Jake wakes, headachy and disoriented, and opens his eyes to see familiar bars. Susan looks at him from the other side, sitting on the same chair she had last time. This time, she holds on her lap the little girl he knows to be the American Dragon. He sees a resemblance in them he hadn't noticed before, and his stomach twists as he remembers what happened.
He glances around the room, so similar to how it had looked the last time he was in this place, behind these same bars, but he cannot see the guardian or the protector. Not that he'd recognize the protector's human face. Not that they'd be foolish enough to show it to him.
Except—
Why give him the opportunity to get a better look at the American Dragon herself? They know who he is. What he is. They must know Rose's return of the American Dragon once is no guarantee of her return, of her safety, should they capture her again in the future. Why would they allow her to stay? Why would they allow him to remember what happened?
Even if they plan to disrupt his memories of this in the future, he doesn't know why they would take these risks. They must know that there is a chance he will escape, whatever they try to do to prevent that, and it is such a large a risk to leave him like this. No one in the Huntsclan would have taken it if they had captured a spy from the dragons, and he'd always thought the dragons were just as careful as the Huntsclan.
It doesn't make sense to him, and that makes him more afraid than he would otherwise be.
"Now, honey," Susan whispers to the girl, and Jake looks back at them. The girl takes a breath and visibly steels herself, squaring her shoulders and hiding away her emotions behind a mask as she holds up one hand. He sees a faint tremble, the barest movement of delicate fingers as she fights to keep still.
Jake blinks as her hand transforms, twisting into a scale-covered talon that leaves no room for doubt about the girl's true identity.
"Dragon scales," Susan says quietly, "form a unique pattern on a dragon's forefeet, slightly different for each individual but easily recognizable within families."
He sees it immediately. There's a distinctive whorl on the girl's scales, the slight change in shape and size and set that lets it form a seamless pattern. He knows what Susan wants, but he doesn't transform his own hand. He knows that they already know he's a dragon. Susan knows, and she must have told them everything.
But in truth, he doesn't want to transform his hand for them. He doesn't need to. He already knows what he will see, what they will see if he lets them.
He knows the pattern on his own scaled hands is an echo of the girl's, and he doesn't know if it's another lie.
He doesn't know if he wants it to be a lie.
It would be easy enough if it were. They've seen his birthmark, and they know he works with the Huntsclan; now, they'll just be even more certain of why, and they'll suspect how much. Of course they'd want to try to trick him, to say anything that would make him hesitate.
Just because he hasn't shown Susan so much as his scale colour, it doesn't mean the American Dragon or her guardian haven't gotten a good enough glimpse at him to spin this lie.
If it is a lie.
It doesn't mean they don't already know how closely his pattern matches the girl's.
But….
If it's not a lie, if it's not a gamble they've taken or a story they've spun in an attempt to win him over to their side, then that means…. That means….
They must have known who he is. This entire time while he needed help, they'd known, and they could've— They hadn't—
But why would they?
Given their actions now, it's unlikely that they'd ever believed him to be a mere prisoner of the Huntsclan.
No.
It has to be a lie.
He hadn't— He wouldn't— Something would have stopped him from trying to slay his own sister, wouldn't it? Some instinct? He would have known. This can't be true.
"You bear the Mark of the Huntsclan," Susan says steadily, "but you're also a dragon."
He can see the American Dragon shift uncomfortably in Susan's lap, and he wonders how much she knows. How much have they told her of the plan? There must be a plan. There must be something beyond this impossible story about patterns and scales and—and family—
Surely, if this were true and they had figured out who he was from the start, Susan would have told the others once he'd begun with meeting her. They could have ambushed him and done this long before he'd waltzed into their hiding spot. Had that been the plan all along? Is that why Susan had suggested the place she did? Had she guessed that his route would take him past this shop—?
"It doesn't make you a bad person," the girl says. "Being a dragon or even being born with the Mark—" Her voice breaks. "Huntsgirl was kind to me, even though she's Huntsgirl and I'm the American Dragon."
Jake wonders if that, too, is a lie or simply a misplaced impression—or if Rose did more than agree to show her face to the dragon.
To the girl.
To the one who might be his—
Jake pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them instead of speaking. It isn't particularly comfortable, hunching into such a position on the hard floor, but he can't afford to be comfortable. Arguing—or, worse, asking questions—might make him forget himself. He can't afford to do that.
Susan knows he is a dragon.
They can all see his mark, plain as day.
He's not in uniform. They don't know his number. They don't know how close he is to Rose.
Not unless Susan put the pieces together when he hoped she had not.
He doesn't know, he can't know, and he refuses to say anything that might confirm their suspicions.
Susan had said that the Huntsclan takes away the marked ones at their birth, but she would have had reason to tell him lies even before she knew he was a dragon. They cannot be his family. He has no family. If anyone is his family, it is Rose. She might currently be the only one in the Huntsclan who knows, but the others would not look at him the same way if they discovered the truth. They would only see a dragon to be slain.
It is always an easier feat when the dragon is wrapped in human flesh.
"It's what you do that matters," the girl continues, "and trying to do better if you've done wrong in the past."
He does not rise to the bait, does not snap out a retort about living in a world of greys.
Susan touches the girl's arm and murmurs something into her ear. The girl frowns but lets her dragon form fade, scales shifting back to flesh. The ease of the transformation is an uncomfortable confirmation that this is the American Dragon's true face. Rose hadn't mentioned this to him, and he wonders if that is because she doesn't like the truth of this, either. The American Dragon is younger than Jake had guessed from their encounters in the past. A dragon's size is not equivalent to their human form, and he'd always thought—
He'd thought—
Male dragons typically develop their powers at puberty. Even being as certain as he was that the American Dragon was female, he hadn't thought— She can't even be ten now. She must have been six or seven when her dragon side began to show.
She is the American Dragon, but he doesn't want to fight her. He should. He knows that. Her youth, her inexperience, makes her an easier target. It makes her more careless, however careful she thinks herself to be. But he cannot—
He cannot think her a creature, cannot subject her to any torture he would not willingly submit to himself if it came to it.
Even if she isn't his sister.
Jake watches in silence as the girl slides off Susan's lap and pads across the room to climb the stairs and disappear.
"I shouldn't need to tell you," Susan says quietly, drawing his attention back to her, "that I will do whatever I can to protect my daughter."
My daughter. The words hang in the air. Her daughter, the one she wants him to believe is his sister, making her his—
"I am also trying to do all I can to protect my son."
Jake flinches in spite of himself but says nothing.
He doesn't know if she means him or if there is another, and he is afraid to ask.
She is not a dragon herself, but she should be. The power is within her. It is coming out in her daughter, just as it is coming out in him, whether he is her son or someone else's.
She knows far more than she ever said, and he is realizing how closely she played her cards to her chest. He had thought he was doing the same, but he is not as skilled as she. She has been playing this game her whole life. It is entirely too likely that he has given her more than he ever wanted to.
"May I tell you about my son, 99?"
There is no doubt in her voice as she says his number. He opens his mouth to deny her anyway but stops as she meets his eye. Her gaze isn't laden with magic, but it stills him all the same. He swallows back his protests and gives a noncommittal shrug. She knows he cannot stop her.
"When I had my first glimpse of him, I thought my heart would burst for love," she begins. She spins a tale of hope and heartbreak, so unlike anything he's ever imagined after what he grew up hearing in the Huntsclan. He cannot pick apart the truths from the lies in Susan's words, so he stops trying. It is a story. Perhaps it is only a story. Being a story doesn't make it truth.
She talks about her infant son, her husband, her father, and later her daughter, careful to never name any of them. She provides details but not the sort of details that would be useful to him later. She never names the hospital, the streets she once walked, the cemetery where the baby's ashes are buried. She never gives him anything he can later confirm. It is all thoughts and emotions, suffocating pain and heart-wrenching hope, or suspicions that she hasn't been able to confirm herself.
She tells him what she thought when he first confronted her in the alleyway and what has been behind her decisions since. That, at least, has what he knows are kernels of truth buried within, however sympathetic she is making her story. He wonders if it is strategic, seeding them here in an effort to make him assume they have been present all along.
Eventually, Susan stops. She watches him, waiting for a response. He tries to give her none, though he isn't sure how much she can read on his face. He suspects it is not as blank as he wishes it were.
She smiles, something small and wistful and resigned, and says four little words that finally shatter his resolve: "We named you Jake."