Jackson Selvaggio

“It could have.” There’s a certain grimness in her tone that reflects just exactly what that worse could have been. She couldn’t lose another family member and it doesn’t bear thinking about that Jackson might have ended up in the Initiative’s hands. Once again her eyes drift over his injuries, making note of each and every one of them so she can take repayment for them tenfold when the time comes. Lia wasn’t usually one for violence, despite being good at dishing it out when it came down to it she never usually liked resorting to it. However, this was one of those rare times that she was itching to inflict some pain and injuries onto other. The rage and hatred she’s feeling won’t accept anything else. “We’ll make them pay for it.” And it’s more of a vow than a statement. Her gaze falls to his wrist. “You had that looked at yet?” 

Jackson nods his head. Even with the head injury and the dazed look to his face, he can agree to that. They will pay back every injury they sustained on the Initiative. The time for petty squabbles and in fighting was long since passed. They needed to focus their efforts on the Initiative. But all those thoughts were pushed to the back of his mind. In the moment, all he could do was nod his head in agreement and be glad that Lia was here, in front of him. That she was okay and he couldn’t get himself to let go of her hand. To make sure that wasn’t going to change any time soon. “No,” he answers when she refers to his wrist. 

It’s too much, between the healing wound too close to his heart and the way his brother walked in here with bad jokes on his tongue that just make him think he was scared. Maybe that’s all it is looking back at him now, implied with every word he’s not saying and half the ones he’s finally offering him now. He wasn’t there, he didn’t see Cal die or half to try and drag his lifeless body home. But he’s not selfish enough to think that hadn’t left a void, that Jackson wasn’t terrified of feeling that all over again, and it’s stupid to think things were strained enough that they wouldn’t.

It’s not the response he expects from his brother. He’d thought joking was the way to go. It usually was with Eli. But he just closes his mouth and nods his head, a silent sign that he can accept that. That he understands there’s nothing really funny about any of this. They’d lost people, it could have been worse, but it was bad enough. Many of them were wounded, including each of the remaining Selvaggios. 

“Maybe. They’re not dead right now. I’m going to try and keep it that way.” It might not be a comforting answer, but she refuses to make promises like that. If she has to sit in front of him later and say it was too late, Eli had bled out too much before she got to him, or Lia had an aneurysm. She doesn’t want to make herself a liar. But their odds are better than they were, and if Nick’s on that list too, she doesn’t expect anyone in this house to care about him. It’s enough that she does.

There’s a palpable relief at her words. That they’re not dead and she’s actively working on making sure they stay that way. His shoulders slump like the tense puppet strings holding him up have just been cut, but he doesn’t fall over completely and when she tells him not to flinch, he barely even registers as she starts stitching his head back together. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t react. Another pinch is nothing to the odd painful numbness coursing through him now. 

His brother doesn’t say anything more about the hole in his chest, and he doesn’t know if he’s grateful for that or not. The silence is easier, ignoring that he almost died somehow safer than remembering what it felt like to lie on the floor of his father’s house feeling his life slip away. That kind of terror is a thing he’s only felt once in his life, watching the glassy eyed stare of Cal staring back up at him. He’d taken that bullet for Eli. Now he’d earned himself one of his own, and if it’s unfair that it didn’t kill him, no part of him really wants to die.

“It’s not my fault you were snoring every time I came in here,” Jackson tells him. The words are humorous, because Jackson had been in here more than he’d been anywhere else except for maybe his own bed those first few days. But it’s the next words that have him sitting up a little bit straighter, echoing his brother’s motions. Eli tells him that he can stop sitting there like he’s waiting for him to die and he lets out a slow breath. 

It doesn’t matter to her that his tone is still cold and detached, it was something she’d grown accustomed to over the years. What matters is that he’s reaching for her hand, giving her that contact that shows her he cares more than words ever could. There’s a wry smile at his question, followed by an attempt at a nonchalant shrug. “I’ve been better. But I’ll be fine.” Her head is spinning too much, standing on her injured feet for any prolonged period is almost impossible and the faltering steps she takes to sit herself next to him probably give away the words she spoke as the white lie that they are. But it was intended to ease worry rather than deceive. The next ones she spoke where nothing but honest, however. “I’m glad you’re here.” As battered and bruised as they were they’d made it out alive. That was what mattered. Eyes scanned his face once more, noting every little cut and bruise and silently swearing vengeance on those who had inflicted them. “How about you? Other than the obvious.”

He nods his head and doesn’t comment on how she stumbles into the seat beside him. She’s hurt, but she’s on her feet and that’s more than he could ever ask for. They can heal. They will heal. She asks about him and he nods his head again because he doesn’t know if he really has an answer for that. He’d been trying to assess the damage. Broken nose for sure, head wound from the pistol whip. It’s his wrist he’s not sure about. Black and blue, swollen and he reaches for the sleeve to pull it up. He’d have to chance a guess that it was broken, because nothing else would cause that type of bruising. And he recognized what a broken bone felt like. It was a sad thing to admit, because they weren’t for the right reasons. “This is the worse I got,” he says, like a broken wrist isn’t really much. “Could have been a lot worse,” he looked at her, not mentioning the black bag that had been over his head. 

“Hey. That’s my line. Get your own.” His nose wrinkles in some mocking disgust, though it’s true enough. That had long been his only answer to the question, though Bruno had never followed through on it. Which was probably for the best. “Unoriginal fuck.”

Jackson smirks at Eli’s defense towards the pony line. He was well aware it was his brother’s go to line, well aware Cal used to say it too because they’d gotten so used to each other. They’d picked up each others mannerisms and sayings, just like a true family did. There’d never been any question that they’d all been a true family. 

It was one thing to be in a firefight, knowing that any second your could die and that would be it, Naomi could deal with that and she fairly certain that it was a sort of chaos that she was painfully familiar with. Maybe even at peace with. However, it was a different thing to deal with the sight of Jackson being black bagged and dragged off. If she and Seamus hadn’t shown up and gone through the back, there was a strong chance that Jackson’s name would be among the missing. She’s not sure what she would do then and she doesn’t want to think about what they would do to him if he were captured. They were the ones that the Iniative was looking for after all.  “Of course. I always got your back, remember?” she says quietly as she presses the cool towel to an open cut on his face. 

“I remember,” he slurs and he doesn’t have to think about that answer. He knows it. He’s known it for a long time. After Eli had left, after his brother had died, Naomi had been the one who’d stuck around. When Bruno didn’t want to talk, when Lia was absent more than she was around, it was Naomi who he’d turned to more than anyone. More than Seamus, more than any other member of the Syndicate could really offer. So he remembers. How they’d spilled blood together, how they’ve watched out for each other, how she took a bullet for him and he doesn’t know if he’s ever gotten the chance to return the favor for any of it. Doesn’t think anything he’s done even comes close to what she had given him. 

There’s a nod of her head, but there’s some relief in the answer when it doesn’t add to her list. Though the distraction might be welcome at this point, a growing dread in the pit of her stomach what she’ll be left with when she has a moment to herself. If it isn’t a state that scared her much before, it loomed over her as too much of a real threat for her to rest comfortably now.

He stills, letting her remove his hand, looking at it like he forgot that he’d been reaching out to grab her wrist. She’s threading a needle and she says she has not anesthetic and he shakes his head. “I don’t need it,” he tells her before focusing on what’s more important in the moment. “They’re going to be okay?” he inquires about his family. The thought that he might be the last Selvaggio standing too terrifying a prospect to process anything else in the moment. 

Eli’s concept of time had been fucked early on, unable to keep himself conscious for more than a few hours at a time. His body was worn and struggling to heal itself, and a conversation with Ryan had been enough to make it clear that she was most of the reason there was any blood left in his body. He’d tried to leave it all on the floor of his father’s house, and if that would’ve been a fitting way to go, it wasn’t anything he welcomed. He’d sworn a thousand times that he was too stubborn to die, but apparently there were just as many people too stubborn to let him.

“It’s not,” he says, though the lie is evident, at least to him. His tone and sense of humor had always been a little stunted, but he’d like to think that even after everything they’d been through, Eli could still recognize it as a joke. “I wanted a fucking pony.” It’s a line Eli’s used himself, he’s sure of it. Though the banter spewed between them was always hard to pinpoint which one of them started a joke first. It felt familiar and natural right now, something he’d been afraid he wouldn’t be able to do with his brother anymore. 

He had no idea who was okay and who wasn’t. Who was taken and who was alright and accounted for. And that was perhaps the most anxiety-inducing thing as he was speeding back to LA. Upon entering the large home, Em was quick to find a very bruised and beaten Jackson, asking him what he knew about what had happened. “Not much. Left Blank was hit with ours inside - no specifics beyond that.” He didn’t have to venture a guess that the man before him had been present at the time. His injuries spoke for him in that regard. “What happened in there?” He was eager to find out, skipping any pretense of real worry for the man before him. Jackson was sitting there alive after all, while others were in far worse positions currently. He idly wondered if Gwen had been there, still holding sensitive information in regards to her impending fate.

Emery confirms that he doesn’t know much and Jackson nods slightly. If anything, he’s glad the man wasn’t there. There’d been too many of them gathered, too many faces that may now be in files, too many names, too many of them still not accounted for. When he asks what happens, he shakes his head. “Initiative showed up with a Corinthian,” he says, the disdain he feels for that man coloring the words rigidly. “Rhys and Ailie are still unaccounted for,” he tells him, not knowing how he’ll take the information. So far, there were still others in question, but he’d seen Ailie get taken with his own eyes. He’d almost been one of them, the black bag over his head and everything. That he’d been granted freedom while they hadn’t, he still wasn’t dealing with it properly. “I don’t know how they knew the location.” 

“Shut up.” She brushes off his protests as simply as that, little time or will to start arguing stubborn male pride. It’s probably for the best she never ended up at the bedside of patients who still had a pulse, too cold even on most of her better days to offer anything like comfort or compassion. It was self-preservation, but now it’s just habit. And she’s swift to start wiping blood from his forehead regardless, until she can better see the gash in his skin. It’ll need stitches, and she looks away to start searching for a needle in the first aid kit next to her without releasing his jaw.

He does as she says and his mouth closes. She’s wiping at skin that’s so numb, he’s not looking forward to the moment the adrenaline starts to wear off and he starts feeling all these bruises and cuts. There’s a lot of blood on him, a lot more in his belly making him sick. Mixing with all that fear and rage. But it’s wearing off, he’s coming down from the high of the fight and there’s just a numbness and a pain settling in. 

Naomi stares dumbly down at the ice a she had handed him because this isn’t her expertise. She’s built to destroy, not to heal and put things back together again. And with her natural ability to put herself back to 100% even after the worst of beatings, it didn’t give her much reason to study the fine art of first aid. Although now that they were engaged int a full scale war, maybe it’s time to start leaning. Not for herself, but more for others even if she won’t be able to help with the bigger injuries like the one upstairs. Naomi tilts her head and scoots a little bit closer to take better look at the injuries on Jackson’s face and head.  She doesn’t even know where to begin to try and help him, but the most she can say is that in case he has a concussion, he better not fall asleep. The most she feels that she can do right now is help him clean up the blood. There’s another damp towel in her other hand and she lifts her arm to start wiping away at the blood on his face. If it’s forward of her, Jackson can just tell her to stop. She gently presses the towel to the side of his temple and prays that she’s not hurting him any more than he already is. “Not anymore. You know me. I bounce back fast.” she says quietly, momentarily glancing down at the large tear in her jacket where the bullet had torn a small chunk of flesh out. It looked like nothing had happened at all. 

Jackson swallows thickly, nodding his head. At least she was okay. He knew she healed, but it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt when she got hit. There’s still the memory of her taking a bullet in the heart. But she’d come back from that, just as she’d come back from anything, he believed. She starts wiping blood from his face, pressing the towel against where the worse of it had stuck to his skin. He lets her do what she wants, too dazed still to do much else. There’s another memory in his mind, though, and his eyes focus on her, despite being glassy and glazed. “You got me out.” It comes out as a statement and he means it as one. It’s not a question. It’s a statement of fact. But there’s an underlying meaning to him saying it. It’s a thank you. The feel of a hood over his head, of cuffs around his wrist and he knows he could have just as easily been sitting in an Initiative van or facility right now. It’s always been a possibility for him, but just how close he’d come awoke a new sort of fear in him for it. They don’t know his name, otherwise the Estate would be swarming right now. He wants to keep it that way. He doesn’t ever want to be in their hands, he has a family to protect.