Chapter Text
One~
Jason Brody was acclimatising.
Only the change of scenery wasn’t that of Rook island, hidden away on the oceans face like a needle in a haystack. Jason was adjusting to the harsh reality that laid bare before him in the form of his barren bedroom. Moving boxes sat at the ready in one corner.
He’d spent a month at home with his harried, business running mother and Riley; who’d since held an obvious amount of distrust and worry around Jason. His stay at home had been brief, his therapist insisted that getting back on his own two feet would be the best way forward.
Jason couldn’t miss Riley’s guarded caution. The glances that lingered on his tatau and burned there, a sheen of fear in his little brothers eyes. Said little brother that had once idolised him. The trust they had was guarded now, their relationship unstable in the wake of what had happened on Rook.
There was a brief moment where Jason thought it could be possible to lose Riley in a different way. Out of fear.
Jason had been lying awake for hours before he was finally able to slip into a false sense of sleep. His ears would twitch at every small noice, lashes fluttering in a concentrated effort to stay shut.
So when Jason jolted awake to his door handle being pushed down in an ever so slow attempt at silence, he was prepared to strike. Once the figure had managed to get the door open a sliver, Jason pounced as easily as he had back on Rook.
Teeth bared and machete cocked to the neck of his assailant; he was ready to kill, to take and maim. The other man was pinned to the floor with a whimper, Jason felt his blood roaring for the kil, for the win.
“J-Jason! It’s-it’s me Riley!” The voice warbles in the stillness of the night. Jason’s expression falls within an instant, eyes wide and searching. He could just make out the frightened expression of his younger brother, who almost seemed to wilt under him like a dying flower without its sun or water.
“Jesus Riley,” Jason hissed as he got up from his brother and switched on his bedside light. He looked back down at his brother with a frown. Riley looked crumpled and awash with a sickeningly pale complexion. “You can’t just come into my room like that I-I could’ve-“ Jason’s shoulders fall as he pulls his brother up from the floor, shaking his head as he does so.
“I’m sorry Jay,” Riley mumbles, still looking a bit queasy from his tumble.
Jason huffs out a breath and ruffles the others hair, “It’s okay, what did you need at nearly 4am?” Riley looks a bit put upon at this.
“I had another uh- nightmare about-about the island-“ Riley gulps and Jason sits him down on his rumpled sheets and throws a blanket over his brothers shaking shoulders.
“It’s okay now Ry, nothing can get you here, your safe I promise you,” Jason slips into his older brother persona easily. While it’s not quite who he is anymore, he could never forget the ferocious intensity in which he protects with. He wishes he had been this way while grant was still alive. Maybe there could’ve been a way-
Jason grimaces out of his thoughts and focuses on his brothers face, the younger boys cheeks damp with tear tracks. Riley had always been the softer brother of the three.
“I keep dreaming I’m still there, Jay I- it will never leave, every time I wake up screaming with this sinking feeling that they’re going to follow us here and take me back or- or take you away from me and I- I just don’t think my head will ever stop being there.” Jason feels himself shatter at his brothers words. Can’t even help the salty tears that push past his eyes and settle at his chin.
He pulls his brother to his chest and lets him sob into his shoulder, the words “I miss him, Jay,” fall from his lips like the fat copper calliber bullets he’s become so used to. Heavy and bruising. After a long while of carding his fingers through his hair and whispering ‘you’re safe’ and ‘I got you’ in hushed tones, Jason pulls away to find Riley peacefully asleep. He carefully lowers the boys head to his pillow and pulls the blanket to cover him.
Switching off the light and lying beside him Jason stares into the darkness, feeling a thousand times more awake than before. But he’d lie awake there forever if it meant he could keep his little brother safe.
It was moments like this that made his journey worth the trauma. Listening to the soft rise and fall of his brothers chest as he sleeps a hair away, it all felt very surreal to Jason. Who only but a month ago took his last and final kill, the hilt of the dagger protruding from just below Hoyts rib cage.
The silence and the safety felt foreign and eerie now.
...
Sooner rather than later his mothers gentle handling had become unbearable. After Rook, his mother saw Jason as something broken. Fine china that had been chipped and scuffed, shattered and glued back together very poorly. Damaged.
If there was something that Jason hated more than that damn island, it was being underestimated and pitied.
Jason grit his teeth, irked by the mere thought of being seen as weak. A part of himself he kept locked away sneers at his family and friends like a rearing viper. Ready to strike and spit venom. One of the more deadly personas at the back of his head was unmistakable. It too wore a familiar face that still haunted his sleepless nights.
So here Jason stood at the mouth of his small one bedroom apartment. He’d done away with the luxuries his mother’s black card could buy. His hardened muscles grew used to the threadbare mattress, the springs on his back had felt reassuring. A consistent dull throb of pain that reminded him he was still alive. That Rook wasn’t just some limbo he’d passed through.
Jason shoulders off his travel bag, it hits the slate tiled floor with a thud. Tense and hunched over, Jason rolls his shoulders and leans back against the door with a sigh as he looks up at the yellowed ceiling. Usually when he looked up he was met with a clear blue sky or a black nothingness that twinkled back behind a canopy of trees.
Clamping his eyes shut, Jason rubs a calloused hand over his face.
“You can do this.” The young, but not youthful, man says to no one in particular.
“One day at a time, you can do this,” Jason mutters, eyes still scrunched up. Hands grip fistfuls of hair and he grunts, “You can live, Jason.”
With a reluctant sigh the heavy hands drop to his side. Jason remains reluctant to unpack even when he’s putting away his clothes into bare draws. When he reaches the bottom of his duffel he’s met with the all too comforting handle of his gun. Cool and reassuring to the touch. The D50 was soon pushed under his pillow, silencer and reticle still attached. Jason couldn’t sleep without feeling the weight of it underneath his pillow. Sleep relented unless his gun was in its place. His therapist said it was normal to have an attachment to something like a gun or a knife after the month or so he spent on Rook.
And of course the visions were all apart of his ptsd. Whenever he washed his hands in the sink his eyes would shiver in remembrance and all he would be able to see is that tell tale murky brown stain of blood. The red of the blood and the brown of the grit being sucked down the drain far to quickly for Jason to confirm if it actually was blood.
He’d stand at the basin in the kitchen statue stiff. Muscles rusted and refusing to move. Jason must’ve spent ages at the sink with that same look on his face each day. His mother would approach him with a worried glint in her eyes, each and every time.
Laying back on the springs of his mattress at the end of the day, tatau arm under his head, Jason closes his eyes. Honing his senses and realising just how alone he really was.