'No Excuses'
By Indiana
Characters: Edward Nygma, Jonathan Crane
Synopsis: If it can't be their excuse, it can't be yours either.
The first thing he learned to keep to himself was that there was alcohol involved.
It took a long while before he realised what was happening to him couldn't be right. It couldn't be right that his father came home and took his drunken frustration out on his son, could it? But when he found someone to ask his concerns were dismissed; "Nobody is themselves when they're drunk," he was told. "He doesn't mean it. It's the alcohol talking."
So he believed that, for a while.
Taking alcohol out of the equation did nothing. "How else is a father to discipline a boy?" he was told. "Keep your nose out of trouble and quit whining."
He believed that a little less.
The problem spread to his peers. He was no longer safe at school or walking alongside the road; he was ambushed by boys who had sprouted a little earlier than he and were determined to show him just how much stronger they were. "Make yourself less of a target," he was told. "They won't pick on you if you show them you don't care."
He didn't believe that at all.
He ran out of people to tell, and as he did he ran out of people to trust. Nobody cared, though all the evidence was right in front of them. It didn't matter what he did. He deserved it, somehow.
He tried not to believe that.
He got a little older and into a little more trouble, and again and again he was seated in front of people who refused to listen. Who wanted only to shuffle responsibility for him to the next pair of hands, and the next. He stayed out of juvie because no one wanted to do the paperwork. He stayed out of prison because no one wanted to defend him. He stayed out of the courtroom because someone decided for him he was not fit to stand trial.
Now they wanted to know. Now they wanted him to talk. He wasn't going to. They hadn't cared to fix the problem when it had all started. He wasn't going to help them now. They could deal with the mess they and their ilk had pressed back into his lap since the day that first teacher had waved him off. He gave them nothing. When they managed to figure out the bigger points he took it from them. Turned it into a triumph instead of a tragedy. He wasn't going to let them use it as a sticking point. He wasn't going to let them take his history and unfold it in front of him as though he'd never tried to tell it before. They'd all contributed to this disaster. He was going to make them face the consequences.
One night after yet another failed interrogation he sat down on his bed to find that his formerly solitary cell was populated by another. An older man. Edward was wary of older men.
"Oh, it's you," he said. Edward had not even seen him glance up from his book.
"Excuse me?" He was infringing on Edward's privacy, not the other way around!
"They mentioned they were bumming me with some obstinate, but hadn't informed me as to whom. I was hoping it was some trust-fund baby, soon to be freed by daddy's paper keys."
Edward clenched his teeth. "You don't know anything about me."
The other man looked at him with the most eerie calm. "I know a great deal more than you might think."
/
They didn't speak very often. Edward highly disliked his attitude, and Jonathan didn't have much interest in him anyway. Which was appalling, really. Who could be in a room with Edward Nygma for eight hours a day and not be interested in him? But Jonathan had an infuriating stoicism that never, ever so much as cracked. Every attempt Edward had made to get through it had failed. He would have kept at it if he hadn't been appraised of just what the man had done to be admitted here in the first place.
It was nothing Edward wanted to endure.
It was several months before Jonathan graced him with a single sentence, given after a particularly irritating session with an psychologist with their foot still in medical school: "They didn't listen, did they."
Edward's head snapped up. "What?"
Jonathan, as always, had a book squarely in front of him. "When you tried to tell them the first time. And the second. And the third. You made a decision, and you're carrying it to your grave."
Edward could only stare at him, aghast. How had he figured it out?
Jonathan nodded and went back to reading.
He didn't know how he'd done it, but Jonathan knew. Little by little he revealed it, over the course of several weeks, and with every new piece of his puzzle Edward was left feeling more and more exposed. How did he know? The day he finally snapped and asked, Jonathan said, with his eternal calm,
"Because I was listening."
It was several weeks later, after a session that almost got to him, that Jonathan sat down on Edward's bed opposite him. Ignoring Edward's suspicious glare, he said, "Tell me."
"Why should I?" Edward snapped immediately. "I haven't told anyone all these years, why should I tell you now?"
"There is the fact that I already know," Jonathan said. "But someone else will figure it out eventually. Someone will wrest it from you and take the power you've been denying them. Or you can tell me now, and I will listen, and then I will tell you what you should do. It's your choice. But it is a choice you are slowly losing the ability to make."
The next day, Edward did.
He told Jonathan everything, from the beginning to the end, and it took hours. Edward talked long into the night and Jonathan sat there quietly without moving. When Edward had finally finished Jonathan waited a moment, then said:
"There was no excuse for what they did to you."
Edward opened his mouth in relief – someone finally believed him! but Jonathan gave a half-shake of his head.
"But if there is no excuse for what they did, you cannot use it as yours."
Edward's teeth clicked together.
"I know it is tempting to explain your behaviour as a result of your history," Jonathan continued. "To say, 'If they had not done this then, I would not do this now'. But there is a price. If you have an excuse, then they have an excuse. And if they have an excuse, they will now and forever hold power over you."
"Are… are you telling me to forgive them?" Edward asked, his voice faint with disbelief. But Jonathan smiled, just a little.
"Worse," he said, huskily. "I am telling you to forget."
"How do I – "
"If you make them the reason for what you have done and what you will do," Jonathan interrupted, "they will hold ownership of it. They will be the true architects of what should have been yours. Forget about them. Take your future in your hands and hold it close. Do not give it away. Take responsibility as they never did. And as you do, you will rob the past of its power. None of those people deserve either a second thought nor a fraction of the credit rightfully due you. Do things because you want to, not because of some distant memory that might as well belong to someone else."
"Can I ask you something?"
"You may."
Edward licked his lips. "Why are you helping me?"
Jonathan studied him. "I'm not. I'm merely advising you of an alternative. If you choose to continue as you've chosen, I will not stop you."
Edward did not usually take the advice of people who gave him advice he had not asked for. In fact, he usually did the exact opposite out of spite. But… Jonathan had listened. And he had let Edward tell it on his own time, in his own way, even though he already knew.
Perhaps… perhaps Edward should do it. Just this once. See what happened.
Life was easier when you had someone to blame, he discovered. He cared little for ethics and morals, given how little they'd done for him over the years, but he still noted his inclination to turn back to them as an excuse whenever he had the opportunity. But why? Why did he keep making them responsible for what he did by proxy? Why not take ownership of it? Everything he did should be in his name alone!
And as he did this, he removed the power from the past. It did not mean so much when he disallowed it to influence him. Doing things because he wanted to mean that he was not constantly ascribing it to some past event, and then mentally retracing the event over and over and over again! He had, in a way, freed himself in a way he never could when he was younger.
A few months after Jonathan was still, for some reason, bunked with him. He was not big on talking but Edward had concluded that was because there was nothing Edward could tell him he didn't already know. One night he said, "My advice seems to be serving you well."
"And how would you know that?"
Jonathan levelled his eyes. "You treat all of your sessions as a game now, rather than some obstacle to be obstinately avoided."
"True," Edward said, "but according to your advice I should give no credit to your advice."
Jonathan actually laughed.
"My advice states not to give others that which is yours," Jonathan said. "Not to remove any outside influence. But do what you wish."
"I suppose I owe you a thanks, at the least," Edward told him.
"No need," was Jonathan's answer. "Your actions have already done that."
And really, Edward reasoned, what better thanks could a man possibly need?
Author's note
People might have hurt you, but you can't use that as an excuse to hurt others. Likewise, you don't need to use what others have done to you as an explanation for changes you've made to yourself so you can be different. Take responsibility for yourself in all things, good or bad. Some people will be like 'well my mom did this and this and that's why I'm acting like a jerk to people right now, it's not my fault so you have to forgive me.' It's not like that. Don't let anyone give you that. And don't give it to yourself. Don't allow other people to make you powerless.