Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Jack was seven, he killed a girl from his group home. Not on purpose, or at least not totally on purpose. She was a year older than him, and really, he thought, it was her own fault for being so nosey.

A few months prior, he’d staked a claim on the abandoned house down the street. Some of the older kids had tried to keep him out, deciding it was their territory, but Jack was a biter and, like any good guard dog, he defended what was his.

In this house, he kept his things; old bike parts and jars full of nuts and bolts and a car battery he found at the dump. His collection was slowly growing, to a point where it wasn’t just the bigger kids he had to worry about. When he started stealing lengths of pipe and corrugated iron from the scrap yard, he knew his sharp teeth weren’t going to be a strong enough defence if grown-ups came snooping. So, he built a man trap.

 He’d seen how bear traps worked on Looney Tunes, when Wile. E. Coyote set one up to trap Roadrunner, but Jack was cleverer than that. He’d always thought, if he wanted to catch Roadrunner, he would. But, either way, a bear trap would be a good start. He found a spring mechanism at the scrap yard and the jaws he made from metal shrapnel from the dump.

It was a monstrous thing, triggered by the opening of the rotting wooden door.

The girl, who was just desperate to tattle on him, went snooping where she shouldn’t.

They were angry with him, yelling and shaking him. Oh god, what have you done? Her blood was almost black and had dried completely by the time they found her, and he was well on his way to his ‘new home’.

Chapter Text

When Jack was thirteen, he spent a week in solitary confinement. Over the six years he’d been there, in the hospital, he’d been in solitary more times than he could count. At first it was just to let him calm down, to keep him away from the other kids until he’d ceased his tantrum and was no longer threatening to strangle anyone.

Then it was as a punishment for when he’d been naughty, when he’d hit another kid with his lunch tray or smashed a window in an attempt to go look at a car that had parked up on the street outside. They’d leave him for a day and let him out again, his shrink trying to reason with him that yes Michael did say that Dick Dastardly was lame, but no, that didn’t excuse him breaking his nose and disrupting everyone’s Meal Time.

Jack had never been left in solitary for this long before. The silence was pressing in on him after the first few hours. The stark white walls cold and unforgiving. But he held on till morning; even during Lights Out, he hugged his knees and told himself that he’d be out in the morning, escorted to the canteen for breakfast and allowed to go back into classes with the other kids.

The next morning, a breakfast tray was pushed through the opening at the bottom of the door, but no one came in to see him. Not the orderlies, not the nurses, not even his shrink.

He looked at the breakfast with disdain.

Lunchtime rolled around and another meal was pushed into the room. No contact. This was when he really started worrying.

“Hey,” he called, as he heard the footsteps echo away down the hall, he knocked on the door, like someone would open it for him, “hey, where are you going?”

No one replied. No one was there.

“Let me out,” he yelled, beating his fists harder against the steel, “Let me out!”

He picked up the tray, his lunch spilling into a pile on the floor as he battered the tray against the door, the plastic cracking against the metal.

“You can’t keep me in here forever!”

Jack sighed deeply, dropping the tray, skulking back to bed and wrapping the covers around him. They’d let him out by dinner time.

Dinner time came and went, another tray pushing through the opening and another set of footsteps leaving him behind.

His heart pounded in his chest. Eyes keeping a careful watch on the door. Waiting for his shrink to show up and tell him off and send him back to his room, with his drawings and nice bed covers and view of the playground.

At lights out he huddled as far into the corner as possible, eventually falling asleep.

The next morning, the mess of discarded food had been cleaned up. Jack kicked himself for not staying awake long enough to get out when the cleaner came in during the night.

He spent most of the day screaming at the door, screaming that he would get them if they didn’t let him out, his knuckles beaten bloody against the steel, every meal they gave to him thrown against the walls, the sheets from the bed torn and discarded on the floor. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he acknowledged, with a faint surprise, that they hadn’t come in to sedate him, like they had so many times before, they’d just let him scream and scream until he wore himself out.

He dipped in and out of sleep that night.

The next day he spent begging, begging them to let him out, promising he would be good, promising not to hit the other kids or swear at his teacher, promising to cooperate with his shrink, tell her everything. He begged them not to leave him on his own anymore.

He slept restlessly, throat sore and eyes red from crying.

The next day he kept quiet, counting his breaths.

He slept lightly, but made it through the night.

The next day, the silence was pressing in on him again, as if the gravity had suddenly got stronger and he was fighting against it to get up. He started talking to himself, spinning tales of violence and heroes and villains just to keep the quietness at bay. Rewriting every comic he’d ever read with him as the hero, pummelling everyone who had ever got in his way.

He slept reluctantly.

On the final day he sat quietly, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed. His mind raced with plans. How he’d get back at them, how he’d make them sorry.

Just before dinner, an orderly came in. Jack looked at them through the curtain of his hair, he liked having something to hide behind, so he’d kicked up too much of a fuss every time they tried to cut it until, one day, they just gave up.

“You’re out, Dante,” they said, gesturing out of the door.

Jack’s wide eyes flickered briefly from the orderly to the corridor beyond them. He was going to be in a lot of trouble.

Standing up, he made for the door, a strong hand gripping his upper arm to escort him out of the solitary cell.

“Dr Garner wants to talk to you,” the orderly explained. It wasn’t a request; it was a statement.

When they made it to his shrink’s office, the orderly waited outside, prompting Jack to just go in, the doctor was expecting him.

“Hello again, Jack,” Dr Garner greeted him, her hand motioning for him to sit in the chair in front of her desk.

He sat down sulkily. Regardless of his frantic promises on the second day, he was going to make things very difficult for her for the foreseeable future. Serves her right for locking him away all on his own.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

He didn’t reply.

“Jack, do you know why you were put into isolation?” They liked to call it isolation, like they were isolating a virus for the benefit of the rest of the group, or to make it sound less like a prison to any outsiders who might get wind of what was going on.

“No,” he lied. He did know. He knows they’re mad at him for what he did to his teacher. He didn’t want to learn geography; he’d had an idea and he needed to write it down before he forgot. And if he was writing it down, he may as well do the sketches for it, and it he was doing the sketches he needed to work out the math, which he could do if his teacher would just shut up for one minute and stop nagging him. Stupid bitch had it coming.

Dr Garner sighed, “Jack, we’ve been through this before, I thought we were making progress.”

Jack scoffed. Progress. Everyone thought that progress was them telling him off, telling him what he should do, and then he doesn’t punch anyone for a few weeks.

“Jack,” he hated how much she said his name, every single time, as though it would make him understand her, “you cannot keep lashing out every time things don't go your way.”

“But I was busy,” he could feel her about to interrupt him, so he went on in earnest, “This idea, it’s a good one, I really needed to get the math down and –,”

“I understand that, Jack, I do, but I thought we agreed that you would do classes with the others, and you have your designated time to work on your projects.”

“But I had the idea then! I couldn’t just wait.”

“Jack, even if you couldn’t wait, we agreed that violence is not acceptable. What you did was completely out of line.”

He looked down at his shoes, scuffed sneakers, the edge of the Velcro strap curling up through repeated fastening.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked at him, with disappointment in her eyes. She was trying, he supposed, which is more than what most people did.

That night he ate, alone, in his room. You can eat in the canteen with the others again tomorrow, they promised, and you can meet the new teacher.

Chapter Text

When Jack was sixteen, some suit came to visit him. He hadn’t had any visitors in the entire time he’d been at the hospital.

An orderly took him out of his morning class, leading him to the visiting room that he had never been to. It was a large room, with round tables and plastic chairs, the yellow paint on the walls was faded and scuffed around the skirting board. There was a battered cardboard box of toys in the corner for the younger kids.

A man stood by the window, hands in his pockets, back to the room.

The orderly pushed Jack inside, closing the door behind him and waiting outside. Jack looked down at his sneakers, the Velcro straps haphazardly fastened. He still wasn’t allowed shoelaces.

He didn’t notice that the man had turned around until he spoke, “You must be Jack.”

Jack looked up; a hand was being held out to him. He didn’t shake it.

“My names Robert Nicholson, and I’ve heard some very interesting things about you.”

“Like what?”

“Like how you’re excelling in maths and the sciences, so much so that the teachers here can’t keep up with you anymore. And how you’ve scored one of the highest IQs in the country.”

Jack smirked to himself.

“I work for a very profitable armament company, we make a lot of products, mostly home security and arsenals for gun fanatics. But, do you wanna know a secret?”

Jack’s piercing stare met with Nicholson’s. He tried not to smile when Nicholson recoiled slightly, “Sure.”

“We have some military contracts. Some, off the books, contracts.”

Jack’s interest was piqued. Shady government shit, armament companies, gun fanatics. All stuff that Jack could totally get on board with. “Why are you here?”

“Because you’ve had ideas that usually we pay much less intelligent people to come up with.”

They let him show Nicholson to his room, with very close supervision, not so much for Jack’s safety as for Nicholson’s. His walls were lined with various drawings and schematics of weapons, some he could make right now if they gave him free reign of the hospital, some he needed specialist materials for. Military grade materials. Materials that even CHAANK might not be able to get their hands on.

Nicholson stayed pretty quiet for the most part, letting Jack explain things as and when he wanted to. Even when he did ask questions, he quickly learned that Jack would reroute any questions he didn’t like the sound of anyway.

Once he took Nicholson through his… portfolio, pointedly skipping over some of the more technical and outlandish designs, Jack sat back on his bed, hunching his shoulders. He didn’t want to talk anymore.

The orderly at the door coughed deliberately. Nicholson looked at his watch, as though he was the one who was being kept.

“I hope we’ll meet again soon, Jack,” he went to pat him on the shoulder, but Jack pulled away.

After Nicholson left, Jack was called into see Dr Garner.

“I have an admirer,” he told her.

She explained that, although it was flattering that people could recognise his intelligence, she didn’t want him to read too much into Mr. Nicholson’s visit, it might not be the best path for Jack to pursue. You shouldn’t allow people to exploit you for their benefit, if it’s going to hurt you.

Now, he hadn’t quite been offered a job, but he didn’t not get offered one either. Legally they couldn’t employ a sixteen-year-old, and with his residence at the hospital preventing any off-the-books deals, the best offer Nicholson had to him was a guaranteed position once he left the care of the hospital.

Jack had elected not to tell him that there was a very high chance he wouldn’t ever be leaving.

Chapter Text

When Jack was eighteen, he was moved into the adult ward and they started letting him out of the hospital.

He got on in the adult ward just as badly as he got on in the children’s wards. All the other patients were such losers here. They were all so boring. Jack didn’t have anyone you might call a friend. Or, they wouldn’t call him a friend, at least. The more subdued environment did lead to him getting into slightly fewer altercations which, to be honest, tricked Dr G into think he had stabilised as he got older (he hadn't).

But, the highlight of this move was that, for one day a month, they set him free. Well, free in the same sense that a dog being walked on a leash is free. An orderly would drive him and a few of the others into the nearest town, make them promise not to run away and then release them into the public. This certainly surprised Jack; in the hospital they kept him under pretty strict surveillance, watching his every move in case he went rogue and snuck into the security office and riffled through files that he definitely shouldn’t, or worse, he initiated a lockdown at the ward that would be a huge hassle for everyone.

He’d almost done a runner a few times, but they’d caught him trying to hitch a ride out of town and threatened to revoke his privileges, so he kept his deviance on these trips to a minimum.

One of the perks of these day trips was all the shit he could actually look at before buying it. At the hospital, the nurses bought presents for the kids’ birthdays (and baked a cake and forced the rest of the kids to drone through a rendition of ‘happy birthday’, before a fight inevitably broke out over the candle blowing), usually based on whatever the recipient did during recreational hours, so he did have a fair number of belongings doted around his room, but this was the first opportunity to go in a shop and look at all the choice.

He’d been given $10 to do with as he wished. He spent it on a bag of sour candy, a Batman action figure and a porn magazine.

Jack sat on a bench, eating his candy and people watched. Tried to gauge what other people did all day. He’d had the same routine every day since he was 7, and he was honestly unsure what other people wasted their time doing. People seemed a lot more comfortable in the world than he did. The curtain of his hair concealed him enough to not feel exposed out in the open.

He checked his watch. It was old, with tell-the-time past-and-to markings and a crack in the plastic casing, but he’d got it for a long-gone birthday and they didn’t seem to be saving up to get him a Rolex anytime soon. Besides, he still kind of needed the reminder on which arm meant what, sometimes. Only sometimes.

He had an hour to kill before they went back to the hospital.

Chapter Text

When Jack was twenty-three, they released him from the hospital.

They couldn’t do much more for him. He’d spent more of his life there than not. He hadn’t gone off the rails (too badly) for years now. It seemed like, maybe, he could lead a somewhat normal life outside, without doing too much damage, under their watchful eye, of course.

They set him up in an apartment, paid the rent for a year and arranged for him to have bi-weekly therapy sessions back at the hospital.

He managed just fine, but in his own mind he was living the highlife. Takeout every night, he could stay up as late as he wanted, free reign to go wherever he liked.

He’d maintained a passing interest in what CHAANK were doing, their latest releases. The incidents that they had tried to cover up, but which Jack was clever enough to find, sifting through police reports and CCTV tapes.  

He hadn’t approached them about a job yet, content to, at least for a while, make up for his lost teenage years by doing as many drugs (recreationally) and having as many late nights (not through paranoid fear) as possible.

He met a girl. Well, a few girls actually, but there was only one he kept around.

***

On one such late night, he got into a bar fight. If you asked him, he’d give a cryptic answer about what happened. Some dude got in his grill about something or other. He pulled his recently acquired Colt from his coat, pressed it against the guy’s chest and pulled the trigger.

He was arrested, on multiple charges.

After a night in jail, which he hated, his mind wandering back to a week of his life that lurked in the shadows of his memory at all times, he was let out. The $500,000 dollar bail paid by CHAANK from their pocket change.

The trial went by in a blur, he barely took any notice of it besides being walked to and from the courthouse by some bodyguards. That and the shirt they’d made him wear was stiff around the collar and he hated it.

He should have gone back to the hospital. They’d dragged Dr Garner in to tell the court how unstable he was, how violent he was, how damaged he was. How it weighed heavy on her shoulders that their institution ever saw fit to discharge him.

He watched her in the witness stand, without the shield of his hair over his eyes. His CHAANK appointed lawyer argued his case. Even brought in a payroll shrink to fight his corner; that he was a special case, that he could thrive if given the correct stimulation, which CHAANK was more than willing to give him, that his arrested development was overshadowed by his genius. Should such genius really be locked away to rot?

Jack Dante was acquitted of homicide, aggravated sexual assault and possession of a non-registered firearm.