Most people couldn't tell the difference between Samuel and Eric Brooks if their lives depended on it, but in the twins' eyes, they couldn't possibly have been more different. Sure, they were alike in many respects, in the ways most identical twins are. But anyone who really got to know the boys would've been able to differentiate between them the moment they said a word.
Sam was born a mere six minutes before his brother. And though most would assume that neither twin would receive the perks of being an eldest sibling, Sam was consistently taking advantage of this. It would always come down to that six minutes when it came time to decide who would ride shotgun, who would get the last piece of chocolate, who got the comfy spot on the family sofa. And poor Eric never had a leg to stand on, and in their younger years, he would often resort to throwing temper tantrums over it. He was a pretty sore loser after all.
While Sam might've been the oldest Brooks twin, he certainly wasn't the boldest. That six extra minutes in the womb must've been used very efficiently by the younger twin in terms of his emotional development. Sam was always much shyer than his brother, and this was how most people who came to knew them learned to tell them apart. Sam would never talk to strangers, while Eric talked to anyone who would listen. In public spaces like church, the grocery store, school, and after school care, Eric made all the friends who adopted Sam into the group by association. Eric was a natural socialite, and it took years of dragging his brother along with him before Sam learned how to make friends on his own dime.
What Eric's social skills did for his social circle, it also did for his romantic one. While he was still rather young by this point (seven or eight at the oldest), he was an early bloomer when it came to girls. Eric always had at least one new crush every week, while his brother wouldn't have told anyone if he did like somebody, which was much rarer.
The boys' father was an army man, and he was adamant about enrolling the twins in military school before they hit middle school. The boys were enrolled at Bainbridge Military Academy in their third grade year. A mother like Kelly Brooks might've been a little more reluctant to send her only children to military boarding school so young, but she knew this was important to her husband and it was always part of the plan.
Daniel Brooks spent most of the time he did with his sons training them for military school in their early elementary years. They ran drills in the backyard, dabbled in different sports and exercises, did swimming and mountain biking in the summer, and the two even did Outward Bound in North Carolina in the summer between first and second grade.
The boys had a lot of practical skills by the time they started at the academy, but they were lacking a little in the maturity department. The two argued and bickered all the time. Everything one twin wanted, the other wanted just for that reason alone. But in spite of the little spats they got into with each other throughout the day, they were rather close. They did everything together, and wouldn't have had it any other way. They were best friends as much as they were brothers. Sam and Eric were inseparable, and people hardly ever saw one twin without the other, which probably didn't help those who struggled to tell them apart.
The twins both enjoyed military school, and one made lots of friends because the other did. They stuck close to the good kids; the ones whose values aligned with their own because that's how their father taught them to find good friends. Simon and Dylan were two of the twins' closest friends. And when they started working with Ralph Langley after their eighty person squadron was split into two forty person ones, he became a close friend of theirs too.
Sam did better than Eric in the academic realm, but Eric outperformed his brother in gym class and in military training. Although this difference in their school and military performance wasn't especially significant. But still, it was enough to set them apart. And as identical twins, they grew up looking for ways to separated one from the other. It was how they found their identities outside of each other; identities that only those who were close to them really got to know.
Daniel, the boys' father, always trained the twins quite vigorously over the two month summer breaks. He took them through drills and exercises in the backyard for hours a day like he used to do everyday when they were home all year round. They didn't live too far from the academy, so the twins would come home for the occasional weekend and every month and of course holidays. Their hometown Albany, Georgia was only an hour long drive to the military school, but that didn't make it less hard for their parents to send them off at the end of every August.
The hardest goodbye was the one the Brooks family said at the end of the summer going into the twins' sixth grade year. What made this goodbye different was the fact that the twins would be gone until mid-November for the International Training Program Bainbridge offered. But it was only two months, Kelly and Daniel assured themselves as they said their finally goodbyes in the twins' dorm room before the hour long journey back to Albany. But little did they know at the time that the two month trip would turn into a five month rescue mission.
It was only a mere two weeks since they last saw the twins when Kelly got that dreaded call from Bainbridge Military Academy informing her that the boys and the plane were missing. The phone shook violently in her hands as she called Daniel at work. She was almost too hysterical to get through the words, so much so that it took several minutes of her hyperventilating for her husband to finally get the message to what exactly happened.
Sam and Eric weren't sitting beside each other on the plane that day. Their seating was assigned according to rank, and there were maybe a few boys between the twins. They were both in the same rank, but Eric was still slightly ahead of his brother. Eric was sitting beside Patterson on the plane, whereas Sam was sitting next to a boy called Daniel, one who didn't turn up on the lifeboat after the crash.
Later that first night on the island, Sam overheard two of the others talking about how one of them saw Daniel's dead body floating in the water in the moments after the crash. Sam eavesdropped as the boy described how Daniel was face down and only identifiable by his abnormally long hair. Even the mental image was enough to make Sam's skin crawl, especially considering he sat right beside the now deceased boy. How easily it could've been him instead, and how lucky and random it was that it hadn't been.
Sam and Eric were certainly in favour of Ralph's leadership style. But this didn't take away from the fact that they were still a couple of ten-year-old kids, only a few months away from turning eleven. Sam was more reluctant to start messing around when Jack and some of the others did, but as usual, his brother roped him into it. They splashed around in the ravines, in the ocean, and joined the others in making up dumb games on the beachfront to pass the time. They knew that all this joking around wasn't what Ralph wanted, that their friend and leader wasn't impressed with their behavior, but Eric pointed out to his brother that Ralph was perhaps a little too uptight. It didn't take away from the value of his words, but he ought to nag a little less. Eventually, Sam just shrugged in agreement.
Things slowly but surely continued to escalate, and the twins found themselves drifting back toward Ralph and his ways as Jack, Roger, and Rapper ventured further in the other direction. At first, the fun and games seemed harmless and didn't take away from the survival needs of the camp. At least, the twins didn't think so. But as Jack and Ralph started butting heads and Jack started disregarding the things that were important, even Eric, the more playful twin, was beginning to think the blond boy was taking his antics too far.
When the two camps were finally separated and established, Sam and Eric stopped the unnecessary goofing off for the most part. When Jack let the fire go out, Eric was secretly almost as angry as Ralph was. But he was much more afraid of Jack than Ralph was, so he stayed quiet. Eric had to admit that there was a lot of fun and freeing things about the island, but he was far from wishing that life would always be like this. There wasn't any amount of fun and games and adult-free living that could change Eric's mind about rescue. He wanted to go home, like most of the boys did. He wanted to be rescued, for this traumatic nightmare to come to an end. And although not everyday on the island was gruesome and traumatizing, the experience as a whole was. The sooner it ended, the better, Eric knew. And of course, Sam felt the same way.
Not even the discovery of the mysterious monster in the cave compelled the twins to join Jack's camp. They weren't particularly fond of Jack's leadership methods, nor did their values align with his. They knew that a lot of the boys who joined Jack lost their way, and their sight of what mattered. When Sam and Eric usually talked about the monster, it was just the two of them. Eric continued to assure his brother that monsters didn't exist, that whatever was out there was probably a figment of Larry's imagination or an injured pig or something like that.
In spite of the logical and reasonable state of mind the twins remained in, the others around them didn't seem to share this mindset. Ralph's camp continued to dwindle in numbers, and talk of the monster loomed over the island all the damn time. It wasn't the monster that compelled the twins to finally switch camps, but the other boys. The twins were some of the last few people on Ralph's side, including Simon and Piggy, and it was becoming daunting. Ralph's camp had seven or eight boys left in it at the most, meaning at least double that number were now on Jack's side. Sam and Eric weren't afraid of the monster, they continued to tell themselves, but they sure as shit were willing to admit they were afraid of Jack Merridew. And as his power grew, Ralph's was evidently fading. Eric had a gut feeling that things would get worse before they got better, and they didn't want to be on the receiving end of it when it did.
The night of Simon's death was the most horrific example of just how much worse things got. Only hours before the feast, Sam and Eric painted their faces, and apologized profusely to Ralph before they did. They insisted that they were merely afraid of what might happen if they didn't join Jack, and even the sight of Ralph silently breaking down in tears as they left wasn't enough to change their minds. Deep down, they both knew better, and it was hard to stomach. Sam and Eric were too smart to believe that joining Jack's camp was really the right thing to do, because it wasn't. They still disagreed with his values, but went along with the things he was doing simply out of self-preservation. Deep down, they knew it was wrong, and that made every moment of that day and night incredibly guilt-inducing.
Sam and Eric were at the back of the pack that killed their close friend, Simon Bennett. When Sam saw the light of the glowstick approaching them on the beachfront, he really was afraid. He didn't believe in monsters, or at least he thought he didn't. But when he saw Simon, he wasn't sure what he believed in that moment. All he knew was that something was out there, something inhuman and most likely threatening. And the other boys, including his own brother, started attacking it to save themselves, and Sam couldn't blame them. Nor could he blame himself for the decision to join them. It was made on instinct, because he didn't know what else to do.
All of a sudden, Sam turned to see one of the littlest boys, Mikey, push his way out of the crowd and throw up beside Sam into the dark ocean water. Some started fleeing, others hung around and looked over whatever they just killed. By the time the crowd thinned out enough for Sam to get a look at whatever it was, Eric appeared at his brother's side. Both boys were standing far enough away that Simon's body looked like nothing more than a clump of flesh and blood. But they stood and stared as others whispered around them. All of a sudden, Eric gasped and covered his mouth in shock. Sam turned to him, noticing the tears glistening in his brother's eyes against the faint light of the moon. When he turned back to the body, he saw what Eric must've seen; the unmistakable head of light brown curly hair. Sam glanced around in search of Simon, hoping that somehow he'd be standing there on the beach with the rest of them. Instead, his eyes found Ralph and Piggy, standing several feet behind them by the fire. Alone.
No sight of Simon.
"Come on" Eric whispered, clasping his brother's wrist, pulling him out of that stunned trance. Sam watched the hollow gaze in his brother's eyes stuck on Simon's body as it was tossed around by the wind in the waves. A moment after he spoke, Eric tugged on his brother's wrist and used it to pull him away, back in the direction of Jack's camp where most of the others had gone. Sam avoided direct eye contact with Ralph and Piggy as they passed by them. All Sam could think about was that Simon was Ralph's friend too.
The following morning, the twins considered the possibility that someone might go down for this when they finally got rescued. Simon was dead, and they knew that it would come out eventually. Sam continued to insist that he was too far back in the crowd to really have gotten any fatal stabs at poor Simon. Eric agreed that he was too, but that still didn't change the fact that they might still be in trouble for it at the end of the day.
"What are we gonna do?" Sam asked worriedly.
"I don't know" Eric admitted in defeat.
"He's our friend" Sam said sadly, a tear falling down his cheek. Sam hadn't slept a wink that night, and cried silently through the whole thing, until he was so tired and dehydrated his head started pounding aggressively.
"He was" Eric whispered the correction with an equal amount of bitter sadness. "But we didn't know" he added.
"That doesn't change anything" Sam hated to admit.
"I know it doesn't" Eric sighed, "but still. We didn't know, and we didn't really do it, did we?"
"We all did, didn't we?" Sam countered.
"We probably didn't, it was Jack and Roger and the people at the front. I didn't even get close enough to see. I think I only hit 'em maybe a time or two. Besides, I wasn't trying really hard. Were you?"
"No" Sam answered honestly. "I was scared of hitting someone's feet, or mine."
"Then it wasn't really our faults, was it?" Eric suggested hopefully.
"I guess not" Sam shrugged, "but what if they think it was?"
"Who's they?" Eric questioned.
"The grownups. When we get off the island."
"Let's just say we left early" Eric suggested.
"But that's lying" Sam countered softly.
"Yeah, but they're not gonna believe that we were there but it wasn't us. Even though that's mostly the truth. They're not gonna believe it wasn't our faults unless we say we left early."
"But what if someone says we didn't?" Sam asked somewhat fearfully.
"It was too dark to know for sure. I don't remember who else left when, do you?" Eric considered.
"No" Sam admitted after a moment of thought.
"Okay, then that's what we say. Or else we'll be in as much trouble as Jack, and that's not really fair. Simon wouldn't blame us, you know that."
"He wouldn't" Sam agreed, "I just wish he was here so he could tell us that himself."
"Me too" Eric sighed sadly.
The last month in Jack's camp was hard on both the twins. Betraying Ralph and joining the hunters was a difficult decision for them, even more so after Simon's death. They knew that the hunters were responsible for it, and not all of them seemed to be remorseful or even regretful about it. Sometimes, they'd hear some of the others whispering about it, but everyone shut up real quick when Jack or Roger came into earshot. Sam and Eric didn't consider how difficult it would be to live in a society that was run entirely on values that didn't align with theirs. It went against everything their dad had ever taught them. It was much easier to just not think about their dad, or their home in Albany, at all.
The day of Piggy's death was a controversial one for the twins. Simon's death and everything that followed it had them questioning whether or not they made the right choice to become hunters. But the moment they watched Roger push the bolder down the rock wall, they both knew that the decision not to switch would've been a fatal one. By this point in time, if you weren't on the side of the killers, you were destined to become one of their victims. Even their father back home would've had to admit that their values weren't worth more than their lives. And as wrong as it felt, it was either be wrong or be killed, as Eric continued to remind his brother.
Several days after Piggy's death, Jack announced the plan to take Ralph's life into their hands and show no mercy. Eric locked eyes with his brother fearfully as the announcement was made, and it was clear that they were both questioning their decision. They might've unintentionally played some sort of role in Simon's death, or at the very least did nothing to stop it. But participating in the unplanned, accidental death of their friend was one thing; planning to actively kill another friend was something else entirely. The entirety of the twins' time in Jack's camp was spent going back and forth about their decision. Was it worth it or not? It was the million dollar question, one that the answer to changed on a dime. So when the opportunity arose to warn Ralph in advance, the twins took it. It was an effort to save the life of a boy they still considered to be their friend, and a bonus to convince themselves that they still had a bit of humanity left in them.
As the hunt for Ralph began the morning after Jack announced it, Eric couldn't help but think back to their days at the academy. He remembered how close Jack and Ralph used to be, how good of friends they once were. The twins spent a lot of time in Simon's room, which also happened to be Ralph's. Sometimes, Jack was there hanging out with Ralph. The two were often cozied up on Ralph's bed, studying or watching something on the TV. They laughed, joked around, and cuddled with each other like the twins did with their parents and cousins. It was disheartening to think about how terribly things went wrong; how crazy it was that they could've gone from that to this over the course of who knows how long. Not very long, Eric guessed. Months? But it couldn't be a year yet. Maybe it was only a month or two. Maybe it was ten. Or maybe, it didn't matter now anyway.
Sam was sure he was as afraid as Ralph was as he crept among the hunters through the forest in search of the former colonel that morning. He was genuinely hoping they wouldn't find Ralph, that he'd somehow escape their grasp for as many days as were left until rescue. Deep down, Sam knew that wasn't very realistic given the island was on fire and there were so many more of them than there was of Ralph. He questioned what he would do if he did find Ralph, and nobody else was around to see it. Would he tell them? Probably not. And when that opportunity arose, one eye-lock with his brother told him Eric was thinking the exact same thing. They took the risk in lying to Jack, in desperate hope that he wouldn't somehow find out. Because if he did, they'd be as good as dead, and as dead as Ralph. Plus, their decision to switch camps would all have been for nothing after all.
In spite of their best effort to save Ralph, stupid Roger found him anyway. Roger wasn't loyal to a single moral value, and of course his first instinct was to alert Jack. Naturally, the twins ran through the forest after Ralph with the rest of the hunters. But they could've ran faster, and they could've screamed louder. Eric was sure that they wouldn't have to participate in the actual stabbing of Ralph. Jack and Roger and whoever else had really lost their minds would certainly do the job on their own, without thinking twice about who else was actively participating. The twins somehow managed to stay pretty far behind when it was Simon, and they were hoping that the daylight wouldn't be enough to force their active participation this time.
But thankfully, there wasn't a this time after all. Neither one of the twins thought about the possibility that the fire Jack lit to smoke Ralph out would be an elephant sized rescue signal. And clearly, neither did Jack. Sam and Eric couldn't have been more relieved to see that Marine officer after the sound of screaming stopped in front of them. It was a joyous relief, and even more so when they realized they were finally going home.
Four months and twenty one days. Sam wasn't sure exactly what it felt like, but it definitely didn't feel like four months and twenty one days. It felt like maybe a year, or maybe just a month. For some reason, five months just seemed... incorrect. And so did the sight of clean clothes, artificial food, and the sound of adult voices. Sam felt overdressed, and Eric felt like his search and rescue clothes were smothering him. It wasn't until they arrived in the Virginia airport that the rescue experience stopped feeling bizarre and unreal and started feeling wonderful and relieving. Seeing their mom and dad for the first time in over five months was the most terrifying yet amazing thing in the world, for both tearful twins.
Recovery from the island was an especially bizarre thing for the Brooks parents compared to the parents of only one island survivor. It was strange to see how differently the twins coped in the first months of their return home. Eric hated being indoors, got claustrophobic, and constantly talked about feeling like the walls were closing in on him. Whereas Sam was too afraid to leave the house at all, and was constantly afraid that if he did, something would keep him from ever coming back. Sam wouldn't sleep on a mattress, kept insisting on the floor. Whereas Eric would bury himself in blankets and stuffed animals while complaining that he always felt cold at night. Both twins struggled with their diet and stomaching artificial and junk foods. They both shuddered at the thought of ever having to get on a plane again, and they both awoke in the night from frequent nightmares. It wasn't uncommon for Sam to wind up on Kelly and Daniel's bedroom floor while Eric slept in bed between the two parents.
Kelly quickly became friends with Ralph's mother as the three surviving boys re-established their friendship and stayed in contact. It was nice to have another parent to talk to about the strangeness of the boys' return and how they were adapting. It made Kelly and Daniel feel better to know that twenty-one other sets of parents were dealing with the same things they were, in varying forms and degrees.
The twins' recovery, like Ralph's, Jack's, Tony's, and everyone else's, was rocky and inconsistent. Some days were better than others, and the process of recovery wasn't always uphill. The Brooks family attended every ceremony and memorial service Bainbridge Military Academy held in honor of the plane crash and island victims. The whole family went to the funeral hosted by Rachel and Collin Bennett for the boys' deceased close friend, Simon. The boy came to Sam and Eric's house several times throughout their years at the academy together. Kelly loved the heck out of sweet Simon, and cried for Rachel and Collin when she heard the news about his death. Eric was more than happy to spare her the gory details.
The Brooks parents made the decision to keep the twins out of the academy and even out of public school. They registered the twins for a homeschool program in which the twins had their own private teacher who came to the house five days a week for a few hours, and the rest of the school day was theirs to work independently. Kelly was good about keeping the boys on task, especially given that she promised to enroll them in public school if they dropped the ball in homeschooling.
There was nothing especially atypical about the first two years of the twins' recovery and post-island lives. That was, until the day of the two year commemoration ceremony on the anniversary of the plane crash. They went off looking for Ralph awhile after the ceremony, only to find him in Tony's room. Jack, Rapper, and Roger were there too, and it gave Sam goosebumps being in a room alone with them all without adult supervision. It was the worst of the worst of the hunters, and Ralph, and the twins. For some anxious reason, Sam wasn't totally convinced they'd all walk out of that dorm room alive. Even after being home for two years, it was still frightening to see how quickly the emotions of the island came rushing back.
Eric felt like his head was going to explode when the news of the subpoenas and the trial came out. After all this time, they could still lose everything over the island. It still had a dangerous hold on their lives, and Eric worried that might never change. Eric wasn't totally certain that his head didn't explode when the truth about Jack and Ralph came out within the same, frightening hour. Naturally, they knew that the two managed to become friends again. Eric would've been more surprised if he couldn't so vividly remember what the two were like prior to the island. The island brought out something inhumane and cruel in Jack, but they weren't on the island anymore. And if Ralph was willing to see past that after almost losing his life to it, Eric figured he could too. His ability to stomach Jack and Ralph as more than friends after Jack tried to kill the boy was something else though. Eric wasn't sure he would ever fully wrap his head around what drove Ralph to love Jack like that.
The months leading up to the trial were full of anxiety and anticipation, as they would've been for the other twenty survivors too. Sam and Eric spent sleepless nights talking about what would happen to them if they were found guilty, about how drastically their lives would be changed.
"Our lives are already changed" Sam pointed out, "how much worse can it possibly get?"
"I think it could get much worse" Eric worried, "depending on how the trial goes. Hopefully, they'll believe that we're innocent."
"But we're not" Sam quietly pointed out.
"You can't say that" Eric combatted softly, "not out loud, not anymore."
Eric considered the fact that admitting guilt out loud could very well be the difference between this trial leading to beginning of peace or the bitter end.