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It happens on a routine mission, one like so many he’s done before.
He wasn’t even supposed to be away for long.
When the Stealth officer gathers them around the dinner table to break the news, Morrigan doesn’t scream. She doesn’t fling her teacup to the ground or grip it so hard the ceramic cracks and hot tea burns her fingers. She isn’t wracked with sobs, doesn’t hug her knees and rock back and forth, doesn’t demand an explanation, because surely this has to be a mistake, surely this can’t be it, not for Jupiter, not for their Jupiter who always knew how to get out of sticky situations with a smile on his face and his clothing only a little rumpled, their Jupiter who may have been away often but who, in the end, always came home–
No. She doesn’t feel much of anything, in fact.
She just sits on her chair, back straight and feet on the ground. Like a statue. She barely registers the commotion around her. She doesn’t hear the sobbing, the screaming, the fruitless consoling, doesn’t see the hardwood floor even though it’s all she looks at. The only sound she hears is the soft pling, pling, pling of tears falling into a half-empty teacup, and only when someone gingerly dabs at her cheeks does she realise they were hers.
Though she knows she must have attended it, she doesn’t remember the funeral. The only thing she remembers is her and Jack placing the flower wreath on his casket together, his hands trembling, hers as if hewn from stone.
She had always heard grief would feel like drowning, but all she feels is emptiness.
(He said he’d be home by Thursday.)
Life picks up again, or maybe it never stopped. Morrigan attends her classes (just one more year), does her duties as a Wundersmith and as a member of the Society.
At C&D meetings, someone else now represents the League of Explorers, a practically-dressed woman who looks as if she fights bears on a daily basis. As Elder Wong goes through the introductions, Morrigan only half listens.
“From the League of Explorers, Captain Jupit—apologies. Captain Anastasia Dorbeck, Unit 897.”
Morrigan can’t fault him for that slip-up, she realises with a wry twist of her mouth as the meeting goes on. Every time a silence falls, she keeps expecting to see someone stand up from the crowd to provide information or express an opinion or volunteer himself, someone with a brightly coloured suit and offensively ginger hair.
When Baz Charlton makes another blood-boilingly stupid comment, she knows exactly what he would have said.
She bites the inside of her cheek until it bleeds.
Sometimes, she turns around to make a remark, only to be met with empty air.
Being at the Deucalion feels different, and it’s not only because of the décor. It feels…like a hospital waiting room, like the hushed silence just before the band starts playing, but no note making a sound. Just the endless waiting for a relief that never comes.
Though he wasn’t always there before, the hotel feels emptier and more quiet now that she knows he’s never coming back.
And that’s just the thing: logically, she knows that he’s gone, that he will never again make overconfident jokes about his looks or nick her breakfast pastries and very obviously (and infuriatingly) avoid answering her questions. She will never get to ice skate with him and Jack again like they did that one Christmas, or make him fulfill his promise to take her to the Nevermoor Bazaar.
She will never get to hear him call her Mog again.
Still, the knowledge doesn’t fully…register. It’s like it hasn’t caught up with the rest of her, or her heart hasn’t caught up with her brain. She keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the moment when not just her brain, but all of her realises—fully comprehends—that Jupiter is dead.
It doesn’t happen, or at least it hasn’t happened yet. Instead, she keeps waiting. Keeps expecting to hear his voice, to see him rushing through the hallways in all his eccentrically dressed glory. Just the barest movement at the edge of her vision, just the tiniest flash of brightly-coloured fabric or ginger hair disappearing around the corner.
(Please.)
Maybe it would have been easier if he’d been around more often. Maybe if him being away for long periods of time had been out of the ordinary, she wouldn’t be stuck in this waiting mode, wouldn’t subconsciously hold onto this thing that’s not quite hope, not quite habit.
Maybe she wouldn’t get up every morning, not-quite-hoping, not-quite-expecting to see him sitting there at the breakfast table, bruised and battered but alive. To rush into his arms and cry together, to hear him tell her I’m sorry, Mog, this wasn’t the plan, but when I nearly didn’t make it, we realised faking my death and going undercover was the only way to keep the Free State safe. I’m so, so sorry, dear heart, and I promise I won’t ever do it again, but I’m here now, and I’m okay. I’m here now and that’s all that matters.
She’s disappointed every time.
In her dreams, she chases movements, colours, voices—so, so close, but always just out of reach.
She and Cadence get together in late autumn. They’re giddy, positively vibrating with excitement. “Yes,” Morrigan says again when they break apart from their kiss. “Yes, Cadence, of course I will.”
“So you’ve said,” Cadence murmurs, amused, as she rests her forehead against Morrigan’s. They’re sitting on the roof of some abandoned building they discovered together. The sunrise they’d been watching is slowly making way for clear blue morning skies.
Morrigan leans back just long enough that Cadence can see her rolling her eyes, before laying her head on her shoulder. “Oh, let me have my moment. It’s not every day you–” She breaks off her train of thought. “Divine Thing, we’re going to have to tell people. Jupiter will–”
She regrets the words the moment they come out of her mouth. Cadence freezes only minutely, but with her head on her shoulder, Morrigan feels it nonetheless.
“I’m sorry,” she says, reeling back. “I didn’t…”
Cadence squeezes her hands. She says nothing, but her look is enough. Reassurance, but also a threat not to apologise for something she can’t control.
She sighs in relief. “I meant, do you want to tell people? Our unit is obviously…”
Morrigan is glad Cadence plays along and pretends nothing happened. She’s slowly been getting better over the past few months, but she still slips up sometimes. (She wonders if it will ever get less painful.)
When a Unit graduates, it’s customary for their patrons to stand by their side for most of the ceremony. They usually hold a speech, too, however long or short it might be. During the ceremony, Morrigan keeps sneaking glances at her Unit and their patrons, gathered around her in pairs.
Out of all of them, she is the only one who stands alone.
(Dame Chanda holds a speech in Jupiter’s stead, but they both know it’s not quite the same.)
In Morrigan’s room, there’s a chest that is kept under lock and key.
It started out as a way to keep together her dearest possessions, mostly presents and letters. The lock had been a fairly recent addition.
She hadn’t meant for it to become a safe for all the things she’d gotten from Jupiter.
If she opens the chest, she’ll find seven years’ worth of Christmas and birthday presents. The glossy green sled he gave her on her first Christmas here in Nevermoor, all kinds of keepsakes from his missions and travels, the scarlet ice-skates she’s long since outgrown.
She almost never opens the chest. She doesn’t want to risk losing anything.
Her dearest present, she doesn’t keep in the chest, though. No, her oilskin umbrella, her first ever gift from Jupiter—that one she takes with her wherever she goes. She has vowed she will keep doing so until it completely falls apart, until there’s nothing left but tattered fabric and shattered wood.
The dearest possession that she does keep in the chest, though, isn’t a present. It’s a small, unassuming piece of paper. It’s creased, the ink is smudged, and it has been victim to a tea spill, making the words at the right-hand edge nearly illegible.
She keeps quite a few letters in the chest, but this isn’t one of them. On the piece of paper are notes, scattered and incomplete—likely a first draft, or just an attempt to jot down the main ideas so that they can be turned into a proper speech later.
They found it in Jupiter’s study one day. She only read it once, but she knows every single word by heart.
They were the ones he would have spoken if he’d been there for her graduation.
(That day, she almost cried for the first time since it had happened.)
When the shoe finally does drop, it’s Morningtide. Almost a year since he died, an age since he brought her here to Nevermoor. It feels like a lifetime ago.
She stands on the rooftop of the Deucalion just like she did all those years ago. Just like all those years ago, she hangs back awkwardly, alone. Once more, Dame Chanda is the first to jump. As the rest of the party guests follow, Morrigan stands by the edge of the balustrade, clutching the silver filigree handle of her brolly so tight it hurts, eyes fixed on the dizzyingly bright pink and orange dawn blooming across the sky.
She has made the jump before, she knows, and on her own too. In the years since then, she has done far more dangerous things, with far higher stakes, so why can’t she–
“I get it,” she hears a soft voice say behind her.
She turns around to see Jack standing there. She hadn’t even noticed they were only people left on the rooftop.
“Do you…” she starts. “Do you want to go together?”
He smiles. “Gladly.”
Together, they step onto the rail, open their umbrellas, and, holding hands, jump off the roof.
(“Step boldly, Morrigan Crow.”)
On the way down, a realisation settles down on her.
Her memories of the previous Morningtide—exactly an Age ago, an Age since she met him—are centred around Jupiter, and she’d resigned herself to being clutched even more tightly than usual in the cruel grasp of that thing that is not quite hope and not quite habit. And yet…
Though she missed him as always—oh, Divine Thing, how she misses him—for once, she hadn’t expected him to be there. She hadn’t been waiting for someone to shout his name or for the music to stop abruptly as he waltzed in. There had been no speech, no toast to unexpected adventures.
There had been no Jupiter, and she hadn’t expected there to be.
She doesn’t know when she starts crying. All she knows is that by the time they hit the ground, tears are streaming down her cheeks and her vision is so blurry she can barely see. It’s not some kind of dramatic revelation. Instead, it’s like a rock that has been eroded through the ages, finally breaking into two at its weakest point. It’s barely a grain of sand in size, the difference, but it’s still irrevocably changed.
She thinks about all the things he won’t ever do again. It’s not just the big events, the deliberate actions. It’s the sensations too. Unlike her, he won’t ever again feel the warmth of the sun on his face, won’t ever feel the wind through his hair. Not the rush of adrenaline of reckless actions or the satisfaction of a good meal.
Not the contentment of being together with his family.
Jack holds her as she sobs. He lets her cling to him like a lifeline and soak his dress shirt with tears and mucus, and clutches her tighter as, between sobs, she blubbers out barely intelligible words in half-formed sentences.
(She hadn’t even gotten an Age with him.)
When her vision has cleared, she steps away and sees he’s crying too. He’s still smiling, though. He’s more well-versed in the act of grieving than she is. He’s become almost graceful in his performance of it, whereas Morrigan is inexperienced, messy.
She wonders if she’s doing it wrong. If she’s going through the wrong steps in the wrong order, all at the wrong times.
“...I want to visit his grave,” she admits, barely a whisper.
He smiles encouragingly and squeezes her hand.
The flower wreath she weaves for him is nothing like the one they’d placed on his casket. That one had been colourful, yes, but muted. The one she makes is a whirlwind of screaming colours, a floral rainbow. It’s a far cry from her first attempt at weaving.
“I never told him what he meant to me,” she finally admits as they sit side by side on the ground before his grave. Her voice is choked. “What he was to me.”
Jack smiles at her yet again, though she can see it pains him too. “He was a skilled Witness, Morrigan, and more importantly, he knew you. You may never have told him, but I’m sure he knew.”
It feels good to cry, after feeling empty for so long. The two of them stay there for hours, talking at length. They tell stories about Jupiter, sharing both the happy memories and the sad ones.
They wake up the next morning with dirt and the imprint of grass and flowers on their faces. As she gets up, Morrigan regards the first rays of sun peeking over Jupiter’s headstone with something almost akin to a smile.
It’s a new day.