough to know which part of the statue's pedestal to push to have the secret door slide open. Ricardus crept inside, into a room lit by torchlight and a fire pit in the center. The boy found himself drawn before a tapestry on a loom, the pictures...
Ricardus shook himself. Jacob's patterns were still hard to figure out, so he very well could return at any moment, and Ricardus had to grab what he wanted. The child quickly found the baskets of weaver's supplies, pulling out the needle and trying to get enough fabric that would tide him over for a while, and hopefully not alert Jacob to his thievery.
Ricardus left without anything going wrong with his plan.
Later, the boy realized how hard sewing actually was. He kept pricking his fingers, drawing blood, and that ended up consuming what little shreds of bandages he had left on tying those little wounds up. But his clothes were mended-crudely stitched, certainly, but without holes now.
Days later, all his subterfuge and trial and error were negated after surviving an attack from a panther. Ricardus had finally lost his vest, and half his shirt had been torn clean off-his sleeve was gone, and with it, a good chunk of the shirt's upper torso. To top it off, the recent scar on his arm had been ripped open again, and he had to use the last of the fabrics he stole to staunch the bleeding.
It felt distinctly like some divine punishment, but the boy still felt extremely cheated. What had he done to deserve getting trapped on this Island all alone, with only that thing and Jacob for company, and if that Monster wasn't toying with him then there were wild beasts trying to devour him and he couldn't even keep his damn clothes intact, and he still had to struggle to feed himself-how did his Sister ever figure out how to support the two of them back home-?
Ricardus reached for his spear when he heard a knock on his meager roof. It had taken a while, but the ship's supply of dynamites had really helped with digging out a shelter, and the boy had covered it with a trap door camouflaged in leaves-apparently the camouflage had finally failed.
"Ricardus?"
The boy's grip on his spear tightened. Jacob was surely angry, he would demand his property back, and wouldn't care to hear it had all been ruined-he would finally act like the Monster too, show his real self-the spear wouldn't do much against things like them-
"Ricardus, you're not in trouble over the thread and needle. I just wanted to-well, I imagine you've never sewn before, and I have some experience..."
The child relented; Jacob was stronger and just something else entirely, he would get in if he wanted too. Ricardus pushed open the trap door and climbed out of his pit, minding his arm.
The way Jacob clucked his tongued and 'tsked' reminded Ricardus of the strangest thing-some of the old women back home in the village. Off the Island. So far away. If he ever returned, it would be without his sister. She would never-
"Let me tend to your arm back in the statue."
Ricardus tensed as Jacob guided him along, but he didn't resist-there was no point to it. The boy was becoming more and more away of how truly helpless he was in this place, how useless, how weak...
"You can have something to eat, and I'll make you a new shirt."
Ducking his head, Ricardus flushed, with guilt, and the humiliation of seeming like a beggar-but since when had he ever had pride? There had never been time for that, on or off the Island.
###
The child wondered how covert he really had been when he found that Jacob already had a clean and whole shirt waiting for him, close to his size. He probably had known all along.
###
"How old are you?"
Ricardus grunted, doodling in the sand after dinner. The meal had been interesting-Jacob had made the fish into an art like his tapestry, cutting it up in certain ways and arranging them just so on the serving leaves.
"Don't you know?"
Jacob shrugged carelessly. "I have a more…fluid sense of time. Poor grasp on concrete numbers, dates..."
"Then why ask?"
"Just curious about you." Ricardus watched as the older man doodled in the sand too, copies of some of the images in his tapestry. "Make polite conversation."
The child grunted again, but said, "9."
"Well, Happy Birthday."
Dark eyes glowered at the blue eyed adult.
"Thought you said you couldn't kept track of time?"
"Now, those weren't my exact words." Jacob stopped doodling, wiping the sands clear of his images. "Do you like it here on the Island, Ricardus?"
The boy stared at the man as if he were insane. He was certainly strange enough, but this was absurd.
When Jacob smiled, Ricardus bordered on not caring how he was bigger and stronger and probably a monster too, he wanted to punch that grin off his face. "It's not so bad. I think you'll grow to like it, one day."
Ricardus bit back the urge to shout never never never to his host's face.
###
Jacob let the boy sleep in the statue sometimes, but didn't make a fuss when he left and slept in his shelter. Ricardus simply didn't feel one hundred percent comfortable in the statue. It was interesting, of course, and it was more secure and warmer than his hole in the ground, but still, it wasn't his-it was still someone else's, someone who could still not be trusted, no matter how kind he was being. Maybe if Jacob continued being harmless, maybe then he could be trusted.
But Ricardus soon sneered at his resistance, how weak it was-he looked forward more and more to talking with Jacob, after going so long with just the Monster's taunting voice, to finally have something approaching civility was something else-and humiliating and foolish too. But the boy couldn't help it.
###
"Is the esteemed Jacob your father figure now?"
Ricardus' back ached from being thrown into the tree, but the smoky tendril hadn't thrown him hard enough to kill. Rubbing his back, Ricardus looked up into the Monster's now human face, dark and graying with a beard and a little smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"Don't need a father," muttered Ricardus, and he tried to keep the blush of humiliation off his face-that had sounded so petulant.
"Might want to be careful-Jacob isn't very good with children." The Monster leaned down, but even so he was hovered over the boy. "They tend to die on his watch. Sacrifices, you know."
Ricardus' heart pounded. Distantly, he thought he had reached a new record-it had taken longer for the Monster to get his heart racing.
"Or they survive, but are troubled souls." The Monster leaned in closer. Ricardus reacted stupidly, instinctively-he punched him in the neck. Immediately the Monster's human hand slammed his head down and pinned him in the dirt, and out of the corner of one squinted eye, he saw the thing massage his neck, amused.
"What's going on?"
The Monster wouldn't let him turn his head, so he just barely saw Jacob's sandaled feet.
The thing laughed, releasing him with one final pat on his head. "The little whelp punched me in the throat."
"He did?" Ricardus gritted his teeth; Jacob sounded just as amused as the Monster.
The boy sat up, rubbing the back of his head as he watched the Monster and Jacob share a few quiet words, before the Monster walked off.
This was just…odd; Ricardus knew the Monster hated Jacob, but sometimes he didn't act that way, and Jacob-well, he never seemed to care enough about anything to fret or grow angry over it in the face of threats.
###
"He isn't always like that. Esau can be quite civil."
All over the boy's face was a look of disbelief.
Jacob shrugged; "Admittedly, that usually means he's biding his time and planning something else, but I find it preferable to when he gets bored."
"Bored?"
Jacob nodded; "Like what happened to your people."
Ricardus' look of disbelief intensified, although he had always gotten the sense that the Monster had enjoyed a lot of what he did. "He killed my sister-killed everyone-because he was bored?"
"You might've heard this before, but, well-idle hands are the devil's playthings," replied Jacob, and Ricardus' fist tightened around his makeshift knife, pausing in sharpening his spear. The boy opened his mouth, but Jacob continued, "And granted, your people probably would've killed each other off eventually."
Ricardus stared at him for a second, then dropped his spear and shook his knife at Jacob, completely incense and out of control. "Not my sister, she wanted to keep us out of the others' fights-"
Jacob actually sounded a little sad when he said, "Often neutral bystanders caught between opposing forces are the first to perish."
Ricardus flung his knife at Jacob's tapestry. The tear of fabric cracked around the chamber.
"So what? It's better to have it end quickly? Is that what you're saying?"
The boy glared, resisting the urge to wince as his knife banged into the loom as it fell. This was it, the man would surely banish him now, or worse.
But Jacob remained seated. He just watched Ricardus with a faint curiosity, something that only angered and unnerved the child more.
"My sister never-she'll never get to-"
Ricardus broke off, staring at the whole in the tapestry.
"Why did he leave me alive?" The boy's voice cracked, but he was looking to Jacob. "You know, don't you? I know you do."
When the man didn't answer, Ricardus took his knife and his spear, and left the statue.
###
"Why don't you return to the ship?"
How many times would Ricardus stare at Jacob with disbelief, and think him insane?
The older man continued, unruffled as usual, "Granted, it can't take you anywhere, but it's still pretty much intact. It would make good shelter, wouldn't it? And the dynamite there is still of some use when properly handled."
The boy finally answered in a faint voice, "I know the dynamite's good, but the Monster had batted the ship around badly, all the way from the coast to this far inland-"
"Yes, that is true-"
"-and my sister never wanted to go back."
Jacob regarded him quietly, then asked, "How old was your sister? She took care of you, didn't she?"
"Ariel was 17-" Ricardus stumbled, his brow furrowing, his breathing become harsh. She had been 17 when they crashed here, but a year had passed-did that mean she was 18? No, she hadn't lived to see her birthday, she had been 17 when she-when she-
"How come you don't kill the Monster? He's your enemy, isn't he?" Ricardus demanded suddenly, and he saw Jacob's face grow fractionally more grave.
"My duty is to keep him here, forever."
Dark eyes blinked up at the tall man. "This place really is a prison?"
"For Esau, yes. If he were to return to the outside world…well, it won't happen."
Ricardus bit his lip, suddenly hit by a treacherous line of questioning.
"When you say 'forever-'"
"I mean eternity. Unchanging."
"You don't take turns with someone else? Shift between different guards?"
Jacob shook his head, and the boy for the first time felt truly sorry for the man.
"I thought you would like the idea of everything lasting forever. You said you wouldn't have wanted your sister's life to end so quickly, didn't you?"
Ricardus shook his head. "That's different-my sister never…she'll never get to do a lot in life. But it sounds like you-that you're all alone here on the Island, always."
"I have Esau."
The boy frowned; "But you're his jailer." Ricardus' hands clenched and unclenched around his spear. "And he isn't very good company."
"Good enough for me."
The child still stared up at him, bewildered.
Jacob shook his head, smiling, "I'm sure you've figured out by now that Esau and I-well, let's just say we're not human, like you. The way we see the world will be different-and if I confuse you, I can assure you, that Esau and I can be just as puzzled by you and your kin."
Ricardus stared at him blankly. "You know Ariel's dead. And there's no other family-no parents, no uncles or aunts, grandparents."
"But the rest of humanity, that whole species-they're still your kin."
Ricardus just felt worse. He'd wouldn't be seeing any of his "kin" soon-if all that was left on this Island were the trees and beasts and the Monster and Jacob, even if he was now the one bright spot here.
###
"Do you need help?" Ricardus asked Jacob stiffly as he watched the man start repairing his tapestry.
The man chuckled good naturedly; "No, that's all right."
The boy bit his lip, looking down at his feet. They were still covered in bandages; before, he hadn't felt right accepting sandals from Jacob too, and now he felt too guilty. But the pair he made for him always sat by the entrance, waiting.
"I'm sorry." Ricardus wouldn't ask for forgiveness.
Over his shoulder, Jacob looked at the boy. "Nothing to be sorry about. Trust me, you're not the first to wreck this thing." And he turned back, humming a little song Ricardus had never heard before.
###
"Morning."
"Mornin.'"
Ricardus stiffened at the sound of the Monster's human voice. When he joined the ever calm Jacob on the beach and shared his fish, the boy scuttled back with his own meal, and was relieved when both the Monster and Jacob just ignored him as they conversed quietly.
Still, Ricardus finished his fish quickly. On his last bite, just before he was ready to dash into the jungle and explore more of the temple ruins Jacob had shown him yesterday (the man had spoke of rebuilding sometime), Ricardus froze.
There was a ship on the horizon.
The boy swallowed, then bolted toward the coast, wading into the water, before sense caught up with him and he stopped, waist deep in the surf already.
Chest pounding, he gaped at the ship.
Don't crash don't crash don't crash
Still, Ricardus isn't very surprised when it breaks against rocks farther down the coast.
###
Esau turned away from the boy watch the incoming ship, shooting Jacob a disgusted look.
"Another one? Trying to convince me again, Jacob?"
"We could just skip to the part where you admit you're wrong."
Esau grunted. His eyes traveled calculatingly over Ricardus, then to the ship.
"More like company for the whelp," Esau muttered, rolling his eyes. "You don't want to make a habit of spoiling him, you know."
"It's a respite," Jacob quietly admitted.
Esau smirked, "Now, there's my cunning master mind."
###
Ricardus felt there had to be some higher power other than the Monster and Jacob that was laughing at him. When he tried to talk with the newcomers, they had responded with a language that made no sense to him, and they shot him equally confused looks.
But then Jacob came up behind him and smoothly said something probably soothing in the newcomers' language, and Ricardus looked up at him, grateful.
###
"Ah, young love," purred Esau with a hard look in his eye as he and Jacob saw Ricardus give a wild yellow flower to a girl his age, someone from the new, smaller ship.
Jacob watched the two children blush and try to learn the other's language-pointing at the flower and naming it in Latin, and then in Japanese.
Jacob turned away, scrawling numbers in the sand. He knew where this would end-or rather, how it would persist. Ricardus wasn't destined for a quick end.
Jacob hoped that the young boy-one day a young man-would understand that there was a greater plan at work. That it hadn't all been a waste.
Jacob knew better than to hope that Ricardus would never hate him. That, too, was inevitable. He was only human, after all.