Page 112 of Natural-Born Cullers

“Don’t,” said Cal gently. “Doesn’t matter what’s been said and done, walking away…?” He frowned. “It doesn’t stop the hurt and anger, it just stretches it out over a longer distance, a longer time, until all you have left is the snap back into it all.”

Jack looked at Cal. “You know, for once, this is fuck all to do with Gray and Jan,” he said flatly. “We’ve all been bastards to each other at one time or another. Name me a relationship that hasn’t.” Jack frowned. “I just forgot that this morning and ran with the heat.”

Cal looked at the summerhouse.

The wind rustled up, taking a few stray leaves with it, and Jack followed the breeze, how the leaves stumbled and fell in different directions, some buried and lost under others.

Cal looked back at him. “I was in the lounge with Simon. It got tough in there, no matter how normal you think it is, Jack. Gray—”

“He fucking killed me.” Jack took a longer pull on his cigarette. “With seeing him holding back, trying not to hit me, if he’s got to fight it, that’s not blind reaction like when he hit me that first time before all the shit went down with Vince. It’s him reasoning with the madness, forcing control over who he naturally is, going against who he is.” Jack shook his head. “There must have been so much fucking hate and anger back there for me, how I’m ultimately responsible for everything Martin does. I fashioned him, right?”

Cal shook his head a little. “Trauma fashioned Martin, son. You all need reminding of that sometimes. No one’s to blame but the people who caused it.”

“Still my head, still my way of coping,” Jack said flatly. “But then Jan? Him turning away, siding with Gray… rightly so with Martin fucking playing poison in the vent, and—fuck.” He wiped a hand over his face. “Gray called out my disorders, but Jan finished it off by putting out the call to get Halliday in.” He shrugged and looked at him. “You never really get a full get-out-of-sectioning card, you know?” he added eventually. “There’s always someone breathing down your neck. Jan, I’m hoping he wouldn’t have known that, but Gray?”

Cal let out a rough sigh and looked back at the manor. “I was here the last time Halliday tried to section you. Gray wouldn’t let a sectioning happen, Jack.”

“This isn’t about what he will and won’t allow. This is about how it was done to dig under the skin with the threat of it. Of how they can make the call and pull me out at any time for the shit that Martin pulls.”

“You can’t know that for sure, son.”

Jack tilted his head a touch. “Don’t sit there telling me what I don’t know about him when five minutes ago you were saying Gray knows how to dig into the best. Jan called for Halliday, and Gray’s silence consented. He said fuck all to Jan about the consequences of calling Halliday in.”

Cal searched Jack’s eyes. “He’d just seen Light rip the ribs out of someone’s back. His head wasn’t in the right place. He would have calmed down. And you… you know the MC. You’ve been sectioned before. You know Halliday would only help—”

Jack laughed, so bloody hard. “You don’t fucking get it, do you? This wasn’t Grayhelpinganyone.” He wiped a hand over his face, then looked at him. “You’ve never been sectioned, have you? Because you can have the best care out there, and Halliday, he’s top of his fucking field, where I love the bones off Craig, but it’s still a living hell. You’ve never blacked out in one room to wake up in a padded cell, one nurse curled into a tight ball behind you after you’d battered him, thinking he was part of some other nightmare. You’ve never woken to restraints around your wrists and ankles as you lie there, your head rebounding with laughter at you because it knows it’s the real jailer, keeping me locked up where I’m forced to sub to a stronger personality, no ropes ever fucking needed. You—” Jack cut that off there. “Vince held me and Jan for two weeks, drugged and raped us both until we couldn’t tell night from day, until I couldn’t tell what piece of reality fitted where. But I lived it forsixmonths back there with Halliday, forced to piece it altogether again and again until all that was left was the need to crawl under the bed and cry no more. But I felt safe there. There were people there to help, ones I know who have no tie to Vince and his head games. So yeah.” He nodded. “Doesn’t matter how much he says he’s nothing like Vince, GraywasVince back there for a moment. They both were. Because they damn well took what’s supposed to help back into a threat, into me being drugged and locked away simply because I hadn’t fucking walked the straight line correctly after someone painted it in blood on the floor. So now there’s no fucking safe place left anymore.”

Cal looked away, and Jack looked down at his hands.

“It cost me Martin,” he said flatly. “I cost me Martin.” Jack frowned. “I couldn’t… I just couldn’t step outside of my own fucking head and hurt long enough to ignore Gray’s burn, and wait, just step back, control the fall we were both heading for.” He looked towards the forest. “But for fuck’s sake, I didn’t know what had gone down, what Martin had done, why he’d done it. I wouldn’t fucking hurt either of them. Ever. All I had was Gray coming at me, and the disease… it spreads, bloody burns under the skin until all that’s left is to burn all my anger out in his. I told Martin to fix it because I’d had enough. And I really had back there. The absence, being thrown back into one, all the anger and hate directed my way, I… I didn’t want it anymore. I still don’t want it fucking anymore.” He snorted. “And for once, in his goddamn life, it scared Martin too. So he went in and did what I made him for. He took the shit whilst I called quit. Again. So I’m back to pretty much thinking I’m the one who ultimately causes all the shit like Gray said; that I should take fucking responsibility for it and stay locked up in a place I don’t even feel safe anymore.”

Cal stayed quiet for long moments. “We….” He seemed to struggle, but most people did when faced with disorders. “We all deal in our own ways, son. Some disassociating with physical distance like me, others with emotion, you… you with that rather unique head of yours and Martin.” Cal offered him a sad smile. “Yet here we are, us two. Still sitting close by despite the damage done and not knowing why it’s been done. You—”

“Don’t.I’monly sitting here now because I can’t fucking drive. And it’s there: Gray would even use that against my ass to get me locked up if I tried to drive away. I’m only sitting here now because I don’t know how to take one fucking step away from this bench without Martin despite hating the fuck out of him over the shit he’s pulled. And now I’m back to hating a part of myself I hand on heart don’t feel would fucking harm anyone here intentionally, and that takes me full cycle over me betraying all the hurt Gray and Jan have been through in the past twenty-four hours, and not bloody trusting a thing my head’s telling me.” Jack held back tears and tried to control the anger. “And then Martin….” He looked away. “I learned long ago that you can never really get rid of another personality, certainly not Martin. But theycansleep, they go dormant. Days, weeks, months… even years at a time. I slept for nearly five months. Martin… he was gone for close to seven years. And now…? Martin was under my skin long before he touched anyone else’s. I’ve never met him beyond scribbled notes and video clips.” He touched his heart. “But I felt him here lately. I still need to feel him rightfuckinghere because it’s scaring me too much to face Gray on my own. So this, this bench? It’s all that’s fucking left. It’sallI have fucking left.”

“Jack?”

It came so softly, and as Cal got to his feet and moved out of the way, Jack cast a brief look behind him and groaned.

Jan came over and crouched down in front of him. Tears streaked the fever in his cheeks, and he stroked at Jack’s. “I know you’d never hurt me, baby. But for a moment, I thought, I….”

Yeah, Jack could see right there what he thought. That he’d known what Martin was up to. He’d seen this look so many times through the years, and Jack snorted so bitterly as—

“You’re scared, baby? You’re…” Jan’s face creased. “Martin… fucking vicious with how he played this, but he was right.Youwere right abouthand on your heartbloody trusting him, baby. Martin put it right. He—” A tear slipped free. “But we… we lost him. We lost—”

“Martin?”

Jack glanced back off to his right.

Gray stood close to the lamp post, hands in his pockets, his look down at his feet. He shrugged, then wiped a hand over his face. “We lost….”

He didn’t finish it. It looked like he couldn’t as he headed over and sat down heavily next to Jack, head down, hands running through his hair. “Fuck. Not Martin. Not now, Jack.”

Gray sat there and called Martin before looking at who sat right next to him, and Jack dipped his head.

Yeah. Over the past few hours, they’d made it right between them. He didn’t know what had gone on to cause that, but the change was… gutting: how Gray’s first thought was Martin in this moment. How it felt the blame came his way again, only this time for losing Martin when ithadbeen made right between them.

“Yeah, you know what? Fuck this. Fuckyou.” Jack got up, forcing Jan back, but a grip to his wrist off Gray pulled him back down. The tug to get him sat beside him was rough, vicious, and Gray shivered as though he still tried to control his anger and stay in control.

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