Chapter Text
There was something intensely gratifying about being angry with another person. There was something intensely gratifying about fighting another person. Whether with words or with fists. The sharpness of them yelling, of them hitting and getting to hit and shriek right back in their face. The cowardness of submission long gone as he stared at Darius. Not quivering with fear as he had so many times from his parents but with outrage. Not only because of Ben’s hearing.
Were. Were. Were. Rattled in his head, down his spine, through his veins. Something that refused to leave his skin. Were. Were. Were . They didn’t need him anymore. Wasn’t that the whole goal? To make them disattached so when he stayed they didn’t try and fight too hard. So Yaz would let the promise break without too much push back.
Bile rose in this throat. Too fast to measure, to understand. Not the instinct to puke but something like hardly held back tears reaching a breaking bone. Gagging and spitting when he’d sobbed so hard he couldn’t breathe.
But Ben wasn’t sobbing. Wasn’t moving.
Darius' silence was a potent, physical thing in the air between them. The fermented rot of words unsaid. Molding between them until there was no choice but to throw out the offending fruit.
This is exactly what you wanted. Stop acting like a coward, Pincus, get your head out of your ass. This is a good thing.
He’d forgotten how much the loneliness hurt. The isolation that had him murmuring to himself, narrating his actions in small whispers. Skipping words because it didn’t really matter, no one was following the instructions anyway.
There was a freeness to that kind of loneliness. He wasn’t alone of his own volition- not at first, not meaning to push Bumpy away- but a subtle acceptance that this is just how it has to be . A freeness that comes without judgment of other’s eyes on him, of being completely and utterly alone. Of being able to breathe without fear that he was doing it incorrectly.
The loneliness that came with the others was deeper. A bleeding organ slowly leaking acid and blood into his system. Killing it with the liquid that was supposed to make him function properly. A loneliness that came with the eyes on him, of watching his every step, his every movement. So not to hurt or offend or endanger them.
At least when he was alone the only person he could hurt was himself. And in turn, the only person who could hurt him was himself.
This was different. Were. Were. Were.
“Ben-”
“Go to bed,” His voice shifted. Became a low monotone he’d become accustomed to before his hearing had reached this point. “We have a big day tomorrow.” Now he could barely make out his own words, relying on the fact that Darius could understand him. Not willing to divulge into anything more emotional. It wasn’t worth it. Being angry at him.
And oh, oh he was angry. Were. Were. Were. Oh, he was an inferno. Oh, he was eating himself, tearing himself apart. Tearing everything apart.
Ben wanted to light something on fire.
“I-” Were. Were. Were . “-goodnight, Ben.”
“Goodbye, Darius.”
He turned away harshly, heel digging into the floorboards. Sharpness beneath his foot that he knew was creaking despite not hearing it. It was instinct to step on the boards that didn’t make a sound, which were few and far between. Moving silently to the balcony and walking to the nearest tree branch. Leaping and climbing, climbing, climbing.
Higher and higher till the branches turned thin and his palms were red but not yet bleeding. Split knuckles stinging with every motion, heaving himself upwards.
Tried to clear his thoughts with the ache of his bones. Old pains long lay dominate under his skin. Flare-ups surprisingly absent in the last few days. A part of him just wanted to get it over with. Have the pain overtake him for a few hours, a few days. Get it over with so he could plan for the next flare-up. Wait a baited breath before the next debilitating clash of achingburningstinging kept him frozen in place.
It gave him something to think about at least. Something to focus all his efforts on in not crying out, in not alerting the others. He only needed to lean onto his spear-cane a little more heavily. Only needed to use the slide instead of the pulley or climbing or ladder. Only needed to move a little less, to not lift anything more than feather light for fear that it’d break his arms.
It never did, but God, God did it feel like it every time.
A part of him wanted to go searching for Brooklynn. To pull her away from the others. To bring her into a sparring match without cloth to protect their knuckles. Feel the strain of muscle and bone. The pop and stretch of joints almost being pushed too far. The staining of bruises and bloody knuckles he knew so well. A new kind of pain- sharp and fresh unlike that old aching. A new flame lit inside his chest.
Another part of him wanted to make sure he was never hurt again. Wanted to push Brooklynn away everytime she asked. Wanted to hate himself everytime he asked to spar.
But pain was a familiar thing, at least now he got to choose it. Outside of the flare-ups, outside of protecting them. He got to choose when he was hurting. When he was doing the hurting. The bruises on his body were his own. The pain in his chest was of his own volition.
It wasn’t fair to ask her now. When she was having fun, when she had a moment outside of him. Suffocating her. All consuming. Taking so much of her time away from the others when they should be the ones connected to each other. They should be each other’s support systems.
Support systems…Sarah had a funny thing about those. Insisting that he needed one- clearly she didn’t know that a support system could just be one person. One person who knew everything bad that could happen to them. That could plan and support themselves like Ben could. There was no need for other people in his support system, not when he could take care of himself so well. Not when he could burden his own mind with those swirling possibilities.
No one else deserved to think of things in the way he did. No one deserved to have to look out for him too.
“The most crucial thing you can do to help you is build a community that you love and can empathize with you when you’re going through your healing process. It’s all ups and downs, and having people there during the downs can be life-saving. In turn, you have to trust these people and let them in. A support system. Do you have someone like that?”
“I-”
“You don’t have to tell me who it is. If it makes it easier. Our support systems are our own, sometimes we don’t want to reveal who we trust most. It’s alright. I hope with time you’ll trust me enough to tell me, but for now I only want to know if you can think of someone like I’m describing.”
That, of course, made it so much easier to lie. And Ben was nothing if not a liar like his Mother, “Yeah, yeah I do.”
What would she think of his urge to burn everything around him? To choke on the smoke, to let those flames caress his skin. A flame, almost like a sunrise, bloody and violent as a new day.
What would she think if she knew most of the things he’d said were half-truths or less? Would she understand why he needed to stay with Mom? Even after she trashed his room and bore cigarette burns in the wall. Would she understand why she could report her?
That half of his progress. Half of his healing was fake. A liar was always a liar- even if they weren’t a very good one. Was it ever really progress? Or was he in the same place as he always was. Flinching a little less but still fearful of everything he came in contact with. Smiling more but remaining friendless and bullied. A thinly veiled mask that when torn off, when prodded and forced away turned him into another version of his parents.
Maybe Sarah was wrong. Maybe there was no getting better. Healing wasn’t a race that could be won, it was a stagnant position along a bloodline. Drowning it that inescapable void of trauma. There was no moving on from the people who raised him. Only subcombing to it, only becoming the monsters he feared for so long. Healing was a ruse created by the hopeful, an idea that they could be any better than the monsters they were surrounded by. But that idea only got people hurt. Only subjected other people to the threat that was himself.
It was laughable now. That he ever thought he could be something other than his Dad. That he could be any less violent than him. That he could be any less cruel as his Mom. He was his parents' child, and there was no escaping blood. No matter how much coated his hands.
The lighter weighed heavily in his pack. An escape, a half-thought out solution. A chance to breathe, even if it was a lungful of smoke and ash and flame.
It’d been a long while since he actually fought something. Something that could hurt him- break bones and limbs and watch him bleed slowly at their feet. Something that would kill him. Something more than coming back to Base with bruised, split knuckles and a smattering of bruises he wore like jewelry.
A part of him ached for it. For actually getting hurt. For patching his wounds on the riverside and curling in the tops of a tree at night. The loneliness that wasn’t. A system made only for him. It was safer for them that way. It was safer.
It was exactly what he wanted. Them realizing that he wasn’t worth it. That having died back there would have been better than seeing him again. Darius was the one who finally broke- not who he expected. Not after his avoidance of Yaz and Kenji. He expected one of them to put two in two together- the wounds, the scars, the blood. They’d seen some of it. Enough of it that they should be able to make out what had happened. What he’d done.
If Darius was the first to finally say it maybe he should be applauding him rather than letting that odd, odd feeling in his chest grow. Maybe he should be shaking his hand and smiling, as though accepting a reward. Yes, yes you figured it out. Tell the others, make them understand that I should be dead.
But the aching didn’t leave him, it never did. This was something different, something the same. A mess of many that he couldn’t begin to untwist into something solid and real. He wanted to burn. He wanted to burn something. He wanted to fight. He wanted his bruises to be his own.
Ben didn’t think he was born violent. He wasn’t born with the urge to hurt, it had been slow acceptance over time that made him crave it. In the same way an addict wanted the next hit- he knew the pain of it, the horribleness of it. But it seemed like every moment between those in agony was fake. Waiting for the next to come and take him away.
The branch creaked beneath him. His hands were rubbed raw, but not yet bleeding. It was a near thing. Getting caught on nearly healed scabs. But the flesh held up.
He’d gotten heavier since Brooklynn had started sitting next to him during meals, or watching him eat a snack after sparring. The little satisfaction that he started to get after finishing a meal, if only to see the proud look on her face. The one he matched when she managed to do the same.
Some days, he didn’t eat as much as he was supposed to, or didn’t finish. And she’d given him a look . Some days she looked like she wanted to gag at the prospect of food, leaving it unfinished or untouched. Which he sealed in a tupperware and put it in his fanny pack. Sammy never mentioned missing when he took it. They’d leave to spar and afterwards- when she was shaking from exhaustion and hunger from not eating sooner, he’d slide the food over.
Sometimes it worked. She ate slowly like every bite hurt, like it was a knife instead of a fork. Sometimes he finished when he didn’t want to, just to give her a piece of mind, sometimes he thanked her for it. When he wasn’t hungry later.
Starving was another form of aching, after all.
Did she realize what Darius had said? After he’d nearly broken her wrist again. After he pinned her down, after she kicked his spear away and he forgot where he was. Surely she must have- if Kenji hadn’t and Yaz hadn’t and Sammy hadn’t. Surely an actual fight must prove something to her.
He could light something on fire. He could fight something. Could… could do something to prove to him that his death wasn’t as imminent as he thought it was.
Instead, someone shouted at him, “Piss off.”
He leaned down, looking for the source of the noise. He should know who it belonged to by now, with a shout that loud and clear. But things were muffled and voices hard to pinpoint. He hopped down another few branches.
Yaz was sitting at the base of the tree, leaning against the trunk. Her bad leg out of its splint, sticking straight ahead. Something he couldn’t make out sitting in her lap.
He shouldn’t want to be near them, even now. He shouldn’t want to know about Sammy and Brooklynn’s families. He shouldn’t care what Yaz and Darius thought of him. He shouldn’t care that he hurt Kenji’s feelings. It’d be better if he could let them go.
They’re leaving tomorrow. Stop. Stop. It doesn’t matter anymore.
He promised to let them go.
He dropped down another branch. Another. Another till he was only a few feet above her. Enough that she could see him if she turned around.
“Are you done with the Tarzan act yet?”
Well then…she’d already seen him. He was too loud now. Without a way to moderate other than: if he could hear his own footsteps it was too loud to be trekking through the jungle.
He refrained from asking about her ankle. How she got under the tree when the others were supposed to be upriver on a hiking trail. Instead he moved to her bad side. Just close enough, just low enough within the branches that he could see the red-purple mass that was supposed to be her joint. An infection spread throughout it, there was no doubt. Swollen to twice the size it was supposed to be and a rainbow or ugly colors hidden with her new sweatpants.
She had to cut her running leggings off, apparently. Unable to get the tight fabric of the broken bone.
“He’s sulking, you know,” Yaz finally said. “Brooklynn thinks you broke his heart.”
He hated that the first person he thought of was Kenji. A reflex. No, she was talking about Darius, of course. Another fight that wasn’t resolved with Ben shutting up and sitting still. Another argument that he managed to spark. But then…were they back already? How long had he been in the treetops?
“What am I supposed to do about it?” It was too cold, too detached. It was exactly what he needed her to hear. He couldn’t care about them. He shouldn’t be growing attached to them. He couldn’t, anymore. Not if Darius thought he was a danger, not if he finally realized that ceasing to care about him was the only option to deal with Ben.
“Shut up. You don’t get to do that.”
“What do you want me to do then? There’s nothing else I can do to fix it.”
Yaz rolled her eyes, hard, like they were going to knock out of her skull. “You two are over dramatic bastards, you know that. First I have to hear it from him- ‘ oh Ben will never forgive me. Oh, Ben hasn’t spoken to me in weeks.’ ‘I wonder what I did wrong. Brooklynn has said anything to you?’ ‘No, he doesn’t talk to me’. ” She rolled her neck, popping it, then continued to stare at him. “Just make up, I don’t care. I’m fucking tired of hearing about it.”
Had Darius been talking about not caring for Ben anymore? Was he the only one oblivious to the knowledge? Tentatively trying to keep his distance from them, to foster an apathy to him, when he already was.
“It's not fair to go in and out of our lives. You act like you care and then you leave for hours and we think you’re dead again. They go into a fucking frenzy looking for you.”
“I told Darius to stop worrying about that.”
Her brows scrunched together, “I’m not talking about Darius.”
Of course she wasn’t. Darius didn’t care about him. He was the only one who stepped beyond the veil. They- the others who didn’t see yet- of course.
“You’re a fucking hypocrite is what it is. You leave to do whatever you do in the woods- please don’t tell me, I don’t want to know- and then you yell at us when we do the same. When we go with someone .
“I can take care of myself.” Can’t they see that? Can’t they see that he was the only one capable of doing what it took to survive?
“I like you, Ben, can’t you see that. I want to be your friend. You were- you were the first person who got it . I didn’t want to let people in, I don’t like people touching me and you didn’t do that. I wouldn’t be able to handle Sammy without you, or talk to any of them. I would’ve tried to go off on my own after the docks, broken ankle and all if it meant I could get a minute alone. And I would have died, I know, but I would’ve left anyway. Youchanged that, you forced me to latch onto people. So fuck you for making me care about you and leaving. Fuck you.”
“I can’t be that for you.” You don’t need me anymore. Please stop needing me.
“What changed?”
“Everything.”
“Stop fucking…” She took a deep breath, the anger forced out of her tone. In that way they were far too similar. Two angry people who latched onto each other when one was gruff and the other needed someone to hide behind. Then the tables turned, and everything was different now. He wasn’t gruff, but he wanted them to shuffle behind him. Wanted to stand in the way of every threat and pretend he wasn’t battered. “I know what I did was wrong. I know you’ve been keeping it a secret from the others. But that doesn’t mean you have to avoid them for my sake.”
“What?” He said before he could stop himself.
“Don’t play dumb I know what you’ve been doing.”
“I don’t-”
“The dinosaur!” She burst, a near snarl to the words like they’d been curtling in her mouth. Quieter now, “The one I killed.”
Oh.
“You didn’t kill it, though.” He dropped down from the branches, approaching her slowly as her breath began to pick up. “That wasn’t-” he tried another angle. Comforting has not been his strength for some time now. He blinked away the surprise in his face, she didn’t need that now either. To think that he blamed himself for it.
Of course she remembered it like that. Of course she couldn’t just see Ben shooting it. “That’s something you had to do to survive. You can’t blame yourself for it.”
She laughed, short and bitter, “Try telling that to everyone else. Darius- he would’ve thought of a better way out. He would’ve tried to make it his fucking pet if it tried to kill him. Sammy would’ve known just what to do and Brooklynn probably would’ve done some science shit and get herself out of it. Kenji-” she hummed, “he would’ve laid down and died.”
He hated how he couldn’t refute her for it. That he had the exact same thoughts every time another monster fell from his hand.
“Why’d you shoot it? It was already dead.”
He shrugged, bodying curling into itself. “I hoped you’d think I killed it instead of you…I thought it might be better that way.”
She cast him a long look, head cocked to one side, brows furrowed, “You make the stupidest fucking plans you know that.”
“Yeah,” he wanted to laugh, wanted to unwind the tension. Take the out she was giving him. That she had learned to create with time. He managed a small smile, “I do.”
It wasn’t fair. To ruin them over something like this, to taint every moment of their friendship. Were they even friends to begin with? They never really exchanged information about each other, never really acted like friends. There was the proximity, there was the necessary thing of having someone to do partner activities with during camp. Until Sammy made it her mission to be friends with Yaz and Kenji kept coming back for Ben.
Was Brooklynn his friend? He considered her one before they ever spoke of anything of importance. Less so than Yasmina, but a friend in the way that mattered. He knew more about her than he knew about Yaz. He knew her parents’ names and what she did for a living and how she felt about an array of things. With Yaz- he didn’t even know if she had parents. Obviously she must, not enough to know anything about them.
Yet Yaz was something more to him than Brooklynn was.
It should stay like that, until they leave. If he was already attached to her without knowing basic information about her then it was a fool’s move to try and know more when she was leaving. If he was attached to Brooklynn while knowing so much about her, yet missing the key thing that made Yaz different, then it might kill him if he had it.
It was unfair, it was the only choice. He was right the first time he’d said it. Nothing was the same, nothing could go back to the way it was before. Was going back to who they were before even worth it, if only for a thought. Did he want to be his old self again? Who was less angry and more angry than Ben was now? Who was weak and shriveling? Who needed someone to stand in front of him?
No. No, he never wanted to go back to that again. There was no world where he’d be that boy, there was no world where he and Yaz could have a friendship- whatever this thing was, the closest way he could define it was friendship- wasn’t tainted with the world.
“Do you hate me for it?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all.”
“You iced me out. All of us…because of me, and- and I didn’t get an excuse to talk to you like everyone else does.”
“They don’t use excuses to talk to me that's-” He stopped, because it all clicked.
Darius going over plans with him individually because he knew Ben couldn’t hear. Trying to sneak in a fact about dinosaurs, a stupid pun, asking how Bumpy was doing despite her being within view. Brooklynn budding in with personal knowledge whenever he asked. Drawing out conversations between sparring matches longer than they should be. Sammy wanting him to sort supplies with her even though they had completely different definitions of the word ‘organized’.
Had he been ignoring them, really? Compared to Kenji and Yaz? No, no they’d been in his life far more until Ben bit Darius’ head off.
Yaz’s hands curled tighter around the handle of her cane. Knuckles straining. Ben made a physical effort to stay still. To not count how far he had to step to stay out of range if she decided to swing. Yaz was an angry person, but she wasn’t a cruel one. She’d never tried to get in a physical fight with him unprompted.
Sparring was different from fighting. Sparring was consentally saying “ I’m gonna fuck you up ” to an opponet and accepting that fact.
Sparing was choosing to get punched, fighting was not. Being hit and being punched were two very different things, no matter if they could be used interchangeably.
“You left me to rot.” She said with venom—quietly, almost missed.
“I thought it would be better if you thought I did it. It’d be easier if you hated me for something like that than to remember what happened.”
“Doesn’t change what happened,” Her voice was still too quiet. Ben came closer, making sure to keep a few inches between them.
“I know…”
Her head snapped up, eyes boring into him, lips pulled back in a grimace. “Fuck you. You don’t get to make that decision for me. I spent weeksthinking you hated me, or- or you were holding it over my head to tell everyone else and get me cast out like everyone always does.”
He didn’t understand what the others had held against her. It didn’t seem like they’d cast her out. He didn’t want to ask, not now, not when he was ready to run and she was ready to snap. “I’m sorry, Yaz.”
“Like that does shit.”
It didn’t. It never did. An apology didn’t take away a bruise, didn’t take away a death.
“...Help me up,” She finally said.
“What?”
“If you’re in the mood for forgiveness then help me up. I want to get back to Base by the time everyone else does.”
It was both a very easy thing to remember what things had been like with Yaz before everything , and harder than he could imagine. In some ways it was no different than it used to be. Ben liked to consider them friends, but had they been? Was it forced from proximity to each other? When Yaz avoided the overly emotional advances from Sammy and the loud douche-baggary from Kenji. Darius’ hyperactive self was still entranced by the dinosaurs or Brooklynn’s stuck up attitude. Out of all of them, quiet, meek Ben was the best option for someone like her.
Someone who didn’t go out of his way to get to know her. Didn’t push her, or seek her out when she wasn’t around. In a way they were never friends. In another they were closer than friends.
Despite everything Ben learned more about Yaz than he ever meant to. And in turn she did the same. They clung to each other. Hell, she almost died for him. Had died for him, by breaking her ankle. By doing something that was more than death in order to save his pathetic self.
Back then things were easier. When they could part ways and not speak about it. But a part of him wanted her back. To sit next to her in contemplative silence without Sammy as a common denominator between them.
It was wrong to still want to be around her. After she’d had to kill because he was too late. After she’d seen a peak of what the island had done to him. He wasn’t the same boy she cared about back then. He wasn’t someone they should care about. Not if they wanted to leave. Not if they wanted to survive all this.
Carefully, he wrapped his arms around her like he had when Kenji was drunk. Half lifting, half supporting her weight as she got one leg and her cane beneath her. Yaz’s untied hair fell into her face that she didn’t bother to push away. Rarely had he seen her let it down and when she did it was usually just after coming out of the shower, waiting for it to dry before putting it back up.
He didn’t ask about that either. It was too raw, too personal after not speaking to each other.
Just about everything seemed too personal.
Yaz was wobbly on her feet. Something he didn’t notice from far away. Her legs were weak and shaking. Where she once let her splint support her, she now lifted it off the ground. Focusing solely on the support from the cane.
His throat suddenly felt very dry and the lines he was desperately trying not to cross didn’t matter anymore. Personal matters were things he never dealt in with Yaz. But it was important now, necessary. “Why did the others leave you here?”
They were supposed to be getting the kayaks together.
She grunt, hand gripping his shoulder uncomfortably. Trying to stay alright without tipping forward. He knew from experience just how hard that could be. “Sammy got anxious, it’s not a big deal.”
“About?” He tried to be calm, but the parts of him that thought of every bad thing that could happen were back. The parts of him that worried and warred over every terrible problem was pushed to the front of his mind.
“It's not a big deal.”
“Yaz?”
“Drop it, I have a fever. It’s not very bad, but Sammy got all up in her head about it. She thought I should stay here till they got the kayaks. Once we get back to Base I can take flu medicine and be good as new .” She said the last bit strangely, like she was referencing something though he didn’t know what. “Let go, I’m fine to walk on my own now.”
“You’re sure?” He hated that question. It was the others seeing weakness in him. Them seeing his broken edges and that worry like he couldn’t take care of himself.
“I’m fine ,” She spat, nearly shouting at him. At least he could hear her clearly; anger and all.
“Okay, okay. Let’s just get you back.”
For a moment, Darius being at Base didn’t matter. Their fight didn’t matter. The others leaving Yaz alone, defenseless on the just outside of Base didn’t matter. Not as he pulled her hair out of her face so she could see. Not when his hand brushed against her feverish skin.
___________
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that they were really, truly leaving. It was impossible. After all these months, for the answer to be as simple as a raft. To get them home hating him. Letting himself go from flourishing to withering and dying on the island that should have taken his life so many months ago. Odd, that they were so close to death, clinging to their humanity and the strings were to be cut now.
Sammy found a beaded rosary to wear and Brooklynn had helped her fix the crushed, broken clasp. Now it thumped against her clothes, beads crackling into each other in what he hoped was good luck.
The treehouse was packed. Their bags light- more than enough food to make a few day’s journey, canteens of freshwater, Darius’s notebook, Yaz’s cane. They didn’t need anything more. The bags sat at the front of the treehouse, waiting to be lowered on the trolley they used to haul Yaz up.
The beds creaked, like a house settling down for the night. The kind that always made Ben think there were ghosts haunting the halls of their apartments. Waiting to grasp him, to tear him apart if he dared slip out from under his covers.
But Ben’s ghosts were solid back then. Real, alive men waiting to bruise him all black-purple pretty. To scar his skin with faint silvery things, undetectable to anyone but a trained eye.
These ghosts didn’t exist, he was the only one who haunted these non-existent halls.
He’d be the only one here after they all left.
Darius went ahead with Kenji, Brooklynn, and Bumpy. The four of them dragging the kayak-raft to the nearest beach where they’d wait for Ben and Sammy to catch up. Originally they were supposed to go together, but Sammy had floundered. Telling them she’s forgotten something. No one raised an eyebrow at that. Yaz was still bedridden until they were testing out the kayak-raft. Something she wouldn’t budge on missing. And Ben had stayed behind with her, not that he told anyone that.
There was no one to tell, Sammy was the only one talking to him. Really talking to him. Yaz tried, but a part of their conversations were stilted and awkward. Partly because she was awake in bursts from her fever and partly because they seemed to have lost the ability to communicate with each other. What was once as easy as breathing was now like pulling teeth.
An insidious fear crept into his gut. Over Yaz’s sickness. Over Darius’ words. Over the fact that Sammy wasn’t going to leave with them. She was going to punish herself by staying here. Going to Hell prematurely, tip toeing the line between life and death like it was something to prove.
He found her leaning over the balcony. Most of her weight balanced on the railing rather than her feet, rosary beads clicking between her fingers. Fidgeting with them, head bowed, eyes closed. He had to remind himself that she’d kill someone, that she of all people had taken a life. The whole idea of this Sammy Gutierrz in front of him killing someone seemed entirely absurd.
He wouldn’t have believed it if she told him at Camp. Back then there were no signs of the cracks, or Ben wasn’t as attuned to them, to her. Her smiles stayed in place upon her face. She was no more detached from the world, she didn’t lapse into silence like Kenji did, or flinch like Ben did, or strain herself to fit her role like Darius did.
There was nothing out of the ordinary, other than the fact that she’d killed a man.
Ben moved silently. He knew which floorboards creaked and groaned with weight now. He knew where to set to avoid getting a splinter in his still bare feet. It seemed suitable shoes were a lot harder to find than clothes. Sammy’s could resize shoes in the same way she could stitch clothing. Finding a pair that worked for the jungle was another job entirely. Darius suggested they look through more outposts. Find bodies of employees and steal their work boots. But there wasn’t time for a plan like that.
Ben leaned on the railing next to her. A bruise forming on his side where it’d dug in from his ‘talk’ with Darius. His hands ached with split skin, but other than that it was a fairly good day. His body responded to his commands without much protesting muscle or locking joints.
He started quietly, barely more than a whisper. Speaking more to the air, to the space between the treetops and the ground, than he was to Sammy. She wasn’t in the business of finding comfort in being as vulnerable as the other person. He knew this. She was more vulnerable than he could ever stand to be. But it was a small truth, it was all he knew to give. It was a secret that was basically out, tip toeing around the truth had only gotten him into more shit.
“You know I wasn’t always like this– you remember how I used to be. This- I became this to survive out there,” he gestured, “I’ve done horrible things to survive.”
At first, Sammy didn’t move. Head bowed, beads clacking between her fingers, in the wind. “I thought so.”
Looking back, he’d been too obvious about it. With Yaz, with Sammy, with Darius, hell even with Brooklynn. They’d all known, in their own way, an inkling of what he’d done. But he hadn’t come out and said it.
It seemed important to do it now, when they were leaving. “You don’t have a problem with it?”
“I don’t know what ya’ did,” She gave a hiccuping laugh and he realized she was crying. Slow tears trailing down her cheeks. Stuck in thick patches in her eyelashes. “But I ain’t no hypocrite.”
Ben shook his head at that. Expecting more, a raging screaming match between them. One last person to avoid him. One last person to sever his attachment with. It was better this way.
“You’re not a hypocrite. I- I did things so I survived. You killed so your family kept living. I was being selfish to- to want that. If either one of us deserves to be punished it's me.”
It wasn’t fair for the people Yaz was closest to, to stay behind. It wasn’t fair for Sammy to try and punish herself over something she could barely control. She had a gun in her hand: yes. She pulled the trigger: yes. But what other choice did she have?
Sammy pursed her lips. Beads click, click, click, “Catholics say it's selfish to wanna to live.” That laugh again, soft and bitter and so tired. It went against everything he knew about her. But it slotted in well with everything he knew about her. “And they say it’s selfish to wanna kill yourself. Only selfish men want to end their lives early to meet God, but wantin’ to keep livin’ outside of His Kingdom is denyin’ Him His right to you.” Tears dripped onto the railing in the same pattern as a bloody wound. They weren’t so different from a picked scab, a moldy thing that can never fully heal. “Anythin’ we do is selfish in His eyes. I- I don’t know how to fix this, or how to be a better person. Anythin’ I do turns int’a sin. ”
He didn’t get it. He was never a religious person. His Dad wasn’t the type to take him to church, his Mom was far too busy for the privilege of sitting in a packed room for hours on end. The idea of it never made sense to him- they sat in a room and God- a being they couldn’t see or touch- talked to them? No, it was ridiculous to believe in something like that. How could they if there was no proof. They didn’t have to see it to believe it, but there must be hard, documented proof to back it up and the Bible had far too many contradictions for him to consider it fact.
And then, he found out people thought it was comforting. The idea of eternal paradise after they shut their eyes for good. They could have everything they wanted, they would see all their family.
But…it all seemed so pointless. Working away for hours upon hours for enough money to pay for the roof over their heads. A roof they didn’t actually own, but paid to get to stay under for a little while. There was a part of him that didn’t want to see his Dad after they both died. Who never wanted to see the man again. Kept far away from ever hurting him again. Another part of him that didn’t want Colton Pincus anywhere near his Mom. Not after everything he’d done to them both. It wasn’t fair to have to forgive him up there.
It wasn’t fair. If there was a God then why did everything hurt? If there was a God then why did Mom have to work so hard to get where she was?
‘The world isn’t fair’ bullshit, God could make it far if he wanted to.
Under those parameters Ben had denied his existence for years. Probably around the time he tried to kill himself. Probably around the time he started thinking whether or not he wanted to live any longer. Probably around the time he figured out that there were good people and bad people in the world, and that his Dad fit in the latter category.
He smiled, tossed his head back, “Everything we do is selfish and we’re never going to be good people?”
It was ridiculous, thinking of it like that. Looking at Sammy and thinking that she wasn’t a good person. That she hadn’t done her best to be good.
“Yes,” She replied, deadly serious. “We’re not.”
“That doesn’t mean you should stay here and suffer.”
“I deserve it.”
“If you deserve it then you’ll go to Hell when you die and face whatever fucking punishment you want down there. Right now, doing this, staying here, it's not gonna fix anything. Besides…it's technically self defense.”
“Ben, I was commitin’ treason.”
“I never said we could change that part.”
Sammy’s expression pulled into a frown, sloping down all her features. “I don’t know if they want me anymore.”
Ben held out his hand, waiting for her to take it. To tug her close to his body and entangle themselves in each other. He’d always found touch grounding and Sammy had always sought it out. There was no reason they couldn’t be that for each other. The people they spent the most time around: Yaz and Kenji were accepting, at best, about touch. Yaz hated it, and moved away from it. Kenji tolerated it, sought it out in his own way but far less often than Ben and Sammy were willing to give it.
It was nice to get to hug someone. To have something solid to cling to, if only for a moment. His face found the space between her collarbone and neck, nose buried into her hair. Her chin dipped over his shoulder, raised just slightly over him. Not connecting.
She knew about the scars there. Knew how he hesitated to move his shoulders for anything more than using his spear or knives. Gently, he reached up guiding the back of her head, pushing against her skull enough that she rested it on his back. A barely there connection that made the whole thing more real than it had been.
He forgot how much he liked touch. Over the years he learned to distance himself from it. Touch meant bruises or it meant ruffling his hair. A new reason to wear long sleeved shirts or a gift passed from hand to hand. He craved the moments of subtle, brief touch Mom offered. Kissing his forehead before she left for the night shift, or running dollar-store manicured nails through his hair.
“If we can’t be rich then I may as well look the part.” Though the rest of her was clad in whatever dead-end job uniform she’d ended up in at the time. She worked as a secretary in the day and a waitress at night. Or a receptionist in the day and a bartender at night. Or a gas station clerk by day and night college student. Her cardigans had strings hanging from them and her slacks were faded from sunlight and wear. More often than not her hair was pulled back to hide the grease and grime that had accumulated. Too tired after work to do anything more than rinse off under the shower streams. Washing long hair took far too long. She’d probably fall asleep with the water running before she remembered to rinse out the shampoo.
So Mom went for simple luxuries. A faux gold necklace with a delicate chain. Press-on nails she got an employee discount when she worked at the gas station. Drugstore eyeshadow and concealer to make her undereyes look like a deliberate choice rather than lack of sleep.
Ben opted for something else. He burrowed in oversized flannels- some from the Goodwill that rested between McDonalds and Walmart; some from his Dad’s closet- in long jeans he had to cuff in order to see his shoes. His clothes were distinctly cheaper looking than Mom’s, but he was far cleaner than she was. Styled hair and ironed clothing. Pristine white shoes with only the barest of scuff marks he could erase. Hands free of grime or calluses.
It masked him, made him look more than he was. Presentable and put-together made even the cheapness of it look deliberate. Like he couldn’t waste the time with expensive things.
He broke apart, only briefly. Ben’s hand trailing down her arm, clasping her hand in his. He said the only thing he had left. The last bit of leverage in the recesses of his mind, “It’s just a trial run, no harm in riding with us.”
“But after-”
Ben, a chronic overthinker, had no right to cut her off. “Don’t think of that now, we haven’t even tested it in the ocean yet.”
She didn’t have to know that he was thinking the exact same thing. The worry in his chest, eating away at him. Spreading through him as the clock ticked nearer. The waves were rougher than they had been in the peak of summer, when camp began. It was more dangerous for them to leave now. But if not now, then they’d have to wait till spring. Or god forbid summer.
That’d be a year on the island. A year they had to survive. After all he’d gone through over the last few months surviving a year with so many people seemed impossible. He was just beginning to grasp the way of the land. The way dinosaurs interacted, the hierarchy that no one but Darius seemed to understand. Though even that was in more clinical, clear-cut terms than Ben saw it.
They couldn’t understand what it was like to survive like he had. But that may be their only choice if they didn’t leave soon. Winter would be rough- it may not snow like it did in Chicago. But rolling storms would be frequent. There was a reason Jurassic World sales pitched downward in the wintertime. There was a reason Mom was so busy from December to February. Most of their technical work was handled then.
Passage on larger, more adept ships was still dangerous and Masrani Corporations were rich enough to use helicopter travel more than anything else. Anyone important coming to the island was flown out quickly via helicopter, while crews and supplies came slower by boat. Able to haul more but were more likely to get caught in the worst of a storm.
Mom said she loved flying by helicopter. The speed, the noise, the distance from the ground and from space seemed impossible. Stuck betweens seeing ants scurrying and toy cars on the road. Knowing space was high, high above the sea of blue. That something was probably looking down at her and thinking she was the ant in the toy helicopter, the below below too small to exist.
This was their last chance. If not now then they wouldn’t make it home for a long while in the best case scenario.
“I’m tired,” Sammy admitted quietly. “I’m so tired of this and- and when I go home it's not gonna be over. It jus’ keeps goin’ and goin’.”
“That doesn’t make the island the second best option.”
She hiccuped another breath, a half sob, “I want to go home, so, so badly, but I can’t.”
“The legal battle won’t last forever. You’ve got Kenji and Brooklynn’s lawyers on your side, if they’re anything like them you’re winning the case.”
“It's not just ‘bout that. I- I don’t got nobody to go back to.”
“But– your family?” A fire lit in his chest. Incessant and fearful, not unlike his anger. But something else, something smoldering, deeper than the center of the flames. All the fear Brooklynn had tried to wash away came back with full force. Maybe her Dads didn’t hurt her, maybe they were great people. But surely that was an outlier.
Sarah said that most kids weren’t hurt in the way Ben was. Most weren’t beaten or screamed at. That his childhood wasn’t normal . He hated those words. Stuck to his back, reminding him that no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t be like his peers. He was too broken by abuse, too ruined by the hands that hurt him, by the words that dug in like glass into his palms.
“They’re too good for me.”
“Because you killed someone to protect them,” It made sense in a strange way. The resentment they could harbor. The hatred that could bloom over such a simple act. But it wasn’t fair, the idea of them hating her for something like this. The idea of anyone hating Sammy .
Yet there was a person, a living person that was now gone because of them. Entirely wiped off the face of the planet when she pulled the trigger.
“Yeah…yeah, part of it.”
“Is-” He liked his lips, trying to mend the cracks in the surface. Sammy tensed when he paused, waiting for something in the same way he waited for a fist to slam into his sides. “Yaz knows?”
“Mhm.”
“You know…you know that I’m…here if they’re hurting you, right?”
“What?” Her head snapped back up. “Oh no, no that’s not. Why would ya’ ever think that?”
She was right. It was a stupid thought. No one as good as Sammy could be raised by people that hurt her. Not in the same way Ben was. When she fought, when she killed, it was for something more than herself. It was a betterment he couldn’t get himself to understand.
“You said you didn’t have a place to go back to,” he lied quickly. Some of his best work, it sounded so much like the truth. “It was an easy assumption to make.”
He turned around, trying to keep one eye on Sammy’s mouth and the other on Yaz’s unconscious form. Logically he knew nothing could get her without him seeing it. But the lack of noise put him on edge. Without the warning rustle of bushes, or clicking of a dinosaur’s beak.
In the end, it was Bumpy that stopped him from hearing what Sammy had to say.
Bumpy running into Base. Her screeches muted to his own ears but enough to have Yaz pushing herself up. Enough to alert him of something behind him.
“Oh no,” Sammy said, “That poor girl.”
There was a trail of crimson sludging off her back. There was a trail of crimson following her footsteps and none of the others were with her.