Last Days of Summer

Jude felt pretty confident she was going to end up behind bars. At least for a while. But he didn't want to touch that. He wanted to handle everything else. Things he'd thought about. Things he felt more competent about.

"You don't need powers," Jude said. "I managed in Halcyon city with no powers. You've got something more important. It doesn't matter how strong a person is if they're dumb. Doesn't matter if you can shoot a laser out of your mouth if you don't stop to think that maybe you shouldn't shoot it at someone holding up a mirror. You're smart Broen. This island's got a million opportunities, a million magic items, a million ways to play dirty against people who have way more powers then you do."

The smart wasn't the Headmaster. The smart was Broen. He was struggling with those lines, the this is Broen versus the this was Broen, but he knew that much at least.

"You don't need a job, either. Did you forget you're on a magic island with a magic school that has free tuition? They take care of you while you're there. Dorm rooms. A budget. You don't need a job."

That was what Jude had decided for himself. That he would be more careful. That he'd use it as an excuse to budget. But he didn't need the money.

No. Nope. He'd thought this was the same as Rory only no, this was so much worse then Rory. Rory wasn't going to do anything like that. She wasn't even going to imply it.

"I was smart before Giltenn," Jude pointed out flatly. "The biggest advantage is memory. It's what I got, so I work with it." He sort of felt like Broen was implying he was cheating, and he was normal enough to be rankled by it a bit, even in the circumstances.

"God, just... just look at your options. You like adrenaline. You're an adrenaline junkie. You like fighting and messing around. Be a scout. Be a veil strike agent. This is a magic island and you know what? Either of those would be good for you. You know how to blend in. It doesn't matter if you turn into a literal dragon if you can't manage to walk through the city without raising every eyebrow. You can go places other people can't. You know how to fight. And you can help people that way."

Jude felt good like this. Normal. Giving advice was something he'd done before. Thinking about things. Options. Possibilities.

There was no easy answer. There was no solution, no magic 'take this and your powers come back'. It wasn't even like before, where Jude could shove his brain at how to get bits of metal out of Broen. There was no problem here. This was just normal. A new normal, but a normal.

You couldn't fix what wasn't broken, and Broen wasn't broken. His powers didn't need repairing--they were just gone. He was starting from scratch.

Which Jude knew all about. That was how he'd been a hero--without any powers at all, right up until he got Giltenn.

"Go for cooking. You're already good at that, you can brush up, get a fancy degree and then get a ton of cash that way. People pay a lot of money for private chefs. You like cooking, and don't try and say you don't--you look... I don't know, happy when you're cooking."

He'd noticed. It was hard not to. He seemed to calm down while he was cooking, which was good.

"You never let anything else stop you before, so why let this be the first? This one's just harder than the others."

He was still leaning up against the wall, watching Broen pace, his agitation obvious.

Jude wasn't sure if Broen really know, but he fixed him with a look when Broen said he'd lost everything in an instant. Because, being real? He knew. He couldn't relate to my emotions came flooding back and I don't know how to process them, but he could absolutely relate to one minute I made a totally rational decision and the next I'd lost everything.

"Most magic is middling," Jude said. "Unless someone takes the time to use magic to make artistry, the food you're going to get is just going to be average, or at best good-but-not-great. And you're not taking into account that some people like that work was put into it. Like, you can make a perfect lab grown diamond with zero flaws, but people throw their hands up and go 'but the flaws are what make it nice!' Same thing with food here." At least on the high end.

He wanted to say yes. He wanted to say yes because that was what he was trying to do, wasn't he? To be a normal person. To have that normal life. Only the answer was more like maybe, because he was never going to settle for being really normal. He didn't really want normal. He wanted to excel.

"Maybe. Not really. I don't know. I never got to do the normal teenager thing where I'm not looking over my shoulder, so I'm trying to do that. But I'm never going to give up who I am, either. I'm not going to... to step down and not do things because people might judge me for who I am."

Or for who his dad was, which was the far more common of the two.

He shrugged.

"And the school is awesome, for the record. You should see the hoops they backflipped through to make my schedule."