Absolute Friends It was freezing outside. Joanie had on gloves and still had her hands shoved into the pockets of her coat, except when she raised one to rub the end of her nose. A stack of books was shoved awkwardly underneath her coat, held in place by the hand that wasn’t leaving her pocket if she had any say in the matter. She could see her breath turning the air white in front of her.
John didn’t appear to notice the cold. Wizards would have to be Aes Sedai on top of everything else, she thought sourly. It wasn’t enough that they never had to look for their keys or shoes and, apparently, had a cure for the common cold – which Joanie would have and not have a cure for if they stood out here in the trees behind the park too long. Rubbing one arm with her free hand as it made its way back down from the tip of her nose, she looked up at her friend.
“What’s so important we have to talk about it out here?” she asked.
“I need to know if I read you right in your last letter,” said John. “Did you mean to say that General Stevcek is in RCIA?”
Oh. That. Of course. “Yeah,” said Joanie. “I figured you didn’t know.”
“You figured correctly,” muttered John. He raised a hand as if to run his hand through his hair, then seemed to notice that he was wearing both a pair of gloves and a hat. Both interfered with this nervous gesture. He began to pace instead. “What happened?”
Joanie shrugged irritably. “I was on my way to choir practice when I saw him walking in,” she said. “I was panicking, trying to figure out where I could possibly hide the body – “ John looked startled – “when he asked me which way it was to the classroom.”
“He didn’t act like he knew you?”
“No,” said Joanie. “I’m – as sure of it as I can be without crazy mind-reader powers.”
John nodded, accepting this. “Okay, okay,” he said. He reached up again and this time knocked his hat off his head. He swore as he retrieved it. Joanie decided it was her turn to ask questions again.
“Why is this freaking you out so much?” she asked. “I thought you were all for people converting.”
John paced for a moment longer, then turned suddenly. “Because I don’t understand why he’d do it!” he exclaimed all at once, words tumbling out too quickly. “Why he’d do that, of all things, unless – unless – “ another break, then another outburst. “Unless I’ve been wrong about everything!”
“What is everything?” asked Joanie, responding to the words instead of the agitation.
“I thought he was after my family,” he said. “All this – that – “ he pointed at Joanie’s neck. She nodded to let him know she understood what he meant. “Everything – the past two years have been because I thought he was after my family, that I – that we – had….” He grimaced. “And now I might be wrong.”
Joanie winced a little, guessing at how difficult that admission must have been for John, but he wasn’t done. “And Joe thinks I’m crazy. Miss Breaman told him I was crazy, that she f – " Joanie gaped in shock for a moment; she might talk like that, but John hardly ever swore at all, never mind that severely – “someone crazy and I had the luck to be related to him. I told Joe I wasn’t crazy, but I couldn’t tell him why, and now – “ he seemed to lose his words again, until he suddenly took a swing at a tree. “Damn it.”
Absently, one corner of Joanie’s head wondered if that exclamation was an expression of emotion or actual pain. The rest of her attention was on deescalating the situation.
“Well,” she said, as calmly as possible, “you aren’t crazy. There is that.”
John looked at her, seemingly irritated. That was a good sign, she thought, that he was not going to have a full-fledged fit. “I’m yelling about conspiracy theories and hitting trees,” he observed.
“John, that’s called having the emotional maturity of a three-year-old,” said Joanie. “You’re having a temper tantrum, not a nervous breakdown.”
Quite a lot of people would have flipped their biscuits at her for that observation. John just made a face. “Antiquated term,” he said. “The modern diagnosis is major depressive episode, or manic episode, depending on which…setofbehaviors…you’re talking about.”
Joanie ignored him. “The tree-hitting, anyway, that’s definitely a tantrum,” she continued. “The conspiracy theories might be your inner thirteen-year-old girl instead of your inner toddler.”
This time, John laughed harshly. “Then why did you write me a coded letter telling me about the whole situation?”
Joanie shrugged. “This stays between us,” she said quietly, then lowered her voice to a whisper, “but I have an inner thirteen-year-old girl, too.”
She didn’t say it seriously, but it was a point. There was a part of her that had always seen this as a game, at least until John had convinced her his conspiracy theories were real and that there were people after them. She supposed she had wanted to feel special again – like her existence might actually create in the universe a sense of obligation – had been looking for her Eleventh Commandment. Now, watching his breakdown, she thought John must have felt the same.
She didn’t say so, though. They were secret sharers, her and John – that was why he had ranted like that in front of her, no doubt, and why she had been so angry with him last year when she had found out he had lied to her by omission – but there were some things that could only be understood, not spoken aloud, even between absolute friends, so bound together by their secret that they could know each other well enough to understand such things. A lie had a life of its own, and theirs was creeping toward its eighth birthday. They could show each other almost any parts of themselves without the slightest fear of betrayal, because there was no practical way out of the relationship for either of them anymore. As long as they stayed this side of hatred, how they felt about each other, if they even particularly liked each other, was no longer relevant.
As for whatever that was…she was something John could still betray, but she didn’t know if that meant he loved her. After all, there was one thing even beyond her, a thing he would sacrifice her for – his family. To a point, anyway. She wondered, sometimes, if John realized that he was already sacrificing parts of his relationships with them – his honesty with his mother, Julian and Joe’s trust in him – for her. She didn’t think he did. If he did….
Today wasn’t the day she found out just how deftly he could juggle divided loyalties, though. Today, the universe felt no sense of obligation toward either of them. Best to think about that.
“If you’re wrong, that’s a good thing,” she said. “Now, can we get to your house before we freeze to death? I can’t feel my toes anymore.”
She had no desire to go to his house right now, but she didn't quite trust him on his own yet. By the time they reached his house, though, John had slipped back into his role. In his living room, Julian was twirling around, showing off a truly absurdly formal dress to Joe and Mrs. Umland. John put his hand on an armrest and peered at the dress skeptically.
“Married in black and you’ll wish yourself back. Or are you going to a quinceañera on the Day of the Dead?” asked John dryly, and so they stepped back into their ongoing show in the Theater of the Real.
OOC: Aes Sedai = in the Wheel of Time series, women with magic powers who know how, via self-hypnosis, to ignore heat and cold. “General Stevcek,” William’s code name, is a reference to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Other Le Carre here includes Absolute Friends, The Looking-Glass War, and The Little Drummer Girl. Joanie also alludes to Stephen Crane’s poem “A Man Said to the Universe”.