Page 15 of Freedom
Tobias hadn’t knownwhat to expect when Jake sat him down. The stores had been fine—thankfully empty, so he hadn’t really had to be brave to walk through them, and Jake had held his hand besides—but when Jake sat down across from him looking so very serious, his stomach dropped.
He knew it had to have something to do with telling Jake about his nightmare. It was the only thing that had changed, and Jake had looked so broken after—arms wrapped around him, his eyes dark in a way that Tobias knew now not to associate with imminent pain—and Tobias thought that no matter what Jake had said, he should have kept his fucking monster mouth shut, because something had changed, and change was so rarely good.
And then, in his most serious voice, Jake told Tobias the secrets of being a Hawthorne.
After about five minutes, Tobias knew that Jake wasn’t making this up or designing this just for Tobias. There were too many details, and they came too easily to Jake for it to be invented. Which meant that each of these steps, each of these words, locations and processes was something he had used. Jake was laying out his life, and Tobias could barely believe it, even as every word convinced him of the truth of it.
He gave Tobias stratagems for keeping safe and free from anyone unlucky enough to try to catch Jake Hawthorne. There must have been a dozen of them, relayed in precise, clear details, but then Jake helped him see how each trick could be adapted for Tobias to keep him just as safe. And gradually, as Jake recounted the steps, the possibilities and the variations, Tobias realized that Jake wasn’t just giving him information and rules, like for a test. He was telling Tobias that he would always find him and, more breathtakingly, giving Tobias the abilities and the knowledge to look for Jake as well.
So Tobias listened, listened for all he was worth, with almost more concentration than he had given to the Director’s instructions during a session, because this wasn’t just a question of pain or survival. This was from Jake, a gift of trust and faith, and Tobiascould not fail. He would never let himself.
He wrote everything down as a matter of course, glancing at the notes Jake was making—messy and hard to read upside down, but Tobias had had to absorb more illegible documents faster in the past—but he knew it wouldn’t take him more than a couple hours to commit the information to memory.
Applying it would be another matter. Most of these steps required Tobias to walk alone into stores without having a panic attack. He would have to be able to look reals in the eye and talk like he belonged there, and Jake had even mentioned the prospect of carrying a weapon of some sort. Tobias hoped it wouldn’t come to that (A freak doesn’t require a weapon to be dangerous, but the very possession of one indicates a willingness to resist which must be burned out at the root. Do you understand, 89UI?), but he supposed he would be willing to fight to make his way back to Jake. And if Jake gave him a weapon, that might indicate that he was willing to let Tobias end himself rather than be taken back to Freak Camp if there were no other options. Though Tobias was beginning to believe there would generally be other options. Just the fact that Jake was telling him all of this showed Tobias that whether or not he could actually remember and perform every aspect of these plans, Jake would track him down.
Even with all these reassurances, it was hard to accept the phone.
“J-Jake,” Tobias said, running his fingers slowly over the small device. “I d-don’t—”
He didn’t need it. Just knowing all of Jake’s numbers, having access to the hotel phones, and waiting for Jake to show him how pay phones worked—“There aren’t that many anymore, but we’ll try one out next time we see one”—would be enough. Why would a monster need to be able to contact others? Didn’t that imply he would be seeking out other monsters—never, never, never—to hurt humans, to do bad things? And it was yet another unnecessary thing Jake had bought for Tobias, a stupid monster, when he had already given Tobias so much, when most of his emergency plans didn’t require phone calls anyway.
But before he could even get the words clear in his own mind, Jake reached over and closed Tobias’s fingers around the phone. “Toby, don’t. It’s a gift. I want you to have it. Here, I even kept the manual. Maybe you can teach me how to change the damn background photo.”
Tobias took the manual and made himself breathe. Jake thought he should have this. Jake thought he could do it. So he would. He had to. He wanted to. “Okay.”
It helped that every time he let Jake treat him like a real person, truly capable of doing what Jake asked, the dark smudges around Jake’s eyes faded.
~*~
Taking Tobias’s picturewas the hardest part.
First of all, finding a good enough camera was a bitch. The cheap throwaway cameras wouldn’t do—Tobias both deserved and needed the best—and the ones in the first shop he tried were frankly more expensive than he could justify spending for a couple of shots.
He was about to bite the bullet and bring Tobias to a shop to take a normal sort of passport picture (even though Leon’s handed-down paranoia and his own common sense said it wasn’t the best idea to advertise what they were doing and stick around in a town that long) when he remembered the camera. They’d picked it up in a pawn shop when they’d had to make IDs fast and dirty, and then later it came in useful against a weird Venus flytrap thing that only appeared in mirrors and through camera lenses, so Leon had made enough space for it in the Eldorado with their bags of rock salt and the shotguns.
But even after Jake dug up and put together the camera—new film wasn’t nearly as expensive as the cameras themselves, pricey fuckers—the second problem was Tobias.
Jake explained what he was doing and why, and at the time, Tobias had looked relieved, a strange light of hope gleaming in his eye making Jake kick himself for not thinking of this earlier. But when it came to actually taking the picture, he couldn’t get Tobias to look like anything but a terrified sixteen-year-old who’d been through hell and was facing it again.
They’d pinned a sheet up over the hotel window, and Tobias stood before it uneasily, eyes locked on anything but Jake’s face.
“C’mon, Toby,” Jake said, finger on the shutter. “Smile.”
Tobias tried, forcing his lips to curl up. Jake took two pictures and then lowered the camera with a sigh. Tobias looked like someone had stabbed him in the stomach and he was trying his best to smile for a picture anyway. Jake set the camera on the end table, grabbed Tobias’s hand, and pulled him over to the bed. He didn’t want to try to talk about this with Tobias standing awkwardly in front of the blank white backdrop.
“Toby, what’s the problem?”
Tobias ducked his head. “I’m trying to look n-normal. L-like a real, and I d-don’t know how, and with the c-camera. I’m s—I don’t know what you want.”
“Just look like yourself, that’s all we need here.” Jake brushed his hair back from his face. Sure, he probably didn’t need to do that, but it would look better for the picture. “The camera’s not gonna hurt you. Can’t steal your soul.”
“It can s-see ghosts,” Tobias said. Then his mouth quirked in a real smile, but it was bitter as three-day-old black coffee. “Probably don’t have a soul to steal.”
“Hey, hey, hey! Don’t say stuff like that.” Didn’t it figure that when Tobias started cracking jokes (and that had better have been a joke), they sliced open Jake’s heart as quick as Tobias’s nightmares? “It’s not a problem, Tobias, seriously. And you look great just the way you are. What’s really stressing you out?”
“Jake, should we...” Tobias’s hands twisted together in his lap. “Should we really be doing this? I mean, I’m a... isn’t this illegal? I don’t want... You shouldn’t get into trouble over me.”
Jake gave Tobias a cocky smile, but he kept his movements slow and gentle when he reached out to take his hand. “Toby, we’re Hawthornes. Illegal is our middle name. I had my first fake ID when I was younger than you. But seriously, I will always protect you. You know that, right?”
