IF YOU DIDN'T SEE THE REPOST OF CH. 35 OR READ THE HUGE NOTE ON THE TOP OF IT, PLEASE DO SO NOW. THE NOTE EXPLAINS EVERYTHING, AND EVERY CHAPTER FROM THAT ONE ONWARD HAS BEEN EDITED, SOMETIMES HEAVILY.
Notes on the edits I did: This was the original chapter 57, formerly entitled "Fragile, Shattered, and Broken". Some people may not like this chapter so much but, hey, it's massively important, so it's-a-stayin'. Now, what I did to it is rather simple. First off, I split the original version of this chapter into two parts, this one and the part that will become the next chapter. This one needed it's own chapter, so yeah. Anyway, I did a lot of edits to this chapter, the thoughts, the descriptive detail, everything. Selene is mentioned here, but only a couple times and only in the past tense in the context of brief memories. That's all. Anyway, hope you all enjoy.
~台風の目~
"Second Chances"
~台風の目~
What few people realized was that Jet's mental state was very fragile. It had been, in a way, ever since he had spiraled into that massive depression back during the war, and it had only gotten worse after the Syxans had captured him. They had tortured him, left him broken and barely possessing a will to live. It was the lowest he had ever been. Even now, he remained fragile and broken. In many ways, he was still breaking. In others, he was forever at risk of it. There was never any escaping it. He had been through so much, and the results of his hell would forever walk with him. Loud sounds had scared him for years, but nowhere near as much as pitch-black darkness had. He still had vivid night terrors, suffered severe flashbacks, and had been utterly unable to tolerate even the smallest touch for quite a few years. To this day, he was terrified of fire, struggled with his anger, and suffered from acute anxiety. But one would never know of any of this just by looking at him.
Even before the day he had been captured, Jet had worn a mask. That mask had been constructed with beautiful accuracy, giving him a shield to hide behind and a false face to show the world. At first, this mask had served a vastly simple purpose. The people of Babylon had wanted a strong and fearless leader and, while Jet had always been strong in his own way, he hadn't been without fear. No one had been, not even Kath and Selene. But the people had needed someone who could at least appear to be fearless in the face of everything. Kath had done that, yes, but he was so terribly skilled at isolating himself while still doing what he needed to that, needless to say, it hadn't mattered. Jet, however, had always had eyes on him. People had always been watching, whether it be through their own eyes or through the lens of a camera or whatever else. As he had once said himself, he hadn't been able to afford a single mistake, ever. To show that he had felt just as vulnerable and afraid as most everyone else... that would have been a mistake in the eyes of many.
So, with little else to do, Jet had put on a mask. That mask had been very effective from the start, but it only became so much more so either during or after his time in Syxan custody. The mask, however, did nothing to stop him from continuing to feel on the inside. Few could imagine how fragile his emotional state also was, especially considering what he had gone through during those six months. So many things had happened so quickly after his rescue from that horrible place. He'd lapsed into a coma and nearly died, Kath (sometime after Jet had woken up) had fallen gravely ill and very nearly died himself, Nyxar (leader of the Syxans) had tried to kidnap him, some other Syxans had managed to kidnap him, Selene died in front of him, the gruesome display completed by the blood that had sprayed him... There was no real way to fully and accurately list all that he had gone through after Selene's life finally left her. All there was to say was that his suffering hadn't ended on that day. If it had, he would have had no further use for the mask. There never would have been a reason for him to so utterly perfect it. But he had.
Since the end of the war and the loss of Selene, few had ever been capable of reading the quiet hawk, regardless of whether or not he was wearing his meticulously crafted mask. Most oftentimes, it had only been she who could accurately imagine how terribly he had been breaking. But lately… lately, he had been thinking that Sonic was reading into much more than he'd been letting on. The way Sonic worded things, the things he did and the way he did them, the things he did and did not pressure Jet to talk about when questioning him… It all spoke to a deeper understanding of Jet (as he was now and not as he'd once been) than Jet himself had been giving Sonic credit for. But why was that? Why had he been doubting Sonic so greatly? The question bothered him and, the more he pondered it, the more he began to understand why. He had trusted Sonic almost utterly, once upon a time. They had been the very best of friends, rarely apart and seldom truly upset with one another. They had been, dare he say it… family. ...Brothers.
But then everything had changed. Jet had, in secret, gone off to war. He'd been to hell and back more times than he cared to count. He'd made new friends. He'd settled into a new home. He'd fallen in love, really and truly in love, for the first time in his life. He'd been married and had children. All without any of his friends from this world. And those kids. Those crazy, obnoxious, temperamental, perfect kids… he loved those four with every fiber of his being - and then some. The young king of Babylon loved his kids so much it honestly hurt... And it was precisely because he loved them that he was constantly forced to leave them behind. Only in doing so could he see to their future, and ensure that they would even have a future to begin with. Guarded and fragile though he was, he allowed himself to love them with absolutely everything he had, and his kids all knew it. They saw what he chose to hide from most everyone else, and they loved him right back with just as much force. His children claimed to adore him, and he certainly adored them. Right now, he suffered on their behalf. Not knowing where they were or if they were alright or if all or any of them would survive this day or the next… it was utter hell, one even worse than the kind he had already seen.
But if he left his children to protect them, then what was the reason he had left Sonic and the others behind? He couldn't convince himself that he had the same motivation for both, but he could do something else. Namely, he could and did wish that Selene was here. She had always been his rock during times like these, keeping him grounded, doing everything in her power to keep him from shattering completely, though he had never, not once, reached that point before (contrary to what he had felt during his time with the Syxans). Certainly, now would be a horrid time for it to happen. Jet needed to focus, and no one could do that when they were so overwhelmed with feeling. Even Kade was no exception to this, Jet knew, which was truly saying something. Perhaps Jet would learn to be, someday, but he certainly wasn't now. Though he seldom admitted it aloud, he was still a person and people needed the support of others.
And yet... usually he didn't want help. Not from Selene, not from Sonic, not from anyone. Lord only knew how many times he'd claimed as much during the war. Claims were by no means always the truth, however, and it seemed that just about everyone knew it. With that in mind, Selene, Kath, Arthr, Azerel, and at one point Jade had all tried to help Jet regardless, but he knew that their every attempt had been rebuffed. When they had tried to remind him how beautiful life could be, he had replied, "Everything beautiful has its moment and then passes away. Beauty is too fragile to waste time and energy adoring." When they had tried to help heal his wounds, the ones not physical in nature, he had simply pushed them away, kept them at arm's length, and isolated himself. When they had tried teach him how to live again, he had reminded them that, with the war going on, he'd had no life to really live. The list just went on and on and on. And yet, their desire to help him… just hadn't ever seemed to diminish, somehow. Instead, these interactions, it seemed, had only served to heighten their resolve to do precisely what he'd said he didn't want them to do. However... they were also no fools. It was often said that there was never any real helping those who didn't want to be helped. In far too many cases with far too many people, this was simply far too true for Selene's liking, as she'd once told him. Sooner or later, someone's will would run out. Either he would stop resisting at some point, or they would simply stop bothering. So, he supposed the real question here was, did he want help? Or didn't he?
In some ways, Jet reluctantly supposed that he at least needed help, if only with some things. He was still more than willing and capable of fending for and taking care of himself by himself, but there were just some things he couldn't deal with on his own. His seizures were one example, and various problems associated with his autism were another. For those sorts of things, he had learned a long time ago to accept help. He had a doctor, he had medications for when he really needed them, and he also had good friends who knew what to do when he needed their aid. But, of course, help was easier for him to accept when the things he was dealing with were only physical in nature. If he was wounded, for example. But when his problems were more psychological and/or emotional in nature... Those were problems he was almost never willing to acknowledge unless he had to, and he certainly never made others aware of them if he could avoid doing so. More than a few times, though, he had been forced to acknowledge them.
He was no fool. He knew he was still traumatized, would always be so. He was well aware of the fact that depression would nearly always be something he had to fight, that his anger would never truly go away, that his night-terrors would likely never fully stop, that the psychological torture he'd endured for those six or seven months would always, always continue to haunt him for the rest of his existence, and on and on and on. Certain things, he'd learned how to manage of the years. Anger management was something he was extremely skilled at now. For years, he had known how to recognize when he was feeling depressed and he had learned how to nip it in the bud before it could get too unmanageable once again. The night-terrors could be lessened when his bedroom wasn't too dark at night, and listening to peaceful music before bed further helped to put his mind at ease before he went to sleep. Regardless, he knew that there was no way in hell everything could be so easily managed. His PTSD was a prime example of that. His seizures, forever linked with that disorder, could be handled with proper care, but not the intense emotional and mental reactions that came when something triggered him and brought back memories of things he wished with every fiber of his being to just be able to forget. Problems like those ones, those psychological and emotional issues he had, would probably never go away. But that did not mean he wanted help with them.
Accepting help, he'd learned, meant discussing what was wrong. Honestly, it did make sense. How could anyone help him if they didn't know what was wrong in the first place? But that was the entire problem. Never once did Jet pretend to want help with these particular things, and he certainly didn't want to talk about them. Even pretending that he actually did want to talk about those problems, more specifically about the torture that caused it all, he just couldn't. Not right now, and possibly not ever. Talking, however, was very different from thinking, something he occasionally wished he could stop doing. Though he felt virtually incapable of talking about what had happened to him, he all too frequently found himself thinking about it all, albeit extremely unwillingly.
Even after all these years, he vividly remembered being whipped and burned and cut and beat and slashed and on and on and on, but those physical pains had always paled in comparison to what his monstrous captors had done to his mind. His memories of what, exactly, they did to accomplish their deeds were often vague at best, but he remembered the results far too well for his liking. All too often, he recalled terrifying hallucinations so vivid he'd genuinely believed them to be reality at the time of their occurrence. It was so easy to remember his many panic attacks, his waking night terrors, his various total mental breakdowns (most of which had completely numbed him to reality for who knew how long). Reality and imagination had almost irreparably blurred for longer than he even knew. Even in his sleep he had never been able to find any sort of relief, as the terrors and sufferings he'd endured when awake had always followed him into his dreams. Far too frequently, he hadn't managed to sleep in the first place. Existence had become a long day that was hellish beyond words and that seemingly had had no end. As far as he had known for a long time, what he'd once understood as the reality he lived in had utterly shattered around him, leaving him in a black emptiness that had no time, no explanation, and no peace. Pain and suffering had been his only companions. Never during that time had he not been terrified and hopeless. He'd spent nearly every moment of his life then just wishing for it all to finally end, forever. Being an Immortal had, for the first time in his life, become his greatest curse.
This singular point in his life was, as far as he could personally tell, why he struggled with trust, why he was almost never able to open himself up to anyone, why he was terrified to let these people in as he had once done... All of those people were united in the sense that they, like him, hated the Nocturnians and were intent on wiping them out once and for all. However, there existed between them a rift that might never be fixable. Never before had he felt so divided from the people had once so happily called his friends. Granted, things were nowhere near this bad with his companions from New Babylon, as they had actively been there to help mend his unwillingly ruined bonds with them, but his friends from Mobius simply hadn't been. It wasn't something he blamed them for, however. It was just... the truth.
Absolutely none of this meant that he wanted help, though. Yes, he was still suffering in various ways. He still experienced the same pain and fear he'd felt when he'd still been trapped in that dungeon. There was never any real escaping from any of it. The truth of the matter was now that he no longer felt willing to care. Every day, he had far too many things to worry about that were far more important to him than his own personal shit. For one thing, he had those kids now. If only for them, he held it together, would bear the pain as best he could and hide the rest, would never again give up as he had once done. Those four smiling faces had each given him purpose again for the first time since he'd lost Selene. They gave him a reason to resume giving a genuine shit about his own existence, grounded him so that he had yet to slip away as he had so often done in that godforsaken cell. They reminded him what it was really like to love someone who didn't use their own "love" as a weapon to emotionally kill, taught him again how to genuinely smile, had helped him to find peace within himself for the first time in so long…
They had saved him, in a way. And maybe this all sounded selfish, but his devotion to them existed for reasons that were everything but. They were his kids... His children were everything to him, and he was nothing without those lives he so deeply cherished. Their kidnapping had shaken him to his very core, and he was once again filled with a wave of terror he was helpless to control. Though he hid it, and his unbridled rage, he still felt them both, and he didn't hesitate to make sure those Nocturnian bastards ahead of him knew that they had fucked up. No one who touched his kids was going to live to gloat about it. Of that he was absolutely certain.
Cutting through open air, he released an energy attack that sliced straight through the throngs of Nocturnians ahead of him. They fell away like the dross in a trash heap, and he wasted absolutely no time and in felling yet more of them. His mind was not always in the best state, he knew (though this had become much less true over the years), but his ability to fight had by no means been diminished as a result of his torture. Before losing Selene and once again losing purpose in his life, he had found himself more driven than ever to get stronger. His nightmares had only served to motivate him to do whatever he could to ensure that he would never suffer like that again... and that no one he cared for ever met that same fate, either. The training had been brutal and downright deadly, true, but it hadn't mattered to him then and still didn't to this day. He was here now, he had survived (like he'd ever had a choice in that), and he was still fighting. He was doing more goddamn good for himself and his loved ones than he'd ever really done before. He was so much more willing now, so much more capable in spite of everything that had happened, and that was something that the Nocturne Clan as whole seemed to have overlooked. Big fucking mistake, you bastards.
Selene's beautiful, perfect voice cut into his thoughts from his memories and sliced through the faint but thickening cloud of his emotions, instantly easing his anger a certain degree. Times like these, when he genuinely started to lose himself to emotion, had always been rare for him. They were even more so now, even with his mind damaged like it was. It troubled him that it had started to happen just now, but he was given no time to dwell on the matter. He swore he could hear her voice in his head from years long past. "Jet, you need to concentrate. Focus on what we're doing right here, right now." The attitude she had always shown him in the early years of their friendship, that no-nonsense I'll whoop your ass and not feel sorry about it demeanor, was fully conveyed in her voice (though it probably was just all in his head), and that alone helped further ground Jet in his logic and rational thought.
Inwardly, he was grateful beyond words for the fact that some things, like how serious and collected she had always been in the face of danger, never truly changed. He may have been broken in many ways, but he realized all of a sudden that many of those around him had remained as stable and reliable as ever. For all his hatred and anger and fear and lord only knew what else, his former (or not?) friends from Mobius had remained precisely the opposite. Selene had always been his rock during the war, one of the only things always keeping him grounded, and for that he would always be grateful. But… Sonic had been that for him once, too, and he had been that for Sonic. Was… it possible for them to ever get back to that point again? For the first time in far too long, he found it in himself to hope that maybe it was. He hoped it wasn't too late… that he hadn't already missed his chance to try.
Feeling stabilized anew somehow, he refocused himself, adjusted his grip on his sword, and continued his flight through space. Out there somewhere, he didn't know where, were his kids and everyone else who had disappeared. No matter what it cost him to do so, even his own goddamn sanity, he was going to find them. Never would he let any of them suffer anything even close to what he himself had been through. As a father, he had a duty to protect his children until the end. As a friend, he had an unassailable sense of duty to afford those around him with the same protection. And that was exactly what he planned to do. So long as he existed, he would never let any harm befall them or any of his friends (former or not) if he could help it.
Never.
~台風の目~
3,643 words this time. Hope you all enjoyed. The next chapter will be focusing on only one character's perspective again, but after that the chapters will be mostly normal (with multiple scenes and all that) again. Posted (at about 12:47 p.m.) 08-31-17.
