Chapter Text
Jack walked by Ann's side, their hands linked and their fingers crossed together. It has been exactly one year since the events of Kong and although the actress is still grieving over the loss of the ape, she learned to live with it, taking his death as the loss of a loved one and facing it, moving on with her life.
The love between them has only flourished since then. Jack has helped her stay on her feet and he lives faithfully for her, enlightened by her love and her soft words, which make him forget the horrible events on the island.
Both are now walking into the night, returning from a restrained and friendly play that they had gone to see on one of their dates. They share laughter and whispers of love , while her heels and his shoes resonate on the New York asphalt. It seems they never had anything to worry about.
In front of them, not far away, there is a small commotion of voices. When they get a little closer they can see four men around the figure lying on the ground of a homeless. The voices come with dirty insults and worn laughter and a little cry from the man on the ground.
Both of them, with their good hearts and empathetic souls, cannot help but stop at such an act. Ann puts her hands to her mouth in disgust and sadness at the cruelty of these men to the poor little figure tramp and Jack yells at them to stop.
"Stop! Go away!" Jack yells as he runs towards them, Ann a few steps behind him. The men turn with a start and run away before checking if they are the police or not.
Jack reaches the man on the ground shortly after, kneels down trying to find out if the homeless is hurt and is horrified when he turns him around and sees his face.
"Jimmy ?!" The name escapes from his lips in a strangled sigh and he can hear Ann's little scream upon arrival. Tears run down the sailor's dirty and too thin face and Jack can see the blood on his lips, the bruise on his over-sunken cheekbones and the gap in his dusty forehead. Thousands of questions come to his mind and he couldn't understand how or why.
"Jimmy god ... what ...?" The writer is not able to finish the question as he tries to move the boy onto his lap, he can feel the feverish burning when he touches his face trying to make Jimmy recognize him. Ann is kneeling to the side, holding the boy's hand lovingly as the tears fall down her own face and she keeps rubbing the sailor's knuckles, trying to erase the bone mark by stretching the skin too much because the boy is too thin .
"J- Jack ..?" Jimmy fixes his big blue eyes on the writer's face and doesn't seem to recognize him exactly. Jack nods "Yes" there is a sad smile on his face and he wipes the boy's tears as a tear rolls down the bridge of his own nose. "Why did you leave me?" James's words are jumbled together but he is able to fit a sentence into his shaky, confused and weak tone.
Then Jack remembers. He remembers having Jimmy in his arms after Skull, still on the boat, the boy crying in his arms from the horror and pain of the losses and the accumulated fear. He remembers to promise to take care of him.
However he did not.
After that and the initial shock, he only had eyes for Ann, for Ann who was crying in the cellar as she stroked Kong's fur. Upon arriving in New York, he realized Ann's rejection and sank into his own misery, forgetting everything else. After the death of the ape king, Ann was in his arms and he could only see and think about Ann and forgot about anything else beyond.
He looked into Jimmy's eyes, fear, weariness, sadness and treason visible in the eyes of the famished and feverish boy. He realized that he had broken his promise.
"Jimmy god I'm sorry ... I didn't think ..." Again Jack looks speechless and he hates being speechless. Jimmy looks at him and although his eyes are unfocused with fever, fatigue and malnutrition, Jack can see the pain burning in his dilated orbs and pupils. "You promised me ..." Jimmy cries and Ann raises her head looking at Jack because she doesn't need too much to understand what is happening and she feels angry with the writer. However, she also knew that Jimmy had lost Hayes, Choy and Lumpy, he had lost his family and she didn't do anything either. She was mired in her own misery and she did nothing.
Jimmy gasps in physical and emotional pain and lets out a cry, closing his eyes and raising his shaking hands to his face. "I don't want to live anymore ..." he sobs. And if the heart of the actress and the writer had not yet been broken, it would have been broken now. Ann takes his face, pushes the boy's hands away, and wipes his tears away. She kisses his forehead regardless of the dirt on his skin while the tears do not stop falling down their faces.
"Give us a second chance, let us fix it" Ann asks between sobs, her lips don't leave Jimmy's boiling forehead for long and she couldn't even look him in the eyes. "Please" The woman asks through tears, her makeup completely shattered. Jack moves his hands, one is under Jimmy's head while the other brings him close to his chest. He tries to warm him because he can feel him shivering in the winter cold and because he needs to feel that the boy is still there, suddenly realizing that he can't handle the thought of letting Jimmy die.
"Please don't leave me again," Jimmy asks in a broken sob, his left hand holding onto the actress and his right hand weakly pressing against the writer's coat. "We won't" Ann speaks for both of them. No more is needed and Jack is moving. He wraps his coat around the shaking figure of Jimmy, who is scantily dressed for the time, and lifts him into his arms carefully because he's sure the boy can't handle walking to the couple's apartment. He realizes how light he is. He hadn't lifted Jimmy before, but he'd held and touched him enough times to get an idea of how much he weighed, and while he was never much, now he was alarmingly much less.
"He's too skinny" Jack whispers, it's more of an understanding to himself than a message to Ann but she's there, adjusting the coat to warm Jimmy and kissing his forehead while still crying.
Then they start walking and neither of them cares about the looks of New Yorkers on the streets or their neighbors in the building. Neither of them cares what they will say of an actress and a writer carrying a poor starving and sick kid in the middle of the night.