Chapter Text
Jack lay awake in his narrow boarding school bed, the sheets stiff and cold against his skin. The fabric scratched faintly when he shifted, too clean, too starched, stripped of any softness. The radiator beneath the window clicked uselessly, exhaling a heat that never seemed to reach him. It groaned and settled like something dying. One thing he would always miss about the island was its endless warmth. It had wrapped itself around him, pressed into his bones, filled the air so completely it was impossible to escape. It had been suffocating, unbearable at times -and yet it had been alive. England felt foreign in comparison. Dead.
He couldn’t sleep. He never could, not anymore.
The darkness here was different. Contained. Civilised. It did not breathe. It did not move.
His housemaster had taken to watching him with quiet concern, his eyes lingering too long during morning inspection, his voice lowered as if Jack might break beneath it. He told him he looked half-dead, that he ought to go to bed earlier, that he was moving like a zombie down the corridors. But sleep wasn’t something you could summon with obedience. It was not a reward for good behaviour. The exhaustion lived somewhere deeper. It had settled into his bones and made a home there. It followed him like a shadow he could not step out of.
He felt lost in a place he once knew.
The corridors stretched long and narrow, the same grey stone, the same worn steps hollowed by generations of boys who had come and gone exactly as expected. Their shoes had carved quiet grooves into the floor. Boys who had gone on to become naval officers, barristers, men of importance. Men who had never lost themselves. Men his parents could speak of with quiet pride over dinner, their names spoken with approval and certainty.
Jack had once belonged to that future.
Now he wasn’t sure he belonged anywhere.
The letter from his father sat folded in the drawer beside his bed.
He had not touched it since the first night. Still, he knew every word.
The paper was thick. Expensive. Heavy in a way that felt deliberate. His father had always preferred things of quality. Things that reflected well on the family. Things that lasted.
I am deeply disappointed in you, Jack.
The words had been precise. Controlled. Far worse than anger. Anger could be forgiven. Anger passed. This would not.
You were not raised to behave in such a manner. You know better. God tests us all, and it is our duty to remain steadfast. You should have prayed. He would have delivered you. He does everything for a reason.
There had been no mention of relief. No mention of gratitude that his son had survived.
Only disappointment.
Jack could picture his parents reading the reports, seated across from one another in the quiet order of their sitting room. His mother’s hands folded tightly in her lap, wanting, for a moment, to be simply glad her child was alive -but she stayed silent, swallowed back by the weight of fear for his father’s judgment. His father removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. The quiet, suffocating shame that would fill the room without ever being spoken aloud was enough to crush him.
Their son had not behaved like the son they had raised.
Their son had become something else.
Jack did not pray.
God had no idea what it was like to be trapped there.
God had never felt the hunger, sharp and animalistic, turning the body against itself. God had never felt the heat of the paint drying on his skin, tightening as it cracked, turning him into something unrecognisable. Someone untouchable. Someone free.
God had not felt the freedom of it.
God had not been there.
He had once been head chorister. He had stood in perfect rows beneath the high chapel ceilings, his voice leading the others, clear and certain. The sound had risen around him, filling the vast hollow space, echoing against stone and glass. He had felt it vibrate through his chest, something pure and immovable. The music had filled him then. It had made him feel clean. Chosen, almost.
Now he mouthed the words without sound.
The hymns felt hollow in his throat. The promises meant nothing. Deliver us from evil. The words hung in the air, fragile and unconvincing.
He wondered if the others believed them.
He wondered if they could feel how false it all was.
He could not bring himself to sing. The sound would expose him. The part of him that used to believe, that used to trust the words of the hymns, had died somewhere on the island. That God had never answered him. That God had never even tried.
He stood among them, silent, feeling like an intruder inside his own life.
He could feel their eyes on him sometimes. The subtle glances. The careful distance. Conversations that stopped when he entered the room. The way they avoided standing too close, as if some part of the island might still cling to him.
They knew.
Perhaps not everything. But enough.
On the island, he had possessed something real. Authority. Power. He had commanded, and the others had obeyed without question. His voice had meant something. His will had shaped the world around him. He had not needed God then. He had not needed anyone.
Some small, terrible part of him missed it.
Here, he was nothing again.
Worse than nothing. He was weak.
Observed. Judged. Reduced to something fragile and pitiful.
They would never follow him again. He had lost that version of himself the moment the naval officer stepped onto the shore. The moment civilisation returned and stripped him bare, leaving him exposed beneath its cold, unforgiving light.
But this time, the choice would be his.
It began with missing meals.
At first, it was convenience. He told himself he was too tired, too busy, too distracted to bother. But the truth was simpler. He could not bear sitting in the mess hall, surrounded by boys who pretended not to stare. The scrape of cutlery, the low murmur of conversation, the unbearable normality of it.
Hunger came, sharp and insistent.
He welcomed it.
It was familiar.
It reminded him of who he had been. Of what he had survived.
Soon, it became easier. If he did not need lunch, then he did not need breakfast. Or dinner.
He told himself it did not matter.
The hunger became something else. Something steady. Something dependable. It sat inside him like a secret, quiet and constant.
Proof.
He could walk into a room filled with food, warm bread, sugared puddings, roasted meats glistening beneath yellow light and walk away untouched. The smell lingered in the air, sweet and unbearable. His stomach tightened, but he ignored it.
He needed nothing.
This was control.
This was power.
At night, his stomach twisted and hollowed itself out, folding inward, but he lay still, staring into the dark. He listened to the quiet breathing of the boys around him. He listened to his own body weaken.
He did not pray.
He wondered if God could see him now.
If He could see what was left.
Jack pressed his hand against his ribs, feeling the sharpness beneath his skin. Each bone felt deliberate. Defined. Something inside him was disappearing, piece by piece, and he could feel it happening.
He was not afraid.
On the island, he had become something monstrous.
Here, he would become something smaller.
Something quieter.
Something his parents nor God could not be ashamed of.
Nothing at all.