Warning: Graphic depictions of suicidal mentality, brief description of planning a suicide. This will not be an easy chapter folks.

Chapter 9

The final blow to their paper-thin façade of a life they'd built together came in the form of an invitation from the Father.

"Welcome back, Brother Jacob!" greeted him in scattered chorus as Jacob stepped off the helicopter with a thump of boots onto the dirt road.

Joseph's Flock—those lucky enough to guard the Father and not face the daily wrath of the Reaping—waved to him with their guns and a kind of joy Jacob never believed was truly honest (it was directed at him, after all). He had no capacity to do more than greet them back with a halfhearted wave with two half-raised fingers, ignoring their clashing questions of why he hadn't been seen around lately and how he'd been to hurry over to Joseph's cabin.

He didn't want to be here, not really, but it was the least he owed to Joseph. The last time they'd really spoken had been when Jacob was referring to his soulmate as little more than a security threat. Amusing in hindsight, though still true considering how many times she'd broken into his bedroom by that point.

And Joseph took their family meals very, very seriously… something Jacob had been blowing off to spend all his time with Rook.

His chest tightened at the thought of her, and he rubbed at it distractedly before noticing the Flock was giving him some odd looks and quickening his pace. The morning after she'd shed tears for him and drifted off in his arms, he'd woken with the sunrise and had been halfway to ushering her out before it became too bright to sneak out unnoticed. But when he blinked the sleep out of his eyes, he decided he couldn't do it—she looked too pretty, with her sunny head pressed firmly into his chest (drooling on him again, he noticed) and all of her limbs curled around him. He had forsaken his schedule once more to meander in his room with her, watching as the sunlight made her hair glow, and coaxed her into opening her eyes, which crinkled into a smile when she caught him staring. He left her briefly to order his men not to bother him, vaguely citing illness as a reason—not that they'd dare question him—before eagerly returning to the beautiful sight of his soulmate sprawled over his blankets.

Rook fulfilled her promise from the night before, trading him a story of her life for his, and they spent the day swapping memories and holding each other afterwards. He learned about her shitty father who could rival Old Man Seed in his ideas of gender roles, teaching her to 'man up' through forced backwoods excursions and drunken beatings; she learned about how he set fire to his foster parents' farm after John got frostbite from being forced to pull all the heavy equipment back into the shed after dark.

He learned about her brief stint in the army, how she had romanticized it as a way to escape her father and earn enough money to get her mother out too before dropping it altogether for the police academy after she watched enough people she'd come to like have limbs blown apart from IEDs; she learned about the day he was ordered to bury the Iraqi soldiers in their foxholes, bulldozing a crushing amount of sand over their heads until all he could see were silt-paled lips screaming under the roar of machinery and hands scrabbling for anything to grab ahold of until they all disappeared under the dirt.

He learned that she parceled her time between the academy and trying to pay her mother's medical bills after a breast cancer diagnosis; she learned of the explosion that left him disfigured, how his unit had been lured into using an abandoned home as cover where the fuckers had planted an IED laced with reactive chemicals that left him begging for death for weeks, even on morphine.

He learned that she fled to Montana's St. George County after graduating from the academy, when her mother died and her father got out of a long stint in prison for his latest DUI and went looking for her, before being transferred to Hope County; she learned how the government declared him too broken for service, leaving him to drain his savings and wander homeless and haunted through Rome until his brothers found him.

Then they healed the pain from old wounds being reopened by losing themselves in each other's bodies again. He did not leave unnoticed the fact that she rode him slowly and deeply, running her hands all over him like she could erase his pain and his scars if she tried hard enough.

He didn't have the courage to question why.

The experience left him raw and distracted, like his soul had been scrubbed clean before being tossed back into the muck of his old life. Truth be told, neither of them wanted to part ways to begin with—Rook had made such a face when she told him she had to go, like the very idea of parting from him was pain, and it was to him, but to her? He couldn't even process the idea.

"Brother Jacob, you really came!" chirped his fake sister's voice from beyond his troubled daydreams.

He huffed, still annoyed at Faith for her temporary theft of his soulmate, before he almost jumped out of his boots when her tiny arms glomped onto his arm and she pressed herself to his side into a half-hug, a show of bravery over all the other Faiths.

"I missed you," Faith cooed, and he scoffed in disbelief.

"You can call me on the radio any time," he reminded her, more for show as Joseph's Faithful watched them go.

In another testament to her courage, Faith's smile took on a cheeky edge as she stage-whispered, one hand at the side of her mouth, "I wouldn't want to take up any more of your time. You've been so busy lately, after all."

He frowned in annoyance and ignored her, already feeling drained. If this was any indication of how the evening was going to go, Jacob was going to have to ration his energy.

Upon entering the cabin, Faith flounced away from his side to take the seat closest to Joseph, beaming like the sun when the Father acknowledged her with a smile that was much, much warmer than the sharp stare Jacob earned upon entering. John was already busying himself with throwing spices onto things, sparing Jacob little more than a smirk before resuming the pageantry that was John's cooking. Jacob sank into his chair across from Joseph, throwing his foot over the opposite knee and trying desperately to look casual underneath the Father's yellow stare.

"Welcome home, Jacob," he said in his quiet way, gesturing towards the files on the dining table. "We were just discussing the latest shipments to the Gates. Soon we will be fully prepared for the Collapse."

"Good to hear," he grunted in return; then, when Joseph stared at him expectantly, he added, "You should parcel them out between John and Faith's bunkers. With the cutbacks we've done in the Mountains, we're already over capacity."

"Excellent," was all Joseph said, before flicking the file closed and setting it aside carefully with one hand, Faith clamping onto the other. "What else do you have to report? It has been a while; there must be plenty."

Jacob tried not to wince under the jab as he strung together a bullshit report with piecemeal intel from up to weeks old and whatever he could remember from his exhausting week without Rook. He left out the part entirely where he threw his most valued prisoner into the dust in what basically amounted to a temper tantrum, and the part where his soulmate somehow managed (despite all his attempts at increasing security) to sneak her way back into his bedroom without even having to kill a guard this time, something that should have earned his ire but instead left him confused and a little bit proud, if he was being honest.

But it felt like Joseph could see right through him anyway, as it always did, staring unwaveringly at him from behind those yellow aviators as Jacob tried not to stumble through the report. He wasn't even listening, not really—Jacob could tell, because while he inclined his head and gave the occasional hum of acknowledgement, his eyes showed he was too busy trying to burrow into Jacob's soul and read his mind, draw out his guilt.

"Jacob," said Joseph when he finished, and despite his calm tone Jacob nearly fled his own skin, "it is important for the Family for us to see you. We know you have been… struggling to choose the right Path—" Jacob shot him an annoyed glance that he promptly ignored, "—but we remain a Family, and a Family must stay together. Or at least sit down for dinner once in a while," he finished his lecture pointedly.

"Yes, Joseph," Jacob grunted in obedience, feeling decidedly like a chastised child just as he expected.

"But Father," Faith piped up, to everyone's shock, "Jacob did find the time to visit me in the Bliss."

She blinked with faux innocence even as she sent Jacob a loaded glance. He tried his best not to react despite his shock—he had no idea what Faith had to gain from going up to bat for him (especially considering he'd all but threatened her) but it softened the sharpness in Joseph's stare just the slightest, and he was grateful.

"Jacob also managed to give me a call over the radio, Father," John said with a light tone entirely belied by his growing smirk, for which Jacob was much less grateful. "He's not a complete hermit."

Asshole, he thought, scowling.

"Is it just me you're avoiding then, Jacob?" said the Father, although a smile played around his mouth.

"You know it's not like that, Joe," Jacob huffed, crossing his arms and sending John a much-earned glare when the brat swooped over to plop a plate in front of him with the swagger of a buttoned-up waiter. "I've been… busy, is all."

When Jacob didn't elaborate, Joseph only hummed and thanked their younger brother for the plate of some kind of braised meat (lamb, maybe?). He was almost relieved as the matter seemed dropped, Joseph imploring everyone to join hands and say grace, something Jacob only ever entertained for his brother's sake…

… right up until, three bites into dinner, John set down his fork and shot him such a smug look over the dinner table it might have won a world record. "So Jacob, how is your Little Wrathling doing?"

Swallowing with much more force than necessary, Jacob set down his own fork with a loud clatter and sat back in his chair with arms crossed, declaring crankily, "Oh for fuck's sake, let's just get this over with."

"Do not curse at the table," said Joseph, with a lighter tone than his scolding warranted.

There was a moment of silence, the air always heavier after one of Joseph's reprimands.

"I'm just curious as to your so-called busy schedule, Jacob," John exclaimed after a beat, his own tone so light it was almost airborne. "It's surprising that the Deputy has the time to finish blowing up the rest of my things when you're both so hard at work playing mating season in the mountains."

That actually caught Jacob by surprise enough to coax out a laugh, which judging by John's grimace was not the reaction he intended; meanwhile Joseph sighed in heavy exasperation while Faith tried (and succeeded rather well) in masking a giggle as a cough into her napkin.

"Provocations aside," Joseph said shortly, with a pointed look at John that had the little shit sinking into his chair, "we have been concerned with how distant and distracted you have been from the Family since discovering your soulmate. Your reports are sparse where they were meticulous, you rarely speak to us anymore, you frightened us half to death when you disappeared—"

"That was months ago," Jacob interrupted with discomfort, shooting a well-earned glare at John for calling that search party and getting the Family riled up.

"According to your Flock, it is a behavior you continue to repeat nearly every night," the Father finished, his own gaze sharpening from the interruption. "You risk yourself each time, Brother. When I instructed you to protect her, it did not mean at the expense of yourself."

"I'm not," Jacob lied through his teeth.

Which of his so-called Flock had ratted on him? He'd slaughter them all, if only to find the traitor—cull the herd to stop the disease.

"I wish I could believe that was true," Joseph lamented, making a show of dropping his head into his hands, as if Jacob wasn't drowning in enough guilt yet. After a moment of silence, of Faith's hand patting on his arm, John pretending to be interested in his napkin and Jacob's eyes firmly locked on the cracked wood of the dining table, Joseph said tiredly, "Then how fare your efforts to bring the Deputy onto the Path?"

"I've made some progress," Jacob was able to say.

This time it wasn't a lie—he'd at least gotten Rook to admit America was on the brink of nuclear war, and that there may be a kernel of truth to Joseph's Collapse… though just getting her to admit that required him reshaping his side of the Project from almost the ground up. John still snorted in disbelief, which gained him two glares apiece from his siblings.

"It's true," Faith piped up, once more earning herself shock and some more begrudging gratitude from Jacob. "She speaks of it in the Bliss."

His gratitude quickly dissipated. "I told you to keep her away from that shit."

"What did I say about cursing at the—?"

"That's not what I meant," the girl said hastily, daring even to interrupt the Father in an effort to bring peace back to the table. "Before you… visited, I brought her into the Bliss to talk, to try and show her the Path. I thought I was making progress, but she admitted it was you."

Three pairs of eyes fell on him—Faith's gaze was warm, while John's was teetering between amusement and another hint of jealousy. Joseph's… Joseph's hurt the most, like he was trying to bore his way into Jacob's soul to prove whether or not this was true. As if Faith's word wasn't enough—as if his word wasn't enough.

"This is… good," Joseph said after the longest pause, and the rest of the table let loose a collective breath… all but Jacob, who knew there was a 'but' coming. "However—" Close enough, "—the fact remains that you have been pulling away from the Family. This will stop."

"Yes, Joseph," came Jacob's automatic reply, one that for some reason only earned him another sharp look from the Father.

"I mean it, my brother. Seek your family's counsel—it is available to you. Do not fall to Pride, thinking you can do this all on your own."

Jacob nodded this time, not trusting his voice to keep his innermost thoughts private. He wasn't alone—not while he had her. Not anymore. Unconsciously, his hand fell to fondle at the outlines of the bandage through his jeans. He really should have changed them for clean ones, but he'd found himself unable to give up the ones that had belonged to her, the ones she'd sacrificed from her own meager hoard and sweetly wrapped around his thigh without question.

"The Collapse draws ever nearer," Joseph continued, jerking Jacob back to the present. "It must be soon, Jacob. You cannot let her fall like the rest of the heathens."

The thought paralyzed him, froze his skin, halted the flow of blood in his veins.

"She won't fall," he managed to spit out around the panic, hoping against hope it didn't show on his face.

"She mustn't, Jacob. The Deputy must walk the Path, or the Family will fall with her."

For a moment, the statement floated in the air without any real meaning, without the direness behind it that Joseph intended, and in that moment, Jacob didn't care. He didn't care if the Deputy walked the stupid Path—he cared whether he could follow her in whatever other direction she chose to go, even if it meant the two of them would drift endlessly in the void left behind by the Collapse like leaves on the wind. He didn't care if she never joined the Project—she could spit in Joseph's face and Jacob would gladly lick whatever remnants of the gesture he was lucky to find off her lips. He didn't care if they all burned in God's hellfire as long as she walked out of it with triumph like she always did, safe and stable on a foundation made of their corpses, if it had to be so.

He didn't care if the Family fell, as long as she could rise.

The final thought was what knocked him back into sense, his heart stopping briefly, his every muscle stiffening, a gasp trapped in a throat that would not open to allow it.

He would do it, he realized. He'd sacrifice everything for her… even his own family. His brothers, who he fought so hard to protect his entire life, who he would tear himself apart for as long as they stayed whole. He'd let them face the Collapse without him, give up the only love he'd ever known, all for the fake world they'd built together on selfish desires and delusions of a future.

Someone's hand landed on his arm in a way that had him almost jumping out of his chair, prepared to body slam whoever dared threaten his person, until his brain caught up and he realized that it was John. Staring at him, baby blues wide and confused, too much like the confused little tyke who didn't know what to do but trusted that Jacob would protect him anyway. That trust was gone this time. He'd lost it. He wasn't worthy of it anymore.

Somebody said his name—one of his brothers, he couldn't tell which, he couldn't hear over the roar of his own blood. It was enough to ground him back into the world, the scream he hadn't let out yet settling patiently at the base of his lungs, his hands unclenching from the table (when had he grabbed it?) and his brain forming the words, "I have work to do," without conscious thought, the sound hollow like one of the default 'yes sir's he'd programmed his newer recruits to utter.

He blinked, and he was outside, legs pacing furiously towards the makeshift helipad they had nestled at the corner of the compound. No one called after him, thankfully—he couldn't answer them anyway, couldn't let them see the shame on his face, couldn't let them know he'd happily sacrificed them in his mind for a part of his soul that only cared for him when he bent to her will.

He didn't remember the flight back to the mountains, the walk back to St. Francis, but it was when he found himself the privacy of his room that he finally crumpled. His bedroom was empty of her, the only sign of last night being the yet-to-be-remade bed and the lingering smell of the antiseptic she'd doused his leg with, but none of it mattered because all Jacob could do was clutch his own head and choke on his unsung scream as he pictured the ways he could butcher his own family and serve them up to please her, sacrificing John like he was Isaac being murdered to prove his devotion to her godhood, presenting Joseph's severed head to her on a platter just so his Salome would dance for him one more time—

"No," slipped through the stranglehold of anguish in the back of his throat, a pathetic, shameful sound. "No, no, no, no...!"

His lungs shriveled from the effort of screaming, an unfamiliar feeling, until he had no breath left and all that remained was a vacuum of grief, his throat collapsing in on itself from the strength of it. The horrific images were so vivid and so terrifying that they probably qualified as hallucinations in their own right—he could almost feel the blood dripping from his hands and face, his own blood mixing with his brothers in a sea of crimson. The onslaught was halted only by the press of the barrel of a pistol against the underside of his jaw, his body having moved itself of its own accord in a desperate plea for mercy—it left him shaking like a newborn babe on the worn floor, heaving against his body's instinctive effort to draw breath and the struggle of whether or not to pull the trigger and end his madness.

It had been but a split second, but in that second Jacob truly believed she deserved to emerge from the flames more than his own family. The ones that saved him from ruin, pulled him out of poverty and suffering and his own mind, and dared to love him, and he was so, so unworthy of it.

His body finally won, sucking in a swallow of air so large he felt like his lungs might explode, stars flying behind his closed eyelids. A pained noise rattled through the room, like prey that had been gutted and mercilessly left to perish in pain, and the sound of metal clattering onto linoleum as the gun fell from his limp hand was harmonious with it. This wasn't how it was supposed to be, he thought in anguish, as he crumbled once more to pieces on the floor. He was supposed to be a protector. He was the one who was supposed to keep them all safe. What had he done instead?

Nothing.

He'd stood by all those months ago, even when he'd had his wits about him, while John meandered his clueless way out of his ranch and only barely missed certain death at her hands. He'd watched her slaughter his people and destroy his beacons all in the name of her little rebellion, and he'd let her—fuck, he'd even enjoyed the sight of it at times. He'd let himself be worn down by her pretty-eyed pleas and the promise of pleasure, until he all but dismantled his side of the Project, turned it away from Joseph's goal—a goal they'd once shared—to appease her soft heart. He'd let her strip him bare, tend to his self-inflicted wounds and then hold what was left of him afterwards, wrapped up in her arms like she was the only thing keeping the severed pieces of him together, and oh God, she was, she was. Joseph told him he'd been trying to protect her at the expense of himself, and it was true, only he was failing so miserably at protecting her while he slowly collapsed in on himself, a weathered ruin held up only by the strength of her columns…

Enlightenment hit him like a ray of sunlight breaking through the tree cover, his every muscle uncurling until he was a limp mass of limbs hunched over on the floor.

She never needed his protection, he realized.

She was the real protector this whole time—protecting the weaklings from the Project's wrath, protecting herself from daily brushes with death, protecting Jacob from himself. And he'd been doing nothing, completely incapable of carrying out his own perceived purpose as he trailed after her like a puppy begging for scraps of her attention. She never wavered in her goal, no matter how hard he thought he tried to coax her away. It made sense now, why Jacob was tearing himself to shreds over her mere presence in his life. She didn't need him—she never needed him. He had no purpose.

He was weak.

An unusual calm fell over him, serene and soul-settling. He understood now, he thought, as he rose on surprisingly steady legs and stared at nothing. She was Strong, and he was Weak—it had always been like this. The Weak had to be culled.

He had to die.

The thought was so cathartic, it pulled at his mouth and cheeks until he was smiling almost against his will.

Jacob always expected he had to die for Joseph's cause. In the past, he'd listened to Joseph's predictions for the future, figured out pretty quickly that his death would likely be what opened the seal. He'd never minded the idea, even looked forward to it at times, back when he'd had nothing to live for but the Family. If it wasn't in this world, it would come in the next, and hopefully it would be honorable enough that his family would remain whole and happy, and pass down his story to whatever was left of the world as an example. It was a foolish, foolish thought.

Now he could see, like the veil had been lifted from his eyes, like the seal of the scroll had been opened specially for him to look upon. He would die by her hand, the Strong culling the Weak, and when he was dead she would take his place as protector, not just of the Family and the Flock but of everyone, unburdened by his weakness. She would end the war, and through her he could keep his unspoken promise to his siblings, who would never know his shame.

It was perfect.

Battle plan formed, Jacob Seed straightened to attention and strode out of his bedroom without a backwards glance, leaving behind the traces of the fragile dream they'd constructed together.

His voice did not crack as he ordered his men to prepare the loudspeakers scattered throughout his woods, the ones set up to play the klaxons and warn those in the field of the end of the world—they would be used for a different purpose, just for today. He did not waver as he left behind his rifle, his pistol, anything that could be used for defense, because those would be irrelevant, and took with him a different kind of weapon in their stead. And as he stalked out of the Veterans Center with a contingent of soldiers at his back, guarding him without the faintest idea of his true plans or the knowledge that he'd filled their guns with blanks—for how could he risk even slightly injuring her, even with all his faith in her?—he did not spare his fake home a second glance.

He knew precisely where to go as well, like God Himself had planted the plan in his head in all His all-knowing glory. A hill with a craggy peak east of the Whitetail Park Visitor Center, just tall enough to see all over hill and dale and watch what promised to be a beautiful onslaught, a final gift to himself. He waited until he was alone, his confused but unquestioning army scattered over the hill like expendable trail markers to lead her straight to him, before he pulled out his radio and spoke the holiest word he knew.

"Rook."

A pause, and then, "Jacob!"

His heart clenched. Her voice was painstakingly beautiful, so happy to hear from him for a reason he still could not figure out, but he'd run out of time to try anyway, so he just closed his eyes to appreciate it better.

"…just finishing up a supply run for the Whitetails," she chattered, not needing a response from him—she needed nothing from him. "And before you ask, no I'm still not telling you where the Wolf's Den is."

He chuckled lowly at her teasing tone as he trudged up the hill, eyeing the top of the mountain peak. "Not important anymore."

It wasn't—Eli and his band of cowards could hole themselves up in their little den forever for all he cared. What was important was that Rook cared.

"Why's that?" came her confused reply, her tone tinged with wariness.

His heart clenched at the sound. She was suspicious. She didn't trust him. Soon he wouldn't disappoint her anymore.

"I realized something today, Rook," he murmured, settling himself down on one of the hilltop's crags. "What we've been doing, all these months… We both know we've been playin' a game that was never gonna last much longer."

As he spoke, his free hand drifted towards the cratered skin of his shoulder, where her words once marked him as hers before war stole it from him.

"I know how to end it now. The Strong cull the Weak, Rook. It always had to be this way."

His hand left his arm to slip into his pocket.

"Jacob, what the fuck does this even mean?" Rook's trembling reply came. "You're scaring me."

Another regretful pang. She wouldn't have to be frightened anymore, he promised her silently.

"Always knew I never deserved you."

His hand closed around the sharp edges of the music box.

"Still," he hummed, "I'm glad God thought I was good enough to give a few moments of peace."

He heard her shout something unintelligible to someone else, the tail end of what sounded like a plea, before it turned into a real one. "Wait, Jacob, pl—"

"Only you, Deputy," he breathed over her words, because his weak heart might actually sway from his goal if he heard her beg. "Only you could have brought me this far."

His fingers twisted around the key, winding it up with a rhythmic clatter.

"It was only ever you."

He opened the lid.

A/N: This was a tough one to get through, and the next one will be a similar ride. I'm gonna make Joseph pay for this one.