Exit Wounds

by London Lampy

Chapter 5

As just about the very last place I wanted to talk to Jack was on the front steps of Municipal Works I managed to persuade him to come with me to the park Vio and I ate our lunch in earlier. There's a cluster of trees at the far end of it, it's not quite large enough to be described as a wood, but it is dense enough to offer a little privacy for what is going to be a very private conversation. We walked here in silence, and I could feel the anger coming off Jack like heat from a fire all the way. I stop a little way into the trees, and I'm briefly reminded of us walking through the Rhea basin forest when I was his "prisoner". That time he was pleased to see me and I was the one cross with him, the situation is reversed now, but he looks a lot more than cross. He looks like he wants to kill me, and I wonder if perhaps I shouldn't have chosen such an out of the way place after all.

"What the fuck?" he throws at me as soon as he's stopped walking and has dropped his kit bag on the ground. "I've been away six weeks, just six fucking weeks, and you've replaced me?"

"No," I shake my head, "I haven't replaced you." I couldn't replace Jack with Topher, any more than I could replace Topher with Jack, they're entirely different. His expression changes, softens slightly, he frowns, and there's a touch of confusion.

"Have I got it wrong, that Surosian bloke, are you not with him? He made it sound like you were."

I take a deep breath, right now I could lie. I could say that yes, he did get it wrong, that I'm not with Topher, and I could make all of this go away. But it wouldn't last, it wouldn't take long for Jack to discover the truth, and I know that if I did lie he would never forgive me and I would loose him forever. Although I think the chances of that happening now are pretty high too.

"No, you haven't got it wrong," I admit. "I am with him."

"You treacherous little shit." Something echoes in my head, a memory, Quint, right at the end, calling me a traitor. I push it away, I can only deal with one lot of pain right now.

Jack swallows, staring at me. I can see that all his muscles are tight and tense, he's breathing hard, his chest moving under his shirt, his fists clenched at his side. He takes a step toward me, and I take two back. He's twice my size and the gods know how many times stronger, but I'm faster than any human, I just need to be out of grabbing or punching distance. I take yet another step back and he looks like he's about to follow me, then he stops and blinks.

"Stay right there, stay right fucking there and don't move, I'll be back soon." He then disappears off amongst the trees, leaving his bag behind.

I wait, knowing what he's doing, feeling half relived that he isn't doing it to me, and half horrible that he's doing it at all. He returns after a few minutes and I can see blood oozing down the back of both of his hands from open wounds on his knuckles. One trickle runs down to his wrist and he licks it up before it reaches the cuff of his uniform, I'm not even sure that he realises he's doing it.

"I'm sorry," I say. It's much too little, but I can't think of anything better. "I'm so fucking sorry."

"Everything, all the shit we went through when we were kids, all the time we were apart, finding each other again, me risking getting court marshalled for you, me moving back to the Twin Islands, and in the space of six weeks you decide to throw all of that away for someone else?"

"No," I shake my head. "You've got to let me explain, I love you, and I don't want to end things between us."

"You love me but you've found someone else. I could understand if I'd been gone years, months maybe, but six weeks?" He holds his hands out palms up to indicate he doesn't understand, there's blood smeared across them. "And you found someone else?"

"No, I didn't find him, he found me, it's Topher." He shrugs, frowning, he doesn't remember Topher's name. "I told you about him, I told you how I got kidnapped by pirates and made to be a captain's pet, and that there was another pet, that's him, that's Topher." I look into his hazel eyes, I can see him putting it all together, you can sometimes almost hear Jack thinking.

"That doesn't make it right," he says eventually, but some of the anger has gone out of his voice.

"He left, he left the captain and he came to find me. He didn't have anywhere else to go, he hasn't got any family, he hasn't really got anyone else at all, so he came to Parnell."

"And straight into your bed?"

"Yes," I admit. We had sex the first night he was here, I couldn't not. I don't want to be around Topher and not be his lover. That's the part that Vio and everyone else can't understand, they all think it's me being fickle, being a slut, but it's not. I could never just be friends with Topher, with us it will always be all or nothing and the only way for me not to have slept with him would be for me to have turned him away at my door.

"And now he lives with you?"

"Yes."

"Are you in love with him?"

"Yes." Jack looks very hurt, and it's a hundred times worse than the anger was. "But I'm also in love with you, one hasn't cancelled out the other."

"Does he know about me?"

"Yes, I've told him everything."

"But you didn't fucking well think to tell me about him? I have to come here and meet him by accident. Would you have ever told me if that hadn't happened? Or would you have moved him out for a few days while I visited then brought him back when the coast was clear and let me go on thinking that my boyfriend was being faithful?"

"No!" I exclaim. "I was going to tell you as soon as you got here. I know that I haven't done a good thing by you, but I'm not sneaky and dishonest like that either."

"Yeah, you're right, you're not," he concedes. "And you can't lie for shit. So what does he think about the whole thing, does he want me gone so he can have you all to yourself?"

"No, he really doesn't care." I remember Quint telling me that Topher makes a huge fuss over small stuff but just kind of deals with the big things. He hated Quint to be with anybody else, but he was already used to the idea of sharing me, and as Jack and me were together before he turned up he really couldn't complain about it. Even Topher wouldn't expect to walk unannounced into my life and for me to split up with my boyfriend for him. He's actually quite keen on the idea of meeting Jack, although I guess he has now. I hope Topher wasn't too rude to Jack.

"He might not care but I fucking do," Jack says, and this really is at the heart of it all. If Jack can't handle me living with Topher then it's all over. I don't want it to be, but I'm not going to be forced into choosing, it's Jack's call now.

"How much do you care?" I ask, risking putting out my hand and touching his. He winces and pulls away. At first I take this for an answer, he can't even bear for me to touch him, then I realise that I put my fingers right on his bleeding knuckles. I look at my hand, it has his blood on it and I wipe it off on my trouser leg. Instead of the back of his hand this time I touch my fingertips to his, pressing my hand into his larger one, he doesn't move his fingers to secure it there, but he doesn't move them away either. "Jack, how much do you care, how much does this bother you?" I look up at him, he gives me a small shrug, I can't read his expression. "I need you to know that what I have with Topher is completely different from what I have with you."

"I get that, you have a proper relationship. He lives with you, you sleep in the same bed every night, you share a life," Jack says quietly. "All I can do is be with you every few weeks, that can never be the same."

"That's not what I mean." But there is something in this, regardless of which one of them it is, I like not living alone. "And I know that it's kind of greedy, but I want to keep both of you."

Jack sighs. "That's a lot to ask."

"I know."

At that moment I hear a noise and we both turn to see what it is. An elderly woman with two small brown and white dogs on leads is walking through the trees toward us, the dogs yapping excitedly at the sight of two strangers as they approach. The woman is no less fascinated than her pets, she stares at us open mouthed and her head actually swivels to keep looking as the dogs pull her past on what I guess is probably their regular evening route. I suppose we must be a pretty odd sight, a very tall solider with blooded hands, one of which is being held by an echoback in the middle of the small stand of trees in park. I wonder what she thinks is going on, I doubt it's anything wholesome and I hope that she doesn't decide to fetch the park-keeper to come and investigate. Jack must be thinking much the same, because once she disappears from sight he suggests that we leave the park and go and get something to eat together. With Jack food comes before pretty much everything else except sex, but even so the fact that he wants to eat, and for me to go with him, can't be a bad sign.

I point out that he needs to do something about his hands first, that nowhere decent is going to let us in with him covered in blood. He agrees so we go and sit on a small grassy slope by the entrance to the park. The sun is starting to dip in the sky and we cast long shadows on the ground. In the golden light Jack opens up his pack and pulls out a water canteen, a tin box of medical supplies and a clean handkerchief. He opens the canteen, soaks the handkerchief in water and begin to wash the blood away.

"Would you like me to do that?" I ask. He passes me the handkerchief and I wipe him as gently as I can. Even discounting these latest wounds the backs of his hands are a mess of scars, and I wouldn't like to guess how many if them are self inflicted. Once the first one is as clean as I'm going to get it I take his other hand, feeling his calloused palm against my much smoother one.

"You ought to stop hitting things, you're only twenty, what are they going to look like in ten years time?"

"It's better than the alternative," he replies flatly, staring straight ahead. "There's a bottle of iodine in the kit, can you put some of that on them too?"

I open the tin box, find a small brown bottle of iodine and then pour some onto a clean bit of the handkerchief. Jack winces with every dab, and I feel for him, then he has me dress his hands with bandages.

"Thank you," he says when I'm done and everything is packed away again. He then puts an arm around my shoulders and kisses the top of my head. "I love you."

"I love you too," I reply, leaning against him.

"You didn't plan it did you? You didn't set out to cheat on me or anything like that."

"No, the last thing I expected was for Topher to appear like that. Actually, I suppose it was less unexpected than you tackling me in a burning plantation in the middle of the forest, I did tell him that he could come and find me if he ever left the ship, but I didn't really expect him to do it. I'm not a cheat, I'm not like Vin," I feel Jack tense a little at Vin's name, he doesn't like Vin any more than Vin likes him, "with half a dozen affairs on the go at once and never telling the full truth to anyone. I just happen to be in love with two people at the same time."

"How did this Topher find you?" he asks, sounding more like his normal self.

"Do you remember Senis, we met her in Kipp?"

"Gods yes, that very talkative echoback girl." I'm not sure that Jack likes Senis very much. Come to think of it neither does Topher, so they have something in common other than me.

"Her parents are friends with Tallis who was kind of my teacher on the ship." And the closest thing to a father I've ever had. "I gave her my address to give to him when she next saw him, and he passed it on to Topher."

"Oh," Jack takes a few seconds to follow this. "And he really doesn't have anywhere else to go?"

"No," I shake my head. "His family were pretty much all killed as a result of the war." I don't elaborate, it's not my story to tell.

"How old is he?"

"Eighteen, he's a bit younger than us."

"Is he always that rude?"

"What did he say to you?"

"Quite a few four letter words, and that I should go and stick my head on the tram track." While Jack isn't rude by nature I can't imagine that under the circumstances he was particularly polite to Topher, so Topher would have simply responded to that in his own style; but I decide not to go into that with Jack right now.

"You have to get to know him," I say.

"Thanks, but I don't want to. If this is going to work I don't really want to have anything to do with him, especially if he's always like that."

"If this is going to work?" I echo, smiling. "You want to try then?"

"I don't see that I have any choice, it's either you with him, or no you at all. I'm not going to ask you to break up with him, you clearly love him, although from what I saw the gods know why."

"I told you, you just have to get to know him, hardly anyone likes him at first."

"You make him sound like olives," Jack laughs.

"Yuck, disgusting things." Topher eats them, I tried one once, it was the most revolting thing I've ever put in my mouth.

"I'm hungry," Jack says, and as if in agreement his stomach rumbles.

"What do you want to do?" I ask.

"Eat."

"I actually meant about us, this whole thing. Are you happy to come and see me and not stay at my place?"

"I wouldn't exactly say I'm happy, hell, I'm a fucking long way from happy," he replies after a few seconds thought. "But it'll do, for now."

I turn my head to look up at him, and he leans down and kisses me softly. I'm filled with relief, for weeks I've been worrying about loosing Jack, and I'm not sure that we haven't still got a whole load of stuff to sort through before we're back to where we were, or if because of Topher we'll ever be, but it's not over, and that's all that matters for now.