Fic: Never Let Me Go (1/1)
Title: Never Let Me Go
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jacob/Esau
Word Count: 6,769
Summary: They were, and always would be, two halves of the same whole. For toestastegood, who requested "Esau/Jacob, pre-series AU: Esau succeeds in escaping the island. If you can work in any kind of hand-holding, I'll be happy" at the lostsquee HoHoHo Exchange. Spoilers Through 6.17 - The End; warnings for the obligatory incest, given the pairing, as well as implications of more-than-brotherly-affection (nothing explicit) before the modern age of majority (though, seeing as those bits take place a couple millennia prior to modernity, I don’t quite know how much of an issue that is; still, better safe than sorry).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title inspired by the work of Kazuo Ishiguro.
Author’s Notes: Happy Holidays, toestastegood! I hope I did your brilliant prompt the justice it deserves -- admittedly, I’ve got a bit of a thing for playing with the whole “whatever happened, happened” concept, so I hope that this particular go-around with it is to your liking, even if it is angsty and schmoopy to something of an extreme.
Never Let Me Go
He feels it, first.
He can’t describe it, doesn’t possess vowels for the way it wrings and gasps, doesn’t know how to string consonants together in order to convey the way things break inside of him, the way they fall and slice and draw angry blood, black with bile from the center of himself as they make their way toward the bottom, lost.
He falls to his knees on the shore, drops long, thin kindling into the sand as he clutches one hand to his chest and buries the other, its twin in the grains, grasping for something real, something steady as he wheezes, tries to breathe.
Twin.
His heart drums madly, war and rage and loss and fear and too much for its boundaries, its limits -- it’s not big enough, not strong enough to hold against whatever this is, whatever vile thing has taken it and twisted, tugged around it; that keeps it thrumming like a bird, a wing-beat flutter to the death and the dying, bruising against his lungs.
There’s nowhere to hold, nothing; no touchstone, no steady breath or warm body, no strong arms to wrap around his shoulders and tell him he’ll survive this, that there are ways to exist as half of a whole, rent in two, with the missing pieces lost somewhere, far across the sea. He crumbles inward, slowly, bends at the waist and tumbles, the hole in him gaping and drawing him, like gravity to the ground and he sprawls, chest heaving hard to the sky as he stares; bereft.
He doesn’t have to see the silhouette against the sun, doesn’t need to feel the paths, the dirt cold beneath his toes; he doesn’t have to smell long-dead embers on the air of a ghost-town, abandoned -- desolate; he doesn’t have to check the edge of the ocean or see a wheel hung off-kilter and a brightness on the leaves, the rocks and the wind, to know that they’ve left.
He doesn’t have to look to the horizon to know his brother’s gone.
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He fits against his brother like they were born for this, to slide skin against skin and palm against palm, the wet fabric of their clothes like a second skin, clung to their flesh, and Jacob breathes it in, brine with the salt of sweat and the sweet musk of the jungle, the land -- buries himself in the crook of Esau’s neck and closes his eyes, lets the warmth keep him safe.
They watch the water until the moon starts to set -- hold to each other, havens against the storm -- and where Esau looks to the coming of something, Jacob marvels quietly at what already lies within his reach.
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The surf beats in a rhythm, familiar, and he loses himself to the phantom, the memory. He watches the line in the sky, where the heavens meet the earth -- where what lies above crashes, breaks against what lies beneath -- for a very long time.
He hears her sigh first, turns to see Mother settling down beside him, and there’s a part of him -- larger, more powerful than he cares to admit to -- that wants to stand and walk away, that wants to run to the camp and hope, pray that his brother is close enough to follow, somehow; there’s a part of him, in that moment, that hates her, that wishes she’d died and their real mother had lived.
They trade posts: she watches the horizon, and he watches her.
“There are things out there that I cannot protect him from,” she says finally, and maybe there was always a part of him that knew -- knew that his brother spoke truth, felt it in his blood like fire -- because he doesn’t ask how the nothingness that she’d always said existed beyond the sea could possibly be dangerous; how a void could be viscous and cruel.
“He doesn’t need you to protect him,” Jacob says instead, pulls himself to his feet and dusts sand from his legs as he sinks into the give of the coast, each step a struggle against futile inevitability.
He wishes he could believe his own words.
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The day after his brother leaves for the camp, for the men across the Island; the day after his brother abandons him, after he abandons his brother, Jacob walks the shoreline until dusk.
He’s afraid, for a time, that Mother will find him, bring him back, so he ventures deeper into the trees, lets the darkness envelop him as he breathes in deep the scents of twilight: of water and clean air, of moonbeams on the leaves.
He tries to steady himself, he tries to learn to balance for once without compensating, without trying to accommodate the weight of his brother’s very being inside of his own; he walks to the ledge above a spring, looks down for moments that steal life from him, that last an age.
He swallows, finally; crumbles a little and hangs his legs over the ledge as he curls in upon himself and lets himself mourn the loss of his gravity, his own bit of Light at the heart of himself.
Mother says that men are selfish, ruthless; that they always want more, but it isn’t true.
Jacob’s never wanted more than just his brother’s Light.
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Things change, once he drinks the wine.
Mother sleeps more -- that’s the first thing that happens. Progressively, it’s more that that world around him is altered, than that he himself is changed. Everything seems dimmer -- the sun is weak and the water shimmers less.
Nonetheless, Mother always finds the time, the strength to weave; she finds time and strength for little else.
She loses her vision first; she navigates warp and weft by touch alone until her dexterity begins to wane and Jacob takes up the burden, sits behind her and guides her hands for the last few inches, spins the threads as she naps in the sunlight and wipes the drying tears from her milky eyes -- something less than sorrowful -- when she wakes.
They finish the piece together; he clamps Mother’s fist around the last of the thread and holds it there, whispers close to her ear, her hearing failing her: “It’s done.”
She smiles, nods, and says nothing; pats his hand against her own and curls up below the loom, closes her eyes.
When she slips away, Jacob feels sadness, but it doesn’t pull at him the way that it should; he feels loneliness, but it isn’t new.
He buries her, and clutches tight to the smooth glass bottle, the wine inside sloshing, keeping time.
It’s his now, he assumes, and it’s the only thing that still holds wonder -- he watches it, fluid and dark, heat spiraling in it, light catching through the glass, and he thinks of his brother, swallows through the ache that always comes with his memory. He thumbs the cork repetitiously, rote and unconscious, as if stroking stubble on a chin, or running the pad of a finger across the bow of a lip.
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Some years after his brother leaves for the camp -- years filled with random crossings and chance encounters, with pangs in Jacob’s chest and dreams of his brother’s eyes in the dark -- years later, he still hasn’t learned how to balance, how to stay steady on his own.
He finds himself in the same place he always goes: a ritual, at the spring sunk low in the rocks, and this time -- this time, with a surge of adventurous, dangerous, desperate folly, he inches to the ledge overlooking the spring below, walks to the very edge: teeters, evens out, wavers again.
He tries, but he falters, and he flails his limbs too late to find his footing again, knows that the fall will bruise and batter, maybe worse, and he tenses, braces for it as his feet slip, his arms too far from solid ground to save himself; waits for the fall and the hit-
And then there are arms, arms and warmth and home wrapped around his biceps, pulling him close, stumbling back as they both fall against the dirt, chest to chest and heaving, sparked with adrenaline as Jacob takes in his brother’s eyes and drinks the wild frenzy gleaming in them, bright with fear and rage and affection, Jacob thinks -- hopes.
Hopes.
‘What were you doing?’ Esau shouts as he sits up, tugs Jacob along, never losing hold of his shoulders, and all Jacob can process is the way that the leaves rustle as sleeping birds take flight at the echo of his brother’s anger; all he can process is the way Esau’s eyes flash again, and it’s not fury inside them, it’s not.
He shakes Jacob roughly, once, and Jacob lets his body yield to the motion, the momentum, lets his head loll with the force as Esau leans in and hisses: ‘Were he trying to kill yourself, you idiot? What were you thinking? You could have-’
Jacob doesn’t think when he leans in and captures Esau’s mouth mid-rant, tastes worry and relief on his tongue as he sucks it in between his teeth, as Esau explores the roof of his mouth and opens deeper, wider until they both break apart, panting and clinging, pawing at each other, just a little lost, still reeling as Esau leans his forehead against Jacob’s and just breathes, gasps, breathes.
‘You have to be more careful, Jacob,’ he whispers, trembles, and Jacob’s chest constricts when he feels Esau gather Jacob’s hand in his, pressing Jacob’s palm hard just below his collarbone, just above his quaking heart. ‘Everything dies,’ and it comes out broken, fragile -- everything Jacob’s never known his brother to be.
Jacob leans in and kisses him softly this time, relearns the curves of his brother, the places where muscle has grown and the years have worn and reshaped his frame -- he’s beautiful, as he’s always been, and Jacob just holds to him, fast and tight as he lingers, mouth against mouth as they breathe in together and mingle on the exhale; as he waits, presses them closer until the knuckles of Esau’s hand bump against his own heartbeat, until the frantic rush of Esau’s blood settles back into something safer, something calmer and true.
Jacob eases them down until they both stretch flat against the smattering of grass, Jacob’s arms braced tight until his brother doesn’t move alone, doesn’t breathe alone, doesn’t exist in this world without the waves of his very being stirring Jacob at his core.
Like it was meant to be. Always.
Jacob feels balanced again as he slips into sleep.
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Jacob walks the Island every morning, every night; surveys his domain with a weary gaze. He can no longer find the beauty it holds.
Every day, he places a hand on the wood of the wheel, catches his finger on a splinter and relishes the bite, a rip of skin and the bead of blood until he remembers there’s no one to press lips against the hurt, to lick away the red and kiss his mouth until the metal taste is gone and there’s only spice and earth and sweet against them, between them.
It’s liberating, until he remembers there’s no one else; no one left.
Every day, he steadies himself down the incline, anchors his feet with every painstaking step down the hills, rough and unkempt, lonely like him -- every day, he walks, tries to imagine where his brother’s feet marked the ground, once, tries to picture where Esau is, if Esau is anywhere, anymore.
Every day, he touches the wheel and wonders what would happen he he only pushed it, only made it turn.
But Mother always told him; Mother always said that if they ever got separated, if ever they were lost -- she always told them to stay where they were, and wait to be found.
Protect this place as long as you can.
He will wait as long as he needs to; he can wait a little longer.
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They meet in different places, different backdrops for the same scene, but they never have to speak of it, never have to plan: they are both drawn in, polarized to attract in the pump of their blood, the marrow of their bones -- and their eyes smile, never surprised, when they seek each other out, when they come together and their lips touch and all the air rushes home like the tide.
Over time, the touches morph, change; they symbolize something deeper, something raw, and Jacob bites welts into his brother’s skin because he needs to show him his heart, and Esau scrapes teeth in lines against his chest because he thinks he can speak to Jacob’s soul through the flesh and the bone, and they tease and bend and yield and take: selfish, wasteful, because they never learned any different.
They never learned anything but the world of one another, the world inside themselves.
They’re panting, hard; Jacob’s hand still low on Esau’s thigh as he pulls him close, pulse to pulse at the neck as Jacob tongues his brother’s stubble, cradles his cheek near and sighs, hungry and overwhelmed, as he presses a palm to the center of Esau’s chest, measures the way it expands and contracts with his breath, proof of life and essence. They’re quiet for a long time, still for longer.
‘I don’t belong here, Jacob,’ Esau breathes, voice fissured, far from steady. Jacob feels the way it catches beneath the touch of his fingers, feels how it spills cold from his brother’s lips against the shell of his ear, and Jacob swirls his tongue at the edge of Esau’s beard for a moment before he pulls back, unafraid, and locks his eyes, halves of a whole to his brother’s; slips a hand behind Esau’s neck and grips tight, close -- a promise, a claim.
‘You belong with me,’ he whispers harsh, teeth clenched and eyes bleeding with something so true that even Esau looks taken with it, looks drenched beneath the fall; and when Jacob leans in to take his mouth, Esau’s waiting, tilts up to devour him like just maybe, he agrees.
Or, at least, like he wishes that he could.
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He doesn’t believe in the leap, the flutter in his chest like a breeze, a hurricane around his heart as he stumbles, lightheaded, grasping hard against the trunk of a tree until the bark cuts angry into the lines of his palm, blurring the creases in his skin.
He doesn’t believe in it, even as he starts, runs; as his footfalls match the thump of his pulse.
His steps lose purchase, and he skids a bit in the sand when he reaches the beach, hands sprawling wide for balance as he rushes to the wet foam where the water teases the coast, to the dark mass washed up on the waves, heaped upon the shore.
He goes to it -- a person, he sees now, a body hunched and shriveled: just as Mother had gotten, just before she’d gone; waterlogged and pale, dripping, and it’s been so long, too long -- a lifetime, or more: he doesn’t remember, tries to forget. He shouldn’t know the face he sees when he grips the shoulder, flips the solid frame on its back and runs a hand from the chest, to the neck, to the chin, eyes fixed first on the stillness, the lack of breath, and then upon his own fingertips as he reaches, a will outside his own, drawn to the rush of blood beneath the surface between wrinkles, in the chasms of stretched and sagging skin.
Something surges hot inside of him when he presses up against the beat, a spark that seems to wrack them both as the man before him gasps and heaves, spits seawater as his eyes fly open and remove all question, displace all doubt.
“You’re,” he whispers, as Esau -- an Esau he’s never seen before, a soul in his gaze that’s changed, that’s grown and thrived and that cuts Jacob to his core -- coughs, the corners of his lips twitching as he struggles for his breath, as Jacob rubs at his chest and eases him to sitting, a hand on his spine where he feels, hears the rattle of every inhalation. “You’re here.”
Esau blinks, something soft in his eyes that Jacob -- he can’t say he merely missed it, because it’s so much more, so much stronger than just a loss; it breaks something inside of him as he holds his palm still on his brother’s chest as his breathing evens, as his heart pumps slow, languid underneath, too far away: “I’m here.”
Jacob tries to swallow, can’t quite manage it. “Why?”
“I’ve come home, Jacob,” and something stirs in him, painful hope before the fall, because there’s such sadness in that voice, such joy at the very same time that there’s resignation, and Jacob remembers what happened the last time he heard such a voice, saw such a emotion etched into tired features, Mother’s features; he remembers, and he doesn’t wait for the words that come next, breathy and faint from his brother’s parched lips, cracked against the sea.
He doesn’t wait for the words before the tears pool in the corners of his eyes.
“I’ve come home to die.”
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His brother hadn’t been exaggerating.
Jacob tends to him, barely turns away from him, barely takes a moment between building a fire and easing Esau close to it to breathe air that doesn’t rush from Esau’s lips; only just allows a second to pass between the stripping of his clothes and wrapping him in something dry and warm where his hands don’t remain flush against Esau’s skin.
He settles behind his brother, kicks his legs out and wraps his knees in around Esau’s thighs, tangles his arms close, gentle but tight, desperate against Esau’s middle as he pulls them into one another, and they still fit, they’ll always fit.
“Where have you been?” he asks, because it’s the only thing that he doesn’t know -- his brother is changed, but he’s still his brother, still the bit of his soul that fell away and now presses back into place; the rest, he still remembers.
And Esau, he sighs deeply as his hand seeks Jacob’s, as he threads smooth skin with weathered, callused flesh and weaves their fingers together, Jacob’s straight and strong against Esau’s, bent with time and hooked with the weight of the world. He lets his head fall back onto Jacob’s shoulder, eyes closed as his body goes boneless, limp against Jacob’s chest.
And Jacob, he knows what death is, now; he knows, but he still doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know how it comes to take the things he loves, why it chooses him to suffer.
He was never curious enough; not like his brother.
He keeps his mouth pressed against the side of Esau’s neck until the night clears, until the day breaks and the fire dies; pretends that the soft massage of blood against his lips doesn’t grow slower, weaker as the stars disappear.
Esau never quite wakes up, after that; moans, shivers, and Jacob does what he can to keep him close, keep him safe, but it’s almost like it was before -- the sharp break of something vital in his chest as he loses his brother all over again -- except this time, it’s slower, shattering like glass, each crack like the burst of a vein at the beat of his heart, blood seeping slow until he drowns in it, and it’s nothing like it was before. It’s agony.
He has to do something.
He presses a kiss to his brother’s lips, hard and quick as he exhales against his mouth before he lifts him, small and light inside his arms, and takes him to the only place he knows, does the only thing he can.
Life, death, rebirth. The source, the heart of the Island. That’s what she’d said.
It’d be worse than dying, Jacob; much worse.
There’s nothing he can think of, nothing he can fathom that could be any worse than this.
She’d lied before.
He lowers them both upon the bank of the stream, submerges his brother’s lower half in the murky waters as his own legs keep him closer, upright against him as he unstoppers the flask, tugs Esau closer to him as he trembles, tries to keep them both steady.
One without the other is nothing at all.
“For we do not accept this just as a common drink,” he stammers, soft and wet with the tears building in his throat as he watches Esau’s chest hitch and still, as he feels beneath his hand a heart that stutters and stops; “but as if he should be one with me.” He tips the mouth of the bottle to Esau’s parted lips; watches, desolate, when the wine spills to the sides, untasted, as the pain in his chest explodes into bright torment against the shadows, the darkness.
“One with me, Brother,” he murmurs against Esau’s lips, unyielding and unresponsive as he pushes a tongue through them and trails the tang of the liquid in, feeds it to his brother -- its power and its life; tries not to cry when he feels nothing, when nothing changes.
He’s still for too long.
A sob dislodges itself from just below his sternum, snaps his bones as it unleashes and floods him, wracks him hard as he cradles close the body of his aged, worn beloved, cries until the river meets him and the tears mingle with the sea.
Broken, bereft; he lets go. Not because he’s ready, not because he wants to.
He lets go because there’s no more strength within him, no more fight to brave the currents pulling fast.
His brother’s body floats toward the Light, and Jacob thinks it’s fitting, thinks it’s right even as he longs to catch him, to hold him and stroke the long grey mane of his hair, to press his lips against the wild brow, craggy beneath his kiss -- it’s right, as he watches through the glaze of grief.
It’s right, until the smoke flattens him against the ground, until the choke of loss and arsenic, of ash and bone in the air suffocates him, blinds -- until the sharp shock of lightening, electricity in the air sends him reeling, and he reaches out, useless for a hand in the eye of the storm, for the touch of someone who will lead him to safety, someone lost to the fray.
Nothing will ever be right again.
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It takes him time to comprehend what it all means, what it all is.
The first time he sees his brother in front of him, he thinks that it’s a dream.
He’s young again, chiseled and strong, firm; Jacob blinks, his heart pounds, and he watches, disbelieving, until he gets close enough. Everything in him wants to lean forward, wants to capture the lips he’s wanted for longer than a normal man lives, longer than a blessed life can last. He can’t stop himself, can’t pause for fear of it all disappearing, evaporating on the wind -- it isn’t until his breath is close, hot as it rebounds against his brother’s skin, that he realizes that his is the only motion, the only exhalation between two men meant to sigh.
He stiffens, but he doesn’t move away, not yet; his eyes flicker up to meet Esau’s, but they falter.
Esau’s eyes are nowhere to be found.
The eyes he looks into, the ones masquerading as that seachange gaze that always betrayed everything, promised the sky -- these ones are empty, depthless not so that Jacob would give his soul to drown in them, but in that he fear falling inside of them, would never find his way back out. They sparkle with malevolence, with violence and vengeance, and it chills something subtle yet essential inside of Jacob to see it, to see them where his brother’s warm passion once smoldered; these eyes are cold.
These eyes are not his brother’s.
He falls backward in his haste to pull away, and his brother would have caught him; no matter what had passed between them, no matter how they’d failed one another, Esau would have caught him.
The man, the thing before him merely laughs -- a bark of it, sinister -- when Jacob tumbles to the ground.
Jacob blinks, prays for nightmares and waking visions, hallucinations -- his eyes snap open, and he catches the tail-end of a plume, a cloud of smoke.
He chokes, the lingering smog burning through his vision, and he tells himself it isn’t so, it can’t be so.
It’d be worse than dying, Jacob.
She’d lied, about so many things. How was he to have known that this one truth would be his undoing?
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When he does dream, it’s almost like release; it’s almost worse than waking.
There are caresses, and Jacob knows the touch: of course he does, he always had, always would; would never forget it. There are soft brushes and warm embraces, hands on his chest and his sides, his shoulders, ridding his tension; there’s a mouth on his neck, and he never sees a face: when lips fasten to his own, his eyes are always closed, remain so.
I miss you, it whispers, too soft and deep to hear who it is, but Jacob doesn’t need to. It only wears my face.
And it wipes away the stray streams of salt weighing down his lashes, marring his cheeks when it breathes, when he breathes.
It only wears my face.
He startles with a jolt when he reemerges in the waking world, every morning, and it takes too long to calm his senses, the blood in his veins -- it takes too long, as so he runs, as if there’s anywhere left for him to go.
He always ends up at the old camp -- overgrown and decrepit now, except for the ladder, the place where the Light leaks through. Jacob had long since patched the gap, save for the wheel’s opening, had gone to visit it like a memorial, a place for reflection and rest.
This time, though -- this time, he needs his own absolution.
This time, there is no other way.
Breathless, terrified, his brother’s voice -- his real brother -- quiet, deafening in his ears: he reaches out, turns the wheel and wakes up to a world of sand and light.
The Island, their Island: everywhere.
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In the beginning, Jacob tells himself that he leaves the Island to celebrate the memory, to keep close what’s left of his brother.
It was all he’d ever wanted, after all -- so much more than his life, his family; so much more than Jacob, even, and it only hurts now that he understands it, now that he knows the depth of what he felt for Esau because it festers: an open wound that will never heal, a constant ache in the hollow of him. It was all he ever wanted, and Jacob chases it with a blind kind of faith, stumbling through an existence so wide and varied that he barely manages to keep his head above it, barely manages to breathe -- and it’s beautiful, and Jacob understands, now, what his brother was so desperately seeking, why it was so important to leave. Why Esau stayed away.
It’s beautiful, and Jacob can’t fathom why Esau left it at all, to come back to Jacob in the end.
He carries the dagger with him, finds places in the world where it wants to go, where metal behaves strangely -- lets it act as his compass: a piece of them, together, to guide his steps. It always helps him find his way back home, even if home is nowhere and the world is vast -- he wonders, in the moments between closing his eyes in the world and opening them back near the yawning mouth of the Cave, bathed in gold with that familiar face -- now, sickeningly, more familiar than the real thing, the truth of Esau as a man, alive -- leering down at him; he wonders, then, if there’s still a part of his brother in that monster, a part that wants Jacob to return, to remain.
It never lasts, of course, and as he licks his wounds and plans his next escape -- watches destinations flicker past in smoke and mirrors as he sits, cross-legged at the top of his Lighthouse -- he knows this is his own doing. He wonders if this is what destiny means.
He tells himself, when he stops the dial, lets it linger in a simple place for which he has no name, but desperately wants to learn -- he tells himself it’s to preserve the memory.
The truth, though, is that Jacob leaves the Island to run from the knowledge of how he’s already desecrated that memory; to hide from the reminder of his own selfish need, his own naivete in the cut of a jaw, the shape of a face more dear to him than any other, with eyes carved deep in hate, empty of the soul Jacob treasures as his own.
Jacob, everything dies!
He squints against the burn behind his eyes, wishes he’d believed his brother when it had mattered, before it was too late.
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Over time, he loses any real sense of expectation, of conviction, but he gains a single-minded focus that fills the empty places with a visceral cloud, a smoke of its own.
He crafts a game because his brother challenged him, told him that he could; he makes his own rues. He plays with lives, with fate and destiny because he can, because it’s left to him to hold in hands that never wanted it, that never cared; that still don’t, after all this time, not at the core of him. He’s learned compassion, learned patience and perhaps a little grace -- things Esau always knew, maybe only sometimes heeded -- but he does not care about these people, about this place. He is sorry that they suffer, and he regrets what he’s created, the vile thing that mocks him with a countenance so similar to the one he thinks of in the darkest moments; in the lightest, too.
He is sorry -- but this was never about them.
He finishes his own tapestry, and he waits.
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The pain is gone, has been since he burned, since his ashes were made and ground beneath an abomination’s soles; dust unto dust. He holds his own remains in his hands, adds them pinch my pinch into the fire and waits for the answers, waits for the end.
There’s a shiver, a presence that comes upon him before he scatters the last of the his burnt flesh across the embers, and he waits; knows, somehow, that it’s not mere conjecture, the desire for warmth and love as it all descends, spirals into nothing.
He closes his eyes, and lets it take him, lets it permeate his being and soothe his fears, the way his pulse drums a little too quick, even now -- he was never so stoic, so strong as some suspected; he never let anyone close enough to see.
He never let anyone in, save one.
The presence -- it’s real, and it knows everything.
Jacob, it whispers on the breeze, welcome and soft and filled with an affection that almost hurts to hear, almost burns to know after so many years, after so much heartache; everything dies.
There’s a rustle in the bushes, the leaves, and he smiles to himself, knows that they’re coming, that it’s almost over.
“I know,” he whispers back, tipping the cup of his palm and letting the last of the ashes, the last of himself -- the last of the things that don’t matter, never did -- fall into the flames.
“Soon.”
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When the darkness takes him, there’s no leaving, no waking -- no quiet becoming. There is no transition; there is regression, and Jacob thinks he should be surprised.
If he turns, he will see his footprints in the sand, walking miles, spanning centuries and space, lap after lap around the universe, never ceasing. If he turns, he will see a life of running, of standing, of stillness in motion when his heart never truly left this place upon the shore.
If he turns, he’ll see the outline of himself, the indentations of his knees and the push of his silhouette against the grains, might even feel the echo of his pain, the wrenching loss in his chest when it started, when it ended; when it began again.
He doesn’t turn.
He keeps walking, knowing where he’s meant to go, knowing where he’s meant to be; he passes the Cavern, bathes in the Light for only so long as it takes to traverse the space -- the bottoms of his feet feel every speck of dirt, every curve of stone as if he’s never walked this path before, as if it’s new, and perhaps it is. Perhaps it’s all new.
He stops at the ledge, before the ledge; he stops as soon as he sees the man peering over, his face turned, angled to look down at the spring, lit and cast in shadows, in relief, and Jacob -- he can’t help but suck a sharp breath in; enough to draw attention, enough to shift the man’s gaze.
It’s instantaneous, the way they draw closer, toward one another without question or relent, and for them, there is no remembering; no fleeting instant where their hands brush, where they say just the right words and the recollection spills, cascades like heat and warmth and light. There is no memory, for them -- they are always, and they are never, and they have lived and died for only each other for far too long. There was never a moment in which they forgot.
It doesn’t stop his breath from catching in his throat when they touch; it’s been so long since he felt so human.
“You’re here,” Jacob whispers, awe in his voice as he merely brushes against Esau’s touch, merely leaves his hand within his brother’s grasp, doesn’t dare to push, to take more than what he’s been given, what’s been gifted out of mercy.
Esau smiles, soft and a little melancholy -- he’s bolder, and he reaches out, brushes the hair from Jacob’s face as he leans in and presses his cheek to Jacob’s, breathes deep and then exhales as Jacob’s eyes flutter closed, content. “I’m here.”
Jacob doesn’t pull away, doesn’t pull back but lets his eyes slide back open. When the black is gone and he sees again, the world is changed -- iridescence and flickering shades of buildings, of people and places that Jacob has seen, but never as he was meant to, never with his brother in his arms; and it means more than just the words, encompasses so much when he speaks: “You made it.”
Esau dips his chin to press his lips to the crook of Jacob’s neck, to murmur against his skin. “I didn’t expect to.”
“I knew you would,” Jacob whispers against the crown of Esau’s head, his arms wrapping tight against him now, the fear of loss melting away in careful, measured waves, and Jacob knows now in ways he couldn’t have understood before that there is nothing he fears more than losing his brother, no fate more bleak. There’s nothing to fear anymore, when Esau’s close, when his every breath presses his chest into Jacob’s, rhythmic and true. “I always knew you would.”
Esau pulls back, stares into Jacob’s eyes, and it steals Jacob’s breath to see the colors, finally, the heat and the radiance and the feeling underneath, within, pulsating through that gaze where it pierces and soothes. “You always believed more than I ever could,” he whispers, a palm cradling Jacob’s face, wide and broad, and Jacob leans into the touch, shivers for the intimacy missed, the tenderness he’s craved for eons and more.
“It wasn’t a strength,” Jacob breathes, “believing. It was a curse.” And he fights down the sorrow, the memory of everything as it threatens to overcome him; he tries to recall himself, to pause inside the knowledge that it’s over now, that whatever future awaits them will come to bear upon them both.
He tries, but he falters; he can’t.
Esau’s arms are around him, bracing him before the first sob wracks his frame, pulling him in close until Jacob is tucked beneath his chin, propped against the strong expanse of his chest and sheltered from the waves, the arms of a universe seeking to take, to destroy -- and he’s been stripped bare, raw by simply living all this time without a place to take rest, without a safe harbor where he could moor and be cared for, where he could lavish the bright, burning, self-destructive love, he held in every part of him upon a soul deserving of his devotion, bright and blinding until it had burned him half-alive. He’s been stumbling, unsteady, and now as he splits in two, he finds the missing link.
He doesn’t have to steady himself, anymore.
“Is it really you?” he gasps into his brother’s clavicle, lips wet and tears pooled in the dip between the bones as he looks up, meets the affection in Esau’s gaze as he reaches and runs fingers through Jacob’s hair, as Jacob breathes ragged through emotions he never learned to temper, never bothered to rein; relishes it like the first and last moments of eternity itself.
“I’ve waited a long time, Brother,” Esau whispers, bends and bears Jacob’s weight more freely as he pulls him in and meets his lips, kisses him with the kind of endless, timeless urgency that speaks of want and need and love over anything else, anything less worthy, and Jacob lets himself be drawn, lets himself be taken with it and loses everything of himself that doesn’t fit inside that sentiment, that state of being -- casts it aside and remembers, reforms himself to fit his brother and knows, this time, that he’ll never take another shape.
“Come with me, Jacob,” Esau breathes into his mouth, his lungs, lets the words seep close to his heart as Jacob takes them in and lets them sink deep, and closes his eyes against futile thoughts, against remorse for what might have been if he’d only given the answer he’d wanted -- the only answer there ever was -- the first time he’d been posed such a question.
“Yes,” he whispers, before he traces the line of Esau’s lips with his tongue, one more time before he kisses him, hard and fast and filled with certainty before he frames Esau’s face with his hands and murmurs again, so sure: “Yes.”
Hand in hand, perfectly balanced, they take a single step, nothing left to break their fall.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jacob/Esau
Word Count: 6,769
Summary: They were, and always would be, two halves of the same whole. For toestastegood, who requested "Esau/Jacob, pre-series AU: Esau succeeds in escaping the island. If you can work in any kind of hand-holding, I'll be happy" at the lostsquee HoHoHo Exchange. Spoilers Through 6.17 - The End; warnings for the obligatory incest, given the pairing, as well as implications of more-than-brotherly-affection (nothing explicit) before the modern age of majority (though, seeing as those bits take place a couple millennia prior to modernity, I don’t quite know how much of an issue that is; still, better safe than sorry).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title inspired by the work of Kazuo Ishiguro.
Author’s Notes: Happy Holidays, toestastegood! I hope I did your brilliant prompt the justice it deserves -- admittedly, I’ve got a bit of a thing for playing with the whole “whatever happened, happened” concept, so I hope that this particular go-around with it is to your liking, even if it is angsty and schmoopy to something of an extreme.
Never Let Me Go
He feels it, first.
He can’t describe it, doesn’t possess vowels for the way it wrings and gasps, doesn’t know how to string consonants together in order to convey the way things break inside of him, the way they fall and slice and draw angry blood, black with bile from the center of himself as they make their way toward the bottom, lost.
He falls to his knees on the shore, drops long, thin kindling into the sand as he clutches one hand to his chest and buries the other, its twin in the grains, grasping for something real, something steady as he wheezes, tries to breathe.
Twin.
His heart drums madly, war and rage and loss and fear and too much for its boundaries, its limits -- it’s not big enough, not strong enough to hold against whatever this is, whatever vile thing has taken it and twisted, tugged around it; that keeps it thrumming like a bird, a wing-beat flutter to the death and the dying, bruising against his lungs.
There’s nowhere to hold, nothing; no touchstone, no steady breath or warm body, no strong arms to wrap around his shoulders and tell him he’ll survive this, that there are ways to exist as half of a whole, rent in two, with the missing pieces lost somewhere, far across the sea. He crumbles inward, slowly, bends at the waist and tumbles, the hole in him gaping and drawing him, like gravity to the ground and he sprawls, chest heaving hard to the sky as he stares; bereft.
He doesn’t have to see the silhouette against the sun, doesn’t need to feel the paths, the dirt cold beneath his toes; he doesn’t have to smell long-dead embers on the air of a ghost-town, abandoned -- desolate; he doesn’t have to check the edge of the ocean or see a wheel hung off-kilter and a brightness on the leaves, the rocks and the wind, to know that they’ve left.
He doesn’t have to look to the horizon to know his brother’s gone.
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He fits against his brother like they were born for this, to slide skin against skin and palm against palm, the wet fabric of their clothes like a second skin, clung to their flesh, and Jacob breathes it in, brine with the salt of sweat and the sweet musk of the jungle, the land -- buries himself in the crook of Esau’s neck and closes his eyes, lets the warmth keep him safe.
They watch the water until the moon starts to set -- hold to each other, havens against the storm -- and where Esau looks to the coming of something, Jacob marvels quietly at what already lies within his reach.
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The surf beats in a rhythm, familiar, and he loses himself to the phantom, the memory. He watches the line in the sky, where the heavens meet the earth -- where what lies above crashes, breaks against what lies beneath -- for a very long time.
He hears her sigh first, turns to see Mother settling down beside him, and there’s a part of him -- larger, more powerful than he cares to admit to -- that wants to stand and walk away, that wants to run to the camp and hope, pray that his brother is close enough to follow, somehow; there’s a part of him, in that moment, that hates her, that wishes she’d died and their real mother had lived.
They trade posts: she watches the horizon, and he watches her.
“There are things out there that I cannot protect him from,” she says finally, and maybe there was always a part of him that knew -- knew that his brother spoke truth, felt it in his blood like fire -- because he doesn’t ask how the nothingness that she’d always said existed beyond the sea could possibly be dangerous; how a void could be viscous and cruel.
“He doesn’t need you to protect him,” Jacob says instead, pulls himself to his feet and dusts sand from his legs as he sinks into the give of the coast, each step a struggle against futile inevitability.
He wishes he could believe his own words.
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The day after his brother leaves for the camp, for the men across the Island; the day after his brother abandons him, after he abandons his brother, Jacob walks the shoreline until dusk.
He’s afraid, for a time, that Mother will find him, bring him back, so he ventures deeper into the trees, lets the darkness envelop him as he breathes in deep the scents of twilight: of water and clean air, of moonbeams on the leaves.
He tries to steady himself, he tries to learn to balance for once without compensating, without trying to accommodate the weight of his brother’s very being inside of his own; he walks to the ledge above a spring, looks down for moments that steal life from him, that last an age.
He swallows, finally; crumbles a little and hangs his legs over the ledge as he curls in upon himself and lets himself mourn the loss of his gravity, his own bit of Light at the heart of himself.
Mother says that men are selfish, ruthless; that they always want more, but it isn’t true.
Jacob’s never wanted more than just his brother’s Light.
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Things change, once he drinks the wine.
Mother sleeps more -- that’s the first thing that happens. Progressively, it’s more that that world around him is altered, than that he himself is changed. Everything seems dimmer -- the sun is weak and the water shimmers less.
Nonetheless, Mother always finds the time, the strength to weave; she finds time and strength for little else.
She loses her vision first; she navigates warp and weft by touch alone until her dexterity begins to wane and Jacob takes up the burden, sits behind her and guides her hands for the last few inches, spins the threads as she naps in the sunlight and wipes the drying tears from her milky eyes -- something less than sorrowful -- when she wakes.
They finish the piece together; he clamps Mother’s fist around the last of the thread and holds it there, whispers close to her ear, her hearing failing her: “It’s done.”
She smiles, nods, and says nothing; pats his hand against her own and curls up below the loom, closes her eyes.
When she slips away, Jacob feels sadness, but it doesn’t pull at him the way that it should; he feels loneliness, but it isn’t new.
He buries her, and clutches tight to the smooth glass bottle, the wine inside sloshing, keeping time.
It’s his now, he assumes, and it’s the only thing that still holds wonder -- he watches it, fluid and dark, heat spiraling in it, light catching through the glass, and he thinks of his brother, swallows through the ache that always comes with his memory. He thumbs the cork repetitiously, rote and unconscious, as if stroking stubble on a chin, or running the pad of a finger across the bow of a lip.
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Some years after his brother leaves for the camp -- years filled with random crossings and chance encounters, with pangs in Jacob’s chest and dreams of his brother’s eyes in the dark -- years later, he still hasn’t learned how to balance, how to stay steady on his own.
He finds himself in the same place he always goes: a ritual, at the spring sunk low in the rocks, and this time -- this time, with a surge of adventurous, dangerous, desperate folly, he inches to the ledge overlooking the spring below, walks to the very edge: teeters, evens out, wavers again.
He tries, but he falters, and he flails his limbs too late to find his footing again, knows that the fall will bruise and batter, maybe worse, and he tenses, braces for it as his feet slip, his arms too far from solid ground to save himself; waits for the fall and the hit-
And then there are arms, arms and warmth and home wrapped around his biceps, pulling him close, stumbling back as they both fall against the dirt, chest to chest and heaving, sparked with adrenaline as Jacob takes in his brother’s eyes and drinks the wild frenzy gleaming in them, bright with fear and rage and affection, Jacob thinks -- hopes.
Hopes.
‘What were you doing?’ Esau shouts as he sits up, tugs Jacob along, never losing hold of his shoulders, and all Jacob can process is the way that the leaves rustle as sleeping birds take flight at the echo of his brother’s anger; all he can process is the way Esau’s eyes flash again, and it’s not fury inside them, it’s not.
He shakes Jacob roughly, once, and Jacob lets his body yield to the motion, the momentum, lets his head loll with the force as Esau leans in and hisses: ‘Were he trying to kill yourself, you idiot? What were you thinking? You could have-’
Jacob doesn’t think when he leans in and captures Esau’s mouth mid-rant, tastes worry and relief on his tongue as he sucks it in between his teeth, as Esau explores the roof of his mouth and opens deeper, wider until they both break apart, panting and clinging, pawing at each other, just a little lost, still reeling as Esau leans his forehead against Jacob’s and just breathes, gasps, breathes.
‘You have to be more careful, Jacob,’ he whispers, trembles, and Jacob’s chest constricts when he feels Esau gather Jacob’s hand in his, pressing Jacob’s palm hard just below his collarbone, just above his quaking heart. ‘Everything dies,’ and it comes out broken, fragile -- everything Jacob’s never known his brother to be.
Jacob leans in and kisses him softly this time, relearns the curves of his brother, the places where muscle has grown and the years have worn and reshaped his frame -- he’s beautiful, as he’s always been, and Jacob just holds to him, fast and tight as he lingers, mouth against mouth as they breathe in together and mingle on the exhale; as he waits, presses them closer until the knuckles of Esau’s hand bump against his own heartbeat, until the frantic rush of Esau’s blood settles back into something safer, something calmer and true.
Jacob eases them down until they both stretch flat against the smattering of grass, Jacob’s arms braced tight until his brother doesn’t move alone, doesn’t breathe alone, doesn’t exist in this world without the waves of his very being stirring Jacob at his core.
Like it was meant to be. Always.
Jacob feels balanced again as he slips into sleep.
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Jacob walks the Island every morning, every night; surveys his domain with a weary gaze. He can no longer find the beauty it holds.
Every day, he places a hand on the wood of the wheel, catches his finger on a splinter and relishes the bite, a rip of skin and the bead of blood until he remembers there’s no one to press lips against the hurt, to lick away the red and kiss his mouth until the metal taste is gone and there’s only spice and earth and sweet against them, between them.
It’s liberating, until he remembers there’s no one else; no one left.
Every day, he steadies himself down the incline, anchors his feet with every painstaking step down the hills, rough and unkempt, lonely like him -- every day, he walks, tries to imagine where his brother’s feet marked the ground, once, tries to picture where Esau is, if Esau is anywhere, anymore.
Every day, he touches the wheel and wonders what would happen he he only pushed it, only made it turn.
But Mother always told him; Mother always said that if they ever got separated, if ever they were lost -- she always told them to stay where they were, and wait to be found.
Protect this place as long as you can.
He will wait as long as he needs to; he can wait a little longer.
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They meet in different places, different backdrops for the same scene, but they never have to speak of it, never have to plan: they are both drawn in, polarized to attract in the pump of their blood, the marrow of their bones -- and their eyes smile, never surprised, when they seek each other out, when they come together and their lips touch and all the air rushes home like the tide.
Over time, the touches morph, change; they symbolize something deeper, something raw, and Jacob bites welts into his brother’s skin because he needs to show him his heart, and Esau scrapes teeth in lines against his chest because he thinks he can speak to Jacob’s soul through the flesh and the bone, and they tease and bend and yield and take: selfish, wasteful, because they never learned any different.
They never learned anything but the world of one another, the world inside themselves.
They’re panting, hard; Jacob’s hand still low on Esau’s thigh as he pulls him close, pulse to pulse at the neck as Jacob tongues his brother’s stubble, cradles his cheek near and sighs, hungry and overwhelmed, as he presses a palm to the center of Esau’s chest, measures the way it expands and contracts with his breath, proof of life and essence. They’re quiet for a long time, still for longer.
‘I don’t belong here, Jacob,’ Esau breathes, voice fissured, far from steady. Jacob feels the way it catches beneath the touch of his fingers, feels how it spills cold from his brother’s lips against the shell of his ear, and Jacob swirls his tongue at the edge of Esau’s beard for a moment before he pulls back, unafraid, and locks his eyes, halves of a whole to his brother’s; slips a hand behind Esau’s neck and grips tight, close -- a promise, a claim.
‘You belong with me,’ he whispers harsh, teeth clenched and eyes bleeding with something so true that even Esau looks taken with it, looks drenched beneath the fall; and when Jacob leans in to take his mouth, Esau’s waiting, tilts up to devour him like just maybe, he agrees.
Or, at least, like he wishes that he could.
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He doesn’t believe in the leap, the flutter in his chest like a breeze, a hurricane around his heart as he stumbles, lightheaded, grasping hard against the trunk of a tree until the bark cuts angry into the lines of his palm, blurring the creases in his skin.
He doesn’t believe in it, even as he starts, runs; as his footfalls match the thump of his pulse.
His steps lose purchase, and he skids a bit in the sand when he reaches the beach, hands sprawling wide for balance as he rushes to the wet foam where the water teases the coast, to the dark mass washed up on the waves, heaped upon the shore.
He goes to it -- a person, he sees now, a body hunched and shriveled: just as Mother had gotten, just before she’d gone; waterlogged and pale, dripping, and it’s been so long, too long -- a lifetime, or more: he doesn’t remember, tries to forget. He shouldn’t know the face he sees when he grips the shoulder, flips the solid frame on its back and runs a hand from the chest, to the neck, to the chin, eyes fixed first on the stillness, the lack of breath, and then upon his own fingertips as he reaches, a will outside his own, drawn to the rush of blood beneath the surface between wrinkles, in the chasms of stretched and sagging skin.
Something surges hot inside of him when he presses up against the beat, a spark that seems to wrack them both as the man before him gasps and heaves, spits seawater as his eyes fly open and remove all question, displace all doubt.
“You’re,” he whispers, as Esau -- an Esau he’s never seen before, a soul in his gaze that’s changed, that’s grown and thrived and that cuts Jacob to his core -- coughs, the corners of his lips twitching as he struggles for his breath, as Jacob rubs at his chest and eases him to sitting, a hand on his spine where he feels, hears the rattle of every inhalation. “You’re here.”
Esau blinks, something soft in his eyes that Jacob -- he can’t say he merely missed it, because it’s so much more, so much stronger than just a loss; it breaks something inside of him as he holds his palm still on his brother’s chest as his breathing evens, as his heart pumps slow, languid underneath, too far away: “I’m here.”
Jacob tries to swallow, can’t quite manage it. “Why?”
“I’ve come home, Jacob,” and something stirs in him, painful hope before the fall, because there’s such sadness in that voice, such joy at the very same time that there’s resignation, and Jacob remembers what happened the last time he heard such a voice, saw such a emotion etched into tired features, Mother’s features; he remembers, and he doesn’t wait for the words that come next, breathy and faint from his brother’s parched lips, cracked against the sea.
He doesn’t wait for the words before the tears pool in the corners of his eyes.
“I’ve come home to die.”
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His brother hadn’t been exaggerating.
Jacob tends to him, barely turns away from him, barely takes a moment between building a fire and easing Esau close to it to breathe air that doesn’t rush from Esau’s lips; only just allows a second to pass between the stripping of his clothes and wrapping him in something dry and warm where his hands don’t remain flush against Esau’s skin.
He settles behind his brother, kicks his legs out and wraps his knees in around Esau’s thighs, tangles his arms close, gentle but tight, desperate against Esau’s middle as he pulls them into one another, and they still fit, they’ll always fit.
“Where have you been?” he asks, because it’s the only thing that he doesn’t know -- his brother is changed, but he’s still his brother, still the bit of his soul that fell away and now presses back into place; the rest, he still remembers.
And Esau, he sighs deeply as his hand seeks Jacob’s, as he threads smooth skin with weathered, callused flesh and weaves their fingers together, Jacob’s straight and strong against Esau’s, bent with time and hooked with the weight of the world. He lets his head fall back onto Jacob’s shoulder, eyes closed as his body goes boneless, limp against Jacob’s chest.
And Jacob, he knows what death is, now; he knows, but he still doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know how it comes to take the things he loves, why it chooses him to suffer.
He was never curious enough; not like his brother.
He keeps his mouth pressed against the side of Esau’s neck until the night clears, until the day breaks and the fire dies; pretends that the soft massage of blood against his lips doesn’t grow slower, weaker as the stars disappear.
Esau never quite wakes up, after that; moans, shivers, and Jacob does what he can to keep him close, keep him safe, but it’s almost like it was before -- the sharp break of something vital in his chest as he loses his brother all over again -- except this time, it’s slower, shattering like glass, each crack like the burst of a vein at the beat of his heart, blood seeping slow until he drowns in it, and it’s nothing like it was before. It’s agony.
He has to do something.
He presses a kiss to his brother’s lips, hard and quick as he exhales against his mouth before he lifts him, small and light inside his arms, and takes him to the only place he knows, does the only thing he can.
Life, death, rebirth. The source, the heart of the Island. That’s what she’d said.
It’d be worse than dying, Jacob; much worse.
There’s nothing he can think of, nothing he can fathom that could be any worse than this.
She’d lied before.
He lowers them both upon the bank of the stream, submerges his brother’s lower half in the murky waters as his own legs keep him closer, upright against him as he unstoppers the flask, tugs Esau closer to him as he trembles, tries to keep them both steady.
One without the other is nothing at all.
“For we do not accept this just as a common drink,” he stammers, soft and wet with the tears building in his throat as he watches Esau’s chest hitch and still, as he feels beneath his hand a heart that stutters and stops; “but as if he should be one with me.” He tips the mouth of the bottle to Esau’s parted lips; watches, desolate, when the wine spills to the sides, untasted, as the pain in his chest explodes into bright torment against the shadows, the darkness.
“One with me, Brother,” he murmurs against Esau’s lips, unyielding and unresponsive as he pushes a tongue through them and trails the tang of the liquid in, feeds it to his brother -- its power and its life; tries not to cry when he feels nothing, when nothing changes.
He’s still for too long.
A sob dislodges itself from just below his sternum, snaps his bones as it unleashes and floods him, wracks him hard as he cradles close the body of his aged, worn beloved, cries until the river meets him and the tears mingle with the sea.
Broken, bereft; he lets go. Not because he’s ready, not because he wants to.
He lets go because there’s no more strength within him, no more fight to brave the currents pulling fast.
His brother’s body floats toward the Light, and Jacob thinks it’s fitting, thinks it’s right even as he longs to catch him, to hold him and stroke the long grey mane of his hair, to press his lips against the wild brow, craggy beneath his kiss -- it’s right, as he watches through the glaze of grief.
It’s right, until the smoke flattens him against the ground, until the choke of loss and arsenic, of ash and bone in the air suffocates him, blinds -- until the sharp shock of lightening, electricity in the air sends him reeling, and he reaches out, useless for a hand in the eye of the storm, for the touch of someone who will lead him to safety, someone lost to the fray.
Nothing will ever be right again.
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It takes him time to comprehend what it all means, what it all is.
The first time he sees his brother in front of him, he thinks that it’s a dream.
He’s young again, chiseled and strong, firm; Jacob blinks, his heart pounds, and he watches, disbelieving, until he gets close enough. Everything in him wants to lean forward, wants to capture the lips he’s wanted for longer than a normal man lives, longer than a blessed life can last. He can’t stop himself, can’t pause for fear of it all disappearing, evaporating on the wind -- it isn’t until his breath is close, hot as it rebounds against his brother’s skin, that he realizes that his is the only motion, the only exhalation between two men meant to sigh.
He stiffens, but he doesn’t move away, not yet; his eyes flicker up to meet Esau’s, but they falter.
Esau’s eyes are nowhere to be found.
The eyes he looks into, the ones masquerading as that seachange gaze that always betrayed everything, promised the sky -- these ones are empty, depthless not so that Jacob would give his soul to drown in them, but in that he fear falling inside of them, would never find his way back out. They sparkle with malevolence, with violence and vengeance, and it chills something subtle yet essential inside of Jacob to see it, to see them where his brother’s warm passion once smoldered; these eyes are cold.
These eyes are not his brother’s.
He falls backward in his haste to pull away, and his brother would have caught him; no matter what had passed between them, no matter how they’d failed one another, Esau would have caught him.
The man, the thing before him merely laughs -- a bark of it, sinister -- when Jacob tumbles to the ground.
Jacob blinks, prays for nightmares and waking visions, hallucinations -- his eyes snap open, and he catches the tail-end of a plume, a cloud of smoke.
He chokes, the lingering smog burning through his vision, and he tells himself it isn’t so, it can’t be so.
It’d be worse than dying, Jacob.
She’d lied, about so many things. How was he to have known that this one truth would be his undoing?
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When he does dream, it’s almost like release; it’s almost worse than waking.
There are caresses, and Jacob knows the touch: of course he does, he always had, always would; would never forget it. There are soft brushes and warm embraces, hands on his chest and his sides, his shoulders, ridding his tension; there’s a mouth on his neck, and he never sees a face: when lips fasten to his own, his eyes are always closed, remain so.
I miss you, it whispers, too soft and deep to hear who it is, but Jacob doesn’t need to. It only wears my face.
And it wipes away the stray streams of salt weighing down his lashes, marring his cheeks when it breathes, when he breathes.
It only wears my face.
He startles with a jolt when he reemerges in the waking world, every morning, and it takes too long to calm his senses, the blood in his veins -- it takes too long, as so he runs, as if there’s anywhere left for him to go.
He always ends up at the old camp -- overgrown and decrepit now, except for the ladder, the place where the Light leaks through. Jacob had long since patched the gap, save for the wheel’s opening, had gone to visit it like a memorial, a place for reflection and rest.
This time, though -- this time, he needs his own absolution.
This time, there is no other way.
Breathless, terrified, his brother’s voice -- his real brother -- quiet, deafening in his ears: he reaches out, turns the wheel and wakes up to a world of sand and light.
The Island, their Island: everywhere.
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In the beginning, Jacob tells himself that he leaves the Island to celebrate the memory, to keep close what’s left of his brother.
It was all he’d ever wanted, after all -- so much more than his life, his family; so much more than Jacob, even, and it only hurts now that he understands it, now that he knows the depth of what he felt for Esau because it festers: an open wound that will never heal, a constant ache in the hollow of him. It was all he ever wanted, and Jacob chases it with a blind kind of faith, stumbling through an existence so wide and varied that he barely manages to keep his head above it, barely manages to breathe -- and it’s beautiful, and Jacob understands, now, what his brother was so desperately seeking, why it was so important to leave. Why Esau stayed away.
It’s beautiful, and Jacob can’t fathom why Esau left it at all, to come back to Jacob in the end.
He carries the dagger with him, finds places in the world where it wants to go, where metal behaves strangely -- lets it act as his compass: a piece of them, together, to guide his steps. It always helps him find his way back home, even if home is nowhere and the world is vast -- he wonders, in the moments between closing his eyes in the world and opening them back near the yawning mouth of the Cave, bathed in gold with that familiar face -- now, sickeningly, more familiar than the real thing, the truth of Esau as a man, alive -- leering down at him; he wonders, then, if there’s still a part of his brother in that monster, a part that wants Jacob to return, to remain.
It never lasts, of course, and as he licks his wounds and plans his next escape -- watches destinations flicker past in smoke and mirrors as he sits, cross-legged at the top of his Lighthouse -- he knows this is his own doing. He wonders if this is what destiny means.
He tells himself, when he stops the dial, lets it linger in a simple place for which he has no name, but desperately wants to learn -- he tells himself it’s to preserve the memory.
The truth, though, is that Jacob leaves the Island to run from the knowledge of how he’s already desecrated that memory; to hide from the reminder of his own selfish need, his own naivete in the cut of a jaw, the shape of a face more dear to him than any other, with eyes carved deep in hate, empty of the soul Jacob treasures as his own.
Jacob, everything dies!
He squints against the burn behind his eyes, wishes he’d believed his brother when it had mattered, before it was too late.
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Over time, he loses any real sense of expectation, of conviction, but he gains a single-minded focus that fills the empty places with a visceral cloud, a smoke of its own.
He crafts a game because his brother challenged him, told him that he could; he makes his own rues. He plays with lives, with fate and destiny because he can, because it’s left to him to hold in hands that never wanted it, that never cared; that still don’t, after all this time, not at the core of him. He’s learned compassion, learned patience and perhaps a little grace -- things Esau always knew, maybe only sometimes heeded -- but he does not care about these people, about this place. He is sorry that they suffer, and he regrets what he’s created, the vile thing that mocks him with a countenance so similar to the one he thinks of in the darkest moments; in the lightest, too.
He is sorry -- but this was never about them.
He finishes his own tapestry, and he waits.
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The pain is gone, has been since he burned, since his ashes were made and ground beneath an abomination’s soles; dust unto dust. He holds his own remains in his hands, adds them pinch my pinch into the fire and waits for the answers, waits for the end.
There’s a shiver, a presence that comes upon him before he scatters the last of the his burnt flesh across the embers, and he waits; knows, somehow, that it’s not mere conjecture, the desire for warmth and love as it all descends, spirals into nothing.
He closes his eyes, and lets it take him, lets it permeate his being and soothe his fears, the way his pulse drums a little too quick, even now -- he was never so stoic, so strong as some suspected; he never let anyone close enough to see.
He never let anyone in, save one.
The presence -- it’s real, and it knows everything.
Jacob, it whispers on the breeze, welcome and soft and filled with an affection that almost hurts to hear, almost burns to know after so many years, after so much heartache; everything dies.
There’s a rustle in the bushes, the leaves, and he smiles to himself, knows that they’re coming, that it’s almost over.
“I know,” he whispers back, tipping the cup of his palm and letting the last of the ashes, the last of himself -- the last of the things that don’t matter, never did -- fall into the flames.
“Soon.”
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When the darkness takes him, there’s no leaving, no waking -- no quiet becoming. There is no transition; there is regression, and Jacob thinks he should be surprised.
If he turns, he will see his footprints in the sand, walking miles, spanning centuries and space, lap after lap around the universe, never ceasing. If he turns, he will see a life of running, of standing, of stillness in motion when his heart never truly left this place upon the shore.
If he turns, he’ll see the outline of himself, the indentations of his knees and the push of his silhouette against the grains, might even feel the echo of his pain, the wrenching loss in his chest when it started, when it ended; when it began again.
He doesn’t turn.
He keeps walking, knowing where he’s meant to go, knowing where he’s meant to be; he passes the Cavern, bathes in the Light for only so long as it takes to traverse the space -- the bottoms of his feet feel every speck of dirt, every curve of stone as if he’s never walked this path before, as if it’s new, and perhaps it is. Perhaps it’s all new.
He stops at the ledge, before the ledge; he stops as soon as he sees the man peering over, his face turned, angled to look down at the spring, lit and cast in shadows, in relief, and Jacob -- he can’t help but suck a sharp breath in; enough to draw attention, enough to shift the man’s gaze.
It’s instantaneous, the way they draw closer, toward one another without question or relent, and for them, there is no remembering; no fleeting instant where their hands brush, where they say just the right words and the recollection spills, cascades like heat and warmth and light. There is no memory, for them -- they are always, and they are never, and they have lived and died for only each other for far too long. There was never a moment in which they forgot.
It doesn’t stop his breath from catching in his throat when they touch; it’s been so long since he felt so human.
“You’re here,” Jacob whispers, awe in his voice as he merely brushes against Esau’s touch, merely leaves his hand within his brother’s grasp, doesn’t dare to push, to take more than what he’s been given, what’s been gifted out of mercy.
Esau smiles, soft and a little melancholy -- he’s bolder, and he reaches out, brushes the hair from Jacob’s face as he leans in and presses his cheek to Jacob’s, breathes deep and then exhales as Jacob’s eyes flutter closed, content. “I’m here.”
Jacob doesn’t pull away, doesn’t pull back but lets his eyes slide back open. When the black is gone and he sees again, the world is changed -- iridescence and flickering shades of buildings, of people and places that Jacob has seen, but never as he was meant to, never with his brother in his arms; and it means more than just the words, encompasses so much when he speaks: “You made it.”
Esau dips his chin to press his lips to the crook of Jacob’s neck, to murmur against his skin. “I didn’t expect to.”
“I knew you would,” Jacob whispers against the crown of Esau’s head, his arms wrapping tight against him now, the fear of loss melting away in careful, measured waves, and Jacob knows now in ways he couldn’t have understood before that there is nothing he fears more than losing his brother, no fate more bleak. There’s nothing to fear anymore, when Esau’s close, when his every breath presses his chest into Jacob’s, rhythmic and true. “I always knew you would.”
Esau pulls back, stares into Jacob’s eyes, and it steals Jacob’s breath to see the colors, finally, the heat and the radiance and the feeling underneath, within, pulsating through that gaze where it pierces and soothes. “You always believed more than I ever could,” he whispers, a palm cradling Jacob’s face, wide and broad, and Jacob leans into the touch, shivers for the intimacy missed, the tenderness he’s craved for eons and more.
“It wasn’t a strength,” Jacob breathes, “believing. It was a curse.” And he fights down the sorrow, the memory of everything as it threatens to overcome him; he tries to recall himself, to pause inside the knowledge that it’s over now, that whatever future awaits them will come to bear upon them both.
He tries, but he falters; he can’t.
Esau’s arms are around him, bracing him before the first sob wracks his frame, pulling him in close until Jacob is tucked beneath his chin, propped against the strong expanse of his chest and sheltered from the waves, the arms of a universe seeking to take, to destroy -- and he’s been stripped bare, raw by simply living all this time without a place to take rest, without a safe harbor where he could moor and be cared for, where he could lavish the bright, burning, self-destructive love, he held in every part of him upon a soul deserving of his devotion, bright and blinding until it had burned him half-alive. He’s been stumbling, unsteady, and now as he splits in two, he finds the missing link.
He doesn’t have to steady himself, anymore.
“Is it really you?” he gasps into his brother’s clavicle, lips wet and tears pooled in the dip between the bones as he looks up, meets the affection in Esau’s gaze as he reaches and runs fingers through Jacob’s hair, as Jacob breathes ragged through emotions he never learned to temper, never bothered to rein; relishes it like the first and last moments of eternity itself.
“I’ve waited a long time, Brother,” Esau whispers, bends and bears Jacob’s weight more freely as he pulls him in and meets his lips, kisses him with the kind of endless, timeless urgency that speaks of want and need and love over anything else, anything less worthy, and Jacob lets himself be drawn, lets himself be taken with it and loses everything of himself that doesn’t fit inside that sentiment, that state of being -- casts it aside and remembers, reforms himself to fit his brother and knows, this time, that he’ll never take another shape.
“Come with me, Jacob,” Esau breathes into his mouth, his lungs, lets the words seep close to his heart as Jacob takes them in and lets them sink deep, and closes his eyes against futile thoughts, against remorse for what might have been if he’d only given the answer he’d wanted -- the only answer there ever was -- the first time he’d been posed such a question.
“Yes,” he whispers, before he traces the line of Esau’s lips with his tongue, one more time before he kisses him, hard and fast and filled with certainty before he frames Esau’s face with his hands and murmurs again, so sure: “Yes.”
Hand in hand, perfectly balanced, they take a single step, nothing left to break their fall.