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Usually, Jake was unshakable. He didn’t flinch, didn’t hesitate, didn’t even question himself most of the time because when he was needed there was never time for second guessing. Sure, he had his moments just like every other person. But for the most part, he was an immovable force with an unshakeable confidence in his abilities to protect, survive, and keep them all alive. It was for this reason that it hit him so hard when said ability was suddenly meaningless.
Because what good was he at shielding the system from harm when he couldn’t even protect them from himself?
It had started as something completely innocuous. He’d been on the bus, stuck going through the motions of a routine that was usually belonging to Steven, just watching the people on the streets as they walked by. It may not have been the most exciting of routines but sometimes fronting didn’t work on a schedule and other people had to pick up the slack for their fellow headmate every so often. So Jake had been the one to step in nearing the end of the Brit’s shift at the museum. It was just the bus. Public transport that they’d been on hundreds of times in the past, time passing completely uneventfully for the most part.
But of course it couldn't be that simple for Jake. Of course it was the prime time for the thoughts to kick in.
For some reason, Jake’s mind would run like a cheetah most of the time, constantly in motion as it moved from one thing to another as quickly as possible. As a result, there were times where the subject matter of his thoughts were less than kind to him, but that was something he’d come to terms with at this point in his life. It’s why meditation never worked with him, his brain always spiralling into a dark void that he’d have to try and catch himself from jumping fully into. But for some reason today, they had forced him to take the plunge before he could even register that his feet had left solid ground.
He’d been talking to Layla about some stuff. Started texting her at some point as the journey progressed, because more often than not it was easier to just write that stuff down and not have to physically see the listener’s reaction to it. As his headmates tried to work on their relationships with the woman, Jake had been subtly trying to step in to help them with their mission. Protect them from a setback before it even had the possibility of happening, something he did by trying to help the woman navigate possible triggers for their system by filling her in on some of their history. Jake wouldn’t really have opened his mouth if it was just him having to deal with it, but if it could benefit Marc and Steven by making sure they were happy? He’d write a fucking novel about all of the things that had happened to them.
One event in particular had been brought up by Jake without prompting. From a time when the man was still young and naïve. When he had decided it was a bright idea to try and fight back out of fear before a clear beating as though it would prevent it from happening in the first place. When, now that he was thinking about it, he had for some reason thought that Wendy was going to try and kill them based on how furious she looked. Suffice to say, it did not end well for them in the slightest. By the time he’d realised what he’d done and ran up the stairs to try and get away from her, she’d made him wish it had just been a standard beating.
It was something that Wendy chose to remind him of for years after the incident. Manipulated him into thinking that he’d genuinely done some damage to her. That she’d been really hurt. That she supposedly needed to go to multiple doctors appointments to get her ribs checked out because of ‘all that he’d done’ to her. Apparently, being kicked square in the chest one time by a twelve year old who was terrified they were about to be killed constituted the punishment of years of emotional manipulation and guilt tripping. That anytime Jake had even remotely appeared angry or agitated in front of her it meant he needed a reminder of how she could still feel the pain from it.
And while Jake could bring up a lot of things that had happened to him without thinking about them too personally, this one had somehow wormed its way into his mind. This random piece of his personal history that had somehow popped up in his mind as he blankly stared out of the window while trying to think of something to say to Layla and started to unravel like a ball of yarn. The stark realisation at how severely fucked up it was to guilt trip an actual child for lashing out in fear for years after said incident had planted the seed of personal connection to the memory in his mind and made him think about it much deeper, much more personally than he’d have liked.
It shifted his train of thinking to himself and his behaviour after that day. How that incident had been the trigger for years of self-punishment at the single notice of his own anger bubbling up as a teenager. Because the way he'd always remembered it up until now was that he'd lashed out in anger, and not fear. That any time his rage had started to burn a searing, red-hot crater into his chest, and made him want to do things that would most definitely result in an upturned house or a one way ticket to juvy, he’d turn it on himself. How he’d punch his thighs black and blue. How he’d drive his nails into his arms. How he’d wrap a blanket around his throat and pull it tight, or clamp his teeth down around his fingers to the point of nearly biting them off.
And suddenly, he felt that same anger at the memories of himself in their adolescent years. He choked with that same fear that she had made him feel before he ‘attacked’ her. He was smothered with that same pure guilt of being a 'bad son', a 'dangerous' son, and he was utterly disgusted with himself for how instinctively he reacted with it.
Because that fucking woman had kept her claws firmly stabbed into his sides for years without even needing to be present as he hurt. The woman that had dared to call herself a mother was the reason he had done that to himself whenever it got too much. That he’d been doing it to them whenever he got too much, because they shared the body between themselves. Jake had tried everything he could to protect his headmates from her as best as he could and in the end of it all, as they were right in the thick of the abuse, he had been the sharpest blade Wendy had used to harm them all and he hadn't even known it.
Then the bus stopped, and the mechanical doors opened.
Then the body exited the vehicle, and walked home.
And then, as soon as the door to the apartment had locked shut, it collapsed blankly onto the bed in silence, eyes starting to flood with tears.
The blanketed wired mesh of fog that had enveloped their brain swallowed him like quicksand. Somehow thoughts were running endlessly, thrumming through the very core of Jake’s being, and yet they were so faint that he couldn’t even feel them swimming around at the very shallowest point of the surface. It was just like being an empty husk. A bucket with the base missing, destined to simply be a vessel for the water that filled it to pass through. The limbs under his supposed control felt like lead laced clouds, so laden with invisible burden and yet so thin and weightless they could so easily float away into the atmosphere.
Eventually, he started crying. Silently and without motion, not even his breathing shuddered as the tears trickled down his cheeks. He started crying as he felt the amnesia barriers kick in. As he felt the memories of his afternoon, of his own past hour, get stripped away from him like the changing of wallpaper. He felt himself fighting against the protective mechanism to desperately try and hold his grip around the memories of what had started this spiral in the first place. And yet as he grasped at them more, he felt himself realise he couldn’t even remember what he was trying to hold onto. And in no more than a few blinks, he couldn’t even feel himself as he slipped away without so much as another thought.
It was Marc that had stepped in to fill the empty space, none the wiser as to what had occurred aside from the slight awareness of something starting a breakdown on a bus journey that hadn’t been his or Steven’s to take. He had the innate instinct that it wasn’t his place to think about what had happened. That the feeling that had settled faintly in his chest told him that it was something he wasn’t supposed to remember. So he wiped the salty tear tracks from off of his face, and got up from where he lay, pushing it away as he walked over to their makeshift living room to go and feed Gus.