A/N: Sorry this took so long - it's hard to make time to write this with school.
Thank you so much for all the great reviews. I hope you all enjoy this chapter.
Also, Sasori - I was so thrilled to read your comment, because Jack's childishness is exactly what I'm trying to hightlight, and I'm working hard to keep him strictly in-character. Thanks! :)
- - -
Ralph awakened from a fitful sleep aware of being watched from across the cave. He closed his eyes and tried to assemble his thoughts before sitting up and facing Robert squarely.
"Sleep well?"
"Not really." Robert's voice was faint. It matched his look. The boy's face looked crumpled and unnatural; his skin shone a papery, sickly white with streaks of riotous color. Ralph frowned and moved closer to lay a hand on the boy's forehead. He expected Robert to flinch back, but he didn't - he merely stared up at Ralph with the same glazed, panicky expression that he had worn since the fireside. His skin was damp with sweat, but not overly warm.
"Are you hungry?" Ralph asked, as a formality.
"No," Robert replied, looking ill at the thought. Ralph sighed, and the depth and resonance of the sound startled even him.
"Why did you do it, Robert?" It was the question he had clearly been expecting, and his lips began to tremble as if on cue.
"Stop that," Ralph said firmly but not unkindly, "I asked you a question."
"He made me angry!" The sudden shrillness of Robert's voice grated on Ralph's ears, and his muscles tensed reflexively. "He was always teasing me! He wouldn't let me alone, and the others said - said," Robert swallowed convulsively, "they said he was younger than me and why couldn't I manage him? They made fun of me, too! And then one day, we were hunting, and he said I was slow, so I hit him, but -" Robert reddened in humiliation, "he could hit harder."
"And the others made fun of you more?" Ralph guessed tiredly, already sure of where the story was leading. Robert nodded vigorously, the moisture in his eyes catching what little light there was in the dark cave.
"And he started to tease me more. So-so-so," Robert's face became drawn, "so I tried to hit him again, and then I had my spear in my hand...he made me angry," Robert finished in a near-whisper. "But as soon as it stuck...I let go. I wanted to take it back. I swear it, Ralph, it's true." Ralph rubbed his forehead and stared off into space.
"Robert," he began finally, feeling tired, helplessly tired in the face of this little drama that was somehow terrifying and ridiculous all at once, "you do realize that what you did was wrong, don't you?" From his rather blank look, Ralph supposed he hadn't, after all. "Just because someone makes you angry doesn't mean you can hurt them. And you did hit Maurice first." Robert twisted his fingers together unhappily. "You only get trouble when you try to solve things that way. Look at it now - Maurice is lucky to be alive, and you..." Ralph's voice trailed off, and Robert's head snapped up, a paralyzing expression of fear locked onto his face. Ralph laid a hand on his arm comfortingly. "You're making yourself sick," he finished, avoiding the subject of fire and the penal system of India altogether.
Ralph realized that Robert was, in fact, gazing over his shoulder instead of at him. He glanced backwards, and jerked away in shock as he beheld Jack casually lounging a few feet away.
"How the devil did you get in here without making a sound?" Ralph demanded a trifle hysterically. Jack smiled with dark amusement. Ralph scoffed, willing his heart to return to its normal pace. Jack pointed his finger at Robert, who looked ready to burst into tears, and jerked his thumb towards the front of the cave.
"Wait outside." Robert moved slowly, shaking visibly. Ralph watched him, unable to speak for pity of the boy.
"Well?" Jack said calmly once they were alone. "What in hell happened?" Ralph looked at him with a mixture of apprehension and confusion.
"What do you mean?"
"With him." Jack clarified impatiently. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were asking about yesterday, when I encouraged a murderer and a sadist to kiss me like a lover after he threatened to whip me senseless. Ralph choked down his choler and managed a nonchalant shrug.
"Maurice made fun of him..." Ralph shook his head, "it was nothing. Stupid. They don't get on, that's all." Jack stared at him, curling his lip.
"They don't get on, so he tries to kill him? That's very perceptive of you, Ralph."
"Don't be an idiot," Ralph said scathingly, "what did you expect? What other reason could they possibly have, here? There isn't any! Except for the island itself and what it does to them." He saw Jack's eyes glaze over with boredom and contempt as they always did when Ralph started in on familiar territory, and Ralph fought down the tremendous urge to strike him with the first thing that was handy. "Will you listen to me for once, Merridew?" His voice, raised in aggravation, echoed on the cave walls. "If we were at school, they would be glaring at each other in class. Maybe there would be a scuffle in the hallways. That's all. It's this bloody island that makes a stupid, normal, boring thing like two boys who can't seem to be friends into a bloody murder!" Because he could not help himself, Ralph added viciously, "And who do you think made him think that sticking a spear in a problem is a good way to solve it?" Jack's face had remained curiously blank during the tirade. Now he ran his finger idly in the dirt at his feet, as if he had not heard at all.
"I still have a hard time believing that Robert would just stab Maurice, although he did do it, and there's no arguing that." Jack finally commented idly. Ralph folded his hands and looked down at them, laced together in his lap.
"People will...do the most incredible things in certain moments," Ralph said slowly. Jack looked up swiftly, and Ralph refused to meet his gaze. "When they're overwrought...that sort of thing..."
"Oh?" Jack said harshly.
"How is Maurice?" Ralph asked hastily, hoping to deflect the conversation from the course it was taking.
"He's doing as well as anyone can be expecting. He'll pull through."
"Lucky that Robert hadn't really wanted to kill Maurice. The spear point wasn't in very far, so he must have -" Jack interrupted him with laughter, and Ralph looked up in surprise.
"Lucky that Robert is a bloody idiot! He put the spear in the wrong side." Ralph looked blank for a moment, and then he sank his face into his hands, hiding a smile. He could see Maurice again in his mind's eye, with the spear protruding, yes, not from where his heart would be just a few centimeters deeper, but from the other opposite half of his chest.
"Well, at any rate, he could have hit a lung and then what? My point is that -"
"Roger stopped when he realized what he was doing," Jack finished with an impatient roll of his eyes. "I know what you're driving at."
"Jack," a pleading note crept into Ralph's voice, "look at him. He's punishing himself. And Maurice will most likely live. And -"
"It's not his fault, since he watches his bloody big chief solve his troubles with violence all the time?" Jack finished with more amusement than anything else. Ralph stared. He was deeply unsettled. It seemed that Jack was suddenly reading his mind, and he didn't know what to make of it. It seemed radically unlike him; he usually showed little patience and even less perception to the fair-haired boy.
"I don't see how it's funny," Ralph said stiffly. Jack stretched, obviously unconcerned.
"And what do you think I should do, Ralph? I can't do nothing. Even you have to understand that." Ralph bit his lip to control his anger at Jack's condescending tones.
"I think," Ralph began evenly, "that you should have Robert look after Maurice until he's well again." Jack laughed incredulously.
"How is that a punishment?"
"It's a punishment because he has to care for someone he hates. It's a way for him to take direct responsibility for what he did. And Maurice really should have constant looking after. And Robert will hardly be able to provide that if he's missing a limb, now, will he?" Ralph added bitingly. Jack gave him a look of grudging admiration from under the fringe of red hair that fell in front of his eyes.
"All right, so it's a good idea. But the boys are going to be awfully disappointed that no-one's getting their hands cut off." Jack said languorously.
"I imagine." There was a tense, loaded silence. Now that the rather immediate problem of Robert had been settled, Ralph found his mind wandering treacherously back to a dark forest and the memory of Jack's mouth and hands. He felt his breath quicken and looked down, praying that Jack would simply leave, and knowing that it was bloody unlikely that he was going to, seeing as he rarely did what Ralph wanted. He was not, however, at all expecting the hands that seized his shoulders and yanked him against Jack's lean chest. Jack was kissing him, unconcernedly. Ralph made an incredulous noise into his mouth and twisted his upper body away. "What are you doing?" He gasped when he had control of his own lips again.
"What do you think?" Jack held the back of his head firmly and applied pressure to bring him close for another kiss.
"Stop that!" Ralph yelped. Jack gave him a hard stare.
"Not game for it anymore?"
"Jack..." Ralph felt himself go still and shy, "I don't know why I kissed you last night."
"I don't much care." The answer stunned Ralph to the degree that he could not fathom the meaning of the words for several minutes.
"What?" He asked blankly.
"Does it matter if you know why? No. Does it matter if you still want to? No. Are you forgetting?" Every warm feeling in Ralph fled, leaving jagged chunks of ice. He was silent for a long time. Frozen.
"No," Ralph finally murmured, slowly, "I never forget." When Jack jerked him close again, he did not resist. He let go of each muscle carefully, pulling back, pulling inward. He let Jack lick his still, immobile lips and caress his limp frame. He may as well have been holding a doll. Jack stopped, stiffening with rage. He glared into Ralph's eyes, so close to his own. Ralph chuckled, an eerie, hollow noise. "It's not much fun, is it, Jack? Kissing a corpse?" Jack let go rather violently, cursing, and turned to leave. At the entrance to the cave, he turned back again suddenly and swooped down on Ralph, who was too cold, too far away to be surprised.
"Take that look off your face! Forget it, all right? Forget what I said." Ralph blinked up at him.
"Jack," he said softly, without any meaning for it, just to say the word, it seemed.
"Damn you," the boy said harshly before wrapping his arms around him again, more carefully this time. He made no move to meet his lips, he simply held the blonde boy firmly against him. Ralph found that he was not being crushed once again against Jack's form, but that his body conformed pleasantly to Jack's angles, matching them in a companionable manner. He was being heated again. Jack's warmth was swimming under his skin. It made him angry. Jack had done so much to hurt him. Why should he be able to control him that way, dictate his freezing and melting?
"You should go take care of this situation with Robert," Ralph heard his voice saying calmly. Jack drew back and looked at him searchingly. Ralph smiled feebly and without amusement. "I'll be right here when you come back." Jack leaned forward and placed the lightest of kisses on Ralph's lips. His eyes drifted shut, savoring the tenderness of the gesture, but snapped open again as Jack's voice rang out close to his ear.
"You'd bloody well better be." When Jack made up his mind to make an exit, he could do so in a split second. Ralph found himself alone so quickly he was disoriented, Jack's last comment still stinging his ears. He ran his hand down the scar on his arm, and then ran his tongue over his faintly swollen lips. He considered running across the woods, down the beach, into the ocean. He wondered about the sudden, painful thawing of himself, and that of all the people to thaw him, Jack had to be the most unlikely, the most inconvenient, the most frightening, the most wonderful. The most whole. Because he seemed to be the source of everything; it was him that chased him out of the sunlight, and it was him who was sometimes dragging, sometimes coaxing him back. He dealt violent harm one moment and sweet comfort the next.
Ralph knew that he unraveled when Jack was near, that he became closer and more intimate with darkness and growling things and passions that seek to rend and tear, and the thought unsettled him more deeply than any other.
Ralph's humanity was the last thing he had, the last thing he could hold inviolate from the island, from Jack, from the beast. But he was sinking. He felt it, and was afraid.
I can't survive like this. It's Jack's doing. He's figured out how to get me at last.
Thank you so much for all the great reviews. I hope you all enjoy this chapter.
Also, Sasori - I was so thrilled to read your comment, because Jack's childishness is exactly what I'm trying to hightlight, and I'm working hard to keep him strictly in-character. Thanks! :)
Ralph awakened from a fitful sleep aware of being watched from across the cave. He closed his eyes and tried to assemble his thoughts before sitting up and facing Robert squarely.
"Sleep well?"
"Not really." Robert's voice was faint. It matched his look. The boy's face looked crumpled and unnatural; his skin shone a papery, sickly white with streaks of riotous color. Ralph frowned and moved closer to lay a hand on the boy's forehead. He expected Robert to flinch back, but he didn't - he merely stared up at Ralph with the same glazed, panicky expression that he had worn since the fireside. His skin was damp with sweat, but not overly warm.
"Are you hungry?" Ralph asked, as a formality.
"No," Robert replied, looking ill at the thought. Ralph sighed, and the depth and resonance of the sound startled even him.
"Why did you do it, Robert?" It was the question he had clearly been expecting, and his lips began to tremble as if on cue.
"Stop that," Ralph said firmly but not unkindly, "I asked you a question."
"He made me angry!" The sudden shrillness of Robert's voice grated on Ralph's ears, and his muscles tensed reflexively. "He was always teasing me! He wouldn't let me alone, and the others said - said," Robert swallowed convulsively, "they said he was younger than me and why couldn't I manage him? They made fun of me, too! And then one day, we were hunting, and he said I was slow, so I hit him, but -" Robert reddened in humiliation, "he could hit harder."
"And the others made fun of you more?" Ralph guessed tiredly, already sure of where the story was leading. Robert nodded vigorously, the moisture in his eyes catching what little light there was in the dark cave.
"And he started to tease me more. So-so-so," Robert's face became drawn, "so I tried to hit him again, and then I had my spear in my hand...he made me angry," Robert finished in a near-whisper. "But as soon as it stuck...I let go. I wanted to take it back. I swear it, Ralph, it's true." Ralph rubbed his forehead and stared off into space.
"Robert," he began finally, feeling tired, helplessly tired in the face of this little drama that was somehow terrifying and ridiculous all at once, "you do realize that what you did was wrong, don't you?" From his rather blank look, Ralph supposed he hadn't, after all. "Just because someone makes you angry doesn't mean you can hurt them. And you did hit Maurice first." Robert twisted his fingers together unhappily. "You only get trouble when you try to solve things that way. Look at it now - Maurice is lucky to be alive, and you..." Ralph's voice trailed off, and Robert's head snapped up, a paralyzing expression of fear locked onto his face. Ralph laid a hand on his arm comfortingly. "You're making yourself sick," he finished, avoiding the subject of fire and the penal system of India altogether.
Ralph realized that Robert was, in fact, gazing over his shoulder instead of at him. He glanced backwards, and jerked away in shock as he beheld Jack casually lounging a few feet away.
"How the devil did you get in here without making a sound?" Ralph demanded a trifle hysterically. Jack smiled with dark amusement. Ralph scoffed, willing his heart to return to its normal pace. Jack pointed his finger at Robert, who looked ready to burst into tears, and jerked his thumb towards the front of the cave.
"Wait outside." Robert moved slowly, shaking visibly. Ralph watched him, unable to speak for pity of the boy.
"Well?" Jack said calmly once they were alone. "What in hell happened?" Ralph looked at him with a mixture of apprehension and confusion.
"What do you mean?"
"With him." Jack clarified impatiently. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were asking about yesterday, when I encouraged a murderer and a sadist to kiss me like a lover after he threatened to whip me senseless. Ralph choked down his choler and managed a nonchalant shrug.
"Maurice made fun of him..." Ralph shook his head, "it was nothing. Stupid. They don't get on, that's all." Jack stared at him, curling his lip.
"They don't get on, so he tries to kill him? That's very perceptive of you, Ralph."
"Don't be an idiot," Ralph said scathingly, "what did you expect? What other reason could they possibly have, here? There isn't any! Except for the island itself and what it does to them." He saw Jack's eyes glaze over with boredom and contempt as they always did when Ralph started in on familiar territory, and Ralph fought down the tremendous urge to strike him with the first thing that was handy. "Will you listen to me for once, Merridew?" His voice, raised in aggravation, echoed on the cave walls. "If we were at school, they would be glaring at each other in class. Maybe there would be a scuffle in the hallways. That's all. It's this bloody island that makes a stupid, normal, boring thing like two boys who can't seem to be friends into a bloody murder!" Because he could not help himself, Ralph added viciously, "And who do you think made him think that sticking a spear in a problem is a good way to solve it?" Jack's face had remained curiously blank during the tirade. Now he ran his finger idly in the dirt at his feet, as if he had not heard at all.
"I still have a hard time believing that Robert would just stab Maurice, although he did do it, and there's no arguing that." Jack finally commented idly. Ralph folded his hands and looked down at them, laced together in his lap.
"People will...do the most incredible things in certain moments," Ralph said slowly. Jack looked up swiftly, and Ralph refused to meet his gaze. "When they're overwrought...that sort of thing..."
"Oh?" Jack said harshly.
"How is Maurice?" Ralph asked hastily, hoping to deflect the conversation from the course it was taking.
"He's doing as well as anyone can be expecting. He'll pull through."
"Lucky that Robert hadn't really wanted to kill Maurice. The spear point wasn't in very far, so he must have -" Jack interrupted him with laughter, and Ralph looked up in surprise.
"Lucky that Robert is a bloody idiot! He put the spear in the wrong side." Ralph looked blank for a moment, and then he sank his face into his hands, hiding a smile. He could see Maurice again in his mind's eye, with the spear protruding, yes, not from where his heart would be just a few centimeters deeper, but from the other opposite half of his chest.
"Well, at any rate, he could have hit a lung and then what? My point is that -"
"Roger stopped when he realized what he was doing," Jack finished with an impatient roll of his eyes. "I know what you're driving at."
"Jack," a pleading note crept into Ralph's voice, "look at him. He's punishing himself. And Maurice will most likely live. And -"
"It's not his fault, since he watches his bloody big chief solve his troubles with violence all the time?" Jack finished with more amusement than anything else. Ralph stared. He was deeply unsettled. It seemed that Jack was suddenly reading his mind, and he didn't know what to make of it. It seemed radically unlike him; he usually showed little patience and even less perception to the fair-haired boy.
"I don't see how it's funny," Ralph said stiffly. Jack stretched, obviously unconcerned.
"And what do you think I should do, Ralph? I can't do nothing. Even you have to understand that." Ralph bit his lip to control his anger at Jack's condescending tones.
"I think," Ralph began evenly, "that you should have Robert look after Maurice until he's well again." Jack laughed incredulously.
"How is that a punishment?"
"It's a punishment because he has to care for someone he hates. It's a way for him to take direct responsibility for what he did. And Maurice really should have constant looking after. And Robert will hardly be able to provide that if he's missing a limb, now, will he?" Ralph added bitingly. Jack gave him a look of grudging admiration from under the fringe of red hair that fell in front of his eyes.
"All right, so it's a good idea. But the boys are going to be awfully disappointed that no-one's getting their hands cut off." Jack said languorously.
"I imagine." There was a tense, loaded silence. Now that the rather immediate problem of Robert had been settled, Ralph found his mind wandering treacherously back to a dark forest and the memory of Jack's mouth and hands. He felt his breath quicken and looked down, praying that Jack would simply leave, and knowing that it was bloody unlikely that he was going to, seeing as he rarely did what Ralph wanted. He was not, however, at all expecting the hands that seized his shoulders and yanked him against Jack's lean chest. Jack was kissing him, unconcernedly. Ralph made an incredulous noise into his mouth and twisted his upper body away. "What are you doing?" He gasped when he had control of his own lips again.
"What do you think?" Jack held the back of his head firmly and applied pressure to bring him close for another kiss.
"Stop that!" Ralph yelped. Jack gave him a hard stare.
"Not game for it anymore?"
"Jack..." Ralph felt himself go still and shy, "I don't know why I kissed you last night."
"I don't much care." The answer stunned Ralph to the degree that he could not fathom the meaning of the words for several minutes.
"What?" He asked blankly.
"Does it matter if you know why? No. Does it matter if you still want to? No. Are you forgetting?" Every warm feeling in Ralph fled, leaving jagged chunks of ice. He was silent for a long time. Frozen.
"No," Ralph finally murmured, slowly, "I never forget." When Jack jerked him close again, he did not resist. He let go of each muscle carefully, pulling back, pulling inward. He let Jack lick his still, immobile lips and caress his limp frame. He may as well have been holding a doll. Jack stopped, stiffening with rage. He glared into Ralph's eyes, so close to his own. Ralph chuckled, an eerie, hollow noise. "It's not much fun, is it, Jack? Kissing a corpse?" Jack let go rather violently, cursing, and turned to leave. At the entrance to the cave, he turned back again suddenly and swooped down on Ralph, who was too cold, too far away to be surprised.
"Take that look off your face! Forget it, all right? Forget what I said." Ralph blinked up at him.
"Jack," he said softly, without any meaning for it, just to say the word, it seemed.
"Damn you," the boy said harshly before wrapping his arms around him again, more carefully this time. He made no move to meet his lips, he simply held the blonde boy firmly against him. Ralph found that he was not being crushed once again against Jack's form, but that his body conformed pleasantly to Jack's angles, matching them in a companionable manner. He was being heated again. Jack's warmth was swimming under his skin. It made him angry. Jack had done so much to hurt him. Why should he be able to control him that way, dictate his freezing and melting?
"You should go take care of this situation with Robert," Ralph heard his voice saying calmly. Jack drew back and looked at him searchingly. Ralph smiled feebly and without amusement. "I'll be right here when you come back." Jack leaned forward and placed the lightest of kisses on Ralph's lips. His eyes drifted shut, savoring the tenderness of the gesture, but snapped open again as Jack's voice rang out close to his ear.
"You'd bloody well better be." When Jack made up his mind to make an exit, he could do so in a split second. Ralph found himself alone so quickly he was disoriented, Jack's last comment still stinging his ears. He ran his hand down the scar on his arm, and then ran his tongue over his faintly swollen lips. He considered running across the woods, down the beach, into the ocean. He wondered about the sudden, painful thawing of himself, and that of all the people to thaw him, Jack had to be the most unlikely, the most inconvenient, the most frightening, the most wonderful. The most whole. Because he seemed to be the source of everything; it was him that chased him out of the sunlight, and it was him who was sometimes dragging, sometimes coaxing him back. He dealt violent harm one moment and sweet comfort the next.
Ralph knew that he unraveled when Jack was near, that he became closer and more intimate with darkness and growling things and passions that seek to rend and tear, and the thought unsettled him more deeply than any other.
Ralph's humanity was the last thing he had, the last thing he could hold inviolate from the island, from Jack, from the beast. But he was sinking. He felt it, and was afraid.
I can't survive like this. It's Jack's doing. He's figured out how to get me at last.