Chapter 8 #2
A hand catches my good arm before I go anywhere.
Jack.
He’s there so quickly, it takes my brain a second to catch up. One moment I’m upright on spite alone, the next he’s bracing me with a firm grip and enough steady weight at my side to stop the whole disaster from unfolding.
“Easy,” he says, voice low and calm, like I’m a skittish horse rather than a grown man whose body has finally decided to inform him it’s reached its limit. “You’ve probably done enough for one day.”
“I’ve stood up,” I mutter, swallowing against the sudden nausea. “Bit dramatic to call that enough.”
Jack’s grip doesn’t loosen. “You’ve had your arm broken, been beaten for four days, and you’re still healing. I’d say standing up and trying to interrogate people about interdimensional conspiracies is a pretty full schedule.”
Sonny makes a sympathetic face that would be more convincing if he didn’t also look like he was trying not to laugh.
“Mate,” he says, “you’ve gone grey.”
“I’m brown.”
He snorts. “You know what I mean.”
I do, unfortunately.
The lightheadedness ebbs, but slowly. It leaves behind a hollow sort of exhaustion, the kind that lingers in the muscles and bones rather than just making your eyelids heavy.
I hate it instantly. I hate the way my body feels unreliable.
I hate the way my legs don’t seem entirely committed to the idea of holding me up.
I hate, more than anything, the harsh reminder that I am not currently capable of doing what I want, when I want.
Defenceless is too dramatic a word.
It’s also not entirely wrong.
Sonny must read some of that on my face, because the grin slips. He pushes off the wall and straightens properly. “I can go find Varek,” he says. “Tell him you need him.”
The words hit somewhere awkward. My first instinct is immediate and stupid and automatic: I don’t need anyone.
It rises right up to the back of my throat, ready to come out razor-edged and mean. I can feel it there, that old reflex to shove away anything that sounds too much like dependence, too much like vulnerability, too much like someone seeing I’m not doing nearly as well as I’d prefer.
But Jack is still physically holding me upright, so I keep my mouth shut.
That’s growth, probably.
Or humiliation. Hard to tell.
Sonny notices the silence and, to his credit, doesn’t make a big thing of it. He just nods once, like my not objecting is answer enough. “Right,” he says lightly. “I’ll go wrangle the giant purple menace.”
“Try not to flirt with danger on the way,” Jack says.
Sonny snorts. “That’s, like, my whole personality.”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “That and bad decisions.”
“Rude but accurate.” He points at me. “You rest. Or at least pretend to so I can say I tried.”
Then he’s gone, disappearing back down the corridor with the same easy confidence he seems to bring to everything, even conversations about royal conspiracies and dimensional ruptures.
The silence he leaves behind is quieter than before, though not uncomfortable.
Jack waits until my balance steadies properly before loosening his grip. He doesn’t let go completely. He just shifts so I can stand on my own while still leaning if I need to.
“I can walk,” I tell him.
“I believe you,” he says. “Still doesn’t mean you should do it alone.”
There’s no pity in it. No fuss. Just straightforward practicality. I hate how much easier that is to accept.
“Fine,” I say. “But if you tell anyone I nearly ate the stone floor just then, I’ll deny everything.”
A corner of his mouth rises. “Noted.”
We start moving slowly back the way I came, and it becomes apparent within the first ten steps that I am not, in fact, walking with anything that could be mistaken for speed.
Jack doesn’t comment on it. He matches me without making it obvious, adjusting his stride so naturally that it takes effort not to be annoyed by how grateful I am.
The tunnels of Dathanor curve around us in soft-lit arcs, the blue-green veins in the rock pulsing faintly.
There’s less foot traffic in this stretch, though we still pass the occasional rebel carrying supplies or weapons or messages from one part of the settlement to another.
A few glance my way, recognition flickering across their expressions, but no one stops us.
I’m glad for that. I don’t think I have the energy to be inveigled into another conversation if it requires me to look competent.
So I initiate one of my own instead.
“You and Solan,” I say after a while, mostly because if I focus too hard on the ache in my ribs, it’s going to become unbearable. “How’s that going?”
Jack glances sideways at me, expression shifting with something softer. “Good,” he says simply.
“Good?” I repeat. “That’s all I get? You’ve got a terrifying Pyronox warrior for a mate and all I’m getting is good?”
A low huff of amusement escapes him. “What do you want, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Details. Reassurance that one of us gets to have a functioning relationship.”
That earns me a proper laugh, quiet but real.
“He’d hate hearing you call him terrifying,” Jack says.
“Would he?”
“No.” Another hint of a smile. “He’d probably be secretly pleased.”
“Thought so.”
We round a bend, and the tunnel narrows slightly before opening again. The air here is cooler. Cleaner. I take a careful breath, trying to ignore how each inhale still drags a line of discomfort through my side.
“Was it hard?” I ask. “For him. Before.”
Jack is quiet for a moment, and when he answers, there’s a weight to it. “Yeah,” he says. “Hard doesn’t really cover it, to be honest.”
I glance at him.
He’s looking ahead, but he’s clearly not really seeing the tunnel. Seeing memory instead.
“Following the Queen’s command did a number on him,” he says. “Not just physically. He survived because he could. Because he had to. But surviving like that…” He shakes his head once. “It leaves marks.”
That, at least, I understand.
Terrafeara isn’t subtle in the way it damages people.
“He and I both know joining the rebels doesn’t exactly sign us up for a quiet life,” Jack continues. “But at least now he’s choosing what he fights for. He’s not being forced to obey cruelty just because someone more powerful told him to.”
I don’t argue.
I can’t, really.
Not after the cell. Not after the Queen. Not after the easy, almost bored way she hurt me just to make a point.
Not after ten years of seeing what her system does to anyone it can collar, control, or profit from.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “That matters.”
“It does.”
We walk a few more steps in silence. It’s not the strained sort. Just the quiet of two men with enough thoughts to fill the space without needing to spill all of them.
Then I ask, “Jamie?”
Jack’s whole face changes at the name. It’s not soft, exactly, but sharper, maybe. More alive.
“Varek’s told me about him,” I say. “Bits and pieces. That he’s with you. That the research into the rifts, all of this—” I gesture weakly with my good hand, meaning the rebellion, the books, the risks, the plans built on plans. “—it all keeps circling back to finding a way home.”
Jack nods once. “It does.”
“For him?”
“For everyone who wants to get out… if we can.” He glances at me. “But yeah. For Jamie especially.”
There’s no hesitation in it. No strategic spin. Just certainty.
“He’s incredible,” Jack says after a moment, and pride warms the words in a way that catches me slightly off-guard. “Smart as hell. Braver than he should need to be. Good kid.”
“Sounds like it.”
Jack exhales, looking suddenly older than he does when he’s joking with Sonny or talking through plans.
“But if I can get him out of Terrafeara,” he says, “out of this dimension, I will.”
The firmness in his tone leaves no room for question.
“This world’s too cruel.”
The words land hard because they’re true.
Not dramatically so. Not as some grand statement about evil and darkness and fate. Just true in the plain, practical sense. Too cruel for a kid. Too cruel for most adults, if we’re being honest.
I nod slowly. “Would you go with him?”
Jack shakes his head before I’ve even finished. “No.”
No uncertainty. No struggle. Just no.
“Can’t,” he says, quieter now. “I have Solan.”
There’s something in how he says the name that threads through the bones of the sentence, making it heavier and gentler all at once.
“He’s my everything,” Jack continues. “I’d sooner cut off a limb than be without him.”
That’s not hyperbole. I can tell from how he says it. It’s fact. A line drawn deep enough that he doesn’t have to raise his voice to make it felt.
I think of Varek.
Immediately, annoyingly.
Of the scent of him in the furs and the stone and the air of his quarters. Of the way the bond steadies when he’s close. Of how much more solid I felt with him beside me in the medical room, as if my body had remembered something before my head had managed to catch up.
I don’t say any of that out loud.
Instead, I ask, “And Jamie knows that?”
Jack lets out a breath that might almost be a laugh if there wasn’t so much worry wrapped around it. “Jamie’s pissed off,” he says. “Misses his folks. Misses Earth. Misses knowing what the hell a normal day looks like.”
“Fair.”
“Very.” He shakes his head. “But he’s also determined to stay.”
That surprises me enough that I almost forget to manage my footing over a slight rise in the stone. “Stay?”
“He keeps saying he’s meant to be here.”
There’s enough unease in Jack’s voice that I hear the rest of it without him having to say it: and that worries the hell out of me.
“Kids say all sorts of things when they’re trying to make sense of something awful,” I say.
“Yeah.” Jack’s expression stays thoughtful. “Maybe. Or maybe he knows something I don’t.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It feels ominous.”
We reach a narrower passage that curves towards the cluster of rooms Varek uses when he’s in this section of Dathanor, and something shifts under my skin.
I slow. Not because of pain, but because of him.