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Simon doesn’t die a martyr.
The night is loud, bursting—it is not a revelation, but a burden, heavy weight chained to the hands of children who will first cut off their wrists before carrying it. When blood is first spilled, nothing changes. The night gets no brighter and reality remains stubborn above them all, unsinking.
Spears break through skin, nature breaks through man, but nothing changes. Hands rear back weakly with determination, in a way they’ve not been taught to, but it comes naturally. Honest. Striking back the veil that hides their savagery.
Simon doesn’t say much. The others hear his laboured exhales, gasping and praying for life, but they do not listen. Nothing changes. Beneath them, blood pools, thicker than the seawater, but they don’t stop to look, compare. Hesitation, though maybe expectedly, does not come.
And then it’s over.
Silence dawns, and in it is heard the shallow breaths of a person—a boy just a little younger than ten, beaten and bleeding, dead with life woven through the points of his fingertips. Around him, children stare, limbs still and absent.
There’s nothing left to be taken, to be won. They stare, and they admire what they have done. They have never seen it done before.
It’s all over, and something’s changed.
But what does change matter to the dead?
Ralph forgets Simon’s death, easy. No one forces it out of him. He doesn’t force it out of himself. Forgetting the darkness, if he never saw what was within it, is simple. Patience is the only price.
But remembering Simon, as unwanted as it sometimes is, isn’t any harder—and God, if it doesn’t hurt. No amount of barricaded guilt, twisting and unsettled in its cage, will let slip the feeling of gentle hands in Ralph’s hair, carding and parental, protective, pitiful.
Ralph wants to forget. Desperately. To close his eyes and see an ocean of darkness for what it is. To stretch, wade through the salt of the sea, and not feel it burn in the form of guilt, longing, at the back of his tongue—realise that he’s alone.
Realise that it happened.
To forget the good, he has to remember the bad, so Ralph lets the memories stay.
They only get worse.
Ralph walks down the length of the beach sometimes, often, the signal fire now a burning memory across the ocean of his sight. He lets himself believe that maybe someone walks beside him.
Simon always likes to talk.
“What do you reckon you’ll do once you get back?”
Ralph gazes at the sand, hands in pockets, kicking it around, the heat of it searing patterns beneath his feet. He doesn’t look up—thinks that the sun is too bright. “When we get back?” he echoes. “Well, I dunno, take a shower, maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Ralph lets the word wash over him, in favour of other conversation. “What’ll you do?”
“I’d ask to go back to England,” Simon says, tone thoughtful. Ralph knows this. Simon’s told him before, but maybe he’s forgotten. “I miss it.”
“They wouldn’t let you. Not yet.”
Simon moves closer, and Ralph goes still, but he does not stiffen. “They might do. If the war’s over.”
Ralph thinks of his dad. “I hope it is.” And then, at last glancing up through his hair furtively, shyly, “I hope you get back.”
Simon beams at him, and Ralph sees that he is devoid of scars, of death. The others, the younger ones, used to glow, in the way freedom grants them, but Simon has always radiated. Like freedom is his, his alone.
So it’s at a point where Ralph remembers Simon’s voice more than he remembers Jack’s face; constantly covered in paint, now, sometimes Ralph wonders if his skin will one day wash away with it.
“You know, Ralph,” Simon is saying, head resting against Ralph’s lap, weightless, “I wish you’d forget me.”
The response is quick. “I wouldn’t.”
“I know,” Simon blinks up at him, fond, “it would be better if you did.”
Ralph’s eyes sweep over the grass, tall and hiding. Slipping between the trees, light pours over the island, the sun coming to rest. “You were— you’re the only one who helps.” He pauses, waits for his breathing to steady out. “Piggy doesn’t bother moving from the shelters. There’s not even—there’s only, like, four of them left, I mean—“
“Not so different as before, then,” Simon chirps, then watches Ralph’s expression crumble a little further and wilts, eyes pinching guiltily. It’s not helping.
“Why are you sorry?” Ralph says, searching for tenderness, but it comes out accusatory, a demand. He cringes.
It doesn’t deter Simon, but the atmosphere grows a little colder. “You,” he says, reaching a hand up to pat Ralph’s cheek, getting caught by the latter’s hold; they’re pressed closer. The touch never makes contact. “You’re pathetic.”
“What?”
“Have you given up, yet?”
On what? “No.”
“I thought you might’ve by now,” Simon smiles, kind. “On me, at least.”
Ralph squeezes his hand. “Not you.”
Simon lingers, before pulling away, settling back, cold. “I know you don’t like me. It’s worse when you lie about it.”
“I do like you.”
“It wasn’t always like that.”
“It is now.” Ralph considers Simon’s wavering smile—the way his expression seems to pull downward, like waves against the sand. “No time like the present, hmm?”
“But I’m in the past,” Simon answers.
Ralph ignores this. He shouldn’t, but he does, and how many more mistakes can he really make?
“You ought to be proud, you know,” Simon mercifully moves on, and awe remains unfiltered, heavy, in his voice—like it always has. “No one else would’ve lasted this long. Not in the way you have.”
“What is there to be proud of?” Ralph settles back, dejected, against the tree; lets his hand tangle itself in the coarse hair beneath him. An act of atonement. “There’s nothing I’ve done that’s lasted. Everyone’s forgotten everything and I’ll only end up the same way.”
“The fire.”
Ralph rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but—“
“You managed to get the beast of the island killed,” Simon says, leaning towards Ralph’s gentle contact, “a being superior to you both in influence and counsel.”
Ralph sobers from his frustration, releasing it in waves; slow, long drags. “You weren’t the beast,” he murmurs, observing the roundness of Simon’s cheeks, the delicacy of his eyes, remembering. He does not look any further than his face. He fears what he might see.
“But wouldn’t everything be easier if I was?”
“No,” Ralph says. Certain, final. “It wouldn’t be.”
“You don’t really know that.”
“You don’t, either.”
At this, Simon smiles, even as Ralph breaks down above him, hands shaking as they move to cradle his cheeks. There is no warmth like there used to be—Simon’s dark skin seems impossibly clear. But he’s here. That’s what matters.
“I want to move on,” Ralph chokes, trembling.
Simon looks at him again, and between Ralph’s hands, his face is blurred, messy. Faded, almost forgotten. But he seems guilty. “Then you should not be talking to me.”
Ralph pulls him closer, desperate, ignorant of any weight’s absence. “I want to talk to you.”
“Which is it?”
“I don’t want to be a murderer.”
Simon watches Ralph’s welled expression reverently, observant. “D’you really miss me,” he says, voice gentle and warm, like the breaking of dawn, “or your conscience, clear of guilt?”
Ralph hears, but he does not listen. “I’ll kill you,” he rasps instead, “if I let you go, I mean— you’ll be gone. How can I—“
“I’m already dead,” Simon grins, brows furrowed in fond exasperation.
Ralph pauses, still shaking, considering. Lets Simon settle back against his lap, guiding him down gently. “Well,” he says, detachedly, “you shouldn’t be.”
“Be honest with yourself, Ralph. Who’s fault is that?”
Ralph ignores this. Brushes the coarse hair from Simon’s face, feels his chest capsize. “I want to move on,” he repeats, clearer this time—absolute.
“Then let me go. That’s all you have to do.”
“I can’t.”
Simon’s gaze turns almost sad. Pitiful. But it never falters. When has it ever? “Then you cannot possibly move on.”
The battleship is loud, bellowing—all call and response, order and discipline. When the children file onto the little lifeboat, their passageway into salvation, their heads hang low, furtive. Ashamed.
Ralph is the first one on.
He’s also the first one to step right back off.
“What’re you doing?” The officer tuts at him—pulls at his arm, steadies him as his feet kick around in the water where he stumbles. “Come on, son. Home time.”
Ralph becomes pliant under the pressuring hold, albeit begrudgingly, and settles down onto the bench—the thing damp and soaked beneath his misery. And with every other cooperative child that makes their way on, he curls further into himself, like his body is a vessel specialised to hide what is broken of him.
The men end up deploying another lifeboat, because although a class of children could easily fit themselves into a space designed for forty men, it seems appropriate considering the obvious animosity harboured between them all. Jack seats himself on the other boat—purposefully, perhaps—and Ralph doesn’t look at him once.
(He does, though. To try his own hand at catching that fleeting, thinly veiled guilt. To seek comfort in the fact that, just maybe, he’s not alone.)
The fire, meanwhile, eroding what is left of the island, crackles—mocking and observant. Already it has reached the very edge of the woodland, heat licking the furthest corners it is capable of, and Ralph doesn’t want to look at it. At destruction. Wishes at the same time he had the discipline to simply not.
But he’s always been weak.
“Remember what I told you?” Simon’s voice rings out somewhat smugly from the side, perfectly quiet yet distinctly audible in a way that serves to prove his reality—because he’s here. Despite everything, he’s here. Why wouldn’t he be?
“Tell me again,” Ralph says, voice embarrassingly hoarse and quiet from crying. He blinks at perdition, then looks sideways to Simon, ignorant of the way Percival is frowning up at him, lost and confused and, jarringly, worried.
Simon shakes his head, smiling, the waves of his hair patient. He slots perfectly between Robert and Bill, though maybe a little smaller than usual. “You haven’t forgotten yet.”
Why yet? “No. But tell me anyway.”
Simon’s eyes flicker about his face, searching. They don’t appear to come to any real conclusion—they still look distant, uncertain—but he’s here. “Alright,” he says softly. And he’s here.
That’s all that matters.