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Simon watches the scene in front of him with reluctance, walking towards the feast Jack's camp had invited the few left of Ralph's to. The rotten fruit wafts up to his nose, he wrinkles it up at the smell. Spotting the source when he follows the flies, he turns away with a grimace.
He worries after Jack's last show, bashing the shell over Ralph's head. Simon wishes they'd opted for another leaf to walk in with for a semblance of peace.
He stays to Ralph's right side, worrying at his lip as he looks around. There is a rather big bird in his chest, his wings flapping against his rib cage. It makes him feel queasy.
Jack is at the front of them, the veil covering his eyes and his face painted. Simon wishes he could recognize him through it. He works his jaw, casting a nervous glance to the horizon.
He only catches his mistake when he turns back, questioning a large silence and finds Jack had turned from Ralph and had been studying Simon instead. Simon had not known how long ago the attention shifted, how far he went without realizing.
He can't make out Jack's face still, he only knows from the tilt in his chin and the twist of his neck.
“You’re a thief, Simon.” Ralph and Piggy’s heads whip towards him. But Simon does not try to plead his innocence in the face of their shock.
Simon nods, keeping his eye at the veil and hoping he could make something out through it. “What does that mean of you?”
Jack smirks.
His words are taunting, Simon's are nothing at all—existing with no inflection.
“Where's your sense of loyalty?”
“Gone away, I presume,” Simon answers simply. He's sure Jack already knows this of him, that there is a lack between them now. The rest of the boys watch them, confused. Simon doesn't mind, but he does wonder how Jack is faring. He always cared so much about what others thought.
“And what have you done with your stolen goods, hidden them in your old ratty hut to be found by morning?”
Simon blinks, staring at him for a moment.
“I burned it.” It was the last evidence that remained of them. Simon will no longer admit to anything else. And Jack, he thinks would rather die. Maybe that’s why he’d want to go looking for it in Simon's things, to make sure no one got close to it. He needn't worry, nothing remains.
Jack's face does something then, something Simon can’t fully grasp. But he makes out Jack's surprise, his mouth drops open. His eyelashes flutter.
When he speaks next, the humor is gone.
“Did you really?” He asks, his eyes narrowing into slits. “Pretty bold show of it,” Jack examines. Simon can’t see much, but he can see the scornful look on Jack's face
Simon shrugs weakly, looking away.
“Can we just get on with it?” Ralph huffs.
And Simon is glad of it when they do. He wants to get this over with as quickly as possible and leave Jack's tribe to it. Go back to the campsite the rest of them have abandoned and lick his wounds until they've healed over. Watch over the signal fire and eat mangos until he can spot a ship and get the rest of the boys off the island. Maybe he would stay here when they'd leave. Slip back into the treeline when they line up for salvation; he'd doubt any of them would notice, and they did, he doubts they could care enough to call out. They'd leave him be and Simon would have the island to himself, and he'd never have to worry of them again. He could be happy and free, without the unjust call for bloodshed and dissipation that surrounds him. He finds comfort in that, he'd doesn't have the same view of carte blanche as the others. And maybe that's why he calls them that; Others. He knows they think of him in the same regard.
The island could be his alone.
It's a beautiful thought, a wilting indulgence that begins to die just as soon as it sprouts.
"You can't not lurk, can you?" A voice says, coming up beside him. "Even at a celebration you still just stand there and watch with those bug eyes of yours."
He nods once, jerkily. Not looking over even as he captures enough of the familiar tone to identify the speaker.
There is nothing more Simon can will up the nerve to offer.
"Don’t you speak?" Jack laughs, coming up beside him.
Simon turns to him, mystified by the mocking. Jack has so many other things to entertain him here, he doesn't know why he's come shoulder to shoulder beside Simon when Ralph is across the crowd, judging just the same. When Piggy is telling off one of the littluns somewhere in earshot. When Roger and Maurice are ready to laugh at each side of him. That he chooses to continue standing shoulder to shoulder, lowering his chin, tilting his head, and eyes peeking out of his veil to deride Simon instead.
He doesn't know why Jack makes an enemy of him. Why he could be so insistent on the matter. Simon had once given him so much trust that there's hardly any left in him to give to anyone anything else, even if the warranty on that has expired and the trust has gone stale.
The truth of the matter is that both the boys have lost each other for good.
Simon instinctively fights the thought back as soon as it comes, though he wishes he doesn't, he knows he needs to accept it fully. Clearly, this is where they've ended up and where they are to stay.
"What would you like me to say?" He responds tiredly.
"What you think, for one."
"You called me hysterical last time," Simon reminds.
"Oh, come off it!" Jack scoffs, turning up his nose and crossing his arms over his chest. "Stop acting like such a baby."
"I'm not acting like anything," Simon disputes with little inflection.
"Then what is this mopey business then?"
"I'm tired." Simon rolls the words around in his mouth, he sighs, shaking his head. He looks off into the distance and shrugs weakly. “I’m just—I’m tired of you, I suppose."
Jack's sardonic smile drops. As does his hand gripping his spear, which goes slack—dropping a couple of inches in the slip.
"That’s not fair," Jack mumbles, staring at him wide-eyed. He braces himself, eyes narrowing, and says stronger this time, "That’s not fair."
"I know," Simon agrees, "which is why I didn’t want to admit to it."
"Maybe you should just keep quiet." Jack muses, blandly.
Simon eyes the dirt, his mouth dropping open a sliver.
"It's not as if my words are important," Simon placates. "You don't even have to listen when I speak. It's not as if it would change anything."
Jack looks at him for a long moment, and Simon wonders if he'd said the wrong thing.
“Simon,” Jack calls quietly in his ear. His words less coated in cockiness. “You know you could come to me. You’re choir, we’d accept you here.”
Simon grimaces, the side of his mouth twitching up into a bitter smile.
“I wanted to believe you wouldn’t let it get bad.” Simon wanted to believe he would not take it this far. So maybe he's just as responsible. He wishes he hadn't defended Jack to Ralph; he wishes he'd put a stop to it at first glance. Back when he'd thought it was nothing, a passing thought, a trick of the light that they'd recover from rather than devolve into.
"Come off it, don't be silly," Jack sounded not his best. Simon thinks on that rather than how his father used to tell him the same.
“Is this you passing or failing?” Simon asks. Jack had once said that he felt this was a test. But a test to see how far they could get with fun and disregard of rules or a test to see if they were able to hold steadfast to their sensibility until rescue, Simon did not know.
Jack's face twitches a bit in surprise before he latches onto what Simon refers to. He sets his jaw, lifting his chin. “Acing,” he answers triumphantly.
Simon looks down at the sand between them and nods to himself, figuring that Jack is telling the truth. It had not mattered, truly, which test it had been. Both of them either had Jack or Simon failing at it depending on the semantics. Maybe that’s how they both see each other as now, failures. Disappointment and detachment. Simon stands in the quiet thoughtfully for a long while before Jack breaks it.
"Oh, c'mon Simon!" Jack laughs meanly. "A hundred things just flashed in your mind and you're not going to say a single one of them? Speak, say what you think. Let’s all hear it."
Simon turns, stepping away.
"This is why no one respects you, you know?" Jack calls after him loudly. The others' attention is called from the loudness their disagreement has raised to. But people often stare at Simon so he is not perturbed; sometimes they would snicker, sometimes they'd lift or furrow their brows as they examined him. Here, they watch blank-faced, stiff-postured, gaze flickering between the two of them, and Simon does not wish to know what they think.
He thought better of Jack than this, Jack who was both kind and cruel. Tremendous and horrible.
He’d trusted him not to do this, not to go this far.
He cringes, shaking the thought away.
Simon walks through the slips of the crowd, putting distance between him and Jack.
"That's not why they don't respect me." Simon corrects defensively. He shakes his head, letting out a deep breath. They don't not respect him because he does not speak, its something else. It' how he unnerves. He had gained Piggy and Ralph's friendship until he'd told him of his joy of the island. They'd gone quiet, even after he'd explained further and tried to encourage them. Everyone here thinks he's batty; there's not one exception.
"This makes you feel good, doesn't it?" Simon says, turning back to Jack. Hurting me, he thinks. "Living off the land, leading the people, the same way you imagine your father those ten days after schooling; Acing it."
"I’m providing," Jack defends, grounding his spear into the dirt. Like he's stabbing it. "I’m helping my people."
Simon nods, a bitter smile pulling at the side of his mouth.
"I know you are," Simon replies quietly; he just wishes Jack didn't find any excuse to make it as violent as possible.
"You don’t get to look down on me for that." Jack spits, taking a step forward and hunching forward like an animal about to pounce. "If anyone gets to be looked down on, it’s you. You're nothing." Simon nods, not surprised by the words and turns to leave. "Go on then, it’s not like I need you!" Jack laughs, "It’s no wonder why your parents can’t stand the sight of you, or why everyone always laughed at you. You're pathetic!" Simon keeps his pace, walking away from their camp and closer to the tree line. "And where are you even going? The beast is in there, Simon."
Simon shakes his head, eyeing the dirt as the boys let him pass them by.
"The beast is behind me, Jack.”
Jack laughs meanly, loudly, but Simon thinks he hears his voice crack.
"When did you start thinking that?” Jack taunts.
“I’ve thought that all along,” Simon answers honestly. He just trusted Jack not to go through with it. This metamorphosis he's clung onto like a lifeline.
Jack jabs his stick into the ground beneath him, again and again and again. “That’s not fair,” he hisses. “You know that’s not fair.”
“I know.” Simon nods to himself but he doesn’t think he means it in the way Jack does. “But it doesn’t need to be.”
“If you go in there, don’t bother coming back." Jack spits, voice thick with something Simon won't name. "I won’t have you.”
Simon continues his walk up the hill and disappears into the treeline.
A branch snapping startles Simon from his peace and quiet, he whips his head around from where he'd sat leaning against a large fallen tree near the edge of the cliff. He spots the figures through the trees, not far from him, a large group. A sharp, loud laugh erupts before someone shushes just as loudly. Simon watches, stilled as a deer in the middle of the road as it stares into oncoming headlights.
A hand pushes a large leaf from its path as the crowd of boys enters full view.
Jack stops in his track, the grip on his spear loosening and dropping from its height.
Simon cannot look away, he wonders if Jack might kill him.
"Return to camp,” Jack orders, not taking his eyes of off Simon. Roger stares at him for a moment, before he looks to everyone else and nods. They shuffle back into the thick evergreen from which they came. Simon turns back to the ocean, thumb brushing over the piece of fruit in his lap. It’s beautiful here, the big blue that keeps them stranded here, better than the stones and walls of their school.
He hears Jack's steps come closer, feet sounding loudly under the crunch of foliage, until he climbs over the log and settles right beside him.
Simon does not turn to face him. Though he feels Jack's gaze on him for a moment, in the corner of his eye, he watches Jack mirror his posture and turn to face the view of the water instead.
They sit there for a moment, staring out at the sea. Looking for something, maybe. Simon thinks he might be relieved if he saw a ship, not for him but for the sake of the others. Jack, however, would be dreading it. They survey the waters, with the same circumstances and vastly different outcomes to wish for.
He finds a little detached humor in that, a smile flickers on and off his face.
He cuts the fruit in his hand in half and offers one slice to Jack in silence.
Jack accepts it easily, cupping Simon's hand as he passes it off so as to not let the slippery fruit fall to the ground and dirty itself.
“You haven’t changed much since we’ve come here,” Jack murmurs thoughtfully after a long moment. “Everyone else has.”
“You've only indulged,” Simon denies quietly. “We’re all who we’ve always been, some things have just grown larger while other parts have shrunk.”
Jack removes his head scarf, drags it from his face, and places it onto the log. Simon still can’t see him through the face paint. He reaches out, running his thumb across his cheek. Jack goes still, a statue, marble carved and sculpted to his likeness, but doused in paint. He is the same Jack he has always been, in shape and size alone. Yet the paint is smeared on so thick that when Simon pulls away with a blackened thumb nothings given away on Jack's face.
“Why’re you even wearing that?”
“We were hunting, of course,” Jack explains.
“It must be uncomfortable.”
“You’ve never worn it,” Jack huffs dismissively.
“I have,” Simon says. “When I snuck into your camp to get my diary back.”
“You put on paint for that?” Jack grins, “donned war paint while going into battle.” The side of Simon's mouth twists up in a begrudging smile, he nods. “I was mighty impressed, actually. I was furious, of course, but impressed too. You'd make a good hunter." Jack pauses, musing, "That’s what I’ve always thought."
Simon huffs, a thick breath of air out of his nose. An audible disbelief. Jack catches it with interest, so Simon might as well double down.
He shrugs weakly.
"I'd make a bad one, I wouldn’t be able to kill anything."
The way Jack looks at him is almost scolding.
"You’ll need to eat meat sometime. You can’t just survive off of fruit out here."
Simon wants to ask why, why Jack could've done this, how he let this get this far. But it'd be pathetic and useless. The truth of it was that Simon had known exactly why Jack had taken this way. Simon had understood. The same way Simon and Jack had always understood one another, unacknowledged and keenly familiar. Because he had always latently apprehended the intricacies that tied together Jack's woven soul. He thinks that Jack might know why Simon took his way too, or maybe he hopes.
So rather than that, Simon spits out the closest adjacency he could.
"You like me, don't you?"
Sometimes he doubts, sometimes he wonders if Jack dropped him like a stone at the arrival of others because he'd needed something to occupy him, and when better company came, he'd disregarded the old for something he actually liked.
It’s hard to read it without imagining a nasal whine, but it’s a legitimate question.
It begs another one.
Would Jack even tell him, as he is now?
Jack stares at him, puzzled. His mouth opens a sliver, but the silence passes like a wave washing up on the beach. "I…" Jack's brows dip down. "You shouldn't doubt that."
A proclamation devoid of meaning, Simon's mouth thins.
"How can I not?" He says with a limp, flippant gesture.
Jack does not respond to this, he keeps his gaze straight. Resting his weight on his knees.
Simon smiles, thin-lipped and bitter. Simon has his own personal bias regarding Jack, one he’s not quite sure he can admit to out loud. As they are now, revulsion meets admiration in equal measure.
“I don’t even know why you're upset about it," Jack blurts out. Simon's brows furrow, trying to make sense of the words. "The diary. It was more mine than yours anyway.” Simon ruminates on that, finding a sense of concurrence with Jack's opinion. Many pages consisted of Jack, and squatter's rights does hold some amount of proprietary rights. But the words just make Simon feel ill. Jack claiming everything for himself: the island, the boys, Simon’s journal, Simon's feelings. Simon wants at least something for himself.
Sayre's law does not apply here on the island. Maybe the allure of chaos was nativus, and of this Simon does not know. He does not think he wishes to.
Simon works his jaw, looking out at the ocean instead of Jack.
The ocean is blue, the same color Jack's eyes used to be before they were covered.
The affection he has had for Jack existed without prurience, without expectation, only care, and respect— a soft unsaid understanding between the two schoolboys. Simon had always thought being gentle with someone would never carry consequences, but it has. It has placed a burden on him. It makes him sad to see Jack like this, it makes him disappointed.
He'd never held anything against Jack before, he can't help but to now.
"You're mad."
Simon shrugs weakly, bowing his head. He rips a piece of grass from between his feet up from the dirt.
He wonders if they could ever get back to it, those days during the long vacs where Jack used to indulge him instead of his immorality. But Jack stands tall, vines growing over his feet and cementing him to where he is, who he’s chosen to be. And he won't bend.
Simon shakes his head.
"I'm not mad."
Simon should be, and maybe if the others were still here, he would be.
But the paradox of fiction Jack revolves around with his tribe doesn't exist here; gone away is fanaticism if only for a moment. The beast sleeps, lulled to deep slumber by a lullaby. Simon relaxes, despite himself, shoulders slumping. He takes a breath.
"You can be," Jack tries. Simon thinks it's his attempt at mercy.
"I know."
Jack's bottom lip slips into his mouth, he's quiet for a moment. Simon watches him, waiting for it. "It’d be better if you were." It reads like a confession, but Simon hasn't been made aware of anything he didn't already know. Self-restraint, forgiveness—or at least a small portion of it, it's harder than indulgence.
"I know that too,” Simon admits. "But I'm not giving you that. I’m not gonna make myself feel worse just so you can feel better."
"Anger feels good." Jack insists, but he knows it won’t hold true. The words are weak; he knows Simon too well for them to work.
"Not to me," Simon shakes his head, "it makes me sick."
Jack winces.
He huffs, a little like a laugh and a little like a sigh. “Nature became subject to law, there are no laws here. Why do you worry about them so much?”
“But what of morality?”
“What of it?” Jack shrugs. “Law upheld the critical. Rules are not for boys amongst themselves on an island far away from the rest of the world.”
“That is the issue I take in this, Jack. We can go as far as we want to, it’s chaos, it’s hedonism. How can it be justified?”
“You are hung up on how another land governs. Imaginary ease at the expense of freedom, you're holding yourself back from it.”
“It is true that this is freedom, uncut, unadulterated freedom. So genuine and embodying. But…" Simon bites his lip, working it between his teeth. "Should we be free if this is the effect?”
Jack looks at him thoughtfully for a long moment.
“I don’t know why you still hold yourself to all the rules of the past.”
Simon sighs.
“And I don’t know why you have been so quick to shed them; you had excelled at them before.”
“And you had been poor in that sense. But you know why I had been so readied. You do, don’t act as if you did not.” Jack pauses, his eyes take Simon in full. “Come back with me.”
“What?” Simon startles.
“Come with me to my tribe. I’ll let you do whatever you want; you can be free there.”
"You haven't been listening to me," Simon mumbles sadly to himself, forgetting his company.
“You should come back with me. You wouldn't have to hunt. You need anger to hunt, to follow through with it.”
To kill, Simon finishes for him thoughtfully.
You'd need hunger for it, and the anger and desperation that came with it.
Jack had always carried the brunt of that for the both of them. Just as he's trying to now. But it's too late, Simon would rather live off of mangos for the rest of his days.
“You said that I couldn’t.” Simon reminds quietly.
Jack shakes his head roughly, making a face.
“I was mad, then.”
"And what will you tell the others? That I apologized and begged for your mercy?"
"If you did, then it wouldn't be a lie."
Simon makes a face, turning away.
"I won't apologize for what I said."
"You said hurtful things," Jack reminds. But they had never topped what Jack had said about him, Simon had never been able to surpass that.
"I said what I thought. Do you think this is right?" Simon asked. "What you are doing?"
He lifts his shoulder in a half-shrug, and Jack's chin dips down. "I hardly think that matters anymore."
"Well, I think it does," Simon says thoughtfully in the quiet.
"You like it here, too.” Jack points out defensively. “I know you do.”
“Not like this," Simon murmurs sympathetically. "You've lost yourself to it. Being wrong feels exactly like being right, we never know for sure until afterwards." Simon looks at him, his mouth pulling down. "Jack, how do you know you're aceing it?"
"Do you think you're passing?" Jack says to continue his opposition rather than answer Simon's question, throwing the words Simon had said back in his face.
"I don't know." Simon shrugs. He looks down at the foliage, tracing patterns in the dirt. "I'm probably not acing it. But I think I'm faring better than you."
Jack tsks.
"You can't be sure either, though, can you?"
Simon hums, nodding slowly. He doesn't think anything can. Including Jack.
"I won’t belong in your tribe."
"You hardly belong in Ralph’s either." Simon chews on the inside of his cheek. The truth was that he had always had trouble with that. Even back home, Simon had hardly belonged there either.
"Perhaps no place at all is better for me," He decides, though the words hurt him. An ache spreads in his chest, like he'd gone and stabbed himself with one of the others' spears. He wishes he hadn't gone and shown Jack how to make them. Wishes he hadn't given that to Jack to use against him.
"Nonsense, you would be better with people," Jack protests.
"I’m lonely even with them."
Jack pauses, his argument loses steam at the words.
For all his wrongness and inadequacies, Simon thinks he's more sane than the rest of them by now.
He looks at Jack. The mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness. A better boy would not have hid, a better boy wouldn’t have made such the mistake. It’s cowardly in the same way that Simon never truly being able to warn the tribe of the beasts' true inhabitants was. But Simon and Jack had always been cowards. They share that.
His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to him when lent term began. Jack is kind, more than people know of him, and Simon never held any of the rest against him too much. Jack won’t let that show here though, not here. It’s almost like he’d rid himself of it completely. But Simon knows that he hasn't; it’s a choice that Jack chooses willingly. Not something that he’s misplaced and cannot find no matter how much he looks. Jack is not looking at all, and Jack is glad of it.
For what is a kind god, if not weak?
Simon thinks that he'd make a pitiful god, maybe it's best Jack has become one without him. Even if he wishes Jack had not become one at all.
Jack threads a hand through his hair, his nails dig into his temple harshly. Simon watches, wishing he'd possessed the strength to reach over and pull it away. His brows knit, his head leans to the side, watching. Jack laughs bitterly. He looks up, hand dropping back down to his side. Simon is glad of it, less so when Jack glares at him, glossy-eyed.
"Imagine me without the burden of you, I’d be a god." Jack insists vehemently, "I am their god."
Simon nods, a small thing.
"I’m sure you are." Simon agrees, looking away.
The way Jack had been with Simon had never been godly. He had not stood higher than him. The truth of it was that Simon had always thought it was a joke, a stride for something they'd never reach. Even before the island when Jack had run his platoon similarly. But Jack's shed everything else beyond that now. Any connection Simon has had with him deemed useless.
Gods do not have sweetness and humility, nor humanity. They are above it.
Jack is above it.
It’s a shame, Simon used to really like the saints. Now they are tainted with something, less wholly in his eyes, though he can't name what it is.
He would say it's Jack himself, but he'd adored him too much to label it that.
"We were both supposed to be gods," Simon says, thinking of their day on the hill.
Jack huffs, half a laugh and half a sigh again. Its delivery comes with more of a disbelieving scoff.
"It’s not my fault you refused to do anything."
It's Simon's own fault; the blame lies with him, truly. A silly boy watching the others devolve into chaos like wildlings dangling off tree branches with their feet and falling face-first into the dirt when they fall and not doing a thing. He knows it's best not to let things fester, yet he still wallows in his regret.
He just thought Jack would've figured it out in his own time. That he wouldn't go as far as he did.
He wonders if it's pointless to think of Jack at all now, Simon does not seek the answer. It's one thread of thought that he drops completely as soon as it comes to him.
"Do you remember Alexander and Hephaestus from history class?"
Jack's mouth quirks up, and his eyebrows dart up. Simon cocks his head to the side, watching the movement like a bird. He regrets the sentence already, though he doesn't know why.
Jack chuckles to himself, he shakes his head.
"So you're set on both of us being a tragedy, then."
"What?" Simon startles, meeting Jack's gaze again.
Jack leans forward mockingly, standing ground on the claim.
"You are comparing our likeness, are you not?" Simon had not meant to, and he could barely see the resemblance. Alexander and Hephaestus had been devoted to each other. Simon and Jack had not been, really ever. Simon thinks it best not to say this aloud, and as he ponders on a response, Jack continues. "Well, I suppose if you refused to be a god with me, a tragedy is the second-best thing."
Somewhere in his mind, Simon thinks gods and tragedies are one of the same.
"I wasn't comparing us," Simon tries to explain. "I'm not in your tribe, nevertheless your second in command."
"You could've been," Jack huffs, rolling his shoulder. "If you hadn't done such a poor show."
"You would never have done that." Simon declares loudly. Jack would hardly be seen with him, even if Simon had joined him with the rest of the choir; Jack would have never announced such a promotion. He'd already had his right-hand men. "Don't lie."
They both know that.
It's silly to pretend otherwise, even if it's another world made in Jack's liking. Where they both sit around the fire where Jack made his home and laugh like Simon belonged there.
Jack rubs tiredly at his face, he exhales loudly.
"Then why'd you even bring it up, Simon?" Jack disputes knowingly. Pointing out the fatal flaw.
"I just thought of it, I wasn't trying to…" Simon shakes his head. Simon knows why, he swears he knows why. But perhaps not intimately enough to explain it to another person. "I don't think we're similar."
"That doesn't even make any sense," Jack scoffs, not willing to let go.
"I don't think things always have to make sense," Simon mumbles quietly after a moment.
Jack rolls his eyes.
"That's why everyone else thinks you're batty."
"Do you think I'm batty?" Simon asks, turning to him. He hides half of his face in his shoulder, with only his eyes visible.
Jack's eyes widen in surprise, he's quiet for a moment.
"No," he mumbles.
Simon watches him for a moment, taking in his painted face for maybe the hundredth time. He can't help it; he's still bitter.
"I will not sit here with this connivance," Simon asserts. "No more."
He'd stood idle and trusting for too long.
"Simon—" Jack tries softly.
"It’s not something to dispute. You're the same animal you were back home, but here, it's different somehow. What was discarded there applies differently here."
Jack's shoulders slump, he sighs. His head lolls until he's facing the ocean again.
"You said you weren't mad," He murmurs more to himself than anything. It's meek, it's puzzling.
"I'm not," Simon insists softly. "I just won't stand for it."
Simon had slipped from Jack's grasp, like a body slipping out to sea, drifting from an island. He'd floated through the water watching as the current carried him away from all life-sustaining hope. Olive branches in the form of mango trees, understanding, and moments of tranquility in the form of drinkable water. Jack had once held onto him, calling him mother and falling asleep beside him on a cramped twin bed they'd had to huddle close on. When Jack's hand loosened on his, more and more the more days they'd stayed on the island. Simon had thought he'd not mind at all of Simon's departure. But Jack had, this deferred realization that had made Simon ache, had been after Jack had shouted that he was hysterical. How Jack had looked him in the eye and said he should've come to him, and Simon hadn't been able to meet his eye for long.
Jack had wanted him to come to him.
Maybe to come home. Or the closest they had to one.
And Simon had embraced the journey through the water where his feet couldn't find steady ground and let himself drift. It had been better, for a moment, than standing beside Jack's veil-covered head.
Piece by piece, Simon had rid himself of the burden of his affection for Jack that had tormented him.
It doesn't make sense that they're still like this.
Simon had burned the journal, he'd walked away from Jack, he'd gotten himself away from this.
But maybe understanding isn't as easily forgone. He can't just stop knowing Jack inside and out at the drop of a hat.
He too is Jack in some ways.
Simon briefly wonders if he'd shared more in common with Hephaestus than he'd thought, but he brushes it off with a shrug. Shaking the thought away.
Perhaps it was divine intervention that let them here. But perhaps it is Simon’s own ineptitude.
Simon's eyes flutter, he works his jaw as he tries to will up the courage.
"Can you tell me you hate me?" He says suddenly.
Jack's head whips around, alarmed. "What?"
Simon shakes his head, unable to explain. "Please just say it, I want to hear it." Simon tries. Jack's mouth is agape, he looks distraught, he looks hurt. Simon struggles to continue. "Just say it one time, and then we’ll put it away forever."
"Simon," Jack warns, but Simon does not heed it. Maybe he wants presence, for Jack to be near him. But he’s not going to get that again. He needs to kill that hope. He needs it to die in his chest. Jack has affection for him, the same as Simon does him, beyond articulation. This home, they've hardly gotten a glimpse of; they need to burn it to the ground as they did half the island.
The eyes that meet him are cold and narrow.
“Permit me this,” Simon hesitates in his insistence, theres a tremor in his throat. “Tell me that you hate me.”
Jack's posture is tight, his shoulders hunch up.
“Stop it,” He grunts.
“I know that you must.” Simon carries on. “In one form or another, I know you dislike me so. Even if it is smallish in the scheme of others. I wish for you to say it out loud so that we may be rid of this.”
Jack opens his mouth, then hesitates. His eyes turn away, “I will not say such a thing.” He announces, stony.
Please, he wants to beg. He had never asked Jack for much, he'd taken what he was given without complaint. He just wants this one thing, to float away from the island on the soft waves of the ocean. To untether himself, wash himself free just as the pilot had. Jack had done so for the pilot; Simon doesn't know why he can't with him.
The memories of their past that had been stored in Simon’s brain and looked on with such ardor seemed to exist now with a thick fog that had blanketed them. In Simon’s mind, crystallized memories from mere months ago now blur.
He remembers Jack smiling at him, but Jack does not smile at him, and Simon contends it to be a silly, lacking dream.
Let me be rid of this. I want it all gone.
The words die on the tip of Simon’s tongue, he swallows their little brittle bodies and they tumble down his throat to float away in his stomach acid.
His simmering hubris halts to a stop, lurching.
He finds himself regretting the thought. He does not want them gone. In truth, they are all that he has left of Jack. He had thought once that he wouldn't admit to anything else. And it's true. He won't own up to anything out loud, but such things can still be kept in his mind and heart. There is no harm in letting the fondness stay, locked in a box that he only unlocks when he is alone. He still wants that for himself, a placation that things aren't so in ruin.
"Sorry," He mumbles after a moment. His voice cracks halfway through, it sounds as if he's crying. "I'm sorry." God or not, he still sits beside Jack. If Jack was so akin to being a god, then maybe he was something similar himself. They'd shared something too comparable to be different forms of life. If they are equal in likeness, and Jack is a god, then why can't Simon be one too? Why would he deny himself that? It does not immediately come with the wildness that Jack gave himself to. If they are to have their differences from here on out, did they have to exist solely without each other? Maybe they can find each other in this, in the heavens. Jack turns to him, aghast. "We're gods, we've always been them. I just don't know why you must come into your power like this."
Maybe there are different types of gods. Jack is angry and all powering, he is cruel. That's where his power stems from. Simon's takes root in something else. And if he never saw Jack as a god, high above him. Maybe it was because Simon was right there beside him in the clouds.
"I…" Jack swallows roughly. He sets his jaw, blinking rapidly. "And I don't know why you hid away so fiercely from it. Power is power, Simon. It's always been important."
"Yes, I’m sure it makes you feel very important, Jack. Though I don’t know why you'd need that reassurance. You were always important."
First and foremost, Jack. He'd always existed as such, Simon never knew why he needed the reassurance. He was always tremendous, he was always embodying, all-encompassing.
Divine.
"You were, too," Jack admits after a long moment, struggling with the words.
Simon smiles wryly, "No, I wasn't."
They were both without much with parents, but Jack had had friends. He'd had love, he'd had adoration. He had possessed many things that Simon lacked.
"You were to me."
Simon winces, dropping his head.
He sighs wistfully. If Jack is trying to manipulate him, it nearly works. His resolve nearly gives in at the words.
Simon didn’t put their bones in the ground. Hollow calcium, brittle and easily shatterable. He hadn't dug them a hole, put them to rest, buried under soft dirt. He'd only walked away, leaving them to sit on the ground, easily recognizable in nature. It’s why he and Jack keep stumbling back onto the remains, shrouded across the lands as they are.
Maybe Simon isn’t a very good god; maybe he is lacking and weak. Cowardly and reserved, and no one lines up for his altar at all.
But he and Jack are one and the same. Even if he, himself, can't make sense of the continuations that coincide with that. He knows that it is in the same way he knows when he breathes in, his lungs fill with oxygen that empties when he exhales. Instinct, or innate, or tacit. Something Simon doesn't have to learn in the same way as everything else. But he still lacks the understanding to attempt an explanation beyond mere musings.
He still has his doubts.
Maybe the secrets of the universe existed in the spirals that circled the insides of a tree, marking its age the same way a boy grows an inch or a man gains a wrinkle. Maybe it lays floating over the way the water ran over the rocks in the river bed. The sound it makes when the water hits the ground. Whispers attempting a reveal of themselves that Simon can't pick up through the wind whistling past his ear. Maybe it's only here on the island, where they are constantly surrounded by these things—rather than lessons, church, cities, war, and absent parents, can they attempt a retrospective glance at the nature of their relationship. Simon should keep the faith, ball it up in his palm and place it over his chest.
But the nagging thought that it is a fruitless search that Simon shouldn't bother with at all grows louder by each and every day.
Jack peers over with a quizzical frown.
"I can't join you, not as I am. Do what you must, just leave me to the trees. Let me have this, just the once."
Jack does not respond, Simon is nearly glad of it.
Gods who possess the power for action and still watch the scene play out regardless.
What are gods if not cowering?
It doesn't matter what kind of gods he and Jack were, the sentiment held true beyond categories.
Jack sits with him still, despite Simon's refusal. It's a relief, Simon had thought he'd up and leave, but the boy doesn't move a muscle. The sun in the sky changes, the light shifts. But the two of them stay leaning against the log, looking out onto the ocean in silence. Sitting in the weight of the acceptance of their own respective choices. Soon, Simon knows, Jack will pull himself up, dust off his knees, and walk back to his camp. But until then, it's just two gods looking over their land. Simon keeps his faith tight to his chest and does little to acknowledge it beyond that.