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He almost skipped it. He would have, if not for the fact that Morrigan and the Deucalion staff had already come to see him walk across the stage.
He had had the suit picked out for weeks, since before. Uncle Jove had come with him to the tailors to pick it out, from the material to the cut to the exact pattern. His tie was the same one his mom had had when she had graduated from university. His gold hoop earrings had been his dad’s.
He didn’t look at the audience as he walked past, even though all his peers and friends had been grinning and skipping and doing ridiculous stupid things to whoops and cheers from the audience. Considering the usually austere environment of Graysmark, this was a complete hullabaloo, even though it was a speck of dust compared to what Frank would have put on later, in any normal circumstance.
Nothing was ever going to be normal again.
His eye patch limited his peripheral vision as he walked up but he still caught sight of Morrigan next to Dame Chanda, trying to smile, doing her best to be happy, genuinely pleased for him, but just sunk under everything else at the same time. He knew that if he looked at her she would be a deep enough blue to be black.
He didn’t stay past when it was polite enough to leave, walking out of the garden party right after Morrigan, nodding at Charlie as he did so no one would think they’d gone missing or stay around for them.
“I found something,” she said to him as they went through the ticket barriers for the wunderground. “When I was clearing out the study.” She said it with absolutely no inflection. No choking. She said it like she had practised it for days. Or at least a few hours.
“What is it?” he asked as they plodded down the stairs. There was no incoming train so they might as well take their time.
“Bottle of wine,” she said. Her voice was still casual but she was picking at the skin beside her thumb, making it turn red under pressure. “Being saved for today.”
“Do you want to go drink it now?” he asked bluntly. Morrigan was still underage but who cared at this point? He doubted it would be her first time having alcohol anyway, given her unit mates, and those Silver District twins she was friends with.
She shrugged, “If you want.”
He uncorked the bottle and poured it, his hand at the exact angle he had seen the bartenders at the Golden Lantern and servers in the Hotel's dining room do a thousand times. The same angle that he had seen Jupiter pour at at Christmas dinner, when he split a bottle between himself and the hotel staff. at the last second, his hand slipped and a splatter of red landed onto the white tablecloth, solid droplets one second, quickly sinking and staining the fabric.
It looked just like the blood on the pavement.
He blinked at it for a second before putting the bottle back down, both of their glasses slightly more full than they should have been, but who cared? What did propriety matter now?
Morrigan sipped at the glass, silently confirming his assumption. It wasn’t Jack’s first alcoholic drink either, even if Jupiter might have assumed or hoped it; he had been at boarding school from the age of eleven. No explanation needed past that.
“It’s nice,” she said finally, putting down the glass, half drunk. “Good wine.”
“It’s vintage,” he said, picking up the bottle, twisting it around in his hand. “Um, from the year I was born, actually. Before he was my guardian, he was my godfather. I wonder—” his throat tightened and he shrugged, unable to finish that thought.
“Probably,” she said. “Seems like something he would do.”
He finished his glass in the remaining silence, filling and emptying it again. And again. Morrigan did the same at least once. Maybe twice. He’d lost track. It wasn’t potent but even his brief experiences of sneaking out into fields on the outskirts of the city with soft drinks spiked with various clear, strong smelling liquids didn’t really prepare him for this.
He found himself again on the floor, his knees hugged tight to his chest. The empty bottle sat next to him, corked again at some point. Morrigan was lying on her back beside him, tracing shapes in the air with her finger. He moved his eye patch to the side to see the thread of wunder she was playing with, entranced by.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said. “I don’t— something went wrong. Jupiter shouldn’t have— Jove wouldn’t have died in such a mundane way.”
“I know,” she said, turning her head. He slid the patch back in place, but not before he saw the cross over her heart, the way she seemed so deep under water she couldn’t even be touched by him. “I tried— it was wrong. It never should have played out like that.”
“Like,” he barrelled on. “He should have lived. Obviously, but if he was going to die, it would have been going out on a mission. Blaze of glory. Not being hit by a fucking car.” His voice twisted in his throat and he didn’t even bother to smother his tears. In public he might have, but what was even the point here? It was just him and Morrigan.
“I know,” she said, dropping her hands. She rolled onto her front, springing onto her hands, standing so quickly that it gave him a headache.
He stared up at her, “What are we even supposed to do now? This was all him, all his. The point is gone. I have to go to the League in… two weeks? And he’s not even going to be there to wish me luck or tell me how stupid my plan is.”
“You’re still doing it then?” She offered him her hand, pulling him to standing in one go.
He rubbed his arm, almost yanked from its socket, “What else even is there?”
She looked at him like she wanted to say something. Her mouth opened, then closed again. Instead of trying to dissuade him or wishing him luck, whatever had been on the tip of her tongue, she just pulled him into a hug, whispering something he would hold with him for months after the fact.
He would remember it on his first day of officer training, on his first time realm hopping, and when he had achieved officer status, and immediately went AWOL. He remembered it on an Outer Realm he didn’t even know the name of, finding his parents, confused and dazed and out of time.
He kept it with him the whole way back.
“We’ll all be here when you get back. I promise.”