Jonn: Are You Sorry?

Jonn only went to Morgan Wyn because he needed a favor. He fucking hated that he needed it, but -- Helena was gone, and Hansel being gone was the entire problem, so he couldn’t go to them. Luci couldn’t help. He didn’t think he even wanted her to know anything was going on -- even though she’d promised to help him if anyone fucked with Dad again.

“I got information,” he said, coming up to her table.

She looked up from her book, unimpressed, and didn’t budge.

“It’s about a turncoat.”

“Oh, yeah?” She kept idly stroking her little blue dragon’s back. “One of ours or about to be?”

“One of ours. I need a favor.”

“Oh, that’s cute. That’s real cute.” She straightened up and gestured for him to sit. He did. “So you think I won’t just compel the information out of you?”

He fidgeted. “You don’t have Amren anymore.”

She raised her eyebrows, looking amused. “You’re trying to threaten me now? Ooh, a turncoat stupid enough to make themself known to Jonn fucking Sterling. That’ll be the damning thorn in my paw, yeah.”

“I need a favor,” he said through grit teeth. “You said you look out for us.”

She rolled her eyes and leaned back. “What is it?”

“My dad’s missing. Hansel Granger.” His hands twisted in his lap. “Can you find him? And -- can I go see him?” Helena would help him. He’d say please and she’d sigh and pet his hair and call him kitty and understand.

Wyn stared him down impassively. “Where was he seen last?”

“Glimmerton. He left in the middle of the night.” He knew this wasn’t a yes.

She stretched her back out and cracked her neck, then leaned back in, elbows on the table. She studied him. “I’ll find him. Who’ve you got for me?”

He chewed on his lip. “Gwydion Fechin.”

###

Jonn felt ill. Didn’t want to feel ill -- didn’t want to feel anything. He ran over the list in his head, but it was getting -- getting patchy, he was losing it.

Hansel said *Stay with the guild*. He said *Stay with Finch*. He said *Be good*.

He said *Don’t set fires*. He said *Don’t hurt people* and then he listed all the things that counted. He said *Stay calm.*

Hansel said *Don’t*.

But Jonn lost track of what he wasn’t supposed to do, even though he’d made his armor remind him every time he changed it, because he made it so he had to say *Don’t*. The fucking armor that -- that he thought Hansel bought for him, and thought *That’s weird, Dad never has money*, but just accepted it because it made him happy to think that Hansel had stopped drinking long enough to buy him something -- and it’d been fucking Mishka, instead, and he didn’t get that, didn’t know why Hansel hadn’t corrected him until later, didn’t know if he was supposed to feel bad about it or --

Jonn felt ill.

He wandered around, for a while, trying to decide if he should go to the bunker -- but it was empty now -- or find Asya at the guildhouse -- but she couldn't help him -- or just go to the docks and make a few silvers off some sailors to distract himself.

Somehow he ended up with Gwydion, and he felt better, and he thought he should feel worse, and maybe he should feel worse *because* he felt better.

Gwydion smiled and said, “Come in,” and kept calling him little dove. Jonn didn’t know why he called him that. He hadn’t liked it at first, because only Hansel and Helena called him pet names, and he liked it when they did it, but when he didn’t know Gwydion he didn’t know if he should like it. But he did, now. Because he knew it was -- nice. It was meant to be nice. Flynn had called him baby sometimes and he’d kind of liked that, too.

Gwydion petted his hair and said, “What’s wrong?” and Jonn couldn’t tell him -- couldn’t tell him *I sold you out* because then Gwydion would stop petting his hair, and calling him little dove, and Jonn knew what he was. Selfish.

"I had to do something I didn't wanna do. It's for my dad, though,” he said. “I mean. I still didn't wanna do it. But I had to."

“What did you do?”

“It’s already done. Doesn’t matter.”

And Gwydion dropped it. Kept holding him and rubbing his back. That made Jonn feel -- safe, somehow, made him feel more stable. He wished Gwydion would grab him tight, like Hansel did, like Finch would sometimes when he got upset and Finch didn’t want him to run off and do something stupid -- but that wasn’t the kind of person Gwydion was, he thought. Gwydion kept him there by being gentle, and -- and quiet, not asking him questions he didn’t want to answer, not judging him when he did answer.

Jonn wondered if he could say what he’d done, and Gwydion would understand, and keep not judging him, and keep holding him. Sometimes he felt like he could do something like that to Hansel -- do something awful to him -- but if he gave a reason why he’d done it, Hansel would forgive him. Because that was what Hansel had done for Mishka. But he was scared to test it, and he thought that -- that maybe the fact that Hansel would forgive him made it more important to not hurt him in the first place.

Gwydion said he'd killed someone who loved him, though, and Jonn thought about that sometimes when he slept with Gwydion. He wondered: how long would it take to make Gwydion love him? How long would it take to be sure Gwydion wouldn't kill him? How long would it have taken to be sure he wouldn't kill Gwydion?

He didn't say anything. He asked Gwydion to come see Hansel with him instead, because he knew it'd be the last time they got to spend time together. He knew once he got back to Skyport, Wyn would extract her payment -- he'd bargained with her to give him that long. And then he needled a little at the story with Gwydion’s dad, to find out how he could help with that. For after. Because he figured if Hansel was dead, and he’d done something really fucking stupid to try to save him, and it got him killed too, it’d help him rest a little easier to think that someone was still trying to save Hansel.

Maybe Gwydion wouldn’t see it that way. Maybe it wouldn’t help at all. Jonn had a really fucking hard time knowing what would help people. Even when he tried, he usually fucked it up. He had to keep trying, though. That was what Hansel would want him to do; it was what Hansel did.

If the pearl wand wasn’t real, or he couldn’t get it, him and Luci would just go kill Tricksy Smirnova, whoever that was -- Hansel would help too, maybe -- and then they could bring back Gwydion’s dad. And Gwydion, too. They could fix everything. Maybe Gwydion would understand, then, why Jonn’d had to make the decision he’d made, and how -- it’d all worked out okay in the end, and something Jonn did actually finally made things better, instead of getting him yelled at, or hit, or shot out of a crow’s nest, or kicked out of his home, or stranded away from his dad.

It'd work out. He'd make things better, for once, like Hansel wanted

###

“I’m worried about your sister,” Goro said, in Orcish so Finch couldn’t understand, and Jonn sat up straighter.

Jonn told him later, though, at the guildhouse -- told him what Goro had said as he paced circles around his new quarters and tried to figure out what to do, what to do. Finch was paranoid. Just wanted to know what’d been said. He was annoyed when it was nothing -- important. To him, anyway. He sighed through his teeth and downed his glass and stood up, holding onto the table for a moment to catch his balance, then caught onto Jonn as he passed by.

“Look,” he said. “Fuck. Just go to the goddamn Sanctuary. Get Shallah to teleport you, or whatever. Go take care of your sister.”

“But what do I do then?” Jonn demanded. “What’s wrong? What if I can’t help her? Who’s asking her about me? And -- and -- if I leave Skyport and Wyn finds out she’s gonna be pissed, and --.” And she might back out, she might break her word, she might kill Gwydion without ever finding Hansel --

“Fucking *Mask*.” Finch grabbed him tighter and squeezed him. “Fucking stop. Calm the fuck down.”

Right. Calm down. Hansel always told him to calm down. He hugged Finch back even though what Finch was doing wasn’t really a hug, because Finch didn’t care about him. Finch hated him. That was what he said, and there was no reason for him to lie. It was nice of him, though, not to brush Jonn off anyway, and hold him in place until he stopped breathing too hard and fast to think.

“I thought you were gonna lose your shit, in the bar,” Finch said after a minute. “Good job on, uh. Not. Or fuckin’ whatever.”

“Yeah, you didn’t run away, either,” Jonn commented, pleased.

He scoffed, and let go, and sat back down to keep drinking.

Jonn thought about drinking too, but he really didn’t like the blackouts. It was weird how that’d never happened to him when he used to get plastered with Hansel.

###

Luci said she was fine, that it was no big deal. She glanced at Goro. She said he overreacted sometimes. And something seemed … weird, and Jonn didn’t trust Goro as far as he could throw him -- except that he cared about Hansel -- but there was no reason for Luci to lie to him. She wasn’t good at it, anyway. Dad wasn’t either. Good at spotting lies and calling Jonn out on his, but not telling their own.

Goro -- he didn’t know about.

But he figured it was moot. Luci wouldn’t just stand there and let Goro lie to him, and she was better at seeing this stuff than Jonn was, so Goro probably couldn’t be lying to her, too. It was fine. She was okay, and it was all fine.

And --

And then --

Then Goro just fucking told him where Hansel was, and said he should go visit him, and Jonn felt fucking ill. Physically fucking ill, like he might throw up, because it was too much, and it was confusing -- he was desperate to see his dad and relieved that he was going to be able to, but god, oh god, this meant he’d fucked up again, and he’d made things worse, and he’d handed Gwydion over to Wyn for nothing. Fucking nothing.

It passed before he could bolt or cry or do anything. Turned to blankness. He didn’t have to have feelings about it. Went through the motions of them, of being excited about seeing Hansel, because he knew what that looked like -- knew it so fucking well that he was pretty sure not even Luci picked up on anything. She packed a bag, and when they went to the teleportation circle, he told Shallah that -- something had come up. Asked her to not snitch. And she looked uncomfortable about it, wincing and shifting, but she nodded.

Said, “Yeah. Okay,” and gave him a quick hug that startled him, because normally he was the one who’d done that. He’d just done it to Goro and Goro’d acted about like Finch always used to, which he figured was fair, because Finch had thought Jonn would kill him, then, and Goro probably thought Jonn would do something even worse to him.

Jonn had figured he was Shallah’s friend, but he hadn’t expected her to be his. Figured she wouldn’t snitch because it’d mean admitting she’d broken the rules, too. Hadn’t thought she might do it for any other reason.

One time -- after he’d come in from sea for the last time -- Hansel had mumbled, *I know you don’t know what you’re doing*. He’d said, *S’okay, though. I love you. You’re doing it anyway. S’what matters*.

Jonn wondered if that was the truth. Thing was, Hansel was bad at lying, but he was good at not understanding the truth. He didn’t understand what Jonn was. He didn’t understand that Jonn was taking care of him because he was so goddamn afraid of losing him and being alone and not knowing what to do ever again. Jonn figured going through the motions, like he did -- sometimes it was good for other people, and it made them feel better, like when he’d found Shallah crying about her girlfriend and talked to her about it.

But then he wondered if he’d just done that because he knew it made it more likely she’d help him later on. If maybe he just wanted people to be his friends so they’d hug him and pet his hair and call him pet names and make *him* feel better. Maybe he was a bad person no matter what he did, no matter how closely he tried to follow Hansel’s rules. Maybe he was a worse person for going through the motions without knowing what he was doing and lying about the fact that he did.

###

It was a long walk to Shepherd Hills from the Silvanus Sanctuary.

Luci linked her arm around his and leaned against his shoulder and closed her eyes, letting him watch out for both of them when she got tired. He kept a hand on his loaded crossbow until the sun came up, and then they rested for a while. Had breakfast, watched foot traffic on the snowy road. Luci propped her head on his shoulder, and dozed off for a little while, then got mad that he’d let her fall asleep.

She apologized. Told him she was just nervous about being away from home. Something about that seemed off, too. She kept looking at him like she was worried about him, but he didn’t know why she would be. She didn’t know about Gwydion.

“When we get there,” he said, “I might have to fucking run. Dad being away from Mishka, y’know, that’s good and all, but he might still …” He trailed off.

“I don’t think that’s how those spells work,” Luci told him, again.

He was still nervous about it. This might be his only chance. Luci was smart when it came to magic stuff, but she didn’t understand, she didn’t know what Mishka could do. He hadn’t needed magic to fucking wreck Hansel. Maybe he didn’t need it to get him back, to control him. Hansel was so fucking --

Hansel was the kind of person to keep Jonn around, and that hadn’t taken magic, either.

They managed to catch a ride on the back of a courier’s wagon, and made better time. Jonn paid her once they got to the town, and they dragged themselves into an inn -- god, actually it was the only inn -- this town was fucking tiny -- and asked for directions to the Granger homestead. The woman behind the bar frowned, but told them where to go, and was a bit more polite when Jonn bought lunch there.

Luci fidgeted, too on edge to eat. Jonn told her it’d be okay, and she nodded. He didn’t believe himself, but she was too antsy to notice the lie. He kind of missed when she was smaller, and he could just pick her up and hold her and rock her when she got nervous, and all of her problems were simple enough for that to really make them go away.

“You really think --.” She hesitated. “You really think Mishka would do things like that to him? You think he could trick Hansel into wanting to hurt you?”

Jonn didn’t think it was that much of a stretch, someone wanting to hurt him -- even Hansel -- but he didn’t say that part. “I think Mishka would fucking do anything to him.”

He thought about Hansel sobbing into his hands about how he’d given everything he had in him to Mishka, and Mishka had used it to hurt him. About how he didn’t know if any of it had been real. About how he didn’t know if it was better to think it was or wasn’t. About how he didn’t know what he’d done wrong, how he’d hurt Mishka so badly, why he deserved what he’d gotten.

“But --.” Luci grabbed Jonn's hand. “But Hansel loves you. So much. If Mishka isn’t using magic -- and he can’t be, right now -- then --.”

Jonn remembered watching Hansel cry and thinking he was so fucking twisted up he might never be normal again. He shook his head. Mishka had broken Hansel, then broken him worse with every letter. Jonn thought all it would take was some explanation, and Hansel would jump at the chance to drop all the tension that was keeping him twisted, any excuse to pretend like he wasn’t broken anymore.

‘Cause that’s what he’d done for Jonn. Given him rules, made excuses, decided that if Jonn was just good -- if he didn’t set fires, if he didn’t hurt people -- then he would be fixed, and there wouldn’t be a problem anymore. He wouldn’t have to twist himself up, worrying. Hansel just needed some lie to believe.

Jonn was still the thing he’d been before, something doll-eyed and dead on the inside no matter how well he behaved, and Mishka was still the thing he’d been before -- something venomous and cruel. He could pretend, and win Hansel back, but even if he wasn’t doing anything to hurt Hansel now, Jonn knew he would. Because Jonn never stopped fucking things up, and Hansel never stopped forgiving him, and Luci never stopped being afraid of fire. Thing didn’t stop being what they were.

###

Luci held his hand tightly as he knocked on the door. She stood half behind him, then suddenly moved in front of him, like she’d had second thoughts and wanted to protect him, just in case. The door opened before he had time to object, and an older woman with graying coal-black hair and eyes just as dark stood there, brow knitted in a deeply familiar expression.

“You must be Lucienne and Jonn,” she said.

As Jonn was nodding, Hansel appeared behind her, looking -- alarmed, or concerned, or -- something. He stepped past the woman and Jonn felt his hand tightening on Luci’s, felt himself start to take a step back, thinking *no no no, please don’t, please don’t, he’ll be so upset if he hurts me* -- but Hansel grabbed him in a hug that lifted him off his feet, tight and hard in that reassuring way that made Jonn close his eyes and go limp.

Okay. It was okay.

Hansel hugged Luci, too, much more gently, and ushered them inside, out of the cold. Hansel scooped him up again once the door was closed, and Jonn could feel his breath shaking through his chest in a way that meant he was close to crying. He hugged back as hard as he could, which wasn’t much next to Hansel, but it was something.

“Goddamn, kid.” Hansel set him down. “You okay? The fuck is going on?”

“I’m okay. We’re okay.” Jonn didn’t know how to explain. He glanced around the little cottage, registering the younger man sitting up in the loft, appraising him silently. He had Hansel's eyes, too.

Hansel seemed like he wanted to say something else, but cut it off. They got warmed up with hot tea Marion made -- just like Hansel made it -- and there were brief stories about how they’d met and some of the better parts of what they’d done together.

Jonn wished that Gwydion were here.

He sat on the old couch with Hansel’s arm around him, mostly staying quiet. Hansel had never said much about his family except when he was plastered, always made it sound real bad, but his mom seemed nice -- seemed a lot like him -- and his little brother had that watchful, quiet thing Hansel did down pat. The stepdad was gone. He was the one Jonn had wanted to shank, the one Hansel had talked about hitting him and calling him names. It was too bad. Hansel would probably tell him not to, anyway, though.

And after a little while, Hansel patted his shoulder and asked him to come on a walk with him. Jonn nodded without even thinking about it. It was safe; Hansel was safe again.

They walked for a bit, and Hansel hesitantly asked, “Hey. Kid. Why you been fuckin’ avoiding me?”

Jonn chewed on his lip. He decided to be honest. “Mishka.”

“Listen, I know things’re …” He didn’t finish his thought. “I’m not with him all the time. You been skittish even when I’m alone. I tried to get you to meet me, out at the Sausage, and shit. I would’ve come alone. You know that, right?” He glanced at Jonn, hands in his coat pockets. “I’m not gonna let him hurt you.”

Jonn wondered if Mishka would hurt him, personally. If he’d get his hands dirty. If he’d enjoy it. When Jonn had bad dreams it was always about Mishka making Hansel sink his trident into him, standing back, enjoying that. Hurting Jonn to hurt Hansel, like he’d done with the poison. Except now he wanted to hurt Jonn, too, in retaliation. It was a good plan. It was fucking devious and heartless. Jonn figured that was the kind of thing Mishka would like.

He didn’t know what to say, and kept just walking, up on the wooden fence with his arms out for balance. Almost toppled and caught himself -- then Hansel put his hands around his waist and carefully set him back on the ground.

“Jonn. Hey.”

“I don’t think you’d *let* him hurt me,” Jonn blurted. “I think he’d -- he'd trick you into it. I don’t think you’d do it on purpose.”

“That’s not what I …” He lost what he was saying again.

“I think he’d …” Jonn crossed his arms over his chest, hugging himself, looking away. “I think he’d use magic and he’d -- he’d make you do shit. He’d make you care about him, ‘cause -- okay, I thought -- I thought that was the only reason -- he fucked you up so goddamn bad, Pops,” he protested. “And I thought he must be doing some shit to make you trust him again, but then I thought -- Luci told me that magic doesn’t work that way, really, so I thought -- about what kind of person you are, and how -- you know, you always forgive me, so you’d probably forgive him.” He looked down. “And I figured, you can’t have the both of us. ‘Cause you either -- you either think he did something awful to you, or you think I did something awful to him, and -- you’re living with him, and I’m, you know.”

He stopped, staring at the ground.

Hansel looked at him for a long moment. Then he slowly drew his hands out of his pockets and pulled Jonn in to hug him, again, and god, Jonn had really missed his dad hugging him.

“I think -- I think you both did awful fucking things,” Hansel said. “Listen -- motek, you’re not fuckin’ wrong, he fucked me up. I know. I know. He knows, too, and he’s fucking sorry about it. There was a reason, and I get it, but -- he’s still fucking sorry and he’s gonna do better, he’s not gonna hurt me again. Okay?”

Yeah. A reason and an apology. That was all Hansel needed, and -- it was like it’d never happened. Jonn wondered if it made him a worse person than Mishka that he’d taken advantage of that fault so many times. He didn’t believe it, but he nodded, because that was what Hansel wanted him to do.

“And you did an awful fucking thing, too,” Hansel went on, “and I know you had a reason, and I get it. Are you …” He stopped, like he didn’t want to say it. “I mean, are you sorry?”

“No,” Jonn said immediately, because Hansel said not to lie to him.

Hansel let go of him, but not abruptly, not dropping him, keeping his hands on Jonn’s shoulders.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Okay. I didn’t -- think you would be. Just … checking.”

Jonn chewed his lip and looked at him. “Why would I be?” he challenged. “Why should I be? He shouldn’t’ve fucking hurt you. He -- he kept doing it. He almost killed you. Whatever fucking reason he had, he --.” He searched for the words. “He shouldn’t’ve ever done that, he shouldn’t’ve ever told you he loved you and then used it against you, he -- I wouldn’t even do that and I’m -- I’m -- all broken and -- even I wouldn’t --.”

“Hey, hey. Shh.” Hansel put one thumb over Jonn’s lips. “Settle. Settle.”

Jonn fidgeted in place for a moment, then closed his eyes, and stepped in to lean against Hansel’s chest. Hansel rubbed his back. He sniffled.

“Okay,” Hansel said again. “Hey. I love you. S’okay. Jonn, people just … fuckin’ hurt each other, sometimes. They don’t even mean to. Or they think it won’t hurt. Or -- I dunno. They don’t think about it enough. Y’know, when I left home, that really fuckin’ hurt my mom, and I didn’t think about that at goddamn all, ‘cause -- ‘cause I was too busy being hurt, too. You know? You understand that?”

Jonn made an uncertain sound. Tried to take what Hansel was saying and put it into an existing framework. He’d hurt people without meaning to. Things hurt other people that didn’t hurt him, and that made it … hard. He didn’t know how he was supposed to anticipate it, all the time.

He nodded. “Think so.”

“A’right. Well, see -- thing is that -- that Mishka didn’t know how much he was hurting me. Thought he was … sparing me from something worse, later on, by hurting me a little bit at the time. You get that?”

“Mm.” That sounded like bullshit. But … then, Hansel said not to lie, and Jonn knew it’d hurt him if Jonn lied to him, but he'd still done it sometimes to keep Hansel from finding out about things that’d hurt him more. “Guess.”

“He didn’t know, motek,” Hansel said gently. “All those letters, he -- he didn’t know. Okay? He thought I didn’t care. He didn’t know. And he’s real fuckin’ sorry. I wish --.” He sighed. “I fucking wish I could just get you two in the same room and make you both goddamn understand.” He bent to kiss the top of Jonn’s head. “But d’you fuckin’ -- get it? I can forgive both of you. Okay? I can think you both did something fuckin’ awful and forgive both of you.”

Jonn was quiet for a while. “But he gets to have you,” he said. “He gets to have you so I thought -- I thought you had to pick, and you’d picked him, and -- even if you’re saying you don’t have to pick, you still do, and you picked him.”

“I … god, kid.” He sounded upset. Jonn wished he hadn’t said it. “I’ve been fuckin’ trying to have you both, y’know? But you wouldn’t fuckin’ show up. I get why -- I mean, I get it, you thought -- you thought he fucked me up again.” He paused. “I get it. But he didn’t, motek, I’m okay, it’s okay, I just fuckin’ -- I wanna have both of you in my damn life, but I don’t know how.”

More than upset. He sounded fucking miserable. Jonn had fucked it up again.

Hansel hugged him. “Listen, can we just -- can you just fucking be here, for a while? Can you not goddamn run off, and can we just … I don’t know, give it a couple days, and then we’ll deal with it, or try to fuckin’ figure out how to deal with it, or … I dunno. I just fuckin’ miss you, kid.”

“Yeah,” Jonn said quickly. “Yeah. I wanna stay, I wanna -- I miss you. I just thought --.” It didn’t matter what he’d thought. He hugged Hansel back. “Doesn’t matter. Already done, right? Doesn’t matter. I love you. I’m sorry.”

Hansel hesitated. “What’re you sorry for?”

“I don’t know. I -- I don’t know.” He felt himself getting agitated and confused again, but Hansel put a stop to it, slowed him down.

“S’okay. Hey. Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out, all right? It’ll be okay.”

Jonn decided to believe him. “Okay.”