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A few months ago Jason would have sworn he had tried to “get back to normal”. Now, he wasn’t so sure. If he was being honest with himself, deep in the privacy of his own thoughts, lying awake listening to the nightly street noises of eastern India, he never really made an effort. His heart hadn’t been in it. It had been easy to pretend for a while, when there was Grant’s funeral to plan and attend. Sobbing, distraught parents to hold and comfort. A living brother to go to therapy with and attentively listen to him work through his trauma. He had focused on each task like a mission and when he emerged out the other side he had found everything else had fallen away. So when he had left it had probably looked to everyone else like a spur of the moment decision, walking out with only a small bag and the clothes on his back. He had even left the door to his apartment unlocked. It had been inevitable. His friends couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore, and his mom and step-father would sit silently eating their way to Sunday dinner’s finish until one day Riley had looked over at him with haunted eyes and hissed: “I don’t know how you can act so unburdened.”
Was he? Maybe by relationships, as people had been peeling themselves away from him since they had returned to the States. Daisy and Keith had vanished from their lives almost instantly, Keith likely out of shame, and Daisy probably to pretend it had all been a terrible dream. Oli had seemed unwilling, or unable, to understand that Jason was different. Like Daisy and Keith he seemed determined to turn his back on the past, but instead of running he kept trying to relieve what was. He ended up getting picked up during a sting at a club, but Jason figured he'd be alright. His dad always bailed him out.
Liza had slunk around as if afraid of him. No, she was afraid of him. He slept on the couch in the apartment because the first time he had attempted to get into bed she had started to shake. He gave her space, but it clearly hadn't been enough because one day he had come home and she had cleared out her things. Not even a note.
It was probably for the best.
He had his own therapist. A nice enough man well into middle age and the threat of balding. He had gently poked and prodded Jason with questions for weeks until his frustration with short, aloof answers finally lead him to write “patient unwilling to cooperate with therapy” on his chart. Jason didn’t feel like he was being uncooperative, he simply didn’t feel like he had much to say.
Because what was there to say?
The therapist sat there in pressed pants and a cream-colored sweater with loafers clean enough to be new on his feet. He thought he could understand who Jason was. Jason knew who he was. A killer. A murderer. A madman.
A warrior.
Dennis had called him that when he had first rescued him from the pirates. He had trusted the terrified young man who had shoved a blade in his face and offered him the first lesson of the islands: you can take a life, but so can everyone else. Dennis had offered him the handle of a blade, as a world of terror, violence and pain closed in rapidly around him. The older man had seemed wise in the ways of survival. Unbreakable.
Unbreakable until Jason had witnessed him broken. Stumbling drunk with a bottle in hand. Coming at him in a rage with a blade, but finding his knife in Citra. For all he knew, Dennis was still there on the Rook Islands mourning his fallen Goddess. He would die there among the shattered ruins of the Rakyat temple. Maybe he already had.
Now Jason was in Bihar, staring at the bottom of a bunk in a hostel whose occupant had the beer farts. He had gone looking for something and all he knew was that he hadn’t found it, and wasn’t likely to find it in a place like this.
He rolled over and grabbed for his pack and boots.
***
He wasn’t sure what time it was when he wandered into the dingy bar, but it was still dark enough that the sun hadn’t yet made itself known. The joint was a nasty, loathsome sort of dive tucked away from the curious eyes of tourists. He walked in, clearly not from around there, and drew every eye in the room. He ignored them.
There was one guy sitting at the bar with his back to the door. Jason took a free seat at a respectful distance and made the universal gesture for a drink. The bartender, the roundest human being Jason had ever seen, nodded and handed him a bottle. It was warm, mostly flat, and tasted like someone had ashed a cigarette in it.
It gave him something to nurse.
“That shit will kill you,” a voice remarked. Jason glanced at the other patron sitting at the bar. A casual glance made him for a local, but he spoke English without an accent. No, he spoke English like someone from the US. A man on his own sort of pilgrimage he supposed.
“I’ve had worse,” Jason replied and tried not to wince around another sip. “But not by much,” he admitted.
“That sucks,” the young man said dryly.
Conversation around the room was beginning to grow, and Jason could almost feel the rising conflict at his back. Like a hungry ember licking at him.
“You know you’re gonna get your ass kicked coming in here,” the young man turned to face him, and Jason could see his initial guesswork was correct. His clothes were worn, but his jacket had been designer once upon a time. His dark hair was growing out, but was still mostly the sort of length where you would go to a barber who would rub his hands through it and slick it up with oils. He was handsome in a way that was a mixture of good genes and someone who paid attention to trends. Jason figured he had probably once looked similar. He had never thought of himself as especially handsome, but he came from money and that bought nice clothing, sports club memberships, and parents with polo-shirted friends.
He might have shrugged him off, because what did he care about a bar of angry drunks? The young man’s eyes flicker to the stump of his missing finger, up his arm to where his tatau peeked out from under his shirt.
Their eyes met and Jason saw something in his dark eyes. Something haunted and exhausted. Did he look like that to other people?
A heavy hand slapped down on his shoulder, and Jason turned to the four men who were now looming over him. Their expressions were very unfriendly. The one with his hand on Jason’s shoulder said something in a language he didn’t understand, but could clearly figure out the intended intent.
‘You’re not welcome here. Get out.’
“They want you to leave,” the young man remarked, “But trust me when I say that they’re not asking as nicely as I put it.”
“You don’t say,” Jason glanced at the hand on his shoulder. “Tell him to take his hand off my shoulder.”
The young man said something in their language. The hand started to squeeze and Jason looked up, a familiar calm settling over him.
“Take your hand off my shoulder,” he said very softly. His big new friend frowned and squeezed harder.
The young man at the bar tossed back the rest of his drink and got to his feet.
Jason moved.
The big man’s hand snapped in several places with a wet cracking sound that promised a long recovery if one was possible. The man’s knee cap and jaw followed with a shatter that seemed to thunder in the small bar, as the man went down hard into what was probably welcome blackness. The three others were so startled by the sudden burst of violence they froze, until Jason brought his knee up into a groin. The man howled and grabbed at himself, as the two others leapt on him, pinning his arms to his back and shoving him to the ground. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a large boot rise and felt a twinge of disappointment that he had survived so much only to be brought down by a size twelve in a dive bar. But the crunching stomp on his head never came and Jason found himself free and being yanked to his feet by the young man at the bar, brandishing a large, wickedly curved blade. It glinted in the low light and Jason felt his heart start to hammer in his chest. The man let go of him and Jason's assailants backed off, two of them dragging away their unconscious friend, while the other still holding his balls brought up the rear.
Jason and his new friend watched them go, the knife disappearing somewhere up the back of a jacket. His eyes twinkled and he jerked his head at the bar.
"You can pay."
He strode out. Jason rummaged a few rupees out of his pocket and slapped them on the counter. More than enough and then some to cover the tab. He hurried out after the man who had come to his aid.
It had started raining, and as most of the few people out on the street hurried towards dryer spots, the dark-haired man stood still with his face tilted upwards towards the rain. His eyes were closed.
"Thanks," Jason finally spoke after a long moment, "You didn't have to help me in there."
"You could have handled it?" the man turned towards him, an eyebrow raised. Jason shrugged.
"I've had worse," he flexed his hand, phantom pains throbbing through the finger that was no longer there. His body was a mass of scars that had healed poorly or crooked and now ached and tugged at his skin whenever he stretched. He remembered walking out of his parents bathroom without a shirt on and running into his mother who had looked at his scraped and pitted chest and started to cry. He had tentatively reached out to her, certain that she wanted comfort but unsure what to do. People felt so alien to him now. People had been so easy to get along with before. When the scars scars didn't exist.
Riley had exploded with anger at seemingly random moments. Especially with him, he had lashed out trying to get a reaction. Any reaction.
One particularly bad night he had gotten right into Jason's face: "Aren't you angry? Aren't you fucking angry? Grand is dead. And we're... We're..."
He had walked away and Jason had let him go. He was angry deep down, kept tight under iron control that he never, ever, let up on. He remembered feeling other things, remembered that he had been terrified, but all of that had been burned away in the weeks on Rook Island. Weeks. Had it only been weeks? It had felt like a lifetime.
Now he felt empty.
"My name's Ajay," the man held out his hand. Jason accepted it and felt steel in his grip, "Jason."
"What brings you to Bihar?"
"Just needed to get away for a while," Jason crossed his arms, "Had a few things to figure out."
Ajay nodded as if that made sense. "I spent some time in Kyrat recently, but I grew up in the States. I've been trying to figure out if I should go back."
Go back. There was no going back to the islands. Whatever strange connection he had formed with the place had been killed when he had stabbed Vaas and beheaded Hoyt's organization. Going back and expecting anything to feel the same would have been courting Vaas' words...
Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity- He shook the words from his head and banished them to the deep, dark pit that lurked in his gut.
"I think I've had enough rain," Ajay muttered, "where are you staying?"
"At a hostel, but it's a shithole. I think I'd rather find a cave," Jason muttered. Ajay laughed, "I've got a hotel room downtown with a real working shower. Hot water. You can crash on the couch if you like."
Jason eyed him, it was a kind offer, but it was hard to throw off paranoia and suspicion.
"If you try anything I can promise you won't like the result," Jason said softly. Ajay nodded, "I appreciate the honesty. If you like I won't take offense if you want a weapon."
Jason hadn't used a gun since the islands, however the dragon dagger hidden at the bottom of his pack felt suddenly heavy. "I'll be fine."
He let Ajay catch them a cab and they rode deep into the city in silence. The buildings grew taller, and the familiar trappings of civilization became more prevalent and Jason felt the hunger to escape start to gnaw at him. He still didn't know where he was going. His old life was still so alien in his memories that it felt almost anathema to him.
But the world was huge as he watched a part of it pass by. Maybe if he kept moving the ghosts wouldn't be able to haunt his heels so closely.