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Jake knocks a quick shave and a haircut on Mama's office door and waits, bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet, for her call to enter. He grins when it comes, voice distracted like she's got her nose buried in something, but without any kind of tone to indicate that she's up for not entertaining conversations right now. Mama has never been anything but kind to him, and she has an open door policy. If she's in the Lodge, then she's available to talk, and she's made sure he knows that. But Jake also knows that she has a hell of a lot on her plate, and sometimes she's not up for it even if she says she is.
He knows he's not a burden-- she's told him that a million times too-- but he is considerate. He can deal with his own problems.
This isn't a problem though, just a conversation. Or, maybe it's kind of a problem, but Jake doesn't want to walk into it that way. Mama might be full of unconditional love and kinder than his birth parents had ever been, but she also has a low tolerance for people disrespecting her.
Usually around the Lodge that's not a problem, but he knows better than to go in guns blazing.
She's at her desk when he enters, hunched over Thacker's old laptop and surrounded by teetering stacks of paperwork. He has no clue what any of it is for-- Lodge stuff, Pine Guard stuff, other... stuff? A lot of this Earth stuff still escaped his understanding, but he figured that wasn't too much of a problem so long as Barclay and Mama were still around.
He'd have to figure it out eventually, probably. Maybe Moira could help. Yeah, that was an idea.
"Hey baby," Mama greets him as he comes in, and the grin that twists his mouth up is entirely out of his control. Invitation extended, he traipses into the office and plops himself down on the sofa against the wall. He has to nudge a notebook out of the way to do so, a tattered little composition book with nothing but a date written on the cover. He picks it up idly and flips through a few pages-- sketches of... something. Abominations obviously, though he's not quite sure what, and some of the pages are stained with old, brown colored droplets. Blood. Huh.
The date on the cover says 1993.
"Hand that over," Mama says, not unkindly, and Jake leans over to do so. She takes it and drops it into a desk drawer, then returns to whatever she was doing on the laptop. It's plugged in with both a charging cable and an ethernet cable, and Jake wonders what she's doing on it. He picks at a hangnail on his thumb and glances around the office, letting his eyes stop on a dusty framed photo sitting on the bookshelf, eye level where he's sitting, right next to him.
It's older than he is, probably, and shows some people he recognizes and some that he doesn't. Mama and Barclay are young, late twenties if he had to guess, and Thacker's just a bit of time ahead of them but obviously a younger man than the last time Jake saw him. There's no grey in their hair, and Mama is a skeleton of her current self, standing with obvious strength but none of the weight to back it up. Barclay's face is younger, beard shaved and eyes unwrinkled. The two of them stand bracketing Thacker, who's dwarfed between them. There's someone climbed up on Barclay's back, legs and arms wrapped around him, smile huge. That person has a black eye and a butterfly bandage on their eyebrow. The person to Mama's right, under her arm, has a long grey ponytail and a gun slung over his shoulder, face time weathered.
"Did you need something? Or just the company?" Mama asks, and Jake tears his eyes away from the picture. Up a shelf is another photo, showing a woman and child, cheek to cheek and smiling wide. It's old enough that the colors are muted and the image a bit yellowed.
Jake had never met Mama's mother.
"I wanna ask you something," he says, sitting up properly and folding his hands in his lap, which apparently gets her attention.
She glances at him over the top of her reading glasses, then slides them down and off, letting them hang around her neck on a chord. She folds her hands under her chin and gives him her full attention. "Shoot," she says.
Here goes nothing. "I want to help with the Pine Guard."
Mama stares at him a moment, considering it, then slips her glasses back on and goes back to the laptop. "No."
"But-"
"Final answer."
"Let me plead my case?" he asks, giving her the biggest smile he can manage to help him be convincing. She's weak to things like that, sometimes. That and whatever she calls 'puppy dog eyes,' though Jake still hasn't figured out quite what she's talking about or how to do it on purpose.
Those tricks don't work on Barclay.
She sighs, and she doesn't take the glasses off, but she does look away from the laptop. "Go ahead then," she says, and now his smile is genuine.
He claps his hands together, once, "Okay! So, last time I asked I wasn't exactly equipped for fighting, I get that--"
"Last time you asked, I said no, you disobeyed me anyways, and you almost got yourself killed. I remember."
He doesn't let himself cringe. Not a strong start. "Yes..." he agrees. "And that was totally my bad. But I was a lot younger--"
"Still young."
"--And I was like, still pretty new to Earth. And I didn't know what I was getting myself into. But I've seen you and Barclay doin' it for years now, and like, I can totally handle myself."
She raises one eyebrow and pulls her glasses back off. He puts his grin back on, though it probably doesn't make him look much older, actually, so he takes it off again and coughs once into his fist.
"Anyways--"
"I don't let kids do Pine Guard stuff," she says, and Jake tries to tamp down the frustration that rises from that.
"I'm not a kid," he argues. "Moira and Barclay and I did that math for fun, remember, trying to get Earth time and Sylvain time to match up? I'm, like, as old as Hollis and they have their own apartment and job and everything!"
Mama's eye squints the way it always does anytime Hollis is involved in anything, and yeah, that was his bad. Bringing up the Hornets isn't anyway to win an argument around here, even if he's not involved with them anymore. Sometimes they still tore through the woods out back on their BMX bikes, filling the air up with gasoline and causing Mama to storm out there and fire her gun into the dirt until they high-tailed it off down the mountain.
"You gonna go get your own apartment and job and everything, then?" she asks. "You gonna start doin' taxes?"
"What are taxes?"
She levels him with a telling expression. He frowns. "The Pine Guard could be my job?"
"Absolutely not."
"I just want to help!" Jake doesn't mean to shout, but once he does, Mama's face grows thunderous. She doesn't stand from her desk, but it still feels like she's towering over him.
"You help by keeping your nose out of it and helping look after the Lodge, then. You help in the clean up, and you help by doin' what Barclay asks you, and if another sylph makes their way through the gate then you can help with that. But I ain't havin' you goin' out into the woods and riskin' your skin hunting these monsters. You think you know what you're doin' cause you seen me and Barclay come back from it? You've seen us come in from a hunt beat to hell and back, and we've been doin' this for longer than you've been alive."
"You guys could teach me, then. I can learn. I'm not useless."
"You ain't," she agrees, but her voice does not lighten any. She leans her elbows on the desk and points a finger at him, pinning him against the back of the couch through pure force of will. "I will say this one time, and that's the end of it. You are not helping with the Pine Guard, and we ain't talkin' anymore about it, and if I catch you out there, against my orders, I will skin you alive myself. You understand me?"
Jake just stares at her, anger burning in his face, and he knows he's supposed to answer her but he's not ready to give up quite yet. He wants to argue further, but she just shut the conversation down right there. Push too far and he was just gonna get himself in trouble, and he'd rather not have her be pissed at him.
He sighs.
He can't make himself agree.
He says, "You let Aubrey do it," and his voice comes out more of a mumble than he wants it to. He wants to yell, sound strong and have enough conviction that she stops seeing him like some helpless little kid she found in the woods, and sees him as someone that can be actually useful. She's right. He's seen her and Barclay come back from hunts in all kinds of states. He's seen Moira stitch them up right there at the kitchen table, has sat with them at the ER. He's listened with his ear pressed to the office door while they planned hunts and documented past ones, and the stuff Aubrey's told him about the hunts she's been on haven't set him at ease any. He's seen the way Barclay's been watching Mama, like his heart is breaking, as she hobbles around and refuses to use her cane after whatever the hell she got involved with when she went off through the gate that last time.
They're getting older. They're getting tired, he can see it. And he's old enough to help now, big enough to be useful. He can fight, he can help, and they can't keep doing this by themselves.
For Sylvain's sake, he got attacked by that stupid, horrible water monster out at the hot springs, and he'd lived through that. He has to do something. He can't just waste time anymore, can't just let them all go and get hurt while he does nothing.
"Ah." All the anger has left Mama's voice like it's been rinsed away, but it doesn't matter. Jake is on the brink of tears from his own racing thoughts, and he hates himself a little bit for it. "So that's what all this is about, then."
"No," he says, and his stupid voice is choked, and he swallows hard. "It's not just that."
"It don't seem fair that I let her go on out there and make you sit at home."
That's not it. She doesn't get it. "Kind of...."
She sighs, and she braces a lot of weight on the desk as she rises to her feet, favoring her bad leg greatly as she limps over to him and nudges him over to drop down on the couch at his side. She takes his face in her hand, and he glares and jerks his eyes down towards their knees.
"Look at me," she says, and she jostles him a little when he doesn't listen right away. He glares up at her.
"I'm not lettin' Dani go on out there either," she says. The heat is gone from her voice, but it's obviously still a lecture. "This ain't a 'No Jakes in the Woods' type of deal, okay? We've had kids in the Pine Guard before, just young things, not a day over twenty-five. Barclay fought me on it the whole way, but we needed bodies out there, and that's all it turned out to be in the end. Bodies. They died, Jake, before they even got the chance to live properly, and I don't ever want to let that happen again.
"But Aubrey has something that we can't take for granted here. She's powerful, more powerful than any of us could imagine bein', you can see it in her eyes when she's fightin'. The girl can shoot fire clean outta her hands, she can hold her own. If you had magic powers I just might let you out there too, but I'm not sending you out there with a gun and a knife and hoping you make it out the other side. Most fights I'm not sure me and the others are gonna make it out alive, but Duck and Aubrey are made for this, and Ned is too grown for me to make any kind of decision for him. If he really wants to stick his nose into this monster business, then let him see the truth of it."
She goes from gripping his jaw to holding both sides of his face in her palms, and she looks at him seriously. "You 'n Dani are too precious to me to get involved with this. I ain't risking you like that, and if I thought we could keep fighting and make it without Aubrey out there backin' us, then I wouldn't let her in the Pine Guard either. You understand now? I ain't trying to be a hardass."
Jake gets it, he really does, but something she said had punched him right in the gut and took the wind clean outta him. "But what if you and Barclay don't make it out alive, like you said?" he asks, struggling to get the words out of his throat. "What if you die and I coulda done something to help?"
"Oh baby...." She sighs again, something heavy, and pulls him into her chest. It doesn't do much to make him stop feeling like a child, but it does feel good, so he drops his forehead onto her shoulder and surrenders to the weight of her arms wrapped around him. It's grounding. He feels a little bit like he's floating away, and this helps. He's not crying though, stubbornly blinking the moisture back into his eyes and taking in measured breaths through his nose to control it. Mama smells like sawdust and leather. He swallows the lump in his throat, and it hurts.
"This ain't your fight," she tells him. "And whatever danger Barclay and I decide to throw ourselves into isn't your responsibility, but I'll tell ya what. Neither of us is keen to let the other beef it out there. I'd bring him back to life just to kick his ass for dyin', and he'd do the same for me. We've fought too hard for too long to let this take us out while ya'll still need us, okay?"
He croaks out some kind of answer that isn't even a word. She rubs his back.
"I'm sorry you gotta be all wrapped up in this. If I could make things easier for ya'll, I would in a heartbeat."
"Not your fault," he says, probably incomprehensible speaking against her shoulder. He sighs, wriggles his arms free, and wraps them around her. Dumb conversation, he shoulda known he she wouldn't go for it. He gives up. "I'm sorry."
"You don't ever have to be sorry for talking to me like this, even if I don't like what you have to say." She squeezes him tight, and now would be a good chance for him to squirm free and get out of her hair, but if she's gonna make him feel like a baby then she's going to have to deal with him sitting in her lap for a while. He leans into her fully, and she rubs his back again.
"You know I love you."
"Yeah, I know," and he doesn't say it back, but he knows that she knows anyways. She's not the kinda person that needs to hear it.
"I mean what I said, though. You'll be one sorry harp seal if I catch you out there during a hunt, you hear me?"
A laugh bubbles out of him at that, and he sniffs, once. His eyes are dry again. "Yes ma'am," he answers, and she presses a kiss to the side of his head.
"Good boy," she mumbles, and they stay like that for a while.
---
Barclay finds them not long after, Jake curled up under Mama's arm, his legs thrown over her lap, his eyes closed and head lulling against her shoulder. She's leaning her cheek against the top of his head and reading something she has propped up on his knees. She looks down and sets it aside when Barclay pokes his head in.
She's not quite ready to let Jake go yet, but he doesn't seem to mind terribly. Anytime she yells at them she feels bad enough to want to wrap them up forever afterwards. His breath is even, and he's dozing but not sleeping, heavy and warm against her.
She grins at Barclay, and he gives a small wave in return. 'He okay?' he mouths, silently, and she nods before patting Jake on the back and nudging him back awake.
"Go on and help Barclay with dinner," she says, giving them both an out. Jake yawns and rolls off of the couch, saluting her as he goes. He laughs and ducks when Barclay tries to grab him in the doorway, dodging a headlock with a playful elbow to the ribs and taking off down the hallway. Barclay swats lazily after him, misses, and looks back at Mama.
"What was all that about?" he asks her, and she gets up with aching knees to kiss his cheek and head out of her office for some air. It's too early to be tired.
"Nothing to worry about, I don't think," she tells him. "He's a good kid."
"Yes...." Barclay agrees like he thinks she's hiding something. She replies by smacking him on the ass and laughing to herself at the annoyed look he gives her as she makes her way down the hallway.
"Where's your cane at?" he asks, and she knows that if she looks back he'll have his hands on his hips. "The doctor said--"
"Yes, yes, I know, the doctor." She peeks into the common room, glances around. Their local werewolves are back in town, it seems, sprawled out in the arm chairs and chatting quietly among themselves. They come and go. She raises a hand to greet them, trusts that Barclay already gave them the run down on their federal agent situation.
"Where's Aubrey?" she asks, and sure enough, Barclay's hands are on his hips and his mouth is screwed up in a frown-- more of a pout, really-- when she looks back at him. "I wanna check in on her."
He looks suspicious, but he doesn't ask. "Out back, somewhere. I think she's doin' something out in the woods."
Yeah, that figured. Try as she might, there wasn't much keeping kids out of the woods these days.