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Jon drops his toothbrush.
It’s stupid, really, that this is what sets him off, but he’s tired and upset and his head feels stuffed with cotton and he’s annoyed, honestly, that he can’t shut the door to the bathroom because four closed walls feel like the first step to suffocation so suffice so say things aren’t good to begin with. He’s dreading sleep but he’s reaching his limits without, could feel his hands beginning to shake as he pressed ‘play’ on Gertrude’s tape recorder. Jon already knows what he’ll see once he closes his eyes and, like always, panic will ask his lucid mind if he’ll be able to wake up this time.
And he drops his toothbrush.
It’s not like it matters, but doesn’t it? Logically, Jon knows that it’s not a big deal, but he’s not sure what logic means anymore. He’s a monster, so he’s not sure how much he can trust his own idea of logic anymore, now that it’s warped and twisted and inhuman.
Jon doesn’t stoop to pick it up, the way he should. He just starts shaking in the Institute basement’s tiny bathroom, a full body tremble as his fists clench and his vision blurs and he’s filled with a terrible, awful anger, because why can’t he just be normal? Why couldn’t he have a normal childhood, with the parents who actually wanted him instead of coming of age outside Mr Spider’s doorstep with his first Knowledge of the unknown? Why couldn’t he speak like all the other children did, the ones who knew the threads and rules of interaction that Jon never learned? Why couldn’t he— why can’t he—
“Control yourself, Jon,” says an echo of his grandmother, and she sounds like Gertrude, and she sounds like the thing that took over Sasha, and she sounds like Melanie, sometimes, when Melanie looks at him like she could kill him with her pinky finger. And why can’t he do what they ask? What the fuck can’t he just be normal like everyone has been asking of him his entire life? Why did he have to cross the final line and—
Well.
Well, wasn’t he a monster already? Didn’t he kill Tim? Didn’t Jon go into the Unknowing damn sure that Tim Stoker was hurting and raw and grieving and reckless and prone to doing something that could get himself killed?
Are murderers allowed to feel guilty?
Jon is biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, trying to stifle the cry that chokes him, but of course there’s no mark on his skin. He’s not sure if he’s fighting back a scream or a sob but the noise that expands in his chest hurts, and it hurts like he is back in the coffin, pounding on the walls and begging for freedom.
Jon’s eyes fly open as he slams a violently shaking fist against the rim of the ceramic sink, barely catching sight of himself in the mirror as the aged porcelain crumbles with the impact. Jon recoils, springing back and meeting his own eyes as the corner crashes to the ground, breathing hard. It feels like the first breath he’s ever taken.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snarls at the mirror, wanting to slam his hands into something else because he needs contact, he needs relief, he needs that tactile something to calm himself down but Jon doesn’t know his own strength and so he just stands, furious, shaking, his chest heaving and his fists balled. His hair is dark and thick and wayward curls have come loose from French plaits and Jon looks gaunt and exhausted, yes, but not as bad as he feels. “What the hell is wrong with you!” he snaps at himself—
And all he wants to do is answer.
The need is swift and all consuming, a low buzz of static building rapidly in the back of Jon’s mind, and all the bad thoughts start rushing to the surface from where nice things like drinks with Daisy have pushed them down, unlocked by the gore and the defeat of the Slaughter’s ritual, because this is his life now. Jon is choked by words, by blame, by fury, by guilt, and all he can repeat is the goddamn question: “What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you!”
He wants to scream and maybe he is screaming but doesn’t realise it; maybe that noise like a broken radiator is his own breathing; maybe Jon is a murderer, a monster; maybe he doesn’t deserve to be sobbing like this on the floor of the Institute bathroom, gagging on words of his own compulsion.
A spiderweb of cracks branch out from where Jon’s knees have hit the floor, as if he is made of concrete.
“What is wrong with you?” he asks again, quieter, and the static grows, and what is wrong with you?
The answer is thirty years in the making and Jon can’t bring himself to speak, just grows more and more overwhelmed, and he can’t lash out and just smack something for fear of breaking it entirely so he continues shaking, trembling, almost unable to breathe as his chest heaves, coughing—
“Jon?”
That’s Daisy.
“I’m— fine,” says Jon, which is quite possibly the stupidest thing to say in this scenario. The idea of Daisy seeing him like this is… bad, because Daisy has already seen him vulnerable in the coffin, and then again before they went out for drinks, and it’s enough for her to either resent him or blackmail him and Jon can’t breathe —
“The… the door’s open,” Daisy says warily, though not without kindness. “Can I come in?”
Jon knows that she’s not trying to kill him now but still wonders why the Hunter would announce herself to her prey.
“I… I suppose so,” he says without moving, his voice ragged and awful and not at all fine, but this is how life goes sometimes. “Be careful, there’s— I — I broke the sink.”
Daisy steps in and Jon expects her to laugh at him, maybe, or let out a low whistle and criticise him for moping, but she just says nothing, which is worse.
“Jesus, Jon,” she sighs finally, after surveying the wreckage.
“I know,” he says miserably, trying his best not to start sobbing again and mostly succeeding.
Sinking to her haunches next to him, Daisy pulls one ratty plait over Jon’s shoulder and asks, “What happened?”
There’s a long moment of silence. Jon thinks about all those things that the Beholding asked him to say, all those confessions that the Beholding demanded he make, and all those guilty thoughts that answered him.
“I dropped my toothbrush,” he says.
“Oh, Jon,” Daisy whispers, and he’s crying again. It’s a full-on, face buried in his hands, sat on the floor and sobbing cry, and Jon tries to stop but he keeps hitching and gulping and choking on air and he can’t breathe and he can’t breathe and he can’t breathe and—
And Daisy’s arms encircle his shoulders, and without even looking Jon trusts her not to suffocate him, and he buries his face in her collarbone and tries, tries, tries not to ask ‘What is wrong with me?’ because he can barely avoid answering as it is.
Daisy seems to get it, though, because she doesn’t ask. She doesn’t try to make him talk or spill his guts or even ask if he’s okay because she knows everything she needs to. She just holds him, and he cries.
Hugging him, Daisy realises how thin Jon’s gotten, and even though she doesn’t keep an eye on his nutritional habits, she realises that she can’t remember the last time she saw him eating anything. A coiled whip of fight in her stomach says that Jon smells like a worthless kill, a hunt that would have no satisfaction in the chase or the reckoning.
“I’m gonna get you a scone,” Daisy mumbles into the air.
Jon raises his head and fixes his glasses with some degree of success. “W-what?”
“Stay here,” Daisy says without really breaking the hug. “I’m gonna get you a scone, and then I’m gonna braid your hair, okay?”
“What?” says Jon again, and - God, does he look suspicious of her now? Daisy doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or sorry. Paranoia is going to ruin him one of these days, she thinks, and then she remembers Tim and wonders if it already has.
“You look like hell,” Daisy says as she rubs circles into Jon’s shoulders. His eyes are drooping closed already, but he seems to accept the explanation of his own shittiness as motivation for her kindness rather than the fact that she’d just want to help him. “And Melanie got scones.”
“Oh,” says Jon after a pause. He’s resorted to monosyllables but at least he’s trying, so Daisy squeezes him just a bit tighter before standing. She feels Jon shudder against her, knows the delicate stitching that holds him together now, and without thinking leans in to press a chaste kiss to his forehead.
“Stay here,” Daisy repeats, feeling both proud and sisterly as she hurries to the kitchen and digs through the crinkly paper bag of scones until she finds one that Jon would like. Not too long ago, she’d pick him the most boring of the lot, but today she selects the sugariest one of the batch. He needs it.
After grabbing a comb and sticking it between her teeth, Daisy hesitates on her way back to the bathroom. Then she fills the kettle and turns on the stove, because even though Martin can’t be here, she knows Jon is thinking of him.
“Here,” Daisy says around the comb in her mouth, holding out the napkin-wrapped scone to a Jon still sat on the bathroom floor. He looks surprised to see both it and her, as if he were waiting for another kidnapping as penance for the hug.
“Thank you,” Jon says shakily, and Daisy watches him smile down at the sugary crust. She chose well.
Plopping down next to him, Daisy sets the comb on the floor and pulls Jon between her legs. She suddenly has flashbacks to sleepovers in primary school, and it’s… good. “Eat,” she tells him as she takes out the old plaits and untangles his hair, brushing it through with a gentle touch. “I get that you’re feeling awful mopey tonight, but you’ve got to eat something, Jon.”
He takes an obligatory bite of the scone and makes a noise of surprise. “This is actually... not bad.”
“Melanie knows her bakeries,” Daisy hums, nodding to herself. They fall into silence for a bit as Jon’s breathing steadies, falling into an easy, gentle rhythm. Jon’s hair is thick, dark, almost curly, and long, and Daisy finds herself lost in the bumps, the texture, the softness.
It’s nice. It’s really nice.
“Can you… can you put on the Archers?” Jon asks after a while, twisting around a bit, and Daisy starts.
“You actually like it?”
Jon wrings his hands, and Daisy notices that he’s finished his scone. “I’m not sure what I like anymore,” he admits slowly, as her fingers wind through his hair. “But — it’s a start.”
Daisy ties off the second and final plait and swings it over Jon’s shoulder. “Sure,” she says, brushing her hands over her knees before she stands. “Sure, we can do that.”
She extends a hand, an olive branch, an offering. Jon takes it, pulls himself up. This time he initiates the hug - short and embarrassed and unsure but genuine - and pushes up his classes, clearing his throat. “Really, Daisy,” he says, eyes flicking to hers and then away. “Thank you.”
“Course,” she says, because there’s nothing else to say.
The teakettle whistles.