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Jake finds himself sitting on the stairs in the main room, leaning against the rail. It’s a place he likes to come to think, somewhere he can see if there’s a new development, or a new visitor, or if someone is trying to rush off into danger alone, but out of the way of whoever’s busy at the tables.
Just now, he’s the only one there and only shadows are busy at the tables. There’s no Ezekiel espousing his own brilliance, no Jenkins complaining about the lack of peace even as he finds little ways to make their lives easier, and there’s no Cassie. Cassie sometimes finds him out here and they talk, but tonight she’s not appeared. The place is empty.
So, he isn’t over on the stairs to keep out of anyone’s way.
This isn’t about staying out of anyone’s way but his own. Lying in bed, trying to sleep, he found his mind going over and over the whole thing with the Oracle. His momma once told him he had a destiny, and at the time he thought she meant to get out and make something of himself. Then his dad told him his future was in the family business, and Jake came to understand his fate was to shore up his dad, to cover for him and chase after him and repair the cracks in the foundation of what his dad used to care about.
He blew that destiny out of the water when he followed Eve Baird. But then, that’s the thing about destiny: it has a way of sneaking up on you and of not being what you thought it was at all. He thought he was meant to stay in that town, that he was meant to run the business. That, eventually, he’d have to give in and marry some nice girl, someone who would be lovely and straightforward and not a brilliant mathematician with death in her head. So, Eve Baird drew him away from what he thought was his fate, and into something else.
Eve Baird who apparently has a greater destiny than he does, and who he offered his life for, not twenty-four hours ago. He isn’t sure how he feels yet about the fact his life wasn’t wanted.
“Hey, Stone. You having a single-person sulk, there, or can anyone join in?”
Glancing over, Jake sees Baird most of the way across the room, her arms crossed and her hair falling about her face. She doesn’t give a reason for why she’s out here at night, but neither does he. Sometimes, when Baird speaks to him, he thinks she almost forgets he isn’t one of her soldiers. Sometimes, he thinks he is. He thought about joining the army to get out of his home town, more than once. That’s another destiny he didn’t chase, and he does wonder what he would have become if he’d tried it.
“You wanna sulk?” he asks. “Didn’t take you for the type.”
She shrugs and crosses to him, wrapping her long cardigan tightly around her body as she takes a seat on the step next to him. Her shoulder brushes against his.
“I escaped death,” she says. “I got nothing to complain about.”
She isn’t quite looking at him, though.
“Makes you think, though, doesn’t it?” he asks. “About what might happen. About what’s meant to happen.”
She nods, and rocks into him, just enough to nudge him.
“I suppose you think I should have accepted it?”
What? Jake turns to stare at her.
“How’d you get that? I offered… Baird, come on. Course you shouldn’t have just accepted dying.”
Baird meets his gaze, and she looks sad. Concerned.
“But you didn’t want to go against destiny,” she says. “When we needed you to open that door, you said you needed to wait.”
Jakes shifts, looking away. Yeah. That’s about why he’s still out here, on this cold step, and not in bed, where it’s warm and safe and cosy. And lonely.
“Yeah, well,” he says. “Turned out I was my own destiny, right?” And he tries a smile. It doesn’t quite work.
“You already changed your destiny,” Baird says. “You came with me.”
“Maybe that was just destiny coming back for a second try,” Jakes says, because this is something he’s thought about a lot. Even around his fellow Librarians, around Jenkins and around Baird, he sometimes finds it hard to show how intelligent he really is, or the range of things he thinks about. So he doesn’t tend to speak at length about his meandering thoughts on fate or other topics, even though he’s getting used to being able to show his knowledge of languages and art and other things. With Cassie, sometimes, he can talk about this stuff, but she isn’t here right now. She must have found sleep tonight. Then again, Cassie knows her fate. “Maybe destiny just sent you to try again after I ignored the letter about an interview.”
“Sure. Could be that,” Baird says. “Of course, if we’re going to play that game, any choice we make, even if we think we’re fighting against something, or for something, could be destiny. So we might as well do what feels right, and fighting death feels right.”
“Yeah. It does,” he agrees.
“Or offering yourself to death, as the case may be,” she says.
This time, when he meets her gaze, she looks a little stern. A little affectionate.
“How’s that work, anyway?” she asks. “You refusing to open a door without a black eye, but being willing to die when you’re name isn’t the one in the prophecy?”
And he could argue that by then they knew the prophecy was a con by the Oracle. He could come up with dozens of excuses. In her own way, though, Baird is every bit as smart as any of them, and twice the tactician. Plus, she’s stubborn. Jake always thought his dad and he had stubborn sown up between them, but Baird is better at it. So he gives in and tells her the truth.
“Destiny or not,” he says, “I couldn’t let you just die.”
“Well, if you can fight for what seems right, whatever fate wants, when it’s about me dying, shouldn’t that apply to anything?” she asks. “I’m just saying, if there’s something you’re waiting for, some sign it’s meant to be, perhaps the only sign you need is that you want to try it.” She pats his knee, once, twice, and stands. “Just decide what it is you want, Stone, and try it. If it’s really not meant to be, screw it. Not like it’ll kill you. Unless you want to try something that’ll kill you, in which case come get me first so I can knock some sense into that head of yours.”
She’s smiling as she turns to leave, and Jake rests his head against the railing again. For all of ten minutes he sits there, thinking. He doesn’t like to go against destiny, but maybe Baird is right. He can’t really say what destiny is, even when it’s been shown to him, and there could always be a bigger destiny outside of that. Besides, screw it.
The next time he’s alone with Cassie, he thinks, he’s going to see what destiny will let him have.