Chapter Text
Like every time before, Jacob looked in the mirror and saw a spitting image of his father.
Each time Jacob saw his father, he always then remembered the flames engulfing the ornery bastard while he sat bleeding out from a shotgun slug Jacob fired from ten feet away. He remembered the nothingness of watching Old Man Seed silently clinging to life as he burned to death.
It was the eerie silence of his father’s death that haunted him the most. Jacob’s vain attempt to rationalize how Old Man Seed could’ve suffered something so agonizing without making so much as a whimper made him shudder and break his gaze from his reflection.
When Jacob remembered the flames consuming his broken home from the undeveloped lot across the street, he swore he could still feel the blistering across his forehead and cheeks. Scars which set him apart from the rest of society at just fourteen years old.
As much as Jacob despised his own reflection, today was different: he could somehow bear to catch a glimpse of the man in the mirror.
Simply put, Old Man Seed was a monster. And though Saoirse’s kindness seemed to know no bounds, she too was a monster. There wasn’t much about her that scared Jacob, either, when it came down to brass tacks. Until Saoirse committed the act of ending the world, he couldn’t be sure whether Furfur was a fiction inside his pitifully broken mind.
Jacob broke his gaze with a growl before wiping the steam from the mirror. He didn’t know why his fists were clenched at his sides while he stood there, half-covered by a plain white towel, shivering in the centre of the shower floor, staring into nothingness in the far corner.
You’ve seen how fucked up the world is, Jacob mused. Your old man made you strong, and she made you stronger. You’d be perfect for an apocalyptic wasteland.
A knock came upon the door and Jacob nearly jolted out of his skin. “Jake?” Saoirse called, her voice muffled and tinny. “I’ve been invited to commanders’ quarters for my pre-briefing.”
“That sounds fucking thrilling,” Jacob countered before he unbolted and pulled the steel door towards him.
Having donned a prim and proper officer’s attire while Jacob enjoyed his shower, he re-entered the examination room and found Saoirse using her reflection upon the plexiglass doors to tuck away several wayward strands of hair.
He then regretted not inviting her into the shower after all.
The world began to fade to black in tandem with the hammering of Jacob’s infatuated heart. “Major,” he uttered softly, taken aback by how gracefully she held herself in uniform.
Sensing his eyes upon her, Saoirse couldn’t help but blush. It had absolutely nothing to do with Jacob wearing nothing except a towel, of course. “Sergeant Michaels dropped off a duffel of fresh clothes for you. I left it on the gurney.”
“You’re all so good to me.”
“Well, Paul said he’ll make you really work for it. Eventually, anyway. I told him you’re mine for the foreseeable future.”
Although Jacob wasn’t too keen on having his balls busted by his commanding officer, and most likely the rest of his unit, the truth coming to light was simply an eventuality. Jacob could accept such, but his thoughts began to race. Would he be ostracized or revered when word of his involvement with the Major got out? “Guess Miller was right about the knee pads.”
“Yeah…I don’t want to know. Listen, I need to head out. If you need anything, the desk phone is programmed to call Corporal Jackson when you pick up the receiver.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll manage,” Jacob acknowledged with a troublesome wink.
Kissing him goodbye crossed her mind, but a parting wink would suffice, Saoirse decided, which seemed to work quite well, given how rosy Jacob’s cheeks became as she took her leave. “Don’t have too much fun without me, Private.”
You can count on it, his grin exclaimed.
In fact, Saoirse hoped he might take care of some business. Maybe more than once, if he was feeling adventurous. It would certainly loosen him up a bit.
Once the plexiglass doors shut behind her, Jacob made for his gurney and hungrily unzipped the duffel, packed tightly with one week’s worth of clean clothes. Nestled delicately inside the carefully packed clothing was a paperback trilogy by John Grisham, Jacob recognized, each of the books equally weathered and worn after years of traveling amongst Sergeant Michaels’ personal effects.
Jacob wasn’t much of a reader, but he lacked much of anything else to do for the next couple of hours. Given all he had endured over the past few weeks, escaping into a different reality, even for a short time, would surely benefit him.
However, within an hour, and just past the first fifty pages, Jacob began to doze off. He didn’t remember feeling tired, and upon waking a few moments later, he chalked his sudden nap up to the mounting monotony of a thrilling trilogy.
Check again, Jacob swore he heard something whisper in the back of his mind. The duffel.
Weird, he commented, but didn’t hesitate to comply with the voice.
To his surprise, he found a leather-bound yet otherwise unremarkable book at the bottom of the duffel. Unremarkable on the outside, at least.
The book itself was so old its leather had begun to degrade and wear down along its spine, but alas, the spine still withstood the test of time. From what Jacob could tell, after skimming over the first few pages, the book was written entirely in Latin and entirely by an anonymous hand. Its pages were thick and spotted with age and grime—much like the John Grisham trilogy, but this kind of filth felt almost too familiar.
The last page onto which he haphazardly flipped showed a symbol Jacob recalled seeing in several history textbooks which he would borrow from Rome’s public library to help his brothers with their schoolwork. The Crusades, he realized, after racking his brain for far too long.
This was certainly a strange book for Sergeant Michaels to carry around, at any rate. Without realizing it, this mysterious book had engulfed Jacob’s curiosity in its entirety.