Work Text:
S.Q. goes home to the Benedict's, after.
Or, S.Q. goes to the house of the Benedict's, after. That is closer to the truth of it. The children tromp inside, tucked under parents' arms and scolded and loved. Kate hangs a dozen jackets, all in a row, neat and tidy. She takes S.Q.'s, too, and smiles crookedly at him. S.Q., who has seen Kate when she means her grins and knows they are blinding, accepts both the help and the not quite lackluster welcome with something between grace and foreboding.
He is not supposed to be here.
He had told Curtain together, and he had meant it. S.Q. has been living with a growing fear inside of him for months now, that Curtain was wrong. (He has been living with growing fears for years, he just can't all the way remember it.) To look at that fear and finally confront it had felt like relief, had been a watering after a drought. The crane had crashed and in the settling dust he had fallen into something resembling calm acceptance. Curtain's fingers had squeezed tight into the fabric of his shirt and hauled him close, and that had been something he could live with.
S.Q. fully expected jail and a lifetime sharing a cell. He has been growing in Curtain's shadow for years, too, and had shared everything else with him. This man has been his whole life for all that he can remember. He had been the beginning, and the middle, and he was supposed to be the end.
Things that are 'supposed to be' rarely happen; this is life, and it deals with chances instead of certainties. Mr. Curtain had been cuffed and led to a government car, windows tinted. S.Q. had raised his wrists, an offering, but Mr. Benedict touched his shoulder and pulled him back, shaking his head gently at the agents peering at them through their sunglasses. The last look S.Q. gets of Curtain before the door closes had been one of befuddlement, like the man had no more plans, and this was almost more scary than his plans being amoral and wrong.
Almost.
When the door closed, he got a glimpse of his own reflection in the darkened windows, and it surprised him. The person staring back from the window looked grown, old enough to be someone who knew what they were doing. S.Q. just felt young, listless. Directionless and lost.
S.Q. had expected jail. He was taken to Benedict's house instead. It was to the merit of his character, but it had felt like a trick.
S.Q. sits. He sits in the soft sort of armchairs that swallow you, couches stained with coffee and soup and hot cocoa, and an odd collection of dining room chairs that only share the fact that they are rickety. S.Q. sits, and he watches this world as it turns and turns, big and terrifying and raw. The Perumals and Reynie trade easy Tamil, soft and reassuring. Kate fusses alongside Moocho at Milligan's bedside, his bruises and all the broken bits and pieces of him. Sticky's parents cup their son's face between their palms and fuss in general, just this side of smothering. Nicholas Benedict and Constance Contraire write a poem by trading lines, one by one, verse by verse.
S.Q. sits, and he watches, and he tries to breathe something like steady. He sits in front of Mr. Curtain as the man roars spite and grievances behind bars, and gets his lungs to work there, too. Tries to remember this man's fingers, clinging. The provided seat is cold and plastic, bolted into the floor. He had said together. He had meant it.
(Despite himself, S.Q. wishes for a love that is neat and tidy. Like jackets, all in a row.)
He sits between towers of books and strewn loose leaf papers, and his clumsy hands twitch and twitch. Once, in an effort to be helpful, to be useful, he carefully organises them into the neat piles that Mr. Curtain so preferred, lining up the spines and giving himself a paper cut as he smooths out creases.
It is a moment of pride, of tranquility, and then Number Two wonders in and murmurs, "Drat. There goes the whole system." She shuffles through the papers until they are laid out in a cluttered mess once more, and waves to S.Q. as she leaves, documents in hand.
He does not touch the papers again.
When S.Q. was seven years old, he came to LIVE Institute. He does not remember shock watches, or cologne, or sickening sweet grins. He remembers, vaguely, his head aching. He remembers being listless and directionless and lost. He remembers Curtain placing a purpose into his hands and he remembers clinging to it.
People grow into other people's expectations, is the truth of it. S.Q. has been growing in Curtain's shadow for years, now, has been planting roots into the academy's unknowingly treacherous soil since the day he arrived. Beginnings and middles and ends: his favourite tree on the grounds is this great old beech tree, the roots these lumpy, gnarly things. There is a spot, tucked close to the trunk, that you can curl up in, that even long and gangly legs can find a place to be kept out of sight. Mr. Curtain had murmured (and ranted, and roared, the one time it tripped up his chair) about having it removed for all thirteen years that S.Q. had known him. The roots were too shallow, digging up pathways and flower beds. Invasive. Untamed.
Thirteen years. S.Q. has been growing into what Curtain has made of him for thirteen years, for longer. For more than half his life. He was a boy who sat in the crevices of trees and painted a future for himself with his words and with his hands. He would become a messenger, and then an executive, and he would stay by Curtain's side. LIVE Institute was home, and always would be.
Futures are not something that keep. He grew into that future, and then out of it.
Life does not deal with certainties.
LIVE Institute is closed down, and there are no more messengers or executives. Curtain is in jail and S.Q. is in a house with more books than he can count. the future stretches on before him anyways, and his heart is full of weariness and dread.
S.Q. feels unrooted, now. Unsteady. There is no hallowed ground.
Sticky finds him reading a dictionary, trying to make the words stick right in his own head. He brightens, happily, and asks what section he's gotten to, starts listing off the next few passages upon hearing abstain, reciting them as easy as breathing. This is a friendly gesture; even Reynie doesn't enjoy reading dictionaries for fun- not more than once anyway- and Sticky is pleased to find someone after his own heart.
It is meant as a friendly gesture. S.Q., who has been reading and rereading the first pages of the dictionary, who has painstakingly been trying to hold onto the meanings, who has already forgotten abrade and is well on his way to losing abseil, it feels like something else. It feels like working and working and working to be a messenger. It feels like losing his sash, again, and having to work hard all over, again. It's like looking at your own reflection and feeling surprised, feeling like your face is something you should know. Something that should be easy. Something that isn't.
Sticky says, "I did like the definition for abstentionism that this edition gave. Very succinct. Abstentionism: the refusal of a government to participate in international relations or alliances that it regards as detrimental to its interests. There's another dictionary, in the upper landing, and the way it phrases it-"
"How riving," S.Q. says. His throat is dry and tight.
Sticky blinks up at him, eyes wide and guileless behind his glasses. S.Q. has seen him nervous before, has seen him terrified, has seen him wringing his fingers before the Waiting Room. S.Q. has seen him in that aftermath, face ashen beneath the mud, silent and still and somehow far away, for all that S.Q. could reach out and touch him.
(For years, for years, S.Q. has feared that Curtain had been wrong. And, for years after, he would not connect how often he would be granted a session with the Whisperer soon after escorting children to and from the Waiting Room. Granted, like it was a gift. Granted, like things were not being taken away.)
"Do you mean riveting?" Sticky corrects, blunt but honest with it, and S.Q. can only make himself clear his throat. He suddenly needs to not be here anymore.
"That's what I said."
He leaves before Sticky can respond. He leaves the dictionary behind.
The world turns and turns and turns, this raw and aching thing, and S.Q. watches it happen. He visits Mr. Curtain in his prison cell, and lets the man yell himself hoarse. He washes dishes when it's his turn in the chore schedule, learning more by example than by tutelage, and does his utmost to not think about the Helpers. He talks with Mr. Benedict, these careful conversations that leave him feeling hollowed out, wary of tricks that don't seem to be coming. He has no truth serum to check.
(He cannot trust any truth that comes from Mr. Benedict, even if he did.)
(Is this something you can live with? he asks himself, and has no good answers.)
At the very least, a new part of the routine has entered his days. It turns out that, for a school, LIVE Institute did not give a lot of foundational learning. S.Q. can lecture on poison apples and poison worms for hours, but basic maths and grammatical terms escape him.
Rhonda comes up to him one day in those long few weeks of the aftermath, teetering under a collection of workbooks that she can just barely tuck her chin over as she carries them. There's a thump as the stack hits the dining room table, and Rhonda flaps her arms with a huff as if to shake off the aching weight. She smiles at S.Q. and tucks one of her long, thin braids behind her ear. "Alighty," she says, "let's start getting you caught up, then."
She's very patient with him, for all that he can tell that she could probably solve the problems scattered across the worksheet with absolute ease. The facts are just there, all inside her head. She does not have to reach for them. She does not have to try.
But she's very patient. S.Q. sits on a mismatched dining room chair, squeezes his fists under the table, and feels as though his lungs have been uprooted.
S.Q. starts sitting at the kitchen table, too, the wood full of scrapes and nicks from years of use and love. He pads his thumb over some of the deeper scratches, and wonders if there is a way to be useful without being scarred. Then he catches Reynie looking at him, brows furrowed, and S.Q. squeezes his own clumsy fingers into too-tight fists inside his pockets and tries not to notice anything else.
But S.Q. has always had eyes that notice things, the little details and bright sparks. The connections between facts do not always happen, not quickly or easily, but S.Q. looks out and notices things: glum faces on small children, footprints in the sand, the way that Mr. Curtain's lips will quirk, just a little, when he is pleased. He notices when Reynie starts noticing him back, that boy who is all brightness and all connections.
Reynie comes to him, then, between one practice multiplication problem and the next. He sits down and his toes just barely brush the floor, the chair legs unusually high. S.Q.'s knees knock against the table, feet planted at an almost uncomfortable angle against the hardwood, and even sitting down he feels tall and looming.
"You can leave, you know," Reynie says. "You're not stuck. No one's going to keep you here." It is not his intention, but S.Q. still hears a silent, Not like how you and Mr. Curtain kept me.
S.Q. looks at him, and looks down at the math sheet in front of him. He feels every one of his twenty years, inadequate and strange with it. He is trying to reach for words. He is trying to reach for meanings. They all get scrambled and lost in his head.
The truth of it is this, that S.Q. didn't learn how to balance a checkbook or to organise a lease. He is unfamiliar with taxes, with insurance, with traffic laws and societal expectations. He learned nonsense phrases and how to feel off-put in your own skin. He learned how to grow into the space of another person, to plant roots in something he will not get to keep. There are multiplication problems typed up in neat little rows, and in another life Reynie would be a child learning about them for the first time, sitting with his peers in a classroom. In this one, Reynie spent being eleven saving the world and wrangling with concepts of trust, of good and evil, of people being people and all the ways that can ache.
In this world, S.Q. is someone trying to learn all of it. Trust and good and evil, yes, but also that 120x33 equals 3,960. That when you multiply you have to make sure you carry your zeroes, that all your numbers are lined up straight before adding them together.
No one would keep him here, yes, but he is stuck all the same. He has never been good at leaving. No one has ever taught him how.
Reynie looks at him, his toes just brushing the floor, his fingers tucked into the fabric of his shirt but never clumsy. Yesterday, someone had brought up home renovations and Reynie had pitched his ideas, thoughtful, taking all the raw little details he's been noticing and noticing and putting them together for solutions to problems that haven't even come up yet. Yesterday, S.Q. had watched this happen and lived through it, had tripped over a stack of books and apologised breathlessly, over and over.
You can get caught in that sort of brilliance, is the thing. It's not intentional, or malicious. It's just that some people are so good at weaving that you wanna step closer, and your feet are sticky against the webs. It can make you feel small, for all that you are towering and gangly and grown.
At least there is this: S.Q. knows about tired, aching things and the way people carry them. He has known for years and years and years, even as he forgot.
"I have an old friend," Mr. Benedict says. His eyes are kind and his hands are open. Some people might easily confuse him for his brother, but S.Q. has never made the mistake once. "He maintains a farm, a few hours away by train. His name is John Cole, and he's agreed to let you stay with him, if you'd like. How does that sound to you?"
It is another one of their little talks, the ones that leave S.Q. with creaks in his spine from the tense way he holds his shoulders. Always, always, S.Q. remembers the island and the cave, so he considers each question with no small amount of care, poking at it for trickery and subterfuge. He considers his answers with an even greater amount of caution, like they are a stack of porcelain plates that he has to carry from hall to hall.
S.Q. wants to say no, is the truth of it. His place is by Curtain's side. He had said they could do it together, and he had meant it.
Another truth: S.Q. is very good at being prompted by pointed questions, especially by men with a shock of white hair and green plaid suits. S.Q. wrings his clumsy fingers and says, "Alright, Mr. Benedict." His eyes are planted on his knees. He doesn't see the concern hiding in the man before him.
"This is not an order, S.Q., or even an expectation. It is an offer, nothing more or less. You are, of course, always welcome here."
S.Q. nods, because he can't say, "I know." S.Q. has lied to himself for years and years, but he doesn't much enjoy lying to other people.
"What is it that you want?" Mr. Benedict asks, kindly, and S.Q. bites on the inside of his cheek and tries to make the words come in a way that won't be irreparably rude, that can't be misconstrued or used against him.
He wants to go home, is the simplest way to say it, even if that doesn't capture all of it. He wants to curl up the roots of the old beech tree and disappear, out of sight and out of mind. He wants to look to the future and see something in it. He wants Mr. Curtain to be out of jail, to be by his side and for that to be easy, because it had always been the only easy thing until suddenly it wasn't. Maybe, he just wants things to make sense again. To know what he wants.
Before, he had just wanted what Mr. Curtain had wanted, and that had made sense, too.
S.Q. squeezes his hands into fists and sits and shakily pulls in air, tries to fill up the gaping cavity in his lungs. His broad shoulders make their best attempt at hiding his ears. He says, "It's fine, Mr. Benedict. I can go to the farm."
He only looks up when Mr. Benedict thumps against the desk, sound asleep.
John Cole is a tall man with a weather beaten face and an easy smile. In an earlier time, a young boy looked at the chicken pox scars decorating his cheeks and saw constellations. In this one, S.Q. looks at him and just sees splotches of faded skin, the way they crease into an ever growing collection of wrinkles. This is not a failure, or a fault. This is just people being people, intricate and different. This is just S.Q., who has always looked at this world and noticed the little details; raw knowledge without any firm connections, but knowledge all the same.
S.Q. has a backpack of clothes he has half grown out of and packets of Maths and Science and History and English for practice tucked away in an extra bag. Hours ago, Rhonda had packed it up for him, her hands capable and cheerful and not clumsy at all.
"That'll do you," she had said, and smiled kindly. The clips of her overalls had caught in the light and shone and shone and shone. S.Q. had smiled back, of course, instinctive with it. They're the same age. They are separated by mere months, not years, in life experience. S.Q. wonders if she has ever been made to feel this small. He wonders if she has ever felt this lost.
Mr. Cole is smiling too, easy with it, and S.Q. reaches for his own expression, wrestling with it. At the very least, S.Q. knows how to do this.
The man says, "S.Q., right?" and wipes his hand against his old weather beaten jeans before offering it up. "I'm John. It's a pleasure to meet you." It's a strong, sturdy grip, but his eyes are kind. He's got crows feet, and they crease upwards with his grin.
"Thank you for having me, Mr. Cole," S.Q. responds, because it's polite. Even if S.Q. truly doesn't want to be here, it was still very nice of Mr. Benedict's old friend to allow him to come over and stay.
"Call me John, S.Q.. No need for formalities or anything. Now, c'mon, there's still a bit of a drive to the farm, and I wanna get there before nightfall. My eyes aren't what they used to be."
He grabs S.Q.'s bag of schoolwork before S.Q. can, hauling it up with ease and gesturing easily for him to follow. S.Q. blinks at this, hands opening and closing with something close to shock. It has been mere minutes, and John Cole has already dismissed any form of title and started carrying his bags without being asked to. It is so opposite from any life experience that S.Q. has ever had that he stalls for several seconds before hurrying onwards, tripping over his own feet slightly.
"I can carry that! You don't need to!"
John laughs, bright and cheerful and something like teasing. "Of course you can, but I can just as well, don't you think?"
"Well- yes. Of course. I didn't mean to impel-."
John just laughs, and it sounds like falling pebbles clicking and clacking together. He knocks his shoulder against S.Q.'s, and S.Q. can't help but startle with it, looking at him with wide eyes. John just smiles and smiles and smiles, crowlines crinkling. "C'mon. Violet's home for a visit, and she's promised to make dinner. "
"Violet?"
"My sister! You'll love her. Everyone loves Violet. Now we best hurry; she'll scold us if we let the food get cold."
So they hurry, and John pulls open the door to the passenger seat before S.Q. can let himself into the back. He sits down gingerly, bracing himself for small talk like at the Benedicts, or a tirade of a lecture like everything before. John just turns on the radio and starts humming along with the commercials, windows rolled down and tussling his salt and pepper hair. (Admittedly, the salt far outnumbers the pepper, but S.Q. doesn't mention it.)
S.Q. relaxes in increments, backpack clutched close on his lap. He leans against the side door and looks out the window, the countryside rolling by. He watches the train station in the rear view mirror - the way back to Stonetown, the way back to Mr. Curtain- as it grows smaller and smaller, and then as it winks out of sight.
The farmhouse is old but well-cared for, layers of stone stacked one on top of another. It is not a shambling mess of extensions and towerings shelves of books that Mr. Benedict's home is made out of, but it is still the sort of place that Mr. Curtain would twist his lip at.
S.Q., quietly, admires the stonework. The way the ivy climbs up the walls. Tiny tendrils reach upwards and outwards and out.
Violet herself is an older woman, her long hair braided down her back and hanging easily down to her thighs, glinting with copious amounts of silver. She's wearing a skirt, something faded and yellow that sways a little over what seems to be a pair of workboots as she leans over the stove. She's wearing round glasses, like two twin moons. She doesn't turn around when John closes the front door, or as S.Q. is directed to put his things down in the entryway. She doesn't turn when S.Q. catches a glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror and flinches, startled.
She does turn when John pokes her side, though, and swats at him with her spatula before catching sight of S.Q. and her fondly exasperated face swaps into a widening grin.
She puts down the spatula.
She raises her hands and-
S.Q. has never seen anything like it. He blinks at the way her fingers fly through the air, graceful and elegant and easy, so easy, and then looks up at her face.
"She wants to welcome you to the Hopefield Farm," John says at a glance. "She hopes you like chicken tarragon and broccoli, because that's what we're having for dinner tonight."
S.Q. blusters over his own words, over the meanings of them, and then says, "That sounds great! Thank you for- for cooking dinner. What-" he raises his hands, a little, and awkwardly mimics one of Ms. Violet's gestures. "What were you doing with your hands?"
"It's sign language," John explains with the patience of someone who has said the same thing a million times over. "Violet's deaf, but she can read your lips and understand you just fine, mostly. Just make sure to stay facing her direction."
"It's really beautiful," S.Q. responds, honest with it, and hastily shoves his clumsy fingers in his pockets, squeezing them into fists.
Violet beams. She's got smile lines, too, and her expression only brightens further when she raises her hands again.
"Flattery will get you anywhere!" John translates, chuckling, and S.Q. feels his face grow beat red. The sauce in the pan bubbles slightly, and a racing wind flares all the curtains into sudden billowing sails. His lungs shake beneath his ribs. S.Q. breathes with it, and breathes with it, and breathes.
They set him up in a small room facing a bluff, a tall imposing thing carving out a piece of the night sky. The mattress dips slightly in the middle. The walls are full of art, paint supplies cluttered neatly across the desk pushed against the far wall. Violet explains, with John's help, that it used to be her room long ago. Now, it is more of an art studio than anything else, but will work as a guest bedroom in a pinch.
They've taken the time to empty out a full set of drawers for him in the dresser, but S.Q.'s backpack and schoolwork only fills up one of them, so he shuts it hastily, like a secret.
John tells him he has free reign of the house. Violet tells him, her hands flying and John translating, to help himself to a midnight snack if he gets hungry. S.Q. says, "Thank you, Mr. John, Ms. Violet," and they both laugh and they both scold him, telling him to drop the formalities.
They wish him goodnight. They go to bed.
S.Q. doesn't. He sits on the mattress, pressed against the headboard, and listens to the world turn round, big and terrifying and raw. There are cicadas singing in the bushes and the crops outside are swaying and rustling with the breeze. The stars are coming out, twinkling and shining, and there are almost too many of them, blotting out the sky. It should be beautiful, maybe, but it just makes him think of the Island. It makes him think of Curtain, who has no night stars to look at.
It makes him think of Curtain, who S.Q. left behind.
It makes him think of Curtain. Then again, so does everything.
He is sitting at the kitchen table, working his way through fractions. Rhonda had left a page of explanations sitting on top, and S.Q. had spent several long minutes working his way through her neat handwriting, trying to absorb it into something that makes sense. There's a storm brewing outside, the grey clouds thick and heavy with the promise of rain.
John Cole comes tromping in. He's wearing thick work boots and a heavy duty jacket, bundling up a basket of eggs in one arm and using the other to shut the door against the wind. He smiles when he catches S.Q. looking, waves at him and in a practiced, easy manner he adds the eggs to the baskets that will eventually be brought down to Pebbleton. He asks, casually, "What are you working on?"
S.Q. blinks up at him, and then glances down at the paper. "Fractions."
John's face twists. "Fractions," he repeats, sounding almost as displeased as S.Q.. "C'mon then, let me see. It looks like they might be giving you some trouble, am I right?"
It's true, they are, and S.Q. braces himself as he hands over the worksheet. He braces himself for this to be easy. For John to reach for the answers in his mind and for them to just be there.
You can imagine his surprise, then, when John simply reaches over S.Q. to grab at Rhonda's neatly written instructions instead, popping on a pair of reading glasses. John pours over them, mouthing the words slowly and tracing his fingers across the lines. It takes him minutes, not moments, and S.Q. watches him, watches him read, watches things come slow.
"I think I remember this," John says at last. "At least, it sounds familiar. Here, pass me your pencil. Let's see if we can work this out."
Wordlessly, S.Q. does.
His writing is more akin to chicken scratch than Rhonda's neat block letters, but it's more than legible. Through a series of trial and error, trying out one or two ways and then checking to see if they got the correct answer, they figure out how to solve the fraction problems. John Cole hums, pleased. Pats him on the shoulder and goes out to work on the tractor before the rain comes.
S.Q. watches him go. He looks down at the chicken scratch on the papers, the mistakes and forgetfulness, the way they still got there in the end.
He sits on the kitchen table chair, old wicker and old wood, and he breathes.
The days are listless and long. S.Q. walks through them untethered, given no tasks and too nervous to ask for anything, even work. Boys from the local orphanage come down in a troop of limbs and laughter, jostling each other, and S.Q. hides in his room the first time one of them calls him Sir and does not come back out again, not for hours. He listens through the cracked window as John gives them instructions and Violet serves them lemonade, after.
There comes an age where grown ups start looking at you and introducing themselves by their first names. There comes an age where children start looking at you and start adding honorifics. You live and you live and you live, and age just comes regardless. It feels so odd and so unearned.
When the farm is empty, he finds himself sitting by the yew tree in the garden. It's not a big tree, and it cannot hide him, but there is at least something familiar about roots pressing against his skin, the bark scratching along his back. It is nice to find a place to sit that is quiet, somewhere to watch the days go by and write his letters to Mr. Curtain, trying to find a way to explain his presence at the farm to the man when he cannot explain it to himself.
There are many, many false starts; his pen brushing against paper, and then the sentences fumbling into blots of ink. Guilt weighs like an anchor inside his chest.
Sometimes, Violet finds him, armed with her sketchpad and pencils and paints. Their time together is quiet by necessity, her hands able to dance and his.... not quite managing that. Occasionally, she will see him glancing at her work and will take the time to explain, writing out small paragraphs on his discarded pages. Occasionally, she will sign something, and S.Q. will try to quietly practice it, to remember the word and the gesture that goes with it.
Something about the movement, he finds, helps. It makes the words stick in a way rote memorization alone cannot quite manage, or has not quite managed in some time. He squints at his own fingers, struck suddenly by the odd thought that he used to be quite good at remembering, that such things used to take very little effort at all. It's not true, now, of course. It has not been true, not for a long time, probably was never true, but also-
Also-
It's just odd for it to come to him now. The sensation of things coming easy.
He imagines himself telling this to Mr. Curtain. He cannot imagine a response.
After nearly two weeks of having nothing beyond schoolwork and failed communications, S.Q. finally breaks down.
Is this something you can live with? he asks himself. This?
He imagines reporting to Mr. Curtain, after he comes home to him. He imagines describing how he spent his time away, laying like a lump in his room, worrying himself over something as trivial as children's schoolwork, and the scorn he would justly deserve for it. If he cannot be by the man's side he can at least be useful.
"John," he manages, staring very intently at the decimals on the page before him, dropping the honorifics very carefully in hopes that appeasing the man might help his case. John, washing sprigs of parsley as he starts to make dinner, makes a questioning hum.
"Is there- Is there anything you'd like me to do? It's just- I'm staying with you, but I'm not doing anything, and so-"
John laughs, clamps a wet hand against S.Q.'s shoulder. "You're our guest, kid! Just relax. Enjoy yourself!" He does a doubletake at the expression painted across S.Q.'s face. "But I mean- if you want to, you're more than welcome to help me out around the farm. It is a nice way to keep busy."
The truth of it is this: S.Q. doesn't know what he wants, but he does know that the idea of being unuseful makes worms crawl up his spine under his skin, worse than any Waiting Room. He nods, and only a little desperate with it.
"We're partners, then," John says. His hands still drip water from the sink, but he offers one to S.Q. regardless. And S.Q., bewildered, not quite able to explain the way his lip twitches into a smile, shakes it.
Farm chores start early, but S.Q. has long gotten used to rising before with the sun. He feeds the chickens and helps collect their eggs. He learns to drive the tractor under John's tutelage, and finds it much easier than the Salamander in almost every way, but maybe that's just the lack of scowls and snide comments to be found in John's teaching. The fields of wheat rise higher and higher, and S.Q. times his breathing with the give and sway of it.
There are herbs growing in the garden, the bushes rising from dark earth, and S.Q. tends to them, too. Waters them and plucks at weeds trying to take root, listening quietly as John explains their caretaking, the reasons behind the thyme and the rosemary, how they had once grown mint and spent the next six years fighting a terrible garden war. Violet, her own hands smeared in soil, raises them to excitedly add on to the story, laughing near soundlessly.
He recognises three of her words, and it makes him grin into the herbs.
Bees bustle around, buzzing, and S.Q. carefully weaves his fingers through them. Trims the parsley. Trims the thyme. Basil leaves clip easily into the palms of his big, clumsy hands when using the right tools.
Once, he turns a leaf over and almost drops the scissors entirely in shock. John looks up from his own patch of garden, rising with a groan and squatting next to him. He laughs, not unkindly, when he sees what made S.Q. startle.
"I've always liked snails," John says, curling his fingers to tilt the leaf slightly more into the light. The snail tucks itself into its shell a little, peaking out at them. "Look, there, ya see that? It's like they carry their own homes with them." He pauses, as Violet signs something at him with an eyeroll, and then chuckles a little. "Getting old does make you say weird things sometimes, I suppose."
He winks at S.Q., though, so he's pretty sure no feelings were hurt.
S.Q. stifles something like a smile. Curtain isn't here, and S.Q. isn't at his side. It feels wrong to take joy in anything, like something taken. Like a trick.
John Cole helps him with his worksheets, pointing out solutions and explaining fractions and decimals and how they work. Reaching for things, and finding them. But he also struggles, too. Looks at math problems and scratches his head, lost and befuddled.
Leans over the paper and starts asking S.Q. questions, trying to toy out a solution just by playing around with it.
It works, sometimes.
When they're truly stumped, they call Violet over. When she's truly stumped, they push the paper aside entirely and make lemonade- the kind that's almost too sour, that makes your cheeks purse a little when you sip at it. They add a visit to the library onto the calendar, and then make the trip down to the town so they can look at old dusty math textbooks and ask the older, dustier librarian if she has any clue.
When that doesn't work, S.Q. writes Rhonda.
Rhonda writes letters explaining algebraic equations and graphing, providing answers and alternative explanations. Her block letters sit neatly on imaginary lines. But Rhonda also writes letters complaining about dull university coursework and tentative hopes about her astronomy class. She talks about walking down into a dormitory basement and tripping over a body on the ground, only to realise that there were no less than six snoring students at two in the afternoon, drooping across the floor and furniture. She had included a drawing of it, stick figures and trails of ZZZZ''s. It's not very good. It's enough to make him laugh.
I'm still trying to find my people, she mentions, and S.Q. sits with paper tight in his palms, thinking of that young smiling woman and her cheerful grin, her steady and patient hands. It had never occurred to him before that she might have been lonely, too.
How is it going at the farm? she asks. S.Q. notices details; words erased and rephrased and rephrased again. It looks like grey smudges on cream paper. It looks like vines on old stonework, reaching upwards, reaching out. Any funny stories yet?
S.Q. has so many half-started letters. He takes out a new sheet of paper and tries again. Dear Rhonda looks strange after so many Dear Mr. Curtain's. With a stubborn tilt to his brow, a dictionary at his elbow, he pushes through.
He writes back. Gratitude, of course, for her assistance. But also about the new batch of chicks, and John Cole falling asleep on the couch in the middle of a card game, his snoring loud enough to wake the dead, and how S.Q. had been the only one around to hear it. He fills the margins with doodles of the newly hatched puffballs of feathers and the giant brooding hen who always eyes him with a suspicious glare.
Rhonda sends back another letter. It's three and a half pages long and it hardly mentions his tutoring at all, too focused on stories and questions and requests for more artwork of the various animals around the farm. The back of the final paper has a wobbly picture that is most likely a self-portrait of her enduring the trials of tedious busywork, head down on her desk, but could also very possibly be a deformed porcupine.
After reading it three times, S.Q. finds another piece of paper, an envelope, a stamp. His clumsy hands form each letter slowly, and he has to pull out a dictionary seven times to check the spelling of various words. He still gets it done.
At some point, the guest bedroom becomes S.Q.'s bedroom. At some point, S.Q. helps himself to a snack from the fridge and nothing goes wrong. At some point, his words start coming easier, his memory losing years of fog. At some point, S.Q. breathes, and it comes out steady for the first time since he lost his anchor point.
At some point, their sessions at the yew tree becomes less of S.Q. trying and failing to write a letter to Curtain and Violet carefully balancing her sketchpad on her knees and more of concrete lessons in sign language. Her hands dance, and dance, and dance, and S.Q. stumbles after her. There's an entire alphabet to the language, grammar and syntax and a world of vocabulary to learn. Her face twists expressively, alive with it.
S.Q. made it as a messenger, don't forget. He lost that bright, shining, ugly responsibility, once or twice, yes, but he earned it back, too. S.Q. has eyes that notice things, the little details and bright sparks. He has been working and working and working for things all his life, and nothing he remembers has come easy.
Sign language is movement and expression, speech in motion. His hands are clumsy with it, but S.Q. is used to being clumsy. He is used to his words coming slow, to tripping over his own feet, to working and working and working towards a goal and knowing it will be harder for him than the others, and knowing his efforts will not be praised. S.Q. is no stranger to scraping by. Every sentence is a maze in his own head, just to find the right word.
You're getting very good at this, Violet says, one afternoon, her fingers going slow. The sunlight is golden, the humidity an almost physical thing.
S.Q. blinks at her. It feels unearned. It feels, just a little, like a trick. But Violet's eyes are warm and her hands sure.
He raises his hand to his chin.
Thank you.
The truth of it is this; Mr. Curtain was wrong.
The truth of it is this; the world is big and terrifying and raw. It is so much easier to live inside someone else's skin. S.Q.'a roots had been planted in treacherous soil but at least they had been planted. At least they had somewhere to grow.
The world is so much less terrifying when it revolves around just one person.
How do you live with yourself, when that safety net is gone? S.Q. finds himself reaching for it, over and over and over. He used to know how all this worked. It had been easy. It had been so easy.
It is so hard without him. S.Q. doesn't think he could ever get over him. He thinks he's going to spend the rest of his life chasing that self assurance, the certainty of following another's path and knowing someone else has stepped before you, pioneering the way into a future both planned and brilliant.
You can imagine his surprise, then, the first time S.Q. makes it through a day and doesn't think about Curtain even once.
Even worse, it was a good day. It was a day spent at the market in Pebbleton Square, buying fruit and vegetables for the week and chatting with stall owners. A few of them had remembered S.Q.'s name, asking over his schoolwork, his time at the farm. John tested half a dozen apples for a pie and Violet hemmed and hawed over art supplies. They meandered through the dizzying sprawl of stands and colours.
Meandered.
S.Q. doesn't think Mr. Curtain has meandered a single day in his life.
So not only was it a good day, it was a day that could not have happened if the curtain had been here. S.Q. tries to imagine him in the cluttered square, haggling over paint and produce, and fails.
The guilt nearly consumes him, weighing and weighing on his spine. This is not supposed to be easy.
But-
But, but, but-
Believing in Mr.Curtain was easy. Staying with Mr. Curtain was easy. Growing in Curtain's shadow, into the purpose paved out before him, was so, so easy. S.Q. had breathed it, lived it, for thirteen years. It had been his hallowed ground.
But Curtain himself is not an easy man. Mr. Curtain is someone you followed on light feet, because you never knew when you would need to jump out of the way. Mr. Curtain is someone prone to fits of rage and endless waves of irritation. S.Q. remembers the prison, and waiting on a hard chair while the man screamed himself hoarse or into unconsciousness. It had not been the first time.
Sometimes, he realises as he curls up in the guest room bed. Sometimes, John and Violet are far easier to be with than Curtain ever was.
Admitting it to himself feels like swallowing stones. It feels like peeling himself open. He feels repulsed, and raw, and aching with it.
He had told Curtain together, and he had meant it. He had thought that he had meant it. He had meant, maybe, to mean it, and somehow got lost along the way.
How dare you? his mind screams. A pillow is pressed so tight against his ears they ring. Remember, remember; Mr. Curtain gave you everything, once. He chose you. He let you stay.
Remember his hands, clinging.
And then, quieter, another piece of himself that S.Q. sometimes wishes he could forget, just because it aches, just because it's too damn hard: Remember, remember, Mr. Curtain was wrong.
Is this something you can live with? S.Q. asks himself, feeling ill, feeling too big in his own skin. Worms crawled under his skin and into his lungs and itched and itched and itched. This? This?
S.Q. doesn't sleep that night, and he doesn't join John for farm chores in the morning. S.Q. tries to write fifteen letters and never manages to capture the way it all aches in a manner that does not feel like laying blame.
The world turns and turns and turns, big and terrifying and raw. S.Q. slides back out of his self imposed isolation and feels guilty for it. He cares for animals and tends to the fields and helps cook dinner. He sits in sturdy oak chairs and he kneels in garden dirt. He tries to breathe without his lungs rattling. He finds he cannot quite master how.
But sometimes the world just turns. Sometimes it's just big, not terrifying, not raw. S.Q. goes through more days, experiences the mundane and the new and the wonderfully new mundane. They grow huge orange pumpkins for the fall and everything they don't sell or bake into pies is donated for the orphanage boys to send flying with a handmade catapult. Mr. Benedict had, apparently, created it in his schoolboy days.
S.Q. helps Violet take out piles of quilts and crochet blankets as the weather grows colder. She describes their stories; craft fairs and gifts, her mother's steady hands. John brags about his hot chocolate recipe for weeks and weeks and manages to buy everything on their list except for cocoa powder. Rhonda writes about making flower crowns and a cute boy who has started sitting next to her during her Astronomy class. S.Q. smiles, and S.Q. laughs, and S.Q. learns how to roll his eyes at the more ridiculous jokes. He learns how to let his feet settle on the ground, weight sturdy, because for all the activity of the farm he has never once been asked to jump out of the way.
And with it comes a new guilt.
With every smile, every shared laughter, every tiny joy, there comes a sinking, bitter feeling; this is more than he deserves.
It is the eggs that get him, in the end.
It is such a ridiculous thing. It is such a painful thing. S.Q. manages to trip over his own too-big feet and send a dozen eggs scattering across the ground, the mostly clean, smooth shells shattering against pebbles and grass in an explosion of egg whites and runny yolk.
His stomach drops down to his toes, something cold rising up within that sends all the blood draining from his face, freckles stark against his skin. He looks up at John, feels something tense in his shoulders, in his spine.
There are several inches in height between them, all in S.Q.'s favour. He still feels small.
"Oops," John says, casual with it. He glances up from the scattered remnants and frowns, a little, at what he finds. "Hey there, S.Q.," he says, and it comes out too soft. Too gentle. Too kind. John Cole has never looked anything like Leodrotha Curtain, but at this moment the lack of resemblance feels stark and raw and aching. "It's not a big deal. Did you hurt anybody? No? Then it's all clear in my book."
S.Q. stares at him, stricken. Feels sick with it. Feels numb. Feels worms in his lungs, shivering.
But I did, he thinks, I did, I did, I did.
The children screaming in the cave, electrocuted and suddenly, startlingly young with it. Number Two growing gaunt under the manacles keeping her prisoner, delirious and shaking. Sticky in the aftermath of the Waiting Room, walking on autopilot and face ashen. Constance, ill at the expense of her own abilities. Milligan, bruised and bleeding and broken. Countless, countless others who suffered under what was done.
S.Q. played a part in that. S.Q. walked each step, side by side with Curtain, because it was easy. Because no one had taught him how to leave, and he had never wanted to learn how.
Here is the truth of it: Curtain was wrong. But S.Q. was wrong, too.
What has he ever done to earn such kindness? Such grace?
The answer is very little at all.
His lungs shake with the weight of that realisation. He picks up pieces of scattered eggshell and he picks up some sort of semblance of a smile. S.Q. knows how to do this. He knows how to shape himself for somebody else's appeasement.
John looks at him too long, and doesn't push. They walk back into the farmhouse, and S.Q. excuses himself to his room.
His room. When did that happen?
There is a half-finished letter for Rhonda sitting on his desk. There are clothes filling the dresser drawers, bought second hand but mended and hemmed with care until they fit. There is a recycled jar sitting on the bookshelf, crammed full of loose bills; John insists on paying him for his work. A book on sign language sits half read on his bedside and the window is open, the curtains billowing and full.
There is a life here.
It snuck up on him, like life is wont to do, but it's here. A whole life, with hobbies and work and things to learn, things to do. It is a steady life, a quiet life, a life with laughter and gentle teasing and things to bury his hands into. It is a life with roots, tentatively reaching for richer soil.
It is a life without Mr. Curtain in it.
How is that possible?
S.Q. stands in the doorway, directionless and lost, undeserving, and he asks himself, Is this something you can live with?
And he knows his answer.
S.Q. tries something new that night.
S.Q. tries his hand at leaving.
He packs his backpack carefully, money and clothes and stacks of paper for letters. He prepares three sandwiches and wraps them in brown paper. He finishes his letter to Rhonda, and prepares it for the post. He writes a note for John and Violet, gratitude and apologies in one. He steps out into the garden and locks the front door behind him.
For the first time in his life, no one is telling him where to go. For the first time in his life, there is no one.
S.Q. finds a tiny overgrown trail leading up to the hills and follows it. Millions of stars light his way, a full moon hanging low against the uneven path. As he walks, he hears the skitterings and chitterings of animals. As he walks, he keeps his eyes on his feet, because it would not do well to fall. When the forest grows up around him and the canopy shelters him from the starlight, he stoops lower still, squinting at the trail below.
He walks for what feels like a long time. He walks for hardly any time at all, and then he stumbles upon the clearing.
In an earlier time, there was an observatory here. The cranks and gears took elbow grease and some oiling, but they still turned. In an earlier time, three children gathered under the overhanging vines and laid on their backs. They painted futures for themselves with their words and their hands, and then they grew into those futures, and then out of them. Futures are not something that keep; those malleable, brilliant things.
At this time, the observatory is mostly rubble and glass. Old weathered stones and old weathered memories, fondly cherished. The vines are still growing, though. Ivy creeps across the ruins and finds tiny crevices to cling to, paints the smatterings of hard grey partly green and golden. Their roots are these tiny, reaching things.
(Beginnings, and middles, and ends; they are not so easy to trace as they may seem.)
S.Q. sits on the ruins and eats a sandwich. He gently traces a leaf and thinks about trimming the garden, small herbs in his big hands.
Then he gets up and he keeps walking.
The trail he picks goes straight up, climbing and climbing and climbing. S.Q.'s legs have been made strong from weeks of farmwork, and they eat up the distance with ease. It was no time at all before he came upon an unusually large boulder. It was no time at all before the world opened up entirely; empty space and endless night sky. The moon hung so low and so large that S.Q. felt as though he could reach up and pluck it from the stars themselves.
In an earlier time, a little boy had sat on the bluff and wondered about Hopefield farm, about the family that lived there. Here, now, S.Q. looks down at endless fields and an old farmhouse made of stone, and finds tears springing to his eyes. Here is a place that has known him gently.
Something small and bitter inside his chest; S.Q. had asked himself, Is this something you can live with? He had not asked himself, Is this something that you want?
He had not dared, because he had known the answer, and the truth terrified him.
For a long time, S.Q. sits there. He cradles all his small griefs, all his tired and aching truths. He holds them in the palms of his hands and he breathes around them, the way they rattle his lungs in his chest. He watches the world spin round, big and terrifying and raw, until the sky seeps full of grey.
The light of the lantern reaches him before Violet does.
She sighs when she sees him, more air than sound, more relief than anything else. It's not what he expected. He's not sure what he expected. S.Q. left. He keeps leaving, even when he doesn't mean to.
S.Q. stares at her, and she smiles back, settles on the edge of the cliff without fanfare or discomfort. The wind catches in her loose hair and plays with it, sending it flying in every which direction. She says, lips quirked with amusement, I keep finding boys on my bluff.
S.Q. stares.
He knows being lost, is the thing. He even knows what it is to stand, directionless, and have people place purpose into the palms of his hands.
He has never known being found.
S.Q., she says, and her expression is so kind. Hopefield stretches out below them, open and welcoming and calling and calling and calling. S.Q., let's go home.
How do you tell someone the worst parts of yourself? How do you take out the beating heart of all the things that have made you small- all the things you did to make others smaller- and expose it to the world, that raw and aching thing? S.Q. feels the tears fall thick and fast and whispers back, "I don't deserve it. Not any of it."
Violet wipes away his tears before she answers, pulling her sweater sleeves over her knuckles and brushing at his cheeks. The fabric tugs and scratches, every so slightly. She smiles, again, and it looks just a little like it aches. Well, she says, and her fingers dance with it. It's a good thing that life's not about deserving, then.
S.Q. breathes and breathes and breathes. "What's it about, then?"
She shrugs. Hell if I know.
And then-
It's about living, I guess. It's about being here, in the moment, doing what you can. She shrugs. Life just happens, sometimes. And you live with it. You do your best to make it a little better than before. What else can any of us do?
She rises to her feet, and offers her hand. There's dirt on her long skirts and her hair a billowing silver flag of tangles. Now, c'mon, if we hurry, we can get back before John does-
"Where's John?"
He went into town to check the train station for you.
"Oh."
S.Q. looks at her. Her eyes are kind and her hands are open. Waiting.
He remembers Mr. Curtain, clinging.
He takes her hand. He does not let go.
What does it mean to let go?
S.Q. ponders this to himself late at night, when his thoughts won't let him sleep in the bed he's realised he no longer startles when he finds himself thinking of it as his own. He had caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the entryway the other day, and hadn't even thought it strange to recognise himself until hours later.
S.Q. learns sign language with Violet. He practices math and carefully works through grammar packets. He pens letters to Rhonda, who has recently gone on her very first date with a charming young man. He pens more hesitant letters to the children, who send him well wishes and updates. He does not pen any letters to Curtain at all.
He follows John around, and they tend to the farm. The cows are milked and the wheat is checked. The herbs get trimmed and weeded, snails carefully captured and released further out into the woods. S.Q. goes on long walks and forgets to ask permission. John and Violet are anxious the first few times, and then they relax into it; leaving does not negate the return. It's just something he wants to learn.
The world is big and raw and terrifying. There are sleepless nights and rough mornings, days where words seem to flee his head completely. He gets into his first fight with John some four months in, angry and embarrassed and bursting with it. He gives Violet a silent treatment for nearly three days over something small and unintentionally hurtful. He sits through apologies and makes some of his own.
But there's this, also: he laughs so hard that milk comes out of his nose, and Violet's hands shake so much by the force of her giggles that she can hardly finish recounting a ridiculous story about her sisters. He works side by side with John to chop firewood, cracking jokes and groaning over manual labour, repetitive and mundane and brilliant. They drink tea as the days get shorter and colder, and S.Q. buys himself a giant, heavy quilt with his hard-earned money. When the winter months arrive, so does Rhonda Kazembe, and it surprises him at how fun it is. How easy. They build a lopsided snowman with inadequate snow and talk about the future, the places they want to be. The things they want to do.
S.Q. wants, and that surprises him too.
S.Q. thinks about the future. He thinks about growing into it, and out of it. There is no hallowed ground, but there are gardens with good soil ready for the types of roots that reach deep, that reach upwards and outwards and out. He thinks about how that is something to build off of. It does not have to be everything. It just has to be.
Somewhere in Stonetown, there are four kids playing and laughing in the snow. Their cheeks are stinging with cold and their fingers can hardly form snowballs, cramping inside their small mittens. They saved the world, once or twice. They are trying to learn how to let that go.
The truth of it is this: the children have been carrying their own aches. They have been lost, and they have run, and they have been found. None of it was easy.
The truth of it is this: there is no such thing as neat love. Love is messy, always.
(The truth of it is this: you decide if it is worth the ache.)
S.Q. will learn that, eventually. S.Q. is learning that, in fits and bursts and starts. His hands have always been clumsy, but they are still his own.
You have to live in your own skin, is the thing. This world turns and turns, big and terrifying and raw, but all your most important parts still fit inside of you. There are snails in the garden, and they carry their own homes with them.
You have to live in your own skin, is the thing, but you also just have to live.
In the springtime, S.Q. plants seeds in dark soil, row by lopsided row. His fingers get covered in wet, clumpy earth and Violet sprays John with the hose when he's not looking, making him yelp, making them all laugh. For his birthday, S.Q. is gifted a trellis to hang out his window, and he fills it with flowers and lovely, growing things. He breathes in the smell of wheat as it starts coming in, tentative sprouts poking out through barren ground.
He breathes, and it comes steady.
There is a letter sitting on his desk. Dear Mr. Curtain is scrawled across the top. It is full of tired, aching things. Sometimes that is what the truth is. It is also possibly full of more kindness than what this man deserves; he has given this man more than half his life.
But so little of life is about deserving.
The letter's not finished yet, but S.Q. has time. S.Q. has so much time. S.Q. is twenty one, and the years stretch on ahead of him on and on and on. More than half his life, open and waiting for him, a brilliant and malleable thing.
"S.Q.!" John calls. His voice echoes against the stonework of the house like a drum."We're heading down to the market! You comin'?"
"Coming, John!" S.Q. hollers back. He grabs his wallet and leaves his bag. His bedroom door knocks against the hinges and he tromps down the stairs. With a burst of speed, he swings into the kitchen and snags an apple from their packed lunch, laughing when Violet exasperatedly scolds him, her fingers flying.
Sorry, sorry, he says, his own fingers dancing. Won't happen again!
Then he takes a bite large enough that his cheeks bulge with it, watches the way she rolls her eyes and grins at him, impossibly fond. John, watching this, jangles the keys pointedly, smile lines scrunched around his scars.
S.Q. swings the front door open. The world is big, out there. The world is so, so big. The future stretches on and on and on. S.Q. is not afraid to greet it with a smile.
(S.Q. is not afraid, even if it will not be easy.)
The sunshine bursts against his freckled skin and paints him warm and golden, seeps into his muscles, the curve of his spine. There's the groans and creaks of old floorboards as people come down the hallway, and John is laughing, laughing. The leaves whistle in the wind, his favourite yew tree swaying with the coming of Spring. There is a life, here. There's a whole life, mundane and new and wonderfully newly mundane.
Beginnings and middles and ends: S.Q. steps outside, one foot after another.
The world keeps turning, and S.Q.'s path is his own.