Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children: One-Shots

Abaton's Shadows (Jack 'Caul' Bentham)

Spoilers:

1. Hollow City

2. The Library of Souls

3. Slight 'The Desolations of Devil's Acre' Spoilers?

Warning(s):

1. Angst

2. Slight Violence

Time seemed to freeze as a trickle of blood slid down Caul's forehead, its glistening red an evident contrast to its electric blue glow.

Caul let go of Noor in shock, leaving her to fall to the floor, where she lay alive, but spent.

He raised a giant hand to his forehead. It came away with blood, leaving a red stain where it met his hand. The electric blue glow was escaping the liquid, slowly flaking away into the air.

'What've you done?' He roared in disbelief, a hint of fear on his face.

The blue light was rapidly fading from the blood still running down his face. He seemed to be shrinking; slowly, almost unnoticeably, returning to his normal height.

He was now clawing at the air, desperately trying to salvage a mere particle of that light, but it slipped through his fingers. He was now shaky on his feet, stumbling as his own weight brought him down. The blood from his forehead was now blinding him, running into his eyes.

He raised a shaky hand, trying to clear his vision; pull himself back together, but it was of no use. He was falling apart faster than he could save himself, and the pieces were way too lost to put back together.

The peculiars were now watching silently, the ruins of Abaton towering over them, waiting to see what would happen. They were exhausted; if Caul managed to pull himself back together, he would be able to crush them in mere seconds.

He was on his knees by now, gasping for breath. An unseen force was pulling him down, forcing him to give up.

A few of Caul's own branches had begun to make their way around his throat, choking him.

He was, in a way, working against himself. In the end, he had become his own greatest threat.

Caul was desperately grasping for his life by now, but his form was unraveling by the very fiber of his being. There was absolutely no way he could save himself.

He was writhing on the ground where he lay, in the grip of a terrible nightmare. He was trying to say something, trying to rip off the branches around his throat, but they tightened as he tried to pry them off. That didn't stop him from trying, though. He was still striving to say something, to utter his last words.

He was almost as tall as an ordinary man, his leaves dry and dead, as he would soon be.

'Remember me...' He rasped, every word an endeavor. 'For we all have something to fight for.'

With those ominous last words, he gave up. He lay on his back, his eyes on the stars, his posture one of a relaxed man, going to sleep after a long, hard day. He sighed almost longingly. His life seemed to leave him, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He died where he lay, beneath the shadows of Abaton. In the end, his obsession had been his demise; his life choices his end; his toil his denouement.

'For the one who breached its walls, drank its power, his success shall be his quietus.'

The war was over.

They buried him right where he'd died, beneath the shadows of Abaton. Miss Peregrine knelt beside his grave. There, right where his blood had drenched the ground, a small shoot had sprung up. It would soon grow into a tree, no doubt about it.

She hummed as she ran her fingers over the sapling's green leaves. This had all happened because she hadn't cared for her brother enough as a young Ymbryne. She wouldn't make the same mistake once more; she'd tend to the sapling until it grew into a strong, tall tree.

Jack would never be a God, but in the end, he'd been her brother, and that was all that mattered. He was misguided, wayward, corrupted, but he would always be her flesh and blood.

Her eyes flitted to the sky, now bright and blue. She knew he'd had potential. She wondered if he'd been nurtured the right way, he'd make an important figure in Peculiardom's history; as someone who'd saved Peculiardom rather than corrupted it.

In the end, he was nothing more than a memory. She still feared the way he looked at her, with such hatred and latent envy; but she'd never been able to stop herself from caring for him. Even after everything he'd put her through, she still didn't want to let go of him.

In fact, she wondered if she'd wanted to forget him at all. She wanted to remember him for all the honorable things he'd done, not his despicable acts, and if she did remember him for all the honorable thing he'd done, would it be such a short list, after all?

There was a lot to puzzle over, forgotten and buried feelings to unveil.

Right now, however, her brother lay right where he belonged; beneath Abaton's shadows.