The Permanent Efficacy of Grace

12.

When Rook gets back to St. Francis's, it's two AM, and the floodlights are blazing as brightly as day. She parks at the end of the long drive and grabs the duffel bag she'd packed up with everything she'd cared to take from her temporary living space in the McCoy cabin on her way out of the Henbane and up to the mountains tonight, and she gets out of the car to walk the rest of the way to the gate, giving them plenty of time to see her coming, hoping to avoid getting shot. Despite her weeks-long residence at the Veteran's Center and Jacob's vague indications that he's through drugging her and strapping her to a chair, she's still only managed to get inside of her own volition one time, and she can't really believe that she'll be allowed to get within five hundred feet of the gates.

Nobody shoots her, though, and the speakers mounted high at the edges of the building stay still and silent. It's a nice change of pace, but she's too tired to feel particularly shocked, simply accepting the not-unwelcome turn of events as an unusual end to an unusual day.

What does surprise her, though, is that when the gates open at her approach, Jacob himself strides out to greet her. The scowl on his face could kill a small child, he's armed with the usual rifle, handgun, and the thing he calls a knife but Rook thinks technically counts as a machete, and there are a few soldiers behind him, hovering like they're afraid this is some sort of trap (but not too close, like they're also afraid he'll take their heads off if they don't tread carefully), but despite her show of bravado, she can't keep her heartbeat from spiking at the sight of him. He never comes in person like this, always sends a few underlings to collect her and bring her somewhere more convenient for him.

He must be real worked up.

She stops a few feet away from him, wary, wanting to get a better gauge of his mood before waltzing right up to him, to identify this weird energy rolling off him. Usually it's anger, which she can handle, but she'd prefer to have a head start if she ends up needing it. He stops short of her as well, eyeing her up and down, and she notes that his free hand, down by his side—the one not currently white-knuckled around the grip of his knife—is clenched into a fist.

He sees her see it and flexes the fingers out before saying abruptly, "You been crying?"

She blinks and tries not to hunker down defensively. It had been a hard enough cry that there was no use trying to cover it up, but she hadn't expected him to call her out on it, or else she might have actually tried, and she opens her mouth to shoot something back—but finds that she's too worn out to execute her usual move, to start an argument that'll distract him from the fact that she was crying in the first place. She ends up just closing her mouth again, and gives him a little head-shake, more rueful than anything else. What're you gonna do?

By way of response, he just nods in silence and glances past her, out towards the black line of trees that rises up to meet the flat expanse of the Veteran's Center driveway just a few hundred yards away. She doesn't think he notices that he's curled that same hand into a tight fist again—when he again catches her looking at it, he flexes it open once more, then reaches it out towards her. "Come on. Inside."

She goes along willingly, letting him take her by her upper arm as soon as she's within reach, letting him take her bag and put it over his shoulder and guide her through the gates, looking back briefly at the dark terrain behind them to watch for threats until they pass into the courtyard and the gates close securely behind them. A skeleton crew staffs the Center at night, so there are people moving to and from tasks and standing guard, but they deliberately don't look at Jacob and Rook as they walk towards the main building. She finds herself glad, not for the first time, that Jacob generally dislikes being gawked at—she's pretty neutral on it herself, but of late, she's enjoying feeling shielded from the stares, enjoying being unapproachable.

In that light, she keeps her voice low, just for Jacob to hear, when she asks, "You weren't worried I was luring you outside to get sniped?"

"No," he says curtly, letting go of her arm and stepping forward to get the door.

She moves inside, pausing for the half second it takes him to fall in step beside her again. "Not even a little?"

"What do you think?" The question sounds a little waspish for Jacob, but she already knows he's annoyed, if not outright angry—though in a welcome change of events, it doesn't seem to be directed at her. Maybe it's that he's thawing around her enough to let her see into his head a little more, or maybe she's just getting to know him better in general (or maybe she's just imagining things), but she's pretty sure this specific brand of annoyance is just a useful distraction from the fact that he's been worrying than because he's actually all that mad, and the way he's handling her—not grabbing at her hard, not yanking her around, not tossing her in a cage or even demanding explanations—seems to support that.

As they reach the stairs and start heading up, he asks, "What've you had to eat today?"

She winces at the phrasing, which he no doubt chose on purpose—the implication being that of course she's responsible enough to have fed herself, at the very least. And of course, she hasn't—since she left the Veteran's Center in the morning, it's been the last thing on her mind. "I'm not hungry," she says, truthfully, because the emotions of the day have her stomach twisted up in knots and the thought of eating couldn't be less appealing at the moment.

"Not what I asked."

She indulges herself, rolling her eyes for a split second, and then says, "I haven't had anything to eat today because I'm not hungry."

She catches the quick little look he casts in her direction, the scornful furrow of his brow, as they're turning on the landing, and then he says, "I'll have them bring you something from the mess hall. You quit having any extra to lose about ten pounds ago."

She sighs, but he's right, she's still down a considerable amount of muscle mass from the whole captivity-infection-stabbing trifecta and the fact that it was basically impossible to get a solid meal in for the entire time all that was going down, and even if he wasn't right, she doesn't have the energy to argue. It'll be quicker and less of an ordeal to shovel down a few bites of something, so she just nods as they reach his office floor, and when he stops to pull aside a soldier to instruct them to bring some food up, she continues on, finding to her surprise that the idea of closing herself away in his office feels identical to the feeling she used to get when she finally got home to her apartment after a particularly long day at school or work. Security, relief—that sense of being home. It's disconcerting. She makes a mental note to think about it later, when she's not dead on her feet.

She goes straight to her bed and sits down heavily. After just sitting in wonderful motionlessness for a few seconds, she laboriously leans forward to unlace her boots. Jacob comes in, closes the door behind him, and as she tugs the first boot off, he crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against the door, pinning her with a measured stare.

She thinks he probably wants to know what she was up to all day, but it's a whole thing, and she's pretty sure the mention of her friends will spark a fight that she doesn't have the energy for, so she just yanks off her second boot and says, "I think we should meet with Joseph."

That surprises him, she can tell—again, she thinks she's either getting to read him better or he's being less guarded with her, because although his scowl doesn't drop, she sees the slightest twitch to his brow, and his mouth slackens just a bit, which for Jacob is the equivalent of a jaw drop. "The two of us, I mean," she clarifies, resting her elbows on her knees and watching him steadily. "Not you alone. I think it's past time he and I really talked, and if you're serious about you and me sticking together, then you ought to be there too."

He recovers quickly, his expression shifting back into stone. "Tomorrow?" he asks, which she takes as agreement. It's more of a relief than she might have thought, and she quickly realizes why: last time she tried to talk to Joseph with him, he'd locked her in his office, then sent her away. This is better, she thinks. Growth.

"Can you make it happen that quickly?" she asks, and by way of reply, he scowls at her, which she takes to mean who do you think you're talking to? "Then sure, yeah. The sooner the better." She feels a whoosh of nerves somewhere in her gut at the prospect of facing Joseph so soon, but now that she's got her mind made up, she wants to get this over with.

He nods, but continues to stare at her with a little furrow in his brow that makes her a different kind of nervous. "Got something on your mind, boss?" she asks with just a touch of bluster that she knows will irritate him, hoping to get him talking to her instead of talking himself out of the idea for one reason or another.

It works, kind of—his expression clears, his mouth takes on a sort of nonchalance, and he shakes his head. "Nothing important." She doubts that, but a knock on the door behind him interrupts them before she can decide if she has the energy (or desire, even) to keep needling him. He shoots her a look that's a little too knowing for comfort, like he knows what she's thinking and is smug about it, then he steps away from the door and turns to open it, stepping out into the hallway.

He returns in short order, leaving the door open behind him, which strikes her as odd until it becomes clear he's not staying, just dropping the Tupperware in his hand off on his desk. He catches her eye and points to it. "Eat."

Normally she'd give him grief for trying to give her orders—still, after all this time and all that's happened with them—but she can't muster the energy. "I'll try," she sighs.

It seems to be good enough for him, because he just mutters, "I'm gonna go see about…" and trails off, opting to stride out of the room and get to work rather than explain. He closes the door behind him, and Rook is left alone in the quiet.

A dangerous position to be in. Her shoes are already off; she'd only need to fall backwards and bam, she'd be asleep. She'd told Jacob she'd at least make an effort, though. Still, it takes her another minute before she manages to get to her feet and shuffle over to the desk. She doesn't expect to be able to manage more than a bite or two, but when she pops the lid off the container to inspect the food—some sort of rice and beans and sausage—her stomach gives an unholy rumble, and she's suddenly starving.

She eats it all, pleased to note that she can manage it after barely being able to stomach a third of the amount just a week before. Once she's done with that, feeling a little revived, she goes to take a shower, conscious that she smells like smoke and sweat and probably moonshine, considering that Hurk had accidentally slopped his jar on her twice.

She scours herself under the lukewarm water, checking her healing wounds and glad to see that neither of them looks any worse. Clean and out of the shower, she throws on a tank and shorts from her bag, and, since Jacob still isn't back, she goes to bed.

Or tries to. She's deathly tired, full, clean, and warm, but that weariness has looped around and now it's too much, too much effort to fall asleep. It doesn't help that she's trying very hard to avoid thinking about Joseph, or the impending meeting with him.

Jacob comes back shortly after she gets into bed, but he doesn't say anything, just glances over at her before switching off the overhead light she'd left on out of consideration for him. In the darkness of the room, now lit only by the small table lamp on his desk, she watches him disappear into the bathroom, and seconds later the shower turns on. Rook rolls over, closes her eyes, and tries to sleep.

This time, she manages to drift a little. It seems like only seconds before she becomes conscious that he's back in the room, rustling quietly around behind her. The awareness pulls her right back to wakefulness, and she sighs, wondering if the whole night will be a wash and if she should just give up and accept it.

She hears the quiet sound of his bare footsteps coming closer, but it's still a surprise when the mattress dips behind her. There's a chill as the blanket lifts, then Jacob's legs are tangling with hers, and his arm slips underneath her, scooping her up close to him. Too startled to think better of it, she gives into impulse and lets out a pained little yelp; he freezes instantly. "Shit," he rumbles. "You hurt?"

"No, I'm just fucking with you," she admits, a bit sheepishly, realizing a second too late that it probably hadn't been the wisest decision. He growls in disgust—she feels it through his chest against her back more than hears it—and moves to withdraw, but she quickly pins his arm to her side with her elbow and more thoroughly entangles her legs with his. It's only enough to slow him down for a second, but a second is all she needs. "Don't go," she begs, unable to keep from laughing despite herself, even though she knows it'll cheapen the apology. "I'm sorry. That was mean."

"Do you ever switch off? Jesus," he grumbles, but it's all bark; he adjusts his grip and settles back behind her, and she loosens her elbow as he reverses, his arm sliding forward around her ribcage. Thus adjusted, he takes a long breath in, then sighs it out again, quiet, slow. Rook lies still and rests her wrist against his forearm, rubbing her thumb lightly over the rough skin there.

Progress, she thinks. The only other time he's loosened up enough to sleep with her was in the wake of a night terror, that night they'd hunted the moose, when they were both too tired to insist on other arrangements. Him coming to her now isn't wholly unexpected, given that they've been warily circling some sort of ratification of their relationship for weeks, but she also can't help but be suspicious of it. Even at their best, he's a withholding son of a bitch, if only because he can't seem to get comfortable with the things he wants, or accept that he wants them. For him to so nonchalantly slide in bed with her now…

"Somethin' on your mind?" he asks, and she realizes that she's tensed up against him, making him go tense in turn.

"No," she lies automatically, even as she thinks, he wouldn't be doing this if he was mad at me, and he should be mad at me for wandering off and then wandering back in the dead of night.

"Uh-huh. Then why aren't you asleep?"

Has he guessed that they've won?

She's simply too tired to ask him outright. She stares into the darkness, her hand still resting against his arm, and when she finally speaks, it's in a near-whisper. "Just worrying, I guess."

He grunts, and she feels him relax a fraction. "Yeah, well. Don't."

She scoffs. "Oh, easy for you to say."

"He's not gonna eat you."

"No, but he might squish my eyes out."

There's a weighty silence, then, slowly, a little disbelieving, Jacob says, "You're really afraid of him."

She blows out an exasperated little sigh. "No, I'm not, I…" She shakes her head in the dark. "He makes me nervous." Jacob's silence seems to be inviting explanation, so she obliges: "He puts out that Fatherly benevolence, and yeah, okay, I think it's genuine, but he's also unpredictable, because… because he's just like you and John."

Jacob's silence takes on a bit of a surprised quality, but he still waits in the dark, just listening.

"If he recognizes a threat to him and his, he'll do what it takes to neutralize it," she elaborates without needing to be asked. "That's the most dangerous the three of you have in common. Faith, too, I suspect, though I haven't personally seen her do anything that confirms it." Jacob snorts a little, which she takes to mean that he has. "It's always been easiest with you," she continues, "because you get what you see. It's obvious just looking at you, like, danger, handle with care, you know? And John makes no secret of it, either. A little more polish, sure, but he let that mask drop the first time I said two words to him. Joseph… with him, that violence is buried deeper. It's less predictable. And the scariest thing about it is that he believes it's his God-given right."

Maybe she's reading too much into things, projecting her own feelings into the dark and silence between them, but the atmosphere seems distinctly more uncomfortable. You know it, don't you? she thinks into the blackness. You know he's insane—or at least, you worry that he is—and you know you'll never be able to talk him out of something he's decided is the will of God. The same exact thing that scares me scares you too. Doesn't it?

Maybe a month ago she'd have been gutsy enough to even ask him out loud, but as it is, as this thing wears on day after day and every day sees her bending a little more under the weight of it, she can't muster the strength. Maybe someday.

When he speaks, his voice is quiet, collected. "Maybe if you were anyone else you'd have something to worry about. He's wanted you from the beginning, though. The order was always capture, not kill. Train, not sacrifice. He—" He cuts himself off. Despite the calmness of his voice, Rook can still feel tension in his forearm beneath her fingertips. Jacob takes a moment, then, even quieter, he says, "He wants you to join the family. Our family, not…"

She doesn't need him to finish that sentence. They've all told her so, pretty explicitly. They've all made her feel like she's something extraordinary, like she's special, like they want her more than they want anyone else.

That's a cult leader specialty, isn't it?

She draws her fingers along Jacob's arm, feeling the roughened skin, the hard braid of muscle beneath it, running along his forearm. Despite her better judgment, she can't help but feel anchored by him, because for all that all the Seeds have tried luring her in in various ways, Jacob's definitely the artless one. Not in the Only You bullshit, the systematic abduction and brainwashing—that had all been pretty refined—but in their moments alone since this started, in their conversations, in the way he reacted up till very recently when she made passes at him: he was the one who seemed to be trying his damnedest to resist her, to keep her at arm's length, and although she wouldn't go so far as to presume that her attentions made him nervous… well. He never did jump on them, use them to try to pry her open and force his way in like all of his siblings did. Rather, he seemed—seems—mistrustful and guarded, like she's going to hurt him somehow.

It's smart. It's also part of what drew her to him in the first place, that artlessness, and he'd have to be a better liar even than the others to have performed that on purpose. (She doesn't believe he is.)

On an idle whim, and because she really doesn't want to talk about Joseph anymore (she thinks he doesn't, either), she asks, "Do you think we would have met… you know. Not in Montana?"

She expects him to harangue her for the vagueness of that question, and she's surprised when his answer comes almost immediately, a flat, "No."

That's enough to get her shifting her weight, rolling over to face him, and he obligingly lets her go, pulling the arm that had been holding her back and lifting the other one up to rest it on the pillow above her head. She peers at his shadowed face and says, "What do you mean, no?"

He looks exasperated, which she thinks is a perfectly Jacob response to a perfectly innocent line of questioning. "When exactly do you think we would have met? When I was barhopping while living on base and you probably weren't even born yet? When I was a headcase recovering in a veteran's hospital? Or maybe when I was a drunk, homeless headcase rotting away in a shelter in Atlanta? Hell, Rook, even the current circumstances aren't ideal for us—believe me when I tell you any point before this would've been worse."

"You're annoyingly pragmatic, you know that?"

"I don't know what kind of answer you were lookin' for."

"Yes, you do," she says, trying not to smile and failing. "You're being difficult on purpose." He blows out a little breath through his nose, and in it, she hears him softening, just a fraction. Encouraged, she adds, "If I'd have come across you in a bar, I'd have picked you up."

"I doubt that."

"Why?"

"Already told you. I was a mess for too long. Even before…" He pauses for a second, then clears his throat and continues. "Even as a green kid, you know, twenty, twenty-one. I'd go out and I'd drink… chase women, sure, but more than any of that, I'd fight. And people could smell it on me, see it, I don't know. But I scared them." He says it all very matter-of-fact, even a little introspective, and she knows he's not asking for sympathy or reassurance, would likely scorn any offered to him.

She teases him instead. "Yeah, but I really thought you'd've gotten the message by now." She drops her voice to a stage whisper. "That works on me." He snorts a little, somewhere between incredulity and amusement, and she grins in the dark. That smile fades quickly, though, and at length, she confesses, "I haven't been really scared of you for some time."

He grunts. "Means I'm not doing my job," he says, but there's no bite to it, and the fingers she feels carding lazily through her hair confirm that it's just bluster. The touch is gentle, soothing, and she feels herself relax, really relax, for the first time in… she can't remember the last time she felt this loose. All at once, her former sleeplessness has vanished into thin air, and each eyelid feels like it weighs a ton.

She fights it, though, acutely aware that this is the first time in a long time she's really had him, without the conflict, injury, or just general stress and busyness keeping them apart. There are a million things she wants to talk about, a million thing she wants to do, especially with the specter of tomorrow hanging over them and the uncertainty that comes with it. She reaches up and catches his offending hand, tangling her fingers with it to slow its movement. "Stop."

"Somethin' the matter?" Oh, great. He sounds amused.

"I'm falling asleep," she complains.

"I thought that was the goal."

"It was, but not anymore."

"Ah, forgive me. I didn't realize." He's moved on to the next tier: sarcasm. "What's changed?"

"Well, now you're here," she says, and realizing belatedly how pathetic that sounds, she tacks on a belated, surly "Shithead."

He doesn't appear to notice. "So?"

"So if I go to sleep you'll leave."

"I can do that now," he points out, shifting threateningly as if to sit up, and she tightens her grip in response.

"Try it," she challenges him, thinking that a little brawl might be exactly what she needs to get her blood going.

He sees right through her, though. Instead of bowing up and breaking out of her grip just to prove he can, he relaxes, giving her nothing to fight against. When she reflexively relaxes her hand, he catches hold of it and brings it down between them. She can see the pinprick of light in his eye from the limited illumination in the room, fixed on her. He says "Go to sleep, Dep. I'll be here in the morning."

That's kind of a lot, coming from him. To keep from having to deal with it, she slides her hand out of his—he lets it go willingly—and rolls over, scooting back a little till his chest is flush with her back, and he obligingly wraps his arm around her waist again, keeping her close.

Even in the dark, not facing him is easier. Staring ahead into the blackness, she says, "Jacob?"

"Hmm?" He's starting to sound tired now, too, the response coming sluggishly, after five or ten seconds have passed.

She breathes in and out, feeling his arm pressed against her ribs as her lungs expand into them and then empty again.

Then, finally, she tells him her name.

Jacob sleeps better than he expects to, what with a meeting with Joseph hanging over his head, another person sharing his bed for the first time in… a while (not counting the half-night he'd spent with Rook on the couch a month or so ago), and the solid week's worth of only four hours of sleep for every twenty spent awake that usually brings about particularly bad nights. (Not enough REM cycles in the night meant that they eventually grow in intensity, and with them, the night terrors.)

He'd been a little iffy on his decision to climb into bed with her, actually, half-intending to just leave once she'd fallen asleep, and then, after promising he wouldn't, he'd intended to stay awake, thinking the unfamiliarity of a warm body next to him would make it easy. He's wrong—he's not sure exactly when he slips off, but it's pretty quickly after he hears and feels Rook's breathing slow down and even out; his memory cuts out almost instantly after that. And he does have the anticipated nightmare, only different: in the grips of it, facing down a burning barn and hearing his brothers screaming from inside it, knowing he has to go in, he has to get them, because this is all his fault—

—he wakes up, because he can't move, and he can't move partially because Rook's got his arm pinned to her side and, groggy, sounding half-asleep herself, she's saying "Knock it off, Jacob, it's just a dream, you're fine."

Waking up in the middle of one of those is always jarring, and it takes him a second of enraged, confused breathing and blinking before he places her voice, realizes where he is, realizes what had happened. By then, her grip on him has relaxed, and she's sitting up and putting one leg over him, then the other (still confused, still in the grips of rapidly-fading anguish, he just lies back and lets her move) and then slips off the bed to go to the bathroom. He finds he's grateful to have a moment alone to pull himself together. He runs a hand over his face and looks at the glowing clock across the room. 4:03. They still have plenty of time. John and Joseph are fine, he reminds himself, you'll be seeing them in just a couple of hours. Calm the fuck down.

When Rook re-emerges a minute later, he's managed to get his heart rate and breathing under control, and she lifts the covers and climbs over him again without hesitation, clearly still too sleepy to fuss over him (for which he's grateful). He grabs her again once he's settled, pulls her close (hell, if it worked once, it'll probably work again), and she just gives him a sleepy, contented hum, pats his arm twice, and appears to fall directly back to sleep.

It takes him a little longer this time, but he gets there in the end, and the rest of the night is dreamless.

And shorter than he'd like—when Rook jerks awake next, he glares blearily at the clock to see that it's about 6:30, which, granted, is sleeping in for him, but their meeting isn't till ten, and he'd been enjoying a better night than most. "Lay down," he grumbles. "Go back to sleep."

"No way," she says, sitting up straight. He sighs, opens his eyes, and stares at the ceiling, because now he can practically feel that nervousness coming off her. She's awake, all right, and for good, probably worried about the upcoming meeting with The Father.

He's pretty certain it's wasted worry. He's not sure exactly what she's planning—sort of doesn't believe she'll tell him in any detail if he asks, so he hasn't asked—but if he's any judge of things, signs point to peace talks. If that's right, then she's probably in for an uncomfortable day, but nothing that won't wash out and numb up with time.

Somehow he doesn't think she'll find that comforting, so he just thinks it rather than speaking it out loud. He sighs, gets up, and goes to take a piss. When he comes back, she's opened up the balcony doors and is standing there, wrapped in a blanket against the gray early morning chill—which is significant, he realizes, probably almost down to freezing, not really a surprise this late in the year, and he pads over to his locker to grab one of several identical white thermal shirts (more gray with use and time now) and pull it on over his head. It's a poor substitute for the warm bed with Rook in it, but he sees little chance of getting her back there anytime soon, so he sets about getting his boots on.

Dressed enough to tolerate the cold, he goes to the balcony, making sure his boots thump along the floor so she knows he's there, and stands behind her. She turns, meets his eyes, then points. "Look," she says.

He looks. It's snow: just a dusting, but more than the little frosts they've gotten so far, and even as he stares out at the whitened treetops beyond the walls, he catches sight of a swirling flurry here and there. The sight of it makes him feel too big for his skin, an unwelcome reminder that time is running out, and he crushes the alarm he feels rising in his chest at the thought and changes the subject quickly. "If I go get us some breakfast, do you think you can manage to stay put and not run off again?" he asks, gruff.

She just stares ahead in silence, apparently entranced by the snow, until he says "Rook," and then she looks at him again and nods.

It's good enough for him, and he's glad for an excuse to get away from the evidence that winter will be here soon. He heads down to the mess hall.

There's not much on offer, powdered eggs and biscuits baked from frozen, but the bacon's decent, and Joseph's disapproval of coffee never manifested in a full ban (Jacob wryly thinks that Joseph's savvy enough to know that alcohol was understandable, but coffee would be just a bridge too far), so there are a couple of ancient, dented, utterly reliable Cuisinart drums producing plenty of strong coffee every morning, and after scooping a couple of portions of food into a container in one hand, he fills a small carafe and grabs a couple of repurposed coffee mugs with the other and heads back upstairs. At the door of the hall, he pauses and looks over his shoulder. There's a flurry of activity immediately, everyone pretending that they weren't just watching him.

He lets it slide, departing the hall with no more fuss. They'll see soon enough. He has the feeling, utterly foreign but not entirely unwelcome, that today will be a good day.

Rook is still standing in the balcony entryway, staring off into the frosty woods as if in a trance. "Get in here and shut the door," Jacob says irritably as he balances on one booted foot and uses the other to kick the office door shut behind him. "You're lettin' all the heat out."

She makes a disgruntled little sound and shoots him a scowl, but when she sees what he's carrying, she moves quickly enough to obey. She joins him at the desk as he starts unloading the food and snatches up one of the mugs, helping herself to a generous pour of coffee. The various utensils and glassware at St. Francis's is, like a lot of other things in Eden's Gate's possession, mismatched and sourced from different abandoned places all over the county, but he didn't take notice of the mugs he'd grabbed till now. In Rook's hand, it's hard to ignore—it's shaped like a wolf's head, huge and textured and tacky in the extreme.

Feeling a sense of foreboding, he reaches out and touches the second mug. The side facing him is white—so far, so good—but when he turns it around, in lurid, glittery yellow cursive: May The Lord Bless You And Your Day, accompanied by faded watercolor flowers.

He glances up at Rook. She's already sipping from her cup, but over the rim, her eyes are shining with unrestrained delight. "Oh," she says, lowering the mug and furrowing her brow in a way he already knows he doesn't like, "sorry—did you want the wolf?"

"Shut the hell up and eat," he grumbles, dragging the glittery abomination his way and sloshing some coffee into the cup. A mug's a mug, and as long as it does what it's supposed to do, it doesn't really matter that it's put that shit-eating look on her face. He's actually a little surprised that she's so cheery—as she tosses a chunk of biscuit in her mouth, she actually winks at him. He knows she's sunny in general (it used to bother the hell out of him, back when he thought it was mockery, that nobody could be that sincerely cheerful, particularly not to and around him) but after how beaten-down she'd seemed last night, he's not sure he trusts it. He sips his coffee and watches her through narrowed eyes.

The longer he has eyes on her, the more he's convinced he's right. She's putting on a brave face, but her eyes keep going distant, and her eating is mechanical in a way that tells him she's not tasting a thing. (Given the state of the eggs, that's probably for the best.) There's a certain bloodlessness to her face that betrays her nerves.

Jacob stares and wonders why the sight of her scared prompts a jumpy feeling of unease in his chest. Fear is good. Fear is a trial to be endured and outlasted, something you come out on the other side of smarter and stronger, with one more weakness burned away. Of course, he's more or less abandoned his insistence on making Rook, at least, strong—much the same way he doesn't make efforts to force his family through trials, hasn't done anything like that since Faith made her sacrifice—but just because he's not pushing her into it anymore doesn't mean it isn't still helpful. He should be glad to see her sitting here in preoccupied silence, obviously afraid, but calm, resolved. Strong.

She doesn't need him looking out for her. She's made it this far on her own, with the exception of the O'Hara incident, which he doesn't truly see as solid proof that she can't handle herself—everyone slips up once or twice, needs to be dragged away from the brink of death. God knows he has.

Still. Since O'Hara, at least (and if he's being really honest with himself, before that), he's had a harder and harder time with the prospect of getting out from between her and his family, letting them get to her, and her to them—fortunately, since her injury, nobody's made a peep about wanting to take her away from him, and he hasn't had to make any difficult decisions about her thus far. He sees the way his people pretend not to watch him, though, and he knows he's been on borrowed time. In fact, if Rook hadn't suggested a meeting herself, he's pretty sure he'd have heard from Joseph today, given her little day trip and the fact that she's obviously feeling better.

Her willingness to start the process of moving forward should be encouraging—and it is, undeniably so; he was startled by the flare of anticipation he felt when she'd spoken up last night. This is what Joseph has been waiting for, so it's what Jacob's been waiting for.

But inevitable or not, Rook is uneasy. So Jacob is uneasy. It's an unpleasant, frustrating feeling, and he's not used to feeling things on behalf of other people, so his scowl only deepens as he watches her over his desk. Any other time, she'd have noticed and said something, what with her overall inability to take anything seriously, but her thousand yard stare towards the closed balcony door marks her as miles away.

It's funny—a month ago, her silence was all he ever wanted from her, a break from the nonstop teasing prattle, but now he finds it makes him feel unhappy and ill at ease, so he clears his throat, and she blinks and looks at him, faintly confused. He's got her attention—for now.

He figures now's the time to tell her what she deserves to know. "Uh," he says, reaching for the little carafe again to have something to do with his eyes and hands, topping off his coffee, "you should know—John and Faith will be there. At the, ah, meeting."

As his words sink in, she gets a look in her eyes that he doesn't quite like. "The Father and all his heralds," she says, all light with sarcasm. "Sounds pretty official. I hope I don't disappoint."

Jacob sets the carafe down a little too hard and gives her a look. She's taking another pull of coffee, and lifts her eyebrows innocently at him over the rim of the wolf cup. "Don't do or say anything stupid and everything should work out fine."

She lowers the mug, and the grin that blooms over her face would doubtless strike fear into the hearts of lesser men. Jacob isn't scared so much as troubled that she seems genuinely amused at the thought that she won't say anything stupid, which doesn't bode well for the day, but he also hasn't seen her smile like this in some time, so he lets it pass with no more than a sternly reproving scowl.

She actually laughs. "I'm always saying stupid shit to you and the rest of your family, and you know it. It's, like, a given that I'm going to mortally offend every single one of you today."

Jacob feels a sudden dull pain between his eyebrows and lowers his face into his palms, rubbing at his forehead with his fingertips. "Christ."

"But," she says, and he lowers a hand enough to glare at her with one eye, "I think… we're stalemated. You know?" The grin has disappeared without a trace, and he lifts his head to stare at her, to interpret this new expression, which comes across as painfully earnest, and more than a little lost. She holds his gaze and says, "We can't go on like we've been going, and I think Joseph is going to agree with me. It's just… time to find a different way forward. If we can."

He doesn't mean to ask—it just jumps out of his mouth, which is alarming in itself: "And if we can't?" Right away, he regrets asking. He might have his private doubts, but now of all times is not the time to share them with her, not when he can feel in his gut that she's so close to surrender.

Fortunately, she doesn't seem to notice. That distant look is back on her face, but after a few seconds she manages to drag herself back enough to the present. She twists her mouth into a smile, but this one doesn't reach her eyes. "Remember a little while ago when I asked you to just bail on all of this and get out of here with me instead? That's still Plan Z."

Jacob merely looks at her and thinks: that plan was never going to work. Some of it must show in his expression, because the fake smile shifts, turns into something genuine, something sad, and he finds it painful to look at.

So he decides not to. He finishes off his coffee and gets up, all business all over again. Rook seems surprised, but he just says, "I've got a couple of things to look in on before we go. Be ready to leave in an hour?" It unintentionally comes out more like a request than an order, and he handles it by not waiting for a response, turning abruptly and stalking out of the room.

Just a few more hours, he thinks. A few more hours, and Joseph will settle all this. Joseph will have a plan.

He tries not to let it bother him that the thought has almost completely stopped reassuring him the way it always has.