Published: October 22, 2025.
Words: 1,673.
Chapters: 1/1.
Summary:
Jack can only have his memory reset so many times before consequences begin to show.
(And it only becomes impossible to ignore when it's something as fundamental as realizing he forgot how to tie his damn shoes.)
Notes:
i'm insanely slow and have suffered from the Brain Issues much of this year, but i am finalllllly posting this!!
written for the Where the End Begins sop fanzine. check out the collection!!
On AO3.
Jack stops.
A dead stop in the center of Cornelia's main square, sufficiently unexpected that it takes the other three a moment or two before they come to a gradual halts of their own. They pivot around to gawk where Jack stands in utter disregard of foot traffic. He doesn't budge when a woman bumps him on the shoulder and issues hurried apologies before jogging off.
Jed closes in on Jack's peripheral, sidling up beside him. "You all right there, bud?"
Most things demand too much effort to devote words to them when action is often simpler and quicker, but neither words nor actions are viable here, and Jack stews in indecision borne from not knowing shit all about this. He returns the question with a disgruntled noise and keeps his attention fixed on what's important: staring at his feet.
"Jack? You in there?"
He grunts to silence Jed, eyebrows drawn in tight like he might somehow intimidate an answer from the stone street.
"What? Is Chaos hiding in the sewers?"
Neon. Her dismissiveness spurs a louder noise of disagreement from Jack, and he really doesn't have the patience now (or ever) to explain the existence of sensations he feels viscerally and with his whole being. He would ignore her, but--ugh, yeah, he's already feeling done and maybe one of his three companions might have a useful observation in them. Frustration surpasses inconvenience, and Jack crafts his communicative sounds into complete sentences.
"Look at it."
"At what?" Neon asks.
Jack shakes a foot, and now Neon and Ash have joined in crowding into Jack's personal space to look closer. The trio form a circle, heads bowed as they look at Jack's boot.
"I…still don't get it," Neon says. "It's a dirty boot. Should I be seeing something else?"
"Eh…" Jed makes a pensive face. "Wouldn't say it's all that dirty."
Because everyone needs an opinion on Jack's damn boot, Ash jumps in. "Yeah, that's hardly a boot past its time. Little bit of elbow grease, and you'd have it near new."
Neon casts a suspicious eye up, and when Jack ignores the obvious provocation, she states, "I'm not cleaning your boots."
"That's--" A complete waste of time to trace how she got from his point A to her point B. Exasperation wins out for a long moment, and he continues, "I'm not asking you to do that."
With a hint of a smile, Ash tosses Neon a wink. "Jack would never be so subtle if he wanted something."
"Is Jack capable of subtlety?" Jed puts the question out like he's mulled it over in private.
Simultaneous, from Ash and Neon: "Not in your dreams."
And, here, Jack has hit his limit and will be hitting the bricks. "Forget it."
"What? No!" Jed protests for all three as they scramble to form a barrier in front of Jack. "Tell us the problem if it isn't about the cleanliness of your boots!"
"No."
"You wouldn't have brought it up in the first place if it wasn't seriously bothering you," says Ash, and Jack cares little for the smug quirk of the other man's lips.
"It was a mistake. Move on."
"Nope," Neon says, tripling down like this group is a democracy. "You do realize that we're going to keep bothering you about this, right?"
Signed his own fucking death warrant.
Jack makes a low noise..
"Ooh, he's annoyed," Jed says. "Should we back off?"
"Only if you're a coward," Ash replies.
Neon nods. "Press the assault. What's the deal with your foot, Jack?"
"This is a waste of time!" Jack's complaint goes entirely unheard, and though excess energy has his fingers flexing like they might form a fist, this is neither the time nor place for that shit. Three pairs of eyes stare him down eagerly for his words. (Does peer pressure count as a democracy?) Jack starts to groan, and it tapers off into an irritated sigh as he falls back to the fountain where he plants his ass on its edge.
"Did we just win?"
"Think so."
"Holy shit."
As much snapped as it is sighed: "Do you want your goddamn answer or not?"
"Yessir!" Jed slaps a hand to his forehead in sloppy mock salute. Hardly a blink before he, Neon, and Ash are gathered back around Jack like overexcited children.
Yet another noisy sigh from Jack (because he isn't going to let them forget he was forced into this) as he works off his right boot, and then he's got it held up for their inspection. "Look again."
Jed squints. "Gonna be blunt: I still don't get it. Am I just stupid or is Jack losing it?"
"Why can't it be both?" Neon asks.
There is undoubtedly an inane retort on Jed's tongue before Ash interrupts: "Why do you tie your laces like that?"
Jack huffs a faint laugh. "You get it."
Jed and Neon both gawk, and the latter comments, "That is admittedly…odd."
And, yeah, it is. An oddness that only occurred to Jack as he glanced down midstep and took notice of how he tied his laces, wrongness proliferating through him. Like the Cornelians milling around the square, Ash, Jed, and Neon have their laces tied in what seems to be the common method.
Only Jack deviates like how he does.
Weeks ago, he remembers going to tug on his boots in the morning only to stop abruptly in abject confusion because how the actual fuck does one tie shoes. He held each lace in a hand and stared at his boots, failing to will any recollection back. Time for a ponderous solution ran out eventually, and so he shrugged and made due with a quick fix of wrapping the laces tight around his ankles and tying the remaining into stacks of simple knots. It didn't always succeed at keeping his feet securely in his boots, but it would work fine until it didn't. (Having to detangle the mess of knots-atop-knots he created each night was definitely a pain he could do without, though.)
Good enough--until the glaring absence of knowledge slammed to the forefront of his mind. It wasn't that Jack just didn't know that his methodology was questionable or that he choose to go about things differently. No, it was that he had known, that he had somehow forgotten, like his head sprouted a leak and the knowledge of how to tie shoes drained out with who knows what else.
It's an emptiness he's been distantly cognizant of, these gaps in his mind. More than once, he's had an answer at the tip of his tongue only to realize there was shit all really there, storage emptied out overnight by thieves. But nothing so important to need to stop, so he redirects and moves on. This all is not the ache calling him forward. Maybe it could even be preferable to shed inane knowledge, keep his mind lean for the actually important shit.
But his boots.
His fucking boots.
This is the first time he hasn't been able to smoothly redirect. Is it vital that he can lace his boots in the common way? He's found a workaround that hasn't had his boots flying off in full yet. Why is his mind stuttering on something so stupid and pointless as not being able to tie his shoes? Why is it a sensation underlying that pull of Chaos in his chest, a scab he needs to pick until he bleeds? Why does it feel like there is something he should desperately want to recall? Why does he care--
"Did you want a lesson?" Neon asks. In a mutter, she adds, "Know I'd be zoning out in embarrassment if everyone found out I couldn't tie my shoes."
"Hey, I mean he's got…a solution." Jed musters an admirable and entirely unasked for defense. "Innovation. Necessity is the mother of invention and all."
Neon balances on the balls of her feet and springs up. "You hear that, Jack? You're father to a beautiful bullshitted means of keeping a shoe on your foot. The world will remember you not as vanquisher of Chaos, but as the man who gave us a worse way of tying shoes."
Ash chuckles. "Congratulations, Jack."
Fatherhood is a duty that will go into the void alongside the rest of this useless fretting. Jack works on cramming his foot back into his creation, a simple but challenging process of pushing and pulling until leather and laces yield to his will.
"Still…what a thing to forget," Neon muses. "Lesson learned to never take directions from you three in any case."
"I know where I'm going fine," Jack retorts.
"Don't group us in with Jack," says Ash. He sticks out a foot and gives a sweeping gesture to his own boot. "You'll notice my impeccably tied laces."
Neon and Jed drift toward Ash for a second round of in-depth shoe examination, but Jack cuts it short. He's wasted sufficient daylight already on pondering his memory predicament, and he needs badly to get as far from it as possible. No more shoelace talk for a week.
"Enough."
He means it. Ash and the shoelace-tying judgment committee all know it by his tone of voice, too. Jack's done with this excursion.
"Yessir." Jed bounces up. "It was just a bit of fun. No need to look so cranky over it, Jack."
"Maybe a na--"
Neon's quip dies a premature death when Ash puts his hands on her shoulders, turns her around, and ushers her forward.
"Save it for later. Jack will look sour then, too, I promise."
While Jack shoots a glare back at all three before stalking off toward the town exit, he's quietly thankful for Ash's aid in redirecting the group. He doesn't want to hear anymore about what he has forgotten, doesn't want to dwell on the why and how, doesn't want the distraction of knowing if something small is gone, what about something big.
Jack just needs to forget it all again.