Chapter Text

On the first day of the beginning of the end of the world, the first rays of morning shone over the spires of Katolis, through an open window, and directly into the sleeping eyeballs of a man named Jack.

Consider Jack – not because he is unique, but because he is ubiquitous. Every civilization that advances beyond subsistence agriculture, develops academia, and survives long enough will inevitably produce someone like Jack. This particular example is male (Jacks may be found in any gender, though few care a whit about such irrelevant minutiae of their particular condition), skinny (from forgetting to eat), and pale (from working indoors). His hair is brown (by genetics), short (out of pragmatism), and messy. His nose, due to a combination of walking into things while distracted and a mild allergy to all known forms of matter, appears about twice as large as it actually is. He is neither a morning nor an evening person – he has a natural aversion to both going to sleep and waking up, and accordingly tends to spend as little time as possible in either state. He does not have a sleep schedule so much as he commits random acts of unconsciousness. He is astoundingly brilliant in several particular areas, and astoundingly stupid in several others.

On the first day of the beginning of the end of the world, this particular Jack had a very important job to do, one even more important than sleep. He had planned ahead accordingly, and left the curtains open the previous night, so that the rising sun would shine in his eyes. Thus alerted of the hour (so went the plan), Future Jack would awaken, get out of bed, and set about his very important work.

Unfortunately, Past Jack had not learned from every previous attempt to get himself up on time, and once again failed to account for Future Jack rolling over and ignoring the light.

Thwump.

Fortunately, one of the things that distinguished this particular Jack was his girlfriend, who – in addition to being strong, brave, beautiful, rich, and a functioning adult with a normal sleep schedule – was determined to make an honest working man of her Jack, even if it meant getting him up in the morning by physically removing him from the bed and waving a fresh slice of bacon just out of his reach.

For a moment, Jack – not to be dissuaded by a mere change of venue – simply curled up on the floor. But then the scent of bacon broke through his somniac inertia, and he emerged, nose-first, to snatch the strip from his girlfriend’s fingers. He chewed, blinked twice, swallowed, and then he was awake.

“Good morning, Sarai,” Jack said from the floor.

“Good morning, Jack,” Sarai said. “Hurry down, there’s more where that came from.”

----

“So,” Sarai said, twelve minutes later, feeding Jack another strip of bacon. “Big day today?”

“Yes,” Jack beamed. “If all goes well, by the end of this day every city west of the Border will be toasting my name, every city east of the Border will fear it, and your parents will finally have run out of excuses for why we can’t get married.”

Sarai smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

Jack sighed and turned in his seat to face his girlfriend. “OK. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Sarai said. “This is great and I’m happy for you.”

“But?”

“I don’t want you to push yourself into something dangerous because you feel like you owe me,” Sarai said. “I don’t want you to feel like you owe me, period. I don’t want you to feel like you need to justify our relationship to my parents or anyone else. I’m happy with what we have now, and whenever you go out there, I’m afraid of losing it.”

Jack reached out and took Sarai’s hand. “I know,” he said. “But I’m not doing it to repay you. I’m doing it for you, because I want you to reconcile with your parents, because I am an obstacle to the relationship you had with them.”

“You aren’t –“

“I am, Sarai. If they acknowledge our relationship, they admit that their daughter ran off with some crazy low-born dark mage who thinks there are cities on the moon, and that loses them social capital – especially after you already ran off to join the army, and then their other daughter came out deaf and also ran off to join the army, and now, when they go to those nob parties that nobs have to whip their nobility out and wave it around and show off how big and fancy and posh it is and see whose nobility is bigger, all the other nobs talk behind their back about oh, here comes that one family whose daughters all run off to join the army, let’s puff up our nobility and talk about how our daughters are sitting around being nice and quiet and meek and ladylike. Am I rambling?”

“Little bit,” Sarai said, suppressing a grin.

“Sorry.”

“For the record, I believe you about the moon-cities.”

“Really?”

Sarai shrugged. “You’re the moon authority in this household. If you say there are moon cities, I’ll believe in moon cities.”

Jack blushed. “Aww, thanks. Anyway. They should be proud of Amaya for serving her country, and her deafness and your relationships shouldn’t matter at all, and it’s wrong and messed up that society doesn’t work like that, but it is what it is. And I’m doing it so our kids can grow up with a dad that isn’t a schoolyard insult – don’t start, you know I will be. And I’m doing it for me, because I want to. But mostly I’m doing it because it’s not just about me – it’s so much bigger than just me. We’re changing the world today. The world will be different – tonight, tomorrow, next week, a hundred years from now – because of what we do today. I’m not just going out and doing my job today, I’m making a new world for everyone who comes after. There’s no price too high for something like that. It’s the thing heroes go on quests for in stories – and all the world is asking from me for it is to do is go out and make it happen.”

“It could kill you,” Sarai said.

“So could a loose horse-cart,” Jack countered. “Or a mugging, or a falling rock, or a slippery patch of road, or a really determined duck. Everyone dies of something.”

“Don’t you worry about that?”

“All the time,” Jack said. “Everyone in the lab does. We spend half our time and budget figuring out how to do our jobs without dying. It’s why we have all that very expensive safety equipment. Well,” he amended, “mostly I have Viren worry about it for me. But he’s very good at worrying.”

“You know how I feel about dark magic,” Sarai said. “I know it’s your passion and your life’s work. But I can’t help but feel that you’re meddling in things man wasn’t meant to.”

“Well,” Jack said, “if woman ever wants to meddle, she’s always welcome at the lab.”

Sarai chuckled. “Woman is going to be busy keeping track of your kid.”

On cue, the child in question waddled sleepily into the kitchen.

“Speak of the devil,” Jack said. “Good morning, Callum.”

Callum stopped at his mother’s seat and mutely thrust his arms upward. Sarai and Jack exchanged looks.

“Do you want up?” Sarai asked.

Callum nodded.

“Do you want to ask for up?” Sarai asked hopefully.

Callum shook his head. Jack laughed.

“It’s not funny,” Sarai sighed, pulling her son onto her lap. “All the physicians say he should be talking by now. What if there’s something wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong,” Jack said. “He’s communicating just fine. He just doesn’t want to talk yet. He’ll get there in his own time. Won’t you, Callum?”

Callum nodded.

----

At the door, Jack crouched down to look Callum in the eye. “All right, buddy. I’m heading out for the day, so I’m gonna need you to look after Mom. Can you do that?”

Callum considered this, then nodded seriously. Sarai gave them both a look of exasperated endearment.

“Good man,” Jack said, clapping his son on the shoulder. “I’m counting on you.”

Callum watched his father’s back until it disappeared around the corner.

“Come on,” Sarai said after a moment. “We’ve got bacon. You want bacon?”

Callum nodded. He was uncertain about a lot of things, but he definitely liked bacon.

“Can you say ‘bacon’?”

Callum shook his head. He was still having trouble with c’s.