She grabbed the floating rag again and was about to scrub her legs, but then decided to press forward just a little, knowing it was in the back of his mind.
"I also know you probably haven't washed any of your wounds, so... if you want privacy, or, um, help with anything, just... let me know."
James locked his jaw shut for a moment as he sat still in the water, staring out beyond Evaline, trying to both find courage and bury his pride. He didn't know how much time had passed, but he knew worse than Evaline seeing everything would be strangers interrupting when he wasn't done and covered up yet. If they caught a glimpse of everything, there would be questions. Thieves didn't have the time to do everything to him that he'd endured.
He took in a slow breath and let it out, and then swallowed.
"I... if you have time," he said slowly. "I could use your help. Getting my back."
Truth be told, Evaline had expected James to merely appreciate her offer and end the topic. She was surprised to see that he actually did want her to help. Pleasantly surprised, of course. She wanted to help any way she could, and she knew he was very sensitive about this topic, so she knew this was no easy thing to ask.
"Of course," she said softly, sitting up straighter. "I can help. Anything you need."
Evaline nodded, and then found herself quickly scrubbing. She knew James didn't want her to rush, but she found herself doing it anyways. She blindly scrubbed underwater for a while, but then turned to lift up parts of her legs when she could, loudly causing ripples from rushing and focusing.
Some minutes passed in silence, and she just about got all the dirt and grime off.
When finished, she laid the washcloth on the edge of the tub and then turned to James.
"I'm done," she announced, then gave him a nod. "Let me know when you're ready."
James nodded, and he took in a deep breath. Slowly, he stood up in the shallow pool, and the water came up to about his belly-button. He didn't look at Evaline, and he didn't want to see her reaction if she even had one. Instead, he grabbed a new, clean wash-cloth from behind him, half-turning away from her.
"It's difficult for me to see," he said, careful to keep emotion out of his voice. "Hopefully nothing's infected. It doesn't feel like it. But I would appreciate if you made sure."
He turned his back towards her and busied himself with a bar of soap and the washcloth, lathering up the soap. He tried not to think about anything at all but the bubbles he was creating and what needed to get done.
Evaline had seen James's open wounds before. Once, about a month ago, right after Marsha visited. It seemed bizarre thinking back upon that time since it seemed that, in comparison, she barely knew James back then. She wasn't sure what she would do now if that situation happened today, but it felt unlikely that she would have unbandaged his wounds one-by-one like she did that night.
James was rightfully upset with her that week, and she didn't think she'd ever see him in a state without his bandages again. Yet here they were.
He stood up, and she once again saw all the wounds. This time, all of it was exposed at the same time. No bandages. Fully exposed.
She didn't have that much time to observe, but it was difficult to know whether he was getting better or worse because of the sheer magnitude of it. This was the first time she'd seen everything open and exposed, and it still shocked her that James would let her see this.
He trusted her.
Some of the wounds looked like they scabbed over more, and the stitches looked more healed. Her eyes naturally also drifted down to where the thieves hurt him. It was doing better than the day she stopped the bleeding, but it was still fresh and needed lots of time to heal. That was all she really had time to notice before he turned.
Her heart sank seeing his back.
There were so many scars. They didn't look as deep as the ones on his front, but it still looked painful. The branded 'B' below the scars let out unending sadness as her eyes drifted over it. Sadness, and anger. Anger that someone did this to James. How could anyone do this to him? He didn't deserve any of this, or any of this pain.
Perhaps out of instinct, she was about to reach out her hand out and gently touch him, but stopped before she could.
James’s shoulders tensed for a moment, and he lowered his head.
He took in a deep breath. He was okay. Evaline wasn’t going to hurt him. It was fine.
“Yes,” he said simply, and he then diverted his attention to his stomach, where he started to gently and gingerly clean around scabs and stitches, careful not to scrape any of the scabs off.
Evaline waited for his response, and upon approval, she slowly, gently, barely grazed his skin with the tip of her index finger. She immediately felt James tense up, especially as she slowly dragged along to the tip of a scar. But he didn't seem to have any other reaction to this, and he even started to relax just a little.
Her finger lightly, slowly, lazily grazed along the scars, following them like she was drawing it along his back. She retraced the bigger ones, one by one, and then a few of the smaller ones. She wanted to understand. She wanted to feel what he felt. She wanted to take the pain away.
She was doing this because she wanted to let him know it was okay. Not everyone was out to get him. A touch can simply just be a touch. She wanted him to have a new memory of someone over his body not to hurt him, but to just be there and give comfort in intimacy.
Because most of all, she wanted him to disassociate touch from torture.
Her gaze fell down to the B below the scars, and she gingerly set her fingers right around it, rubbing a space around it as her way to tell James that she acknowledged it. She saw him. She saw how Butch branded him. And she was here now, by his side.
She'll make sure he'll never have to go through this again. Never have to meet Butch again.
James wasn't able to do two things at once. He'd started cleaning around a wound on his belly, but the moment he felt Evaline touch his back, it was a battle to not react. To not pull away, duck down, spin around, scream, and fight. His heart started to race, and he snapped his eyes shut while his brow knitted together tightly.
His mind jumped between complete disassociation and being present - feeling her fingers trace the scars, the scabs, and everything in-between. He didn't know why he'd said yes. This was too much. He didn't know if he could handle it. He thought he could but with every lingering touch, a memory kept pushing itself to the forefront of his mind. A headache, piercing right between his eyes.
He kept trying to fight it back. Breathe in, breathe out. He focused on breathing. Relaxing his muscles. Staying calm. But his mind was a raging storm on the edge of something, and he didn't want to find out what it was.
She touched his lower back. Right near the brand.
Spoiler
He was in a shed. It was dark, apart from the roaring fireplace in front of him that cast sharp shadows across the barren room. James had every limb strapped to the arms and the legs of a small, wooden chair, and he felt that at any moment, the legs would snap underneath his weight. He was gagged with a sock in his mouth, and a bandana secured tightly between his teeth for good measure. With that alone, his breathing felt shallow.
Sitting across from him on a stool was a man with dark skin and dark hair that grew to his shoulders. He cupped his bearded chin with one hand and spun a knife around in the other, letting it dance between his fingers. He looked like he might be from the isles, but it had to have been a long time since he'd seen the sea for him to be this far up north. He looked about James's size, but a bit taller. Possible to overpower, but not like this. Not while James was bound.
At the other side of the shed, in the corner, another man was sitting on a crate. He had pale skin and didn't look like a fighter. He was built like someone who worked indoors. Someone who hadn't worked with his hands except to perhaps, stitch things up. James felt like he already understood the man's role. He was the medic, and his eyes were glued to the floor.
That would explain why James's leg was bandaged. Before he'd come in to the cabin, he remembered stumbling through the forest, his leg gushing blood as he limped through the rain and the mud. He'd slipped. He'd hit his head.
That was how Butch had caught up to him.
A shudder ran down his spine as the bounty hunter emerged from behind a stack of crates, walking towards the fire.
Butch stood at least a foot taller than him, and he was broad and massive. He was a cross between an ox and a tree, and it felt like he filled up the whole room with his presence.
James's eyes flicked to the fire. At first, he thought Butch was stoking it, but then he realized Butch wasn't poking at the fire - he was pulling a metal rod out of it.
At the end of the rod was a brand. The metal curved and turned to form a sharp-edged "B" with a circle around it. James felt a wave of nausea wash over him and his eyes grew wider as he stared at the glowing iron symbol hovering over the flames. No. No. Surely, Butch wasn't so cruel as to treat his bounties like cattle.
James felt his heart beating hard in his chest. He started to wriggle and pull at his restraints. Someone in the room had to fight. Butch couldn't just get away with this.
Butch turned his head back towards James as the chair beneath him creaked under his struggling. Butch's mouth upturned into a sickening grin, making the man's underbite more prominent.
The light from the fire cast half of Butch's face into shadow, but when Butch and James locked eyes, James felt his body, involuntarily, begin to tremble.
With a swift movement, Butch drew the brand out of the fire and marched behind James. The chair tilted forward. James felt Butch push up the bottom of his shirt, exposing his lower back. He didn't know if the chill he felt was from the night air against his skin or the fear.
"It's just tradition," Butch began to say casually like one would discuss the weather. "So that when I bring you in, they know it was me who caught you."
James whimpered, but it was barely heard through the gag in his mouth.
"Here's to the mark of a man who is no longer free," Butch said. James might've understood that Butch was saying it to the other men in the room in the same way one might raise a glass for a toast, but he was staring into the fire. The room felt hot, and he couldn't breathe, and his heart was pounding.
And then scalding metal met flesh, and he bit down on the gag as he screamed.
James didn't notice when Evaline pulled her hand away, and he didn't hear her question. His breathing sped up a few paces. He stood frozen, staring blankly out into the bathhouse, and all he could hear in his ears was his own scream.
Evaline lingered at the brand mark, trying to empathize and understand, but knowing she couldn't ever possibly know what it was like. She could only try.
She was about to pull her hand away and announce that nothing was infected, but everything in her froze and was set on pause as she was whisked away to another story, another head, another world.
This was a memory. But she couldn't know that. Not when she was seeing through James's eyes, feeling his emotions, hearing his thoughts like she was James in that moment in time.
It didn't register until it was over.
And then, it hit all at once, like she had glanced over and only briefly saw an incoming train before it crashed into her.
It was the pain that came first.
She felt her head spinning with a pain isolated near the left side of her forehead, and her leg throbbed like it had been cut open and left to bleed overnight. But the pain that overwhelmed everything else was isolated to her lower back. Burning. Scalding. Branding. Like she was owned, to be sold off and shipped like cattle.
As soon as the memory ended, her hand tore away from James and she fell backwards on the tub, shocking pain taking over her body as she was unable to keep her legs straight anymore. Every muscle below her waist seemed to spasm and lose control even with the warm mineral water, and she felt limp and helpless as she crashed into the water.
This was too much, too fast, and she wasn't prepared. She didn't think this would happen. She didn't expect this to happen. James would have to be deeply thinking of the memory, and she'd have to touch him while wanting to know more. But she didn't think this would happen. Not like this. Not in this environment. She wasn't prepared to feel this.
The fresh pain from the branding zipped up her spine like an electrocution, and for a second she felt like she was drowning in this shallow water. Evaline let out a beginning of a cry -- or maybe it was a scream, she didn't know -- but was already submerged underwater, and she only lost her breath as her voice turned to bubbles that reached the surface.
She felt paralyzed.
But a sudden wave of desperation washed over her. Desperation to escape. Desperation to survive.
She knew that James didn't directly cause this pain. She knew he wasn't the one who inflicted it on her. And she knew he didn't do this on purpose. It was an accident.
But the terror in her was telling her that she had to get away. He was the source.
She finally could feel her legs on the surface, and she pushed herself up despite the throbbing pain. As she reached the surface again, her back was already turning away from James, and she wildly and desperately reached for the opposite edge of the tub, accidentally sending the soap and two candles over the edge. Her hands gripped on the edge too tightly, and she found herself shaking and heaving, taking violent deep breaths in and out as her head hung low, her hair clinging to her face and body.
It hurt so much. And she couldn't undo it, because this wasn't real. She knew this would fade. It will.
But it hurt so... so much.
It felt like her eyes were already producing tears the second the memory ended, but now that she was above the water and staying still, she could feel it streaming down her face, hot and desperate, unable to be held back.
Pain wasn't something she could control. It was a feeling, not an emotion.
As she stayed there silently bawling and shaking at the opposite end of the tub, Evaline could only beg for it to stop with time.
James heard the splash behind him, and he whirled around. His mind still felt like it was trapped back there, and he couldn't escape, but the moment he saw Evaline leaning over the edge of the pool, he was able to come back.
Partially.
He still felt frozen, like he was trembling on the inside, but his muscles were stiff, and couldn't move. The steam of the room swirled around him, and all he could feel was the heat of the fire. The burning from sitting in front of it for too long, and the burning of scalding hot metal.
He wished he could reach out, but he felt stuck.
What had he done? What happened? Had... had Evaline...
She must have seen it too.
His vision was blurry, but he felt himself shutting down again. Everything going numb, slowly, and then all at once. The memory was tucked away, neatly, far, far back into his memory where he couldn't think of it or feel it again, and all he was left with was the lingering heaviness and discomfort in his soul.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
He wanted to crawl out of his own skin. Sink into the water. Disappear.
Evaline vaguely heard James apologize, but she couldn't respond. How could he even talk if he was feeling this too? It was too hard. Even if she wanted to, she didn't think she could. The pain was too overwhelming. It took control of her body, and it didn't leave.
Not yet. It will. It just hadn't yet.
Her hands still deathly gripped on the edge of the tub, she stayed there with her head low, not bothering to repress the cries or the terrifying mess of emotions inside of her that accommodated the pain.
James couldn't finish his thought, and he let his sentence hang emptily in the air as he watched Evaline cry. He knew that when she saw his memories, she felt everything too - and he never would've dreamed of sharing something like this with her. Not like this. Not where she felt it.
His chest felt tight, twisting into a knot in the center like it was cutting off his airways. He felt like he couldn't breathe, and it hurt.
He bent his knees in the water and started to sink. Lower, lower, until the water came up to his eyes. A stupid thought passed through his head - that at least, with the water lapping at his tear ducts, he could pretend he was able to cry. It wasn't like he hadn't cried yesterday, or a week ago. More than he had in an entire year, and still, it didn't feel like enough. Like there was still more trapped in there, waiting.
He watched Evaline for a little longer, but then he found himself drifting. He wasn't in the pool anymore. He was somewhere outside of it, looking down at them, experiencing it all from a third-person perspective. That way, it hurt less. He could simply be an observer.
But it only took a few seconds before he wasn't even observing anymore.
His entire body felt numb from the heat, and his head felt empty. Quiet like a winter night, covered in seven inches of snow, far out in the wilderness. No footprints. Only silence.
