Juno Steel and the Embrace of Ice (Part 3)

Arc poster by Ellison Estephan.

**Juno Steel and the Embrace of Ice (Part 3)** is the third episode of The Penumbra Podcast season 4. It was released October 26, 2021.

## Overview

In which Juno Steel, detective wunderkind of the HCPD, becomes Juno Steel, disgraced ex-cop... and his story as we know him really begins.

## Episode Summary

In the past, Juno asks Diamond over comms to investigate where "the ballroom" Ms. Shot's people are taking kidnapped waiter Sonny to might be. After he hangs up, he hears Puck Falco running after him, threatening unseriously to kill Juno if he doesn't slow down to let them catch up.

In the present, Puck is once again running after Juno. They reach the mineshaft Puck has suggested the missing child they're looking for might have gone to. Juno is surprised to realize he can hear crying. Derek Mathers is a real child, and really did go missing. He talks to Derek, drawing on his memories of running away himself. In his narration, he muses that he wishes he could close the story on saving the child, being a good guy, but he can't--there's still the matter of what happened seventeen years ago.

In the past, Puck catches up with Juno and they listen to him lay out all his fears in a panic. Juno rejects all suggestion of using police resources or initiating an investigation by Internal Affairs. Puck tells him their window has closed to go after Sonny. They believe in the system working to keep "creeps like Hijikata" in line, but Juno, to their horror, suggests falsifying evidence in the hope of busting Hijikata faster and saving Sonny. Juno reflects in the present that he's spent years trying to justify his choices: to do it at all, to do it knowing that he hasn't even forged the signature well, to do it still wondering whether he owed Hijikata something.

Juno was suspended, and Hijikata dropped all charges as one last favor to him, rather than letting him have the "satisfaction" of his own trial. She stopped talking to him. Diamond didn't talk to him for weeks, and on their intended wedding date, Juno goes to the Hijikata house drunk. He and Diamond argue about his choices and where to assign the blame between him and Captain Hijikata. She lets it slip that she knew all along what "the ballroom" was, that it was a spaceport. Juno snaps that Sonny might not have been killed if she had told him. She insists they can't know that. She insists that she isn't a bad person, and says that when she tried to help him, she didn't think it all through. She had mistakenly thought it was kind of fun until she realized that if they convicted her mother, Diamond might not be able to pay for her classes. Juno points out they would have found a way, but she rationalizes that if her graduation had been delayed, she would have had to wait longer to "help people in big ways." Diamond further tells him she believes that it would have been naive to take down her mother, that the hard choice was actually to finish school on time because she's sure her good impact is going to be greater than her mother's "alleged" bad one. Juno is hurt and disillusioned: he had thought he knew what kind of person she was, but he was wrong.

In the present, Juno thinks that he'd still loved her then, but not in the way she wanted. He thinks about Peter Nureyev. They don't know each other well yet, and they both have stuff that they need to talk about when they're ready, but they had felt like they had forever, and in the meantime being together felt good. He trusts Peter Nureyev, and he can't know whether that's a good idea, because he'd trusted Diamond just the same.

Puck interrupts his reverie, and Juno apologizes that "It's been a hell of a--" Puck finishes the thought with "Life?", making them both chuckle. They reminisce a little, and Puck announces that they've been meaning to tell Juno "thanks" for a long time. They tell him people at the HCPD had respected him. Juno insisting that he was going to help Sonny no matter what made a big impression on Puck: they're both people who need to help people in their work. Puck had first tried to be a teacher. They'd been a "fidgety" and dyslexic kid, so they dreamed of making school more adaptable and positive. Budgeting and logistics made their best ideas prohibitive, but the final straw for Puck was the discovery that a difficult student was also dyslexic, but her problems completing work had been explained away. She had almost slipped through the cracks right in front of Falco, because their classes were just too big to give any student enough good attention. Disillusioned, they quit two months later. Eventually, partly inspired by Juno, they found their way to their current sheriff's position. The community is small enough they can know and help people as individuals, and it's a good fit. They're happy.

A little later, Juno admits he'd been afraid Puck was working with Dark Matters, to Puck's uproarious laughter. He keeps some secrets back--Nureyev's and Ruby's--but tells Puck a lot of the rest. He tells them he needs help, but doesn't want to pressure them to betray what they feel are their duties as a cop. Puck laughs. They're fifty-three and old enough to decide how much risk they want to take, and they'd rather muss up their record than leave Juno hanging. Puck finds it easier to read on paper, so they arrange for some news to be printed out for them. With a lot of crinkling noises, they show Juno an article saying that Mick Mercury has become rich.

In the past, Rita comes to Juno's apartment while he's drunk, and tells him that she filled in the blanks in the Hijikata case. She knows he helped her, and she's not going to leave him alone to hurt. She pours him a glass of water, and he mellows and thanks her.

## Cast and Crew

### Cast

* Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel
* Chelsea Ruscio as Puck Falco
* Josephine Moshiri Elwood as Diamond Hijikata
* Kate Jones as Rita