The Darkest Before The Dawn

For once in her life, Ripley isn’t quite sure what to say. She had waited for this moment, but now everything she had planned on saying was lost like a dream she didn’t quite remember.

On the first day, her worry was kept in check, though evident by her chewed nails. On the second, exhaustion had caught up to her and dragged her from Jake’s side where she had fallen asleep still clutching a cold mug of coffee. On the third, she had woken to a blanket on her shoulders and a headache pressing at every angle of her skull. She had busied herself, hunting, cleaning guns, she even attempted to cook, but was quickly stopped by Leon when the stew pot caught on fire. On the fourth, an unnatural feeling stirred in her gut every time she looked at the cabin, still and uneventful, sick with the air thick with worry and doubt.

And then on the fifth, Isabella had dragged Leon back to the cabin, hope fresh on her face. Relief coursed through Ripley as she watched them, dropping her to her knees as her heart settled at last.

Jake was awake.

Now she stands in his room, hovering by the door, unsure, hesitant, careful.

“Hey,” Jake says, it snaps her into attention, and she notices the small twinge of a smile on his face.

“Hey.”

There’s an awkwardness that wasn’t there before. She doesn’t quite know how it got there, nor how to rid it. Was it always there?

“Isabella mentioned something about you.” Jake sinks back down into his pillow. “You came after us, didn’t you?” He settles on her, his eyes questioning with amusement.

“I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re hiding something.” She twists her thumb into her palm.

Jake turns from her and stares up at the ceiling and Ripley is left wondering what he’s thinking about. She wants to ask him a million questions; what had happened on that mountain? Did Michael do this to him? But she suspected that Isabella and Leon had already pestered Jake with them, drilling him, looking for every ounce of evidence to what happened to him.

“What did you see on that mountain, Ripley?”

The question surprises her, catches her off guard. She had been prepared to leave that day behind, to let Leon and Isabella drag the truth from Jake.

She’s wrong about the awkwardness. This wasn’t it, this was tension, a tightrope between them both that was about to snap.

“Nothing.”

Jake turns to her, frowning.

“Nothing?”

“That’s what I said.”

She wants to say it. She wants to ask. She wants to know why Michael isn’t dead with a bullet between his eyes. Why hasn’t Jake told them to get rid of him? Instead, all she gets is a grunt of approval, and her patience wanes.

“All I saw was you, lying on that mountain as still as if you were dead. I thought you were. I thought that I was too late.” Her voice is too high and no matter how much she tries to lower it; she can’t stop it.

“So, no, I didn’t see what happened. I didn’t see what Michael did to you, but I’m not stupid, no one in this camp is stupid enough to believe that he didn’t do this. He almost killed you.” It spills out of her. The anger, the rage that has built up over the past few days. She avoided Michael, or she could imagine herself punching him. So far, he had gotten the hint.

Jake lets out a long sigh as he runs a hand down his face. If he wasn’t injured, Ripley would hit him. There’s salt in her wounded pride from that sigh.

“Am I wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

She doesn’t bother to hide the anger from her voice, or the way her hands curl into fists by her sides, or the crease of her forehead. She hides none of it.

“Ripley, you-.”

“Don’t. I ain’t no kid anymore. I haven’t been for a long time.” She runs a hand through her hair. When she had first met Jake, it was always tied in a long, messy braid until she grew frustrated one day and out of that frustration cut it to her shoulders in wayward curls.

“I know what he’s capable of. I know first-hand what Michael can do.” It was a mistake, a stupid drunken mistake. Always too loud and unable to swallow any decency, Ripley had told the men where to find Jake. She didn’t know who they were aside from what they told her. Friends from way back when. She didn’t think of what those friends had done to Jake, had done to his Sara. She didn’t realise any of this until she came riding into camp where bodies littered the grass. It definitely sunk in when Michael knocked her down and pressed a gun to her head.

Jake had saved her, as always, steering Michael’s anger onto himself. She remembered the argument between them, the guns pointed at each other, the bitterness of it all when Jake finally pried Ripley away from Michael’s temper.

“How much do you love Mae?” Jake asks.

“Don’t bring her into this.” The words get caught in her chest. Jake raises his hands from under the bedsheets in surrender, they shake from the effort.

“That love you have, that’s the same love I have for Michael and it’s the same love he has for me.” He looks her in the eyes and keeps her there, holding her attention.

She sinks into the chair and digs the balls of her palms into her eyes and bites down on her lips, silencing herself. She doesn’t understand, perhaps doesn’t even want to understand. All she knows is that she almost lost Jake, lost the only person she’d take a bullet for, and she doesn’t understand why Jake would take one for Michael.

And then she sees it. The exhaustion under Jake’s eyes, giving the blues of them a piercing gaze, almost like lightning strikes. Jake has always been the camp’s protective, a figure that holds out their hand to help those who fall get back up. Jake had fallen once, and Michael was that hand; she knew the story of how they met.

If Jake tells the truth, if he says that Michael had done this, had hurt him to the point that he almost died, Michael would be six feet under the ground. Jake’s love is the only thing protecting Michael.

“I hate him,” she says quietly.

“I know.”

She drags the chair across the floor, the legs scratching the wood, making her way to the bed. Jake winces at the sound and Ripley shrugs at him as though it’s his own fault for his injuries.

The air is still thick between them, but Ripley always manages to bounce their relationship back to its annoying self.

“Because I saved your life, can I have your rifle?” She asks, half in jest.

“No.” Jake closes his eyes.

“I guess we can just call it even then,” Ripley says, her fingers touching the point on her stomach where the bullet had passed through her a few months back. She ignored the fact that that wasn’t the only time Jake had saved her and there were several other incidences and would be many more to come.

There’s a laughter that rumbles from Jake’s chest before his face contorts in pain. Ripley stands up and goes to take a step forward and then another but hesitates as she remembers Leon’s warning. Jake was fragile right now and he needed his rest. It was a difficult thing to wrap her head around, Jake being fragile. It was a word she would never use to describe him. He was like one of those metal statues in Saint Denis. They were a figure strong and sturdy; you’d never expect them to crumble.

“Do you want me to grab something?” Ripley asks far too quickly.

Jake shakes his head, gripping the blanket, twisting it in his fingers.

“Don’t make me laugh,” he grumbles.

She waits for the pain to subside and finally Jake sinks back into the bed, his face slick with sweat.

“Don’t make me come save you again,” she says, watching the rise and fall of his chest, ignoring the voice in her head. She’d always save him if she needed to.