The Way It Was by Another Illusion

Summary: Jack was just settling into his life at the Mercers when an unexpected ghost from his past resurfaced. Now thrown back into the world he thought he had left behind, the brotherhood he has with the Mercers takes on a new importance.

Author's Note- For those who still don't know, I'm British and thus spell accordingly. Also a big thanks to my excellent beta as ever, and to everybody who has reviewed so far. I appreciate all constructive criticism and feedback. I would like to apologise for the long delay in the getting this chapter out too, hopefully there will be less of a gap between chapters in the future.

Disclaimer- I do not own any of the characters from Four Brothers. The song quoted at the beginning is ‘Talk’ by Coldplay. I very clearly don’t own it, and therefore I would enforce that I make no profit from any of this.

Three: Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire.

" oh, brother I can’t believe it’s true/
I’m so scared about the future/
and I want to talk to you/
oh, I want to talk to you …”

Yawning loudly, Jack Mercer walked down the stairs, casually rolling a cigarette between his fingers. He needed caffeine fast. When Jack was around ten or twelve years old, he’d spend months at a time not sleeping at all, but since coming to the Mercers, he’d grown used to getting a solid seven hours of sleep a night.

Recently however, Jack’s mind had been on more pressing matters, causing him to stay up all hours of the night and he was paying for it threefold now.

He walked into the kitchen -- he was planning on making some coffee immediately.

“What was wrong with you last night?” Bobby asked suddenly. Jack turned around to see him leaning against the doorframe with an indefinable expression on his face.

He didn’t know what to say in response, so Jack just looked at the floor, continuing to roll the cigarette between his fingers. It was sort of therapeutic.

“You are not going to smoke while making breakfast, are you?” Bobby teased. “D’you even know how unhygienic that is?”

“Do you?” Jack retorted pathetically, putting his cigarette behind his ear for later. “Passata and mouldy cheese rings a bell here,” he said, remembering their conversation the day before.

“Don’t throw my own insults back at me, Jackie,” he said evenly. “That’s just plain rude. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that, huh?”

Jack rolled his eyes and put a slice of bread in the toaster. “How’s sleeping on the sofa suitin’ you?”

“It’d be better if you weren’t waking me up at God knows what hour.” Bobby looked at Jack intently. If Jack’s life was some cheesy Lifetime movie – and Jack knew he had enough fodder for at least a three movies already – then this would have been the point where he confessed to some terrible truth and Bobby would have reacted perfectly so that in the end everyone would live happily ever after.

The thing was, after being in the system for so long, Jack knew there was no such thing as a happy ending for a person like him. Talking was over-rated and essentially useless.

Everybody used to say that talking about something made it better, but Jack didn’t see how that could be the case. Talking couldn’t erase a memory, erase a scar, or an argument – those things stayed, they festered and burrowed underneath you, and Jack was pretty sure you couldn’t change that at all.

Ignoring his brother, Jack said nothing as he grabbed a can of Coke from the fridge, deciding it was less of an effort than making a pot of coffee.

“Do you wanna explain what’s going on?” Bobby asked loudly. Clearly he was not amused by Jack’s newfound silence.

“Not really,” Jack said, avoiding his eyes guiltily. How could he describe something that he could explain to himself? It was like he had stepped back in a time warp and he couldn’t explain the important things again. There were all the words and he actually trusted someone –more than just one person -- this time too, but perhaps, perhaps particular problem this ran too deep for him to bring into the open.

Just being involved was like a load of Jack’s old wounds had been reopened, and Jack wasn’t sure how it would affect him if it all came out and his brothers knew everything.

“Jack?” Jack suddenly broke out of his thoughts to hear his brother calling his name. “Are you deaf or something?”

“What?” Jack asked without irony, watching the toaster pop up.

Bobby shook his head, flipping him the finger. “Good thing that I’m fluent in sign language, huh?”

“What, are you in third grade?” a voice said from the doorway. Jack looked behind him to see Angel loitering by the back door

“Shut up, Angel,” Bobby said. “Haven’t you got somewhere else to be? Like with Sofi?” Bobby said Sofi’s name in the same way people said incest.

“Jealous, Bobby? Where’s Ma, anyway?”

“Am I her keeper?” Bobby scornfully replied. “I think she went out to get some food, or something.”

Jack looked at the clock in the kitchen, he needed to get to ready for school if he had any hope of getting there on time. He scowled and made his way upstairs to get dressed. “Much as I’d love to stay and chat, I’ve got to get out o’ here.”

“Hey Jack,” Bobby called, “I’ll give your lazy ass a ride to school if you hurry. I’ve got to go someplace anyway.” It seemed suspicious, Jack wasn’t even sure if Bobby had anything to do at the moment, and to be offered a lift was a pretty unusual thing.

“Sure,” he said finally, standing on the bottom stair. “Saves me walking to the bus-stop.”

“Heaven forbid, the little fairy messes his hair or shoes up.” Bobby always had to have the last word in everything.

Jack shook his head and walked up the stairs, cursing Bobby’s nickname for him with every step. It suddenly seemed that there were a hell of a lot of stairs in the house.

They hadn’t deserved him. That’s what Bobby had decided - he, the so-called Michigan Mauler, was worth a thousand of those office bound, ignorant officials who had suspended him. The guy hadn’t even been that badly hurt. Regardless, what had happened to hockey being a real man’s sport? It seemed like it was played by a bunch of pansy figure skaters now.

Besides, Bobby was going to take a holiday anyway. He’d been thinking about for months, though in all honesty, he would have preferred to go somewhere a little more exotic than his Mom’s house.

He leaned back in the car seat to watch his little brother walk into the main building – Bobby wasn’t stupid, he’d suffered the same humiliation of being driven to school, by Evelyn no less, and he tried to get out school through the back, until Evelyn got wise and would sit there in her car until first period ended.

Bobby had sort of resented her when he was younger. He wasn’t quite sure when it changed, but somehow it had.

Bobby started the engine again. He hated not knowing things. It wasn’t even he needed to know what was going on with Jack that was bugging him – the kid was still alive after Bobby hadn’t been around for ages to look after him – but it was the idea that there was something to know and he didn’t know it.

That was the sort of thing that made him grit his teeth, or swear more, or hell, just got him riled. It was sort of like Sofi’s voice.

Fourth period English was the easiest class that Jack had been in since Kindergarten. He hadn’t been put in a particularly good class, and therefore the teacher mainly put movies adapted from books to watch all period. This year Jack had to suffer through: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and other assorted estrogen filled monstrosities.

At least they didn’t have to watch them at home or anything. Jack couldn’t imagine how Bobby would react if he saw Jack watching an Audrey Hepburn film. He guessed that being called a fairy would only be the tip on the iceberg.

It was odd having Bobby and Angel come home at almost the same time; Jack wasn’t sure how to react. He’d started to get used to it just being Evelyn and him

Jack tried to keep in line with the literary spirit though; he wrote a lot of song lyrics in the lesson. You couldn’t only watch something dull like Pride and Prejudice a few hundred times, unless you were some of the girls in his class who squealed every single damn time Colin Firth came out of that lake.

Still, he only had to get through fifth period at the counsellor’s, and then it was lunch. Jack hated the counsellor the school had insisted he saw – and what right did they have to impose such a thing anyway? The guy was always trying to get him to admit that there was some deep trauma causing him to be how he was.

Jack didn’t think there was anything wrong with the way he was, and even if there was a problem, using whatever had happened in the past as an excuse was nothing more than weak.

He had seen kids who had been truly destroyed by their experiences, and he knew that he wasn’t one of them. Not even close.

Still, at least seeing the shrink meant he only had six periods of actual lessons a day, and he only worked in a couple of them. School was one great waste of time and the sooner he was out, the better.

The bell rang and the teacher turned off the television. Yawning, Jack stood up, grabbed his bag and made his way out of the room.

His phone had been ringing intermittently all day. Jack looked at the number of missed calls anxiously as he walked out of the cafeteria.

He had had an extended lunch after walking out of the counsellor’s office partway through their session -- he just couldn’t deal with him today.

“Hey Jack, practice at my place?” Casey Robins, the seventeen-year-old guitarist for their band asked, joining him.

“Sounds good,” he mumbled distractedly, debating about calling the person back but deciding against it. It could wait … they’d handle it.

“You ready for Thursday?” he asked, rubbing his hands together.

“Yeah,” Jack said, preoccupied with other concerns. He looked at the clock in the hallway. Maybe it was worth skipping the afternoon, he wouldn’t learn anything anyway and he highly doubted the school would actually suspend him. They’d given up on him before he had even started.

He hoped they wouldn’t anyway; he couldn’t face Evelyn’s disappointed face. Evelyn’s face when she was upset or disappointed hit Jack about a thousand times worse than any punch ever could or had.

“It should be great,” Casey said. “Loads of people in my Calculus class are going.” Calculus? Jack raised his eyebrows: that hardly inspired the rock star in him.

“Casey,” Jack began. “I need a favour. I’ve got to do something and um, can you cover for me? Say I’m sick or something.”

Casey nodded. “Sure, man.” That was the thing about Casey; he was the sort of guy who’d take your word on anything. The kid was naïve, but he was a good guitarist.

“Great, I’ll be back for rehearsal at fourish,” Jack said, calculating how long it would take him to get there, then get to Casey’s as Casey lived on the other side of town.

“See you then,” Casey said as Jack already began to walk away. “Hey, Jack,” he called. “You’re okay, aren’t you?” There was pseudo-pity in his voice that made Jack angry, he was sick of people pretending to care about him, tip-toeing around his ‘sensitive’ past – it was all bullshit.

Jack turned around, giving Casey a lame thumbs-up. “I’m fine.” That was thing - he was fine. That was why he had to do this. He was fine when other people weren’t and it was his fault – all of it.

It had always been Jack’s fault.

Jack called the voicemail on his phone, biting his lip nervously as he walked to the bus stop.

“You have five new messages,” the robotic female voice told him. Jack hung up – he didn’t want to hear the messages, not now, and if he was honest, not ever.

He just needed to do what he had to do now.