#character introspection

CW - implied/referenced child abuse, canonical character death

The thing is, he can’t protect Marc from everything, and after Steven comes along Marc begins to recognise the feeling of someone else pushing to the front, that slightly odd pressure on the inside of their head and he resists any of Jake’s attempts to take over whenever their mother comes in.

He takes over in the aftermath, however, when Marc is too tired to resist him, and he finds the bruise cream, the Band-Aids, the painkillers that he’s technically too young to take. Maybe, maybe, if Marc doesn’t feel the effects so much, he won’t remember how bad it was.

Sometimes, he looks in the mirror and sees Randall’s face.

At night, the ones when Marc actually sleeps, he slips out of their bed – no longer the warm and comforting place it once was – and into their back yard. He wasn’t strong enough before to protect them, knew the moves but didn’t have the muscle, so he builds that muscle up. Press ups. Sit ups. Throwing punches, first into empty air and then at tree trunks. Running and running and running. Stretches. Jumps. Until he can mimic fight scenes from his favourite movies, until he can lift and move the kitchen table without straining.

He will protect them.

They send Marc back to school – send all three of them, now – about three weeks after what his teachers tactfully refer to as ‘the incident’. Never in front of him, he hears them, sees it in the way they pause conversations when he approaches. No one in school comments on his sudden love of long-sleeved, high-collared shirts or the fact that he comes in every few days without lunch.

Jake wants to hurt them. He wants to take them by the front of their perfectly creased blouses and scream in their faces, ask why they don’t care about him. Why doesn’t anyone want to help? Marc cries about it sometimes, late at night, thinking of the way he had been dizzy with hunger in the afternoon, or the bruise that had poked out from his sleeve, and the way that the teachers brushed over it. Ignored him.

Still, school was better than being at home. At least people left him alone at school.

Or, they mostly did. Two days into being back, a girl approaches the corner of the playground that Marc (or maybe Jake) had claimed for their own. They can see everyone else and watch her walk up with no small amount of trepidation.

“I heard about your brother.” She says, and Jake pushes Marc back, away.

“Everyone has.” He replies.

She shrugs and sits down next to him. “My mom died last year.”

Everyone knew about that as well. A battle with a terrible illness. Marc’s mom had sobbed at her funeral.

“It’s not really the same thing.” Jake tells her, moving away obviously enough that she gets the hint.

Her face, previously open and hopeful, twists up into something angry and hurt. “Well, you don’t have to be rude about it.” And then she’s gone.

Marc blinks at the empty space she was standing in and then looks around until he finds her. She’s gone back to her skipping game. Wasn’t she just in front of him? No. That’s impossible, people don’t teleport, he must have imagined it.

Rain starts falling and he shudders, feeling the bone-deep coldness he had felt dragging Randall out of the cave.

It’s Jake that picks them up when the teachers start yelling and bring them inside.

It’s amazing how quickly time seems to fly by. Almost immediately a year has passed and Jake walks them back to the cave.

Steven is kept down, unaware. He didn’t even know Randall existed and Jake is happy to let Marc keep it that way. Some days he wishes that he was Steven, he was the one Marc created to give them a normal life, not the one who carries the weight of the truth. But there is no point wishing, it doesn’t change a thing.

Like Marc’s dad says, “If wishes were horses…” Jake can never remember the second part of that phrase. Something about gifts and mouths maybe.

He keeps Marc down as well, asleep through the entire day. He doesn’t need that pain; Jake is the one who takes the pain.

It’s been boarded over, very poorly, and the wood used is already rotting. If Jake pulled at it, he could probably climb in and find the rock that Randall’s blood surely must still be staining. He doesn’t. It’s a death sentence in there, even if it isn’t really the thing that killed Randall.

“Your fault!” Wendy’s voice screamed, echoing in his head. Marc was having nightmare. Or maybe that was just his own memories haunting him, the way that he had failed them.

Someone coughs behind him and he whirls around. It’s the neck tattoo again that makes his heart jump in his chest. The same man. Boy, really – now that it isn’t raining, now that his mind isn’t clouded with fear, he can see him for who he truly is. Probably no older than twenty, probably got the tattoo while he was still underage, the ink is blurred slightly into the lines of his skin and noticeably faded.

Jake wants to laugh.

“You a coward, huh?” The boy says, approaching him slowly, cracking his knuckles. “I ain’t had the police on my doorstep, so you ain’t told them the truth.”

Jake doesn’t back away. The boy has a heavy Chicago accent, unusual in the area they live, and not something he remembers from their previous interaction, even if there wasn’t much talking.

His own Chicago-heavy voice sticks in his throat, the syllables refusing to form.

“I’m you.” He whispers. “I’m just… you.”

“Speak up,” the boy mocks, “Marc Spector.”

Jake tenses. Of course, the boy knows his name, their family was in all the local newspapers after the tragic ‘accident’. It doesn’t make Marc’s name any easier to deal with, spilling out of that mouth.

“What do you want?” He demands.

The boy shrugs. “Just to let you know, I know you’re a coward.” He pauses, a careful smile spreading across his face. “I know everything about you.”

Marc comes to, nearly a block away from his house, with bruised knuckles, a sore nose, and no memory of anything after getting into bed the previous night.

Steven.

It had to be Steven. He was so clumsy as well, probably tripped and hurt himself.

He sneaks in the backdoor and borrows the Band-Aids from the kitchen, sticking one across his nose horizontally and one on the small cut on his wrist. Steven would assume that his mother did it. She loves him, after all.

“Do you even know what the date is?” His mom screams from somewhere else in the house. Probably at his dad, but it makes him feel that he has forgotten something. Marc reaches for the calendar on his desk.

Jake frowns at it, the innocuous, unmarked date, and shoves the calendar under a stack of books that must belong to Steven, just because of the subject material. Marc doesn’t need to remember, doesn’t need that pain.

He’d take as much pain from Marc as he could, even killing someone in his place. The boy with the neck tattoo flashes up in his memory, the shocked face once he realises Jake could actually fight back. He would kill him if Marc needed it.

fall of angels

all you remember of her is bright flashing lights

       neon green glittering against her pink tresses

and you remember your breath catching in your throat

you remember her back in front of you, sharp shoulders

       drawn too tight, head held too high, cold air stealing

their way out of the soft curve of her pretty lips in the winter

you remember her hand gripping yours so tightly you thought

       you could feel the pulse of her heartbeat dripping into your veins

you thought your chest was going to explode, dynamite pricking your skin

she tells you to remember her in all her best moments, eyes red

       breath harried, hair mussed up, fingers trembling and shoulders

shaking. there are too many variables unaccounted for and you can’t think

she asks you to run, lips curling up in a smile, age eight and

       young and innocent and it’s pink hair curled next to a black mess

tiny fingers intertwined and there’s a forgotten baton lying at your feet together

you bypass her on a glaring summer morning when her white shirt

       blended into the sight of an empty track before you; she trails up

behind you, palm fitting into the small of your back, and her praise thrills you

your best friend, same name and same age and same school and

       as you’re running for the last time you abruptly realize you’ve never

known anything without her in it, without her tear stained cheeks and laughter

and she’s the only color splattered against the dark night sky you look up at

       from the rooftop with your brother. he asked you what you saw in

the skies once, and you saw her, and you said you saw a future.

tonight, you remember her as she yelled for you to run, face streaked

       with blood so dark it’s the color of her hair and you’re running, running

away from the only person you’ve ever loved with your whole heart.