Author's Note: Eh. Just wanted to write some of Raiden's history and reflect on why he behaves as he does now. This, though it's not really a Parallax story, is 'canon' to my stalled Parallax series. @whee!
Discalimer: MGS2, characters, whatever, and stuff including U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind" are not miiiiine.
"And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack,
And for a second you turn back,
Oh no, be strong:
Oh, oh, walk on, walk on--"
With a sputter and an unhealthy-sounding cough, the old radio died somewhere in the middle of the chorus. The staticky retort of the dying machine woke Jack from a sleep already uneasy from the unseasonable summer heat and the perpetual nightmares; he lay a moment in despair at his own lack of sleep, then gave the hours 'til morning up as an unfortunate loss and sat up. The sheet was uncomfortable and sticky with sweat; he tossed it off, raising a hand in the same motion to rub at the bridge of his nose.
Oh hell, not another one. A nightmare, this one bad enough to leave him weak with remembered terror. The feeling wasn't merely psychic--Jack moved his hand to his right temple, scrubbing at the seed of a migraine already begun there. His mouth tasted foul with fear and dehydration; it was worse than a hangover after a night of hard drinking and almost made him wish he dared drown the dreams in alcohol.
Rose wouldn't let him, though. She wasn't there, next to him, tonight--small mercies, he thought--she'd been out visiting her mother, or something equally feminine and inscrutable that meant an overnight stay somewhere else. He'd resolved, privately, that he wouldn't bother her with this kind of thing--tell the truth, the nightmares--because it only led to her complaining at him that he didn't want to 'share' what he'd been through. Probably because I barely remember most of it, myself, he thought, ruefully--and doubled over as his stomach decided to join in the rebellion started by his head. Damn! I hate this!
The cramp passed, quickly enough, though he knew from long experience another would follow it, and another, until he finally found himself kneeling at the porcelain throne and giving up whatever he'd eaten for dinner. And people wondered why he was so skinny.
At least it wasn't inevitable, like the nightmares. Another small mercy. Peeling the sheet off the rest of the way, and casting an unhappy glance toward the empty half of the bed, he slid out of bed and made for the bathroom.
He left the light off: It wasn't, after all, the dark that scared him. It was almost comfortable, like an old friend: All his VR missions had been at night, and what little he remembered of--of--his mind shied away from labeling those years for what they really were, but he remembered the night being pleasant, wherever it was he and the rest of his unit had been. Quiet and free of the blood and stink of the day, most of the time. It was just when he was sleeping...
Jack found the bathroom door by feel, interrupting his disquieting reveries. Pushing it open with just the tips of his fingers, he eased inside and reached out his other hand, to keep from running right into the sink. Wouldn't do any good for his already abused gut, that was for sure. The medicine cabinet was above the sink; the quarter moon shining in through the tiny window above the shower was enough to illuminate the latch. He opened it and rummaged for a moment, sending a bottle tumbling to the floor--probably an empty one, the prescription expired; how many times had he asked Rose to just throw those away?--until he found the familiar bottle of calcium tablets.
There was a glass somewhere next to the sink; he didn't even bother with finding it, just popped a pair of the tablets and chewed them down--taste like chalk. I hate these things, too.--and opened the tap to scoop a handful of water to his mouth and rinse the taste away. Another handful went into scrubbing the sweat off his face and bringing some sense of order back to his bangs. He caught a glimpse of himself in the moonlit mirror as he did: Pale, haggard with the lack of sleep, icy eyes guarded with the memory of the terror that lurked in sleep. Good morning, Jack! You look like hell today! His own artificial cheer was enough to make him quirk a smirk.
Even if the calcium tablets tasted like reprocessed blackboard dust, they did their job; Jack's traitor stomach had settled. He shook his hands dry, and toed half-heartedly beneath the sink a moment for the derelict pill-bottle. Not finding it, he gave a shrug and turned to shuffle back into the bedroom.
The window there was open, the blinds rattling in the faint breeze that came through but did very little for the heat. Jack flopped on the bed, spread-eagled to try and cool off somewhat. Despite the fact Rosemary's absence meant he had no one to talk to about this latest bout with the nightmares, at least without her he was in no danger of heatstroke. Must remember that next time it gets this hot. I'll sleep on the couch.
Already, with the stomach problems dealt with and the migraine dimming back down to a manageable throb, shards of the nightmare began to poke through Jack's surface thoughts. This one had been more straightforward than usual, if that were even applicable to the harried, terrifying mess the dreams usually were. Simple, almost.
He'd been back on the roof of the Big Shell, crawling around under that damned Harrier. Looking for the bomb, the C4 Fatman had been tossing around so profligately. The once he'd done it in real life, it had been a simple affair; he'd just had to crawl under the Harrier's left wing, and the little blinking monstrosity had been waiting there, ready to freeze, on one of the wheel chocks.
But nightmares were all impossibly stretched; this one hadn't been any different. He'd felt so...small. Dwarfed by the massive Harrier; even the bomb was huge, its little green light like an angry animal-eye, glaring at him from its lair. There was the Colonel's voice--no. Wait. Jack twitched slightly as the memory corrected itself in his mind: Hadn't been the Colonel's voice, it was his godfather's. Solidus. You just won't stay dead, will you, you bastard. He bit the inside of his lip, the pain chasing away the sudden, too-palpable panic the thought of that name brought on. Pain-fear-loss-Mom-Dad-where are you? Where did you go?
Jack shook his head, the childish little voice in his head silencing itself. As unpleasant as it was, he had to focus on the nightmare. The therapist--useless woman--Rose had talked him into seeing about it had been right about that much: At least, when he got the dreams together in some kind of cogent form, they didn't recur. New ones just took their place. He should've been writing it down, but it was too much effort to find his pen and notebook and turn on the light. Better to just think through it.
So. He'd been under the Harrier, and smaller than he was supposed to be. Solidus had been whispering through the radio in his ear, words of false encouragement, false terms of affection. "Come on, Jackie-boy. Just touch the bomb. It's not so hard. You want to make Daddy proud, don't you?"
Jack had recoiled from the bomb in the dream, whimpering; and in one of those sideways shifts nightmares always took, he'd been an adult again, hoisted up off the surface of Arsenal Gear with the pincer-grip of a tentacle around his throat. Solidus was grinning up at him, the grin madness, his eyes angry as he continued to speak: "You were always such a disobedient little snot, Jackie--don't you think it was nice of me to kill your Mommy and Daddy, so they didn't have to deal with such a bad little boy?"
Choked recriminations had bubbled to Jack's lips; he'd struggled against Solidus' hold, but couldn't catch his breath. His chest was tight as he began to suffocate; a weird black light was suffusing his vision. And Solidus just kept smiling, smiling. "It's all right, Jackie-boy...you can go join them now. Just touch the bomb, and everything will be all right..." Somewhere, a child whimpered. It wasn't Jack, couldn't be; he didn't even have the breath to moan in pain.
The scene lurched sickeningly sideways; Jack was thrown from his godfather's grip and went sprawling across the vast plain of gray metal, choking and spitting blood. Something exploded nearby, the entire world suddenly catching fire and burning down around him. Solidus loomed up out of the flames before him, a grim, fiery skeleton with a burning blade raised high above Jack's head, still smiling--
Jack twitched, teeth clamping together. Pain and the taste of blood blossomed in his mouth; he'd bit his lip.I don't know what's worse: Having the damn nightmares or living them again all over again afterwards. Damn, damn, damn. He sat up, tucking his knees against his chest and resting his chin on them, eyes squeezed shut against the image of Solidus' perfect white grin, glaring out at him in the dark. It seemed as if some part of the beast would always live on within Jack, whether it was the smile or the laugh or the hatred burning in his black eyes...
...Black? Jack raised his head slightly, his own eyes slitting open unconsciously. His godfather's eyes hadn't been black; they'd been somewhere between gray and green, like his clone-brothers'. Not black. Why were they black in his dream?
Something about liquid black eyes, the childish whimper he'd heard in the moments he thought he was dead...they seemed to wind together in Jack's mind as he sat there, curled in on himself and staring slit-eyed at the dark. A hidden corner in the back of his memory stirred, shaking out of sleep like a cat and unfolding itself. It had happened once before, after another of these vivid nightmares; it had been enough to remind him about the realities of his past.
He remembered--
Bomb disposal had just been another coy adult euphemism among the child-soldiers of the Devil's army. Jack had been seven when he finally learned what they meant when the crippled kids, the kids who couldn't hold or fire a gun, were rounded up for bomb disposal. When he was younger, he'd been envious of them: They got the glamorous job, the heroic job. They weren't just grunts, they got to go snip wires and stop the bombs that would kill him and the rest of his platoon, just like the heroes in the movies. He just had to shoot at people; that wasn't glamorous at all.
He'd once asked one of the men--the adults--if he could be a part of bomb disposal; he wanted to be a hero. The man had eyed him, then smirked and tousled his hair, almost fondly. "Naw, Jack. Yer too good for bomb disposal." His face hardened, the tousling became a quick slap that Jack nimbly ducked. "Now git."
Jack had got, though the next time he saw the kids being rounded up for bomb disposal, he must have been a little too obvious about his envy. Someone saw the tears of rage and jealousy glittering in his eyes; one of the older boys of the platoon pitied his ignorance and dragged him aside. "What's up, Jack?"
He sniffed, swiped a hand across his eyes, and muttered into his chest, "Nuffink."
"Yer jealous, aren't you?"
Jack looked up, pained; it'd been that obvious? "...Y-yeah." He paused, sniffing again, and tumbled onward: "I-it's not f-fair, Rafe! They get to get rid of bombs and be heroes and w-we're just grunts..."
Something about the look in the other boy's eyes silenced Jack; he hadn't seen anyone look that aghast or that haunted before. Rafe swallowed, patting him gingerly on the shoulder. "I dun' like havin' to be the one to tell yuh this, Jack, but they ain't heroes."
This caught Jack athwart. "...They ain't?" he echoed, faintly, the mental image of his heroes getting rid of bombs colliding messily with the idea of these cripple-kids not doing something like that.
"Naw. Look--" He paused a moment, licked his lips, and pressed on. "I know what yer thinkin'; it's just like the movies, an'all; they go an' snip a coupla wires and the bomb stops tickin'. But..." He trailed off.
Jack waited a moment; then curiosity got the best of him: "But what? Whadda they do, Rafe?"
"Don't talk back, Jack. Look. Them's as are in charge here, when they say bomb disposal..." He paused--again, maddeningly--and drew in a breath. "They mean they're just gonna chuck the cripple-kids at the bombs till the bombs blow, awright? They blow those kids up, Jack, so's we don't get blown up, too."
This revelation was as bad as the time one of the bigger boys had punched Jack in the stomach and he couldn't breathe right for a while. "...Oh."
"Yeah. So. Dun' lookit them that way, awright? They're no heroes." He slapped Jack on the back, hard enough to shake the younger boy and leave his shoulder stinging. "See ya 'round, Jack."
The ugly little secret was out of the bag, and the pressure was off Rafe. He immediately wandered off to make dirty jokes with the rest of the platoon, while Jack just stood there, staring after him. They're not heroes, they're living shields...meat-shields. Meat-shields. It was almost funny. Jack giggled, self-consciously, and immediately felt guilty.
3:15, the little red digits of the clock read as Jack glanced at them askance. He'd woken up somewhere around two-thirty, two forty-five; the memories didn't take that long to relive, but lent some damn helpful insight.
So that's why...More recent memories bubbled up, colored strangely by this latest round of the recall game. His CODEC calls to Rose, admitting his own terrible fear of the bombs. "I almost threw up a couple of times..." The impossible battle with Fatman on the heliport, methodically stalking the mad bomber while some part of him gibbered in terror at the thought of explosives, everywhere. Snake and Stillman pressing the duty of bomb disposal on him despite his reservations.
"I'm not trained for this!" he'd protested, but somewhere deep down inside, little Jackie-boy had been saying, What'd I do wrong? Why d'you hate me so much you want to kill me?
'Bomb disposal'. In retrospect, it was chillingly ironic Peter Stillman had been a self-made cripple, and taking down the biggest bomb of all had ended up costing him his life. Hell. Jack chewed on the inside of his bleeding lip, the pain intensifying. There wouldn't ever be anything in his life--even something that, that heroic--that would ever seem right or normal again. Dammit. I hate this. It was a very old sentiment.
There seemed to be more, though the memories lay half-coiled somewhere at the back of his mind. It was like they were alive, waiting, teasing him. He braced himself, gritting his teeth. All right, damn you. Come and get me; I won't go down without a fight.
He was older. Ten, maybe; however old he was, it was after he'd been elevated to platoon leader. His first command. He'd been so proud, to have survived that far, to have racked up so many kills for the men who commanded them. He'd outlived Rafe, and Mike, and Chu; all of the older boys who might have been up for the job had died somewhere back there on the endless battlefield, and it was Jack who'd been given the honor of command. The price had never occurred to him, because there was never a price, in the movies.
There had been a girl. His first love? No, the memories didn't say so; just that he'd been attracted by her deep black eyes and shining hair. He couldn't say, looking back, that he'd loved her; but he certainly felt the first stirrings of appreciation for that beauty. Her name was Ajeya; she'd been his junior by at least a year.
Their first meeting was brief; the children were segregated by sex off the battlefield, and there were always fewer girls than boys. But everyone knew the girls were there; and they sometimes got to talk to these strange, fragile creatures. Most of them remembered it, too, and the older boys sometimes talked about their 'girlfriends' in the female units. Their comments had always seemed more dreamed than real; the girls may have been smaller, but there was no doubt in Jack's mind--even at that age--that they could take any of the boys on. And probably win.
She was washing her hair when he first saw her; she must be green meat, he thought disparagingly, to waste our water like that. "Hey!" he shouted at the girl, breaking away from a knot of other boys. They watched him go, then turned inward, back to their own discussion of bullets and tactics.
She didn't look at him as she shouted, just kept on humming tunelessly to herself as she scrubbed at her black tresses over the water trough. "HEY!" he shouted again. "Are you deaf, or just stupid? We need that water! Hey! Are you listening to me?"
He grabbed her shoulder and shook her; she cried out and flinched back from him, finally looking at him. "Are you listening to me, bi--" The obscenity had fallen away from his lips, unsaid, as she stared up at him in terror. Oh, he'd seen fear before, out on the battlefield, in the eyes of his enemies. He'd seen it in his own boys, too, but had just goaded them onward with shouts and insults.
"There's no time for that kind of crap in battle! Move it!" A downright terror he was to his own, but that was the way it was supposed to be. Jack the Ripper, they called him; not where they thought he could hear it, but it made him proud to know that his kill record was recognized even among the snot-nosed greenies.
It wasn't his place to harass the girls, though; he shied away from them, didn't want to think about hurting them or driving them into battle like he did his platoon. Probably because their platoon leaders were training to be killers every bit as vicious as he, or worse...or maybe for some reason he hadn't worked out in his own head. Either way, it didn't feel 'right' to have her looking at him that way. He chewed on the inside of his lip a moment, composing his face into something less like the snarl he wore when working the greenies over.
"Look," he started; then checked himself, evening out his tone. "Look. You can't use that water for--for your hair. We have to drink that. It's the only water we get. You understand?"
She stared at his lips the whole time he spoke, only nodding slightly as he finished. Not satisfied, Jack took her chin in one hand, forcing her to look him in the eye. "You understand, right? You're not dumb, are you? Look. You've got to--are you even listening to me? Stop doing that!"
With a fierce shake of her head, she wrenched her chin out of his hand and waved her fingers defiantly in his face. Jack drew back, aggrieved, and swatted at her hands out of reflex. "Cut that out!" His mood had seesawed from as close as he got to patience to outright annoyance. If she gave him another fifteen seconds of stupidity, he was going back to the rest of his platoon. He didn't have time for this kind of crap.
The words won him an odd kind of instant obedience, though. She immediately grinned up at him, apparently content, and clasped her hands behind her back, swaying. She's crazy. Or stupid. Or something, he thought, easing another step back. You could never tell with the idiot kids; one of them had turned on him in the field once. It took half the unit to cut him down, and that after they'd broken one of his arms wrestling his gun away. Maybe it would be better if Jack just made a break for it, leaving her to do whatever she wanted. "...Never mind. You just...you do whatever, okay?"
He turned away. I'll have to warn Sam, if she doesn't already know she's got this crazy dumbass kid in her platoon yet. She probably did, but last time he'd known about one of these things before she did and didn't tell her, she'd kicked him where it hurt when she found out. Some of his boys still remembered the look on his face; like hell he was going to let that happen a second time--
"Wait."
The word was said weirdly, the vowels all clotted up and the intonations totally wrong. Jack almost just kept walking away; something stopped him long enough to glance back at her. She was still standing there, grinning insufferably at him and rocking back and forth. "...You say something?"
She nodded. He huffed out a breath, irritated. "...You really are dumb, aren't you."
"'M not dumb. 'M deaf."
"What's the difference?" he shot back, quickly growing very angry with her weird way of talking, her weird grin, her refusal to make any kind of sense. "You're still stupid. Can't take orders. You're useless in the field."
"Not useless!" She strode over to him, body all stiff. She--punched him, in the shoulder, not enough to hurt compared to all he'd taken in barracks scuffles over the years.
He batted her hand away again. "Stop it. Someone's going to hurt you if you go around doing that to people."
"See? 'M not useless. Made you mad."
The reasoning was so backwards and strange he had to laugh, the incongruity of it knocking his ideas of being angry right out of his mind. "Yeah, so you're good at making kids pissed at you. That's still not any good to me."
Rolling her eyes, she almost raised a hand to hit him again, then stopped. "I'm not useless," she replied, gesturing emphatically.
"You are too," he retorted.
"Not."
"Are too!"
"NOT!"
"Hey, Jack. Who's the idiot of the day?" The escalating argument had drawn a small crowd from the boys nearby.
His retort was automatic, and typically contrarian. "She's not an idiot, she's just deaf. And her name's--" He stalled, realizing he hadn't bothered to ask before he'd gotten into an argument with her. What's your name? he mouthed, looking her way for a split second.
Ajeya, came the silent reply, her hands fluttering again to accent it.
"--Ajeya. An' until she meets up with Sam for her assignment, no one touches her but me. Got it?" He didn't need anything but his reputation to back that one up.
"...Yeah, whatever." The other boys muttered dejectedly, cheated out of their sport.
They could find another greenie to pick on, for all Jack cared. He grinned rakishly at Ajeya; until he met up with his opposite number among the girl soldiers, he meant to keep that promise. Such was the way friendships formed in the Army of the Devil.
Jack didn't realize he'd been clenching his hands until the deep pain of a nascent bruise intruded on his reverie. He forced himself to relax, uncurling his fingers and making a face at the deep tingle of crushed nerves in his palms; took a breath against the choked feeling of his lungs.
Black eyes. She'd had black eyes, as deep and unfathomable as a starless night sky. That was where they had come from, in the nightmare. Ajeya's black eyes, filled with a horrible accusation and hate that--he didn't think--they had ever held in life.
But that wasn't what had sparked the feeling of foreboding that was sitting like a palpable weight on his chest. He didn't know what filled him with such dread, only that the two memories and the nightmare somehow added up to make one horrific puzzle. Jack covered his eyes with a hand, shutting them against the sudden onslaught of the renewed migraine and sudden vertigo. God help me.
His pulse spiked and raced, like the onset of a panic attack, but it wasn't the fear that started it; it was the rage. Horrible, all-consuming rage against the people who had ruined his life and the lives of innocents like Ajeya. He wanted to kill all of them who were still alive in the most painful, inefficient ways he could conceive of, and the best part of it was he didn't regret his bloody ideas for a moment.
But Rose would be horrified if she knew, the part of Jack that passed for a conscience pointed out. Even when she wasn't there, by his side, somehow she still served as a check on his behavior. It was both a point of great frustration and great relief, though it was the former that was gnawing on Jack's heart. I don't want to be good and play nice. They never did; why can't I play by their rules? Why does being a hero mean I have to do the 'right' thing?
Jack had never wanted to do the 'right' thing, just the thing that got him closer to carrying out his orders, and the thing that got Rose off his back, and the thing that felt best when he killed his enemies. Not the 'right' thing, because being 'right' meant being good and honorable and nice. Jack hadn't been raised that way. He did what he was told; honor meant nothing, goodness meant nothing.
He just knew there was something terribly wrong in making little kids fight wars, and he wanted to show the bastards who had done it just how wrong it was.
A sigh escaped his lips, the rage fading as quickly as it had come. It was a good thing it had been short-lived; last time it had happened, he'd broken a window and gotten a set of spiraling cuts all up and down his right arm, before the pain had snapped him out of his anger. The time before that, it had taken Rose yelling at him. They couldn't afford a broken window, and Rose was out, so it was just as well.
Once the emotion had drained out of him, Jack felt spectacularly tired. He wanted to go back to sleep; he had work in the morning, and no time to spend on heat-induced nightmares. And tomorrow we're supposed to be moving, too. Ugh. It would be physical labor, and mindless, too, but it didn't mean he wouldn't need rest.
But what had happened to Ajeya? He frowned at the little voice of memory. What had happened to her? She had--she was just--she--he didn't know. He probed his newfound memories gingerly, and came up with a blank. He didn't even know what they'd done after he first met her. There was a blank, labeled 'Ajeya', in the middle of his recollection of the time. Why can't I think of her? What's the matter--I--
It was if he had stepped into the middle of a waterfall, and stood with open mouth trying to get a drink. All the memories came back at once, a brilliant cascade in the course of a second, shoving themselves back into his mind and taking back their accustomed place.
Ajeya, smiling at him as he shoved a bully out of the way in the chow line, and let her have his place.
Ajeya, scowling, as he tried to explain the workings of a submachine gun.
Ajeya, scribing words in the air, her fingers graceful as she signed words at him, and he just smiled.
Ajeya, trying to teach his clumsy fingers to move in the same patterns, to spell out the letters of his own name. He'd never learned to read, but he knew how to spell in sign.
Her smile, the first time he formed a full sentence in sign.
Their conversations, held completely in sign; a silent, private form of communication all their own, that not even the men could eavesdrop on.
His friends, asking why he spent so much time with the stupid deaf girl.
One of the older boys, looking painfully stunned, after Jack punched him in the stomach for calling Ajeya an obscene name.
Her first fight, and how he'd had to go back to find her, thinking she'd died, and carry her back, barely alive. Just enough the medics could patch her up, but it had been so close...
More lessons in sign, as she'd been in what passed as their barracks, waiting through the scant week the men allowed their child-soldiers to rest off an injury.
Her second fight. Her third. Her fourth. His promotion to a commander over two platoons. Her fifth fight. The light leaving those big bright eyes, as she watched her friends die, as she watched him become more of a hardened killer every day.
The first time she alone killed another child.
A barracks' scuffle. He'd waded in to break it up. Ajeya was on the bottom, beneath a much larger girl. Her arm had been dislocated at the shoulder; she had oozing bites on it.
Sitting in the infirmary with Ajeya until the men chased him out, as she signed slowly and painfully one hand. Her other was an infected mess. No one had medicine to spare on a deaf girl who could barely fight.
Jack swore, at first, under the torrent of memories. Then the torrent became an open floodgate, each of the crystalline images seen through his younger eyes flooding back, and the insistent twinge in his skull blossomed into a migraine. This was his life, lived again in fast-forward. Only two years, but the memories were there, and it seemed like an eternity. A bloody, violent eternity.
Jack had thought he'd seen everything. He thought he'd been thoroughly desensitized to violence and degradation. He had thought--and thought wrong.
For under that cascade, Jack began to scream.
It was just an instant. The whole thing had only taken moments, but he screamed, and curled in on himself, waiting for it to stop and let him go; it was all of his nightmares, the source of all of them, personified at last, beaten into his skull. And it didn't stop. It didn't stop, not until the last second of those two years had flashed by, and the dark wall of self-repression and drug therapy slammed down between him and the memories again.
It took him nearly two minutes, shaken and shivering, head ringing with pain, to finally uncurl from a fetal ball. It took him another two to get his breathing straightened out, to stop sobbing for breath.
But they were there. The memories were back, and he couldn't deny them. It wasn't his whole life before the Patriots, but it was a full two years that they had taken, and it was back.
Two years. Two years, and all it had taken to get them back was to find one common thread--Ajeya--tying his life together. Jack sat another minute and just breathed, still trembling with pain, and shock, and the sense of triumph. It was the most progress he'd ever made, and it was sweet.
And he never, ever wanted it to happen again.
Jack slipped out of bed again, padding uncertainly back to the bathroom. He needed something to drink; his mouth was dry from fear and the heat. Fumbling a moment against the wall by the door, he found the light switch and flipped it on, then stood stunned and blinking when the lights did come on. That was...something else.
The psychologist had told him it might happen. He hadn't believed her, after what it took to get just a tiny scrap of a memory back from the drug therapy. Guess she was right, he thought, as his eyes finished adjusting to the light and he moved to get a glass. He filled it with water, and then stood at the sink a moment, sipping cautiously at the water and staring at himself in the mirror. Nothing had changed on the outside, except that he looked a little more haggard, a little less sane. Figures. It just figures.
He threw back the last of the water, turned off the light, and slunk back to bed.
So what did happen to Ajeya?
He was sprawled against his pillow, on the verge of falling back asleep, when the voice had spoken.
What happened to her? Do you know?
He didn't. There was still a hole, where the last memory of her ended without any closure. This isn't fair.
Jack was tired of spelunking in his own memories. He just wanted to go to sleep, and not deal with the sudden influx of information until he was well rested and sane again. Fighting nightmares beat memory cascades in his book.
But the irritating feel of an unsolved disappearance tugged at him. Fine. What did happen to her? I don't know; YOU tell me. It had gotten so bad he was talking to his fickle memories as if they were another person, in his head. Sometimes it felt like that, like another person had lived that part of his life, and stayed on to taunt him about it sometimes.
Either way, it seemed to work.
This time, though, the memory was subtler. It didn't rush up on him; it just came into being, slow as if he'd fallen asleep and begun dreaming. Maybe he had. All he knew was he was standing in camp again, watching a parade of cripple-kids get herded past him by the men.
Jack was tired of the cripple-kids. He'd gone full circle, from envy, to pity, to disdain of the 'bomb disposal' squads. He just didn't want to see them anymore; didn't want to know, as he now knew, which of the wounded and sickly were going to get pulled for sacrifice. He didn't want to see their dismembered bodies in the bushes anymore, after they'd been flushed through a minefield. He didn't want to deal with these walking dead kids when they got temporary placement in his platoon, and screwed up his maneuvers.
Most of them didn't know what was going on. They thought it was an honor, still. That was because the older kids had never had the heart to break it to them, and break their programming. So they walked like lambs to the slaughter when the men pulled them for bomb disposal. They were helping the Army of the Devil; that was all they knew, until their friends were screaming and dying around them, until they stepped on mines and blew up.
But Jack watched the parade anyway, taking note of the kids he knew, noting those in his own platoons that got taken, that would need replacement. He noted that half of Derek's platoon had gotten gutted; that meant Derek wasn't doing his job. That meant Jack might expand his own power a little. That was good.
There were a lot of girls this time around. That was unusual. Usually there was a slightly higher proportion of girls in 'bomb disposal' anyway, because they were weaker and couldn't keep fighting as long as the boys. This time, though, nearly half the group was girls. Sam had disappeared two weeks ago, somewhere on the battlefield. The men said she was MIA; the younger kids said her parents had found her. Some of the optimistic older kids thought she'd managed to run away.
Jack and the rest of the platoon commanders didn't think so. Sam was pretty. She'd begun growing a bosom. That meant the men had probably taken her, and Jack had a pretty good idea what they'd done. It didn't matter, except that Jack would miss her. She was a competent commander; it showed in the fact they hadn't replaced her yet, and more girls were getting hurt and killed.
He was about to turn and go when a familiar pair of black eyes caught his. Jack straightened, puzzled. Ajeya? He signed toward her, frowning uncertainly.
The movement caught her attention. She looked his way. She looked--bad. Her arm had gotten infected; she hadn't been able to fight for food anymore. He'd brought her some of his, but the fever was taking its toll. She was thin, and haggard, and there were little red lines of blood poisoning snaking up her left arm, from the infected bite wounds. Hi, Jack, she signed back with her right hand, giving him a drowsy smile.
He moved a little toward the line, falling into step alongside the column. What's going on?
I got picked to go along with these kids! Her smile brightened. Where are we going, anyway? Everyone's talking so fast I can't read their lips.
Jack suddenly felt cold. This is the bomb disposal squad, he signed back hesitantly, picking up his pace as their line did. The men hadn't yet taken notice of him.
Bomb disposal? You mean I get to snip wires and stop the bombs from blowing up you guys, like in the movies?
He had never explained to her about bomb disposal.
It hit him like a ton of bricks. He had never taken the time to explain it to her. He had never explained that it meant suicide. He thought he had, but he hadn't, he so obviously hadn't. His one friend, and he hadn't let her in on the big secret of the Army of the Devil, and the rest of the boys knew she was HIS girl, and had never taken the time to explain either.
Jack's hands faltered. He stopped, staring after her, and falling behind the rest of the kids. Ajeya frowned, and signed, painstakingly, Is something wrong, Jack?
He started forward again. One of the men noticed him heading toward the line and stepped out of it, starting for Jack. "'Ey, Jackie. What're you doing here? Don't you have a 'toon to be commanding?"
The line was getting ahead of him, and Ajeya was being swept along with it. He had to tell her; he had to convince her that something was dreadfully wrong, he had to stop the men from taking her away to be fodder for the mines. He didn't have time to explain himself to the man; he pushed his away around the adult, putting to use the newfound strength he'd gained over the past few months. Ajeya! You need to listen to me, this isn't what you--
A hard hand came down on Jack's shoulder. It was the man who'd spotted him before. "Jack. I don't know what the hell yer thinking, but you know yer not supposed to go near those kids. Get away from here, Jack, get back to your platoon--"
Jack didn't think. He acted; he slammed an elbow back at the man's crotch, fighting as dirty as he ever had in a barracks brawl. The man yowled in pain, letting go of Jack to clutch at himself. Jack dashed toward the line, and Ajeya's retreating form. She gave him a startled look as he shoved his way into the midst of the group, knocking another kid down.
He didn't have time to explain. Sign was too slow, and she wouldn't be able to read his lips. He had to get her out of here. He grabbed her by her bad wrist and tugged; she hissed in pain, slapping at him--and when that didn't work, she signed furiously, Jack, what do you think you're doing? I want to be here! You're hurting me! Let go!
"Ajeya, you can't! This isn't bomb disposal! They--"
Two more men descended on him, wresting him away from her. They had to pry his fingers off her arm, and she shrieked at him in pain. He kicked, bit, threw elbows at anything that didn't immediately yield.
It was to no avail. He was strong, and tough, but they were stronger and tougher. They hauled him away from the group of cripple-kids, even as he started screaming at them, "It's not bomb disposal! They're going to kill you! AJEYA! RUN, AJEYA! GET AWAY FROM THEM!"
She couldn't read his lips. Not at that distance. She rubbed at her arm with her good hand, looking pained, and gave him a hurt look. She didn't understand what he'd said that caused the kids around her to panic; that much was in her eyes. She turned away from him, then glanced back, watching as he fought the men, and screamed--screamed, praying with a child's faith that she might not be deaf for just a moment, so she could hear what he had to say.
I'm sorry, Jack, she signed. He could barely see it; one of the men had clamped a hand across his mouth. He bit; the man cuffed him. I don't know what's wrong with you. I'm going to be a hero, okay? I might save your life, like you saved mine.
I'll see you later tonight, all right?
The man holding Jack hit him hard enough he blacked out, before he had time to start screaming again.
Jack stared at the ceiling. That was why.
Ajeya was another casualty of the endless battlefield. One that he might have given a fighting chance, if only he had told her. If only he had said something, let her in on the secret of 'bomb disposal' before she had gotten hurt, and the men had dragged her away.
What could he have done? the voice of doubt whispered. Even if he had told her, how would it have prevented the men from dragging her off?
At least she wouldn't've gone quietly.
At least she wouldn't've felt betrayed, when she was surrounded by blood and noise, and the screams of kids getting thrown to the mines. She would have known. She might have fought.
The unfamiliar prickle of tears stung Jack's eyes. His chest tightened with pain; not the too-tangible pain of a wound, but just pain. Pure, crystalline grief, stabbing him right through the ribs. The tears threatened to overflow, but he choked the emotion down; it boiled over in a single, throaty sob--before he rolled over, burying his face in his pillow and waiting for the pain to go away.
I'm sorry, Ajeya. I'm so sorry.