"I know it's kind of random, but I miss tea parties. They were fun, and even by my standards now they weren't usually that fucked up. It was nice to sit down for tea and cookies with Siberian and whoever wanted to join us: usually the newer members and some of my creations. Shatterbird even attended every now and then. We'd just talk, pretend at being fancy, give each other over the top titles and monikers, and snack on goodies. I hate to admit it, but even with everything else, they were nice. Even the last one was mostly pretty good."
"More tea, Great Lord Slashington of the Slashington dynasty?"
"That would be lovely, First Lady Bonesaw, Mistress of Tea Ceremonies. And would any of our other lovely guests prefer a cookie? Or perhaps a scon?"
Bonesaw giggles and fills Jack's teacup with more tea. "That would be quite affectatious, Lord Slashington, and I would be remiss to ever deny such a treat."
With a pair of tongs, Jack places a cookie onto her saucer. She takes a demure bite and then dabs away the crumbs with a napkin.
"Absolutely divine, Great Lord Slashington. Berry Duchess Bethany, you simply must try one. Please say you will?"
Bethany, a fun new toy Bonesaw picked up the other day, whispers a hoarse, "Yes please," and tremblingly holds out her own saucer.
Uncle Jack tongs a cookie onto her plate and she sets it back onto the table before she can drop and break another. There are only so many breaches in decorum a tea party can allow, after all.
"Oh goodie, that makes me ever so joyful," Bonesaw cheers.
"You simply
must tell us what you think of them, Duchess Bethany of the Berry Briars," Uncle Jack says. "It's an old family recipe, and I know my grandmama, the late Empress Jewel, Lady of all that is Sharp, would have been delighted to hear how you find her prized work."
Bonesaw stifles a giggle. Uncle Jack is so silly. She bought these cookies at a store earlier today, with Muriel's plastic money, and Bethany looks to know this, judging by how she looks between the cookie on her plate, its perfectly uniform peers on the serving plate, and Jack's smile. She sweats as she lifts the cookie to her mouth and takes a delicate nibble.
"It's good," she says.
"You truly think so? Oh, you honor me and my grandmama's recipe, Miss Duchess. And Lady Bonesly of the Sawed Nation? What do you think?"
Bonesaw can't hold in her giggles any longer. "You're silly, Lord of the Uncle'd Slashes. I bought these cookies!"
Uncle Jack laughs along and raises his hands in acquiesced guilt. "You got me. My grandmother isn't quite the baker she once was, being dead and all. I'm surprised the Duchess didn't realize that."
Bethany whimpers and freezes.
"Tell me,
Duchess, is your palate really so unrefined as to not distinguish between store bought cookies and those made by a dead woman?" Uncle Jack asks playfully, with an undercurrent of danger.
She stammers meaninglessly and then apologizes. Bonesaw clicks her tongue at such inelegance, unbefitting a tea partier. Jack agrees, shaking his head.
"That's twice you've spurred our hospitality and treated us so poorly. Perhaps you'd like to take a hint from Monsieur Bearington of the House of Bears? He has yet to even approach insulting us in our own house." Uncle Jack turns to the fourth and final guest. "What's your secret to being such a grateful guest, Monsieur Bearly?"
The stuffed bear Bonesaw had sat up on a stool says nothing, of course. He's cute and purple.
"You don't say?" Uncle Jack jests. "Well I suppose that's what I get for bragging about your skills as a guest; you prove me a liar. That's one, but because you're French-Canadian, that's two."
The stuffed bear continues to say nothing. Uncle Jack returns his attention to Bethany. "I'm sorry to say that I don't have a shining model of behavior for you to follow, but what can you do?" He shrugs. "Now, you won't mistreat your hosts for a third time, will you, Duchess Beth and Knee?"
"NO! I promise, I won't, Lord um– Lord Slasher the um, Master of… Slash?"
Jack smiles and gestures with his knife for her to continue.
"I'm- I'm- I'm sorry I didn't um… properly appreciate your hospitality?" Bethany guesses, feeling the edge of danger. Bonesaw can smell her sweat at this point and can see her pulse hammering in her neck.
"That's good to hear, Duchess Beth of Any Baroque, but you should really be apologizing to Lady Sawbones of the Bony Surgeons Guild; it was, after all, her gift of cookies that you dismissed as being no better than a dead woman's work," Uncle Jack says with a warm smile. It's so kind of him to think about Bonesaw like that and make sure she gets recognition.
Bethany turns to Bonesaw, who smiles sweetly. Bonesaw isn't going to count whatever Bethany says as a strike against her, no matter how inelegant or against the spirit of a tea party it is. For one, she's having fun and a third strike would mean losing a guest, probably. For another, Uncle Jack really likes handing out strikes and she wouldn't want to spoil his enjoyment; it's not often enough that he joins her for these parties. And finally, because giving Bethany more time to stress before her latent passenger activates can only be a good thing.
That's why she's here as a guest and not as materials in the first place; Bonesaw and Jack want to force Bethany to trigger. Based on Bonesaw's exploration of Bethany's brain while she slept, Bethany's poised to trigger with some sort of social engineering power, either with or without a control element, based on the placement, size, and orientation of her Corona Pollentia: seventy percent sure. When Jack suggested a tea party to coax her passenger into connecting, Bonesaw jumped on it, closed Bethany's cranium, and woke her up.
It's also been nice seeing her Uncle Jack get so focused and excited about something. He stopped playing his other game when he decided to do a tea party.
So Bethany's either going to trigger and join Bonesaw's family, or die. She's not young enough to be Bonesaw's sister, but maybe she could be a fun aunt? Not one that's married to her Uncle Jack though, that would be weird, but a different sort of aunt, one that will dote on Bonesaw and protect her and always be there for her.
So when Bethany stammers out another fearful apology, Bonesaw accepts it with a smile and a sip of her tea. She goes to pour herself another cup, but the teapot is empty. Uncle Jack notices.
"Maid Muriel, we need more tea," he calls out. He gives a gentle double-clap, and Bonesaw puppets her into the room.
It's been a week since Bonesaw turned the tables on her, and despite her age, Muriel's body was well taken care of. It's how she mostly survived until now, throughout the various surgeries and augmentations. Bloated with over a dozen brewing solutions, she shambles over to the table on her three legs. Trilateral symmetry didn't do her any favors, but it was fun to program her ambulatory instincts to work with that rare body design – Everything is sadly bilateral or radial nowadays.
Bonesaw sets the teapot down near the edge of the table – on a coaster, of course – and removes the lid. A proboscis made of a section of small intestine and muscle uncurls, the end dropping into the teapot. A moment later, warm green tea starts to flow out and fill the pot.
"Oh god," Bethany whispers. Her tea cup clatters onto her saucer and she gags and heaves. "oh god oh god oh god oh god."
When the teapot is full, Muriel retracts her proboscis and shambles back to the basement to continue her fermentation and generations of chemical material. Bonesaw caps the pot and refills her own teacup. She takes a moment to add a spoonful of sugar and a dash of milk, daintily stirs without clacking spoon against cup – like a fancy lady! – and then takes a sip.
"Oh, I am so sorry," she says. "Where are my manners? Would anyone else like some more tea? Lord Slashington, of the highest order of Slashed Slashes?"
"Don't mind if I do, Lady Saw of the Guild of Sawing Saws of Bones." Uncle Jack holds out his teacup for more and Bonesaw obliges him.
"Monseuer Bearfinkle of the Bearfinkle Holdings?"
"I do believe he's still working on his first cup," says Uncle Jack. "Not a very thirsty fellow at all."
"I suppose not. Any Duchess Beth? Would you like some more tea?" Bonesaw asks.
Bethany starts to cry. "Please, no, don't make me drink that."
"Hm?" Jack questions. He takes a sip of his tea. "I'm afraid I didn't quite snatch that,
Duckess. I could almost sweat I head say to you've not drink me."
Bonesaw blinks and replays his words in her mind. Upon closer inspection, she concludes that they definitely didn't make sense. Both the Lady and the Duchess look at the Lord with confusion, but where Bethany is terrified, Bonesaw is concerned.
He knows what he's doing though. He's Jack Slash, and he always knows what he's doing, even if it doesn't always look like it, so she can rest assured. And the more Bonesaw thinks about it, the more sense what he's doing makes; triggers are caused by helplessness and trauma, and information-gathering powers come from situations involving confusion and a sense of not knowing. By pretending to be incomprehensible, he's edging Bethany ever closer to triggering! And it's just after she refused tea, which must be the third offense, so that's even more terrifying!
So it's okay, and Bonesaw can relax and trust in her Uncle Jack.
"I don't– I don't– What?" Bethany asks, hyperventilating.
"She ashed you've won't tea? Goodis. Oare ngu thirdsty?." He lifts his knife to stir his tea and smirks. "Goober. There's no fear poison not goo hat for guest to you mine. Die shishus."
Bethany blanches and gags at the mention of poison. Hurriedly, she shoves a finger down her throat to try and expel what she'd already imbibed, and in the next moment Uncle Jack's head thumps against the table as he falls out of his chair. Bonesaw stands and has only enough time to take a single step toward him before he moves.
"AND THE POISON IS KNIFE!" he yells as he launches up from the floor and vaults over the table, knife in hand, smile on his face. Everything clatters and spills, and most of the tea set Bonesaw had scrounged together shatters against the floor. He tackles the stuffed bear and stabs his knife into it, again and again. "BREED YOU SON OF A BITCH! I TOLD YOU NOT TO BRING THESE THINGS TO THE FUCKING DINNER TABLE!"
Bonesaw gasps and covers her mouth with her hands. He just… Uncle Jack just said bad words. Uncle Jack never says bad words! He gets mad when other people say bad words around her because she's a good little girl who shouldn't be exposed to crass language. But he just said the b-word and the f-word, and Bonesaw doesn't know how to act about that. Does she chastize him like she would anyone else? Does she accept that they're maybe not bad words right now? Does she pretend she didn't hear them? Does she ask Uncle Jack why he said them?
Not knowing what to do about the bad words Jack just said, she does nothing as blood suddenly stains Bethany's shirt, spilling crimson across creme cotton. She clutches at the wound and falls to the floor with a pained cry. The wound isn't immediately fatal, but without intervention Bethany will mostly likely bleed out in six minutes. Bonesaw could save her and give them another chance to force her trigger, or hurry up and harvest her for materials while the meat is freshest, but she does nothing. She stands, hovering over her chair and doing nothing because she doesn't know what to do to be good.
When Uncle Jack is done stabbing the teddy bear into a million pieces, he stands back up and wipes his brow clean of sweat. He's smiling. Then he looks around, sees the wrecked tea set, dying woman, and shocked niece. He frowns and looks down at the wreckage of fluff at his feet. He blinks and then looks around again, visibly confused. When he looks again at Bonesaw, he plasters on a smile that must be fake, despite how easy it looks.
"Well, that was a fun way to end the evening, don't you think?" He chuckles.
"Uncle Jack said a bad word," Bonesaw whispers.
"Did I? Are you sure?"
Bonesaw nods. "Two of them."
"I'm sure it sounded that way, but Bonesaw, I don't say naughty words. Igbh wouldnght beu roght tagh glrsh ang einf grafilf." His words dissolve into nonsensical gurgles and groans, said with a confident and reassuring cadence. If Bonesaw had overheard these sounds in isolation, she would assume they're another language. But she knows that despite any meaning Uncle Jack is trying or not trying to infuse into these sounds, they are just noise: meaningless and terrifying. It's like a very confident baby's babbling.
She doesn't understand him at all and she's getting the creeping suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her Uncle Jack, but what that could be, she doesn't– The car crash! He suffered a brain injury! He said that he was fine, and she believed him, so she never followed up to make sure things were fine; the closest she came to checking his brain was when she connected his optic nerve with a new eye.
He stops blabbering. "Abluh?"
"I need to take a look at your brain, Uncle Jack," she tells him. She hopes it's just his speech that's not working properly and not his language centers. She hopes he can understand her.
He makes another short noise that tells her nothing.
She approaches and he continues to babble reassuringly. When she doesn't stop, he takes a step back. He's broken or breaking and she has to fix him. She can't let him break and become just meat. Not him. Not Uncle Jack. She has to fix him.
So she doesn't let him flee. She jabs at him with a needle and he dodges, and she tries again and he dodges again. She sics her spider boxes onto him and he goes down like a baby deer as they paralyze him. Bonesaw pauses. That was too easy, far too easy. Which means… he wants this, right? If he wasn't okay with this, he wouldn't have let her catch him, regardless of the cursory dodges; it's all part of his game. That much she can grasp.
Bonesaw puts him under and splits his head with a handmade bone saw. She opens him up and checks for the… damage. Oh geez. Bits of his frontal lobe and pollentia have necrotized. His gemma looks untouched, without obvious damage, but it's not as active as it should be. With her electroreception, she can see as it barely flickers with activity.
This is bad. It's not the worst she's seen, and not bad enough she can't fix, but it's worse than his brain should be. Did her fixes not stick? She hasn't cracked his head open since the car crash; has the damage been progressing since then? How much has this been affecting him? Memory and judgement are mostly controlled by the frontal lobe, so could it be this whole time that he's not been playing a game but–
No. No, he's Jack Slash. He's invincible. He's taken on some of the strongest parahumans in the country and led others of similar strength, and he's come out on top every single time. He's not going to be actually hurt from a car crash, and even if he is, that's why she's around; she's going to fix him and make him better and make everything alright again and her family will be okay and full and–
Everything will be okay. She just has to fix him. And lucky lucky, the parts of his brain that are most damaged are present in their guest.
Bonesaw gets to work. She grabs at the still dying woman's body, ignoring her limp struggles. Bonesaw cuts into her skull to–
The not-tree grows. Thanks to the help of Structure, it grows faster than any of its kind has ever grown before. Taller and deeper too. Its roots deepen and break through impossible rock to reach the reservoirs it had only heard legends of from the eldest of its kind. It gobbles up nutrients from the ground below and chokes the sky from above, reaching up until there is no more air. When it releases seeds, none grow. The ground below it is blighted and dead. The jungle it grew from is no more. Only it remains. As it sickens with isolation, Structure communicates, and the impossible, alien intensity of that communication peels the bark from the not-tree's trunk. Forces it could never comprehend assault it as sheer collateral.
Continue?
Structure's communication makes no sense, but it makes perfect sense too. It's not right, but the not-tree understands. The scents and chemicals the not-tree knows as information is there, but there is so much more that it cannot hope to understand. And yet somehow, even as it struggles to move nutrients to heal itself from the radiation, it does understand. Structure's progenitor-self-hub accepts and returns the communication.
Abandon.
Structure watches as the not-tree collapses under its own weight and rips up the planet's surface as its egregious weight pulls at the tectonic plate it rested upon. Bits of the planet's crust are launched into space from the force of the fall, and a cloud of dust begins to choke the planet. Structure searches through other worlds for yet another host.
Bonesaw's bone saw slips, ripping hair and scalp and jamming. She sits up from her slumped position and blinks away confusion. She saw something. Something familiar. She gasps in realization. Bethany triggered! That's so fun, she's so excited to examine the data the once-VCR recorded. With just a tape as a harddrive it's not likely to be rich data, but all data is good data.
The blood on the floor quivers, and then starts to bounce and wave, crests and troughs meeting each other to become peaks and valleys, before those peaks suddenly solidify, spike, and split into needle-like brambles. Pinpricks open on Bethany's skin as the blood inside her does the same, branching sharpness extruding from her, and Bonesaw has to scramble crabwalkily to avoid getting impaled.
She triggered with some kind of hemokinesis, rather than an information gathering power, which is surprising. The passenger's means and behaviors are elusive and hard to comprehend, but Bonesaw was confident in her hypothesis. Did her passenger see that Bethany was going to die and changed its conditions so as to grant powers – any powers at all? Does it have that much autonomy and flexibility? Why could this one force a connection when other latent parahumans would just die? Was Bonesaw wrong in her speculation? Can–
She rolls to avoid the bramble of blood rolling over her as it grows her way. Bethany is crouching, pain and terror brilliant on her face as she sloppily directs her new ability. Like all new triggers, she's nothing but instinct; she hasn't learned finesse or discovered the intricacies of her abilities – That makes her less dangerous, but only by degrees. The blood bramble smashes into and through the wall as Bonesaw dodges again. It's growing, and Bonesaw can't tell if that's because there is more blood than before, or if the bramble is hollow now: blood generation or cleverness? Another infantile swing punches a hole in another wall, seeing Bonesaw cling to the ceiling like a gecko.
Bonesaw needs to put her down so she can try to decipher why Bethany's power manifested this way. A spider box falls on Bethany from the ceiling, administering a debilitating neurotoxin.
The blood bramble stills, then falls to the floor inert. Whether this means Bethany will die of blood loss or if her passenger will protect her from that due to the nature of her powers, Bonesaw does not know. She doesn't care if she dies either; Bethany's
stupid flailing hit Uncle Jack and it's– It's not good. It's–
He's been mangled, and the only things keeping him in one piece are the augments she'd already installed. The body isn't what worries her though, it's his brain. She left it exposed and vulnerable, and that
meanie took advantage. A branch of blood got inside his cranium and scramble-stabbed parts of it. What was minor necrosis is now major brain trauma and Bonesaw isn't sure if she can–
She can fix this. She has to be able to fix this. She has to fix this. She has to make him better. He has to be okay. He will be okay. He's Uncle Jack; he's not going to be done in by a
stupid new trigger meanie. As long as she fixes him, he'll be okay and because he'll be okay, that means she can fix this.
"It's gonna be okay," she whispers, unsure of if it's to herself or to him. "I'll make it all better, I promise. It'll be okay. I can fix this. You'll be okay."
She mumbles as she works, her mouth keeping her hands moving. His brain dies four times over the next hour, and she pulls him back from across the veil each time. She can't help but feel like she's losing more and more of him with every pass. She doesn't let it stay her hands, refusing to let the loss happen. She can't lose him. She can't let her family die. Not again. And eventually, she does it. She's done. She doesn't have to say goodbye.
She blinks away the fuzziness in her mind and pulls her hands out of the mess she made. The disassembled remains of a microwave and radio are scattered around the pair. She barely remembers making what she made, but it's working, whatever it is. Artificial neurons – made of what looks like ionized couch fibers and toothpaste – carry signals from the healthy remnants of his original brain; they're shoddy and she'll have to replace them before they fail. Four small contraptions sit nestled in his brain matter, anchored to the skull, and she's not entirely sure what they do, exactly. She's pretty sure they deal with locomotion, memory, language, and… something else. It's built against his corona pollentia. She'd have to disassemble it to understand the mechanism behind it, but she thinks it's reinforcing his passenger's connection. Did it try to leave him when he died? If it did, it looks like she leashed it back, but it remains to be seen how successful she was. It doesn't look like it's actively failing, at least.
She's done. He's as fixed as she can make him. She replaces the missing part of his skull, then falls back onto her bum to wait for him to wake up. She wishes she had something to tinker with to occupy her hands, but she disassembled the meanie who caused all of this during her fugue. And that's what it was, she's realizing: a fugue. It's been
years since she'd lost track of what she's doing and entered a fugue state, but that's exactly what just happened. If this worked, she'll have to thank her passenger, as unlikely as it is to hear her. She only has a vague understanding of half of the stuff she put in his brain, which means it's unlikely she would have been able to make it if she were in the pilot's seat.
She waits. His heartbeat and breathing are steady, but he doesn't wake up, so she waits. There's nothing she can do other than wait – she can't leave him, can't run off and abandon him, can't be alone – so that's what she does.
When the police come by, red and blue lights flashing obnoxiously, she lets out a killer plague she'd kept in her tertiary kidney – one she's absolutely certain Uncle Jack is immunized against – to make them leave them alone. The town goes silent and still after that – dead – and she continues to wait.
Eventually, late into the night, Uncle Jack's eyes open. Bonesaw holds her breath as he sits up, not sure if she should believe her eyes, waiting for him to be normal. He blinks as he looks around, and his eyes settle on her. He smiles and her heart hitches.
He doesn't say anything, just stares at her, and she eventually vomits the words, "Are you okay?"
"Okay?" he asks thoughtfully. He grins. "No, I'm Jake."
She blinks. "Huh?"
He chuckles. "I'm just messing with you, puppet. I'm fine."
She watches him stand and stretch. He's still torn to bits, but her previous work is good and able to keep him ambulatory despite the damage. Hesitantly, she mirrors him, standing and brushing off her dress. There are stains that will never come out, and tears that aren't worth mending; they'll both need new clothes before they can go anywhere.
"We both need new clothes," Uncle Jack says, picking at the stained, shredded fabric that was once a shirt. "Then we should be heading onward. No rush on that, at least: a ghost town this size shouldn't attract attention too quickly."
"I'm sorry," she says. "I know you don't like me using plagues but–"
"You thought it was necessary," he interrupts, "and you did it for me, so I'm not mad."
"You're not?" she asks.
"I'm not. You did good, kid," he says in a gruff voice. "Now let's check out the neighbor's place, see if we can rely on their kindness to at least dress ourselves."
She lets herself smile. He seems like he's at least mostly back to normal, and she feels herself relax a smidgen.
"I'm back to normal," he says out of nowhere, and she blinks.
She's quiet as she follows him into a neighbor's house. They look through closets and dressers for new outfits. She finds a nice yellow sundress that should fit her, though she'll need a shower before she's willing to try it on. The two shower together, wearing bathing suits scrounged from closets. She helps pick splinters and fibers out of his wounds, and he helps wash her hair. She lets herself relax into his touch. It's nice to be taken care of.
"This is nice, isn't it?" he asks.
"I… guess so?" she answers. "I'm glad you're okay."
"I'm not okay, I'm Jake," he repeats. "I thought I told you that earlier."
She cracks half a smile. She wishes he wouldn't joke like this right now, but that he is is… it must be good, right?
"I'm sorry," he says with a sigh. "I know I shouldn't joke, but I just want you to know everything is okay now, alright?"
"...Thank you, Uncle Jack," she says. She feels weird.
"Jack?" he asks, sounding genuinely confused. "My name is Jake."
She blinks. "What?"
"It's short for Jacob. Heh, did you think my name was Jack this whole time?" He boops her in the nose. "
Now who's being silly?"
She stares up at him; now she's the genuinely confused one.
"Jack is just what Kurt called me, as a joke," he explains. "My real name is Jake. I can't believe I never told you that."
He has to be joking, right?
"Gotcha!" he says with a sudden jerky motion. "That was a joke."
"Oh. Oh!" She laughs at his joke.
He stares at her oddly, like he's waiting for her to do something. She doesn't know what to do, so she stares up at him just the same. Is he going to– He gets back to washing her hair, helping the red run out. She wants to relax into it and enjoy the closeness again, so she shoves down that kernel of wrong that's sprouted and grown since Uncle Jack awoke.
"Something wrong, puppet?" Uncle Jack asks as they finish up and dry themselves off. "You seem a bit… subdued."
"I'm–"
"Ah! I know! You need to tinker. It's been too long since you've gotten the chance to really stretch your legs, hasn't it? How about we find you some parahumans to play with? I'm sure we can find one or two for you to make into art."
She blinks. That wasn't what she was going to say, at all, but "That does sound nice," she admits with a burgeoning smile.
"Then let's find ourselves a ride and blow this popsicle stand. There are plenty more popsicle stands to see and blow," he declares.
"Okay, Uncle Jack," she says.
Dry, they separate to get dressed. She slips the dress on over her head and pulls her hair out from inside, letting it bounce across her shoulders. Then she puts on knee socks and her trusty pair of Mary Janes. She leaves the bathroom and joins Uncle Jack in the hall, ready to go, but her brain skips a beat when she sees how he's dressed.
"Uncle Jack, you're wearing a sweater-vest?!" she asks incredulously scandalized.
He looks down at the zig-zag patterned sweater-vest he just put on over top of his button up shirt, then at her. "Yes. Why?"
She gapes, struggling and failing to find words. He's never worn a sweater-vest before in his life. He's almost never buttoned his shirt all the way either, but he has it buttoned to the top now. It's surreal seeing him dressed like this, casually and not for a bit, and it sends her head spinning.
"I think it looks snazzy, don't you?" he asks with a grin.
She lets out a confused, stressed whine.
"Come on, Bonesaw, let's blow this popsicle stand. There are plenty more popsicle stands to see and blow."
She doesn't move. He clears his throat, threatening a three-count, and she bustles into movement like a good girl. A good girl doesn't tempt a three count.
They walk outside together to find a car, and luckily the keys are in the one in the neighbor's drive. Uncle Jack pops the trunk so they can load their belongings – mostly Bonesaw's meager lab – inside. Muriel died to the plague she'd released, Bonesaw realizes; it's a bit ironic that the tool she'd made to brew things like plagues died to one, and it's a shame, but not much of a loss. She can make another, easily; Muriel was just a tool for her art. Still, she gets Uncle Jack's help to empty her of her chemical and bacterial bladders and puts them in jars and puts the jars in an ice cooler for later. Waste not, want not, after all.
"Ready to go?" Uncle Jack asks as he closes the trunk. "We're not forgetting anything, are we?"
Bonesaw feels better after loading everything up. Even if he's dressed weird, he's still her Uncle Jack. She puts a finger to her cheek as she pretends to think about his question. "Hmm… Nope!"
"Then let's get on the road. I'm thinking… Georgia. It's been a while since we've been there, hasn't it?"
"We were there just a few months ago," she reminds him.
"Oh. Hm."
"...We can go to Georgia," she says when he suggests nothing else and the pause goes on for too long.
"That's a marvelous idea," he says. "Let's do that. Let's do that."
They climb into the car and buckle up.
"So where to?" Uncle Jack asks.
Bonesaw blinks. They just decided, didn't they?
Uncle Jack laughs. "Kidding, I'm kidding!"
Bonesaw laughs along, relieved. He starts the car, puts it in drive, and idles directly into a mailbox.
"Heh, sorry, the wheel got away from me there," Uncle Jack explains easily. He accelerates over the mailbox with a lurching bump, and drives directly across the road and into another mailbox.
"Uncle Jack?" Bonesaw voices with concern.
"Are we sure this car is working right? It doesn't seem to want to turn quite right."
"Uhm. I think you're supposed to put your hands on the wheel?" Bonesaw says. She's decreasingly certain that that's how that works; it feels too obvious for that to be the problem and for Jack to miss it.
"Ah! Right-o!" He puts his hands on the wheel and pauses. His eyes pinch with intense thought.
"...Maybe I should drive," Bonesaw suggests.
"No," he barks. "It's the adult's job to drive, and the child's job to ride along."
"Okay. If you're sure."
"A good girl shouldn't doubt her uncle like that," he chastizes mildly.
"Sorry, Uncle Jack," she says, feeling genuinely awful.
He puts the car in reverse, drives straight back over the mailbox they previously ran over, and continues on into the garage door.
She wonders if she should suggest taking the wheel and steering for him.
"I'm the adult, and that means I drive," he says in response to nothing.
"Okay. I–"
"We'll talk about it when you're older. For now, be a good girl, be quiet, and let me concentrate."
She quiets, though she didn't say anything. At least they're wearing their seat belts. Uncle Jack licks his lips, wraps his fingers around the steering wheel like he's choking it, and turns the wheel. He grins.
They're not moving.
"Um–"
"
I know, poppet. I know. Just… give me a moment." The car accelerates, turning now to avoid the twice-flattened mailbox by driving over the lawn instead. It's going well until they hit a car parked on the road.
She doesn't say anything.
"You know what, sweetie? I just had a great idea," Uncle Jack says. "Why don't I teach you how to drive? I was about your age when King taught me, so what do you say?"
Bonesaw blinks. "Didn't you just say I shouldn't?"
"Hm? No. Are you feeling alright? Cellular Structure didn't hurt you, did she?" He sounds genuinely confused and concerned, enough to make her wonder how much of the conversation she imagined.
"No! I'm fine, I just–"
"Alright then, let's switch seats and we'll start your first driving lesson."
He gets out before she can respond, leaving his door open. The car is still in drive, and the only reason it's not moving forward without his foot on the brake is the car they've already run into. She unbuckles, climbs over the center console, closes the driver's door, and re-buckles. Uncle Jack gets in the passenger seat.
"Don't forget to buckle up," she reminds him.
"Right-o," he says, doing so. "First thing you have to do is adjust your seat and your mirrors." He tells her how and what the right values are, and she does so; when she can touch the pedals and see the right things, he continues. "Next, you'll want to press the brake and move the prndl into drive."
She looks down at the prndl. "It's already in drive."
"Okay move it into park." She does so. "Okay now you'll want to press the brake and move the prndl into drive."
…She does so.
"Now, slowly take your foot off the brake and move it to the accelerator, but don't press it."
She does so.
"There we go. You're driving."
"…We're not moving."
He blinks and looks around. "Did you take us out of park?"
"Yes."
"And you're not pressing the brake, are you? That's the left pedal."
"No, just the accelerator."
"The emergency brake isn't on, is it?"
"I don't think so?"
"Well, is it?"
"I don't know what that is. Where is that?"
"Right here." He taps a handle in the center console, next to the prndl. "Hm. It doesn't look like it's engaged. Maybe it's an issue with the engine?"
"I think it's because we're driving into a car, maybe?" Bonesaw gently suggests.
He blinks again, as if just seeing the car he drove into only a few minutes ago. "Ah. That might be it. Good eye. In that case, press the brake and move the prndl to reverse – That's the 'R'."
Bonesaw puts it into reverse, takes her foot off the brake, and the car slowly back up out of the other car's side.
"Okay, now stop; press the brake," Uncle Jack says when they're a few feet back, into the yard. "Shift the prndl back into drive and turn the wheel to steer us past the car you hit."
She follows his instruction and inches past the parked car and onto the street. She turns to move them down the road and continues onward, slowly. Jack praises her and she lets herself smile. He grabs the road atlas from under the seat and directs her out of town, toward the back roads. She doesn't go above twenty miles per hour for the entire drive and is unable to shake the terrible feeling that creeps up her back to settle around her neck.
Author's notes: Jack slash teaching Riley to drive is my favorite scene in this entire story. I had so much fun writing it, and it makes me laugh with every reread. I hope it made you all laugh too, now that we don't have to worry about Jack being broken or anything; Riley fixed him, so he's fine and everything's alright and lighthearted and easy and okay again : )
also if you like this, i have a
ko-fi. Feel free to tip me a couple bucks, if you're so inclined.
