Jin gave an ever so slight wince at Leah’s words and turned away from her.
“Don’t try to bullshit me, Jin,” she added fiercely. “I’ve had to put up with far too much of it from far too many people, and I can see right through it.”
Jin’s shoulders rose and fell as he released a heavy sigh.
“So why don’t we start this again, this time with the truth.”
“You couldn’t handle the truth,” Jin said wearily. “I can hardly handle it myself.”
The sudden weariness in Jin’s voice was unexpected, and it gave Leah enough of a shock that she paused. In her pause, Jin lay back against the wall and slowly slid down to the ground. Leah sat down next to him, looking both curious and concerned.
“My parents,” he began, “were murdered when I was eight; on my eighth birthday, actually. We’d had this big celebration because I’d also gotten my black belt in karate that same day. My dad taught me. He ran a dojo a few miles from where we lived. Anyway, that night a loan shark came calling, a guy by the name of Frank Herman. You see, my dad had taken a loan from this guy to get his dojo started, and apparently, it had been a while since he’d made a payment.”
“Oh no,” Leah breathed, for she knew where this was going.
“Yeah,” Jin agreed. “Well, my dad tried to explain things to Frank, that business at the dojo was slow, but as you can imagine, that didn’t hold well with Frank. He said my father was lazy, that he was making excuses, and as you can imagine again, that didn’t go over well with my father. It started a verbal fight, which started a fistfight, and…”
Jin paused, looking away as the all to vivid memory played like a video in his head.
“And?” Leah pressed, feeling wretched for forcing something so obviously painful for Jin, but unable to restrain her curiosity.
“You ever see what a twelve-gauge shotgun does to a watermelon?” Jin asked.
Leah shook her head no.
“It kind of…explodes. Like someone has stuck a tiny little bomb inside it.”
“Oh God.”
“So, now you can imagine…” Jin began with his voice breaking, “…what I saw when…Frank made my parents kneel and…had the two goons who’d come with him…put shotguns to the back of their heads.”
Just as Jin finished, and the memory video in his head finally stopped, a single tear and strangled gasp (which sounded strangely like a sob to Leah) escaped from him. Leah automatically wanted to ask him if he was okay, but she knew that he wasn’t. Instead, she gently laid her hand on his shoulder, being mindful of his broken left arm. Conscious of the contact, Jin took a slow breath to pull himself back together and continued his story.
“I don’t remember much else from that night,” he said. “Just crawling out of the closet and uh…trying to…put my parents’ heads back together.”
“Oh God. Jin…” Leah gasped hoarsely.
An immense well of sorrow and compassion began to fill every fiber of Leah’s being. Before she could control it, before she could stop herself, she threw herself at Jin and wrapped her arms around him in the tightest hug she could manage.
“Ahh haa ah,” Jin gasped in pain as fire shot through his left arm. “Leah…my arm…”
“Oh! Sorry!” Leah said, immediately moving to back away.
“No,” Jin said quickly, shooting out his right arm to catch Leah by the waist. “Stay.”
Whether it was the viper-strike quickness of Jin’s move to hold her, or the powerful longing and honesty that had taken over Jin’s voice that held her in place, Leah didn’t know. All she knew, as she shifted her weight so as to not hurt Jin’s broken arm, was that this is where she had to be. She also knew, as Jin nestled his head in the crook of her neck, that the person she’d met in Jin that morning, the person she’d watched practically dance around her son’s karate instructor, had been the real Jin. Sure, tragedy and heartache had buried him, but he was still alive, however broken his spirit may be.
Jin didn’t know why, but being so close to Leah, holding her as he was, was incredibly soothing. She was like an emotional sponge, absorbing all of his pain and anguish and transforming it into warmth and comfort. After so many years of being cold and alone in the dark, Jin felt wholly unworthy of the heat and the light Leah was giving him. As such, he felt that he needed to offer up something in return; something to convince Leah that he was worthy of the gift she was giving him.
“I didn’t choose to be what I am, Leah,” Jin whispered to her. “I just never had a chance to be anything else.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, leaning back so she could see Jin’s face.
Jin sighed heavily again, pulling away from Leah and the warmth of her body. In the coolness of the night air, when he was alone, the memories were slightly less painful.
“I spent the next six years at an orphanage,” he explained. “I didn’t have any other family and was never adopted. I didn’t care. All I wanted was for people to leave me alone. Two years after I got there, I heard on the news that Frank Herman had been let go. He was caught not long after he killed my parents, but the resulting court battle took forever. When I heard that he was going to go free, I went crazy. I swore to myself, to my parents, to God himself, that I wouldn’t let him get away with what he’d done.”
“Kinda like now,” Leah observed. “With Dorigan.”
Jin stiffened but gave a small, almost reluctant nod.
“What happened next?”
“Well,” Jin said, taking a breath. “The orphanage had a play structure in the back, outside, and rather than playing on it, I used it to work out. I’d do pull-ups on the monkey bars, swing and climb all over it to improve my agility and also practice my karate. I got pretty strong. I was definitely stronger than any other kid there. The handful of fights I got into…well, you can imagine how they ended. Got me a pretty unsavory reputation, but I didn’t care. I also started sneaking out at night, sneaking around the city to try and find any information on where Frank was.”
“Did you have any luck?”
“Not at first, and not for a while. It was another two years before I learned anything and it wasn’t anything I could have acted on. I still kept at it, and then…another kid came to the orphanage. I didn’t pay attention to it – a number of kids had come and gone since I’d been there. I saw him though. He was pretty thin, a lot of the bullies started calling him ‘Twiggy’. One day, I was running around the playground, and I saw them picking on him, pushing him around and trying to egg him on into a fight. Well, I knew that the minute this kid took a swing, they’d pull him apart. So I walked over and the second the bullies saw me coming, they left. They knew that I could do to them what they were going to do to Dorigan.”
“Wait!” Leah said, shocked. “That little kid was Dorigan?”
“Yep,” Jin answered. “And he spent every day at the orphanage following me around, asking me how I was able to scare them off like that. It was annoying, and eventually I started teaching him karate as well. I’m not gonna lie, he got pretty good pretty fast. Not as good as I was, but that’s kind of been the story between us for as long as I can remember. I think that’s part of the reason he’s trying to kill me as hard as he is, all this pent up resentment about however good he got, I was always just a little bit better.”
“But…what happened with Frank?”
“Like I said, I didn’t really learn anything of use until my sixth year at the orphanage. Dorigan and I had become…I don’t think friends is the right word but…”
Jin trailed off, trying to think of the right way to describe the relationship. After a moment, much to Leah’s surprise, he chuckled.
“I guess you could say Dorigan was the annoying little brother I’d never really wanted,” he explained. “He was always hounding me, trying to pry open the shell I’d closed myself in, going out of his way to be nice to me. I didn’t reciprocate much of it, but it never stopped him. Anyway, back to Frank.”
Leah shifted
herself to better face Jin as he cleared his throat.
“My last year at the orphanage, I finally caught a break. One night, I ran across one of the goons Frank had brought with him to kill my parents. It had been six years, and I’d only seen him that one night, but even now I can see his face clear as day. I ambushed him in an alley and broke one of his legs. I asked him where Frank was hiding, and when he didn’t answer, I broke his other leg. He tried to choke me then, and I broke his right arm. That’s when he told me.”
“Did you kill him?” Leah asked, sounding as if she were scared of the answer.
“No,” Jin answered evenly. “He was just a tool, and I’d caused him enough pain to be satisfied.”
“So what happened next?”
“I went to Frank’s hideout. It was this dingy old warehouse on the south side of town. I didn’t kill him though, at least not that night. I just snuck around, checking the place out. When I was confident I’d memorized most of it, I went back to the orphanage. Since I’d been out all night, I acted sick so the staff would let me spend most of the day sleeping. That was the first thing that tipped Dorigan off that I was up to something. So that night, as I’m getting ready to sneak out, Dorigan comes up to me and asks if I’m going after Frank. I told him I was, and he told me he wanted to come with. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen, and so I caved. He came with me, and together we killed all of Frank’s men, and I finally killed Frank myself.”
Jin paused for breath, and a sad, oddly twisted smile crept on to his face.
“You know, I never realized it until now, but all of this…Project Hellbound, my wife, my kids, even you and Will…it’s all my fault because I let him come with me. Because I exposed him to a world that no one should ever be exposed to. One that consumed us both and gave us no way out.”
Once again, the naked emotion in Jin’s voice stopped Leah’s breath in her chest. The amount of pain in Jin’s voice was unbearable for her to hear, and she couldn’t even begin to imagine how badly it was for Jin to actually feel it.
“Jin,” she said, trying to find a way to mitigate his pain. “You can’t take all of that onto yourself.”
“No, Leah,” Jin said in a low voice, “I really can.”
“Jin,” Leah breathed, “that…that’s…that’s insane!”
Jin closed his eyes and leaned his head back. How could all of this be coming out now? Why was it now, of all times, that he had to come apart at the seams? More than that, what was it about Leah that took the once infallibly strong walls of ice Jin kept between him and his memories and rendered them as weak and frail as a dead leaf? Jin tried weakly to restore the barriers, but it was a failing effort. So many memories of pain, loss, and death swirled before Jin’s mind, and a thousand knives of grief and guilt stabbed into his heart. How could he be responsible for so much?
And then another memory came, this one only minutes old.
Leah’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, her body pressed softly but fully against his. The warmth of her heart melting the ice that encased his own.
But that wasn’t fair, and Jin knew he couldn’t have it.
He didn’t deserve it.
After all, he was a murderer! He’d killed hundreds upon hundreds of people, and done so in the coldest of blood!
“How can you stand me, Leah?” Jin asked, the pain plain in his voice. “How can someone like you tolerate a monster like me?”
“What?” Leah exclaimed.
“I’m a monster, Leah,” Jin went on. “I’ve killed hundreds…hell, maybe even thousands of people in my life, and I’ve done it without a second thoug…”
Even as Jin tried to say it, he knew it was a lie. Of course he’d had second thoughts. He’d had them after every mission he’d ever gone on. It had never seemed right to him, how he could take so many lives and always escape unharmed. Fighting and killing were the only things Jin had ever really been good at, but that was no absolution, and it certainly wasn’t any justification.
Even so, his hesitation caused a slight smirk to appear on Leah’s face.
“Exactly,” she said. “Jin, I told you, you can’t bullshit me.”
Jin looked up at her, eyes filled with a kind of desperate longing. He didn’t want to be a monster, and even though he didn’t see anything Leah could say or do to convince him otherwise, he dearly wanted her to.
When Jin didn’t immediately respond, Leah knew she had him where she wanted him. She crawled onto his lap, being careful of his left arm, and took his face in her hands.
“Jin, listen to me,” she began. “What you do doesn’t always define who you really are. If the value of a person, the value of their soul, were measured solely on the weight of their negative actions, everyone would be going to hell. Everyone brings pain and misery onto others in some form or another. The key though, the thing that makes the real difference, is that negativity can, and almost always is, canceled out by the weight of their positive actions. Sure, maybe for you that hasn’t been the case, and maybe that’s why you are where you are. But the thing you have to keep in mind is that where you are is not where you will stay. Tomorrow will always come, and it will always bring with it the chance to change the balance in your life.”
“And how am I going to do that, Leah? How can I balance out the murders of hundreds of people?”
“You don’t think that protecting me and Will counts towards that?”
“Two people, Leah! Two people out of hundreds!”
“Jin, why are you so determined to condemn yourself? Do you feel like you’re not supposed to be happy?”
At this, Jin turned away from Leah, who released his face to let him.
Shame burned in Jin’s chest as he realized what the answer to Leah’s question really was.
“Because it’s easier,” he said at length. “It’s easier to run than it is to face all this pain. Especially when you’re all alone. I’ve got nothing, Leah, nothing and no one. I lost it all because of my own choices, my own mistakes.”
“But, Jin,” Leah said, taking his face in her hands once more, “don’t you see that if you’ve got nothing to lose, you’ve got everything to gain?”
Jin opened his mouth to argue, but the words wouldn’t come. He wanted to be happy. That was all he’d ever wanted. But after all he’d been through, all the lives he’d taken, it seemed to him a cruel mockery of life itself for him to be happy. Yet here was Leah, this soft, warm, fiery human being fighting passionately to convince him otherwise. Suddenly, the rules of Jin’s universe were flipped. The weight of his pain and his guilt shifted, and all of the sudden there was room for something else. Within that new space, a small fire sparked into life, and he was instantly attached to Leah.
Jin was suddenly aware of how warm Leah’s hands were against his face, and it occurred to him that he hadn’t had contact like this with anyone in a very, very long time.
Nothing made sense anymore, and Jin’s head swam with confusion.
A wave of tiredness swept over Jin, and he almost instinctively leaned forward into Leah’s chest. He distantly knew that falling asleep outside was a stupid thing to do, but he was far too tired to care.
Leah was somewhat surprised by this, but it only brought a smile to her face. She could sense the change in Jin’s demeanor, and she knew that it meant she’d won. She’d convinced Jin that his life didn’t have to always be void of happiness, regardless of the things he’d done in the past, and that knowledge made Leah extraordinarily happy. She held Jin a little closer to her, and as she felt his breathing ease into a slow and steady rhythm, Leah closed her eyes and rested her head over Jin’s.
Today had been one of the most harrowing and emotional days of her life, and now, at the end of it, she was glad to have some rest. Like Jin, she was too tired to care that she was about to fall asleep outdoors.
Yet as Jin and Leah slowly drifted off to sleep, Will was wide-awake, staring at his mother and Jin through a crack in the curtains, a mix
of betrayal, hurt, and hate burning in his eyes.
Chronicles of the Apocalypse
--<(0)>--
Part 1: Revenge, Everything is Nothing
Chapter 12: Safety & Deception
Some hours later, as the sun began to paint the morning sky with orange, its warm light spread across Jin’s face, gently waking him. As he came to, he noticed a significant weight on his right side. Jin opened his eyes and found that Leah Lawson was curled peacefully against him. A genuine, effortless smile came to Jin’s face as his mind drifted over and into the events of the previous night. He gently ran his right hand through Leah’s hair, once again shining like fire in the soft sunlight, and she stirred, curling farther into Jin’s embrace. Jin chuckled and gently kissed her forehead.
The light pressure of Jin’s lips on her forehead broke through the veil of semi-consciousness that draped over her awareness. A soft moan passed through her lips as she stretched out in Jin’s arms, and her eyes fluttered open.
“Mmm, morning,” she said softly.
“Morning,” Jin replied. “You think Will’s up?”
“I dunno. Why?”
Jin gave a slight sigh. Despite the warmth Leah gave him, the cold truth of his reality could not be forgotten.
“Gotta keep movin’, Leah. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Leah groaned, and Jin wrapped his right arm around her shoulders and gave her a light shake.
“Hey, Leah, listen to me,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I know how much this situation sucks, especially for you. You didn’t ask for it and I know you didn’t want it, but I promise you, I’ll make things right. I’ll get you out of this. I won’t let my mistakes destroy your life.”
“I know you won’t, Jin,” Leah smiled at him. “I know you won’t.”
Chronicles of the Apocalypse: Revenge, Everything is Nothing Page 14
