Resist

29

"After everything today I just need to make sure you understand something." Jack's voice was raspy, his eyes locked on mine.

There was a pause in which he seemed to be collecting his thoughts. Then he added, "Actually, I need you to understand everything."

I was startled for moment, was Jack really choosing to open up to me fully? It was unexpected to say the least. Jack was such a closed of person, sometimes seeming unreachable. The recent progress had been leaps and bounds but I'd still had my doubts about ever receiving the full story of him. Now, I found myself ready to soak in his every word, eyes trained on him. Subconsciously, I scooted closer and our legs pressed together.

”It just all needs to be said to make sense, I want you to know why. And today was such a reminder of the imminence of death to us that I feel a need to share now, before it could possibly be too late." He spoke so seriously of the possibly near end that it was scary but highly understandable. The words came from someone who had been living this dangerous life of refute to the rule for a decent time now. Jack understood fully the risk The Recovery took with their actions and existence but I had brought a new realm to the game: someone he cared for. And greatly if I knew him as well as I felt I did.

"I want to know," I coaxed him, "Tell me whatever it is that you feel the need to share."

He took another moment to gather his thoughts, perhaps deciding where to begin. I could practically hear the gears whirring inside his brain, thinking.

"As you know, my family is gone," Jack began. He had never said to me before that they were dead, all of them, but it seemed to be an assumption he wanted me to make. I wondered if he was unable to say the words himself, to say aloud that his family was dead. "I've never told the details of how it happened, it was horrible." An actual shudder passed through his body, his long muscles contracting momentarily as he thought of the story he was about to tell.

I moved a hand to his knee, just a small amount of contact, to reassure him. He met my eyes for the first time since he began this conversation. It was a quick amount of eye contact but it must have given him the ability to continue because he did.

"When The X came to our home that day, my mum pushed us into the hall closet, my sister and I. It was just in time too, the front door was knocked in moments later. We heard my mum yell and the shouts of the soldiers. It sounded like they were breaking things in the kitchen. There was splintering wood and the metal of the pans hitting the floor. Not even searching for anything, just destroying for the sake of fear.

"Geneva, that was my sister's name, she screamed when we heard someone grab the doorknob of the closet. She hadn't meant to, it just happened. My mother of course tried to keep them from opening it. The last sound I ever heard her make was a gasp of pain when they stabbed her. Then the door opened and they grabbed Geneva. She had been standing in front of me, hiding her little brother, and so they took her without seeing me amongst the coats. But I could see them; they didn't close the closet door. She ended up on the floor beside my mum, two bodies with blood flowing."

He paused here, taking a deep, shaky breathe. I didn't know what to say, I was shocked into silence. He had seen his family murdered, seen his sister stabbed even. It was horrible.

"The weird thing is, I just have this vivid picture in my head of them laying there dead, the puddles of their blood mixing together as I just stood in the coats, completely stunned. The soldiers left, moved on to another home, as soon as they thought everyone was dead in mine. I guess my mum putting up a protest had made them decide to kill.

"At least nothing like what almost happened to you happened to them, I would be even more scarred then I suppose." A dry laugh came from him, obviously finding no humor. It seemed to me more like a small laugh of hatred towards The X and their infernal ways. "None the less, I did see them murdered when I was fourteen and it's just something I can never shake from my mind, it's always there behind my eyes. And every time harm comes to someone close to me, it just goes on replay; the memory just floods me. When I stood today looking at James and Will in the infirmary, all I could really see was those mixing pools of blood and how my hands had been coated in it after I had kneeled there for hours crying and shaking their bodies."