Pay the Piper

"Yeah, but my jugular isn't, and I'm not sure if you realize, but I kind of need that," Jude muttered under his breath.

He didn't know what Broen was going to say, but he did his best to mentally prep himself. Realistically speaking? He didn't prep hard enough, because he was happy Broen was looking away. It meant he couldn't see the wince, the way Jude's right hand instinctively went to the back of his own neck, completely free of scars.

It was kind of easier not to think about the emotional side of things. To think about the mental side of things. It was a good place to hide marks. It would hurt like hell, but it wouldn't be visible under the hair. Cigars? Probably cigars, from the size and shape of them.

"That explains the hair thing," Jude said quietly, and only after a moment did he realize he'd even said it out loud. Truthfully? He wasn't sure what to say. He wasn't sure what he could say. He couldn't fix it. He probably shouldn't even try.

"Thank you..." He trailed off a moment, trying to find the words. "Thank you for trusting me with that." With his secret, with all those implications.

Jude was really, really out of his element. He was like a ifrit that had hopped into a goddamn lake. He wasn't good at this kind of emotional comfort, and Broen was volatile enough that any wrong move could just piss him off.

"He did a good job convincing people that he was... that he was not who he really was. Some people are like that. But people who really know you will believe you," he said, trying to... to what? To offer some kind of comfort? He didn't even know if Broen wanted comfort, but he supposed it probably didn't hurt to know they had his back.

"This kind of thing's what friends are for. To have your back."

Jude had. He'd thought Gallant was amazing. He'd looked up to him. He still had, right until they went through the portal. He still had, right until Broen had started making implications.

"They don't," Jude said. Better to reframe it. To make it something else. "None of them look up to your old man. People look up to who Gallant pretends to be. To the figure he presents. Like, people look up to Flying Freedom, but none of them know who she really is. They don't know what she's actually like."

The only one who'd figured it out. The only one who had all the pieces and had snapped them together. Who had an idea of just how bad it had been. But also who knew Gallant. Who knew who he was, and how he'd been.

No wonder Broen hated people lying to him.

Jude scooted over, sitting down beside Broen on the couch. He was doing better. His emotions were more in check. But that raw emotion was still there, visible and obvious to Jude in a way it probably shouldn't have been.

"You don't have to be sorry," Jude said. "You didn't do anything. And if you want to talk about it, you can. If you don't want to, you don't have to."

He wasn't even expecting him to do that much. For that matter, he hadn't known Broen had a therapist. It was the sort of thing that old Broen would never had done.

He'd changed a lot.

"Of course that's okay," Jude said. "I'm not going to kick your door in and demand you give up your secrets. Your secrets are... well, they're yours. To tell or not tell who you want."

For a moment, Jude considered putting a hand on his shoulder, and then decided that was probably too much, too fast. So he dialed it back, trying to reach out in another way.

"This is normally the point where I'd like, share some big dark secret of mine, but... you already know about Gil, and you know about my dad, and... honestly, I think sometimes you know more about my secrets than I do. You got your fingers into everything."