Guess who's still alive? Yup. 100reasonswhy is still alive. So uh, sorry on the god awful delay on this, but I've had ZERO time, and boy has RL decided to be a butt at the moment. But hey—this is a nice long one for you. Probably one of my longest yet, so no complaints. Kudos to you if you get through it without stabbing yourself in your left eye. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR REVIEWS AND SUPPORT OMG I am the luckiest writer ever to have such amazing readers.

Also thank you for your patience. I don't think the next update will take nearly as long.

Soundtrack: Sloom - Of Monsters and Men.

Disclaimer: if i was a billionaire like bill gates then maybe but I'm probably not bill gates idk remind me to check later.

Note: It's kind of long.

Warning: ANALOGIES HOMYGOSH. yep.

Have fun~

Judas I

"So make all your last demands, for I will forsake you.

And I'll meet your eyes for the very first time, for the very last."

Maybe it had all been a nightmare.

She remembered faintly the feeling of hands on her bare skin, touching, clawing, scratching, as if she was land to mark, as if she was an island to explore.

His lips had tasted so sweet. They'd been soft, gentle, innocent even, but then they were rough. He'd left hungry, razed marks upon her flesh, bruising her with that gentle mouth, scarring her more than any knife.

Fingers had dawdled on loose linen, tugging and pulling tattered clothing with a cruel amount of slowness. Although their shaking limbs had been hesitant, their hearts were splintered in determination, and not even that aching distance of clothing could deter their motives.

There had, of course, been the vaguely embarrassing amount of unsureness. What to do, how to go about it, and the sorts. In the hotness of their kisses, knowledge faded, although it appeared as though they were already learning. He seemed to learn faster than her.

But the silence—that god awful silence that followed...it'd been nearly unbearable. Both bodies were sensitive to each other, aflame in the others' burning touch, but each formidable burn left a silence so cold it turned the flames to ash.

And the pain. That lingering, bitter sting of agony. It wasn't beautiful, not nearly what her mother once explained. A defining moment, of course, but beautiful? There was only pain—that and the deadly repugnant thought of her slaughtered innocence.

Light shattered the murky darkness of their safe haven, obliterating the meager shroud of night which had concealed their bare forms. Louise shuddered where she lay—right beneath Ralph's arms—and blinked, shifting so that the weight of his grasp lightened and shivered. He made a small noise in his sleep—a soft boyish snore—and readjusted himself around her, nuzzling his head in the slope of her neck. It was a gentle movement, a calm graze of affection, and yet it set her heart on fire.

The pain was nearly unbearable. It started right between her legs, and it ripened to the point that it was a raw sort of ache. Even with Ralph's arm draped around her, Louise felt the stinging glint of her sin, and the sick slime of transgression seemed to stain her skin. Jack's dangerous words poisoned her mind, leaking through like the bitter venom of Eve's first bite into the apple of Eden.

"So how prepared are you? Has Ralph fucked you yet?"

Her insides curdled, growling in the quivering mixture of hunger and hatred. Bile stung the back of Louise's throat, and with a careful sigh, she wriggled out from Ralph's embrace, trying hard not to pass her eyes over his sleeping form. He was dressed by nothing except the cool morning light, and at the sight, Louise's cheeks burned a blistering red. It was as if her eyes had been stripped of their mask, torn away from the pretty world of fantasy and inserted into a vicious land of leering faces and dirty, soiled hands.

It was then that she realized her own nakedness. Impulsively, her hands were at her chest, meagerly attempting to cover what had already been desecrated by the night's charred embrace. Her tattered garments were strewn all around their small hiding place, and in mild frustration, Louise turned to collect them. She pulled her torn skirt back over her hips, whimpering slightly at the unexpected flare of pain, and then shoved her arms through what remained of her blouse. She was hasty in her movements in fear of waking the blonde. The green area around Louise shook, smeared and blurred by the drone and beat of Ralph's soft breaths and her own throbbing heart.

A mistake. It had been a mistake. But mistakes were not easily erased. Not on such an island, with its dastardly coils of vines and thick rooted branches. Mistakes on a place like that were consequential—lethal, even. Louise shivered, shoving the awful thought of Jack Merridew's fury from her mind. He wouldn't be too happy, not if he knew about what had...happened.

Ralph stirred from his sleep, and instantly, Louise stiffened. Her limbs were rigid and her nerves ablaze: What would he say? Would he regret it? Admonish it? Did he enjoy it?

Louise's heart raced, a hammer against wood, as she turned warily to the boy who slept below her, watching in shy curiosity as he lifted his head—gently, at first, then all at once. Ralph groaned, squinting in irritation at the morning light that flittered through the dense foliage around them. Tiredly, he propped himself up on his elbows, positioning his body in such a way that nothing was hidden. Louise's face burned, for although it was no longer anything particularly new, the shrouded parts of men still sent blood rushing to her face. How intricate his form was, wrapped in dirt and mud and what appeared to be blood, but still...

He was handsome, with his long legs and soft muscles and sculptured features. He was bright—yellow headed and blue eyed. Golden wisps of hair clung to his sweaty brow, and in the midst of his sleep, it seemed that only his lazy grin was disturbed. In that bleak and brief moment, Louise felt every bit as adamant about Ralph as she had the previous day, and in one blurry flare of emotion, her body burned for his touch, for his hands upon her breasts and his mouth at the base of her throat.

The impulse vanished as his sleepy eyes cracked open, peering warily from the ropes of sunlight to his own naked form. Louise couldn't move. Her lungs felt no need to breathe. So she stood silently and waited as Ralph finally and slowly came to his own good sense. His eyes first passed by her, and in an obnoxious realization, he hastily flipped himself over and reached blindly for his clothes, breathing hard in his embarrassment. Louise suppressed the impulse to laugh, as it was quite amusing to watch Ralph simmer in his own humiliation. But the sinking feeling of her sin overwhelmed that to giggle, and with that darkening thought, she feigned composure and turned away.

Once Ralph dressed, the duo stood in dripping silence, listening as the surrounding forest cooed in grave delight. The entire world felt the weight of their disgraceful deed. It was an awful feeling, knowing that something so delicately wonderful had been fractured in a wave of irrational pleasure, and it turned Louise's stomach over. In abhorrence for her own self, she peeked up at Ralph, who seemed obliged to avert his watchful gaze. His shoulders tensed at his obvious discomfort, but his expression was obscured by his tangle of blonde hair. Louise cringed; the only thing apparent about Ralph's composure was that he was ashamed, ashamed and sickeningly embarrassed. Although offense took of Louise primarily, it dispersed when she realized her own growing shame.

What have we done? Louise's thoughts quieted when Ralph suddenly spoke.

"Are you okay?" It was a disconcerting thing to ask considering that nothing about Louise was okay. Swallowing her disgust, the girl forced herself a step closer to Ralph, hoping to obliterate the awkwardness that protruded.

It didn't work.

"I'm fine," Louise murmured quietly, passing her gaze over Ralph's rigid muscles. He still refused to meet her eyes. At his silence, she continued. "Are you? You seem a bit..."

Ralph lifted his head, blinding Louise with his own piercing blue eyes. No longer were they soft and wide and wonderfully sweet. They were dark, shadowed, misted with his own chagrined agony.

"Of course I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"

Louise stammered. "Well...I just thought...you seem distracted." A bitter laugh escaped the blonde. "I have no reason to be distracted."

"Ralph."

He's acting insolent, just like that damned Merridew.

Suddenly, Ralph's expression melted, and the heaviness seemed to leave his shoulders. Softly and with hesitant doubt, he raised his hand and touched the slope of Louise's cheek with his fingertips, staring as if her skin would set his ablaze. And his flesh did burn, but in yearning, for the taste of her mouth and the feel of her body beneath his still throbbed like an open sore in his mind.

Louise's head seemed to scatter whenever he touched her. Instinctively, she fell into him, raising her head so that his lips would meet hers. But Ralph, stunned by his own impulsive desire, turned away, shunning what they both recognized as dangerously delightful. Louise felt her heart smolder. He was impossible.

"Ralph," she began, her voice hardening. "This is ridiculous."

"What?" The blonde pivoted on his heel, his face contorted in rage. "The fact that I'm trying to preserve what little dignity we still have?"

"No." Louise's words fell flat and cold, frozen by the blow of his anger. "The fact that you're all that I have and I'm all that you have. And if you decide to run away from that because...because of...what happened, then you'll be throwing yourself and me to the wolves."

"I'm not stupid," Ralph replied, flinching back. "I'm not going to leave." "We can't go on like this. Avoiding each other."

"We've gone batty."

Louise sighed. "Or maybe that's just you."

A punctuated silence stretched before their dark little nook, inundating every sector and crevice in its cold, slithering claw. Ralph stood, perched like a marble statue, grimly staring at the girl across from him, balancing his own anger between her evident fury. There was nothing beautiful about the situation at all, and for one lingering moment, he wondered why Jack Merridew and that daft Roger were so eager to submerge themselves in the world of transgression. But then his own biting desire returned like a flame, and without another moment's hesitance, he grunted in frustration and turned away.

"Let's agree to disagree. C'mon, we need firewood."

The encroaching waves slurped along the shoreline, licking at frothy boundary between land and sea. Roger stood and watched the deadening horizon, enjoying the blear barrenness of the ocean. There had been a time when he was five or six that his parents first took him to the beach. It all had been astounding to him, of course—the ocean from the eyes of a mere child appeared infinite. The sun had been a clock in the sky, ticking away as tiny toy soldiers marched themselves into bottled ships and sailed past the crashing waves. The memory, like the sand between Roger's toes, was swept away as another wave caressed the beach, leaving only an imprint of white foam. Sighing, Roger tore his gaze from the sea and looked back at his chief, who stood in rigorous anger beside him. Jack could be like the ocean at times; always moving, but never truly changing.

Roger tensed as his chief drew a breath. Louise's little parade provided a fragmented jolt to his relationship with Jack, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be remedied. Of course, Jack would expect Roger to pay his dues, but what chief wouldn't demand such loyalty from a second-in-command? For the moment, Roger was content with subsiding to his superior, but when the time came, his own supremacy would be unearthed.

But until then.

Jack turned his flaming head towards Roger.

"Are you sure it was Maurice?"

Roger nodded—once to assure Jack, and a second time because he was lost for words. They seemed to escape him at the most crucial of times.

Jack's flitting ire swelled into a burning rage.

"What kind of fucking idiot is he? He let her go? He just fucking let her go?"

Roger countered his friend's exasperation with his own unsettling ease. It was queer how Roger balanced Jack's fury; it seemed the sadist had a better way of harnessing his ill feelings.

"Maurice is weak," the dark haired boy said, and although his voice was unwavering, there was a certain calmness that not even Jack's anger could refuse. "He's always been weak. He was weak back at home, and he's weak here. You just have to learn how to use that to your advantage."

Now, Jack was interested. With a raised eyebrow, he turned his painted, peeling face to Roger in curdling fascination.

"What do you mean?"

"He let her go," Roger answered flatly, scaling his eyes back across the ocean. How could something so indefinitely empty be so strangely full? "So use that against him. Make him help you in getting her back."

Jack grinned wickedly. "Ah, another beating?" Although his chief's ardent hunger for torture was growing, it was not what Roger had been implying.

"No." Roger allowed the word to linger, to bewilder before he spoke again. "Surely, Louise trusts Maurice now. At least to an extent."

Jack's smile dissipated into an expression of enduring attentiveness, something that previously transfixed him at home during the long and intensive routines of choir. Roger stepped past his friend and brushed his feet along the shoreline, innately reveling in the soft kiss of the waves on his toes. It was something he always enjoyed.

"Surely she told Ralph of his heroism, of course, assuming she's with Ralph."

Jack's jaw hardened. "Bastard."

"Surely she would trust Maurice to help her again, would she not?"

Roger's eyes, shining in his own infernal bliss, passed from the waning ocean to the icy, excited gaze of Jack, whose lips now fell open in dry, hungry appeal. Roger grinned.

"Maurice is weak."

"S'pose so."

"Are you going to let a filthy little girl abuse that?"

Jack was quiet for only a moment.

"No," he said, quivering in anticipation. "That's for me to do."

The ocean cooled in one last roaring wave, sending a spray of water into the yellow backdrop of the sky.

"What was your brother's name?"

"Jeremy." There was a pause, an accentuated silence that pierced through the thick rope of rigidity surrounding the jungle. "He's in the navy."

"With your father?"

Ralph's footsteps slowed as he was overwhelmed with a mixture of emanating guilt and cumbersome grief. He raised his head towards Louise and nodded once, visibly restraining the sting of tears that threatened at his eyes. "Yes. With my father."

Truth be told, he missed them both something awful.

Louise struggled to hold the fragmented pieces of firewood within her quaking arms. Already, her legs trembled beneath her, threatening to crumble at the mere drop in her breath. But she carried out without complaint, already at a distance with Ralph and reluctant to pursue that gap any further. She was closer to him than ever—in skin, in body, and in mind—but she had never felt so far away.

They made sure to linger where the foliage was thick and vines coiled around the ground like hungry, roping snakes, perched to strike and foil those around them. It was safer that way, as there were less pigs, and with less pigs, there were less hunters.

Or at least that was Ralph's theory.

Straying between the veined trunks of towering trees, the two teenagers shuddered beneath the dreary weight of the sun, blistering and hot upon their backs. It seemed as though the chilling graze of shade from the trees only dampened their spirits, reminding them that this island was no place for two children. It was dark and grotesquely brutal. There was nothing glorious about the place. Nothing.

Ralph stooped as he reached for another hunk of damp firewood, regarding it with dismayed apathy. There was nothing particularly exciting about gathering firewood, but it prolonged the diversion against his innate need to assuage his desires once more with Louise. It was a constant thorn thundering beneath his gut, floundering his nerves and mussing the delicate scraps of sanity he'd managed to save. He couldn't forget anything, but he could neglect the memory, and in doing so, perhaps cease things before they spilled from his control.

Although it appeared some things already had, Louise being one of them. The girl passed a sidelong glance at him now, narrowing her gaze in inquisitive confusion. Ralph swallowed the impulse to grab her and looked away, minding the trees and the birds and the tangled vines as he clutched his bundle of firewood. The smalltalk apparently grew tedious, and now the jungle swelled in their confused and uncalled silence. Ralph hated it. He loathed the fact that Louise was his and he could barely speak. But the silence was not negotiable; it accompanied their decision. Everything felt unbearably awkward, and there was no panacea to mend all Ralph's wrongdoings.

It surprised him when Louise lifted her lips and fell into speech once more.

"Do you believe in Heaven?"

Ralph furrowed his brow, slightly thrown from her question. It was blatant and piqued at his sensitive nerves.

"I s'pose so." But he dropped his dark eyes to the floor, subduing the budding fear that flourished from within the deep recesses of his heart. "I believe in God, if that's what you mean."

Disgruntled, Louise stepped over a splintered branch and wrestled to keep her balance, holding her firewood close to her breast.

"That's not what I asked. Do you believe in Heaven?"

"Why does it matter?"

"I mean—" The girl shook a stray, stubborn curl from her eyes and sighed. "—do you believe that when we die we go to Heaven?"

A sick feeling curled its way past Ralph's mind, usurping his thoughts with the sodden, sordid stain of guilt once more. He remembered being young and sitting on the very edge of the church pew, legs dangling over the edge and barely reaching the tiled ground. The pastor's voice still blared in its stentorian manner against his ears, reciting the beautifully wondrous verses of God's word like it had been patched together in a quilt. But this soft sound was pierced by Simon's screams, and in another moment, Ralph returned back to Louise and her awaiting gaze.

Trembling, he lips fell apart and gave way to what his mind refused to acknowledge.

"No." The word hung in the air for what seemed like an eternity, reaching the lengths of both Louise's and Ralph's hearts with icy tendrils. Its echo appeared to enrage Ralph, and in a fluster of confusion and raw anger, his arms fell numb and sent the cluster of firewood sprawling to the forest ground. With a reddened and enraged face, Ralph met Louise's eyes for the first time since their encounter the night before. "I don't think people go to Heaven."

Louise's heart dropped. "Where do they go?"

Ralph grinned in acidic resent. "Hell, maybe. Nowhere. Perhaps they just sit and rot beneath the ground."

Louise's own limbs fell slack and she sank to the floor, dropping the wood and drawing her knees close to her chest. Her mind throbbed. Everything was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Embittered, she looked up at Ralph and felt her confidence shatter.

Quivering, Louise asked, "What about Piggy?"

"Gone." There was no hesitation.

"And Gracie?"

"Gone."

Louise paused. "Simon?"

Ralph felt the poisonous bite of tears swell from behind his eyes. "He—" But his voice cracked into silent tears, spilling forth in hot, wet streaks upon his grimy cheeks. A face returned to him, blurry and smudged at first, but a rippling image all the same. A boy with dark hair and green eyes and a diffident smile materialized and wobbled, fading from real to bludgeoned and bloody and mutilated with the fatal mark of a spear. Compunction blackened Ralph's lungs and sent him into convulsions, sinking down beside Louise in heaving sobs. The girl's heart rose in sympathy, and beneath her own quiet tears, she gathered him in her arms, pressing his disheveled blonde hair close to her wet cheek. The forest wavered in its cacophony, and the sweet sound of seething sobs besieged all that was there. Louise clutched Ralph, holding her fingers to his skin, and for once, she was not diluted with the gluttonous flame that would usually consume her. She felt his head quavering beneath her own, their tears mingling like rainwater on a window, and she no longer felt the fire roaring through her veins nor the slow patter of her heart as his arms tightened around her waist. They were children once more. Children lost in a forest. Children far from home. Children who only wanted to be children.

Ralph lifted his chin, unabashedly pairing his piercing gaze with Louise. Her face was stained with the incriminating smear of her tears, and although her eyes glowed with a fierceness he could never truly understand, there was something indefinitely amiss about her now, as if she had been broken and badly fixed. Shaking, he moved his hand up towards the curve of her jaw, pressing his thumb between the small slope from her nose to her lips. She sighed gently, pleased with his touch, and pressed her lips to his thumb, eliciting a small noise of avidity from the blonde. Breathing slow and still, he replaced his thumb with his dry lips, and soon their mouths had melded in the easing practice of passion.

The forest was silent, but their hearts were a deafening roar.

Maurice crouched behind the green leafage of the jungle, holding his knees close to his chest. Ralph and Louise would have to scale back through the east end of the forest if they wished to avoid the hunters. Any true hunter would realize that, which, to Maurice's awful dismay, Roger had. And it was under his explicit order to rectify what he had caused ailment to. Or, as Jack had so plainly put it, it was either Ralph's head, or his own.

The sky was brilliantly yellow in the late afternoon—a pillar of smoky clouds and creamy oranges, blended only in the dusty light of the sun. A stunning evening—quiet even, silent in complacent stir of the forest. Maurice's heart twitched in audible agony as he observed the sight, reminiscing on his first day stranded upon this god wretched island. Bill had been with him...yes...and they raced up and down the beach...they were free. So free. Infinite in a like.

But that invincibleness lay crushed beneath the foul and shocking gavel of defeat, not that Maurice was particularly defeated. In all consideration, he was atop the burning file of fiends, and although Jack was miffed, his anger would fade into annoyance and then dissipate completely. Maurice was safe. Ralph...well...he preferred not to think about it for too long.

Breathing in the warm, heavy air, Maurice stilled at the soft sound of laughing. His heart stammered in one sickening pulse, threatening to jilt his confidence completely. There was a gentle snicker and another low chuckle, one that definitively belonged to a female. Maurice's breathing slowed, his mind imbued with the sad possibility of abandoning Jack's orders and leaving altogether. But no—there was no other choice. It was either Ralph's head or his own, and frankly, Maurice couldn't seem to unearth the selflessness to sacrifice his life for someone who would inevitably die one way or another.

Peering over the spindly brushes of the bush, Maurice watched as Louise and Ralph sauntered quite carelessly towards the bank of a running creek, pausing only to pass sideways glances of abashed admiration to the other. Part of Maurice's conscience crumbled at the sight of those shy stares. How strange a place for two people to be so absorbed in their own human affection. A spike of envy ground its way through the base of Maurice's heart, leaving its splintered edges to propel him to find his strength and stand. Yes. Jack needed this. Roger needed this. They all needed this. And it was up to Maurice to consummate such instruction.

As he attempted to find a steady gripping amongst the protruding roots of the thick trees around him, Maurice called out for Louise.

"Hey!"

Louise staggered into Ralph and shrieked, her eyes shadowed by coming panic. Ralph guilelessly caught her and held a fist to an opponent who was not there. Seeing that no threat visibly was poised, he lowered his fist and steadied Louise, narrowing his cobalt eyes into the darkening forest ahead.

"Who goes there?" There was a lengthy pause. "Will there be trouble?"

Maurice stifled a laugh before he remembered that yes, there would be a considerable amount of trouble. The thought turned his heart black, sodden with the despondence of fear. It took a moment for him to gather his wits before he could answer Ralph with an unwavering voice.

"N-no." Even in the swarthiness of the night, Maurice felt his neck prickle with the flower of blush. Lying had never been his strongest attribute. "It's me." Realizing his ambiguity, he added, "—Maurice."

Silence drew by, strangling each moment with its smothering howl. Maurice had just begun to falter in his poise when he heard Louise's timid voice shatter the quiet muse of the forest.

"It's alright, Ralph." The bristle of footsteps was now audible. "He's fine. He helped me at Castle Rock, when...when Jack and them..."

In that moment, Maurice's stomach churned. All at once, he detested himself. It was repugnant, trading his life for that of someone else. But it was necessary.

Maurice felt the hesitation in Ralph's footsteps, as if he could sense the precarious danger in the situation. His heart stooped, pummeling into the dreary but constant thought of jeopardizing his success. Coaxing the duo appeared more of a challenge than Maurice could have ever anticipated.

"You're not safe." Maurice swallowed what little pride he managed to retain and focused his brittle thoughts on the dim silhouettes before him—so close. "Jack knows where you're hiding. He's going to attack before dawn."

Ralph's warm disposition decayed into fraying alarm. "W-why are you telling us this? Do you actually care what happens to us?"

Yes. I do care. But sadly when it comes to you or me, mate, I'm always going to choose myself.

"I care that you're human," Maurice probed, his voice lilting at his own pathetic demeanor. "I-I helped Louise before, didn't I? I might as well help you now." The gloomy swell of darkness obscured what little expression Ralph or Louise may have portrayed, but from the elongated silence, it seemed as though Maurice's proposition was being mulled over. With his heart thrumming beneath his chest, Maurice felt his flesh grow sticky in the exhausting heat of twilight, and already his nerves were beginning to falter yet again. Guilt was quick to consume his mind, drowning him with the bladed thoughts of his own virtue. Not that it mattered anymore. Not after Simon.

"Look." Maurice blundered helplessly towards the two shadows of people, stumbling until he was thrown towards their feet. He could see them somewhat clearer now, or at least the glowing irises of their glinting eyes, and was washed in shame. Those unassuming eyes were beginning to soften in trust, a gift Maurice recognized would be long banished from the island after his own slaying of loyalty. "—I know somewhere you can go. It's safe. Jack doesn't know about it. And I can get the twins to look out for you there. I promise."

If Ralph doubted the authenticity of Maurice's promise, he blatantly disregarded it and instead nodded gently, wrapping one arm around Louise's trembling shoulders.

"I don't see what other choice we have," he mumbled, more to Louise than to Maurice. In spite of his guilt, Maurice's face brightened at Ralph's quavering words and bestowed him with the strength to raise himself up so that he could meet the blonde eye to eye—for the last time.

"Come, I'll show you."

And he was fumbling back through the dense foliage, followed closely by the two people he quite knowingly condemned to their fates.

In a clearing not so far away, an impaled pig's head grinned wickedly in sardonic delight, humored by the throng of flies that flitted through its rotting eye sockets. The Beast had been appeased.

Louise realized something was wrong as soon as they crossed back over towards the blanketed shoreline. Pressing herself close to Ralph, her heart stammered at the black expanse of ocean that thundered from only a short distance away. The waves, like rolling hills of soldiers, toiled and broke against a clatter of rocks, rocks where Louise and Ralph once sat and talked and kissed and fell into each other. But now the rocks were only deadened slabs of gritty concrete, moldering under the grueling drudgery of a hundred years' worth of wind. Maurice had seemed to grow slightly more tentative in his steps, and with each blundering movement came a dubious glance back towards Louise and Ralph, as if he was dithering on his decision to accompany them through the forest.

It was when they completely detached themselves from the forest that Louise's ambivalence turned to thick, tangled fear.

"Where exactly is this hiding spot?" she asked, feeling her voice tremble and crack in angst. Maurice looked out towards the ocean and sighed.

"Uh—shouldn't be too long now."

Ralph's arm tightened around Louise, drawing her bony shoulders right into his chest. She shuddered, feeling her body pulse in the eerie warmth of being close to him—too close to him. Something was very wrong, and it was as if Ralph already had come to the conclusion for himself. He nuzzled his nose against the top of her tousled hair, savoring her sweet scent and the soft feel of her curls against his skin, bristled and entangled but familiar all the same. She attempted to giggle, molding her fear into girlish delight, but it escaped as a squeak and only jarred the fear that blistered beneath her.

"Don't be afraid," Ralph said softly, and then Louise knew. There was no hiding place.

"I wish I could've met Jeremy," Louise whispered, breathing in his lovely scent—like salty water and pine trees. Like silken sand and the gleaming sun. Like him. "You'd like Timothy, my brother. He's a very nice boy."

And all at once, it happened.

A vociferous shriek shattered the teetering silence that somehow proved an equilibrium to Louise's starch panic. At the obliteration of said silence, her hysteria exploded, fleeing from her body in a punctured scream. Ralph managed to hold her beneath his grip, although she struggled, her limbs flailing as if she was under the acute clutch of Roger. She scratched at him and begged for her own release—then maybe we both could run it's not too late it's not too late—but the hunters were already encircling them, akin to demons with their whitened faces and glittering smiles. The distorted outlines of splintering spears became lethal rods of steel in the dark mutilation of the night, and before Louise could truly register the extent of Maurice's duplicity, she had begun to scream again.

It was over. They were trapped.

She fell into Ralph as they both crumbled to the sand, lost of any strength or hope and instead marred by the brutish force of anger. Ralph was silent; his mind could only grope at the feeble chance that perhaps Jack would have mercy. But if not...

Louise couldn't yet bring herself to fathom the possibility of what could happen, that neither of them could even be breathing by the yellow break of dawn. There was nothing more unfeigned than the barbarian sneer of the hunters surrounding them, each growling and grunting in their own amused guffaws. The tallest of the hunters broke the circle and approached the fallen beings before him. Through her quaking tears, Louise recognized a streak of red and her heart faltered.

Jack grinned.

"Look at them!" he cried, earning a wild uproar from his cohorts. "Writhing in the sand—in their own filth!" Ralph's fingers tensed around Louise, his tautened anger bristling into smoldering rage. Louise was shaking from beneath his embrace, so nakedly intwined in her own futile hopes.

But Jack's triumph had not yet been splattered across Ralph's demolished pride, and with a widening smile, he reached down and pulled the blonde's hair, raising him from his stubborn and defeated crouch on the sand. Ralph bit back a scream and stared with deadened eyes, enraged but aware of his formidable fate.

"It is under my jurisdiction that you will either live or die, Adler." His breath wafted upon Ralph's burning cheeks, putridly warm and foul like the rotten person he was proving to be. "And I'll be honest when I say I'd prefer to see you hang."

Mustering up what little dignity he had salvaged, Ralph forced his gaze upon the repulsively disgusting sight of Jack Merridew and twisted his lips to say, "I will not beg, you fucking coward."

Louise broke from beneath them, as if the threads of strings within her mind had been foolishly cut and rendered useless. Her sobs racketed through the easing night, but against the reverberating trill of the black, frothing waves, it seemed only a whisper.

Chagrined at Ralph's fearless defiance, Jack's mouth contorted in unadulterated rage, only distilled by the looming guild of power that somehow proved to restrain his growing fury. He passed his irate gaze first from the unwashed blonde beneath his tightening grasp to the girl beside his feet, who almost appeared deranged and unfit for thought. She looked back up at him, her eyes wide with appeasement, as if the mere sadness of her stare could soften Jack's lividly solid stance on forgiveness. But it did not; like most things, it only whetted a thirst to smear Ralph's name in the dust, carving his humiliation so that it would remain in infamy for the rest of time. And Jack's power would be eternal. Just as Roger promised.

Releasing the blonde's matted hair, Jack carelessly threw Ralph aside and sniggered as he stumbled into the dirt, his body so obviously battered and weak beneath weeks' worth of malnutrition.

"I won't kill you at first," Jack began, pacing himself around the begrimed being struggling helplessly beneath him. Jack smiled, throwing one prowling glance back at Louise before he continued, his voice lathered in lustful contentment. "First, I'll deal with her. There are certain consequences to making such an obscene defiance against my open instruction, and those punishments will be carried out. I don't care if she's a girl." Seeing the raw look of horror distort Ralph's expression, Jack, glowing in triumph, placed one grimy foot upon the boy's back and stared down pitifully. "And you, my Chief, will get to watch—everything. What's the point if a boy can't have a little fun, eh?"

Ralph looked rightly petrified, and Jack knew he had made the right decision in buffeting Louise. Grinning, he kicked Ralph in the side—hard—and threw him over onto his back, snickering cruelly when he elicited a quiet whimper. Like a fucking pig.

"But don't worry." Jack's eyes were aglow in something dark, something icier than the deepest blue of his chilling stare. Ralph shuddered beneath him, silently despising the boy that towered above him. "I won't allow her to have all the fun. Once we're finished, then it's your turn for punishment, which I'm sure you can imagine, she'll simply love." Jack, his eyes glaring in feral malice, turned back towards his enamored tribe, greeting them with a bellow that echoed across the growling waves. "What do you think, huh? Should we entreat our Chief to a proper death? A king's death?"

The response was maniacal; spears were tossed up into the air, a stampede of footstep shuddered across the damp, wet sand, vicious screams curdled into bloodlust—a noise so violently savage Louise only wanted to draw into the shadows and never emerge. But the screams fell back into shallow cries of retribution, and with each harrowing call came another that only eclipsed the last.

"Throw him off the cliff!" One boy—perhaps Robert—screamed, ravaging the ground beneath him with his spear.

"Make her do it! Make her stab him!"

"Let Roger kill him! Let Roger kill him like that fucking fatass!" An accord of yeah's spilled over the silence, reaching the tips of Jack's grin till it spread like some unnatural thing across his face. But the cries were finally silenced when one last shriek perforated the wild howls and demanded their attention.

"Take off his head! Cut if off like a pig! Like the Beast!"

The heaving bodies in the crowd stilled into quietness, drawn only by the quivering anticipation of their shaking chief. He pulled one waxen, thirsty gaze down at Ralph, and then met his tribe with amplified excitement.

"Yes," Jack whispered—just a breath at first. It was a moment before he found the strength to speak. "Yes! We'll behead him! Like the pig! Like any pig! A death fit for a King!"

With a scathing black gaze, Jack looked down upon Ralph and smiled—warmly at first, and then in that caustic aberrant way he had. Jack, the Red Chief, the Hunter, the Head Choirboy, sunk upon his knees and met the firm eyes of his alter—the Blonde, the Conch Holder, the Rugby Star—and the flame within his heart flickered.

"Yes." Jack held his gaze, whispering so that only Ralph could hear his calamitous words. "I think a King's Death shall fit quite nicely for our King."

A/N:

OH AND IM SEEING FUCKING JAKE BUGG IN FUCKING CONCERT HOLY SHIT. sort of obsessed.

now how about a review.

FINI :D