Ouroboros Snippybit - Family

"Oh, my god."

No.

"Oh...My god. Jackie?"

No. No. No. If there is a god in this world who still gives a damn about mortals...Please, please let this be a dream.

Jackson knew that voice. He had long ago come to terms with the fact that he could never again hear it in good conscience. The pitch was different, lower. It had had twenty years to mature, after all. But he could still recognize it.

The voice of his half-sister.

On a crowded street, in the city a day's drive from where they'd spent most of their childhood was the last place he expected to have a family reunion. He hadn't expected to have a family reunion at all - or at least not one that he would be involved in - any way.

They all thought he was dead. They had buried a body.

He couldn't just slip away. Even if he let himself get lost in the crowd, she would find him. He felt a presence alongside her. A tiny form reliving memories over and over like a home video player. He drew in a breath and closed his eyes for just a moment.

He sat on a tree branch in the park while Bianca played on the swing-set with another girl her age. The shadow of a man sat before him, balancing on air and grinning like a snake.

Jackson turned around. "Bea?" He tried to force a real smile. He tried to make a plan. In the back of his mind, he wondered if it would have been wiser to ignore her.

But, no. The kid with her. That could be problem. Better to be found by himself than some lurker, after all. The attempt at a smile vanished.

Bianca's eyes were wide, on the verge of tears. The light caught just right and made the brown dance with red, the way he remembered it happening as a kid. One hand was holding onto the child's hand and the other was over her mouth. Her shoulders shook, her hands shook. He would have said she looked like she'd seen a ghost, but he realised that in her mind she had.

Jackson took a step forward, preparing to catch her should she faint. He wasn't sure what to do if she screamed. At that point, there wouldn't be much he could do.

"Jackson...they..."

"Bea, the street's really not the place for this conversation."


He guided her down the block to a little family restaurant. No one spoke. Bianca tried to. Jackson could see her thoughts scrambling for cohesion. For an explanation, a reason, an apology. He could feel the kid's eyes on his back.

Jackson entered the restaurant and held the door for them. He nodded toward a booth in the corner. The floor was empty other than the teenage girl mopping behind the counter. Jackson took the seat facing the door.

He watched in silence as Bianca folded her son's scarf, piled his hat onto it, and helped him out of his coat. She was still silent, still in shock. The kid never took his eyes off him, as though he was wondering how the kid from Bianca's memories could be the same person that Jackson had grown into. Bianca put the clothing on the seat beside her, smoothed out her cardigan and inhaled.

Before she could let out the speech of unintelligible gibberish her mind had cobbled together, Jackson said. "I couldn't tell you I was alive. I'm sorry."

Bianca stared at him, her brows furrowed upward, her mouth open just a crack. Her voice finally came, in a harsh whisper, "I never told Nicholas about you. When he started saying about seeing, hearing things... and it sounded like what you said you saw when we were little..." She looked away, eyes still wide mouth still agape. "I didn't think anything of it. Just a coincidence or something. But then just now on the sidewalk...all of a sudden he described you sitting in the tree that day. And something about some strange man in the branches..." She breathed a few times. Slow, stuttering breaths trying to force back tears.

Jackson closed his eyes. She was thinking about the accident. Thinking hard. Thoroughly.

Metal twisted around every inch of brainpower. Bones snapped and severed and lodged themselves into red liquid pavement. Steering wheel eyes, seat-spring limbs, engine-block torsos. Two bodies. A pretty face imprinted on a burst airbag. High heels and painted toenails somewhere further down the road. A boy with more glass than skin. Fingers missing. Legs missing.

Bianca hadn't been there. But she knew his mother's car, she'd heard reports and seen news reels. She'd filled in the rest with her own imagination, wracked with emotional over-description.

"I saw the bodies, Jackson. You were dead. We buried you."

Jackson rubbed his temples, ran his hands through his hair. He sighed in frustration. "I know." That damn kid's eyes wouldn't leave him alone. He was so caught up in all these new memories, all this wonder and weirdness and horror - Jackson steered him away from anything he thought too much to handle - that he wasn't even speaking. He hadn't learned how to multitask that much yet. "I couldn't tell you. Anything. Remember when we were twelve and they thought I was kidnapped for a day or so?"

Was eight years old enough to watch graphic depictions of gunning down spirit killers? He was fairly certain the answer was no. The look of wide-eyed anticipation on the kid's face turned to a sour scowl when the scene changed to the greenhouse of the mansion.

"But I had just wondered off and gotten lost until someone took me to the police station? That was about when this started. I wasn't lost and I wasn't kidnapped. Someone important found me. All these..." he circled his hand in the air, trying to come up with a sufficient word to use for someone who had no idea what he was talking about and never possibly could. "All this hearing and seeing things. This gets dangerous. Too dangerous for people who can't even comprehend what it is. So these important people started keeping an eye on me from a distance. Not interfering or anything. Just keeping a lookout. When the accident happened, that was when they recruited me. It was perfect timing. Everyone who knew me would think I was dead and I wouldn't have to endanger them or explain impossible things."

He started blocking the kid with faces. Bronwyn and her sisters. The General. Roan. Seraphim. Mira. Simon. Lucas. Any second he was going to start complaining. With real, out loud words instead of angry paper-mache spikes trying to rip past concrete walls.

Bianca's concern felt different now. It shifted from the cold void of fear of betrayal to the impending, crushing emptiness of fear of the unknown. She wrapped her arms around her son's shoulders. "But Nicholas sees these things now. What if... Jackson, he has a little brother. And a father. What happened to your mother? Did they save her too?"

"No. She died that day. The accident wasn't caused by those people - it was just something that happened that they took advantage of to get me a different type of job than they would have otherwise." He shook his head, slowly, sighing and rubbing a vein on his forehead as he did. "It would be much easier - safer - if I arrange it so you forget all about this. Go back to thinking I'm dead."

"What? Like a neurolizer? Is this all some top-security government thing?" Her brows furrowed. She wanted to understand. Tried to piece together the minuscule information she'd been given, connect it to what she knew from before. She tried to change her perspective. But one bit didn't change. She didn't even consider it. "I'm not going to forget about you."

"Bea..." The words came out in an exasperated groan.

"No, Jackie. You're not deciding this for me. I find out my brother is alive after more than twenty years and he wants to just take that away? What next? You're going to make me forget Nicholas and take him away to this place?"

"Bianca you don't understand this." His hand slammed down onto the table. The kid flinched in his seat, withdrawing into a tiny speck on the the side of the table, his eyes wide an his mouth twisting into various displeased shapes. Even Bianca herself jolted at the sudden change in him. "These aren't just people," he spoke in a low growl. "They're monsters, some of them. And a lot of them want nothing more than to torture me in anyway they can. If they know you're related to me, they will come after you and you can do nothing to stop them. And they'll realize your kid exists because he can see them. They'll make him a target now. We can protect him, but if they see from him that you know me..."

"Nicholas won't tell anyone if you don't want him to. I won't either if-"

"These things can change the world just by breathing. Don't think they can't read minds without even trying to. But if you let me deal with the kid he'll be safe and you'll be safe. If you forget I exist then you'll be even safer."

She stared at him for several seconds, her mouth a thin line, her eyes blazing with quiet determination under her knitted down brows. Her mind raced around twisted metal cars and kids sitting in trees and ghosts showing up on the city streets at midday. She was going to deny his request again, more forcefully, but before she could get anything out, the kid tugged on her shirt sleeve and spoke up.

"I'm bored. And hungry. Why haven't we gotten to order something yet?"

Jackson looked to the counter. The girl there was one of the General's people so she'd known better than to interrupt him when they first came in. She'd finished mopping and started wiping down the counter when he called out, "Lianne, get me the usual and give the kid a tour."

"Sure thing, sir." The blonde vanished through one of two doors located behind the counter. She emerged with a pot of coffee in one hand, a brightly painted mug in the other, and a red apron over her street clothes with the name of the restaurant in plain type on the chest. She sat the mug before him, filled it and sat the coffeepot closer to the edge of the table. "Anything for you as well, Mrs. Reynolds?"

"Lianne!" Jackson hissed, turning to her with a venomous look.

The girl's eyes went wide as she realised what she'd said. Her hands clamped over her mouth.

"I... I haven't said my last name." Bianca raised a brow. Her eyes darted from Lianne to Jackson and back again. She reached for her chest, wondering if she had a name tag from work that she'd forgotten to take off.

A muffled apology came from behind Lianne's hands. "At least now she knows you can't be lying. How about that tour?"

"Do I want her taking my child anywhere?"

"Bea, would I have suggested it if I didn't trust her?" His forehead found it way into the palm of his hand. "I need to speak with you alone."

"How can I even trust you?" Bianca's shoulders trembled. She leaned in over the table, not taking her eyes off of him, grabbing for Nicholas' sleeves as the child tried to get out of the seat. "How do I know it's even you?" There were tears in her eyes.

Jackson clenched his jaw. This was exactly why it would have been better for her to not know about him. He stayed silent, but signaled to Lianne to take the kid.

Her smile was fake, Jackson could tell, but wide enough that the kid couldn't help but be excited when she said, "Where should we start? Do you wanna see where we make the pizza first? Or the pancakes? Or the freezer - where we keep all the ice cream?"

"Ice cream!" Nicholas ripped himself from his mother's grip and grabbed onto Lianne's wrist with both hands. "Ice cream, please?!"

"If you didn't trust me, would you have followed me in here?" Jackson said quietly once the door behind the counter had closed.

Bianca wiped her eyes on her cuff. "Yes. Yes I would have. Because I saw my dead half-brother alive on the street and wanted answers."

He let out a sigh. "I can have my boss put you under guard if you insist on trying to be part of this. But we need your son. There aren't many of us, so we need all the help we can get. And I will protect him as long as I can."

"What could you people possibly need from an eight year old?"

"Nothing, yet. But, Bea, just listen. He sees things and hears things that no one else can. He broadcasts things that no one can hear unless they know how to. Bianca I kill demons for a living. I live in a house filled to bursting with spirits and ghosts and nightmare demon monsters. I protect people from things they can't even begin to imagine. Because I could see and hear the same things that he does. There are kids who get targeted by these creatures just because they can do that. But if you let us teach Nicholas how to use that ability, he can help us without ever getting in any danger himself." He reached for the napkin holder. "Do you have a pen?"

"Jackie this is.." she trailed off, shaking her head. She reached for her purse. Crazy. Impossible. This is the mot elaborate dream ever. A disgusting prank.

"I know. I can't explain any of this well enough anyway. Not my department. Look, if you trust me then go to this address. Any time, any day. Tell the person at the front desk that I sent you. And if he asks for a passcode, tell him I said to fuck himself." He scribbled down the headquarters' address and slid the napkin toward her. "Only if you trust me. Only if you're alright with making Nicholas a part of this."

He met her gaze, and for the first time that day, her eyes were steady. She took the napkin and the pen and put them in her purse.


"You sent her to the boss?" Lianne leaned on the counter. "Think she's gonna go there? She seemed really unsure."

Jackson sighed. "If she doesn't, then I'll have to think of something else."

"Y'know, she'd have no way of knowing if you did decide that a mindwipe is the best way to go. And the General might end up doing that anyway, if she thinks it's the best way to go."

"I'm not going to disrespect her like that. But if the General decides that, then there's nothing I can do."

The blonde girl gave a shrug. "I don't think she will. Not if you didn't want to. Your opinion is pretty much the only one she really cares about. So you think that kid might replace you some day?"

"I hope not." He held back a glare. "Only Mira is stupid and hard-headed enough for that."

Lianne laughed. "Are you insulting her or yourself?"

"Yes."

She laughed again. "I think he'll be fine. No matter what his mom decides to do. Maybe he'll get to be recon like me. Then I can train him and help keep an eye on him for you."

"Don't think I won't be keeping watch of him every second until he can defend himself properly."

"Every second you're not out on a mission, at least. You didn't even tell half of how dangerous your job is."

He shrugged and turned toward the door. "I didn't want to make her more worried than she already was. It's not like the kid will be doing the same sort of stuff I am. Besides, I'm sure the General will give her more detail about it."

"Not enough to drive her away though, right?" Lianne started to follow him out. She fumbled in her pocket for the keys. "How much did you let the kid see?"

"Enough, I think." He held the door for her. "Mostly the house. I tried to keep it mystical and intriguing. Kids like that, right? I steered away from the worst things. Wouldn't want him telling Bea about the time I broke my neck or got thrown down a cliff."

A shudder racked down the girl's spine, forceful enough to make her miss the keyhole. "Hell, I didn't want to be told about that time. I'm glad you and the boss ended up getting that guy." She shook the images out of her head, and turned toward him, smiling again. "But anyway, all this is new. Usually you hate new recruits and here we are with you getting us one." She rocked on her heels as she pocketed the key. "See ya' later, Mr. Raider."

"Stay out of trouble, kid." He started off, giving a half-hearted wave.

He heard her laugh. "No promises."