Little Tin Bucket

The man placed a little tin bucket of water and a gnawed, sodden yellow sponge on the floor. He said, "Clean yourselves up."

Sand was grainy and stuck sweatily to Ralph's body, mud was streaked across his ankles, his mouth tasted of soldered metal. He almost wept at the sight of clean water and a gritty bar of soap, he was grubby; but the man was apparently unaware of this. He stood with his eyes narrowed against Jack, his face mutilated by colour.

Jack was not looking at him or anyone, and he did not turn when the man left. He sat in the corner, staring back into the pastel blue of the sky.

The sun was shining pink through grey clouds, as if everything inside had been lit by a rose-tinted bulb. Beneath it, the sea was webbed with dark weeds, salt and live, fluttering fish – once again it was especially magnificent. But they did not see it. All faces were turned back across the length of the ship, to the black stain of the island on the luminous horizon, to the past.

Ralph could not fathom it.

Still, they were crying, but Ralph's tears had been scrubbed away by the rough slide of his own dirty knuckles. Home was fast approaching now, soon Jack would feel the sharp sting of cobbled street rather than hot white sand on his feet, and Ralph knew he would hate it. In that thought he was smiling, despite the snotty, blotchy-red faces about his knees.

The painted boys did not move towards the tin bucket, though many glanced at it, the memories of clean skin and vanilla soap flooding back. The delight that it evoked was splintered with terror. They would be snakes shedding old skin once again.

Ralph cleared his throat.

"Doesn't anybody want to wash?"

The littluns began squeaking their pleas (like piglets, Jack thought, and immediately his head snapped around to stare at them). Ralph ignored this and gazed patiently at Jack and Roger. Roger's eyes were hooded behind his mask, tired and raw with loud tears. Ralph had never heard him make quite as much noise.

Beside him Jack looked over his shoulder, and swallowed.

"We need to wash," Ralph insisted, stern and hushed. "C'mon. Why don't – Roger – c'mon."

Roger's dismal eyes flinched up into Ralph's, and they swung to his right to face Jack. Jack did not look at him.

"Che –"

"No!" Ralph said abruptly, and again two or three littluns squeaked. "He's not 'Cheif' anymore, Roger."

Jack did not speak, but he turned fully to face Ralph. One side of his face was plastered in dark shadow, and the other lit by a ray of the purest light, causing the tears' wet remains to glitter on his cheeks.

Ralph took in a breath shakily, determined to face that face properly now, and without fear or hate. This would all be forgotten, he was sure of it. When they were home it would all be fine again. He was sure of it. That would be what would happen.

"He's Jack."

Jack's teeth, the sickly, foul tinge to them appearing bright white against the red clay, snuck out from his mouth and then pressed down into his lower lip. And then he cried again, two short bursts of breath choking him when up in his throat. He looked at the ground, balled his hands into fists in his lap, and he cried.

Simply, Ralph picked up the little tin bucket and then placed it back down at Jack's feet. Ralph knew it needed only four words. He knew Jack.

"We're going home, Jack."

Jack looked up at him, and finally Ralph knew the pale, red-threaded eyes.

He knelt down and dipped the sponge into the water, relishing the cold slip of his over his hands. He wrung the sponge and then held it up to Jack's face.

"No -"

"You need to get this off. It's silly."

"Don't!"

"We're going home now," Ralph said firmly. "Everything will be alright soon. Just – let me. O.K.? Let me."

Why, suddenly, Ralph wanted to do this he was unsure. Jack was lost, so he thought, but now they were here, held together again. If they could forget it, if they could just forget everything, it would be fine again – these masks were memories that needed to be wiped away.

Or, in Jack's case, stored in a dark, comfortable hidey-hole in a secret pocket of his mind.

Ralph moved forward again, and the sponge touched Jack's face, and then moved down steadily. Jack let him, and as Ralph cleaned, the paint began to glide from his face into forked green and black and red rivers; down his neck, his shoulders, Ralph's fingers. He had forgotten Jack had flesh, all bronze and patched burgundy with sunburn. The usual flaxy white of his scalp was also screaming red, the skin of his shoulders was peeling away brightly. Finally the paint was gone, in its place a green smudged, dripping, sore-eyed, freckled face. The only paint left was matted pretty black and crimson in his hairline.

Jack would not stop crying.

"There," Ralph smiled. "It's gone now."

Jack was trembling and sniffing, desperately blinking back tears. Ralph remembered the Jack from the island, the forest, with a perverse fondness: Jack, scarlet jewels of blood sliding from his fingertips.

And now. Now he was curled in a corner, snivelling and filthy and mute. It was one of the most electrifying, terrible things Ralph had ever seen.

This had to be forgotten. And now he had the old Jack, the Jack that he had explored with and laughed with. The Jack who wore a Prefect badge on his chest, and not a knife. Everything would be fine. They could forget now.

Ralph wanted to console him. The only means of doing so, he found, was a faint, charcoal-rubbing of a memory – his Mother. When he had cried she took his face in her long warm hands, and just sort of kissed his forehead. It was a girls' thing, but he didn't care anymore. Anything, now, anything to make things better.

So Ralph did the same. He folded his fingers around Jack's chin, leaned forward, and pressed a quick, quiet kiss onto Jack's forehead.

Jack let him, again.

"It's better now, see?"

Jack shook his head – he did not see. His big mouth started to shiver frantically, fought against tears. They fell on flesh this time.

"It isn't," he mumbled.

"It is. We'll go home, and everything will be alright."

"How?"

Ralph did not need to think about his answer, because he had wanted to explain this for so long, and now he had the words.

"Because, Jack!" He insisted irritably, "Because we'll go back to how it was. The people and – and the grown-ups – they can teach us to be – to – to not be like this anymore."

A distinct shuffling began from behind him, but Ralph ignored it.

"They can teach us to be proper again. And be good."

For the first time in a while, Jack was smirking at him – the scorn was there but none of the dangerous hate.

"You're silly," he spat, and his mouth fractured into a gleaming, smiling snarl. He snapped, "They hit each other, and they kill pigs! They kill people all of the time – with guns and bombs!"

Ralph had never dared think of things this way. His eyes widened.

"What have we really got to learn from?" Jack continued brutally, and though he was crying and cowering still, Ralph was struck with fear. Suddenly anaesthetized, and insanely saddened, he fell back onto the floor. Jack saw this, and he was calmed immediately.

"I don't want to go home," he said finally, darkly.

Ralph gulped against his anger and the swollen hot tears waiting to feel oxygen, to be free from his skull. He would not cry again, and he would not think badly of people at home. Jack saw things in a very odd light. Nothing could come of this but good.

"Is that why you're crying?" he asked.

Jack put his hands, patterned with paint and dirt, over his eyes. Nobody spoke. A stretch of silence filled the ship deck, they all watched him, mesmerised; suddenly everything had been reversed.

Jack was the one to speak first. It was only one word, but Ralph knew that was all that was needed.

"Simon."

He did not look at them, now words came from his mouth with an erratic clucking and flicking of his tongue, twisted and clotted, horrified. Ralph could not understand him, because only one word was truly clear; and that was wish.

For some strange reason everyone allowed this crazed hiccupping and talking to go on. Jack stared up at the sky and spoke to it, and the others, in their respectful silence of him and of his madness, gazed at the floor.

Wordlessly, Maurice took the bucket as he talked, and began rubbing the sponge over his face. Maurice, it seemed, shared Ralph's joy in the rescue, temporarily blinded by the miracle of it, the thought of home and brickwork and factory fumes – the thought of a higher order. He was grinning.

Jack's voice dissolved into awful, thick, gluey noises. Maurice's face was moving and made of skin again. When the crying was gone, Jack was left looking at the sky once more, rattling.

The little tin bucket was passed about the room, and one by one fleshy faces appeared, but Jack did not care for them any longer. They were different when painted. Now they were all tanned and grubby, but none of them were dark enough to be Simon. Because Simon was different. And Simon was gone, at sea.

If he had been buried, at least he would have been snug and warm beneath in earth, in one definite place, held safe. He would float forever at sea and that thought alone made Jack feel sick, sicker than he ever had, sicker than he had felt while spitting the boy's blood between his teeth.

He hoped the sea had taken Simon somewhere quiet and beautiful.

Ralph looked at Jack.

Jack was turned away from them again, but his lips were moving in time with breaks and syllables in words. He could not see his eyes, but his chin was tilted out and up, and Ralph supposed he was watching the sea.

A/N: So, after I wrote this I thought 'Wow. Really?'

I've been studying LOTF for my English Literature coursework, and though I'd read it previously, studying it made me want to write fic. I had to fix things. Sympathy for the devil, y'know? :D

Anyway. William Golding is a genius... and I think I've subconsciously imitated his style here, but whatever. My first slashy fic too (yeah, this is as hardcore as I'm going to get with tweleve-year-old boys, I'm afraid). I have not proof read this properly and it's not my best, but it NEEDED to be vented. Hope you liked!