He held you like that for quite some time, just breathing you in. Your arms and back had started to ache from the position you'd been kept in, and though his grip on your jaw had loosened, you were sure it had bruised, along with your wrists. You weren't about to tell him that, though. Upsetting him was sure to make your pain worse.

When he finally released your jaw, you looked toward the ceiling and stretched your mouth a bit. You shifted on the cot to a slightly less uncomfortable position, and in doing so drew Jack's attention to your legs. They were dirty and covered in scratches and a few bruises, from the fall down the stairs and the journey through the thornbushes.

Jack immediately began to fuss over your legs. He muttered to himself as he went over to one cabinet and grabbed a few bottles of this and that, as well as some bandages and towels. He then went over to the corner of the room to your right, where he began to fill a basin with water from a large sink.

As he came closer to you and began to wash the dirt off of your legs with a towel he'd soaked in the basin. There wasn't much, as you hadn't walked any of the way there, but he still spent time carefully looking over every inch of your legs for something to wash off. After he was done with that much, he grabbed a bottle with some kind of clear liquid in it and a bit of the gauze. You did your best to move away from him, but he shot you a look and you stilled. You didn't relinquish your legs to him, though, so he spoke.

"It's just saline."

This calmed you a bit, but you still didn't trust him. You slowly edged your legs back to him, and he continued with his attentions. When he soaked the gauze pad in the saline and put it on your scratches, it didn't quite hurt, so you relaxed and waited for him to be done.

It was a good few minutes until he was finished. While you appreciated his attentiveness in tending to you, his reverence was a bit creepy. It was like he was trying to memorize the shape of your legs just by feeling them.

After he was done with your legs, he looked up at your face and shook his head a bit. You could hear him talking to himself.

"How do you not notice that she's all messed up? Get your head out of your ass, Jack, come on..."

You felt the need to console him, though you didn't know why. There was just something so genuinely sad about his voice, then, like he felt like he had failed himself.

Or you.

"Hey, it's okay, I wasn'—" You'd barely managed to start before he suddenly jumped forward and put one hand around your neck and another over your mouth.

"Don't say that. They hurt you, I should've just done it myself."

He stiffened after he said that, but he left his hands on your throat and mouth.

"Did they mark you?"

You shook your head and glanced down. He removed his hand from your mouth to let you speak. You felt his grip on your throat tighten minutely.

"They didn't cut anything into me. One of them pushed me down the stairs, but—"

He grabbed you by the hair and pulled you even closer toward him. Your face was an inch away from his mask, and you tried to move away. He didn't let you.

"Which one?" His tone had darkened and his voice was more gravelly than before.

"I—I never got a good look at him. The clown called him Jeff, I think."

"Of course he'd be the one to fuck this up."

Jack backed off of you and let you sit back, but his hands went to the hem of your shirt and began to pull it up.

"Hey!" You did your best to struggle out of his reach, but you knew it was pointless.

"Stop moving. I need to make sure you aren't broken."

"I don't want you to take off my shirt!"

"I'm not going to fuck you just yet. Relax. Shut up." He growled at you as he roughly pulled your shirt above your head and let it sit at your shoulders. You felt more than exposed, then, in nothing but your sleep shorts.

His interest in you did seem to stay strictly medical, to your relief. He poked at your ribs before deciding that you were just bruised.

"I'll be back in just a second. Don't move." His voice darkened again with the last order, and he dashed off to behind the curtain he'd first entered from. Ever the gentleman, he returned quickly with a pair of cold compresses. He stalked over to you and sat down on the cot next to you, placing the compresses on either side of your ribcage and holding them there.

You wished you could tell where he was looking.