Author's Note: Chapter two, and the last installment. Hope you enjoy. (I forgot to mention in the first chapter that this wonderful fic is written in collaboration with my good friend Amelia.)
Jack walked haltingly down the hallway, unsure exactly why he had agreed to come. A thousand shallow reasons why he should turn around and leave flitted through his mind, but somehow he made his body continue moving forward. Memories pounded through his brain, surfacing in time with his pulse, which was beating faster as he neared the desk. The white halls of the hospital made him uneasy and claustrophobic, but he realized that he owed this to Ralph for what he'd almost done. Swallowing the annoyingly large lump in his throat, he came within sight of the desk. He assumed the lady standing expectantly behind it was the one he'd talked to on the phone.
Pauline stepped into the hallway with her hand extended and walked warmly toward Jack. She truly believed it a miracle that she had found this man, the Jack Merridew that she many times had half-doubted was one with reality. That he had actually consented to come and see Ralph was quite another story; Pauline's head swam with the magnitude of such an accomplishment.
Ralph sat with Simon in his quiet place among the butterflies, staring out at the former haunt of the Lord of the Flies. After the other boys left, Ralph had seen no need to keep it around. What was a gift to a beast who was never really there?
Yawning, Ralph reclined against the bed of creepers. He closed his eyes and focused on the barely audible hum of bees in the distance, and started to feel himself slipping into sleep. A rustling in the jungle behind him and to his left disturbed his placid state of consciousness. He felt that Simon was no longer next to him, and opened his eyes, confused. Where he might have expected to see Piggy, Ralph found a boy with freckles and a shock of red hair staring back. Alarm propelled his body involuntarily a few feet backward, and Ralph searched his clouded mind for what he should do. Jack still stared, but made no motion forward. Ralph stared back, tensed for flight, waiting for something terrible that loomed in inevitability.
Although it seemed a longer time had passed, Piggy followed Jack a few seconds later.
Jack looked back at Pauline, who followed him into the room. The haggard man he saw sitting at the table looked little like the Ralph he knew in that terrifying, turbulent time of their boyhood, but the chubby girl assured him with a nod that it was. She made comforting motions with her hands, noticing that his body was tense with what must have been an incredible rush of recollections and thoughts.
Piggy crept forward, soothing Ralph's nerves with gestures that said, Don't go anywhere, Ralph. It's going to be okay. He just wants to talk.
Jack eased himself into the chair. His smile was awkward but there was none of the former hatred in it. Pauline had stressed the essence of Ralph's condition, telling Jack to remember that Ralph was still on the island. That being a place that Jack had left far behind, it would be difficult going back.
Jack sat on the ground, leaving some distance between himself and Ralph, clutching the choir cap with the gold pin in his lap. There was no paint, no knife, and no evidence of Jack the Hunter in him now; it was as if they had just arrived. "Hello Ralph," said Jack, clearing his throat with slight discomfort.
"Hello," Ralph returned curtly, still somewhat frozen with surprise. Piggy stood in the shadows of the hanging creepers, obscured in darkness, yet a comforting and very real presence to Ralph.
"Do you..." Ralph choked, unable to continue.
The eyebrows on the ugly freckled face perked inquiringly. "Do I what?
Remembered pain shot through his body as the boy searched for the words he had for so long wanted to say. Ululations sounded in the back of his mind. "You've been gone for a long time, Jack.
"Yes, a very long time."
"Do you ever think about..." Ralph searched for a sentence. "...what happened on this island?
"You mean the hunting and the beast?" Jack sat in his chair and imagined himself as a freckle-faced twelve-year-old, doing his best to play the game.
"That, and Simon and Piggy." Ralph looked into the shadows, trying to find the spot where Piggy had been, finding that he had retreated farther into the jungle. He wasn't keeping his distance because he was afraid, but because this wasn't his conversation. Piggy had become a part of Ralph internally, he realized, understanding that he wasn't alone now, and never truly had been, even when Piggy went away. The wise friends lived in his conscience.
"Sometimes."
This wasn't the Jack that ran through the forest with his knife and tainted the jungle with the blood of innocents. He had changed. He had learned. He had grown. Ralph saw him differently, considering a possibility that he hadn't ever thought of before: he might be able to forgive Jack for the terrible, unspeakable things he had done. Maybe.
"Why did you do it?" Sudden emotion brought tears to Ralph's already burning eyes.
Jack silently prepared the answer to the question he knew had been coming. "I was a hunter, Ralph. Not a leader, not like you. I couldn't get them to like me. I needed something different, something that they wanted. I wanted to be chief, to make the rules, to have the conch." He saw the powdery explosion of the coveted shell in his mind. "I found out I could take them from you. Ralph, I hated you because you were better than me," he confessed, letting tears of his own leak down his face. "Simon and Piggy got in the way."
Pauline watched from the window as both old men reverted to childhood. Neither was Jack or Ralph, or the chief or the beast, but the child in everyone, that doesn't want to be left alone, with the monsters in the darkness.
"There was never a beast, Ralph.
"Yes there was, Jack... Simon knew. He tried to tell us."
"No, I made it up, the little 'uns made it up."
"It was us, Jack."
Jack had known the truth, after the bloodlust faded away and he saw the world again, with its grownups and its society. He had been the beast, but he chose not to admit it until now. A part of him had always held on to the knife and the paint, the hunting, an excuse to be a monster. It had all been a game, until now. Jack silently asked Piggy and Simon for the forgiveness that Ralph had given him. He washed the last of the paint from his body, dropped his knife into the swirling waters that had claimed two bodies of his innocent friends, looked into Ralph's eyes, and finally saw himself.