Jonn: It's Not Funny Anymore

The half-orc was the only one who stopped and flipped a coin Jonn’s way, which made him feel *almost* guilty about the fact that he was definitely going to steal his wallet. It wasn’t Jonn’s fault that the pirates coming into port didn’t secure their coin pouches that well. They were already eager to roll into the bars and taverns along the boardwalk, and it made them careless. It wasn’t Jonn’s fault they were dumb.

But the half-orc was also the only one who noticed. That was Jonn’s fault—he was being dumb by targeting someone who had already clearly seen him. He’d heard that orcs ate human kids, and this guy was only half-orc, but Luci was *really* small, still. The pirate grabbed his wrist roughly and he twisted to shift Luci behind him as much as he could with her on his hip. He might have to drop her but it was only to grab his knife so they could get away. She’d understand. Well, she wouldn’t—she was a baby—but he’d buy her some candy and she’d forget.

“Hey, what the fuck?” the orc said at first, and then Jonn caught him looking at Luci.

“If you eat my sister I’ll fucking cut you open and get her out.” He tried to sound threatening but his voice was too high.

The pirate laughed at him. “All right, damn.”

He didn’t let him go, but his grip on Jonn’s wrist loosened a bit. He took his wallet back, prying it out of Jonn’s hand, and glanced at the satchel hanging from Jonn’s shoulder. Jonn shifted, trying to conceal it. Then the pirate looked over his own shoulder, where his shipmates were disappearing into a bar.

“They’re about to be disappointed, huh?” he asked.

“I dunno what you’re talking about.”

He just looked amused. “All right. C’mon.”

He straightened and grabbed Jonn’s shoulder, firmly enough that he still couldn’t get away, and directed him down an alley, out of sight of the docks. Jonn didn’t know what was happening; he held Luci tight in case he got a chance to run, but it didn’t really seem like the orc wanted to hurt them. No one in the port would have batted an eye at him kicking the grubby beggar orphans straight into the ocean. No one would’ve missed them.

“Why would I eat your sister?” he asked, guiding them through the city.

“I dunno,” Jonn mumbled. “Orcs eat kids.”

“I’m a *half*-orc.” He didn’t deny that orcs ate children, which concerned Jonn.

“Well, she’s only like a quarter of a person.”

The pirate snorted. “I’m guessing you don’t have parents? Orcs eat’em?”

“No.” He didn’t elaborate, and the orc glanced down at him. The look wasn’t quite pity, but Jonn hated it anyway.

“Well. Look, there’s this Eldath monastery outside of town a bit,” the orc said. “They take care of kids sometimes. I’ll take you there.”

“No!” Jonn dug in his heels, feeling the orc’s fingers dig into his shoulder in immediate response. Still, he did stop to look down again in question.

“What?”

“We tried that. The city sent us there. They’re not—they’re bad clerics.” He didn’t have the words. No one had ever asked him before.

“Bad how?”

Jonn struggled—first to speak, then to get away. Who cared? The fucking orc should just let him go. If he took them to the monastery Jonn would just run away again, so this was all a waste of his time. He should understand that. If he wanted them to suffer he should just do it himself.

“Kid, hey—.” The orc knelt down to put both hands on his shoulders, holding him more gently, but still securely. “Calm down. Bad clerics how?” He seemed to need Jonn to say it, which was bullshit. “They hurt you?”

After a moment, Jonn nodded. “The Mother’s …” Hesitantly, he shifted Luci so that he could roll up one sleeve and show the burn marks on his forearm. They weren’t blistered up any more, but hadn’t quite smoothed into scars. Then he tugged at Luci’s clothes to show him the matching marks on her small arm.

“Huh,” the orc said.

# # #

Jonn covered Lucienne’s eyes, but he thought that what Hansel did to the Mother was the best thing he’d ever seen.

# # #

“Hey, Pops.”

Luci was being shy, but Jonn met Hansel in the front garden of the monastery. He’d been practicing balancing on a narrow stone wall until he’d seen Hansel, then dashed to the end of it to launch himself at the pirate. He was looking older now. Half-orcs aged faster than humans, apparently. And as it turned out, they didn’t eat kids.

Of course Hansel caught him and hugged him back, but he stumbled back a few steps. “You’re getting too big for this shit, kid.”

“I’m the same size I was last year.” He let go, his boots thumping down in front of Hansel, having to almost crane his neck to meet Hansel’s eyes. His father was about a foot taller than him. At sixteen, it didn’t seem likely he was going to catch up.

“Then I’m getting too old for it.” He threw an arm around Jonn to lead him on a leisurely walk through the garden. Jonn rested his head against him. “You stayin’ outta trouble?”

“Yup!”

“Mmhm.” Hansel ruffled his hair and he scowled and pushed him away.

“When do I get to join your crew?”

“Hm.” Hansel was always noncommittal about this. “Just signed onto a new ship. Let me see if it’s any good first.”

“None of them are any good, Hansel. They’re pirates. That’s the point.”

“You know what I mean.”

Jonn didn’t. He really didn’t. He kept trying to prove to Hansel that he was ready to be a pirate, but there was always some excuse. He’d been taking swordfighting lessons from the retired soldier who lived in the woods near the monastery, but when Hansel found out he’d just forbidden him from talking to the old woman again. He’d tried to demonstrate that he could take care of himself by hiding out in the woods by himself for a couple weeks, but Luci had snitched on him to the clerics and they’d dragged him back inside—and when the new Mother told Hansel about it, he’d gotten mad. He’d shown Hansel how quickly he could gut a fish, and how well he could climb ropes, and everything he’d learned about swords and knives from the old soldier, but Hansel just wouldn’t do it.

He respected Hansel. That was the only thing that was keeping him from just doing it himself—going into the city and signing up on a pirate ship himself. Hans had told him that he’d been sixteen when he’d left home, so he thought that maybe this year he would get lucky. He wanted to do it with his dad, not by himself, but god—the monastery was so *boring*. They were always telling him not to do things. Hansel did it too, he just wasn’t there all the time.

Don’t set things on fire, Jonn. Stop stealing people’s clothes, Jonn. Don’t throw rocks through the stained glass windows, Jonn. Stop whittling sticks into shivs and putting them in people’s beds, Jonn. It isn’t funny when you leave dead animals in the kitchen, Jonn. None of them had any sense of humor and he didn’t like the way they’d started looking at him. They were even getting to Luci, a little bit—she didn’t think he was funny either, but she didn’t give him the same look.

Hansel just sighed. He always met with the Mother when he came by and got a report from her on how Jonn and Luci had been doing. Luci was the golden child, of course, perfect behavior, very into Eldath, but Jonn didn’t resent her because he thought she was perfect too—and they both knew Hansel *wasn’t*. Hansel would grumble and ask him if he really thought this shit was funny but he never stayed mad. They were too much alike.

“I wanna be a pirate,” Jonn whined, pushing at Hansel again.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Tell me stories, then.”

“Fine.” Hansel thought for a moment. “So this new ship I’m on. You’d probably like the captain.”

# # #

“What the fuck, Jonn?”

“What?”

“*What the fuck?*”

Jonn gestured with the disembodied hand. “*What?*”

“That’s a person’s hand. Why do you have that?”

“Because I cut it off him.”

“Oh my god.” Hansel sat down heavily on his bed, putting his head in his hands. “Oh my fucking god. I did this to you, didn’t I?”

“What?”

“I never should’ve killed that Mother in front of you. I was so fucking stupid.” He was being hysterical. Jonn grimaced. “Look, I didn’t know, all right, I didn’t know kids could get fucked up by that kind of thing.”

“Pops, calm down.” It was just a hand. This was not the weirdest thing Jonn had cut off a person.

“God, and then I kept telling you about all that shit I did at sea—none of that was shit I should’ve told a kid.” He groaned. “I should’ve been around more or not at all. Fuck. Goddammit. Why do you have a fucking *hand*, Jonn?”

“Look, I put down a rag, I’m not getting blood on the table.”

“That’s not the point!” He paused. He hadn’t noticed the rag, but he was looking at it now, and Jonn waited for him to admit that he was proud of Jonn for thinking ahead like that. “Why are you fucking *skinning it*?”

Jonn looked down at it. “Well, practice, mostly.”

Hansel stood abruptly, stalked across the room, and jerked him to his feet. It caught Jonn off-guard. Hansel was never rough with him. Why would he be? He was just overreacting because he was a little surprised, and he’d calm down in a minute. Then they’d go downstairs and get a drink together and Jonn would tell him a story, for once, if he really wanted to know the deal with the hand. He’d probably think it was funny. He’d act like he didn’t, but he would.

Instead, Hansel looked him dead in the eyes, and his grip didn’t let up at all, and he said, “Jonn. No more of this shit. No more fucking—hands. No skinning shit. No stealing people’s shit and breaking it and giving it back to them. No setting shit on fire.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s not fucking normal, Jonn,” he snapped. “It’s not *okay*.”

Jonn stared at him. He’d changed. He’d gotten older, yeah, and Jonn knew that what Mishka had done to him had changed him, and whatever it was that happened to all of his crewmates and not him had changed him, too. Jonn wasn’t sure which thing it was that had caused him to start thinking … this.

But it was okay. He was Hansel. Jonn loved him, and it was okay if—like Luci—he’d stopped finding Jonn’s jokes funny. He didn’t have to know about them. Jonn wanted him to be happy, after all, and he was clearly upset now, so Jonn would say whatever he had to to make him happy again.

“Okay,” Jonn said. “I'm sorry.”

He was so relieved. His fingers loosened again and his shoulders dropped as he closed his eyes. Jonn stepped in to hug him, because he knew it would help, but also because Hansel had hurt him, grabbing his arms like that, and he really needed something to make up for it.

“I’m sorry, Dad.” Hansel really liked it when Jonn called him Dad. He didn’t let on, but Jonn was sure of it. The Pops thing amused him, but Dad—that was real. “I’ll stop.”

He knew he’d done well when Hansel apologized to him, afterwards. For yelling and grabbing him. Jonn realized he had been wrong for a long time—Hansel wasn’t that much like him. He hadn’t changed recently, either. He never had been. Jonn loved him now, sure, and he’d always loved Lucienne, and he’d do anything for the two of them, but Hansel had been soft towards him like this when they’d first met.

Jonn hadn’t felt bad about stealing his wallet. Hansel had felt bad about something he hadn’t even *done*, and he’d gone out of his way to fix it. He acted tough, and he wasn’t that bothered about killing people most of the time, but he wasn’t like Jonn.

It was a good thing to realize. Hansel was gentle. Hansel would *always* apologize to him.