Part Thirteen in the "Reflections" Series,
written by Sapphira
Short Story Based on the WB TV Series "Tarzan"
~*~
Disclaimer: Don't own any of it… not the characters, the music, or the tv series in any form… I am making no profit off of this, or ANY of my other fanfics… I'm writing it purely for my own enjoyment, and hopefully for the enjoyment of some of the fellow fans.
Distribution: If you want it, you can have it… just drop me a line and tell me where it is going… ;)
~*~
Author's Note – This is the thirteenth part in an on-going series of mine, and is the sequel to "I'm With You", "Lies", "Fallen", "Forever", "Hollow", "Nothing Thicker Than Blood", "Dangerous Parallels", "Breathe In", "So Are You To Me", "Choices", "A Similar Song", and "It's You"… Although all of these stories CAN be read as stand-alone pieces, I do hope that you will take the time and read all of them in order, if you have not done so already… Enjoy!
~*~
Summary – "I'm not asking you to trust my rules, I'm not asking you to trust my laws, I'm asking you to trust me!" John's conflicted thoughts when Jane confronted him at the end of "The End of the Beginning"… Part 13 in the Reflections Series…
~*~
He had been viciously hurt time and time again by the man in front of him. And just like the animals that had taught him how to survive in a world not his own, he wanted to lash out at the thing that had caused all of that pain.
So why wasn't he receiving a budding sense of satisfaction and accomplishment at the death he was about to bestow?
He was enraged, and part of him so desperately wanted to hear the crunch of that so easily defeated man's skull. He wanted to feel his spine snap under the pressure of his hands, and the sticky warmth of his blood soak his fingers. He wanted to know that it was over. That he could never be caged again. Strapped to a bed, abused. Betrayed. He wanted to know that the one responsible for it all would never be able to hurt another innocent again.
So why, when looking into his uncle's eyes, was there a part of him that was instinctively withdrawing from the scene he was taking part in? Why should this be any different than all the other times he had been forced to kill while living in the jungle?
His uncle fed off of cruelty. Of being so powerful and strong in his position within this world, that no one could control him. No one could judge him. He seemed to have all of the rules that Jane spoke so adamantly about by the throat. He knew every loophole, every catch. He knew how to twist things to his own benefit, and no one seemed to be able to stop him. Jane had said it had something to do with 'lack of evidence'.
The countless bruises criss-crossing over his body from the straps that had held him once again so bruisingly fastened to a bed was all the evidence John needed.
So it didn't matter what else he thought. He knew what had to be done. He had been far more patient that he ever should have been, and that had only earned him as well as those around him, nothing but more pain.
Jane had wanted him to conform to her ideals, her beliefs, and her rules. And he had tried. But he couldn't do that anymore. It was much simpler, and less confusing, to just go back to the set of rules he was familiar with.
The particular brand of justice that he knew so intimately wasn't made up of laws and politics, greed and blindness. Instead it was all about teeth and claws and fur, and the sheer instinctive knowledge that only one would be coming out of it alive. Only one would be able to prevail. It was the perfect system… for the jungle.
That is what he held to, even though a part of himself he hadn't even known he carried was unpleasantly twisting something down low in her gut. That was the mentality he retreated to when he raised up the slender iron bar clenched so tightly in his palm, and when he looked into his uncle's eyes, and told him he was going to die.
But then Jane was there. Throwing all of his emotions and thoughts back into chaos once more.
"John! Leave him alone!"
He whirled around to face her. Forcing her to slide to a sudden stop just a few feet away when she saw the rage so clearly reflected on his face. "Get back!"
"John, that's not gonna solve anything!"
"BACK!" his voice didn't even sound human in that moment. And in that moment, he almost hated her. Almost.
She was bringing something out in him he wasn't ready to face. Something that he had lived for so long without, and yet couldn't afford to be feeling right now.
She was making him doubt his intentions. She was dragging out of him some sort of sense of right and wrong, not by the animal's point of view, but by humankind. Something that he had once thought himself separate from.
He knew why he was feeling so strange about this moment and the idea of finally killing his enemy. Richard wasn't an animal… And neither was John. He was a human about to kill another human. And he didn't know why he knew that was a bad thing. He sure as hell hadn't been pre-conditioned to think like that. But in that moment, it was as if he could clearly see the rift that was forming within him. Ripping him in two. Pulling him in separate directions. Separating him from the life he knew, and the one that was stretched out before him. Demanding that he choose once and for all which path he was going to take.
Because once he made that choice here tonight, there would be no second chances. There would be no going back.
He thought the choice would have been obvious. He thought he had always known which one he would take when the time came. But in that moment, he doubted everything he had come to believe in the last few months. He had been called an animal so many times by so many different people. Maybe it was better off just to prove once and for all that that was really all he was capable of being. It would sure be a hell of a lot easier than his alternative presented.
To simply just slip back into a simple frame of mind that had once upon a time belonged to him. A way of living that he was so very intimate with… he wondered if maybe that was where he would finally find his sought after relief.
He turned back to his uncle, and shut away all remnants of what might be considered human emotion or thought. Feeling a cold and unfamiliar void suddenly begin to fill him.
It had to be done. This was something that he knew how to do. This was something that was simple. Clear-cut as black and white, life and death.
This was something he could understand on a level that not even Jane – no, especially Jane – could.
"We tried it your way," he stated simply. Turning his head to the side. "Now we try mine."
Resolve filling him, he rose his hand once again in preparation of a killing blow… only to have the sound of a gunshot blast at close range fire off above his head. Stopping him in mid-downward swing, and spinning him around to face her. Various emotions battling for supremacy within him, as the acrid smell of the bullet's expulsion stung his acute sense of smell.
"You're not a murderer, John! That's not who you are! I know that. I know that in my heart! And after everything we've been through, what? You're just going to prove me wrong? That it was for nothing?"
Confliction welled up again, and he no longer knew what to do. He words brought him up short faster than anything or anyone else could have. But that was what Jane did when she was around him. She forged a link between the creature he had become, to the person he was meant to one day be. At first he never felt it unless she was with him, but over time, some how or other, that link had steadily become more permanent, till it was his own voice that he heard inside his head, rather than hers. But despite all of that, despite how he had wanted so desperately for those voices to stop, her words penetrated deeply. As they always did.
And he was left staring at the reflection of himself within her eyes.
And she knew it too. She saw the personal demons that he was struggling with. And maybe, just maybe, in a way she finally understood them. Understood just how thoroughly his world had been turned upside down and butchered… And how desperate a part of him was to retain the fractured remains of that existence lying deep inside of his heart and mind. To keep from feeling like he wasn't just losing his past, but also losing himself.
But was he really a creature of the forest that wouldn't think twice about the taking of a life? Could he really turn away from what he had shared and experienced… with her?
Again, as if reading her mind, she finished her thought. "You do this, and you're never going to see me again. You know that, right? Never."
Anger welled up against the coattails of such difficult indecision, and he lashed out. Smashing the iron rod against the hood of the shell remnants of a what had once upon a time been a car. Then turning to back kick huge craters in its side.
He had been taken away from everything that he had once known. He had been locked up, tortured in more ways than just one by the man in front of him, and had every right to want to kill him. Every instinct in him was screaming for him to just do so. But yet now he knew he couldn't. Not with her standing there, watching him, and tot when he knew he would forever be haunted by it.
He couldn't kill Richard. He just couldn't. He hadn't expected to be blind-sided by the own knowledge of his heart, but there it was nonetheless. Whether he despised it or not.
He understood it then. His instincts were those that he had cultivated in a world far different than this one. A world that he would never see, or be a part of, ever again. And although it had its moments, it was a side of him that could not take precedence in this one.
Which meant he was now left with the knowledge that he would have to, once again, relearn how to survive in an alien world. A world he didn't even believe in anymore. A world that saw in so many different shades of grey, it had forgotten all about wide variety of the other countless hues that made up the color spectrum.
A world that seemed to have betrayed and deceived him at every turn. Starting when he was only six years old. And he hated it. He hated that it seemed his hands were so thoroughly tied. He hated that his own mind was so torn he couldn't see which direction to turn, when originally it had always provided him a safe haven.
To retreat to the existence he had known, would be to lose Jane. But to stay here, in this one… would be to admit that he would have to become something, someone, that he was actually really afraid to finally see one day when he looked at himself in the mirror.
But not as afraid to see what he would be choosing to become if he followed through on his original goal this night.
In that moment, his hate reached its strongest peak... But it was pointed at himself.
As if knowing his thoughts and the source of his frustration, Jane raised her voice in desperation over the crashing sounds he made as he vented his anger out on the broken down car.
"John, we're gonna fix it! But we're gonna fix it the right way!"
He pulled away from the car, ignoring his uncle, and closed some of the distance between them. His electric eyes burning with the force of their own fire.
"Your rules don't work." he growled out. Lips snarling slightly as he took in a deep breath. Hair the color of pale gold framing his face and falling into his gaze. Catching at the corners of his mouth.
A strange look crossed her face, and she stepped closer to him. Eyes beseeching. "I'm not asking you to trust my rules, I'm not asking you to trust my laws, I'm asking you to trust me."
John stilled, just looking at her, and then turned back around to look at his uncle.
Again, as was their tendency, her words disarmed him, and he found his anger suddenly melting away. This time for good.
And so there it was… he was standing at a crossroads. A great precipice. He had to make a decision. And the conflict was still riding him hard, until it finally clicked. As he was looking into the eyes of his uncle, he finally understood what it was that Jane feared.
If he killed his uncle, the cost to his own soul would be far too great. He would, in essence, become just like him. That same vision he saw deep in Richard's eyes that hated so much, would become the exact reflection that he would see in his own.
This was going to be one of those times, where the greatest danger to John, would be the conditioning he had received while lost in the feral jungles of the Congo. This was going to be the first of many moments to come, where he was going to have to choose what his actions were going to be very carefully.
He would forever walk a fine line two very different worlds, and this would only be the first time where such a decision would be made… it would be the hardest. He would be doing something that he had never thought he would do.
He would conform, if only in part. Because it wouldn't be to the desires of others. It would be to his desires and his alone. He would find a middle ground that still remained true to the beautiful wildness so firmly immersed within his heart and soul.
And he hoped that it would be a compromise that Jane – and Kathleen – would be willing to accept.
He still didn't trust anything in this world. He still didn't believe in it. How could he? It was such a screwed up place of existence. But it was where he belonged, whether he wanted to or not. And he wasn't going to become part of the very problem that he had despised upon sight.
He turned back to look at Jane. Gaze tracing the beloved lines of her face. Seeing the fear mingled with tenacious hope and heavy anxiety, and he knew he could do less than what she had requested. He still may not believe in anything else that this world had offered him. He still may not have believed in their so-called justice system, or their ways of viewing what was right and what was wrong, but there was one thing that he would put his trust into. Actually, one person… and it was the same person that had had it all along practically since the first night that they had met.
Making his decision, and choosing his path, he loosened his fist, and the iron bar slipped free. Landing in the dirt with a dull thud.
And he turned and walked away. Walked away from the desire to kill like nothing more than another animal. Walked away from the past that would only prove in times like these to suck him under rather than benefit those around him.
Walking towards a future that he still doubted, but for her… for her he would do whatever he had to. She was his anchor. His little bit of home. The one person he knew he would believe in with his last breath.
If he killed his uncle, he would just be letting the older man win. And in the process he would lose Jane, and any semblance of humanity that he was currently trying to grab onto. He would just be proving Richard's point.
Would he have stopped if Jane hadn't arrived when she did? Probably not... But then again, there were a lot of things he would have done very differently if it hadn't been for Jane.
But now it was time to start doing it for himself… and inevitably, for them both.
He realized then that he actually already found his sought-after peace. His contentment. Which he found rather odd given the circumstances surrounding the discovery. And it wasn't in the jungles, or in the death of another, or even in this world, for surely things were still as screwed up as before. He didn't know what tomorrow would bring, or if he would just once again find himself locked back up in another cage.
But she had asked him to trust her, and he knew he could do no other. To turn away from her would mean to truly turn his back on everything that they had been through, and still might yet have together.
And that was the one hope he had clung to throughout all of this mess. He could no more truly let go of that, then be could become the man that for some reason his uncle still wanted him to be.
There was one thing that he now understood could never be taken away from him, and that was Jane's belief in him. No matter what happened, he knew in his heart she would always be there, fighting for him.
And he would do the same. Whatever he had to do, he would do it to ensure that one possible perfect future. Free from his uncle, free from the lies and the deceit…
And free to be with Jane as he was meant to be. Free to spend the rest of his life with her in peace and beauty. Free to finally claim this world as his home…
Free to claim that home with her.
It was that belief, that dream… and that trust that would light his path for the difficult days ahead…
And that was suddenly worth everything to him.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
AN – Sorry it took me so long to get this one completed, but here it is. Finished. I hope you enjoyed it. You might be wondering why I didn't get more extensive with it, or do a story from Jane's point of view… well, the reason for that, is because I already have in mind another story for this scene, that won't be a part of the "Reflections" series. Reason for that is, it will be more of an AU/extended take on the end of it, where I'll spin it off of the question of what might have happened between Jane and John/Tarzan after it was over…
Okay, there are another two fics in this series left to go. Their titles are "Checkmate" and "Show Me The River"… but I don't know for sure just yet what order they are going to come out in, or how I'm going to work it all out, so just make sure you keep your eyes peeled for either one.
Don't forget to review and let me know what you thought! Have a safe New Year's!