Chapter Text
Jake English walked from his bus to his second week of school with his head down, like he always did, and prayed as he walked past the kids hanging out in front that he would please, please turn invisible, or that they would be too busy to notice...
"Oh look, it's the old-timey freak. Golly gee, Jake, got anything fun to say to us today?" a kid with dark brown hair said, his denim jacket the only part of him Jake could see as he walked over, because he wouldn't look up high enough to see his face. Jake tried to walk faster, but the kid jogged to catch up to him and walked beside him as he clutched his books to his chest.
"Ever hear of a backpack, Grandpa? It's this newfangled invention, lets you carry your books without dropping them. Whoops."
Before Jake could react, the kid, whose name he didn't even know, pulled on the bottom of his books and the fell into the dirt at his feet. He stopped walking, swallowing back his fear as he leaned down to pick them up...
Some other kid's foot landed squarely on his ass, pushing him face-first into the dirt, knocking his glasses askew. The foot remained on his back, preventing him from getting up. He whimpered.
"Aww, little barbarian boy raised by...what was it? Monsters? Or was it dinosaurs?" He heard the snickers around him and felt no need to raise his head out of the dirt. He hadn't known. He hadn't known, when they had come to his island and asked if he'd wanted to move to the mainland, to civilization, that it would be like this. That it would hardly be civilized at all, that the monsters he fought , hunted, and learned to survive around would be something he'd miss in comparison to these miserable excuses for human beings.
But he could not go back. In this world of rules that he could not understand, he apparently had no rights or say in what happened to him because he was too young. It made no sense to him; he couldn't understand it, and so he was at the mercy of a system of rules that he only discovered as he ran face-first into them in the dirt.
He felt fingers wrap tightly into his hair and lift up his head, only to find himself staring into the ugly, freckled face of the asshole, who gave him a wide, evil grin.
"Aww, he's crying. Guess nobody was there to teach you to be a man on your little magical island. Guess this is your lucky day, cause here I am to do it for you," he said, smashing Jake's face back into the ground. He covered the back of his head with his hands, wishing they had let him keep his guns; none of these imbeciles would have stood a chance if he had his guns...
He heard the bell. He heard a teacher's voice far off. His face was shoved into the dirt one last time, and then the foot on his back gave him a good kick in his side, and then feet trampled all around him, and then silence.
Jake slowly rose onto all fours, peering around him, to find himself safely alone. He rose to his knees and wiped the snot- no, blood- that dripped from his nose onto the back of his arm. He left the bloody smear there and felt it crack and dry on his skin. He was no stranger to injury or pain; he'd gotten plenty of scratches and cuts and broken bones spelunking in the deep caves of his island on his lonely adventures- adventures he knew he'd never have again.
He did his best to wipe the dirt from his glasses with the inside of his shirt, not caring about the dust on his face. He gathered his books- covered in dirt now- into his arms and rose, head held low, eyes focused on the ground as he walked up the stairs and entered the school. He was yelled at for being late to class, and then sent to the nurse for his bloody nose. By the time he arrived in first period it was half over, and he slunk into the room with everyone staring at him, as he inched his way around the desks to the last available seat, a broken desk in the last row, so he had to walk in front of the entire room to get there.
When he finally slumped into the seat he didn't even care enough to open his notebook. He had been excited about going to school when he first came; to be with other kids his age, learn things from teachers instead of Google, be able to ask questions of humans instead of Yahoo ask...but now...now he was sorry. He shouldn't have come. He shouldn't...
A wad of paper landed on his desk; another object thrown at him to show him how low he was in the human pecking order. Too apathetic to even shove it off his desk, he just lay his head down on his arms and stared at the offending ball of paper.
That was when he noticed that it wasn't just a wadded up ball. It was folded very neatly into the shape of what looked like a bird with a long neck. He raised his head to stare at it and saw just how carefully, how precisely the folds were made so that it was perfectly symmetrical.
Too curious to ignore it, he raised his head and reached out his fingers to pull at the wings. Underneath the folds he saw impeccable handwriting, with precise, exact letters. Part of him was terrified that this was another prank; something about paper birds was probably an insult to these crazy people. But as he unfolded the paper before him and the words revealed themselves, his heart stopped in disbelief.
"They won't bother you again. I'll keep you safe, I promise." -DS
Jake raised his head to look around the room. He didn't really know anyone's first name; forget their initials. He knew better than to stare at anyone, so all he could do was glace around the room quickly. All he saw were a bunch of faces that he either didn't know, or knew and was afraid of. There was Larry, a basketball player who liked to corner him in the locker room; there was Susan, a girl who had pretended to be nice to him, until he learned she was just doing it as a distraction so that her boyfriend could slip chewed gum into his side pocket; a kid that had never spoken to him but he was terrified of because he dared to wear these frightening pointy sunglasses in school, and even the teachers seemed too afraid of him to tell him to take them off; a blond girl whose name he didn't know who seemed grateful that no one paid her any attention, and the brown-haired kid who decided to make him eat dirt this morning. None of them were looking at him. No one was.
All the rest were still strangers to him, faces that he couldn't even recognize yet, people he wasn't even sure he'd seen before. He looked down at the note, feeling a turmoil of things that were far from relief. Was this another prank? Another joke? Another mean thing that would come back to hurt him later?
He wanted to keep the letter, on the slim chance that what it said was real. That there was someone in this classroom full of cruel assholes who gave a shit about him. Yet he was terrified that it was just another prank, in which case he wanted to crumple it up and toss it into the trash first chance he got.
He looked once again at the creases in the paper. They were absolutely perfect and symmetrical. Whoever had folded this had done it with extreme care and precise control. He didn't think that any of these assholes would put that much effort into a prank. Praying with every ounce of hope he had left, he carefully, gently re-folded it back into its original bird shape and tucked it into the inside pocket of his green shirt.
The author of the letter took that to mean acceptance of his proposal. No matter what else happened, his loyalty was to Jake for as long as he wanted it. Forever, if necessary.