Work Text:
"Do you think it's normal to worry about what people think of you?"
"Normal as in happening often? Yes. Normal as in something that should happen? No. What brings this up?"
"I keep wondering what the rest of my party thinks about me, but then I feel bad because it feels like I'm doubting them? But at the same time, I think they'd be justified to not think very highly of me, so it's not like I'm judging them based on my imaginary ideas of them. Is it unethical to cast Detect Thoughts on your friends?"
"Highly," he snorted. "But you know your friends love you, obviously. Or at least, you should."
"I guess so. I mean, I know they do like me, in their own special dysfunctional ways. I just don't know why."
"You still think of love and affection as something you have to earn," Jawbone said gently, leaning forward in his chair to punctuate his point. And yikes, point made, because Jawbone always somehow got into the heart of the matter within fifteen minutes of a student sitting in front of him in the comfy old couch.
"It is, isn't it?" Adaine argued. "People can say they love someone unconditionally but at the end of the day there's always some unforgivable fuck up that will make them stop loving you."
"You're thinking about your parents with a wide lense again, let's back up. Pick someone you're close to, I don't care who, and think about anything you could possibly do to make them leave you without even a second chance."
What would make you leave me, Jawbone?
"What if I stopped getting better?" Adaine asked instead. "What if the anxiety and the panic attacks got to be too much?"
"And what exactly do you classify as 'too much,' Mrs. Abernat?"
"When I stop being useful?" But that didn't exactly make sense for Jawbone, did it? She could stop being useful for her party, if the panic started to seize her and she couldn't get her mind and mouth and hands to cooperate to form the spells she needed to fight. But she didn't fight side by side with Jawbone. She lived with him. "When I start being a nuisance, and I get in the way."
"Can you see yourself reaching a point where your anxiety alone makes you impossible to be around?"
"I don't know how much good the few things I have to offer will do when the bad things get in the way. What's most people's threshold of tolerance?"
"You're saying 'when" an awful lot," Jawbone pointed out. "And that's not exactly the name of the game. These are worst case scenarios right? A lot of 'if's And I know there's only one Oracle in this room and it sure as hell ain't me, but these are the most unlikely to happen. Tell me the good."
"The good?"
"Yeah, the nice outcomes. Where are you going to be, in a few years or a few months or weeks or whatever. What do you hope is coming?"
"I'll get better," Adaine started haltingly. "My meds will start working enough that everything doesn't feel like an apocalypse."
"That's a good start, but that's survival stuff up there with eating and sl- trancing every night. What's some stuff you really want for your future?"
"I want- well, to be happy I guess," Adaine shrugged, unconsciously burrowing deeper into her jacket and sinking further into the couch. "Passing my classes this year would be nice."
"And what else?"
"Not going to prison, hopefully. My friends being happy. I hope Kirsten's new god works out and they get all the paperwork filled out for the GSA. I hope Riz remembers to sleep while he's working cases in his new office and Fabian just lets himself be for a while. I hope the SigFig's sell out and Fig and Gorgug have fun on tour.I just want to be a normal teenager for a few minutes y'know?"
"Pretty reasonable stuff there," Jawbone said. He leaned back in his chair once more and took a swig of tea. "Sounds like you just want you and your friends to be happy. You're a sweet kid, Adaine. I don't know why you think you have to try so hard to make everyone happy."
"Because I didn't try hard enough with my parents and they left?"
"You could've given your parents the moon and they still would have left because they were determined to dislike you," the counselor said bluntly. Adaine appreciated it.
"But it wasn't always like that," she argued. "When I was young they treated me and Aelwyn the same. It wasn't until I got older and my anxiety got worse that they picked a favorite."
"So they were assholes that should've gotten pets and not kids. Why are we choosing to revisit this point now?"
"When am I going to be too much for you, Jawbone?"
It wasn't exactly like ripping off a bandage. With that you could always put a new one on, put everything back to rights and pretend it had never happened. This was like opening the gates of a dam, and standing there as the flood water washed over you.
"Nothing that comes to mind," Jawbone answered automatically and with what she was as close to sure was full honesty as she could get without forcing Kristen to cast Zone of Truth on their shared guardian. "Look, kiddo, your brain is hotwired to make you think stuff like that, not because it's true , but because it might be. And that goes hand in hand with being an oracle right? You know what's going to happen, the good and the bad and the mediocre, right?"
Adaine nodded hesitantly, unable to force herself to give a verbal answer. The werewolf continued regardless.
"And I'm proud as fuck that you're comfortable enough to ask that, but I need you to know that that's not something you have to worry about with me, okay? I don't need you to get certain grades or say certain things so that you can live in my shitty apartment with my nephew and her girlfriend and occasionally the goblin or the sad elf down the hall, alright?"
The description brought a smile to her face, and Adaine was overwhelmed by how apt it was. Jawbone's house was never still, it's very occupants seeming to shift from day to day. There was Jawbone and Tracker and Kristen and Riz and Sklonda down the hall and Gilear a floor above and Sandralynn bringing Fig over for a visit as an excuse to see the counselor. She couldn't imagine Jawbone kicking any of them out for failing to meet the standards she held herself too, so why should she expect the same of herself?
"That's the face of a revelation," he laughed.
The wizard was horrified to realize that her eyes felt misty when she blinked, but yeah, okay, maybe this was a revelation.
"I love my job sometimes," he sighed contentedly, taking another sip of tea.
"You're a great counselor," she agreed.
"Thanks, kiddo. But I think I like being a parent even more."
… And now she was fully crying. Great.
"Basrar's after school?" Jawbone offered. "Tracker and Kristen are on another swamp mission so it would just be the two of us."
"Yeah," Adaine smiled wetly. "That sounds nice."
Jawbone beamed back, and maybe everything really was going to be okay.
The future was uncertain, but who gives a fuck about shitty future vision. She was going to have a good school year with her pseudo werewolf dad if she had anything to say about it.