Work Text:
Cassandra almost walks past Jake’s door, but she can hear him moving around, muttering to himself in words tinted blue and yellow, and the door is open.
“Hey,” she says, taking that last step and pausing on the threshold. “You ready to go?”
Jake’s leaning over, some piece of clothing bundled up in his hands, and he was clearly about to shove it into the bag on his bed. As she watches, he shifts from glaring to blinking, and drops what turns out to be a shirt.
“What do you want, Cassie?” he asks, sounding tired. Instead of straightening up, he twists and sits on the bed, almost on the shirt, resting his forearms on his knees. “I’ll be there in a minute, all right? Just…I figured I’d…”
He shrugs and doesn’t even try to finish the sentence. It trails away into silence, leaving a taste of something burnt in Cassandra’s mouth.
“You’d what?” Cassandra asks, doing her best not to let her lips twist at the taste. “You’d pack a bag? Jake, we aren’t taking a change of clothes with us. We’re going to take the back-door home as soon as we get the Eye of Ra.”
He nods. He doesn’t look happy about it.
Cassandra takes one step into the room and looks around. Jake keeps his place neat, and at first he barely had anything here. Over the months, years, they’ve been Librarians, he’s added to the space: a shelf of books on one wall; a painting of sunflowers, the yellows rich and dancing; a dagger on a stand sitting on the top of his dresser. The thing is, all of these things belong to the Library itself, and Jake keeps his clothes shut away behind wardrobe doors, his personal possessions tucked into drawers and boxes - there isn’t much chance of being able to tell if he’s clearing things out. His room is hard to read.
“You aren’t…you aren’t packing to go somewhere else, are you?” she asks.
The speed at which he scowls is reassuring, in its way.
“What? No! Of course not. I…I just needed something to do with my hands, you know. Just, to settle things in my head.”
Oh. He was stress cleaning. That…that was not something she knew he did.
“So…the bag’s for…?”
“Laundry,” he says, meeting her gaze as his scowl softens into a frown. Lifting his head brings his eyes into the light. “You really thought I’d leave?”
She might be imagining it, but she thinks there’s an unspoken ‘you’ at the end of that sentence. The burnt taste fades into cinnamon and apple.
Seeing him still hunched over, Cassandra steps further into the room and crosses to the bed, sinking down onto it until she’s right next to him. She’s pretty sure she’s just sat on that shirt, but it’s not the main issue, here. The bed dipping makes Jake’s body lean, ever so slightly, toward her. He probably doesn’t even notice.
“No. No. Well, I mean…you did seem a little…upset…”
“Upset.” The word is flat in Jake’s mouth and he huffs out a laugh that is anything but linked to humor. “Cassie, we’re planning on using magic. You know how I feel about that. And I wasn’t even in the room when you all decided it.”
“I know-”
“Really? Because Ezekiel and you, you both made a pretty big deal out of Flynn rejecting your ideas, out of him rejecting what you think and what you do, and then our plan is magic. And I get this decision made without me even there.”
As usual, he talks with his eyes and his expression and his hands as much as with his words, and she doesn’t reach out and snag one of this hands, because she can’t make him feel involved and connected. Forcing that kind of thing on someone never works. But she wants to. If he would just hear her when she tells him magic can do so much good, that they don’t have to fear it, to lock it away…
But they’ve had this conversation before, and he’s too wary of it to be swayed far. He’s a protector - it’s why he stayed and looked after his family business for so long. That, and responsibility. If Jake sees it as safer and more responsible to refuse magic, then he won’t suddenly shift.
“So, are you going to refuse to come with us? Are you stress-cleaning because you’re working up to telling us you won’t use the magic tic-tacs?”
Jake sighs, dropping his head into his hands and somehow managing to slump even more. He looks rumpled, even his hair seeming messier than normal. Not for the first time, she wonders how long he spends on his hair, but now isn’t the time.
He speaks through his hands, but he does answer. She wasn’t sure he would.
“Course I’m coming,” he says. “I hate it, us using magic. But I’d hate you going without me even more.”
“I know you don’t like magic,” she says, “but I looked into everything, and this is our only shot. It’s the God of Chaos. Pure evil. We can’t refuse to use what we’ve got.”
He lifts his head again enough that she can see his eyes, even though he isn’t looking at her. She isn’t sure what he is looking at, but it’s not her.
“And where do we draw the line?” he asks. “Jenkins said to me that he tests the magic he uses, that his experiments means he knows the parameters, and I ain’t saying I’m keen on that, even. But I get it. Known quantities, known qualities, and known combinations can mean it’s usable. Safe. Sort of.” He doesn’t sound happy about it, even so. “But this? You can’t tell me this is as well tested as what Jenkins uses.”
“It’s the best we can do in the time we have,” she says.
This argument isn’t one Jake can win, because it was already over by the time he heard about it, and whatever issues he had he shared with Colonel Baird. She knows he did, because she saw the two of them speaking from a distance, and she knows what Jake looks like when he’s expressing his disagreement. She’s seen it enough times.
So, this isn’t Jake trying to win. This is Jake trying to deal with having to do something he doesn’t think is safe, only he won’t come right out and say so. Protection and responsibility, and keeping things hidden behind doors.
For years, Jake had all of his dad’s problems on his shoulders. He was responsible for keeping the business going and for keeping all of those people in work, and safe. And he had to hide most of who and what he was. She can’t make him change his mind, but she can remind him he doesn’t have all of this on just his shoulders.
Tentatively, she reaches out and rests her hand between his shoulder-blades. He blinks, his eyes darting to the side, but he doesn’t say anything. She thinks she sees his lip twitch.
“It’ll be okay,” she says. “We have to do what we can, but we’ve got Colonel Baird. And Jenkins will come for us if he needs to. And this is as safe as I can make it. You trust me, right?”
The hard beat of her heart at her own words makes her worry, just for a second. They’ve moved past what happened with Lamia and the crown. She knows they have. But she still remembers Jake telling her he was all right with not trusting her, so in the time it takes for him to answer she finds taking a breath a little harder than it should be.
“Yeah,” he says, and her body settles. “Yeah, I trust you, Cassie. But that don’t mean I trust magic.”
“Okay,” she says, and rubs her hand in a circle. The material of his shirt send vibrations of string music down her arm, yellow and warm. She feels him lean back into her touch and she doesn’t risk breaking the moment by mentioning it. “Okay, well, that’s a start.