Page 33 of The Quiet
She could imagine him standing behind her with crossed arms and a proud chest. She knew his strong front hid a deep woundedness. Kay had only shown her a fraction of the grief she knew he felt. She hoped this conversation wouldn’t stir him too deeply. He was intelligent, and he was passionate, but he was fragile all the same.
“Love? Who did you love?” Jackson replied in an easy and relaxed way that completely contrasted the tone of Kay’s convictions. Jackson, she knew, had lost everyone and everything. She’d seen the losses first hand, and so he broachedthe subject with a nonchalance that made her wonder if the topic stirred him at all.
Ella was struck with the personal nature of the question, and the sense that he’d had to ask Kay about a specific person. It did seem like an important skill set to get to know people quickly in the circumstances Jackson had come from. She looked over her shoulder again and exchanged glances with Kay, curious if he’d answer. Jackson was analyzing them, poking like a surgeon, relaxed and alert in a disorienting way she could only guess was strategic. It was peculiar how well he was adjusting to being present again, present and alone, in a completely different time and place. It was as if nothing existed but his goal of finding Peter.
“Why pretend to ask about something you don’t care about?” Kay said with a rising edge in his voice, unlocking his arm only to gesture over at the relaxed posture that mirrored Jackson’s tone perfectly. He sat next to Ella’s bag, arm propped up on it, one leg stretched out and the other tucked close to his chest.
“I understand. I’ve loved plenty of people.” There was something in Jackson’s ease of mood and bluntness that almost made him child-like. “We fought alongside each other too,” Jackson said, “but when they were dead, they were dead. I didn’t create missions at the risk of my own life just to figure out how they died or why. I knew why. Life is chaotic and unpredictable,” he said, “you’d be better off looking for revenge, not an explanation. Revenge at least, I’d understand.”
“She wasn’t plenty of people,” Kay argued back, both arms unfolding now as if he were preparing for a fight.
“Doesn’t mean I loved them any less,” Jackson said.
A long silence ensued. Ella felt the discomfort in the pit of her stomach, exchanging glances with Kay who seemed disarmed and yet angered by Jackson’s evenness.
Kay gave Ella one last glance that she returned sympathetically before he swallowed, turned and walked off.
It was hard to argue when words themselves felt too incomplete to translate the pain. She didn’t blame Kay for leaving, though she had a feeling another argument might soon be on the horizon.
Ella wasn’t sure what Jackson represented to Kay, but it stirred something tender in him. Jackson stirred something in her too, and so when Kay was gone, she eagerly returned her gaze to the view of The Quiet and hoped Jackson would leave the silence be.
After a few minutes, Jackson walked up beside her and leaned against the opposite tree, looking off at the sunset with her. She wasn’t sure if the space between them felt peaceful or hostile, but the tension caused her to shift against the tired discomfort in her body.
He didn’t say anything for a long time, and removed another cigarette to smoke. He offered it to her, and though Ella didn’t smoke, she took it anyway, if only for the sake of having a distraction from the pain in her arm and having an intuitive sense of the ROSE’s language. She kept waiting for him to offer her a drink which she knew would have a healthy dose of Amnesia.
“You didn’t see any Strike in my memories?” Jackson asked as she inhaled. “Not hearing any voices since getting out?”
Ella exhaled and shook her head as she handed the cigarette back to him. She was acutely aware of his gaze. His eyes soaked in the world in a vastly different way than Kay’s analytical stare. Kay’s mind was busy as a bustling mailroom, always producing some return in the form of speculation or judgment. His mind was always in the past or the future, but Jackson was grounded, so deeply grounded that his eyes arrested like anchors and every time she looked at him, it felt she was jerked into the gravity of the present.
She couldn’t quite reconcile the strange mix of gravity and lightness that he manifested, but it reminded her of a river several miles from Samual’s cabin. Infamous for pulling fisherman under, the surface was calm with a powerful undercurrent. Ella had known to learn from the risks of nature, understanding that the people capable of embodying its power had their own dangers.
“You’ll need to learn how to avoid time traveling,” Jackson said.
“Time traveling?” she asked, meeting his gaze full on for the first time since he stood beside her.
“Thinking about the past and future takes us there. The present moment is a ship but every version of the past and future are just waters around us. Strike can swim those waters with more than just their mind. Madness breaks down their human constitutions and makes them fluid. They can drag people into the past and torture them with their own memories, or interrogate them for information among other things. It was one of Strike Amiel’s favorite tactics.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Ella said defensively, and as if on cue she thought she saw the familiar white table out of the corner ofher eye, as if the pull of the image opposed her every attempt to ignore it.
“Look at me,” he said, Ella jolting, having not realized that her gaze had strayed so obviously to it. She felt she’d been caught stealing, listening to him if only to avoid any chance he might ask about the table that now lingered in the corner of her vision.
Ella exhaled slowly, uncomfortable with the intensity of his stare, and wondering if he’d take the offensive right then and there. After a few moments, she settled down , but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d simply sat with another person in mutual silence. It felt more personal to her than sharing secrets, as if the present was a secret most people hid from each other.
Jackson didn’t rush to move, instead he seemed to sink into his own thoughts as if he’d noticed something in her eyes and wanted a better look. She let him look, knowing averting her gaze would tip him off if he wasn’t already suspicious of her. The subtle shift in his focus invited her deeper into her own and for the first time she saw his face, not for its expressions, but with a recognition of its parts. In a way that an artist might appreciate watching an ordinary object she realized that the thickness of his dark brows intensified his natural gaze. He’d broken his nose, possibly more than once, and a scar disfigured one nostril, carving a needle-like path to the top of his lip and starting again at the fullest part of his bottom lip. His face had been shaped by the elements of life like a mountain range, capturing the essence of strength in that it made scarring seem natural.
She felt drawn to his face for such a reason, unable to distinguish if he was truly handsome or not because she’d lost all objectivity. Superficial attractions could be fleeting, but she was horrified tofind that it was some measure of respect that arrested her now. That would be harder to shake.
Kay was right after all in his hurtful presumptions. She liked this man. More than that, she admired him. She really was losing her mind.
“Tell me about Peter,” she said, interrupting the moment and heading off further exploration of the revelation.
“He was the worst of them,” he replied and to her surprise, he turned away almost restlessly. “The oldest. The most powerful. Until I have proof that he’s dead, I can’t be sure how the war actually ended. This is a stupid mission. You shouldn’t be on it.”
“I’m not going to apologize for waking you up,” she said, and he looked her over again, measuring again. His incongruence deepened in front of her. As relaxed as he seemed, the undercurrent pulled harder in his eyes and she almost felt like he hated her. Against all reason, she wanted to provoke him.
He chuckled before drawing from his cigarette, releasing the air, “You think I’m asking you to?” he replied.
“No. I don’t think it would make much of a difference. I think you hate that I woke you up, might even hate me for it.”
