Archive of Our Own ^beta

"It's not fair." Jack says lowly, conversationally, staring at the roof of their goliath, the one he and David operate together. David hums. But Jack doesn't really feel like explaining. Not really. Its not as though David would understand.

"What is? Cause from where I'm standing, this whole situation seems pretty unfair." That makes Jack laugh, mean and sharp and cruel, and David doesn't say anything more because he knows when Jack gets in his moods, nothing can shake it from him save a bottle of liquor.

"What was I born for, if I wasn't going to get anything?"

"Jack."

"Why am I alive if I have nothing to live for?"

"Jack!"

"I'm a failure as a man, as a son, as a prince, as a king, as a human being, and I've been punished for it. But why couldn't god have just let me come out of my mother's belly, strangled on my own cord, and stopped at the one twin who mattered?"

"Jack, God has a plan."

"Oh yes." Jack agrees with a sharp grin, and that shuts David up too. "Oh yes he does. But I'm not in it. So I don't know why your god is so vain as to keep me on this earth when I could be roasting in hell by now, if this is all he planned for me." He gestures around the goliath. David looks around the very cramped space as though there's actually something to see, and his eyes fix back on Jack, waiting.

"If you concede God's got a plan for me...." He starts. "I'm here too?"

Suddenly it makes a lot of sense. All of it. Every single moment, since David hauled him up with all that god given strength and dragged him to safe trenches, to now, make so much sense. He tosses his head back and laughs, thinks god is cruel indeed, and then thinks of putting a bullet in his fucking mouth, for all that his life means, to himself, to god. David looks on with concern, and it must be uncomfortable sharing space with a madman.

He gets to his knees before David, looks up into those beautiful blues. Different from his own, which are greyer, with more green. "I am your shadow." He says, and it feels like truth to say it. "I am your whipping boy. Your dark half." He dares touch David's face, is surprised when God doesn't strike him down right then, and David watches him warily and knows the same way he does that he's speaking Truth.  "I live as you live and die as you die. So that your soul may never be blackened, I am your tool. When you smile, I pull triggers. When you wave, I break necks. I am your weapon."

It feels good to say it, to know. Almost like it's alright that he's never once had a single thing that belonged to him, because all this time, he's belonged to David.

God could just have well sent David a lone wolf or a tiger, for all that it wouldn't be the same. But he had to suffer, and suffer, and suffer again, so that when the time came to give himself to David, whole and entire, he would be without soul.

Jack cries his last tear, and thinks he's been dead for a long time before this.

 *

"You in position." It's not a question. Jack grunts an affirmative and fixes his gaze through his scope, sees as a weapon should see, impartial. "Jack." David says quietly. "Come back alive."

Jack doesn't bother to reply with a snort. It's figuring out how to die that's been his problem. He's sacrificed his body for David, taken bullets for him, covered him when they beat impossible retreats, and yet he's still, damnably alive.

He blames god. This isn't the luck Silas and David experienced. Just condemnation. He could swallow a bullet and still wouldn't die, if it's what god wanted. How disgusting. How infuriating to be part of god's plan but not be detrimental to it, like being an extra in a play. One doesn't matter all that much, but they make the whole thing a little more real.

"You're thinking too loudly. I can literally hear you taking the Lord's name in vain." David says with a laugh over the line. 

"Shut up, focus on your mission."

"You're not alive because God is cruel, you're alive because he's kind."

"How but we call it even, say he's both depending on the case, and get back to our mission?"

"I won't let this go jack."

Jack heaves a breath, moves into a more comfortable position that's a little more well hidden, and sighs. "Your god is kind to you. He is not my god. You're my god." He can hear David's sharp intake of breath. "Your god bid I live and breathe for my god, I do." He neither needs nor wants a god that takes before he's even been born, curses him time and again before he's done anything to deserve it. It just makes him want to deserve it.

"I can't-- I'm just a man, Jack." David whispers.

"And that's why you make such a good god. Now shut up and let me finish my mission, before you blow my cover and no amount of divine intervention will save me then."

 * 

"I don't understand what you mean when you say shadow." David says quietly, curling beside him on his spread sleeping bag like a child at a slumber party looking to share secrets. He's never actually asked before, even after three months of Jack as his sword and shield, what the truth that came burbling out of Jack's lips really meant.

"So far I've come to understand like this; if a boy who can do no wrong is born, someone's gotta take on all that wrong. If you're light, I'm shadow, if you're success, I'm failure." he pauses, sees that his words aren't really making all that much sense. But it's hard to explain something he just knows to be true, hard to explain the mechanics and reasoning of it. He touches David's face. "I was born so that you could be perfect."

"I'm not--"

"Shut up David." Jack returns jovially, and turns his back to him, trying to get comfortable on the gravel beneath their sleeping bag and tent. David's forehead presses between his shoulder blades warm and insistent and intimate in a way he probably doesn't intend. "David." Jack grinds out.

"It's just...you're a person too, you know? You have dreams and--"

"Not anymore." Jack thinks of leaving it at that, or getting meaner so that David will pull away. He doesn't though, he just enjoys David's touch, his company, his blessing. 

"So long as you're living and breathing, there are things you want."

"The things I want don't matter any more." He sighs, and David shifts closer, as a comfort perhaps. "Everything I've ever wanted has been taken from me. So it really makes no difference if I do or don't want things. I'm not going to get them."

"Maybe you've been wanting things god didn't intend for you." David tries. 

Jack thinks of Joseph, laughs. "I've definitely been wanting things god didn't intend for me."

"So just find the things God does want you to have."

"Already have David." He doesn't tell David again that he was born purely to serve him, to harden him, to save him from every pain and difficulty. He was born to take bullets for him. And it's not what he wants but he's unfortunately, infuriatingly good at it. "Now go to sleep and stop worrying about me."

"I can't help it." David laughs a little, nudges his hip. "You make it so easy."

Jack doesn't laugh. Jack is busy wanting and wishing he didn't.

*

"Why'd you do that?" David whispers, fingers slipping in all the blood leaking through his army kit. "Why'd you do that why'd you do that Jack--"

"Shh." Jack murmurs, and is satisfied when he doesn't cough up blood around the noise. The wound hurts like a fucking bitch, and David is trying his best to keep him from leaking out onto the sand. "Its alright, this is how --"

"Jack if you tell me you're a glorified meat shield one more time I swear I'm going to dig this bullet out with my bare fingers and make you eat it." 

Jack laughs brokenly; but how is he supposed to tell David he didn't give a sour fuck about his mission when hr jumped in front of that bullet? He just wanted David safe and whole because he loves him more than he ought to, and fuck if this wasn't gods plan all along.

David's tanned face is splattered with his blood, and Jack doesn't let himself swipe it, streak it to his mouth. He laughs again and hopes this is the last bullet wound he ever has to deal with.

"No." David says suddenly. "No don't you dare " He takes Jack's face in his hand, warm blood smeared over his cheeks. "You're not allowed to die. You're not allowed to want to die." He presses their foreheads together, and it'd be so easy for Jack to lean up and kiss him, so easy to kiss him and then fuck off to hell. "You said you're mine." Jack's breath catches. "You said I'm you're god." David's eyes are so blue, so all encompassing. "Well, I'm telling you not to die."

Jack wants to say he's never listened to a god before in his life, why should he start now? He laughs, presses his forehead back against David's because that's as close as they'll come to kissing; it's an affectionate gesture, he likes it. "Well who can deny that?"

*

"You've gotta stop this." David says. Jack hums as he strips out of his kit, down to loose pants. There's still a ragged raw scar in his side, and David's eyes are fixed on it. "I don't like seeing you bleed to death in my name. I don't like that responsibility."

"Hate to break it to you Davy, but being king is a responsibility. People will bleed for you then too."

"It's not the same, you know it."

Jack sits down before David, crosses his legs casually. "What do you want from me, David? Because I don't know how much more of myself I can give to you before you understand--"

"You haven't given me the part of you that matters." David says resolutely, and Jack knows he's speaking truth, the kind of thing that just makes sense. "And that's why you don't understand."

"And what part of me is that David? My hands? My eyes?' He already knows the answer.

"Your heart."

Jack laughs. He thinks it's uncomfortable sharing head space with a madman, desperate and in love and damned, and possibly blessed because of it. He hasn't given David that part of him because he figured it was the one part of him he didn't need, but if he wants it, jack will cut it out of his chest and give it to him, damn all the pain and all the fear involved.

"David." Jack laughs sharp and cruel. "That's the one part of me you've always had."

"Yeah?" When David leans forward and kisses him, so gentle and sweet, Jack is surprised hes not struck down right there. "Do you still think God isn't kind?"

Jack smirks wry against Davids mouth. "Damn god to hell."