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Jack's always a little too lucky, a little too blessed, and a little too crazy, with things turning a little too well in his favor, a fearless (and so, so stupid) hero in the vintage comic books Gabriel had been collecting once, the ones from the time when the morality was black and white and there’d never been a hard question of right and wrong.
"It's my monster under the bed," Jack would answer both the questions and the reprimands.
Gabriel won't remember why he'd been angry then, about what exactly: probably Jack playing at the golden era hero, or something different, inconsequential in the grander scheme of things, but he will remember the shape crawling from under Jack's bunk. He will remember claws nipping at the skin of his cheek, the faint lines of scars will remind him of it every time he looks into a mirror – and he will remember the voice, rustling like the spilling of metal shavings and swarming insects joined together.
He won’t forget the words.
"You will break him and kill him, and when you do, I'll be waiting for you."
He will remember the marks on Jack's body – not the ones left there by war or him – but the other ones, long red raised lines carved into the skin of the shoulders and back, and swollen bite marks made by a mouth full of a predator’s canines.
He will understand, years – decades, really – later, looking down at the boy lost at night in the woods – and he will scoop him up in his arms, smiling a death’s head’s smile full of fangs gleaming from behind rotting lips – and he will say:
“Don’t worry, I’m the monster living under your bed.”
Because Gabriel, when he finally admits it to himself, is a selfish man who sows the seeds of his own downfall, and he will do it again and again, for he refuses to let go of the only thing that has ever refused to let go of him.