Whatever Jaq's past might have been, it didn't take a lot of coaxing now to get her to come to him. He had almost expected resistance this time — at the very least, hesitance — he had even prepared for the girl to pretend like she was asleep, which would have only annoyed him further. Instead, she fell into the circle of his arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to come together. And he didn't resist, either.
... maybe, by the light of day, things would be different. Roark couldn't imagine ever making the same invitation then, with all the realities of their world standing in such stark definition. Over the course of the day, her presence had frustrated him so many times that more often than not he could scarcely bring himself to look at her. Maybe, some part of him was afraid to look at her — afraid to look back, and find nothing but windswept ash trailing in his wake. Find that the single set of footprints were just his, same as they had always been. Nothing more and nothing less.
But now she was near, and she was real. As she shifted into him, Roark's arm came up to wrap around Jaq's head as she pillowed it in his bicep. Her arm wended into the warmth of his coat and around his chest, and he turned into her slightly to accommodate. She burrowed into him in the same instant; his lips accidentally found her hair, and he froze.
But she was talking, as if she hadn't noticed a thing, and eventually she drifted. Her heart rate evened out, her shivering stopped, and Roark finally allowed himself to inhale what felt like his first breath in a very long time. For a moment it was as if all his life had been lived submerged beneath water, and he was finally coming up for air at last.
He didn't know when — or how — he fell asleep. When he woke the next morning, the arm that had spent the night cradling Jaq immediately let him know just how much it hated this new sleeping arrangement.
He didn't get up right away. His hand was at her temple, the pads of his fingers hovering at her hairline... so close to brushing it all back, to smoothing the leaves and snarls from the dark waves. How long had it been since he had touched another person this way? She would never need to know.
In the next instant, Roark loathed himself for it. He transferred much of this anger onto Jaq, forcing them to break camp immediately, not letting the woman so much as take care of her morning necessities before they were already headed back out to the road. Not like they'd drunk enough water for that, anyway.
Then, to his complete surprise, the road ended; it didn't continue on to the main freeway, as he had expected, but rather diverged off into the woods, unexpectedly becoming someone's (or a former someone's) driveway. Suddenly terrified, and not knowing what else to do, Roark led them onto the property, stepping cautiously with his gun unholstered. Jaq's hand may have found his arm, but then, that may have only been a tree branch dragging at him — he couldn't afford to glance down and find out.
The trees folded back like a curtain, and a house loomed over them. They climbed the porch; Roark brought them to an abrupt halt before turning to Jaq, his face gray and severe.
"Wait here," he instructed. "You hear any commotion from inside, you run. I mean it this time."
With a very stern look, one that he hoped had silently conveyed enough daggers to pin the woman effectively to the spot, Roark turned and cautiously let himself through the door. He hated to leave her unarmed, but in that moment, he needed the protection more than she did — besides, the woman was probably just as likely to accidentally shoot herself at this point as she was to gun down a potential assailant. If he was quick about it, and stuck close to the windows, he could survey the place and keep an eye on her all at once...
He overturned every table and kicked in every door. The house showed no evidence of being lived in recently. Returning the pistol to his waistband with a sigh of relief, he made his way back to Jaq.
"All clear," he said. And then, without so much as a hint of a smile, "they have running water."
It was different with Roark. No other man had even remotely tried to help her before, they had only tried and succeeded in hurting her. They helped each other it seemed, and for that reason alone she seemed to trust him more than any other person she had met since the end of days. Plus, sharing body heat would help warm her up, and freezing to death didn’t exactly sound like a pleasant idea. So she had moved over as soon as he had made the offer, and when she was comfortable it wasn’t something that she regretted.
She was pretty sure the soft kiss was an accident, as he stiffened immediately. A miscalculation of where her head was as he shifted to get closer to her and get comfortable as well. She didn’t comment on it, but accident or not, it was still very nice, a gesture she had experienced before and had come to dearly miss. Even if there was no intention behind it, even if it was a mere coincidence, it reminded her of all the times before when it had been done on purpose. And it was comforting.
With all the stress, and all of the walking they had done, and the fact that she had barely fed herself anything at all, Jaq was exhausted. It had been a very long day, and she had only eaten the once. That in itself wasn’t exactly anything new, but she wasn’t accustomed to expending so many calories throughout the day without being able to replenish perhaps even a quarter of what she had used during the day. She slept the whole night through, not waking once from nightmares, or anxieties of being found again. In Roark’s arms, she figured she was as safe as she was ever going to be in this world.
The sun rose up over the line of the horizon, lightening the skies from the pitch black they had been. Morning had come, and it was time to get back on the road.
Being woken up, she was hardly given the time to sit up and rub the sleep out of her eyes before they were up and walking again. She had grabbed up her pack and ran after Roark, sifting through her bag without looking for something in particular. Pulling out her hairbrush, she held the handle between her teeth as she zipped her backpack closed and shrugged the straps over her shoulders. Pulling her hair over to one side, she untied the rope she had used the day before yesterday to tie back her hair when he had first arrived in her grocery store, placing it in her pocket for safe keeping.
And then she brushed out her hair as they walked, the ritual being one she had done nearly every single morning since childhood. If there was no other remaining part of her morning routine, she had at least kept this. It was simple, and maybe even silly to care about in this day and age, but Jaqueline still enjoyed making sure she looked half-decent. She had truly cared about her appearance before, and this was about all she could do to ensure she looked pretty now. Even if her clothes were in need of a good washing, as well as herself, her hair could at least look nice.
They walked for a while, and she made sure to follow behind him in his footsteps again, not straying from the path he set out for them. After a couple of hours, the street turned into a driveway, which lead to a house. As Roark pulled out his gun, Jaq grabbed onto his other arm, wanting to make sure she didn’t get separated from him. He was the only real protection she had.
He lead her up onto the porch before turning to face her, and instructing her to wait here while he searched the house, and if she heard any kind of turmoil coming from inside to actually run away this time.
“Okay,” Jaq barely whispered, nodding that she understood, before watching him disappear inside with an uneasy stomach. She waited, listening intently, poised to run at any sign of a struggle coming from the house. She hated that she would have to leave him if he was in trouble, but she wasn’t about to not listen to him again. After all, he was the one who knew what he was doing now, not her.
A few minutes later, Roark reappeared, telling her the house was all clear. And then he said the four most beautiful words she had heard since she had left her beloved apartment in search of food. They have running water. A huge smile broke out onto her face, and Jaq couldn’t help but actually be excited and let out a very quiet squeal of delight. She could have a shower, or even a bath! She could wash her clothes; wash her spoon properly instead of licking it clean. She could drink as much water as she wanted without worrying about it running out! This was quite literally the best news she had heard in a very long time indeed.
“I’m going to go find the bathroom and have a shower! I’ll make sure not to use up all the hot water if there is any,” Jaq said quickly, darting into the house, and looking room to room until she found the bathroom with shower accommodations. After closing the door, she placed her backpack on the ground, before stripping off her clothes and hopping into the shower. They did have hot water, and Jaq let out a very happy sigh as she began to wash her hair.
It wasn’t more than five minutes before she was out of the shower again. She had mastered the art of the quick shower when going to school. Sometimes there hadn’t even been time for sleep, so she had needed to be able to shower as fast as possible before running off to a midterm or exam with a cappuccino to-go.
She dried herself off with one of the towels from under the sink, squeezing her hair until it was relatively dry. Pulling out her nightgown from her backpack, she slipped it on, and the cardigan she had been wearing the day he found her. They were the cleanest articles of clothing she had, as she did anything and everything to keep the nightgown as clean as possible. She couldn’t let it get stained. It was very likely to be the last nice thing she owned.
Jaq sat down on the lid of the toilet, brushing her hair once again, and simply revelling in the feeling of being clean and smelling nice once again. Once she was finished, she picked up all her clothes and stashed them in the backpack once again, using the towel to brush as much dirt off of her shoes as she could before putting them back on. Running back downstairs to the laundry room she had found earlier, Jaq piled the small amount of clothes she had inside. There wasn’t enough for a load.
Finding Roark wasn’t difficult.
“I need your clothes,” Jaq murmured, holding out her hand expectantly, as if this were the most normal thing in the world for her to say. It was plain as day Roark wasn’t planning on handing them over though. Time to go back into lawyer mode.
“I’m putting on a load of laundry, as this house currently has the resources to do so, and I don’t have enough for a load on my own. It wouldn’t make any sense at all to do two loads of laundry when we only have enough clothes put together for one. And when you’re done your shower, clean clothes will be in the process of being ready and you won’t have to get into dirty clothes with a clean body. So mister, hand them over and scoot upstairs to go have a shower.”
One hand was on her hip, and the other still stretched out, waiting for his clothes.
News of running water sent his companion practically scurrying off into the house, leaving Roark to wonder if telling her had been a mistake. Where once his life had been a dismally overcast series of days there were now bursts of Jaq's sunlight penetrating the gloom; but rather than welcome its warmth, he continued to resist, to shield his eyes and turn his head away, as if any light at all would blind him. Fear and pain, survival and solitude: those were the things he knew best. True, living by their punishing strictures bled him slowly, would probably kill him eventually, but they had served him well so far, and they wouldn't be pushed to the side so easily by the arrival of this girl...
... but maybe he was overreacting. Maybe he needed to cut her some slack. She was young, and she obviously still had some capacity for joy left. He had been just as deluded himself, once — hadn't he? He almost couldn't remember anymore. Certainly nobody he had traveled with so far had ever found any reason to be happy.
He heard the faucet switch on upstairs, and sat down exhaustively on the swinging porch seat. He took great care not to move after that: the shrill squeal of the rusted hinges frightened him. It was too loud, and it sounded like some animal's death knell. What he wouldn't give to see an animal again, even a dead one...
Roark leaned forward suddenly, bringing his hands (and, subsequently, his gun, which he hadn't even noticed drawing) recklessly close to his furrowed forehead. Animals? What the fuck was he even thinking of? Did he entertain these lofty ideas normally, or was Jaq burrowing into his head now too, when she wasn't busy burrowing into his arms? What the hell was the matter with him?
He ruffled his hair contemptuously, as if hoping to dislodge the girl from his brain. When that proved fruitless, he hauled himself to his feet with a long-suffering sigh and made his way into the kitchen. He was just setting his gun down on the table when he heard the pad of feet and glanced up.
She took his breath away, the same as she had two days before. Standing there in her stocking feet in that ridiculous slip of a dress, her emaciated body engulfed by her sweater — nothing about this picture he should find attractive at all, but he felt that old, familiar lurch all the same. Her legs were covered in scars, and that poorly administered bandage, but they were a woman's legs; the slip shifted and shimmered against her body with every subtle movement, but he wasn't really looking at her body anymore, he was looking at her face. And he didn't have the energy — or will — to look away.
He stared into her eyes, and for a moment he felt completely lost. Technically, he was lost most of the time, but a man driven by purpose was never really directionless. He didn't feel directionless now, either — he felt compelled to move. But he remained standing still, because he didn't want to know where it was he was moving toward.
I need your clothes.
"Not a chance in hell." His response was automatic. He wasn't even making a concentrated effort to be rude. But Jaq was persistent, and when she started into that maddening thing she did where everything she said made the most logical sense and he was left feeling like a fool again for resisting, his temper rose. He didn't even bother with attempting a second rebuttal; he was already ripping off his coat and all the layers underneath, piling them up in her arms. The man beneath the clothes was just as filthy, with a body hardened and weather-beaten and mapped with just as many scars. There wasn't an ounce of fat left on him to redeem the brutal landscape, to even hint at the possibility of gentleness.
He'd dispense with the rest of his clothes later, once he was in the shower.
"What are you, a lawyer?" Roark asked, just to fill the sudden silence. He only half-expected an answer.
Once again, she won. They were small victories, nothing really all that consequential, but it felt good to know she was right. It felt good to stretch out and reclaim the person she had been before. Slipping into that old way of being was like coming home, which was rather ridiculous as she wasn’t at home and she never would be again. Her parents’ house, her apartment, the cabin at the lake, she would never see them again. But using logic and driving home a point that was irrefutable, it was the closest thing she was going to get to being back in that life again. She’d never get to finish her degree, never get to have another court case, never really be able to do what it was she had imagined herself doing since she was a kid. These fleeting moments were all she had, and they were invigorating; she could feel her heart beating, the breath coming and going from her lungs. She felt alive, instead of just feeling like a fleck of the ash that fell from the sky, going this way and that with no real sense of purpose or belonging.
As he shrugged out of his clothes, and piled them into her arms, Jaq stood in silence, letting him huff and puff over her being right again. It wasn’t her fault that she had been practically trained since she was a kid to be a lawyer like her dad had been. It was just something she had picked up as a child, and then started to turn into a career. If the world hadn’t been turned upside down, she would probably have been studying up in her apartment right now, for some upcoming exam. What month was it? She had lost track, but there had always been lots of tests. Countless nights had been spent at her kitchen table, textbooks and notes spread across the wood, with coffee in one hand and a highlighter in the other while she revised.
So when Roark grumpily asked if she was a lawyer, a small, sad smile turned up the corners of her lips.
“I was in law school – second year, when… well… I was in the process of becoming a lawyer.” She replied quietly, hugging his clothes tight to her chest before disappearing down the hall to the laundry room and leaving Roark to have his shower.
Tossing his clothes in the wash with her own, Jaqueline looked through the cupboards, finding some soap even to toss in. In a little bit, their clothes would clean and actually smell good again. She was long had been so pleased to have had the shower, and she figured that maybe Roark would be too. How long had it been since she had had running water available to use? It seemed like forever. So maybe the shower would help put Roark into a better mood, because it had certainly helped her feel like the world wasn’t so bad.
There was something else that might help too – dinner. She could feel her own stomach begging for something to eat, and made her way to the kitchen again, looking to see what was available to work with. There wasn’t much; some old crackers, various cans of soup, some rice, and some packages of dried fruit along with things she couldn’t put a name to and therefore did not want to touch. However, when she went and looked in the last cupboard, she found something she had never expected to see again, an unopened bottle of cabernet sauvignon.
She was dreaming. Or maybe she was hallucinating. Or maybe she had finally just died and gone to heaven. Hesitantly, Jaq reached out with her fingertips, pausing right ahead of touching the bottle. What if when she touched it, it disappeared? Taking a breath for courage, she reached out and grasped the neck of the bottle, and nearly dropped it when she realized it was actually there, that it was real and she wasn’t crazy.
Dinner fell together easily after that. To go with the wine, Jaq grabbed two of the cans of soup that were labelled ‘grilled steak with hearty vegetables’ and poured them into a pot. Bringing it to a boil, she hummed the tune of one of her favourite operas as she stirred, before letting it reduce. Though the rice was a bit on the stale side, she made some. While both were on the stove, she flipped over the laundry.
It was the most blissfully normal afternoon. If it weren’t for the fact that she didn’t know this house, that it wasn’t her own, it could’ve passed as the time before. Everything was perfectly ordinary. She had had a shower, used her lawyer skills, done laundry and was cooking dinner with a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge. While it wasn’t the beef bourguignon she was known for among her friends, and there would be no tiramisu for dessert, it was the best she could do.
The laundry finished, and she put Roark’s clean clothes just outside the bathroom for him. She dressed back into her jeans, and tucked the slip into the waistline, keeping the sweater on as well. It would be good to look somewhat nice for dinner…
Their meal was ready, and she doled out two full plates of rice, before spooning the thickened sauce with meat and vegetables on top. She opened the bottle of wine, closing her eyes and taking a good inhale of the aroma. It was delectable, there were actually tears in her eyes it smelled so wonderful.
Shaking her head with a hint of a chuckle, she placed the two plates at the table, pulling out silverware for the both of them from a drawer, and poured herself a glass of wine. Looking up as she heard footsteps, Roark entered the room just as she put down his glass of wine and put the bottle back down on the table.
“You have impeccable timing – dinner is served,” Jaq smiled, sitting down across the table from where Roark’s plate was. He seemed to enjoy his space, and she hadn’t wanted to crowd him by sitting beside him.
“It isn’t much; the rice is a bit stale, and I mean it’s not beef bourguignon or anything, but it’s the best I could do with what I had to work with… On the plus side, we do have what I am pretty sure is the last bottle of cabernet sauvignon in existence. So yeah… I hope you like it,” Jaq finished, explaining the meal, and taking a sip of the wine with a contented sigh.
The last thing Roark expected was to be right about her. Granted, he was usually right about most things when it came to people... he had pegged Hughs for a power-hungry snake since the beginning, but as with most snakes, the general populace rarely realized they were in danger until it was too late.
But for the most part, he'd been right about Jaq just as many times as he'd been wrong about her. In the world he lived in, the existence of a girl like her made no sense. Which at the end of end days, led him to one of two possible conclusions: either she was the anomaly, or he had been wrong about his world altogether. He thought the former more plausible and, what's more, easier to come to terms with.
I was, she said. It was only when a response came that Roark realized how he had phrased his question... he had asked as if she still was, as if the world hadn't retired them all permanently. She left him standing there, more than a little introspective, as she carted his clothes off to some deserted corner of the house. It occurred to him that he didn't like her being out of his line of sight for too long, but he decided not to dwell on the implications of it... instead, Roark left to go locate the shower. It didn't take long.
The water that streamed off him and pooled in the drain was soot-black with ash, and then rust-brown; occasionally, an older wound or bloodstain made the water run red. Roark bowed beneath the showerhead, bracing himself against the wall with one muscled arm, and watched his history flow away from him.
True to her word, his clothes were ready for him by the time he had finished. He shrugged back into them, grateful for the homecoming. Everything back in its place, better than before.
Except for his gun. Too late Roark realized his firearm was absent from his pocket... he hadn't thought to take it into the shower with him, because he hadn't planned to take a shower at all. His thoughts had been too occupied with this latest revelation about Jaq, and now she occupied his thoughts once more as he bolted from the room, his footsteps thundering down the stairs. It wasn't the thought of being without it that sent him running — it was the thought of her, left alone with it...
He would have heard the gunshot over the noise of the shower, wouldn't he? He would have heard it, just as he had heard it all those years —
Roark pulled up short in the doorway of the kitchen, panting from exertion. But the scene laid out before him couldn't have been further from the one of his imaginings. There was prepared food decorating the table, more of it than he could ever remember laying eyes on. And there was Jaq, standing at the head of the table and smiling, a bottle of wine in her hands hovering over two full ruby-red glasses. His gun untouched.
Roark was so caught up with the scene that he had no idea he might have been making one of his own. He had barely taken the time to shave, and only managed to pull his coat over one arm before the image of Jaq lying in a pool of her own blood had him sprinting out the door. Even now, he couldn't be sure that this was the reality of what he was seeing... had he found her there dead after all? Had his mind finally snapped, and was the dinner, the smiling woman, a hallucination to help him cope?
The aroma that hit him suddenly like a ten-ton punch to the face made him think otherwise. Roark in took a sharp breath, and wondered how he hadn't noticed it before — it permeated the entire house. He guessed flying into a blind panic wasn't really conducive to receiving input from his other senses.
"You..." He couldn't get the words out. He sat down in his chair like a sleepwalker as Jaq struck up conversation, sipping at the wine he was too afraid to touch.
But he wasn't afraid for long.
Several glasses and a few helpings later, and Roark felt like he'd never be afraid of anything again. He was content to just let Jaq do the talking; in lieu of any voiced approval over the meal, he let his appetite speak for him. About a half hour into the meal he let his gaze wander to the girl's pack, piled beside his own in one of the vacant chairs. Before he could think to stop himself, he pulled a book from one of the half-opened compartments: To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.
"Why do you have this?" he asked quietly. He could think of a million and one things more essential to the woman's survival that might fit in that pocket, and yet...
Sitting in the comfortable chair in the kitchen, at the dinner table with a warm, hearty meal before her and a cool glass of wine in her hand, Jaq felt like she had died and gone to heaven. Even though she knew that this was real, she had cooked it all for goodness sake, it felt surreal. It was too good to be true, and as Roark sat himself down at the table, she could almost pretend that she had just moved from her apartment into a bigger place. Granted, if she had been the one decorating the building, it would’ve been much more sleek and modern, understated but done with class. She missed her marble countertops, the stainless steel appliances, the wine rack filled with every kind of wine for every occasion…
It wasn’t what she had been accustomed to. If this had been before, she probably would’ve wondered what the hell she was doing in this place, drinking a cheaper wine than she normally bought, eating a poor man’s gourmet meal instead of something she would’ve made with purely fresh ingredients and cooked until it was perfect. But this wasn’t before, it was after.
And in this new time, this new era of the world, when the wine passed her lips, Jaqueline was sure that she had never been happier. The shower had been wonderful, it truly had been excellent to wash away all of the dirt and grime that she had accumulated over the time since she had last had a shower or a bath, but this was exquisite. This wine she would’ve turned her nose up at before was now the most extraordinary thing she had ever tasted. She was quite sure that nothing, absolutely nothing, tasted as good as this wine did.
“I used to hold the best dinner parties,” Jaq mused quietly, remembering the days before when she had invited her friends and classmates over for a dinner and study party. They would eat, drink, and be merry for a while, before pulling out the books after dessert.
“Anytime anyone wanted to get together, they would always ask if we could do it at my place because they knew I couldn’t have people over without feeding them,” Jaq continued, smiling at the glass of wine in her hand, really more just reminiscing out loud than actually speaking to Roark.
“I used to make only the best; coq au vin, rack of lamb with sautéed vegetables, truffled scallops with braised leeks, duck a l’orange… And the same went for dessert, of course! Tiramisu was my specialty, but I could whip up a mean chocolate soufflé, crème brulee, or a molten lemon cake with a fresh blueberry sauce…”
She missed that life. She missed it dearly. What she wouldn’t have given for just one more dinner party with her friends; to have everyone alive, and together again, chitchatting over dinner, drinks and dessert. When she had lived with her parents, they had a chef, who she had enjoyed pestering as she grew up, learning how to cook this and that. It had proved very handy, but when she had tried to tackle something new, she had made sure that their chef was on her speed dial – just in case.
But as Roark dug in, and finished off his plate, Jaq stood from her place, taking his plate and refilling it not just once, but twice. The wine went perfectly with the meal. Even if it was a poor man’s gourmet, it was the closest she was ever going to get to have again, and Jaq savoured the dinner as well. If she closed her eyes, she thought she could hear the distant echoes of their chatter from long ago, a laugh, satisfied mmm’s as dinner was served…
Jaq was pulled from her memories and opened her eyes as Roark asked her a question, holding out her copy of To Kill A Mockingbird on display, obviously referring to the book.
A fierce blush stained her cheeks as she reached for the book, holding it close as if he might try and take it from her, or toss it aside for wasting valuable room in her backpack on such a thing of the past.
“It’s my favourite,” Jaq murmured quietly, avoiding Roark’s gaze. “I couldn’t bear leaving it behind… This copy was my dad’s; he gave it to me when I moved out of their house and into my own apartment.”
She was blushing — ? How much had she had to drink? Roark's eyes narrowed as he watched her face heat up beneath his gaze, but he allowed her to take the treasured item all the same. Maybe she was embarrassed — maybe she had every reason to be. What good were books, in a world that revered neither knowledge nor achievement?
Still, the sight of the tattered cover, of the yellowing pages within, had done something to him. If Jaq wouldn't meet his eyes, he made no attempt to meet hers, either; instead, he stared at the floor, taking an unnecessarily angry swig of his wine as she took his plate. He had been pulled back in time, back to the days when he had been surrounded by books... by people who loved books. Quiet, intelligent patrons had found escape from an outside world fast going to shit by coming to visit him; in their last days together as a functioning society, the library had been an escape for many, a cathedral in its own right when all the others had long since exceeded maximum capacity with howling, repentant souls.
But it had been a mirage after all — just as the characters and conflicts on the pages of Jaq's book were a mirage. He watched as she busied herself over the sink, cleaning their plates and polishing their used utensils. There she went, being hospitable again. Roark believed every word of her story, could see her fitting perfectly into the life she had described to him.
"That was the only book Harper Lee ever published," he said to the woman's back. Why was he even talking? She could probably care less what he had to say. What young person had ever picked up a book and wondered at its history, at its origins? Scowling now, assured of the fact that nothing he could say on the subject would possibly interest her, Roark rose to leave the room.
"Hold onto it. Don't ever let anybody take it from you, even me."
He took the wine bottle with him when he went.
An hour later, after he had assured himself that every door and window was locked up tight as a tomb, Roark retired to one of the two upstairs master bedrooms, content to be left alone with his gun and the bottle of wine. He hadn't seen Jaq since dinner, but he could hear her rustling around downstairs; when she came up, he turned the lamp on the table down low, signaling that he'd rather not be disturbed. He didn't go to bed straight away, however; he sat in the corner chair, staring at the far wall and ruminating long into the evening. At one point, the wine had emboldened him enough to actually want to get up, and actively seek Jaq out — if she still had her book with her, maybe he could get her to read it to him, just one chapter — but in the next instant he felt stupid for even considering the request. Besides that, he didn't know how to ask, and borrowing it from her outright would make him the worst kind of hypocrite.
At the very least, he should have thanked her for the meal. Maybe even wished her a good night, or confessed to more than just a passing knowledge of Harper Lee's bibliography... for example, he could have told her it was his favorite book as well, and he was a man who had read a great many in his life. That's what the old Roark would have done — he would have opened up, as surely as the books he loved, even if it did require a bit more coaxing. The old Roark wouldn't have holed himself up in some dead person's room, seeking asylum in rudeness and the bottom of a bottle.
If Roark went to bed cranky, it was his own damn fault. He fell asleep quickly on a full stomach, but it seemed like mere moments later he was jolted awake... by what, he didn't know. Disoriented, he lunged for his gun, nearly toppling out of bed — he hadn't expected to be in a bed — the safety was off before the silhouette registered in his doorway and familiarity set in.
"Jaq?" he asked blearily.
The book, this nightgown, they were relics of the past she had brought to remind her of who she had been once, in a time where the world was perfect for her and everything had been going her way. The book was there to help her remember what a sense of purpose felt like, how knowing you’re right where you belong felt like, of a childhood where her world simply consisted of her dad who taught her right from wrong and how to tell the difference even in murky waters, how to see things from another’s point of view, how to be compassionate. To Jaqueline, To Kill A Mockingbird was more than just the only book ever published by Harper Lee, it was everything she had once been and dared to dream to be. It may have been a foolish thing to pack in a backpack with limited room, where every inch could be packed with things for your survival, but it wasn’t foolish to her. While clothes, and food and water were necessary to daily living, she needed a way to keep her sanity, to retain the morals she had been brought up with and believed in her whole life, and that was hidden away in the pages of her book. Even just holding it, she could practically recall the feeling of sunshine beating down on her while swimming up at the lake, before begin called in for dinner and then to read the book with her father before bed.
The dishes practically washed themselves. Or, rather, her hands went through the motions, while her mind was elsewhere entirely, back to reminiscing of days long past and unattainable again. At least until Roark spoke once more, telling her not to let anyone take it from her, even him.
“I won’t,” Jaq replied quietly, but it was doubtful whether or not the man heard, because as she spoke and turned to glance over her shoulder she saw he had already disappeared. Sighing, she lamented the loss of the wine bottle, but was grateful for the still partially full glass she had kept for herself on the table beside her book.
Once the dishes were washed, and put away back in the proper places she had retrieved them from, she picked up the glass of wine, and tucked her book back into its safe pocket, zipping it closed.
Yet again, she ended up all alone, with no one for company but her lonely self. And truth be told, by herself, she wasn’t nearly as bright and cheery. She had thrived on connections with people, friends, lovers, her family, her cat. She hated being alone, even just being in the same room as someone but not talking was preferable to her solitude. But it seemed that Roark was a man who needed his space, and so no matter how she missed his silent presence in the room, she left him be.
She took to sitting in the living room, curled up with her feet tucked under her legs in an old recliner, sipping occasionally from the last glass of her wine and just staring out the window at the barren landscape, reflecting. She didn’t know what to make of Roark. Sometimes he was almost friendly, like earlier during dinner, offering the tidbit about her book. Sometimes she was absolutely positive that he loathed her and wanted nothing to do with her. And then sometimes, sometimes he seemed to almost genuinely care about her, about her wellbeing, almost worrying over her. What set of circumstances had turned him into who he was? What things had happened to him since the end of days that made him maybe even a little afraid of opening up again? Whatever they had been, whatever hardships he had incurred before, she vowed then and there to do her utmost to keep from being one of those hardships. He had been kind to her, in his way, and she didn’t want to cause him any trouble.
Finishing off her glass of wine, Jaq washed it and put it away back up in the cupboard as well. Taking off her cardigan for bed, she tucked it inside of her backpack, where she could claim it from again in the morning. Climbing up the stairs, she paused in front of the closed bedroom door Roark was obviously in, hand half poised to knock and say goodnight before she thought better of it. Shaking her head, the man wanted his space and who was she to encroach upon that? This might be one of the few times they would be able to be truly alone for a while if they set out again in the morning. She would give him that; she wouldn’t take that from him.
Walking into the room that was left for her, Jaq turned on the light and closed the door.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she combed her fingers through her hair, getting rid of the tangles from that day this way as she had foolishly forgotten her brush downstairs in her backpack. Once that nightly routine was finished, the sun had set and night had fallen. It was as good a time as any to sleep, especially if they were leaving in the morning. She should spend as long as possible in the comfort of a real bed again, covered with warm blankets and her head resting on a pillow.
Pulling back the covers, she dropped them and took a step away from the bed when she saw the sheets were covered in stains. Red and white, obviously blood, and she didn’t want to know what the other was. She didn’t want to know. She clenched her eyes shut tight, pushing away the memories that threatened to consume her. Taking a step away, she turned towards the closet, hoping that there would be fresh sheets in there, but that was not what she was met with.
Bloodied handcuffs and rope, a whip, various knvies costumes, gags…
Stumbling backwards, the memories took over.
There were so many men, the group of men who found her in her grocery store, chasing her through the aisles, picking her up and dragging her back to the front, beating her when she tried to fight back or escape. They tore at her clothes, she could feel them pulling on the sleeves, on the torso, trying to get it open. She could feel her arms tied behind her back, she could feel the tears sliding down her cheeks as she struggled. She could distinctly hear the raucous laughter at her screams, at her tears, at her pleads for mercy.
She could feel their hands in her hair, forcing her head up. She could feel their bruising fingers all over her body.
But somehow this time she managed to break free.
Scrambling up, she bolted out of the room, fumbling with the door handle of another before stumbling inside, still in a panic, eyes wide as the tears kept falling, nearly hyperventilating, unable to catch her breath. It felt like she would never be able to breathe properly, deeply again.
For a moment she thought she was safe, before she heard a man’s voice, and the panic started all over again.
“No, please! Please, not again!” She begged, hoping that maybe this one time it would make a difference as she back peddled out of the room and into the hallway, struggling to find a way out of this hell.
“Take it all! Take it all and leave me alone!”
If he had been confused before, he was fully alert now. Where he was, his shared circumstances with the woman in the doorway, it all came rushing back to him in an instant. As Jaq backed into the hall, Roark was already out of bed and launching himself after her. By now a scenario was playing itself out in his head: someone had entered the house while he was sleeping, someone had found her. He had been so stupid to leave her alone —
But as he tried to wrangle her, he realized too late that he was the one she was afraid of.
"What the hell?" Roark cursed as she lashed against him, twisting just out of his reach. Frustrated, the man dropped his weapon and took hold of her with both hands, hoisting her against him and hauling her kicking and screaming and crying back into the relative safety of his own room. He was trying to help, goddammit, what was with her — ?
He slammed the door shut behind him with his foot, but it was too late — they'd already caused enough of a commotion that whoever it was who had startled Jaq would know precisely where to find them. Except, now that he actually had a chance to listen to her broken sobbing, he suspected there was no one else — only him. Only his irrefutably male presence in a strange, darkened house.
He should have let her go. She was probably terrified, being manhandled like this, but Roark did the exact opposite; instead of releasing her to curl up on his bed or hide in some corner, the man forcefully turned her around until her back was pressed flush to his chest, his arms wrapped securely around her neck and torso. He didn't exert enough pressure to pin her arms, but there was little room left for her to continue to wage her battle, either. Roark had no idea what instinct told him to hold the hysterical woman this way, but he hoped it wasn't a misguided one.
"Shhh," he whispered. She continued to spasm against him, but he just held her harder, willing the strength of his arms to calm, not frighten; willing his embrace to shelter, not imprison. He had no idea if Jaq could differentiate in her current state, but damn if he wouldn't try anyway. Damn if he'd let her be afraid of him again the same as she'd been that first night.
"You're all right now, no one's going to hurt you." He continued to murmur to her as if to a spooked animal, as if to even speak above a whisper might set her off. "Nothing's going to happen to you, I've got you." He rocked her gently against him until he felt her loosen, felt her relax, though not by much; then, he turned her around and guided her further into the room, seating her on the bed. In the low light his face was a valley of shadows, but she seemed lucid enough to recognize him now. "Stay here, all right? You're safe here. I'll be right back."
He needed to retrieve his gun, but more than that he needed to find the source — the cause — for Jaq's outburst. Roark backed quietly from the room, keeping eye contact with the woman until he was out of her line of vision; he returned moments later, as promised, although his face was noticeably paler.
"You're sleeping here tonight. We're leaving first thing in the morning." His tone left little room for argument, though he doubted Jaq would protest. He set the girl's pack down against the wall before crossing to the chair in the far corner, with the clear intention of giving her the bed.
She wasn’t fast enough, she had never been fast enough. Whenever she had tried to run, they had always caught her, so what would make this time any different from all of those? But there wasn’t much else she could do, so she ran. She ran away as fast as she could, but it wasn’t fast enough. An arm went around her waist, trying to pull her back, and she screamed, twisting out of grasp as quickly as she could, managing to slip away and put a few feet of distance between them. But the distance was quickly covered, lost ground was gained, and she was in their arms again, both this time.
She was being pulled backwards, dragged back to where they would hurt her, over and over again, taking turns. She would never escape, never get away, it would never end. Struggling as much as she could, she kicked out, tried to grab onto anything she could to slow down the inevitable or tried pry their hands off of her while she sobbed, the tears blurring her vision. She was hopeless. She wasn’t fast enough to run away, or strong enough to fight them off. Was victim tattooed on her forehead or something? Would this just keep happening, until she died? All she wanted was to be left alone!
When the door slammed shut, Jaq screamed again, frantically trying to get to it, to get to freedom!
But, wait a second… there wasn’t a door to slam in her grocery store.
The thought came into her mind, as her back was brought against someone’s chest, their arms wrapping around her tightly while she still continued to struggle against the hold. But she was held still, or as still as possible, and quiet words were being whispered in her ear. Kind, quiet words, nothing lewd or suggestive. This also didn’t fit the scenario that was flying through her mind, what she was so sure was happening.
She was being gently rocked as her mind to started to piece the clues together, to realize that she wasn’t back in the grocery store again with a hoard of men just waiting to peel her clothes off and use her as if she were nothing more than a common whore without having even the decency of paying her.
"Nothing's going to happen to you, I've got you."
No, she wasn’t in her grocery store, she was in a house, and she recognized the voice that was talking to her. It wasn’t some nameless stranger who was trying to rape her, it was Roark, and he was holding her, trying to calm her down. It hadn’t been real; it had just been a memory, an awful, awful memory she had never wanted to recall.
Relaxing a little in his arms, she brought a hand up to wipe dry the tears from her face as she was brought to sit down on the edge of the bed, trying to reign in her emotions from running wildly, to slow her heartbeat down. She was safe here with Roark, he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her like she had been before.
When Roark told her to stay here in the room, that she was safe here, Jaq nodded, biting down on her lip, not trusting herself to say anything just yet. However, as he began to back away, the hand that she wasn’t using to try and dry the tears instinctively reached out for him before she caught herself and forced herself to stay sitting on the bed, as he had told her to. Holding her hands together, she watched as he disappeared from her line of sight, and had to fight to smother the panic that clawed up from inside.
Jaq sighed with relief when he came back into the room, alone. There was no one else in the house; just the two of them and her memories.
When Roark sat down in the chair across the room from her, Jaq got up off the bed and moved over there, sitting on his lap, her hands sliding up around his shoulders, her fingertips digging into the tense muscles to try and keep a good grip on him as she laid her head on his shoulder, eyes wide open and still half-terrified of horrors she couldn’t fight off on her own.
The last thing Roark expected after such an episode was for Jaq to willingly seek him out. The horrors of the room down the hall had triggered something in the girl — a memory, maybe — and she had worked herself into such a state that for a moment he had barely recognized her as the woman he had come to know. But that was damn presumptuous, wasn't it? They had only been travelling together for a few days. Barely time to get to know anybody at all.
But Jaq knew him, there was no denying that. She knew him well enough to know that when she slid from the bed and came to him, he would let her. She folded herself up against him in complete trust, and Roark's arms came up eventually to cradle her there. He felt no dampness against his skin, which was a good sign that she had stopped crying... but every time an eyelash fluttered, he knew it. Every time Jaq shifted, he felt the move acutely.
They couldn't stay in the chair. With a reluctant sigh that stirred the girl's hair, Roark rose and carried her back to the bed, depositing her atop the rumpled covers. He moved the bedding aside before she could protest and climbed in after her. She was clinging to him again within moments.
This made no sense, he thought. Moments ago, she had feared everything with a male shape indiscriminately — why should now be any different? Why with him? He could be just as bad as the figures that shadowed her past. She was putting herself in the perfect position to be taken advantage of — had been all along. Why was he the exception?
He would probably be angry about this in the morning. Once they had put a few miles between them and the house, Roark silently vowed to lay into Jaq about the more trusting aspects of her personality. If she wanted to avoid a repeat of whatever it was that had happened to her, she couldn't go crawling into strangers' arms every chance she got. Whatever this thing was that they shared, he needed to wean her — both — of them off of it. It was for her own good.
But not tonight. Tomorrow would be different, but tonight he would let his guard slip one last time. Tonight Roark would allow a frightened woman into bed with him, and he wouldn't lay a hand on her unless she wanted him to. She could have him on her terms. She could retake everything that had been stripped from her by exercising choice — and if she wanted to be held, he would hold her.
So here they found themselves again, coming together without a word. Roark sighed a second time, and Jaq's cheek rose with the exhalation. Quietly, he took the girl's face in his hands and pulled her up to the pillow, smoothing the hair out of her eyes. He had definitely had too much to drink. His hands felt rough and despicable against the smooth slope of her cheek... maybe the only part of her body that wasn't scarred. But she was cool, and he was warm, and maybe she wouldn't mind the touch so much. He said nothing: just stared into her eyes intently. Waiting.
Why hadn’t she been able to move past all of that? She had thought she had worked through it enough to be able to get on with her life again, that it wouldn’t haunt her anymore. The nightmares, the flashbacks, they hadn’t happened in so long. She had moved past it, regained the ability to put a smile on her face, and put what little life she had back together again and moved on with things. Why did it have to come back? She had gotten past it, she had moved on with her life. She had been so sure that she had made peace with what had happened to her, that she had put it behind her, that she had closed that chapter of her life with a sense of finality. Except, apparently, she wasn’t as over it as she thought.
Clinging to Roark, Jaq bit down on her lip, feeling incredibly frustrated with herself and fighting off tears once again, blinking them away, refusing to cry again. It was horrible, it was awful, it had happened more than once, but it was over. Those people weren’t here, they couldn’t hurt her here. She had a feeling that even if they were, even if those despicable men were in this household, Roark would’ve fought to keep her safe, just as he was holding her now.
She held onto him as she fought with herself, as she tried to push away the feeling that she would never feel okay again. That was a lie. She had been having such a wonderful evening before she had fallen victim to memories she had thought long forgotten. She had managed to move past it before, and she would just have to push through to the other side once again. She may have been physically weak, but it would take more than a few men taking away her ability to choose to break her spirit. She was Jaqueline Adams after all; people had expected great things from her, many accomplishments. And while that future had been stolen from her, they wouldn’t take away her will to survive, her will to do the very best she could with what circumstances she had and to help people along the way if at all possible. That was the woman her parents had brought her up to be, and she wouldn’t forget that just because a few men had hurt her.
She wouldn’t let them win, not now, or even again.
Jaq was somewhat startled, pulled from her own thoughts as Roark picked her up and carried her back over to the bed. She didn’t even have time to protest against being put in the bed alone again, because he slid underneath the covers right beside her. Jaq quickly reclaimed the same position she had the night before when he had welcomed her into his arms for warmth. She could clearly hear his heartbeat now, and it was something that soothed her. This heart was full of goodness, full of decency and compassion. Whether he tried to hide it or not, it was there.
He pulled her up to his level, his hand brushing the hair that had fallen into her face out of her eyes; a gentle, comforting caress, something so very far and distant from what she had been imagining only moments ago.
Looking him in the eyes, Jaq took a deep breath before placing her hand on top of his. For a moment, she kept it there, preparing herself for what she was about to do. Taking a slightly firmer grip, she moved his hand slowly from her cheek, to softly moving down the side of her neck, something that she had actually loved before the world came to a halt, and horrible men had ruined her body for her.
This wasn’t bad, this wasn’t something that would make her skin crawl, this wasn’t something that would make her feel dirty later, dirty in a way that she couldn’t scrub away in the shower no matter how hard she tried… This was actually kind of nice.
Moving his hand across her collarbones, she kept eye contact, grateful that he wasn’t asking any questions, wasn’t trying to move his hand away or do anything more than she was instigating.
Not all touch was something to be hated, something to be avoided at all costs. There was a vast difference between the men who had bruised and tried to break her, leaving reminders in the form of scars on her body, and this. There was no ill intent in this; no harm would come to her from this. This was pleasant, comforting, kind. This was not unwanted.
She moved his hand slowly over her shoulder, and down her arm until she reached her hand where she took his in her own, shifting to fluff the pillow underneath her head. Glancing down to their hands, Jaq almost smiled, the corners of her lips twitching upwards the tiniest bit, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand in a way of thanks, before looking back up at him.
“What did you do, before? I was working on becoming a lawyer, what did you do with most of your time?” Jaq asked quietly, part genuinely curious, and part just wishing to hear a familiar voice to help reinforce that she was safe here. Roark was a man of far greater calibre than those who had attacked her, and while she may have not known him all that well, she knew him well enough to know that.
Roark's eyes remained trained on Jaq's in the darkness, never flickering an inch, though the light shed from the low lamp swam in their depths. Had this been any other time, he would have gotten up to switch it off, terrified that even on its dimmest setting it would shine like a beacon and give away their location. But he was more afraid now of what would happen if he swamped them both in darkness — what Jaq's reaction would be, more specifically. He didn't want to frighten her off to some far corner of the house where he wouldn't be able to find her until morning, though they'd certainly bedded down together in darker places. At this interval he was almost too wary to move, afraid of what might prove too much for her to cope with in her fragile state.
Maybe he should just be himself. She seemed to like that, God knows why. He hadn't cut the woman any slack since meeting her and she'd followed him this far. If only he could remember how to be the man he'd been before all this... just for an hour. The Roark of yesteryear would have been better equipped to handle this situation.
But what she had to work with now was a steely, partially inebriated man of few words, one who hadn't even had the thought to pull a shirt back on in the wake of her relapse. How was it that she didn't recoil from being so close to him? Wasn't this the nature of her fear? He could only speculate; while Roark had a wealth of skeletons cluttering up his own closet, he doubted he understood half of what Jaq was going through right now.
He understood it even less when he felt the girl's hand come up to press against his own, when he felt her slip her cool fingers through the notches in his knuckles like water, like the missing piece of a previously unfinished jigsaw puzzle. He allowed her to lead him downward, his palm smoothing along the arch in her neck, his fingers skimming across collarbones. The roughness of his skin caught at hers, but he could feel her beginning to warm to his touch... really, what was the sense in sleeping in that outfit, if she was going to be cold? Why did she wear it at all? He thought it drove him crazy before simply because it was insensible, but now he couldn't stop thinking about it. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since day one, if he was being perfectly honest.
He would never escape that vision of her. Right now, he didn't know if he would ever want to.
Roark could feel his heartbeat start to speed up despite the angry protests of his brain. He willed his body not to react to her and what she was doing — because while it seemed like an invitation on the surface, he knew it was something different. This was more intimate, more personal, and possibly more important than anything he had ever done before... but the sudden sensuality Jaq had unwittingly introduced into their situation did not escape him. He was all but driven to distraction when she moved his hand beneath the covers, but the exploration ceased there when she joined her hand with his. He concentrated hard on that union until her words called him back to a land of intelligent exchange.
"I was a librarian," he said gruffly, after a moment's pause. Maybe conversation was what they both needed to get their minds off other things. "Atlanta City Public Library. I worked as a bookseller before that."
He imagined she might laugh. He might even feel relieved if she did — there was nobody still living who knew his previous occupation, and he thought that people generally tended to assume the worst. Police officer, former marine, ex-convict... all of those seemed to suit him better from a superficial standpoint. He liked to think it was his discipline that gave others their impressions of him — a discipline that was being sorely tested at present, with Jaq by his side. In an attempt to diffuse the tension somewhat, he passed the woman's hand to his other one; as his thumb took a turn massaging her wrist, he allowed his other hand to roam idly to the dip in her waist, before gliding back up to her shoulder in a soothing motion.
"You would have made a terrific lawyer," Roark admitted grudgingly. He avoided drawing her hand too close to his rapidly beating heart.
They had held her down, beating her and tearing her clothes off, leaving marks on her skin so she could never forget, no matter how hard she tried. She had been beautiful before, every inch of her skin a flawless canvas of ivory. Now she had scars, and they were hardly beautiful. The only part of her body that was the same as it had been before was her face, ironically the part of her that had brought on the attacks. If she hadn’t been pretty, would they have still gone after her with such vigor? Or would they have left her alone? Or would they still have attacked her for the plain and simple fact that she was a woman?
Before, she had taken such pride in her appearance. She had been brought up to accept only the best of everything, and she had come to expect only the best of everything. Her closet had been stacked full of designer threads, even just plain tees and jeans were all designer, and all very expensive. The same went for all of her shoes, various bags and jewelry. But in this world, beauty wasn’t a thing to be grateful for, it was something that she had actually come to quite nearly hate. She seemed to be a bit of a glutton for punishment though, as she had kept the nice things she had had with her, refusing to give them up no matter what happened to her. The nightgown was anything but practical, but it was one of the last bits of her old self she still had.
It was proof that the world hadn’t always been this way, that once she had been a beautiful young woman and loved every second of it, living life to the fullest instead of cowering and hiding in shadows from things that went bump in the night.
But this was nice, this was really nice actually. This wasn’t crude, or vulgar, or despicable. This was something she could get used to.
And then he said he was a librarian. Jaq was to say the least, surprised. She hadn’t really pegged him down to a particular occupation, but librarian was certainly not one that she had been expecting. But the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to kind of suit him. The quiet, the books – maybe his earlier interest in To Kill A Mockingbird wasn’t from some disapproval over her packing choices, but a deep-rooted interest in literature. Maybe she had surprised him by bringing such a book with her, surprised him over the fact that it was her favourite. Granted, it had been among the favourites of human beings for a very long time as it was a classic, but there was a much more personal reason behind Jaq’s affinity for the novel.
“I always loved libraries, spent a lot of time there in law school,”
He had been a book seller before he had been a librarian. So he must have had a love of books then too. Her own collection back at her apartment had been getting rather out of control before the end of days had come. She had books stacked full in her book cases, on top of them to the ceiling, cluttering her coffee table, and another bookcase in her bedroom with her bedside table piled up high with books, folders from school and interning, and her laptop and a bottle of water. Suddenly she missed her old life more than she could bear, missed the direction her life had been going in. Everything had been going so well…
His compliment drew her back from her reminiscing, and put quite the smile upon her face.
“Thank you,” she murmured quietly, wishing that things were different, that the world hadn’t fallen to its feet in its destruction. “I guess you could say it’s kind of in my blood – my dad was a lawyer, had his own law firm and everything… Another reason why To Kill A Mockingbird was my favourite. I wanted to grow up and be just like him, just like Atticus, and stand up for what was right even if no one else would…”
Roark tried to imagine what he would have done back then, had Jaqueline wandered through those double doors and into his life. He wondered what his reaction to her would have been: would he have seen her as just another patron? A talkative law student, a distraction from his work, a disruption to his peace and quiet? Would she have approached him behind his desk and asked for assistance, or would he have found her sitting late at night in an aisle between bookshelves, in a corner far removed from those most frequented, at an hour when he thought himself alone? Would he have spoken to her? Helped her? Befriended her?
Or maybe nothing would have come of it. No interaction, only the briefest of acknowledgements, if she was able to see him at all. He was a librarian. People came for his books, and he was often overlooked in the process.
But the Jaq and Roark of this netherworld... the strangers taking shape in his mind... they wouldn't have stayed strangers for long. He knew it, deep down. There was no avoiding it. Even with a ring on his finger; even with a life waiting for him at home; he still would have seen that dark-haired law student. She would never have been just another face, not to him.
Roark shifted quietly. His roving hand alighted on her shoulder, and he pulled her against him, resting his chin atop her head as she thanked him. For once, he didn't rebuff the girl's gratitude... however ill-placed it may have been.
"That book..." He didn't know how to continue. Didn't know how to tell the woman in his arms that he, too, had once aspired to be like him — to be like Atticus. True, his ambitions had never extended far beyond the walls of the library, or often even the covers of whatever novel he was immersed in... but once, long ago, he had dreamed of having what Atticus had. He had dreamed of being the kind of father Harper Lee envisioned, the kind of father he had always envisioned.
But he couldn't say it, not out loud.
"I meant what I said. Don't let it go."
Maybe he wasn't even talking about the book anymore. Maybe he was trying to warn her: don't become like me. He had let it all go, left everything about himself and his life behind in the dust of civilization. He had become someone else. This was who... what... he had to be now. A survivor. Survivors didn't stand for what was right — they stood for whatever they could take, by whatever means necessary. They looted the graves of the world and bolted at the first sign of trouble. They lived on as the rest perished. They lived alone.
But here he was, with his arms wrapped around another. Roark pulled away only long enough to switch off the lamp; when he returned, he buried his face in her hair.
"Get some sleep."
Had they unknowingly met before? Had she been so busy with midterms and deadlines that she hadn’t taken the time to notice him, sequestered in a far corner of the library with her work, only stopping momentarily for more coffee from the little café next doors, or to go to the bathroom? Had he been there all along, and she just had been too busy, too focused on her life to even notice him? She hoped not. She liked to think that if he had been working when she had been there, she would’ve at least said hello to the librarian in passing, a friendly smile before heading off back to her work. She didn’t know, wouldn’t know. But she knew Roark now, in this life, and she couldn’t help but wonder what he had been like before. They had all changed, undoubtedly, just some more than others. She had tried to stay as much herself as possible, and she had felt herself fading before Roark wandered into her grocery store and into her life, falling prey to fear and victim to doubt. But she had a better grip on herself again, especially with cooking earlier and the wine. That was who she was, a friendly socialite with a taste for the finer things in life, not a frightened young woman scared of every stirring noise she couldn’t account for. She didn’t want to have to be that person, she hated being that person, hated being afraid, of jumping at every shadow that moved.
She wanted her life back; she wanted to take it back from the world, from the men who had hurt her, from the fear that she would die alone one day. Maybe the world wasn’t any better, maybe there were still men out there who would hurt her, maybe she would die alone one day, but it wasn’t this day.
This day she was safe, this day she was with a man who would protect her instead of harm her, this day she had no fear of dying or dying alone. This day, she had been herself again for a moment of time, and she wanted to hold onto that, to try and keep bringing pieces of herself back from the depths of her mind, from the recesses she had retreated to in the wake of the new world. She had made dinner, had a bottle of wine, and was being held. That was one hell of a good start.
Jaq shifted as he pulled her against him, her head pillowing on his chest one more, wrapping one of her arms around his torso. This was lovely. This felt like the closest thing to home she had experienced since the day the world died and was reborn a terrible place in its afterlife. She could get used to this.
“I could never leave it behind,” Jaq murmured in reply, reiterating her previous statement. Leaving that book behind would be like leaving her father behind, leaving herself behind in a past that she wasn’t ready to give up. Her chosen profession may have been obsolete, but she could still stand by the values that the book had taught her from a young age. In this new world, yes, it had brought her a lot of heartache, but it had also brought her Roark, and that wasn’t a bad thing from the time they had spent together so far. In fact, he was probably the best thing that had happened to her since that fateful night so long ago. Maybe that wasn’t saying much, one good person amongst all that bad, but what would’ve happened had she turned him away? This certainly wouldn’t have happened, and this was nice. Maybe it didn’t make up for all of the bad things that had happened to her, but it helped her regain a little hope, and a little hope could go a long way.
“Goodnight Roark,” Jaq quietly responded, closing her eyes and falling asleep. No nightmares plagued her, even after her flashback earlier in the evening.
She woke when the dim light began to filter in through the draped windows. It was probably still early, and it seemed that Roark hadn’t woken up yet – his breathing was still even and slow, his heartbeat a steady pace in his chest. So Jaq continued to lay there for a moment, simply enjoying human contact without any ill intent, looking around the room with the area she could see without moving her head. She didn’t want to wake him. He would probably huff and push her away in the morning light, and for a second longer she just wanted to enjoy this simple moment, this moment that could’ve been mistaken for waking up in the time before.
And then the moment was gone, as she heard a loud commotion in the not-so-far-off distance. Raising her head to look at the window, Roark had woken from the noise. Pulling back and sitting up, Jaq hardly dared to breathe in that moment.
Someone was coming home.
Roark's sleep was dreamless. It was the sleep he preferred, but so rarely achieved; his dreams were always of a past life, of a world that no longer existed, and to him these were worse than the nightmares. At least in a nightmare he knew where he stood — it was going to end, and end badly for him, at the hands of one inconceivable horror or another — but in a dream his mind was transported to an unreality that fostered expectation. Expectation that, when the veil of sleep lifted, it was his waking life that would reveal itself to be the dream.
He preferred the static white, the nothingness. Alcohol granted him this to an extent, though alcohol was understandably hard to come by. But the wine they'd helped themselves to did wonders for him now, and he slept on heavily even after Jaq woke beside him. It was Jaq's sudden startled movement, however, that called him back from the void, and Roark roused groggily. He raised himself up on his forearms beside her.
That's when he heard it, too. A car backfiring. Voices. The man surged up out of bed; he didn't have to look behind him to know Jaq did likewise.
"Your things," he commanded. "Go!"
They had to move quickly. An awful voice in his head warned that they were already too late, but he pushed past it as he grabbed his shirt. His brain compiled a mental a checklist as fast as any old world computer, but still it was too slow — they had to grab every belonging, replace everything they had taken, make the beds... oh Christ, how had they left the downstairs? Did Jaq still have things in the wash?
The raucous voices of the gang were too close and he couldn't think on it anymore. He had to get them sequestered somewhere, hidden away, somewhere with a lock... that would slow the homeowners down. But it wouldn't be enough. He followed Jaq doggedly out into the hall as they entered her room of horrors. "Don't look at it. Any of it," he ordered. Neither of them could afford a relapse right now, especially not with the reality of the phantom torturers so near. "Keep your eyes on me if you have to. Grab all that you can." He maintained eye contact when she needed, all the while crossing to the window and flattening himself against the wall. When Jaq's eyes dropped momentarily to her pack, he looked away and craned his head around the corner. They were already in the driveway.
"Bathroom," Roark said suddenly. "Now." He hustled her out the door; the cherished book dropped from her bag behind her, and after a split second's hesitation he dove to retrieve it. He was in the process of stuffing it back into her pack as they ran down the hall. He pulled them both inside the bathroom and bolted the latch just as he saw the front door swing open below.
He stood staring at the door, at his hand on it, listening. He heard laughing, but beneath that he thought he heard the sounds of scuffling. Of sobbing. He didn't look at Jaq, didn't want to see her face.
Then he heard footsteps on the stairs, and a decision was made. He wheeled and grabbed Jaq around the waist before she could protest, lifting her up to perch on the sink. He had his gun drawn before she'd even settled in. He clicked the safety off and raised it to her skull.
One bullet. He only had one left, the one always meant for him. They'd kill him anyway when they found him, but they'd do worse to her.
His hand was shaking and he forced the barrel against her temple, attempting to still the tremors. Despite the disorder downstairs, the men advancing the staircase seconds away from discovering them, it was silent as the grave in the barricaded bathroom. He had to do it. His eyes were as blue as the lost sky as they stared into hers. He wasn't asking for permission, but maybe he was asking for forgiveness. Maybe he was asking for something else entirely, something he had no right to ask for.
Maybe he just wanted to hear her voice one last time.
A car had backfired, and it had cut through the silence with a deafening roar. Voices were speaking to one another over the noise, everything was just so loud. It was terrifying. Those who were loud were dangerous, and knew it. They were capable of hurting people, killing people, and she and Roark had unwittingly spent a night in their house, drank their now priceless bottle of wine, ate their food and had used up some of the hot water to have showers and wash their clothes. They had essentially done something that was considered unforgivable in this day and age, and she knew it. The home had looked abandoned though, it looked like no one had been living in it for quite some time, but that wouldn’t matter, not to these sort of people.
Someone was coming home, and it didn’t bode well for the two of them. Things certainly weren’t looking up, and Jaq tried her best to see the best in every situation, looking for the silver lining in the clouds. This time the clouds were only pitch black, swirling and threatening to begin to pour down a whole lot of rain.
She was stuck, frozen, contemplating the possibilities of what could happened to them when these people walked into the building until Roark’s command snapped her back into the present and into action. Scrambling off of the bed, she slipped on her runners and threw on her coat over her nightgown, picking up her bag last and not even bothering to dig out her brush like she usually did every morning to brush out her hair. It was the one part of her morning routine she had been able to keep, but this wasn’t exactly an average morning. It suddenly occurred to her that she may never brush her hair again. There was quite a high probability that she was going to die this morning, wasn’t there?
So everything was all for naught then? All of her struggling to survive, all of the relentless determination not to give in, to help others no matter how much trouble it got her in, or helped her in Roark’s case, it brought her here to this house, where she was going to die. Really? Life would be that cruel? Life would take away everyone and everything she had ever loved, try and rip away any shred of hope, and now they go to this house, and after having a wonderful night (mostly) last night, they’re going to die?
If it wasn’t so heartbreaking it would almost be hilarious. She couldn’t tell if she wanted to be sobbing or laughing right now.
Walking back into that room, Jaq realized she wanted to sob, but she couldn’t afford that luxury at the moment, and so she kept her eyes locked on Roark’s, brimming with tears she wouldn’t let fall, her jaw clenched shut tight until she had to look down at her pack to quickly wipe away the tears with one sleeve.
Being ushered into the bathroom, Jaq tripped and tried to lunge after her book as it slipped from her pack, but she was only pushed further into the hallway and away from the book. Glancing back over her shoulder, she was relieved to see Roark pick it up, and then feel him shove it back into her pack as he caught up and pushed her faster into the one room with a lock in the upstairs of the house.
As she was brought up to sit on the sink, the gun pressing hard into the skin at her temple, she ripped the book back out of her bag and held it out to him, before putting it in his hand, and stubbornly wrapping his fingers around it.
“Take it, please,” she quietly sobbed, “they don’t deserve it. Keep it safe, for me.”
She took a moment to adjust herself to the idea that she was about to die as the people who owned the house were beginning to come up the stairs with their loudness, their stomping feet resounding through the walls like battle cries. Another sob bubbled up out of her throat and escaped before she could stop it.
“Goddamnit, I want to live,” she whispered, before bitterly laughing the preposterous thought away. It wasn’t possible. Roark was doing a good thing for her with this. How many bullets did he even have?
Leaning forward, she kissed his cheek, before hugging him one last time, moving slowly enough that he could keep the gun aligned with her head.
“Don’t blame yourself, please. This wasn’t your fault. Goodbye Roark, thank you for everything…”
Roark wanted to laugh — or not laugh, just release some hopeless wild sound — when Jaq pushed the book into his hand. How was he supposed to keep it safe when he couldn't even protect them? But he couldn't think like that, it couldn't be the truth. He was protecting Jaq now — the last thing he would ever do for her was keep her safe.
But why? a small voice in the back of his head whispered. Why does it have to be now? Roark's grip on his gun only tightened in response. The footsteps stalled partway on the stairs outside as their owner conversed with someone in the foyer... there were sounds of laughter below, and some thwarted struggle... they had brought somebody home with them, some new victim to torment for their own depraved entertainment. They were so close to finding two more on the other side of this door. Roark's whole body hummed with fear, vibrating as uncontrollably as Jaq's; his free hand on the girl's arm was doing nothing to steady or calm either of them.
This was the worst possible time to relive a memory, but he did anyway.
"You have to do it, Roark. Please. It can't be me, it has to be you."
He sits on the bed, staring at the gun laid across his open palms as if he's never seen or operated one in his life. Months ago, this would have been true. But this isn't months ago.
His wife is crouched beneath him as if at an altar, gripping onto his knees. Begging. He can't look her in the face anymore, but he realizes with dread this is nothing new. The situation he had been avoiding — the looks averted, the comments ignored — has come to a head. Now he's required to answer.
"Please."
"You can't be asking me this, Fionna." His voice breaks; he was a different man back then. "Why are you asking me this?"
"Please." She isn't crying, she's exhausted all her tears. She's become a well, dry and empty and dark and out of his reach. "I can't live this way anymore, but I can't take my own life — if I do, the Lord will never let me enter His kingdom. You have to be the one to do it, it has to be you."
Roark rears up suddenly, displacing her hands from him. Her touch repulses him. "Do you have any idea how selfish you have to be to ask me this?"
"You're the one who's being selfish!" Finally, a human response; she is on her feet as well now, quaking with rage. She hasn't exhausted all her tears after all, and he sees them start to fall through a film of his own. A part of him fights the process, screams to stay hydrated, but it's no use. "You want to live in this world, not me! Why are you keeping me here?"
"Why are you giving up?" Roark shouts. His hand grips the gun at his side just for something to hold on to.
"It's over, Roark! There's nothing LEFT!" The man turns, chastised but unbeaten. His wife reads his decision in his shoulders and scoffs. "You know, you really are the selfish one. You can't stand the thought of going on alone, so you rob me of my own choice and force me to stay here with you."
"Your choice would make me a murderer!"
"Maybe you hadn't noticed, but I'm dead already, Roark! Whether or not I find peace is up to you, but I can't do this anymore!" He leaves so he doesn't have to hear more.
Fionna doesn't find peace, but the next day she finds his gun.
He couldn't do it then, but he had to now. He had to let Jaq go. All it took was a spark in the firing pin and a spark in his primary motor cortex to pull the trigger. It didn't require dredging up buried memories or thoughts.
"I want to live."
This time it wasn't a memory. Roark's eyes snapped open, but she was already leaning in; her lips grazed his cheek, and she enfolded him in her arms. His gun was still pressed against her temple.
A moment passed. More than a moment, Roark realized it was the moment, and he had missed it. His resolve had already crumbled... no, not crumbled, he could feel it building to a crescendo within him. For so long, he thought he was the only one. They both knew the outcome of the other side of that bullet, but what about the outcome on the other side of the door?
He heard a muffled commotion. It sounded like one or more captives had broken loose downstairs, because whoever's footsteps had been mounting the steps were suddenly pounding back down again. The foul laughter was gone, replaced by screaming and swearing and the sound of a gun discharging into the ceiling.
I want to live.
"Damn it, so do I."
He pulled Jaq down from the sink, guiding her hand into his as he shoved the door open. The coast was clear on the upper landing, but the bedlam down below... but he couldn't think about that now. They had to find another exit and that was as far as he allowed his thoughts to extend. He suddenly remembered seeing a gutter downspout installed on the opposite end of the house and steered them both towards the furthest room. A ferocious kick and the door burst open; he helped to lower Jaq down out the window first, before following suit as fast as he could manage. Once they had both safely landed on their feet, they took off for the woods.
They ran for at least a mile. It wasn't far enough for his tastes, but he could feel Jaq lagging and last night's wine weighing him down, so without thinking he grabbed the woman and threw them both down into a bank of ash. It erupted in a flurry around them — he doubted it would conceal them if anyone wandered by, but did it matter? Hysteria set in, and he started to laugh.
Her eyes were shut tight, not wanting to see Roark’s finger pull on the trigger of the gun pressed against the side of her head. The last thing she would see in this life was her kind stranger, the man who had stepped into her grocery store looking for food and unwittingly stepped into her life at the same time. Even if she had the chance to do things over, she probably wouldn’t have changed anything – aside, of course, of their current predicament, the charged situation that had arisen that morning. It had been a whirlwind of escaping potentially deadly encounters, the silence of walking out on the open road, and cold nights spent huddled together mainly for warmth, but maybe also for a little companionship outside of the loneliness this new world had forced upon their hearts. Solitude was a heavy burden to bear, and she for one, had been grateful for someone to spend some time with, even if half of that time had been spent running away from some form of threat.
A moment passed, and another followed. She had unknowingly been holding her breath, and her lungs were beginning to protest, wanting to inhale another breath of air, of life. But this was supposed to be the end. She had accepted it, or as much as one can come to accept your imminent demise within a matter of seconds. Her life was over, but at least for the most part it had been a good life. The time before had been wonderful, spent with her parents, friends, fellow students and aspiring lawyers. She had even known the sheer joy of winning her first court case. She had seen a good deal of the world in her days, and watched it all fall apart as well. There were unpleasant memories, horrible memories, and memories she wished she would never have to remember ever again. But they were not as plentiful in number as the memories she cherished.
At his words, her brown eyes flew open once more and Jaq was pulled down from the edge of the sink, gasping for breath as the barrel of the gun slid away from her temple. Roark’s hand found hers once more, and while Jaq was trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she was still alive for the moment, she was dragged out the bathroom door and into one of the bedrooms. Roark opened the window and helped her out of it to slide down the drainpipe, quickly following suit. Once they were both on the ground and standing, their hands found one another again as they set out at a run for the forest they had emerged from the day before.
They were quite literally running for their lives.
With every breath, every beat of her heart, Jaq pushed herself to keep up the pace. Life was quite an incentive, and every step away from that house put distance between them and what they had thought to be truly the end. Every step meant there was a chance that she would stick around to see tomorrow, to have more tomorrows even after that, and hopefully add more memories to outweigh the bad. She was terrified the occupants of that house may yet come after them still, but exhilarated at their break for freedom.
There was just one problem, her body wasn’t made for running away – she had gotten by hiding herself from the world, and she just wasn’t used to running for long periods of time even with adrenaline coursing through her system. Jaq’s legs began to tire and her muscle burn at the exertion, but she kept going, not daring to glance back. She forced herself to keep going until Roark’s arms picked her up and tossed the two of them down into the ash, letting out a small surprised squawk as her feet left the ground.
Roark began to laugh, and the madness was catching. Even though their current situation wasn’t even the remotest bit funny, Jaq could feel herself start laughing as well.
“We’re alive… we’re actually… alive,” she managed to get out between the bouts of incredulous laughter. Yet again they had managed to elude death, and she had thought that for sure they had been beaten that time. They wanted to live, and they would do just that, live to see another day and hopefully many more after that.
