Work Text:
“There was no moon.
The sky above our heads was inky black.
But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood.
And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.”
-Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
The cruiser is luxurious, especially compared to the wild jungles of the island, or his faded memories of his father’s naval ship.
Ralph shifts, uncomfortable on the floor. The American captain—an impossibly adult adult, with authority and common sense and answers— is standing in front of him, easily gliding the boat over the water which had, only hours before, seemed like the enclosed walls of an impenetrable prison.
And though those walls were now broken and he was free, the curtain had already been flung open, the constant paranoia now slotting itself easily into Ralph’s broken and betrayed mind. Even though the ship takes him back to life, to life with food and toilets and-and the opposite of death or whatever people called that cruel game they had been playing—Ralph knew that some part of him would forever lay broken and abandoned on the island, swept away by the tide, broken in half by a fit of anger.
Ralph blinks, eyes dry, all the tears having already been shed. He feels empty, in more ways than one—and tired, and sad, and confused.
Slowly, he turns his head to look out the window, seeing blue skies and the deeper blue ocean.
Freedom. What is freedom? Surely what they had on the island was freedom, no adults, only boys who could do whatever they wanted. And yet still, with that freedom, they had turned into savages, all of them, down to Maurice and Samneric and...and…
Grownups know things, they ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things would be all right—
It hurts to remember anything, anything past the island and fear and death and shards and spectacles and beasties and feasts—there was further knowledge there, something that Ralph wasn’t letting himself reach, and quite frankly, he didn’t want to bother.
The captain reminds him of his father. Blearily, he wonders if he will ever see him again. He doesn’t want to admit it, but his family was next-to-forgotten during that last stretch on the island.
I just think you’ll get back all right.
He had vehemently insisted that he was in a different room than the savages—
No, the other boys, he shakes his long, matted head violently, attempting to dismiss the thought of murder and beasts. The other boys who once were innocent, too, and were stranded with him and were part of his assembly and some who had, once-upon-a-time, sang up to C-sharp with the melodious voices of golden childhood.
Ralph sighs deeply, hoping that his heart rate would slow. The throbbing and piercing pain of his chest wound doesn’t seem to lessen, though they had been hastily dressed by real bandages a few hours before. The slow movement and rocking of the ship comforts him, a constant assurance that the island was left burning behind them—forever.
I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you.
He jerks, looks helplessly at the captain, hears the eerie, relative silence of the boat and the ever-present drawl of motors working.
There are windows around the room, no other ships or islands in sight. The captain receives a message on his two-way radio, and responds in kind.
The grownups can handle it, the grownups will decide and lead. The burden of authority is lifted, and for a moment, Ralph decides to feel innocent again, naive and trusting of the heart of man.
In an instant, he feels the pull of sleep, the adrenaline crash finally beginning to set in, as sharp, crisp memories of a lagoon and fiery shelters dance just underneath his eyelids. He resists the lull, something out of his control keeping him from sleeping.
Kill the pig.
Cut her throat.
Spill her blood.
---
In the end, it relents. It lets him go, due to sheer fatigue and maybe a growing sense of apathy. Nevertheless, the moment he leans back against the metal wall and closes his eyes, he sees the island and a pig’s head, slowly grinning up at him.
“Oh, Ralph. You understand now, don’t you?” It says, with a maniacal grin, one that reminded Ralph of a boulder rolling down, a savage on a hill, “Even if you didn’t want to admit it until you broke, yourself.”
Ralph looks down, stuck in place and unable to run. The pig head is whole again, on a stick sharpened at both ends, one jammed into the ground and the other jammed into the pig’s beheaded neck. They are both in a small ashy clearing, the sun beating hot and the jungle casting green shadows on the world. Far above, Castle Rock towers imposingly, the steady stream of smoke meant to be there gone.
For a moment, Ralph believes he is back on the island, believes that the rescue was a mirage, that it was all just a heat-hazed dream. He turns delirious eyes back to the pig, whose beady eyes stare into—no, through his very being and into his innate, uncontrollable nature—
“The beastie.” He forces out, strangely, but it doesn’t sound like him. The voice has a slight accent, slightly deeper—
Ralph knows very well who’s voice it is.
“So yes, yes, indeed you do. You are a silly little boy.” The head says, its eyes glimmering with knowledge—if one were to only put a pair of spectacles on those eyes, it would be a perfect replica of… “Fancy you, Ralph, truly believing that the beast was something you could kill.”
“I…” It’s not Simon’s voice any longer, instead switching to a childish voice, a littlun. “I...didn’t know, we all didn’t know…”
“Oh, but Jack Merridew knew. He used it, and he used it smartly." Even in this dream, Ralph feels his heart spike at that name. He looks into the dark, soulless eyes of the head, and sees his reflection, flinching back when he notices the dark birthmark covering half his face. It continues. “And so did dear Simon—if you had only kept control for a little while longer, maybe he would have lived long enough to tell you.”
Simon…
“He was weird,” Ralph demands, faintly, ears ringing—he is himself again, but doesn’t feel much better. “He was strange, batty, he was—”
“Right.” The pig finishes, its mouth almost twisted into a smirk—again, Ralph is reminded of another boy whom he had once known. “Simon was right all along, and you did nothing about it.”
A pause. Ralph’s mouth goes dry. The heat seems stifling, riddled with fear. “I…”
“Didn’t you ignore him? Didn’t you turn on him like all the others?” It asks, and the jungle and the mountain and the scar seem to collectively look down on him, as if there was something they had to laugh at him for—and indeed, there was. “Weren’t you with me at the dance?”
The wind whistles, the breeze not lessening the visible heat. Feeling vulnerable, he searches for a shield, something to use as a defense.
Not for the first time, he wished he wasn’t alone.
“I’m not a savage.” Ralph protests eventually, weakly, strangely out of breath. “...I’m not a savage, not like—”
“Your beloved Jack?” The flies buzz around it, and it looks pleased at Ralph’s hesitant plea for validity. “No matter what you claim, he is your weakness and you are his. Hate is a funny thing, isn’t it?”
“No...like...like Roger ,” He gasps out, lightly, detached, not ready to face the truths of a redheaded boy and two opposing wants. “Roger...killed...he sharpened a stick...”
Somehow, the pig seems to laugh. “Roger? Truly, truly, he understands me more than Jack pretended to, or you, or Maurice or Bill or anybody else. And yet, you cannot deny what you did—”
Ralph can feel the transformation this time, glancing at his shadow, seeing a different boy there. He winces, shutting his eyes quickly and again, looking towards the pig and the clearing. He hesitates, heart thumping, knowing what’s coming next. “I didn't kill...I-I…”
It is an American accent, words from a voice that is meant to sardonically drip with understanding and sense and ass-mar and gullibility.
Ralph misses that voice.
Again, the pig smiles. “Oh, but you did. In killing the beast, you set it free. You know this, Ralph, you’ve seen it, felt it—accept it.”
In killing the beast, you set it free.
The island seems to be shimmering now, his surroundings wavering in and out like mirages on the beach. The head is still there, watching, waiting. Ralph knows that soon, this will be over, and he will wake up. He knows this, clings to it, has found his shelter.
The world, even for just a moment, focuses. Instilled with new, false confidence, he boldly addresses the head, voice not cracking. “You’re a beast.”
“Correct!” It whoops. Ralph winces, facade immediately shattered and broken. “I’m the beast! I’m why things turned out like they did! And you, Ralph, are not an exception.”
Ralph swallows. “Who are you?”
It’s meant to be a question, but comes out as a blunt statement—he wants this to be over, wants to go back to bus stations and ships. Maybe they’ll arrive in England soon, and he can meet his family again. That’s what he wants, right? That’s what normal people want?
What could be safer than the bus center with its lamps and wheels?
He searches for more to yearn for, but finds that most of it is gone, flying out of his memory, like...
“I’m more than you are, little boy.” Patronizingly, the head speaks, startling him. “More than the games men play. More than the atom bomb. More than Piggy’s auntie, more than your father, more than the loudspeaker man and that pilot who never survived.”
“...god.” Ralph shook, bravado gone, body reshaping to his own again. Suddenly, it seems very hard to speak at all. The curtain drops, the weakened shield cracks into two. Again, his surroundings waver. The head, flies still buzzing around it and guts spilling over the ground, is still there, persistently smiling, eyes shining with a knowledge that terrifies Ralph. “You… god?”
The forests shake, as if a boulder had been dropped off Castle Rock and tumbled down the scar, as if the island itself was laughing at him. “Indeed. Dear, stupid Simon—he gave me a name. The Lord of the Flies.”
And then, Ralph understands. The surroundings are light, blurry—the world around him begins to collapse, but the pig is still there, its eyes glimmering with reminders and corruption.
His voice sounds soft to his own ears. “You are us.” He says. “The beast was us. You turned them savage.”
“No, Ralph.” The Lord of the Flies seems to respond, and Ralph strains to hear it over the dullness of reality.
“What, what is it?” He demands, faintly, desperate, hungry—he has had a taste of understanding and he wants more . Something is ticking, he feels like he is flying. “What do you mean?”
A pause, and the world continues to deconstruct and life begins to take hold.
“You turned yourself savage.” It says, with an air of finality, as the island turns light, with flame, with the sun, with purity.
Ralph wakes up.
---
There is a boy, writing something in front of him, one he doesn’t recognize. Hastily, he sits up, rubbing tired and wet eyes, and glancing around the room, seeing that someone has moved him from the floor to a hard bed in a different room.
“Don’t,” the other boy says, and Ralph decides that he isn’t truly a boy, more of a man—yet obviously stuck somewhere between. Still, he has authority, and so Ralph listens, and leans against the wall.
The Lord of the Flies and his words linger in his mind. There was a beast, not a beast to hunt, but a beast nonetheless…
Were they doomed from the start? Was there ever any hope of remaining civilized, if the beast lies in everyone?
The heat is still as bad as it was on the island, almost inhibiting his breathing. Beneath him, the cheap leather is damp with sweat. Desperately, Ralph tries to think, through the confused haze and a muddled mind.
“You’re running a fever,” the writing teenager says, casually. His accent is remarkable, if slightly dampered. He turns sharp eyes towards Ralph, who looks away immediately, and snaps his book closed with a flourish. “You’re the leader of the Brits we found on the island, right?”
Ralph takes a moment to digest the question, then hesitantly nods.
“I’m the junior medic for this ship,” he continues, Ralph listening to the novelty of a different, lower voice. “I treated a couple of the others—twins I think.”
He feels like he is expected to respond but he has no idea what to say.
“...oh.” His mouth says, eventually.
The medic opens a cabinet and extracts two, tiny white pills, and hands them to Ralph, who takes them with a confused expression. “I’m not going to say those were life-threatening injuries, but not ones some kids playing pretend can exactly get on accident. And that’s a nasty cut on your chest—you could’ve been a lot worse off if that was a bit more precise.”
“Oh.” Ralph says again, dumbly. He cups his hand and swallows the pills dry. “I…”
“You don’t have to answer. The other two didn’t say a word.” He pries, taking a moment to pause. “But I’ve gotta ask, what the hell happened on that island?”
Ralph doesn’t want to answer that, he doesn’t want to answer that ever , he doesn’t want to even think about it. Not yet, at least, not now with a burning stomach and a throbbing head and a prying medic.
“How long?” He forces out. “Since…”
The medic doesn’t notice the evasion, instead jumping at the opportunity to provide information. He glances at the clock on the wall, which provides a constant tick, tick, tick— a dependable, societal fallback to ground himself on. “I don’t know—all we did was follow your smoke—but it’s been five months since the bomb was dropped...so...”
Bomb?
Ralph blinks, trying to make sense of that strange word. Someone had mentioned it before, but he couldn’t... wouldn’t remember now. Not wanting to put in the effort to speak, he cocks his head questioningly.
That gives the teenager pause. He turns strange eyes to Ralph, concerned ones. “I know you have a fever and it’s hard to think...but do you not remember the Nazi bomb?”
He shakes his head, slowly. Flashes of life, before the island, start to surface—terrified grownups bursting into his boarding school room, ringing alarms, a late-night usher onto a tiny plane. No one had given him any obvious explanation, leaving him to connect the dots on his own. The medic doesn’t say anything, instead looking away, seeming to mouth words that Ralph doesn’t care to decipher.
Didn't you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They're all dead.
“We’re not going back to England, are we?” Ralph hears the voice as if it wasn’t his own, as if he was spectating his life from some soft, faraway castle on a cloud. Suddenly, like his dream, the world seems too light and hot and heavy to be real.
“We’re en route to New York right now, kid—” He says, softly, eventually, voice laced with apology. “You've been asleep for a while. We’re going to drop anchor in four hours.”
“Oh.” Ralph says, glancing around the room, trying desperately to cling to snatches of his old world—the clock, the sink, the medicine.
But I tell you, there isn't a beast!
A wall inside of him breaks. The Lord of the Flies, then, isn’t trapped on the island—the Lord of the Flies is everywhere, in everyone…
The darkness of man’s heart—a truth that children shouldn’t have to learn, a truth that should be kept under lock and key until the crude shock of adulthood. He is faced with a concept and a reality and Ralph doesn’t want to know. He retreats into himself, turning primitive, scared, younger, like a littlun—it makes sense now, what they were scared of, why they screamed at night and huddled around each other for protection.
“It was the beasties, wasn’t it?” He whispers out, not thinking, staring at the floor with creased eyes and a throbbing head.
The medic opens his book again, grabs a cheap pen, shakes his head. “The beasties, yes, the beasts we call men.”
---
There are maybe thirty or forty boys in all, counting the littluns. Ralph follows the captain like a puppy, with simple, thoughtless obedience. The Aspirin had worked, somewhat, as it’s slightly easier to think and yet slightly easier to bar emotions.
He swipes at his nose, as he declares the name of the kid standing, eyes trained towards the ground, in the oversized military shirt before him. “Percival Wemys Madison.”
Percival Wemys Madison. The Vicarage, Harcourt St. Anthony, Hants, telephone, telephone, tele—
“Full name, for this one?” The captain looks surprised, and Ralph nods while glancing away, signaling his affirmative.
When they are all lined up in a single orderly row, it’s easy to pretend that none of it happened, that the conch had continued to hold power and they— we? —had never fallen prey to beasts. But then he sees Roger’s tan skin or Maurice’s dark hair, and all he can hear is a single sentence, a chant never to be forgotten.
The captain noticed, must have noticed, how Ralph refuses to look a single one of them in the eye. Thankfully, he doesn’t bring up the subject.
He still sees savages, painted faces, sticks sharpened at both ends—but mostly those crystal clear final moments of creepers and curtains and animalistic uluations. Even before Castle Rock, Ralph had stopped referring to them by their names, instead referring to them as savages…
After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.
How had he never included himself, if the Lord of the Flies told the truth? Was that another sort of proof that he, too, had left the island with a moulded conscience?
The line gets taller, mostly biguns now. From weeks and months of knowing them, Ralph can tell who most of them are without looking at their faces, and does so quickly and quietly. “Bill. Robert. Henry.”
Behind the line, the junior medic stares. The captain writes this down. “And you all came from prep schools in Britain…”
“Yes, sir.” Ralph answers immediately, remembering that first day and a stomping choir, late night chats underneath shelters or underneath stars, lying and wishing for rescue and talking, holding on to real life as they remembered it. “I...Godstone Prep. Audley House…others too.”
He nods, scribbling this quickly. “And none of you knew of the bomb?”
Ralph shakes his head violently, not offering any further comment, understanding the implications.
The medic shuffles.
Jolly good show. Like the Coral Island.
“Let’s continue.” The grownup says. He continues to walk down the line, only a few more to go. “And them?”
Ralph glances up, if only because this was Samneric and he needed to be able to tell them apart. Over the time they had spent on the island, he had begun to see their miniscule physical differences, the bigger dimples Sam had or the eyebrow scar that Eric had once said he got as a kid, by falling down some stairs.
But, though they are different, in their red-rimmed dark eyes they both hold deep sadness, apology, pain. Ralph hadn’t thought of what they had gone through—Eric has a bandage over his arm, cradling it carefully, as Sam looks softly on.
They hadn’t meant to get caught up in this, had they? They tried to help Ralph escape, didn’t deserve Roger’s torture or being twisted for answers. They had wanted to be safe, to simply follow and appease—Lord knows that Ralph understands the innate instinct to survive, no matter what.
Ralph looks into their eyes and shows his forgiveness.
You don't know Roger. He's a terror. And the chief—they're both—terrors—only Roger—
“Eric, Sam.” He says, before his eyes slide down again.
Only one pair of feet left, only one name not called—besides the two who weren’t. Ralph knows this name, had once held it with respect, with companionship, with awe.
Almost too heavy.
Not for the two of us.
Suddenly, he misses something very much. The silence stretches on, a littlun begins to ask something but is immediately shushed.
I know about people...he can't hurt you: but if you stand out of the way he'd hurt the next thing.
And then he remembers.
See? See? That's what you'll get! I meant that! There isn't a tribe for you any more! The conch is gone—I'm chief!
Painfully, his chest throbs.
“The chief.” Ralph whispers, unwittingly, soft enough that only he and the other can hear.
The captain leans closer. “Sorry?”
“Jack,” Ralph says, too quiet, “Jack Merridew.”
Across from him, Jack shudders.
---
The line breaks and the boys disperse. The captain pulls Ralph aside. He looks grim, like he’s seen too much—and from what Ralph has gleaned about the world, he probably has. “You mentioned that two were killed?”
Ralph! Don't leave me!
Ralph jerks away, involuntarily. The grownup doesn’t move to stop him, patiently waits.
He looks towards the land, faraway people and boats moving across the waters. Out there is civilization, adults, responsible authority—rules and people and bombs and the Lord of the Flies. He wants to go back, yes, but there is a part of him that wonders if the world is one even worth returning to.
What has gone on, outside of the island? The world is so much bigger than beach and a tangled jungle.
The officer seems content to wait. As a unit, the pair move towards the railing, amidst yells and the playing of littluns. Ralph listens, and remembers beaches and, at first, normalcy and hastily made shelters—
Roger sharpened a stick at both ends.
The sun is bright, shining on tan skin and reflecting off of ever-moving waves. Ralph’s head pounds, and so does his chest.
“Three at the very least.” He breathes out, eyes shut, face looking out against the sea. “Three of us dead.”
The officer doesn’t seem startled, not like he was on the island. Maybe he’s had some time to think. He continues to lean. “I’ve seen a lot of death in this war, kid—I have a right to have lost my innocence. You don’t—you’re what, barely in middle school? What do you know?”
“We are the beasts,” Ralph says sagely, without thinking—funny how sagely and savagely are only two letters apart. His head lolls to the left and he appreciates the slight change in wind direction.
The captain laughs, a single, short thing. “Right you are, kid.”
That little 'un—him with the mark on his face, I don't see him. Where is he now?
The Aspirin must be wearing off—suddenly Ralph feels strangely, more tired, more real, more sad. He opens his eyes to look at the officer, now seeing that he couldn’t have been much older than the upperclassmen at his prep school, or the medic who pitied and tried.
The ocean mist blows towards them, lifting their hair up and dropping it just as quickly.
“S-S...Si—” Ralph tries to begin, before forcing himself to pause. The wind whistles in his ear, and the sun warms his skin, cuts healing and nails bitten. He tries again, taking in a deep breath. “S-Simon Cambourne. He fainted sometimes. He knew a lot. We didn’t listen.”
What I mean is . . . maybe it's only us.
Ralph expects the captain to write this down, but instead, he simply looks towards that infinite sea and hears. “And he died.”
“Yeah,” Ralph says, with a swallow. A fire, a pig, a game. “He didn’t deserve it. It was us... it was us.”
“I’ve learned that most dead people don’t deserve it.” The captain muses, and Jesus, he doesn’t get the half of it.
A sharp laugh, bordering on hysteria. “Obviously.”
Weren’t you with me at the dance?
“Piggy.” Ralph says, before this strange confidence fades. “Piggy d-died too...and...”
He wants to cry but there is nothing there, just a strange emptiness and a hurting mind. If he tries hard enough, he can disassociate for at least this moment, and maybe that will get him through.
“I think he mentioned once that his name used to be Peter. Peterkin.” Mechanically, without thinking too hard. Relay information, in, out, be quick. “But we called him Piggy anyway. He had ass-mar and needed glasses—seriously, he needed them—god knows what we would’ve done without those damn spectacles.” He completes this speech with a hollow laugh, the exact kind Piggy hated.
And then it’s silent, and the silence stretches on. Ralph has found that there are many kinds of silences, comfortable silences, lying as friends on the beach, or that heated, murderous silence of the jungle—
Don’t scream.
—or perhaps the silence of patronization, where someone older and wiser and better tries to teach you something. This is none of them, more of a strange in between, where Ralph is just thinking and the officer is listening.
“He never knew it was coming, at the end his specs were broke and he never saw the friggin’ boulder.” A tiny pause, a snigger. “I wonder if Roger, or Jack, or whoever, meant for that to happen. Lord knows they cared.”
In this moment, Ralph doesn’t care anymore, instead rambling on about senseless things and memories floating around, never to be forgotten. He barely looks at the grownup anymore, talking mostly to himself. The minuscule, hastily clogged crack in the dam widens, until it breaks apart completely, taking away all of Ralph’s sense and inhibitions with it.
“And he knew...he and Simon both said that I should continue to be chief, even when it was just us—well, not Simon at that point—and Samneric and the fire was about to go out...it was in the exact same assembly spot where I was so sure that we would get rescued where I...just, I forgot...”
A hiccup, a giggle.
“But Piggy didn’t forget, and we all thought Simon was batty when it was really everybody else. ‘It’s them that don’t have common sense’ Piggy said—something like that—once, and at the time I was hopeless and hysteric and broken because of Jack and the damned hunters and—oh, god, that was the beginning of the end, wasn’t it?” His eyes are frenzied, not looking at anything of this plane, lost in memories. A lopsided, stupid grin lies on Ralph’s face—he pauses to catch his breath and organize his thoughts, and the captain seems to be thinking over what he had said. What an idiot, Ralph thinks, there's no way he would have got half of what I was saying.
The cawing of the seagulls compels him. “One more,” he swallows, feeling himself teeter dangerously close on the edge to losing it again, “one more dead. He was the first, this littlun with this dark birthmark across his face—like a comic character, or something—he was Henry’s cousin. We never got his name, but he was scared of this beastie—of course we all thought he was as stupid as Simon.”
Fancy you, Ralph, truly believing that the beast was something you could kill.
He listens for a moment, to the familiar voices of the littluns yelling. “I suppose that was the true beginning of the end...plant seeds of doubt, give them a fear...we did something stupid and we never saw him again. There might have been more kids. I don't know. I didn't try to get names. Not of the littluns. I should've listened—” In lieu of a tree he slams the metal railing. “We were so stupid, so so stupid—I did everything all wrong, from the very first day.”
The naval base is closer now, ships identical to the one they’re on floating, caterpillar sized, near the empty docks. How long had he been on this boat? Days at least—How long had he been on the island? Months at most.
Let him be chief with the trumpet-thing.
Unannounced, he crumples onto the floor, and leans against the metal boundary dividing him from the wooden deck and the sea. His tired, red eyes look towards the officer, who is still leaning on the railing. “I should’ve died during the crash. It was all my fault, in the end, wasn’t it? Surely they wouldn’t have turned savage if I wasn’t chief, and Simon would be alive a-and…”
Ralph wipes his nose, feeling the tears form. Strange, he hasn’t able to cry since that first day of being rescued.
“Piggy, too...and the littlun with the birthmark. And maybe Wilfred and Eric and the others wouldn’t have been beaten and hurt and maybe—”
You turned yourself savage.
He dissolves into tears, his head, as it has done many times before, spinning with possibilities, and mistakes, and rosy what ifs where everything is perfect—but this time, there is a grownup here and authority in place.
Ralph doesn't want to admit that somewhere along the line, he had forgotten what that had felt like.
“It's alright, kid—” The officer goes to sit next to him, shooting a slightly concerned look at the sniffling Ralph, then looking across, towards the playing children and the biguns sitting away, awkwardly, alone.
For a moment, they are both silent. Ralph wonders, through the emotional haze and stuffy nose, what kind of silence this is.
The rocking of the boat matches the movement of the waves, a constant rhythm, one Ralph begins to watch and notice and anticipate the normalcy of— now it will speed up, oh, and here’s the catch, the quick slowing. On the island, he would sometimes spend what seemed like entire days watching the waves crash in and out of the surf.
It is predictable, linear, a grounding fact of life, like the ticking of the clock, or the movement of the sun.
I've been thinking—about a clock. We could make a sundial. We could put a stick in the sand, and then—
“...we all blame ourselves for the shit that happens.” The officer says, eventually. He seems to be talking slower, more clearly, thinking about his words. Ralph wonders how strange this scene must look from an outsider’s perspective: a dirty, sick boy and a crisp and clean naval officer, both sitting on the deck of an American cruiser. “And sometimes, that's a good thing. To take responsibility.”
Ralph mumbles in agreement, eyes following the medic who desperately tries to steer the littluns away from the bow of the ship.
People were never quite what you thought they were.
Responsibility is such an ugly word. He knew, that once upon a time, he had worn long stockings and expensive uniforms and wished that he had more of it.
The island quickly rubbed that out of him. He laughs, childlike, and sighs.
“But there’s something you can’t forget, not ever—” The grownup says, contemplatively, eyes also lost in the distant past, before he blinks and focuses on Ralph. “Don’t lose hope. Whatever happens next, kid, never lose hope.”
Hope.
Ralph turns to face him, ready to laugh again, but stops when he sees the grave expression on his face.
How long has it been since he’s thought of that word? Since he’s felt that innocent feeling of peace?
I just think you’ll get back all right.
“People like you—go into it all bright-eyed and happy, then have it all lost, right in front of their eyes.” The officer stabs at a floorboard with his finger, not seeming to notice what’s he’s doing. “Most don’t make it past that. They break, they lose it, they never truly recover.”
Ralph wonders what hope is. Trust? Love? A conch? Cracked spectacles? A stick sharpened at both ends? It’s been long enough that he has forgotten. If he listens closely enough to the yells of the littluns, maybe he can hear Simon’s quiet, kind laughter, or Piggy’s berations. They had hope, didn’t they? Was that why they were killed?
He begins, unsure of how to continue. “I…”
“I know.” The officer saves, like he did on that burning beach. “You don’t know what that is anymore. And I get it. I’m not going to pretend like I understand your island. I’m not going to pretend I understand why...what, Piggy and Simon died? But I know what you’re feeling.”
How could he?
Your only hope is keeping a signal fire going as long as there's light to see. Then maybe a ship will notice the smoke and come and rescue us and take us home.
“Learn to hope, again, kid—like you did before you got on that island and got that nasty cut.” A pause. The familiar noise of a bird cawing sounds—must be getting closer to land, then. The captain sighs. “You understand how evil men can be, now you need both sides of the coin—so find the goodness in the world, because though there is darkness in man’s heart, there is an equal capacity for light as well.”
In the silence, the words hang between them, like creepers dangling from damp branches—strong and terrifying and true.
Ralph blinks, blinks again. Sniffles. “Wh—”
The officer stands up. Smiles. Ruffles Ralph’s long hair, and walks away. “Think about it, kid.”
Ralph pauses to breathe in the cold air, and thinks.
---
He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there, simply looking and listening. Having overcome, sometime, the imminent fear of being killed by the other boys, he finds comfort in watching them play their innocent games—
Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.
He pushes the thought down, fiercely, jerking his head. With the noose of civilization around their necks, the islanders have abruptly switched from boys armed with sticks to the perfect prep school students they were before the crash.
Then, there is a presence next to him. A shuffle, sitting down. Not the captain, who is intently trying to steer the ship safely into the still, slightly faraway docks. No, a presence that he recognizes well.
Instinctively, he flinches away.
This silence is tense. Awkward. Anticipating.
Ralph doesn’t want to look away from the ocean— it seemed like the breathing of some stupendous creature. Slowly the waters sank among the rocks, revealing pink tables of granite, strange growths of coral, polyp, and weed. Down, down, the waters went, whispering like the wind among the heads of the forest. There was one flat rock there, spread like a table, and the waters sucking down on the four weedy sides made them seem like cliffs. Then the sleeping leviathan breathed out, the waters rose, the weed streamed, and the water boiled over the table rock with a roar. There was no sense of the passage of waves; only this minute-long fall and rise and fall—
“...Ralph,” Jack ventures softly, breaking apart Ralph’s strange mirage. Ralph blinks in unintentional acknowledgement, but does not respond in any other way.
Jack shuffles, and is silent for another moment, before he starts to talk again. “I wa—”
“What happened, Jack?” The words spill out of Ralph suddenly, he is unsure why. The tears are still present in his eyes, the constant pounding of his head making his thoughts slow and lethargic. Suddenly, he is aware of his chest wound, stinging and burning. He rubs at his nose. “I...what happened , on that...on that fucking island?”
The expletive comes out smoothly, and he vaguely remembers that in a past life, he would’ve felt guilty for cursing, and had been reprimanded justly—but the captain is gone and so is the medic. It all feels too much like the false freedom of the island, with littluns playing and the waves receding in and out.
Jack breathes once, slowly. Ralph, not turning his head, wonders what he looks like. Surely he can remember? Yes, he does—on that first day—the red hair contrasted with the dark cloak strongly. But what did his face look like, before it was covered with paint and all of it fell apart?
Ralph remembers, but it feels like something just out of his grasp, another thing nearly forgotten due to the jungle.
—after all we aren't savages really and being rescued isn't a game—
Game, that’s it. It was all just a game, played between children. One that adults put an end to, one that authority quickly and shortly ended.
I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you.
“I don’t know,” Jack says, gravely, and Ralph muses on how he’s never heard Jack every truly say that. It feels like they are acrobats, balancing on tightropes, both knowing the sheer facts but refusing to acknowledge them—instead playing another strange, averting, simple, game. Jack continues, almost mumbling. “But...I wanted to…”
“Apologise?” Ralph lets out that single well-known, hysterical laugh. “Apologise? For what, chief, what do you have to apologise for?”
He turns to face him quickly, and tries to disguise his shock at seeing Jack’s bare, cleaned face again—maybe he had truly forgotten what it had looked like.
...the liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought.
Jack looks down, and fidgets with his fingers. He clenches his jaw. “F-for...it. All. The painted faces. I…”
“...I’m sorry that I tried to kill you, Ralph!” Ralph mocks, in a high voice, slamming a fist onto the deck and scaring a littlun—somewhere, inside of him, he knows that if he was thinking straight he would be shutting up, shutting down, not spending even a moment talking to this murderer—
Weren’t you with me at the dance?
—but the apathy grows, tangled and ugly, like the hair they all currently possess. And Ralph cares , he knows he does, but for some reason right now, he doesn’t. For some strange reason, he acts with a sort of gleeful abandon, knowing that the beast inside everyone is contained—for at least this moment—due to the pressures of society and that dragon called organized civilization.
Piggy is dead. Simon is dead, too. And he’s not sad anymore, no—he’s angry, angry at Jack, angry at the Lord of the Flies, angry at himself.
His head hurts. Faraway, trumpets are distantly blowing, and he vaguely wonders why.
“I’m going to ask you again, because I didn’t get an answer last time,” Ralph starts, looking into Jack’s eyes, completely unafraid. “Why do you hate me?”
Hands up, whoever wants Ralph not to be chief?
Jack looks away first, his expression indiscernible. He waits, and waits, and the silence grows between them. But Ralph is content to wait—if nothing else, those long stretches of lying and sitting on the island have taught him to have patience.
Ralph thinks, as he looks at Jack’s body, crumpled and childishly washed choir robes wrapped halfheartedly around his legs. The breeze chills Ralph, while simultaneously heating it, and he is so very confused, just so confused—who is Jack Merridew? Who is anybody, truly, if people can change so quickly, if motives cannot be ever calculated and the beast can never be truly captured and sent away?
“I don’t hate you.” Jack says, softly, fiddling with a stray thread on his robe. “ I dunno. I...don’t, now, but…”
“The thrill of the hunt.” Ralph spits out, grimly, looking to his side. He had felt that addictive thrill once, gotten a taste—maybe that was why Piggy and Simon had died, because they were outsiders, because didn’t ever truly understand the savage obsession infecting the rest of the boys.
I hit him all right. The spear stuck in. I wounded him!
He is only now being truly aware of the falling temperature as the sun descends. The littluns and other biguns, at some point, had all been ushered inside of the cruiser, and it is just the pair of them sitting alone on the deck. The ship is pulling closer to the cramped dock now—civilization seems amusing, all buildings and stark greyness.
Jack seems at a loss for words, once again. Ralph looks at the passing sea with blatant disinterest—he wonders about how Jack could kill him now, without anywhere to run, or anybody to stop him.
Maybe Ralph would let him.
—the anger is still present, but morphing into something indescribable and different. Jack’s fist, lying at his side, still seems to be clenched around a spear no longer there, and Ralph considers the fact that maybe Jack is wondering about that too.
“It was…” Jack’s voice comes out in a crack, and he swallows. “The island. T-the beast. At first we tried to get the b-beast…”
Ralph laughs, hollowly—he rather likes this position for once, with Jack being at his slight mercy. “Well, you got it. You found the beast. Congratulations.”
Jack seems like a completely different creature than he was on the island—quiet, unsure, not a bloody murderer.
A stick sharpened at both ends.
“You were going to kill me,” Ralph mutters, more to himself than the other, “on the island, you sharpened a stick. Like I was the-a pig. Like I was the...the—”
“I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.” Jack breathes out, too quickly, awkwardly, strongly. “All of us. We were…”
“The Beast.” Ralph says, resolve cracking, and he knows that Jack understands. He stands suddenly and turns toward the sea that they had just crossed, wondering what other secrets the depths hold.
My daddy says there's things, what d'you call'em that make ink—squids—that are hundreds of yards long and eat whales whole.
Readily, agreement, relief, blame. “The Beast.”
The air is cooler now, cooler than it had ever been on the island. Ralph finds himself appreciating this strange novelty, relishing the feeling of skin pricking and heart rate increasing that—for once—is not caused from fear or terror-induced adrenaline.
It feels nice. Normal.
And for a strange, surreal moment, with a broken boy beside him and a burning chest, Ralph maybe thinks that it will all be okay.
Because though there is darkness in man’s heart, there is an equal capacity for light as well.
The residual anger turns into something odd, akin to apathy but slightly more. He feels the sudden urge to smile again, to be merry and happy and hopeful for the future—
Piggy is dead, and so is Simon—and he must keep living and being and learning and changing for them, because of them. Take the island and use it to mature and tell the Lord of the Flies to shut his damn mouth for once.
Maybe the beast can be controlled. Maybe the beast can turn into something good.
Ralph laughs suddenly and wonders if the Aspirin is making him feel this way—or if it’s the excitement, or the acceptance, or the rosy tinted lenses of memory.
“I’m sorry, Ralph.” Jack admits, simply, standing next to him—he hadn’t noticed when he had stood up.
Ralph smiles at him, tightly, as the first stars begin to twinkle in the sky and the ship begins to slow. Far away, the island burns, bringing with it stakes and failure and terror and a pig’s broken skull—but closer from there is here, life, with its endless roads and grownups and bus stations.
Ralph decides that yes—the world is simply too good to miss out on.
Whatever happens next, kid, never lose hope.
They laugh, together, both gripped by a sudden frenzy of excitement as they look at the buildings and lights and the fact that life goes on. People, other people, are looking and pointing and watching.
Ralph turns, looks once back at the fading horizon line, before facing Jack and life and death and everything in between.
The cruiser slows to an absolute stop, as the crisp air of forgiveness blows towards them, with the salt wind from the sea.