“Is dad home?”
Jackson Cade stands on the front porch of his parent’s house, face to face with his mother who shakes her head.
“No, dear. Do you need to-“
“I don’t need to talk to him,” Jackson says, interrupting his mother. “I don’t need him to see me like this.” Jackson lumbers into the house, still injured from his match with Redgrave as he sits down on the couch, his mother taking a seat beside him.
“Are you hurt?” Mary asks, concern etched into her face as Cade shakes his head.
“No. I just… I don’t need him to know that I’ve failed.”
“Did something happen to Joey?” His mother asks quickly, but again Cade shakes his head.
“Last year,” he begins, “I was assigned to the Redgrave case. Jasper… He’s a butcher. A self-proclaimed artist that terrorized Arcadia from top to bottom and fileted countless innocents for his own sick pleasure. One by one he collected victims, corralling them like a Shepard into his gallery.”
Jackson lowers his head, the memories coming back as he speaks. “That studio? It was his killing floor, the place where all the little lambs who walked into his trap went to die. I tried to save them, I wanted to help, but in the end I found myself hanging from the ceiling like a piece of meat. Every night of my fucking life I dream of those blood stained walls.”
A single tear wells up, rolling down his cheek. “I smell the blood, feel the agony, and can only watch as life after life came to an end! I couldn’t stop him, mom. And now… I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to set things right. The last chance I have, the only chance for me to take him down, to try and save Joey, is to win Lambs… But I don’t know if I can.”
Mary listens to her son, placing a hand on his cheek and forcing him to look up. “Jacky,” she whispers, “you can’t save everyone. But despite that you’re still strong, you haven’t failed.”
“But I-“
“Stop.” Mary speaks forcefully, as though chastising him. “You lived through hell, Jacky. You were sent to slaughter in that man’s horrible gallery but you did something no one else could.”
“You survived.”
A smile forces its way onto Mary’s lips as she reaffirms what she’s said, tears welling up as she speaks. “It takes a coward to butcher a lamb or kill a child like Redgrave has. But you? You’re stronger than that. The others in that fight may fall, but you’ll do what you always do.”
She laughs a bit, fighting back those tears. “You’ll rise. No one else in Arcadia has survived what you have, no one else has walked into hell and came out alive on the other side. You’re my angel, Jacky. I know you’ll survive.”
Jackson nods his head, taking his mother’s hand off his cheek as he stands up.
“I’ll do more than survive.”
Cade stands, steely eyed.
“All of it, the pain, the torture, I’ve been a Lamb to the slaughter already.”
“I won’t just survive, this time. I’ll win.”
Cut.