Chapter Text
Fury was what he remembered in that moment. It ripped through him like a hurricane, and the words came out harsher than ever, like daggers. He barely recognized the sound of himself, raw and guttural as his wrath overwhelmed him, the sheer hypocrisy of it all.
The words clawed up his throat and burst free without permission. He knew he was showing too much, knew this was the exact reaction his mother had hated him so much, knew his father was coming out, but he couldn’t stem the flow, no matter how hard he fought to cobble himself together. To snap his mask back into place.
“He gets to mess up like this and everyone takes his side?”
He scanned their faces as his voice broke on the words. At the sight of their expressions—wounded things that seemed to throw accusations without uttering a single word—he faltered. His stomach lurched. His rage guttered and drained, and he felt the blood leech from his face; the fury, as quick as it’d come, dissipated like it’d never been there to begin with. His legs felt hollow. His knees threatened to buckle under him.
His heart thudded in his chest like a war drum, beating a vicious rhythm against his ribcage, as the quiet crept in, frigid against his fevered face. It made his hair rise on end, bile rising into his throat, acid burning his esophagus. His stomach knotted while silence—the hollow, awful, creeping kind that couldn’t be ignored and demanded to be felt—rang in his ears. His heartbeat throbbed there.
He gulped down air, trying to find the words. Trying to control himself, but no matter how he valiantly wrestled, it slipped further and further from his grasp.
Finally, he gave up and straightened, scrubbed at his face until the skin beneath his fur was raw and burned, then lowered his hands. Each inhale he forced past his lips shook his shoulders and burned his sandpapery throat; each shuddering exhale heaved his chest.
He wet his lips and something inside of him, something cruel and wicked and vicious, stilled and locked on.
Pomni’s stare was a physical caress, a hand on his skin, like she was just waiting for him to be cruel. She stared at him with a keenness that bordered unsettling, and he knew she was expecting it, knew he was only confirming what everyone else thought about him through no actions but his own.
And it’s your own fault.
The bitter truth he couldn’t run from.
The iron taste of simmering, swelling rage was all he focused on for a moment, and knew, when he looked at Pomni’s expression, that he hadn’t kept it off his face. He felt it as he thinned his mouth and the muscles ached, felt it in his shoulders, the tension winding its way along the back of his neck. A dull, relentless ache in his knuckles and bloodless fingers was the only sign he’d curled his hands into fists.
For a single, fragile moment, everything froze and hung on a precipice, a frame of animation suspended with tension. The air crackled with it, alive and electric.
Then Ragatha moved towards him, carving a path with that determined march, head held high, that reminded him all too painfully of how she came to be this way. He couldn’t stomach the wetness that glistened in her eyes that she couldn’t hide so he looked at her hair, bright-red and curly. The kind of hair he admired and, secretly, wished he might possess. Anything was better than this body, the one he’d been forced into, hadn’t had a choice in.
A sharp inhale—from Pomni, he imagined—that clogged in the throat was what reminded him of where they were. And all the horrible things he’d done. The weight pressed in for a moment, and all he could do was stand there.
At first, he could only stare at her.
Ragatha.
The only one who understood the way grief had hollowed him out when Ribbit and Kaufmo abstracted. Who’d offered him something he’d never had before—a steady, anchoring presence that understood his struggle while he grappled with his loss. Who he’d belittled and bullied and demeaned, and even now, even after his cruelty, she was here again, relentless.
Jax’s heart hammered like a war drum and threw itself with fervor against his ribs. He was locked in place, immobilized by paralyzing uncertainty, as she inhaled a fortifying breath and began to speak.
“Jax,” she begged softly and quietly, “calm down. Please. I know it’s hard but you aren’t alone, not if you don’t want to be.”
The words fissured something inside of him, something raw and tender and fragile, and it took him entirely too long to register what it was. Hope. For the first time in his life, he wanted to lean on someone else, someone who understood what he was drowning in. He was so goddamn tired. Tired of being just what his mother had accused him of: like his father.
He couldn’t speak, his throat was so tight. Against his will, his mouth trembled and wobbled. His eyes burned when he blinked as he watched her.
“Please, Jax. I want to help. Let me in,” she pleaded with a quiet heartbreak he recognized instantly, the same kind that plagued him, born of grief and the ache of watching someone destroy themself. It resonated somewhere in his ribs like a line going taut, and he splintered.
“I can’t,” he whispered like a small child, voice quiet. “I can’t.” He swallowed hard as soon as the words broke free, his vision blurring, and it was only after she’d reached for him, her thumbs stroking beneath his eyes, that he realized he was crying.
He pushed himself to his feet and stared at her. He flicked a glance to her hand again and couldn’t bring himself to grasp it, this lifeline she extended, the olive branch he didn’t deserve. But he also couldn’t make himself move, either. The fight guttered out of him, leaving him wrung out and hollowed, cracked open and raw.
Air seesawed in his throat, his lungs, as he stood there, unable—unwilling—to leave or to accept her kindness. Kindness came with strings, with expectations. Kindness was transactional. Kindness was for those who deserved it, and he was not that. Never that. Not while he was his son. He was weak when he chose quiet, and when he fought back, he was a monster. Just like his father.
But Ragatha had looked at him, not as extension, but like she saw Jax in his entirety and didn’t hate him. And, more than that, he didn’t want to hurt anyone, not anymore. Still he hadn’t exploded or run off, so that was something.
For an eternity, they stood there, reality sinking into their bones, and it was so still, it felt like everything had frozen.
Then Kinger, more to himself than to any of them, murmured so very softly, “Brain scans.”