Hell's Greatest Weapon

Chapter 39: Faith

"Where are we, exactly?" 

"Mount Vaea."

"Samoa?"

"That's the one."

You looked around at the dull green foliage and random flowers that spouted from the ground, heard the birds singing overhead, felt the mist of water hit against your face as it fell from the waterfall a half dozen yards in front of you.  A jungle, that's where you were, and before you knew it Chuck was a few steps ahead of you, walking through the plants and random trees until he reached the full opening the waterfall made.  It was thin enough, the waterfall, but that didn't make it any less spectacular; it fell from twenty or so feet up and cascaded down, over a mass of rocks until it collected in a pool below.  There was a perimeter around the pool of relatively cleared area, making it easy for you to walk toward the waterfall once you were near enough to the pool of settled water, so when Chuck did exactly that, you were quick to follow.

Finally Chuck sat on a rather large boulder a couple yards from the waterfall, turning so that the fall was just off his left shoulder.  He signaled for you to sit beside him, and while a part of you wanted nothing more than to argue, you obliged.

"So you're here about Dean."  You only looked at the man, your eyebrows rose before you nodded once while silent disbelief washed over you.  It was about time.  "So it appears that even after years of knowing he was going to be your end, you couldn't stay away."

"So it would seem."

"How do you think this is going to end?"

"I'm not really at liberty to say."

"Well you called the meeting," Chuck shrugged and turned his attention to the water.  "You must have had some sort of game plan, a presentation, an offer you wanted to throw out."

"No," you shook your head, your hands now fiddling with each other while you shook your head, "No, my only plan was to beg." When you looked over at Chuck to see him smiling softly, you shrugged and focused back on your hands in your lap. "So I guess that's what's happening."

"Robert Louis Stevenson is buried here," Chuck said all at once, the statement out-of-the-blue and you felt your eyebrows scrunch together as you whipped your head over to look at him in a small reflection of your confusion.  Chuck, having noted this, only pointed forward with a lazy hand.  "He spent his last few years here, decided it was where he wanted his body to stay.  Great guy, kind enough and he had a head on his shoulders that surprised a lot of people." Chuck shrugged, "An agnostic, but I suppose it could have been worse."

"What exactly does he have to do with anything?"

"He knew the balance of good and evil and how they were supposed to be together, not separate."

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?"

"Yes." Chuck nodded at that before picking up a small stone from the boulder and throwing it into the water, watching with a sly smile as the stone skipped several times before sinking.  "Yes, that's what I'm referring to."

You tried to think about how this might be used to help Dean, how applying the works of a long-dead man might provide you with a solution, but came up dry.  The classic tale of splitting the personality into two separate parts was well known enough, but how it related was beyond you.

"The whole point of the book was to stress how important evil was to good and vice versa," He said, finally, after spending a moment to look at you and smirk at the confusion on your features. "A decent man wanted to be rid of the evil, to separate it from him entirely, therefore creating Mr. Hyde."