“Kid’s got a hell of a lot of power packed in that body of his,” he said, looking up with his brown eyes and angular face at Jin and Mark, his voice tight with pain.
Jin’s eyes widened and his mouth fell an inch or so open. Carlos was an excellent fighter, just as good as Mark was. Even if he’d been caught off guard, Jin wouldn’t have expected him to be as thoroughly trounced as he appeared to be.
“Okay,” Jin said slowly after taking in the bizarre picture. “I’m gonna ask again. Did I miss something?”
“I…just wanted to go for a walk,” Will growled.
“Uh huh,” Jin said disbelievingly. “You beat the crap out of Carlos just so you could take a walk.”
“Look, it’s not my fault I got dragged into this fucked up world of yours!” Will shouted. “So excuse me if I need to take a walk to blow off some steam!”
Jin grimaced. “You know that’s not the best idea, William.”
“I don’t care!” he roared back as he tried to shove past Jin.
Jin dodged Will’s shove and then grabbed his arm to hold him back.
The instant Jin did this, Will snapped his head around and glared fiercely at Jin, who was stunned by what he saw in the young boy’s eyes.
It was hate, pure and unfettered.
The exact kind of hate Jin felt for Dorigan.
In that one moment of surprise, when Jin’s guard was nonexistent, Will gave a savage cry and spun around, driving a viciously powerful kick into Jin’s pelvis. Jin gave a loud groan and released Will’s arm, stumbling to one knee. Finally free, Will bolted for the stairs and leapt down the entire staircase.
“Follow him!” Jin half-growled, half-groaned at Mark.
Mark gave a swift nod and launched himself after Will.
Groaning again, Jin slowly stood back up and looked over at Carlos, who was now standing.
“I see what you mean,” he said.
“Yeah,” Carlos replied. “Though I gotta say, I didn’t think the kid had it in him to take you down! I didn’t even know you could be taken down!”
Jin chuckled. “First time for everything.”
“Must be.”
“Well listen, Carlos, thanks for coming over for us. I really appreciate it.”
“And I’m sorry for what my son did,” Leah cut in. “It was completely uncalled for.”
“It’s not a problem, Ms. Lawson,” Carlos said. “I’ve been beat up worse. You should be proud that your son’s so strong.”
“I am,” Leah said, a little defensively. “I just wish he’d use that strength in the right ways.”
“Well, I can’t really help ya there,” Carlos shrugged sadly. “Kinda out of my area.”
“Well, thanks again, Carlos,” Jin said. “You can go now, if you want. Mark and I should be fine for now.”
“Of course,” Carlos replied, walking toward the door that led downstairs.
As he passed Jin, he paused to lay a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s good to have you back, Master,” he said so only Jin could hear.
Jin gave a sad smile at the title and gave a small, almost hesitant nod. Carlos returned the nod and continued toward the stairs, closing the door behind him.
“I’m so sorry, Jin,” Leah began. “I had no idea that Will would act like that! I…”
“It’s alright, Leah,” Jin said calmly. “You don’t have to apologize for him. Though I think it’s time I got some answers.”
“About what?” Leah asked, confused.
“About your past,” Jin explained. “Because I just saw a frightening amount of hate in your son’s eyes, and I know that kind of hate. It doesn’t just pop out of nowhere. It has a source, it has a cause, and I need to know what it is.”
Leah bit her lip apprehensively. Her past was a dark place. A place full of loss, pain, and hopelessness. It was a place that she had fought tooth and nail to escape from, and a place she swore she’d never go back to – in any form.
“So what’s the story, Leah?” Jin pressed. “What happened to you two?”
Chronicles of the Apocalypse
--<(0)>--
Part 1: Revenge, Everything is Nothing
Chapter 14: Understanding
Leah took her bottom lip into her mouth, chewing it in apparent apprehension. She turned away from Jin and slowly began to walk away. She could feel within herself the darkness of her past squirming out from the deep corner of her heart she’d buried it in. Yet even though the darkness threatened to consume her utterly, Leah held fast and stoically refused to give in.
“Leah,” Jin said, breaking into her little cocoon of willpower. “I need to know.”
“I know, Jin,” Leah fired back at him. “I just…need a minute. You have your dark past, and I have mine.”
Jin cocked an eyebrow at Leah’s words, intrigued, but he stayed silent as Leah moved over to the couch and sat down. A moment of silence followed, wherein Leah gathered her emotions and memories to put words to them, and Jin gave her the quiet to do so. When Leah finally spoke, all light and joy was gone from her voice, leaving it dark and heavy.
“You remember how I told you that I used to be a nurse, aiming to be a doctor someday?”
Jin nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”
Leah took a deep breath, and then began her tale in full.
“Seven years ago, I was working the nightshift at the hospital when a man was brought in from a car wreck. It was a bad one, and he was losing a lot of blood really fast. They brought him into the OR so we could stop the internal bleeding. I was one of the nurses assisting the surgical team. It was the first time I’d ever been involved in something so severe, and it came so fast, I wasn’t ready for it.”
Leah paused a moment to calm herself down with a breath, and when she had, she continued with a revelation that struck Jin in the heart.
“That man was my husband.”
“Oh no…” Jin whispered, knowing at once how the story was to end.
“I couldn’t stop shaking, I was so nervous,” Leah continued. “One of the doctors performing the surgery asked me if I needed to leave, but I told him no. I told myself that I would use my fear as my motivation to save his life. It didn’t work. My husband’s ribcage had been crushed in the wreck, and some of the bones had been splintered. The doctors were trying to remove the splinters that were close to the heart…”
“Leah, you don’t have to keep going with this,” Jin suddenly interrupted. “My mind can take it from here.”
“No, Jin,” Leah replied stonily. “You really can’t.”
Jin sighed in defeat, then nodded for her to continue.
“When this was going on, one of the doctors called me over to collect one of the splinters. I was so nervous and jumpy that when I moved, I tripped and fell fully into the doctor, knocked him completely over, and the tweezers he was holding got stuck into my husband’s heart.”
Jin’s breathing slowed considerably. Though the accident had occurred in the middle of the operation, with the victim surrounded by a team of doctors, Jin knew that there was simply no conceivable way that Leah’s husband could have been saved. It just couldn’t have happened. In the blink of an eye, Jin could picture the entire scene.
Leah trips, collides with the doctor, the doctor accidentally stabs the heart, the monitors go haywire, the other doctors and nurses all begin shouting, confusion and chaos engulfs the room. Checkmate. Game over. He’s dead. Between the initial confusion and Leah’s undoubted panicking, there would have been no way the doctors could have gained control of the situation fast enough to save her husband’s life.
“God,” Jin whispered as this knowledge sank in. “I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
Jin slumped his shoulders and stared in wonder at Leah. Because of his own experiences, he could easily understand Leah’s pain, and feel it as though it were his own. He briefly wondered how she could have survived her experience when her voice filled his ears once more.
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“Everything else that’s happened to me, and Will, has happened to us because of that.”
“And what else has happened? Does Will even know about his father?” Jin asked.
A humorless smile pulled at Leah’s mouth. “No. There’s no way I could’ve told him, not with the shape I was in.”
“And that’s also why you gave up your dream of being a doctor, isn’t it?”
Leah nodded. “I quit the very next day. Never looked back.”
“Then what happened next? Why does Will still not know the truth about his father?”
“Because as bad a shape I was in, I would only get worse – a lot worse.”
Leah chewed on her cheek for a moment as she thought of her next string of words, and when she had them, she spoke them.
“I started going out at night, to clubs, not long after my husband’s funeral. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending nights alone in our bed, let alone the action, so I did whatever I could to avoid it. I think I got around three, maybe four hours of sleep a night, got it all on the couch, and this went on for about a year. And don’t think I didn’t know what that kind of sleep deprivation could cause. I knew it very well, I just didn’t care.”
She paused for breath and then continued.
“On the anniversary of my husband’s death, I stayed at the club a lot longer than I usually did. Met a guy.”
“Please tell me this story is not going where I think it is,” Jin said with a grimace.
“Sad to say,” Leah said, with a twisted smile that wasn’t quite a full grimace, “but it is.”
“Mmm…” Jin hummed, closing his eyes and grinding his teeth, his right fist clenching almost unconsciously as he fought to suppress the rising anger he felt in his chest.
“I think I knew at the time it was a stupid thing to do,” Leah continued, “but I was so drunk that night, and he didn’t seem like a bad guy. He was smart, charming, even had a decent sense of humor. I invited him back to my home. Will was spending the night at a friend’s house, and I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone that night. So we got there, sat down on the couch, and he started kissing me. I went along with it at first, I mean, it had been so long since I had any contact like that, my brain just shut off. But then he started getting aggressive, and I broke out of my daze to push him off me. That’s when he pulled out the knife.”
Jin sucked in a sharp breath, dread and a slow anger filling his system as he imagined what this man intended to do with his knife.
“He told me that unless I complied with his every wish, and if I struggled or fought back at all, he would cut me in some place that no one would ever see.”
“I don’t suppose,” Jin began in dark growl, red fury clouding his mind, “that this…animal has a name?”
“Not one that I’ll give you,” Leah responded quickly. “I don’t want anyone else dying because of me, whether or not they deserve it.”
Jin’s mind struggled to wrap around this. The idea that he wasn’t allowed to kill this man, even though it would be pathetically easy to do so, was a concept that Jin just wasn’t prepared to accept. Especially when his would-be quarry so mightily deserved it! Suddenly the rational part of Jin’s mind kicked into gear, reminding him that he had bigger concerns at the moment than dealing with one stray human rapist. Jin’s emotional side argued vehemently, drawing on Jin’s inner vengefulness to justify murdering that piece of trash.
Though Jin’s mind was strained by this conflict, he kept his body standing perfectly still. Only the extreme tightness of his muscles belied his internal struggle.
“So what happened?” he managed to say, albeit quietly.
Leah gave a dark chuckle.
“Well, I’ve never been someone who just lets bad things happen to her. The only problem this time was that he was so much stronger than I was at the time. He was probably almost as strong as you are.”
Jin gave a very derisive snort. “He could only wish.”
Leah shrugged. “Didn’t really matter, he was still strong enough to overpower me and…well, let’s just say I’ve got the scars to prove it.”
A vicious surge of protectiveness rocketed through Jin’s body, and for half a second Jin could have sworn his right hand thrust for his sword. It had not though; Jin’s right hand was still curled into a fist.
Leah sighed, and then continued.
“After that it was pretty much a downward spiral,” she explained. “I felt so violated that I started drowning myself in booze and drugs, doing anything I could to avoid feeling at all; not that it helped. This is where the things with Will are coming from.”
“Because you were so swallowed up by your own pain,” Jin inferred, “you couldn’t think much about anything else other than avoiding it. That leaves Will pretty much without a mother. So he starts out as worried, scared, lonely, and then as he matures and grows older, he gets angry and resentful.”
Leah nodded. “After a couple years of…that, Child Services gets called on me and takes me away. Will gets thrown into the foster system, and I don’t see him for nearly two years.”
“Where were you?” Jin asked. “Rehab?”
“Yeah,” Leah answered. “That’s where I discovered aikido. My therapist said that learning a type of martial art could be good for me. Get my self-confidence and personal power back, you know.”
“Yeah. Martial arts would be a great way to do that, especially with such a defense oriented form.”
“Mm-hmm. It really did feel good for me to get myself back together like that, but after a while, I wanted to be able to do more than just defend myself. Aikido started to feel too passive, and I’ve never been a very passive person.”
Despite the gloom of her story, Jin grinned at Leah’s words. It was her fighter’s nature that he found so attractive.
“Thus you took up tae kwon do,” he said.
She nodded. “Anyway, after I got through rehab and the compulsory therapy, I got myself back on my feet. Found my own apartment in the city, and my current job at the bookstore.”
Leah paused for a moment, seeming to return to the world around her, and then suddenly she let out a single, genuine laugh.
“Doubt I’ll have that job to go back to once all this is over with.”
“You will,” Jin said reassuringly.
“Well, either way, once I got my life back together and actually felt secure, I tried to get Will out of the foster system. Being a former drug addict, I wasn’t given an easy time of it. Even so, I did get him back, and ever since then I’ve been trying to make amends for everything I’d put him through.”
“I’m sorry, Leah,” Jin sighed heavily. “I am…so sorry.”
“I just hope that when we get out of this,” she said solemnly, “he’ll forgive me for making him tag along.”
“Hey,” Jin said, walking over to her and putting a hand on her shoulder. “He will.”
“Oh yeah?” Leah asked, looking up into Jin’s eyes. “How do you know?”
Jin smiled. “Just do.”
Leah smiled back, and that’s when the door to the living room clicked open. Jin and Leah both turned toward the sound and saw Mark and Will standing in the doorway.
“Hey,” Jin said. “You’re back.”
“Didn’t go far,” Will grumbled.
“He really didn’t,” Mark verified. “Just went a few blocks down to the corner.”
Leah took a very deep breath of relief, and Jin very visibly relaxed, his shoulders slumping as he leaned back against the arm of the couch.
“Like I said,” Will spoke again. “I just needed some space. I never said I’d go all the way across town to get that.”
Jin gave an acquiescing nod and Will walked away from Mark over to the dinner table. Jin watched him for a moment, and felt the compassion in his heart unlock. It filled him with a sudden, almost paternal desire that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Suddenly he knew what he needed to do to get through to Will and calm him do
wn. Without a second thought, Jin pushed off the arm of the couch and walked over to Will, hoping that this would make a difference.
“Hey, Will,” he said gently. “Listen, you don’t have to right now, but sometime in the future, whenever you feel you’re ready, I’d really like to talk to you.”
Will looked up at Jin, shocked by his words. Since when did Jin have a heart? Rather than say anything further, however, Jin simply clapped Will lightly on the shoulder with his hand and walked away.
--<(0)>--
That night, while everyone else was asleep in their sleeping bags, Will was wide-awake in his, his mind still buzzing over Jin’s unexpected change in demeanor. After telling Will he wanted to talk to him, Jin had acted both casual and relaxed. While Mark and his mother acted like nothing had changed, Will had continued to stare at Jin, completely confused. Even now, hours later, Will was still trying to piece things together.
He couldn’t deny the fact that Jin’s words had been sincere, and that irritated Will to no end. First, Jin appeared to be a decent person, despite the strange circumstances of his arrival. Then when the truth was revealed, Jin morphs into a violent, angry person with little regard for just about anything, and now it seemed he was trying to go back to being that first person! Will growled quietly to himself, just who was this guy?
But maybe that right there is the key! Will thought suddenly. Maybe all I have to do is find out who this guy really is.
--<(0)>--
When Will awoke the next morning, his mother was still fast asleep on Mark’s couch, and sunlight shone through the windows of the living room. Somewhat groggily, Will unzipped his sleeping bag and got to his feet. As his senses returned to him, Will first smelled fresh toast, and then heard the sizzling of bacon cooking. He turned toward the kitchen and saw Mark cooking breakfast.
That’s a sight I don’t think I’ll ever get used to, Will thought. A guy cooking.
Chronicles of the Apocalypse: Revenge, Everything is Nothing Page 17
