Chapter Text
Monday, August 2nd 1979
You used to be able to guess where an orphan had been born in Magnus based on their last name alone. After the Dying Years it was no longer traditional to give children the surname of the founder whose land they had been abandoned on. Hank had always supposed it would've been rather gauche to name a kid after your murder victim.
Children raised in the many orphanages of the territory of the former Blackwell family, who were given up at birth, or otherwise foundlings, where, when he was born, at least, given the surname of Edgar, after the Saint Edgar River which runs between the islands of Blackwell and Grant's Ville.
Hank had been born in 1953, some 42 years after they stopped giving orphan children the names of their erstwhile founders. He was found at approximately 3 weeks of age and the Marm of the orphanage christened him with the name Henry Jonathan Edgar. He'd gone through school with 15 other boys named Henry, half of them foundlings, so the teachers couldn't even call them by their last names to tell them apart. He was one of two Henry Jonathan's, the other guy had been 6 days older than him, and by that skin-and-teeth seniority, he was Jonathan, and Hank had been reduced to John. The other boys started calling him John Doe after that.
He had made a habit of skipping afternoon mass by the time he was a teenager, and one burning cold winter day in 1968 he met Judy Hart and Jonas Achterberg. Judy was a firecracker, burning like one of the carousel bonfires, a redheaded little spitfire. Jonas had only lived in Magnus for a year by then, German accent thicker than glue, lanky and lean and awkward. They called themselves the Triple J's, and they were inseparable, three peas in a pod - a matching set.
It had been Jonas who came with him to the courthouse when he changed his name from Edgar to Hart. He’d done it the moment he had turned 18. Judy’d been real nonchalant about the whole thing. Did nothing more than wink before she'd given him permission to steal her last name. Jonas had been jealous for a while, that he was the odd man out, the only J without the last name Hart. But, Jonas took Judy's last name when they got married half a decade later, so it had all worked out in the end. After that Judy always swore the three of hearts was the luckiest card in the deck, she was a cardturner once upon a time, so he supposed she would know best.
The Coop was a falling down old brick monstrosity in Richter Park, lousy with foundlings and Statesiders before it all went bust with the changing tides of the ‘80s. It was when Jonas was living at the Coop that he started going by Hank. He was one of the oldest folks haunting around the place and everybody told him that John was a serial killer name. It was some punk kid who left three days after Jonas arrived who said they should call him Hank, since he already acted like an old man. Hank stuck, John didn't. By the time he met his wife, it was his name and he didn't answer to anything else.
It was the summer of 1975 when he first met Lena, who was 19, fresh off the Cascadian ferry, and brilliantly angry. Now, four years later, Hank makes the third decision he doesn’t regret, and starts the second movement in the transformative dance of Henry Edgar, Magnus orphan and wannabe musician, to Hank Hart, family man.
"You really wanna pick what's safe Hank?"
It’s Judy who asks it, always able to cut right into the quick of his soul. Jonas watches on from a busted armchair, glazed eyes unfocused, as his mouth twitches in that rabbit-like way it does when he disagrees with something but doesn't yet know how to say why.
"She's got a kid, if I wanna be in her life, yeah, I gotta pick the safe bet."
That Billy Joel song is playing loud from the record player as he murmurs his final verdict into the air because The Stranger is the only vinyl in Jonas and Judy’s new apartment at the moment, and Hank can’t help but feel a bit of loving melancholia.
Slow down, you're doing fine, you can't be everything you wanna be before your time.