J's P.O.V.

It took me a while to get my head wrapped around what had happened to me during the last few days. I'd gotten used to being around Sully, Nate and Lara. I was comfortable enough to fall asleep on the couch curled up in a little ball.

After what had happened to me, they understood that I needed sleep, even if it was in a strange position. They didn't disturb me, in fact they left me alone as I slept no matter where I fell asleep.

I woke up, still feeling drowsy and warm due to the fire nearby. It took me a moment to realise that I'd been crying in my sleep, that was something that they had to get used to too. I sat up, resting my head in my hands.

I couldn't believe that my Mom was dead, she hadn't done anything to anyone, at least not enough to deserve what had happened to her. My head hung in my hands as I mourned over her, knowing that soon I would have to move on with my life, whatever that could turn out to be.

A hand fell on my shoulder, giving a quick squeeze before rubbing my back.

"You feeling ok kid?" It was Sully, his gravelly voice made it easy to distinguish him.

I shook my head in answer, not sure whether or not to speak to him yet.

"Give it time." He smiled at me before he walked around and sat down next to me.

Involuntary, I moved away slightly, still not sure why I was doing it.

"Here." He passed me the notepad he was sat on, the pen still clipped to it.

"Lara tells me you come from a Chinese tribe, can you tell me about it?" He asked.

Quickly I scribbled a reply and gave it to him.

"Ok, 'which part?' there's that much to it?" Sully read aloud.

I nodded, my hand was rubbing my leg like there was not tomorrow.

"Alright, tell me what the main belief is. It is peace or something?" He asked.

I wrote down what I could remember about the tribe, the religion was more about the unity of the people. Keeping the tribe together as a unit, as a single group. Confined from the rest of the world, forbidden to show the rest of the world our power.

I passed the pad back to Sully, he read it over before asking.

"What kind of power?" He asked.

I shrugged, not knowing what my mother meant when she told me the stories.

Sully smiled before passing the pad back to me.

"Still sore?" He asked carefully.

I looked at him and scratched my arm, telling him I was itchy.

"Your leg or your...?" He spoke carefully.

I patted my thigh and pointed at my crotch before hitting my palm with my fist to make a loud clap noise.

"Doc mentioned something about that, it's best you try to ignore it. You want my advice, leave it alone. Someone once told me lemon juice would work, worst night of my life." Sully told me a little story.

I cracked up, knowing myself that lemon juice hurt on the wrong part. Sully smiled, knowing he could get me to laugh meant that he would be able to get me on the right track to recovery.

Sully told me story after story about he had gotten into a bad situation and managed to get out of it. He even told me about how he met Nate and how he managed to pull Nate out of a bad situation of his own, then he told me stories about the situations that both he and Nate were in and managed to get out of.

I knew what he was doing and frankly, he was doing the right thing. Sully had done a lot in his life, he was only about 40 at the time of meeting him, hearing about the things he'd done and to be fair, it was a lot.

It was about an hour before Sully got fed up of telling me stories and started to ask me about myself, what I liked doing. With the notepad I again scribbled down my reply on the note pad. I listed out what I enjoyed doing.

"Climbing

Running

Shooting

tinkering."

I gave the pad to Sully and he read through it before raising an eyebrow.

"Tinkering?" He raised an eyebrow.

I took the note pad back from Sully and began to draw a revolver to the best of my ability and labelled the parts and trying to draw an exploded view of the gun.

"You know about guns?" Sully asked again.

I tapped on the pad next to the word 'shooting' and looked at him, wondering why he'd missed it.

"Did you hunt?" He pressed.

I shook my head before writing 'competition' down on the pad.

"Really, with a revolver?" Sully asked.

"He always was a little bit of a cowboy." Lara spoke out, she'd been listening in on the conversation.

She walked over with a bunch of papers in her hand.

"His dad had to find something for him to do to distract him a little bit, shooting was one of the more popular sports over there." She explained as she sat the other side of me.

I was beginning to feel a little bit trapped as there were two significantly taller people than I was. They began to talk about the hobby like I wasn't there, I was sort of transfixed on the stack of papers that she was clutching to. It must have been something important, the way that she had been listening to me from behind as if she was eavesdropping.

"Hey, I've got something for you." Lara put her hand on my shoulder.

I looked at her in reply.

"These are some of your mother's letters, talking about the village she came from." She set the pack of paper on my lap.

"Why don't you take them somewhere and read through them, just not outside, don't want you catching a cold after all this." She rubbed my back as I got up.

I took the papers with me and went to the libary that Lara had upstairs in her grand estate. It was very quiet, something that I could use as I mulled over the events again. I didn't even get to reading the stack until a while after.

Lara

"What do you think?" I asked, when I was sure that J was out of earshot.

"I don't think it's right, he wasn't born there kid. I think it's best if he went home, there should be friends of the family over there that can take care of him." Sully replied.

I wasn't having any of it, friends of Angel would be just as bad if not worse for him.

"Do you know of any of his freinds?" I pressed his idea.

"No..." He sighed.

"I don't think he's got a phone book Sully." I joked.

"He aint got a chance going to that tribe Lara, does he even speak Chinese?" He stood up, straightening his shirt as he got some circulation back in his legs.

"Sully: he can't stay with me, you've got your hands full with Nate and neither of us can get in contact with the island." I listed off the possibilities.

Sully sighed as he wiped his face down with both hands in frustration. He was thinking of a plan.

"We get him speaking and settled. Then we ask him what he wants to do, he knows a way back onto the island." He remained adamant that J wasn't going back to his mothers home.

I stood up, confronting Sully.

"Listen, he is in no condition to go back to that place, there is no-one there who can look after him there who we can get into contact with." I sighed.

Sully laughed.

"Oh, and he's in condition to get back on a plane to China to go to a place he has no memory of and stay with people he can't speak to." He argued with me.

"Anything is better than going back there, do you have any idea of what happened in that house?!" I raised my voice.

"He's in recovery! There is no way that he is going anywhere if you want to send him to that place, I might as well take him with me!" Sully was getting angrier than I'd seen him before.

"Do then!" I yelled.

"GUYS!" Nate screamed from the upstairs at us.

We stopped and looked at him, annoyed that he'd angered him.

"I can hear you from up here, do you think J's deaf?!" He yelled down to us.

He was right if Nate could hear us there was no way that J wouldn't have at least heard the yelling.

"I'm going to check on him." Nate sighed bitterly and walked to the library.

We stood there for a second, wondering what we were supposed to do in that situation.

"He's right, we have to let him settle when he's ready he'll tell us what he's comfortable with." Sully sighed, rubbing his forehead.

Nate

I couldn't believe either of them, thinking that J could deal with arguments after three days his attack. I was glad that I was around, god knows what J would have done if it was just Lara and Sully around.

As I opened the door, I saw the desk that J had been reading at, but he wasn't there. When I closed the door, I heard another noise that struck my attention. J had hidden somewhere within the library. I knew that there was a small place that someone could hide if need be. There was a closet under the stairs and it was big enough for someone twice J's size to hide in.

After thinking about it myself, I decided to tell J that it was me before I went about looking for him.

"J, it's me Nate. It's alright." I called out.

The door under the stairs opened a little, J peeked out of it like a scared cat.

"You alright?" I asked.

I didn't move until J did, he moved out of the closet and shut the door, he looked pretty upset.

"I'm guessing you heard them." I sighed.

Surprisingly, J shook his head before holding a letter in his hand. He held it out to me, so I took it and opened it. It all seemed pretty straightforward, a simple letter from J's mom to Lara, why she'd given it to him was beyond me.

"What's wrong then?" I tried to figure it out, but couldn't really manage it.

J moved closer to me, he wasn't nearly as tall as I was, he was fourteen and I was sixteen. He looked like he'd never grown since he was 10. He pointed at a phrase that had peeked his interest, but also made him upset.

'He's done it again, Lara'

I didn't know what it meant until I looked at him.

Without his notepad, J couldn't answer without using his limited sign language. With his hands, he suggested that he'd attempted suicide by taking an overdose.

"Why?" I pressed as lightly as I could.

J lifted up his sweater and shirt, revealing a large scar across his abdomen before pointed at the word 'Angel' and pointed back to the scar again.

"Angel hurt you? Who is he?" I wondered.

J couldn't find the word on the letter, he couldn't really show me what he was trying to say, despite several attempts.

"Look, whoever he is, he's not here. He can't come for you." I tried to calm him down.

J looked flustered.

He pointed at the part of the letter where his mom told Lara that J had stopped speaking English when he spoke to her, opting for Mandarin, a language I couldn't understand.

"Can't you speak a different language to us? That way he can't hurt you?" I tried, not really knowing if what I was saying would even work.

J looked around, rubbing his right wrist with his left hand clearly worried about what was about to happen with him. Eventually, he gestured for me to come close to him so he couldn't be heard.

"Tiếng Việt." He spoke in Vietnamese, saying Vietnamese.

I nodded, knowing some basic Vietnamese. J's voice was ragged though, almost as if he hadn't used it in years.

"Cha tôi." He whispered this time, barely audible, more because it shocked me than anything else.

Angel was J's father, the abuse that Lara had told me about was much worse than I'd thought about. My own experience made me doubt J's mental strength.
Now I knew why he was so scared, the scar across his abdomen was dark, so it was a deep cut, it would have been deep enough to reach his intestines.

J noticed my shock, he realised that he shouldn't have told me what he had and instantly began to regret it. He looked around again, this time for a way out.

"I'm sorry J, this isn't... Isn't right." I couldn't form into words how pissed I was with J's father.

Without even seeing him I knew he was evil, anyone who could do something like that to their own kid deserved the worst punishment that there was to offer.

J began to look more upset, so I did what I did when he woke up the same way in the middle of the night. Carefully I opened my arms, he clung to me instantly, his arms around my chest before I could even ask him if he wanted a hug or not. I wrapped my own arms around him gently as he began to feel safer with me.

He was like that for a few seconds before I noticed that his breathing sounded bad, he had a ragged sound coming from his lungs as he breathed. Slightly worried, I moved my hand to his back and pressed lightly, there is was, his lungs sort of vibrated as he breathed, as though he was sick. I figured that it was the fact I made him speak to me. Who knew how long it had been since he'd said a single word?

I got him to calm down enough to the point where he was comfortable enough that he broke away first, after I made sure that he was calm enough I straightened up and walked over to the table where J had placed all the letters down, if Lara thought that J would get through them all before midnight she was sorely mistaken. That was if J was even slightly interested in the letters.

J got back into his seat and started to look through the letters, reading calmly on his own.

I left him alone in the libary and walked out the door, bumping into Lara as I did.

"Is he alright?" She asked.

"Yeah, he's good." I replied, still not happy with her after the argument she had with Sully.

I made sure the door was shut before I said the next words.

"After everything he's been through, there is no way I'm letting either of you just send him away like that." I glared at her.

"I'm not sending him away, he's going to be around people like him." She sighed as though she'd had the conversation.

"Whatever." I walked away from her and left her to do whatever she was planning to do.

"Nate!" She called as I walked off.

Sully normally knew what to do, so I went to see him outside as he puffed away on the cigar he always carried with him. When I saw him, he was clearly distressed, almost as if he didn't know what to do.

I stood next to him and looked out onto the manor's grounds with him, it was a lot of ground, the hedge maze was still neatly kept as was Lara's massive sundial.

"Why doesn't she listen to us?" I asked.

"I don't know Kid. J's mom was a freind of hers, so I guess she thinks it's her way or the highway... I mean, if the Kid wants to go that's fine, but if he doesn't then where does he go?" Sully explained the predicament.

"Home? Is there anyone there for him?" I started to think a bit like Lara.

"There should be, but I can't get in touch with the island. I can't get a phone call over there seeing as their phone lines are similar to the 1950s, so I sent a letter this morning, not sure where it'll end up though." Sully sighed.

He took another puff of the cigar before stubbing it out in the ashtray.

"We could fly him over there and try and find someone in person, but what's the difference between that and what Lara's doing?" Sully looked at me, turning his back away from the hedge maze.

"At least he'll know that person, right?" I smiled.

Sully hummed in agreement. He looked around a little before he nodded.

"Like you said, when the Kid decides what's best we'll go with that." He smiled.

J

I tried to get through more of the letters, but all they were doing was bringing back things I'd rather forget, every letter I read through made a scar twinge slightly. I could remember clearly how I got every scar I had on my body.

Instead of bringing up old wounds, I decided to stack the letters into a pile, leaving them on the table just to keep them out of the way. Frankly, I didn't want to see them again.

Instead of reading the letters, I decided to take a look around the library to see what I could find to read.

2 hours later.

For two hours I looked around the library for at least one piece of literature that wouldn't bore me. Almost every book in the library had something to do with medieval Europe or this thing, that thing or the other thing to do with some ancient tribe of people and their artefacts. Nothing interested me about them, I even tried reading some of the books, eventually, I had I pile of books surrounding me, enough to make an armchair out of. That was until I found a scroll that had been transcribed to a piece of paper.

The stack of paper, explaining exactly what it was a Tiwinoku was.

A human being original, given its power via a lightning bolt. The being was sent to a place called the void where its power became far more fierce, it had the ability to share its power with every being on the planet. It didn't though, the original Tiwinoku were simple farmers and not much else. The 4th century marked the first Tiwinoku.

Massive, hulking beasts, capable of breaking through the great wall if they had to. Their abilities so powerful that no-one could face them on the battlefield, they were like monsters. What shocked me the most was the fact that they took part in a barbaric act.

They raped and pillaged like Vikings, they set fire to farms and homes that belonged to people who killed a Tiwinoku on the field. They kidnapped human women and used them as entertainment.

As shocked as I was, I realised something else about the whole thing. Once the Tiwinoku became docile and decided to settle their debts, many Tiwinoku children were taken and sold as slaves.

It didn't make sense to me, how a group of warriors managed to become so docile. I soon realised why though, I was a Tiwinoku and I looked nothing like that picture the scroll painted, I had no wings, I didn't have a whole lot of muscle definition. I did remember being able to heal much faster than other kids when I got hurt. I realised that I was fully healed from the recent brutal attack in a mere few days.

We'd evolved, but we'd become more human than anything else.

Lara

After a couple of hours of letting J have some space, I decided to go and check up on him, just to make sure that he was ok, after being away from everyone else I didn't know what he could have been up to.

Quietly I opened the door and popped in, I decided to use a book to stop the door from closing loudly. I walked around the Libary to see where he was, eventually, I found him upstairs in the office, reading through the Tiwinoku scroll, resting his head in one hand as he read through it.

"J?" I asked carefully.

Calmly he looked at me and smiled, that worried me seeing as he was still clearly suffering.

"I just came up to see you, I need to check your bandages." I explained, smiling too as I walked forwards.

He frowned slightly and stopped reading the scroll before turning in the chair towards me. He helped me by rolling up his sleeves and showed me the bandages. I took one of his arms gently and looked at the bandages. They were clean, no blood or signs of his wounds turning septic.

Carefully I undid the bandages to check the gauze, as carefully as I could, I removed the tape keeping the gauze attached to the wound. Removing it made J hiss lightly, more from the adhesive pulling on the stitches lightly.

The wound was clean, nothing really alarming about the wound except the fact that the dampness around the wound from the sweat.

"I think we need to air these out a bit." I smiled at him as I took the other arm and did the same thing.

J used his hands to try and tell me something, but I couldn't quite get it. It had something to do with the scroll.

"Sorry J, where's your notebook?" I asked.

J tapped his temple and patted his forehead before pointing away. He'd forgotten where it was.

He then tapped the scroll and then tapped at his chest.

"Oh, yes the scroll talks about the Tiwinoku. Why?" I needed more.

J shook his head before pointing at a specific part of the ancient text.

"You can read this?" I was surprised.

J looked at me blankly, before looking at the screen and skim reading through it until he got to the point he was talking about. He pointed at the section talking about the Tiwinoku being slaves to humans.

"Yes, they believed that they had to make amends for what they did. It caused a big rift throughout the tribe but eventually, they all agreed, the warriors that were closely linked to the crimes were given as slaves." I explained.

J pointed at himself, then the floor.

"Tired?" I asked, confused.

J rubbed his eyes in frustration. He grabbed a pen and wrote a word on his hand before showing it to me.

"Now." It read.

"No, not now. It was a long time ago and they've become like buddists." I explained.

J nodded slightly in understanding as he went back to reading the scroll.

"We're thinking of having something to eat, do you want to help me out in the kitchen?" I tried.

J looked at the scroll, wanting to keep reading but decided that he'd had enough. He got up and walked with me, that was until I saw the pile of letters on the desk downstairs and the armchair of books.

"J, did you read those letters?" I looked at him.

He nodded before pointing at his scars and pointing at his head. He remembered why he'd gotten the scars from the letters.

"I should have thought about that, sorry." I sighed.

J gave me a worried look before he went down the stairs and began to put the books away.