Chapter Text
It was the twentieth of April, and a very remarkable boy found himself in a remarkably ordinary room, laying on a bed that felt far too small for all the things that he’d seen, staring at a pristine white ceiling. The room was dark, only barely illuminated by the glow of the moon falling through his open window, but even in complete darkness, he could tell anyone who cared to ask where exactly everything in his room was. He could tell which posters were positioned where, could say every slur he’d once written over them in his troubled sleeps. He could tell where the chest where he kept items that, once upon a time, had seemed almost a little bit magical, tools of a trade he’d once dreamed of delving in. He could tell where his computer lay on it’s desk, the same one he’d spent so much time at, talking to people miles and miles away, some even galaxies away, whom he’d considered as his family, never knowing just how close to home that statement truly was.
Yes, he could tell you everything there was to tell about the room that he no longer felt he belonged in, but owned him so completely. And that, right there, was the problem, as far as John Egbert was concerned.
He’d played a game when he was thirteen, a game that ate up three years of his and his friends’ lives, their own actual lives, and their universe as they new it. They suffered their way through victory, walking a shaky line the entire way, even as they knew that in the end they were nothing but pawns in an ancient battle, and that the ending was already written down, just waiting for them to turn the page. During the week after things went back to “normal”, or, as normal as it was ever going to be, sometimes that thought was comforting, was peaceful, because things would be what they would be, and it was better to just go with the flow then try and fight the inevitable. On nights like this particular one, though, when things were quiet, and all he could hear was the faint sound of the wind blowing outside his room, inside his head, it was nothing but that final kick to an already downed opponent. Why should he ever bother trying at anything? What was the point if he was just playing into someone else’s bullshit design?
He knew that wasn’t any way to think. Knew that wasn’t any way to try and move on. Knew that dwelling and stewing over the past wasn’t any good for him, or his friends.
Oh yes, his friends, who had blown up his computer and his phone once they woke up. Rose, and Jade, and Dave, all making sure he was okay, that it had really happened, that they weren’t just going crazy. And isn’t it amazing, John, because look who’s at home with us? Look, we have our young guardians, isn’t that swell. It’s kinda like having Bro/Mom/Grandpa all over again.
No, they never said that, and he knew that they didn’t really think like that, but when he walked out of his room, when he ran into Jane, and saw the same disappointment he felt reflected in her eyes when neither of them were a tall man, filled with humor and honor and more fatherly love then John had ever known what to do with, then he could have ever truly appreciated...
He was bitter, and it wasn’t fair to Jane, who really was a nice girl. She tried, she really had, to make them both comfortable in a home that was so familiar and foreign at the same time, filled with mementos and memories of a father that no longer existed for either of them. It wasn’t fair to his friends, who certainly would never have wished it on him, who offered heartfelt condolences. His friends who checked up on him everyday. To Jade who would ask him how he was feeling, and then tell him about all of the kind of ridiculous things Jake would get into, and how she kept having to yell at him for breaking all the vases in the house. To Rose, who told him that if he ever needed someone to talk to, she’d be there anytime he was ready, but never pressured him into anything, even though he could tell that she really wanted to, that she wanted to crack his feelings open and delve right into the heart of whatever problem she knew he was facing. Wasn’t fair to Dave, who rambled on about the same old shit that he used to ramble on about, because he knew that was what John needed, that sense of familiarity, and even managed to do so without it feeling like he was tiptoeing on eggshells for him, even though that was exactly what he was doing.
Not a single damn bit of it was fair at all to his friends, to his family, and he knew it. He knew it as well as he knew that there was no way he could stop himself from feeling the way he was, from eventually acting out on those feelings, from eventually blowing up and hurting the only people that really mattered to him. Knew it as well as he knew that they’d figure that out at some point, and they’d stick by him anyway, through whatever abuse he might throw their way in the heat of the moment. That he would draw them all together, and drag them right down, because they were too good to him, and they’d never let him go.
And so it was, on that night, just a week after his sixteenth birthday, John decided that he was just going to have to do it for them, because he refused to sit idly by while he destroyed whatever chance of moving past The Game and becoming the great and successful people he knew they weren’t meant to be. The kind of person he’d never be able to become.
It wasn’t a spur of the moment decision, though it wasn’t as well thought out as it probably should have been, either. He moved silently, in the dead of the night, slipping a few things into the sylladex he inherited from his father; his copy of Colonel Sassacre’s, a pipe and a bit of tobacco that nobody in the house was going to be using anymore, and one of his father’s hats, and topped it all off with the birthday gifts he’d received from his best friends three years ago.
He probably should have left then, without so much as pressing his luck at getting caught, but instead he found his way into the kitchen, his father’s, and now Jane’s, domain. A place where he’d never just sat and watched his father bake often enough, where more often then not he’d start to aggrieve when he should have just appreciated what he was doing, the fact that he even got to spend any time with him in the first place, just... having him there.
He slipped into the kitchen, and started pulling out bowels, pans, and a recipe book which at first he thought must’ve been Nanna’s, but had his name. Good Old John Crocker, but was, thankfully, filled with simple, easy to follow instructions for baking goods, and not a single Betty Crocker ingredient amongst them.
It took him longer then he’d thought, this baking, and by the time he’ finished icing the rather puny looking thing, the sun was starting to come up, the sharp songs of the birds telling him that he needed to get a move on. So he grabbed a napkin, and wrote down a quick note to Jane, telling her that he was going out, and to take care of the house while he was gone, placing it next to the only cake he’d ever made, and probably the only one he ever would, and then left, putting on the white fedora, and walking away from the sun, feeling tired, so very tired, but willing to follow where ever the wind would take him.
---
When Jane woke up a few hours later, she was not surprised to find that John isn’t around, since he’d been sticking to his room, or going out for walks for the week that they’d been home. He was so quiet, and she wished that he would talk to her a little bit more, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t understand why he was doing it, why he was that way. He’d come out of his funk on his own, though, she was sure. After all, he was a Crocker- er, Egbert, and they always came back from a fall with a laugh. It was just in their blood. Sometimes it just took a little longer to get up then others.
The cake was a surprise, however, and she thought even showed a lot of promise, a hint of the good baking skills that she was also sure was inherited. What was also a surprise was that, by the time noon time rolled around, and then well past, John still hadn’t returned from whatever walk he’d gone on for lunch. He didn’t seem to have much of an appetite, but he always made it home, anyhow, just before she started to worry.
‘Maybe he’s just caught the bus into the city,’, she thought to herself, sitting down gingerly on the couch, steadfastly not looking towards the kitchen, where his note still lay. ‘He’s just going out for a bite to eat. No point in getting worried over nothing. He’s a big boy, John is, and more then capable of taking care of himself.’
She’d just managed to convince herself to relax a little, when her phone began to chime in her pocket, that old familiar sound of a chum pestering her.
timaeusTestified [TT]
began bothering gutsyGumshoe [GG]
at 2:47
TT: Jane, would you do me a huge favor and get Egbert to log on line?
TT: Bro is starting to become a little snippy.
TT: It’d be really adorable the fact that he’s worrying so much about the guy, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m the only one readily available to bitch at, and the fact that he’s reminding me of a very dark, very clingy time in my own life.
TT: I feel like I should go and apologize to Jake if I was acting like even a fraction of what Dave is trying to pretend he doesn’t feel.
GG: No, you really don’t need to apologize to Jake. We’ve all put that behind us, so it would be best if we just never bring it up ever again.
GG: But as far as talking to John goes, I would love to, but he’s not home at the moment.
TT: He’s not home.
GG: No. He left a note, and was gone before I rolled out of bed this morning.
TT: And he still hasn’t come back?
Jane frowned, the worry that she’d forced to the back of her mind starting to work it’s way to the forefront. Surely John wouldn’t have done something stupid, would he? Nothing that could get him hurt. He was way too smart for that. You don’t just go through a life threatening game, only to do something like get run over, or run away without telling anyone only to get kidnapped and/or murdered, especially when there were people who loved him, and depended on him. He couldn’t have. He left her a note, and baked a cake. You don’t just leave after baking a cake.
Still, she got up from the couch, and made her way into her father’s study, opening the drawers, finding the hidden compartment where there was a goodly amount of cash kept. It wasn’t the only place where it was kept in the house, hidden behind a few portraits and Dad’s old sock drawer, but she’d already seen John come into the study to grab a tiny bit of cash, for grocery shopping, mostly.
She pulled out the bills, counting them and checking twice, but no. It was still the same amount as it’d been the day before.
GG: There isn’t any money missing. But I’ll go and check his room, just in case.
She didn’t even bother to hide the money again before she was making her way upstairs, and straight towards John’s room, which she’d been staying away from, for the most part, only having entered it a time or two with her ecto-father/son’s express permission. But she’d been in there enough to know where the important things were. Or, where they should have been.
The bunny, John’s bunny, the original one that he’d gotten as a birthday gift, wasn’t in its usual place.
‘No, that doesn’t really mean much. He’s just taking it with him, as... a security blanket?’
But even as she told herself that, as she made his way to the chest in the corner of his room, decorated in stars and swirls that gave more of an insight to who he used to be just three years ago then all of his posters ever could, she knew, she just knew, that she was just feeding herself lies.
GG: He took Colonel Sassacre’s Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery. The unabridged version.
There was a split second before Dirk responded, considering whether anyone would carry around a book that was more then capable of killing medium sized domesticated animals when dropped from a small height for just a short stroll.
TT: Fuck.
TT: This isn’t going to be fun to explain.
TT: Jane, are you going to be okay up there?
She wasn’t sure she was going to be. John had seemed like a strong guy, who had everything together, even if he was a little bit quiet. He’d been able to let go a little bit, and laugh and joked and convinced her to join along whenever he wasn’t in his room, even when she thought she couldn’t.
So if he couldn’t handle what they’d all gone through, what chance did anyone else have?