We are not traitors

He doesn't love Christmas. There had been a period way back in the misty past of his childhood where it hadn't totally sucked, but after his father had swerved off into drunken oblivion and he and his mother had moved into the cramped apartment one of the shadier parts of Queens Christmas had sort of lost a lot of its luster.

It's getting it back now. A little.

There's a fire in the temporary fireplace. There's a tree, in addition to the giant center-spoke of the wheel that the house makes. Hobbes had insisted and Eostre had grumpily given way. There's a can covered with a dishtowel in lieu of wrapping, because he's not sure how the fuck he'd wrap this. There's metal clinking around his neck, under his shirt. He's waiting for Hobbes to show up and for Eostre to finish putting the girls to bed. It's Christmas Eve and the one thing he notices is that he's actually just a little nervous. Mostly about Eostre's gift.

Maybe also about the fact that the trend actually seems to be upwards.

Hope is a dangerous thing, and 'tis the season for it.

I wish things were easier. He remembers saying it once, or he thinks he does, though he can't remember why or who he'd been speaking to. But he had wished that things were easier, and he still does, because they so seldom are.

And yet in the end they do happen.

He's not sure when Lennox had left him. One moment he'd been there and the next gone, but by that time he'd been ready to let him go. And then he'd closed his eyes again, and when he'd opened them some unknown time later the sun had been setting and he had been alone in the jungle with the shadows long and dark all around him.

He goes home. It seems like the thing to do.

Walking up the path towards her hut he feels tired, bone-weary, but it's a healthy kind of weariness, the kind that promises deep and long sleep. He feels cleaned out. Pleasantly empty. Ready to be filled with something new.

When you carry something for a long time, it can take putting it down to remind you just how heavy it is.

There are lights burning in Eostre's hut. He's not surprised to see them, but he does feel a touch of relief. He'd known that something was going on outside his own little corner of the world, though he hadn't known exactly what and had been too lost in his own mind to worry much. But now things are all right. He feels it deeply.

He doesn't knock, not anymore. He lifts the curtain that covers her door and steps inside, eyes closing for a few seconds as the light hits them.

When Peter had come running up to him, flushed and out of breath, alarm bells had not immediately started ringing.

When Peter had informed him that he should probably go see Eostre because Peter had broken her, they had. Loudly.

At least he's fairly sure he knows what it is, and it had been confirmed when Peter told him who he was going to tell next.

"You didn't break her," he had taken a second to say. "I mean... okay, maybe you did, but it's okay." Except is it? Fuck, it's two weeks early. Is that too early? At what point is too early? Are twins usually early because there's less room? Is there less room? Should he take another second to run back to the Compound and wash his hands with soap? Should he be ready to boil water? Why the fuck do you boil water, anyway? You hopefully aren't going to toss the babies into it. Like lobsters or something.

His mind is working along these faintly horrifying lines as he grits his teeth and starts to run. Running still isn't easy or pleasant and if a doctor saw him doing it he would probably be yelled at, but if there was ever a time when he truly did not give a shit...

He's so unprepared for this. He hasn't even read books. And two weeks.

Jesus fucking Christ.

"Eostre?" he calls, skidding to a stop outside her doorway and pulling the curtain aside, breathing hard. "Peter... told me..."

He never wanted to be back here again. As his leg was being set and he was gritting his teeth through the pain and wishing like hell for some morphine the back of his mind muttered something about best laid plans. He should have picked that up by now. Shit just happens.

He just wishes it would happen to someone else.

His leg is back to a dull throb and he lies in the clinic bed and stares at the ceiling and tries to make his mind blank. Dr. Grey had been patient with him and really impressively competent, and everything could have been a lot worse. It could have been a compound fracture. It could have been a broken wrist instead of just a sprain. It could have been a lot further away. Chris could have headed in another direction. He could have hit his head on a rock in the fall.

He could have seen it again.

He's got a towel full of ice on his wrist and his leg bound up in straight, slender pieces of wood, and despite the pain sleep is threatening, but he can't. Chris has gone to get Eostre. And he has no idea what she's going to say or do, but he has a strong feeling that he should be awake for it.

And Hobbes. He had left Hobbes. He wonders if he'll even know. A less charitable part of him wonders if Chris might not just neglect to tell him out of spite.

No. He'll find out somehow.

He turns his head to the side, shuts out the sterile, white ceiling and sets his jaw.

Fuck.

Brilliant. Fucking brilliant. The most up and down two weeks he can remember, and if this is how it gets capped off, he's not sure he'll be complaining. Considering the hellish time he's been having in his own body, maybe being in a new one is exactly what he needs.

And there had also been Hobbes's face. And the rest of it he can live with.

Dressed in jeans that no longer fit him and a t-shirt that hangs more loosely than usual, he makes his way through the trees and slips into her hut without bothering to knock. He hopes she's still asleep. He doesn't even particularly care what sex she is. Fuck it all, he's going to have some fun.

He sees a familiar blond head and a familiar shape under the sheets, lets the jeans fall down past his hips, and moves over to the bed, sliding in next to her as carefully as he can.

[continued from here.]

"You keep feeding it, it will." He presses forward again, insistantly hard, slipping his hand down and under her skirt, running his fingers up the smooth skin of her thigh. "God, you make me want you."

He almost wants someone to hear them, here, or stumble by and see them. This is the kind of thing he almost wants to show off.

When he wakes he does it hard, snapping out of dreaming in a way that leaves no grogginess or mud in his brain. He sits up in the darkness of his hut. He has no idea what time it is. Once the sun goes down, time here doesn't mean as much. Hobbes had had a watch. He remembers the day it finally broke. The kid had kept wearing it. It was the first thing of his he had ever touched. He doesn't know why that should be significant, over everything else.

The letter is folded by his head. He has no idea what he's going to do with it. It doesn't matter right now, because the dream is coming back to him in fits and starts. Not the head on the stake, not this time. Not the scorched landscape. Worse. Hands. The heat of him too close, dangerously close. A flash of the curve of lips and the line of a neck. Firelight in eyes. Things he'd looked at before. Things he'd shoved to the back of everything, only when you push something to the back it's still there.

By the end if he had touched him he would have screamed. It would have been too much. It is too much now. If he had been unable to have her, would he be feeling this same way now? He's desperately afraid the answer is yes.

He does have her. He can... she can...

He should have done this to begin with.

He pulls his pants on quickly and steps out into the night, moving fast and silent and it seems only a few yards to her door. There's a light. He stops short of entering, blinking. There's something dark and heavy pressing against the inside of his skull.

He doesn't need the dinosaurs. There's more than one way to be consumed.

The last couple of days have been blessedly uneventful and he's starting to get used to the idea that maybe he doesn't have to be doing something useful, not all the time. Sometimes maybe he can just sit and read, as he is today, with his back against the trunk of a relatively comfortable tree and his toes in the first hints of sand that lead down to the beach. A copy of 1984 is open in his lap. Dystopias aren't a whole lot better than Norse myths, but it's at least a step up. And he's not going to beg. Not ever.

He starts to turn the page and then lets it go, closing his eyes instead and turning his face up to the sun. He isn't leaving. He's still sure. The Island might be strange and sometimes very messy, but it's still better.