A Head's Up

Jack was not a thief.

Jack had unwillingly become a lot of things she had never wanted to be. She had become a drinker. She had become a caretaker. She had become a politician- sort of. But she never stole what she could not return, and then it was just progressive borrowing. She had never stolen from a store, only borrowed things of use that were never, ever personal. Owning Wheezes and having to deal with petty shoplifters and other sorts had firmly convinced her against thievery.

But here was this vial.

The book had been of interest to Jack. She shot her companion a sad look; knowing his self-destructive mission, it was easy ot guess that this book was one of his methods of drowning out whatever horrible memories had- and that was when the vial clinked against the book spine and drawn her attention. She reached out and took it, shelving the book on hallucinogenic herbs, her eyes determinedly trained on the vial containing what she knew to be a memory.

The temptation was great. And that was when Jack began to speak herself out of it. "It's not like you carry a pensieve. Are you just going to summon one? A quick Accio Pensieve to do the trick?" And then a small pensieve rolled off a shelf, onto a beanabg, across the floor, and at her feet. She stared down at it, almost not believing what had just unfolded. It must have been subcncious- her curiousity spurring her to act without realizing it. And chance had shone on her.

She reached down and picked it up, taking a few steps to place it on the table. She stared at it and began pacing, rubbing the glass of the vial as she felt conflict tear her apart. This was a huge invasion of privacy but Jack was curious, and she was worried. Poe was suicidal and she wanted to help. Any sort of information could help. But if it was her- But it's not you! But IF it was- BUT IT'S NOT. YOU are not the one who is a danger to yourself. Are you sure about that? Don't be snide.

She cut off the inner dialogue by opening the vial and puring the liquid in the basin. She stared and blanched. This was wrong. Terrible. Evil. But possibly necessary. She turned back to Poe and took a few steps forward, putting her face right in his. "If you don't wake up right now-" she yelled, emphasizing it by shaking his shoulders [i]I will have no choice but to fall into your memories!" He didn't stir so she walked towards the basin. "See? Here I go!" She mimed diving into it but stopped. With a frustrated sigh, she made a moved to pace again.

But the stupid bean bag caught her, and she twisted towards the table. She let out a yelp of surprise and her nose broke the surface of the silvery liquid. And suddenly, her whole body was sucked into a strange expanse and she was tumbling and falling...

And then, with a decent thud, she landed in the memory of her friend Poe.

The pensieve's surface rippled behind Jack as the heels of her boots, too were submerged in Nemo's childhood memory. And a dark summer's evening materialized.


Three digits.

“Dad – help! Help me! Help me!”

Three digits, and ten stumbling fingers.
Small, trembling hands and quaking bones.

“No, no, no, no,” was the six-year-old child’s pleading mantra, shouted towards the blackened evening sky. “No, no, no, no,” he sobbed in unison with the rolling of an abundance of fat, pearly tears over those fleshy levees; his lower lids. Just get the three numbers! It’ll be over. Over. Over. Safe. I’ll be safe. His subconscious insisted with a determined bravery that his present, conscious mind did not possess.

“No-nononono.”

I can’t.

Time thrummed audibly within his ears - large in comparison to the circumference of his skull as his body began in its attempt to better proportion his adolescent appendages. How little time remained before he was discovered, cowering in the overgrown garden, phone clutched with genuine desperation against his rapidly rising and falling chest? Three numbers! Dial - please, dial!

And with a startling halt, time ceased to exist in the pitch darkness that had enveloped Nemo as the familiar swoosh-click of their household’s only remaining, functional entrance was thrown open against the chilled air. The screen door; the only barrier that had previously remained between himself and the predator by which he was so mercilessly hunted.

His only chance - had gone.

Jack tumbled through the air and when she landed, she quickly tried to figure out where she was. Curiosity mingled with guilt, and she struggled internally momentarily. She could not do this. She would simply look away, ignore it all, and wait until she could escape so her friend would not be upset with her. She turned away, intent on ignoring the memory… Until she heard a soft cry and she was forced to turn around.

The little boy was the only one there, indicating that this had to be Poe. She glanced around, watching him struggle and cry. She stepped forward until she reached him, crouching next to him and reaching out. Her fingers disappeared on his shoulder. She watched him, sincerely concerned that whatever caused this really was terrible. This was not the cry of a child denied after dinner ice cream. This was a severely disturbed child.

There was another noise and Jack looked up, seeing who had to be Poe’s mother at the door. Perhaps she could reassure the little child. Jack instantly knew this to be false as she felt a strange shudder in the air between herself and Poe- it was utter, absolute terror. She looked at Poe and moved to reach her hand, before she remembered that he could not feel her. Still she could not stop herself from saying, “Don’t worry, little Poe.” But she knew she could not save him.

There was an unearthly pause. A moment during which her eyes combed their surroundings in search of his fragile frame, hidden amongst the tallest blades of grass. Her orbs, blackened by the shadows that had befallen Florida as the sun had retired, were hidden from the child’s view. Yet, Nemo became alert at once as her head straightened with a nap in his direction across the night. A mere glint in the moonlight was all that was to be seen of her eyes as she cocked her head in a gesture of animalistic curiosity.

The mobile phone.

Immediately, Nemo’s petrified fingers stirred to life, frantically digging beneath the hem of his soil-dusted shirt, so to conceal beneath it the device. But she had already begun in her advance across the yard and the few feet that distanced the pair rapidly diminished. At the sight of the hellishly pin-pointed manner in which she strode before him, Nemo’s legs collapsed, and the phone clattered to the damp ground below as he defensively folded over himself upon his knees.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” He screamed in sheer terror. Surely, these were not his words, for he did not recognize this voice, so panicked as to suggest that the life of the boy to whom the tone belonged was soon to be stolen. “Please! I’m sorry! I didn’t call – It didn’t work!” Nemo cried against the ground, his body racked with tremors.

With a nauseating crack, his mother's knee collided with his nose, eliciting from Nemo another shrill shriek; one which seemed to carry onward for miles, while simultaneously lacking any true tone at all, due to its breathy nature. "You trying to call the police on your own mother, Nemo? Traitor! What, you haven't stolen enough from me already!?" his mother inquired before proceeding in her ritualistic punishment. The mighty force of her weight being shifted atop Nemo's right hand, shortly followed by the other, was without competition against the lad's frail fingers.

Nemo had lost himself in his screams; had forgotten entirely the sound of his voice in any other form than this expression of pain. Broken, he fell flat upon his stomach, with his shattered nose buried deep in dirt in the hope of concealing it from his mother's view, and thus protecting it from further harm.

A skillfully positioned kick was thrown to the child's side and the split of two of his ribs was confirmed by the clap that followed. And Nemo began to count; taking note of each injury that he received as it was delivered to him, for to allow himself to drift and drown amongst his suffering would surely result in his demise. One busted nose. Eight broken fingers. Two cracked ribs.

Tears mingled with moss across his freckled cheeks, Split chin. It's gonna need stitches again. Bad bruises on my belly. Broken lip. Dislocated shoulder. And to a higher power in which he did not believe, the boy prayed in the form of panted whispers, "Help me. Please help me. I just want to go to sleep. Please, let me fall asleep forever, so Mom can't hurt me anymore."

Jack remained next to the child, finding that the fear had become almost infectious and she was terrified of the approaching woman. Jack rose slowly, as though wanting to challenge the woman, but she thought that she was overthinking it. The woman was about to berate the boy, that was all. That was all, right? He was pleasing because he did not want to get in trouble, was afraid of being grounded, and that this was a normal scene.

And then the woman’s knee went straight into the boy’s face and Jack let out a yelp, running forward with her arms out to push the woman over. There was a weird shimmer and Jack was on the other side of the woman. She spun around and was now watching from the front, every blow and word more vivid and horrendous in the full light. Jack had no power to stop any of it. She had to watch her friend be destroyed as a child.

Her throat suddenly convulsed and she wanted to sick, so horrible was the sight. Jack had seen a lot of horror… But never had she seen anything so terrible inflicted on so young a child. Jack stumbled back a few steps, a cold sweat gathering on her brow. It was impossible to think that her friend had suffered through all of this and seemed so cheerful, so carefree, so normal. But Poe was not normal. He drank and attempted suicide and researched hallucinogenic drugs- he was trying to drown something out and she knew what.

She wanted to help, but what could she do? She closed her eyes and walked forward, going towards the young child. She crouched next to the pained boy and clenched her teeth and sucked her air to the back of her truck and looked above him, unable to look right at him. Jack had never thought herself to be one fond of children. But to her, this was the most heinous thing she had ever seen. She wanted to unsee it with all her might. She wanted to take this act back from history.

But Jack had no power here.

"Please..." Ghost words; the last to be heard before the scene gave a mighty sigh and another setting materialized as Nemo's memories recalled the events of the evening's next hour.

Behind boarded windows a sitting room existed, dimly lit and forever smelling of overpowering incense. Pumpkin. Nemo had always detested the flavor of pumpkin, let alone its fragrance. But he had grown accustomed to such things, much in the manner that he laid then on the sofa, which felt to flesh much like steel wool, without thought or argument.

“Shhshsh,” she cooed against the side of her child’s face when Nemo keened beneath the searing crack, pop, slide! of mending bone and wounds re-threading.“Be quiet, Nemo,” his mother warned, her tone one of mocking optimism as she pieced together once more her broken son. I’m like Frankenstien’s monster, Nemo inwardly noted. His lips had not ceased in their trembling, nor had his silent weeping. The six-year-old had been well and thoroughly exhausted; so much so, that he had begun to drift and dream towards the possibility of an eternity of peaceful rest. Not with a bitter heart did he imagined such an escape, but a sweetness and an innocent curiosity: What would it be like, to die? Would it be like sleeping? Would it hurt? I hope not. I don’t want to hurt any more.

Nemo did not flinch, for he was well acquainted with the electric bite that his mother’s fingernails issued throughout his scalp upon contact, but he had been jarred awake from his brief slumber nonetheless. “Tell me the truth,” the boy quivered beneath those calmly spoken words which were unfailingly presented to him after every session of punishment. Thus, he was well aware of what reply his mother expected of him. With soft words he did speak his well-rehearsed lie, “I stole your sight. I took it and it doesn’t belong to me. I’m sorry Mommy.”

His bleeding lip and broken ribs were left untouched. They were further, deserved punishment for having attempted to phone for help, his mother had informed him. She was right. She was always right. “It is my fault. I deserve it. I was just being stupid. I won’t tell anyone. Never tell…” Nemo breathed as he fell quarry to his fatigue where he lay, abandoned in the sitting room.

His red-ringed eyes fluttered closed.


With a jolt of Nemo’s head the air was stolen from his lungs. His heart rattled violently at his core and within the veins adjacent to his ears the vital organ directed the fast and hasty flow of blood, as though for no other purpose than to allow Nemo to listen to the sloppy beating of his heart as he fought to free his mind from the nightmare that had overtaken him. And with his return to reality, Nemo was reminded of the reason for his previous methods of sleep deprivation; to ward off the terror.

Nausea drove the intoxicated man to stand - but intoxication was a far more powerful force, demanding that Nemo return immediately to a position of rest. Thus, he fell heavily to his knees upon the floor like a sack of spuds. A groan was issued from his lips, but the complaining noise went unheard by Nemo, for his ears were still very much preoccupied by the thumping of his distraught heart.

Several minutes were spared for the sake of recovery before Nemo began once more in his attempt to stand. With the assistance of the nearest shelf’s edge, he climbed several inches upward, halting for rest when a squat was achieved (being such a mighty feat).

When ever had the world spun so quickly?

“Slow down. Just… wait… ‘till I’m in bed,” Nemo slurred, blinking furiously in his struggle to clear his vision. He groaned a second time as the books that occupied his crutch swayed without direction – only to quickly retrieve the carbon dioxide that he had expelled with the discovery of his pensieve bottle, emptied of the memory that had once resided inside.

Across his mind’s eye several images did splay themselves: Spirals of red. A clown’s prop nose. A wide smile stretched across a familiar face. “No,” Nemo sobbed as his diaphragm began to stutter beneath the weight of his anxiety. “No, Jack…”

The memory shifted and the colors around Jack blurred as she felt the world that the memory belonged in reassemble itself to properly present the images to her- like stagehands adjusting scenery to provide that none of the actors upstaged themselves. This was not any kind of theatrical performance Jack ever cared to attend, though. She had never delved into a pensieve. She did not know how to escape. And, like a car crash, she found her need to leave equaled by a horror that kept her rooted to her location and unable to tear her gaze away.

The actress in this scene that played the mother was different, though she was a terrible actor. If she was trying to play a mother sincerely worried for her hurt child, she was failing miserably. A selfish motivation for her healing touches was written across her face, even if Jack could not exactly identify what that motivation really was. Jack’s stomach clenched and turned over unpleasantly as the woman hushed him.

And then, she gripped him again. Jack’s hands jerked into fists, her nails biting the heels of her palms, and her teeth clenched, gritting, as her whole face seemed to close against the scene in furious disapproval. “Don’t touch him,” she hissed jerkingly, but it was the same phenomenon as someone watching a movie instructing the characters on screen to act a certain way- always in vain, for it had all already concluded.

And young Poe folded to her, something that broke Jack’s heart but she felt an obligatory trickle of relief. If he had not, more damage would have surely befallen him and Jack didn’t think she could stomach any more of this. She had not wanted to see this memory. Yes, she had been a little curious but not enough to make her pursue it. She had tripped, it had been accident, and she wished to take it all back.

Jack gently approached the child, reaching her hand out but not touching, knowing she could do nothing anyway. Sorrow filled her and then she realized- the boy did survive this situation. He escaped, made it out alive, and he grew up into a man. A man that Jack had currently left unconscious back in the world of the presence. A man that Jack realized, she had known nothing of real importance about until now. For though his suicidal tendencies and drunken state were important factors, Jack could bet some of it stemmed from what she had just seen.

((If you want her to leave the memory now, I can edit))

Fear. It trickled down his throat; mingled with his blood; brewed and boiled beneath his skin. “I can’t…” Nemo whined, breathing audibly through his nose as he shook his hands out at his sides. ‘Twas a nervous tick: the twitching motions of his wrists at his sides – the likes of which Nemo had not expressed since the traumas of his childhood. “I can’t, Jack…” He huffed and brought to his mouth his right hand, relieving it of its previous duties so to viciously scrub at the lower portion of his face, unaware of his participation in the act as a result of his concentrated focus on the pending task.

Fear moved him towards the pensieve, so small to possess such power as to have rendered the audacious Nemo Omara a quivering child. And there he stood, swaying with the poisons that he had introduced to his system a mere hour prior and the fear that had wound itself around his very being gave him a merciless squeeze.

“No…” He begged of himself as he came to a silent and inevitable conclusion. “Just leave her,” He insisted, while simultaneously contradicting his own words with a tense step taken towards the penseive.

Abruptly, into the pool of his memories, he leapt.

-

For a brief moment he believed himself to have drowned before the illusion of his childhood was painted, until his previous life found its shape and he was inserted in the midst of one room in particular of his mother's home. A room in which he had hoped to never again set foot. His blue orbs met the image of his younger years before Jack, who possessed unnatural qualities amongst Nemo’s memory, for he recalled with such clarity that moment that the addition of his redheaded companion felt an intrusion which rubbed the wrong way her surroundings: Nemo’s mind.

Absently, he ghosted his unsteady fingertips against his side above the pair of ribs that hadn’t healed that evening and was jarred by psychosomatic pain. “Jack,” He gasped through the unpleasant sensation that split his side. He was growing panicked once more as his senses were immersed in the abuse that he had so desperately longed to escape; as had been his goal in its extraction from his mind.

Fear. It thrust Nemo downward upon his shins and his brows furrowed, his face contorted with sorrow, "Jack." For too long, he had suppressed his experiences and The Savior had pulled a brick from Nemo's protective wall with such blunt force that it had collapsed, leaving Nemo to be buried beneath its ruin. "Please..." He croaked without offering to elaborate. Surely, she would understand his desire to flee to the present if she had yet seen anything of his past.

It was too much for her. She should not be here. She could not be here. Jack was a brave girl, but only when she could do something. How many nightmares had she had so akin to this. Those she cared about harmed and she had to watch without being able to save them. Ari’s transformations ripping him to shreds. Chase bleeding to death in the cold streets. Thaor falling out of the Astronomy window. Michael being pulled under the surface of Loch Ness. Riley being beaten by a nameless gang. Vito flickering and flickering, holding a hand out to her to anchor him.

Jack could face anything so long as she could do something. She could not watch this unfold and not do something. She grabbed at the child, but each time her hands disappeared. She ran to the other doors, but could not enter them any further than, what she assumed, was the child’s line of sight. No, she was forced here, alone with her friend being tortured when he had no power to save himself, and she had even less.

Jack backed up until her back hit a bookshelf. She turned, leaning heavily against it, the wood pressing tightly against her eyelids; not that she could feel it. She pulled away and stood, shivering. But she could hear it. Hear Poe’s whimpers and she imagined he somehow knew she was there, and was calling out for help. She covered her face with her hands and stretched her thumbs back to her ears.

Her thoughts whirred. What could she say to Poe? She wished with all her might to fix the events she had seen. But years had passed. How could she help something she had had no part in? She had to do something, because this was sorrow Jack didn’t understand. She had seen sorrow in Vito, but how quickly it turned to anger and hate. How often he took it out on everyone else. She could not imagine Poe doing that to anyone. He needed her. Or, maybe, she considered the alternate for the first time in a situation where she began to develop her protective spirit over someone. Maybe he did not need her. Maybe she had just screwed things up.

And, suddenly, above the muffled whimpers, she heard something else. Her name. She turned and saw Poe, real current Poe, falling to his knees. Jack could not say she was crying, because she felt it a crime to cry due to someone else’s pain. What right had she? But the anguish, guilt, and sincere apology all remained on her face. She dropped her hands and stumbled forward, towards him. She fell to her knees before him and wrapped her arms around the man, clinging to him as though she had personally felt every blow herself. In a cracked voice, she said, “I’m so sorry.”

Nemo had not forfeited to the sobs which he had temporarily attempted to stifle, for it had never been his decision. No longer did he hold the ability to slip into his comfortable facade and suffer smiling. His intentions to exclude all others from the tortured boy that existed within him would lay abandoned, now that such destructive lines had been crossed. Thus, Nemo melted within Jack's comforting embrace as her arms were thrown around his frame. In the crook of her neck, Nemo buried his face and was possessed by his sobs - muted, at the very least, by Jack's shoulder.

And the very shoulder upon which he had only just shared with her a bout of giddy laughter, nonetheless.

He had never before received comfort for these cracks that had been made in him. His alcoholic mannerisms and suicidal tendencies had attracted an aggravating amount of pity. But where a mending glue was most needed, Nemo had never before allowed. He breathed in uneven gasps as his body shook in squiggling lines. Was this how shared sorrow would treat him? With expressions of emotion that he found himself entirely incapable of stemming the release of? Had he then been correct in hiding the damaged sections of himself from view?

Nay; he needed someone now. To have denied this truth would likely have been his destruction.