Chapter 1 :

A Show Of Love. . .

Infinity stayed with Jack for many years. She even ended up celebrating her eleventh birthday with him and his wife, Claire. She took care of Infinity while Jack was away on 'business'. After a time, the kind brunette actually did find herself liking the young girl. It was easy to like her; Klarissa was the sweetest child Claire had ever met. She had wanted her own child for quite a time, but Jack wouldn't have it. We still have plenty of time, he would always say, we're still young. Claire treated her little guest as if she were her own daughter.
They would play games for most of the day, especially when Jack finally came home. For some reason Jack, too, got quite into playing games. He would think up a new one almost every week. There were games that got her to do her chores and games that helped her learn. It only took the first two months for Infinity learn how to read and write. Even with those basics learned, Claire wanted her to actually attend school. Jack refused, saying that there was no way that she could handle something so 'real' with how she'd been raised. When he first contested this with Claire, she seemed confused. Once he told her the girl's reaction to her father's death, though, she understood. Infinity had only stared at him blankly and asked if that meant that he would never be able to play with her again.

It seemed like Infinity was as important to Jack as his wife or a child that he would have had with her. It was a strange bond, Jack as a protector of the daughter of a man he had killed for 'business', and Infinity as an innocent but slightly strange girl.

The day was normal, other than the fact that Jack stayed away from home a little longer than usual. Normally, he was home by four or five in the evening, even if he did leave later for 'business'. Now it was almost seven and still Jack had not come home. Claire was hanging by the only phone they had in the house, in the kitchen. She paced while waiting, checking on her surrogate child. Infinity was safely back in her room and playing with a few dolls that Jack had gotten for her. For some odd reason, Infinity did not seem to realize how disturbing this scenario was for her adoptive mother.
The phone rang, and Claire answered it even before it had a chance to get through the first ring. Normally there was at least hushed talking, but there was nothing but silence that lasted until the cluck of the phone as she hung it up. Only a few minutes later when her foster mother entered her room with a complete urgency about her.
"You need to hide, sweetie," she told her. "Hide like we told you to and don't come out unless I or Jack comes to get you, alright?"
Infinity nodded, smiling at the idea of playing the hiding game, something that reminded her of her old life. Once Jack's wife was gone, Infinity hid under the bed, her back pushing firmly against the wall. At that point, Claire was back in the living room down the hall with a man from Jack's work. Still, Infinity had no idea what was going on, at least not until she heard a scream. Though the volume of the outcry dropped quickly, agonized whimpers wafted through the door to her ears. She did not move, even though she wondered what exactly was going on outside her room. One of the rules of the hiding game was not to give herself away unless Jack or his wife couldn't find her. She had to play by the rules, no matter what.
She listened carefully as the front door was promptly slammed and the whimpers of pain continued. Shuffling came to her ears after a little longer, and something banged into her door before jiggling the handle. Infinity curled up even more against the wall, doing her best to not make a sound that she was barely breathing. She was good at hiding; she always had been. The door opened, the only sound from it being from the bottom of the door scraping across the rough carpet and a glimpse of a woman's foot speckled with blood.
"Infinity?" the familiar female voice asked the room softly. She stumbled in, taking a look under the bed where she knew her young charge would most likely be hiding.
The girl's eyes widened for a moment as she felt shock at what she was seeing. Her beloved adoptive mother's face was dripping blood. Infinity could not tell why she was bleeding, nor why so badly. Nevertheless, she scrambled out from under the bed and tried to stop the bleeding with her own hands. Her caretaker's face was fighting itself for a chance to display both her agonizing pain and a boiling anger that Infinity had never seen before. Tears intermingled with the blood and slowly Infinity began to realize that she could not stop the hemorrhaging by herself. She rushed out of her room, her hands still covered in the viscous liquid, to try and find anything else that could help. After a time, she managed to bring down a box of band-aids and scamper back to her room.
"These'll help, Mommy," the young girl assured her as she got down on her knees beside the woman and began tearing through the packaging.
It took almost half an hour before Infinity finally get the bleeding to stop, the wounds sliced up on both corners of her mouth were covered with two layers of thick band-aids. The girl simply hugged that woman, seemingly unfazed that they were both covered in blood. "You'll be alright now, Mommy. We got you fixed up."
The woman was still crying, something she had never once stopped doing ever since Infinity had seen her after the stranger had left. Her body shook slightly with the tremors that her sobs elicited from her. She didn't reply to her adoptive child, though she did cling to her as she was embraced, her head resting on the top of the child's head.
It had been dark when the stranger came but it was pitch black when Jack finally returned home. His wife was sprawled out on the couch, watching over Infinity as she played a rather intense video-game on the living room's T.V. The game served to entertain her so that the woman did not have to speak and re-open her wounds. When Jack finally entered, Infinity paused her game and leapt up, running over to hug him. Her smiled at her, and started to ask where his wife was– before he stopped mid-sentence as he saw her on the couch and especially the band-aids on her cheeks.
"My god, Claire, what happened?" he asked, quickly moving over to her side and grasping her closest hand tightly in both of his.
Claire simply shook her head and nodded to Infinity, who had a very curious expression on her face.
Jack stood slowly, facing his young charge. "What happened, Infinity?" His voice was low and serious, and it made the girl's face contort into an expression of confusion. This was still a game, right? She was thinking to herself. If it is why does Jack look so ... angry?
Despite the girl's slight twinge of both confusion and fear, she answered him as best she could. "Well a stranger came by so Mommy told me to hide." She started off, looking to the woman sprawled on the couch and smiling sweetly. "I hid real well by the time I started hearing things. I wanted to come out because I heard Mommy scream, then she got a little quieter and I heard the front door slam shut. Mommy came to my room, but I thought it was the stranger, but when I heard Mommy call my name I relaxed and started to come out. When I saw her, Mommy was bleeding." The little girl paused her story to show where her mother had been cut. She put her fingers at the very edges of her mouth and puled them across her face to about the middle of her cheeks. "Mommy was cut, I think. But I got the band-aids and fixed her," she nodded to confirm her story, still smiling slightly.
Jack knew what had happened, and why they had done it, but he wasn't about to tell the eleven year old child why. She was the reason that his beloved wife had been assaulted– as punishment for his choice to take her in. Jack had refused to turn Infinity over to the mob's head. This was his punishment: ruining his pretty little wife. Oddly enough, he did not blame the young girl at all for his wife's predicament.

== == ==

They argued every day, and Infinity was beginning to wonder if they were still playing Jack's game. It seemed like Claire wasn't playing along, and that was what was making them disagree. The game changed completely one day. Jack told Infinity to come into the living room with a simple hand gesture.
"You're still just as beautiful as you have always been, Claire," Jack told his wife, though he turned around to face his adoptive daughter. He knelt in front of her, pulling something out of his pocket. What came out was a long pocket knife that barely looked like it could fit in the pocket it came from. Jack flipped it out expertly before handing it gently to her. "Here, here. I'll show you, Claire."
Infinity blinked, looking at the blade as she held the handle gingerly. She tilted it around all sorts of ways to look at it, clearly entranced by the sheen. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen one before, but she certainly hadn't been allowed to handle one before. She'd take all the time she could to ooh and ahh over it while she had it.
"Infinity," Jack said after a bit, helping her hold the knife right as he brought it closer to his face. "I'll stand perfectly still..." he started glancing back at his wife with a surprisingly gentle look to him before turning his attention back to Infinity. "And I want you to cut me just where Mommy got cut."
He held his adoptive daughter's hand so the blade of the knife was pressed against the very edge of his mouth. As he urged Infinity to push so the knife would cut him, blood came forth from the slice. It dripped slowly off his chin, trickling like a faucet left to drip.
His beloved wife, of course, was horrified at this sight. She was reliving her own attack in slow motion, temporarily paralyzed and utterly unable to speak. And besides that, she was completely appalled that Infinity expressed no emotion as she helped her husband. If anything at all, she seemed...enthralled by the whole experience. She was curious about this blood, about this new game that brought a new smell to her memories. The metallic smell and the thick, sticky liquid that everyone she played with had, somewhere inside them, something new and exciting to the little girl.
Jack did not even flinch as the blade sliced its way to the middle of his cheek. It was far enough, he decided, and stopped her there. Jack promptly changed sides before his wife could object. Any kind of resistance was the last thing on her mind. She was still stock still as she watched this twisted show of love from her husband. Infinity was no longer being guided, but the cuts she made were amazingly clean. She stopped when Jack held up his hand and she scurried off to clean the blade in the kitchen sink. Nothing that was that shiny should be stained.
As Jack stood, his wife took two steps back. Her husband was now a horrible sight to behold. The blood that seeped out of his wounds slipped down his neck and soaked his shirt. Her eyes widened. "Jack, you shouldn't have done that to yourself. You didn't have to," she managed to breathe.
"Yes, I did," he argued, his voice as calm as it had been through the whole ordeal. "You wouldn't believe me before. But now I've shown you, Claire. I've shown you just how much I'd give up for you. How much I'd do to make you happy..." His wounds continued to bleed, and it was a wonder that he hadn't passed out from the outflow. The shirt he wore now stuck to his chest, the blood that saturated it making it stick to his skin.
That cracked the dam of shock that had kept Claire's emotion at bay. "You think this would make me happy, Jack? You think by doing this to yourself you would make my pain less intense? Are you insane?" Her yelling drew Infinity from the kitchen, and she watched as the drama unfolded with a curious expression on her face. The knife was left behind on the kitchen sink.
"Yes, and it will. I promise," Jack was trying desperately to soothe her. He could see his attempts were failing because every step he took towards his beloved wife made her step back even further. "Just calm down..."
"Calm down? Calm down?" Claire snapped, shaking her head vigorously. Her path was very clear: she was heading for the master bedroom. "You maimed yourself, and what's worse: you had Infinity help you!"
Before Jack could get a hold of his wife, she had sealed herself in their room. Fumbling and many other noises came through the door. She was getting something together, but what, only the terrified Jack seemed to know. "No, darling, please!" Jack said. The tone of his voice was completely foreign to Infinity. He was begging, begging for his wife to stay.
It was only a few minutes before Claire emerged, suitcase in hand. She started rushing to the door, ignoring Jack's pleading along the way– at least until he gripped her arm. As soon as she felt that, her whole body reacted. She turned, striking him sharply across the face. "Stop it, Jack! I've dealt with so much for you… this… this is the last straw."
Jack stood in shock, still bleeding, as the sting of his wife's slap rocketed through his body. Most of the pain, however, was in his failing heart. He seemed like nothing more than an empty shell as he watched his wife leave him. In a few more moments, he flopped to the ground after his knees and legs failed him. Infinity scampered to his side, holding him up as best she could. "Jack...?" she asked him softly, trying to get him to at least look at her.
It was several long minutes before he did just that. His eyes watered quickly as he weakly raised his head to look at her. "Are you going to leave too, Infinity? Do I frighten you, too?" he asked, his voice hoarse.
Even the tone of his voice made the little girl feel as if she should start to cry right along with him even though sadness was completely foreign to her. She shook her head, obviously quite confident in the answer. "Of course not, Jack. I love you. You've been really nice to me. You always have, even when you first met me. I can't think a reason I'd want to leave you..."
The words seemed to render the grown man speechless. When he finally did move, he just hugged her tightly as if he was afraid to let her go. "Then I'll keep doing that," he managed to get out after a time. "We'll play games forever. The city will be our playground, Infinity. Would you like that?"
She seemed a bit confused for a moment, but soon enough a smile crossed her face and she nodded. "That's a huge playground. I'll love it." Infinity did not understand what was happening, but it was clear her protector was changing. For good or bad, however, she was not sure yet.