LOTF: Before and After

Phase 3: Chapter 46

Jack Merridew was nothing if not strong-headed. There wasn't a traumatic event that life could throw at him that would bring him to tears. That was, unless Ralph Langley had anything to do with it. Ralph had the power, unbeknownst to him, to make Jack feel all the things he'd spent his life learning how to suppress. Jack had trusted Ralph, trusted him with most things he deemed important. Jack was so obsessed with Ralph, and how the brunette boy made him feel, that he forgot how dangerous trust could be. Letting Ralph in betrayed every rule Jack had ever set for himself. He grew up in a world where love wasn't given freely, it had to be earned. Jack had never earned it. Not from his father, and certainly not from Ralph.

But it wasn't until after Jack ended his relationship with Ralph that he realized that, though. One moment, he felt secure, okay, happy perhaps. He enjoyed going back and forth between Dalton and East Point. Knowing he would get to see Ralph later in the day or week made going to public school somewhat bearable. He woke up everyday excited because of Ralph. He was consumed with the new and sensational feeling of knowing and trusting that he was loved, genuinely and deeply loved. He had always been afraid growing up, afraid that any and every move he made could get him in trouble, ignored, cast aside. He practically shook in his six-year-old pants the first day he came home with a less than stellar grade on a spelling test. His dad had ripped him apart; tore him down, shamed him, hit him. It was the moment that Jack decided harmful attention was better than none at all. But Ralph had changed his outlook on life and on love. It was a weight off Jack's shoulders to know that there wasn't a bad grade or detention slip or impromptu parent teacher conference about his behavior that would turn Ralph against him. His worth no longer depended solely on his ability to do well; to hold himself to a stupidly high standard, to be the best at everything, top of his class at the academy, highest rank in the squadron, the strongest, fastest, smartest kid in military school. With Ralph, none of that mattered. Ralph cared about Jack's safety and well-being above all else. He was whenever Jack was hurt, happy whenever Jack was happy. Ralph hadn't just loved Jack, he rebuilt his priorities and his life around him.

Jack felt nothing short of comfortable, safe, and loved when he looked at Ralph. Even in his own house of horrors, Ralph's presence had a profound way of easing his mind. He couldn't feel the deep isolation he had grown accustomed to feeling, at least not when Ralph was holding his hand. Jack always felt like an outsider in his own family, a degenerate that was only welcome under strict conditions. But Ralph had managed to take that twisted feeling inside Jack's chest and unravel it, providing him with a space where his equality, and sense of belonging weren't constantly under threat. He had felt like the Langley family loved and accepted him more than his own family ever did.

Then, as Jack began to settle into the trust he'd put in Ralph and their relationship, his damned mother showed up in time to remind him that there was no such thing as unconditional love. He stared the woman in the face, a face he couldn't but should've recognized. She was nothing; a broken, lost woman who came crawling back to the very thing she'd abandoned all those years ago. Jack knew that she hadn't just woke up one day and realized that she loved her deserted children after all. He knew, as he stared into her horrible face, that she was only there because she'd lost whatever she had left them to chase after. Jack would be damned if he was going to run back into her arms, forced to settle for being her consolation prize instead of the pride and joy most mothers saw their children as.

Jack realized as Paige shouted at her, belting angry and sad threats at the woman, that he never even knew her first name. Paige and their father always referred to her as 'our or your mother.' Jack never asked her name. It would've made her too real to him, and he didn't want her to be real. He wanted her to remain an infamous figure of his imagination, a symbolic character that only existed in fairytales and stories of history. That way, Jack could keep a safe distance between himself and who he thought she might've been. He could pretend that she left for a good reason; a reason much deeper and satisfying than the ugly truth.