Fic: Deuce (1/1)
Title: Deuce
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jacob, Esau; Ensemble
Word Count: 1,400
Summary: He’s trapped. That doesn’t mean he’s helpless. For toestastegood, who requested "Jacob/Esau" at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. General Series Spoilers for Lost.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: This turned out rather fragmented and vague and stylized and not very shippy at all. For that, I apologize.
Deuce
People don’t understand him; people don’t even try.
But there’s one thing that should never be forgotten about Esau, brother of Jacob.
He’s trapped. That doesn’t mean he’s helpless.
___________
It takes time -- time, and the slow decay of souls; it takes eons beyond his reckoning, but he finds it: finds his loophole, his exception to the rule.
He cannot harm his brother. He cannot leave his brother. He cannot break the bond they share.
He cannot leave the Island.
Not alone.
When Jacob watches his charges, his prodigies in the mirrors, spinning the dial and staring out to sea, Esau wills whatever force connects them to this place, each other; bends it as best he can, and begs for a liberty, a capacity to be that is not free, is not his own, but is something -- something more than what he has.
It takes everything he is, but he manages. He is bitter, he is wrathful, he is vengeful -- he is unleashed.
He requires only a speck of dust to move mountains, raze worlds.
___________
His hands smell of it, saturated like vile sin, and he closes his eyes, can feel sand beneath the touch of his fingers in the crease of his palm -- he smells of it: fuel and fire and ash.
She slides a card, distracted, across the grimy countertop; he peers out of the window, squints against the glare, the scatter of light as it steals his breath for a moment, golden, blood in the back of his throat.
He doesn’t ask her what she needs a few Benjamins-worth of regular unleaded for at quarter after ten on a Wednesday night, watches as she signs the ‘K,’ long and wide in her name on the receipt.
He breathes in, and tastes destruction on his tongue; remembers things he’s been waiting for centuries to forget.
The jingle -- tinny clang of the bell on her way out rings like an omen, a blessing in disguise.
___________
They’re sitting in the dark, shadows playing across features -- atmosphere, more than anything, and he can comprehend its power as he sees the man, takes him in; the light plays to his advantage, heightens the sensation, strengthens the con.
‘We got a deal, Hoss?’ It comes out angry, vile, and they’ve got that much in common, at the least.
‘So goddamn eager, boy,’ he says, sips MacCutcheon and chuckles into the glass; ‘too fucking ready to sell your soul to the Devil.’
But he makes good on the exchange, and tells him where he can find a man named Tom.
___________
He watches the Doctor as he moves, cuts, stitches, smiles -- scrubs in and out; he watches the life that was saved, and he sneers at the natural order, at second chances and futures, free and clear.
The patient flat-lines, inexplicably, and there’s blood on his hands when Jack Shephard has to call the time of death.
___________
He’d be a fool to deny the role of fortune, the way that mere chance works within this world, within the next.
He still can’t quite buy the whole psychic thing, though.
He doesn’t ask for a reading, just brings an envelope of money, a ticket on Oceanic, and a little bit of karma, a nudge in the direction of providence.
He tells Malkin to give it to the blonde girl, and he knows that it will be done: men who believe in something, in anything, will go to the ends of the earth to see their faith rewarded, to see in nothingness exactly what they wish to see.
And Malkin -- he believes.
___________
He takes a moment to watch the man before him, ready to collect: to see the shot of blood, veins in his eyes, stained beneath smeared eyeliner and swollen lips, and he smiles when the bastard shoves rumpled bills -- dollars and pound notes, Euros, anything he’s collected, all that he has -- in exchange for oblivion.
He gives the bloody rock god his sodding hit, and then some.
___________
He unloads the statuettes, hollow -- false idols, and it’s fitting.
He hands the man named Eko his cassock and collar, and wonders how a fallen son might feel to be able, to be free in this world to steal a life, his own blood: his own brother.
He wants, more than anything, to find out.
___________
He presses the numbers, touches the screen, lets the paper print slow, loud, and the man across the counter tosses sloppy curls away from his face as he hands over the cash.
‘I have a feeling about this one,’ he says with a smile as the customer pays and takes his ticket, his numbers -- Esau has more than a feeling.
___________
It’s dark, and the knife in his hand is bloody; the only sounds are labored breath, the wheeze of real pain at the heart, in the bone -- torment and torture made tangible, a presence.
He turns, crouches down next to the soldier tied to the pole, eyes bruised and skin separated, tattered.
‘If you’re willing to learn,’ he says, speaks the Guard’s tongue; ‘I’d be willing to stop.’
He offers the knife by the handle as he unties the one they call Jarrah; the man takes it, and Esau nods, satisfied.
___________
He steps forward from the line: congratulates the happy couple, condemns -- speaks the same as Jacob has, will, but with a different intent.
Never take it for granted.
He catches his brother out of the corner of his eye, moves to run; they both know it as a fool’s errand, so Jacob lets him flee.
He fights sleep for days upon days, uphill struggle, losing battle; his eyes slide closed against the shore of the Pacific, warm on his toes.
They open, and the sky is a deeper, hateful blue: he is once again a prisoner, he has always been a slave.
___________
The ropes are tightened, now; he’s kept on a shorter leash. He will not leave again; not until it’s done.
Jacob suspects, of course he suspects; but he doesn’t know what it is his brother’s done -- who he’s seen, what he’s changed.
Jacob doesn’t know everything.
Esau is trapped. That doesn’t mean he’s helpless.
And he cannot, will never leave of his own free will; he cannot run without this place catching him, dragging him back by the skin of his neck until the blood that hasn’t beat beneath his skin in centuries -- millennia; until it runs bright, runs dry, a miracle.
Because this place... this place is so much more than just an Island, and it’s the only thing they have in common anymore: it scares the hell out of them both.
And he carries it with him, this home that isn’t his; he brought it with him, bore it like a badge, like salvation in the pit of his gut, and there is no going back -- there is no getting out. He forgets a piece of himself here every time he tries to run.
He leaves a piece with each of them, in kind -- where Jacob tries to bless them, lure them to his heart, Esau shackles them, one by one, and tosses every keys against the waves.
He cannot leave on his own. The forces that bind him to this place will always win out in the end.
That bind all things, in the end.
And Jacob likes numbers. Esau, though; he likes physics. For every action, its opposite. Equal.
In balance.
Someone has to pull against gravity, against destiny, against the twisted perversion of something called fate.
Someone has to steal him away.
So let them come, broken and battered, weathered and weak. Let them come, corrupted, ready to fall.
He’ll be waiting.
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jacob, Esau; Ensemble
Word Count: 1,400
Summary: He’s trapped. That doesn’t mean he’s helpless. For toestastegood, who requested "Jacob/Esau" at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. General Series Spoilers for Lost.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: This turned out rather fragmented and vague and stylized and not very shippy at all. For that, I apologize.
Deuce
People don’t understand him; people don’t even try.
But there’s one thing that should never be forgotten about Esau, brother of Jacob.
He’s trapped. That doesn’t mean he’s helpless.
___________
It takes time -- time, and the slow decay of souls; it takes eons beyond his reckoning, but he finds it: finds his loophole, his exception to the rule.
He cannot harm his brother. He cannot leave his brother. He cannot break the bond they share.
He cannot leave the Island.
Not alone.
When Jacob watches his charges, his prodigies in the mirrors, spinning the dial and staring out to sea, Esau wills whatever force connects them to this place, each other; bends it as best he can, and begs for a liberty, a capacity to be that is not free, is not his own, but is something -- something more than what he has.
It takes everything he is, but he manages. He is bitter, he is wrathful, he is vengeful -- he is unleashed.
He requires only a speck of dust to move mountains, raze worlds.
___________
His hands smell of it, saturated like vile sin, and he closes his eyes, can feel sand beneath the touch of his fingers in the crease of his palm -- he smells of it: fuel and fire and ash.
She slides a card, distracted, across the grimy countertop; he peers out of the window, squints against the glare, the scatter of light as it steals his breath for a moment, golden, blood in the back of his throat.
He doesn’t ask her what she needs a few Benjamins-worth of regular unleaded for at quarter after ten on a Wednesday night, watches as she signs the ‘K,’ long and wide in her name on the receipt.
He breathes in, and tastes destruction on his tongue; remembers things he’s been waiting for centuries to forget.
The jingle -- tinny clang of the bell on her way out rings like an omen, a blessing in disguise.
___________
They’re sitting in the dark, shadows playing across features -- atmosphere, more than anything, and he can comprehend its power as he sees the man, takes him in; the light plays to his advantage, heightens the sensation, strengthens the con.
‘We got a deal, Hoss?’ It comes out angry, vile, and they’ve got that much in common, at the least.
‘So goddamn eager, boy,’ he says, sips MacCutcheon and chuckles into the glass; ‘too fucking ready to sell your soul to the Devil.’
But he makes good on the exchange, and tells him where he can find a man named Tom.
___________
He watches the Doctor as he moves, cuts, stitches, smiles -- scrubs in and out; he watches the life that was saved, and he sneers at the natural order, at second chances and futures, free and clear.
The patient flat-lines, inexplicably, and there’s blood on his hands when Jack Shephard has to call the time of death.
___________
He’d be a fool to deny the role of fortune, the way that mere chance works within this world, within the next.
He still can’t quite buy the whole psychic thing, though.
He doesn’t ask for a reading, just brings an envelope of money, a ticket on Oceanic, and a little bit of karma, a nudge in the direction of providence.
He tells Malkin to give it to the blonde girl, and he knows that it will be done: men who believe in something, in anything, will go to the ends of the earth to see their faith rewarded, to see in nothingness exactly what they wish to see.
And Malkin -- he believes.
___________
He takes a moment to watch the man before him, ready to collect: to see the shot of blood, veins in his eyes, stained beneath smeared eyeliner and swollen lips, and he smiles when the bastard shoves rumpled bills -- dollars and pound notes, Euros, anything he’s collected, all that he has -- in exchange for oblivion.
He gives the bloody rock god his sodding hit, and then some.
___________
He unloads the statuettes, hollow -- false idols, and it’s fitting.
He hands the man named Eko his cassock and collar, and wonders how a fallen son might feel to be able, to be free in this world to steal a life, his own blood: his own brother.
He wants, more than anything, to find out.
___________
He presses the numbers, touches the screen, lets the paper print slow, loud, and the man across the counter tosses sloppy curls away from his face as he hands over the cash.
‘I have a feeling about this one,’ he says with a smile as the customer pays and takes his ticket, his numbers -- Esau has more than a feeling.
___________
It’s dark, and the knife in his hand is bloody; the only sounds are labored breath, the wheeze of real pain at the heart, in the bone -- torment and torture made tangible, a presence.
He turns, crouches down next to the soldier tied to the pole, eyes bruised and skin separated, tattered.
‘If you’re willing to learn,’ he says, speaks the Guard’s tongue; ‘I’d be willing to stop.’
He offers the knife by the handle as he unties the one they call Jarrah; the man takes it, and Esau nods, satisfied.
___________
He steps forward from the line: congratulates the happy couple, condemns -- speaks the same as Jacob has, will, but with a different intent.
Never take it for granted.
He catches his brother out of the corner of his eye, moves to run; they both know it as a fool’s errand, so Jacob lets him flee.
He fights sleep for days upon days, uphill struggle, losing battle; his eyes slide closed against the shore of the Pacific, warm on his toes.
They open, and the sky is a deeper, hateful blue: he is once again a prisoner, he has always been a slave.
___________
The ropes are tightened, now; he’s kept on a shorter leash. He will not leave again; not until it’s done.
Jacob suspects, of course he suspects; but he doesn’t know what it is his brother’s done -- who he’s seen, what he’s changed.
Jacob doesn’t know everything.
Esau is trapped. That doesn’t mean he’s helpless.
And he cannot, will never leave of his own free will; he cannot run without this place catching him, dragging him back by the skin of his neck until the blood that hasn’t beat beneath his skin in centuries -- millennia; until it runs bright, runs dry, a miracle.
Because this place... this place is so much more than just an Island, and it’s the only thing they have in common anymore: it scares the hell out of them both.
And he carries it with him, this home that isn’t his; he brought it with him, bore it like a badge, like salvation in the pit of his gut, and there is no going back -- there is no getting out. He forgets a piece of himself here every time he tries to run.
He leaves a piece with each of them, in kind -- where Jacob tries to bless them, lure them to his heart, Esau shackles them, one by one, and tosses every keys against the waves.
He cannot leave on his own. The forces that bind him to this place will always win out in the end.
That bind all things, in the end.
And Jacob likes numbers. Esau, though; he likes physics. For every action, its opposite. Equal.
In balance.
Someone has to pull against gravity, against destiny, against the twisted perversion of something called fate.
Someone has to steal him away.
So let them come, broken and battered, weathered and weak. Let them come, corrupted, ready to fall.
He’ll be waiting.