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“Morrigan? Jack?” Kedgeree was walking around, a frown carved onto his face, blotting out all his smile lines.
She was just knocking another of Jack’s pawns off the chessboard when he came in, “Yes?”
“Hi, Kedge,” Jack said. “What is it?”
He looked serious, “I received a note from the League of Explorers just now.”
Something awful made a hole in Morrigan’s stomach and started dropping all her internal organs down it. “What is it? Is Jupiter alright?”
“He’s… he’s…” for once Kedgeree seemed at a loss for words. Jack jumped up and took the note out of his hands, eyes rapidly moving down the page.
“Captain North has currently been declared Absent Without Leave. He’s missing,” Jack read out in a flat voice.
“He’s what?” Her throat felt tight very suddenly. “Jack, he’s what? Where’s Jupiter? What do they mean he’s missing?”
She tried breathing in and out through her nose until she felt it get warmer and warmer, and realised that it had gone from air to steam, and someone was standing beside her, but not grabbing her arm.
She regained control quickly, blinking furiously to deal with it, “Where was he last seen? Where did he go missing from?”
Kedgeree, whom she now realised had been the one hovering around her, frowned even deeper, “They said it was classified. They’re sending out search parties obviously but they are informing us that for the present they don’t know when he will be returning.” The silent if hung heavy in the air, unsaid but completely understood by everyone in the room.
Jack was crying, she realised, his mouth moving frantically open and closed, like a fish out of water. “I’m bringing you two to the Smoking Parlour,” he said decisively. “Martha’s making tea, and bringing up cakes. Neither of you are in any state to be alone right now.”
Morrigan found that she could hardly disagree, that she was in no state to disagree as they were herded down there, a hand on each of their shoulders, either as a comfort or to try and stop them making a break for it. Possibly both. She had jumped off the hotel roof in pursuit of some goal of a ramshackle plan to save the day probably more than one too many times at this point.
They were deposited on sofas and force fed cakes, tea and chamomile smoke until it was coming out of their ears, but it hardly made Morrigan relax. It didn’t help that the staff were so jittery when they came in, to take away trays, put in new trays, talk to them, check on them.
And they were being actively guarded by Fen.
“I don’t know-” Jack said again, before breathing in and out of the paper bag he’d been given again and muttering incoherently.
“Fen,” Morrigan said.
She turned around immediately, “What is it?”
“I think Jack might be in shock?”
She looked at him cautiously, “Yes, I think you might be right. KEDGEREE!” She yelled out the door.
She managed to walk right out while everyone was gathered around Jack, trying to see exactly how to help him, on her way to do what she could. She could try something- try and find Jupiter? Maybe there was some little forbidden book on wundersmiths she could find that would make the society tremble to know she’d found which could give her a way to track or find someone-
“Just where do you think you’re going?” A massive paw suddenly blocked her vision and she found herself being swept back towards the sofa she’d just escaped from.
“Um. um,” she said, like the intelligent being she was. “I was just-”
“I’m sure,” Fen said, unimpressed. All the other staff were around Jack, he was breathing better now, with a cup of something steaming in his hand - was that ginger tea she smelled? Or was that just the smoke now? - and a very heavy blanket draped around his shoulders.
“-panic attack,” she heard Kedgeree say to him. “You want to focus on your breathing, okay? Tell me what you can see.”
“You need to stay here,” Fen said harshly. “If Jupiter isn’t coming back for the time being to keep an eye on you, then we have to keep you from going off and doing something stupid.”
This was a) unfair since she only did insanely stupid things to solve problems some of the time b) not going to help her find Jupiter. She didn’t listen to anything else Fen had to say though, instead avoiding eye contact and formulating plans in her head on the sofa - when did someone give her a blanket and a pillow? - until she just fell asleep.
“Are you awake?” said Jack in a scratchy voice.
“Yeah,” she answered back, feeling like she really needed some water. “You?”
“Take a guess,” he said.
She’d been lying in a state of half-sleep half-wakefulness for a good hour at least, staring up into pitch darkness. Either they had closed off the Smoking Parlour for the time being or none of the guests were using it. “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” he said. Then: “Bad.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
“It's reminding me of my parents,” he said suddenly and she propped herself up on her elbows, vaguely looking in his direction although she couldn’t really see him except for a vague silhouette.
“Oh.” She didn’t ask for more details. She knew that Jack hated people being nosey. But he told her anyway.
“They were also in the League, so I got left with Uncle a lot. What happened today - yesterday, I guess - was pretty much exactly what happened last time.”
“Jupiter could still come back,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe.”
She didn’t really know what to say to that. Would he get back? They didn’t even know where he was right now, and if Jack’s parents had had the same thing happen to them, well, it was possible then.
She didn’t like the feeling of dread remaking its home deep inside her. She had been briefly allowed to be lulled into a sense of false security, or at least the idea that she could lie in the Smoking Parlour until he came back, until everything was fixed while the adults around her all said reassuring things, regardless of if it was true or not. Also, Fen had been quite literally guarding her here.
But she could do something, maybe. She had a laundry list at this point of the times that she had been accused of sticking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted but Jupiter was her patron. He was her family! She had to do something or else- well she was trying very hard not to think of the or else situation.
But she had no idea what to do. She had tried to think of plans for a long time, lying there, eventually being tricked into sleep. And none of those plans were all that good. If there was wundersmith information on how to find someone who was missing, she didn’t know how to get her hands on it, at least as a book.
But she did know someone who might know it for her.
Jack’s breath had evened out by the time she kicked off her blanket and was sneaking out her door, first to her room to grab her brolly, which didn’t seem to be setting off any alarms. No one came to find her, or tell her off, or to either keep her in her room or in the Smoking Parlour, which, by the way, were they putting in extra soporific smoke in now? Even thinking about that smell made her sleepy.
It didn’t matter though. She needed to find Squall and this was how she was going to do it.
Now all she had to do was find her way to the Gossamer Station. Would it be easier to go to Proudfoot Station and get a railpod from there? Or could she try and recall her old route that she had taken with Jupiter on Christmas Day all those years ago?
What to do, what to-
“Miss Morrigan, what are you doing up?” Martha said, and she knew she had been caught. Again.
“I’m going to find a way to get Jupiter back,” she said, unapologetically.
“No you’re not,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night, Miss Morrigan, you need to go to sleep. Come on, I’ll run you a lavender bath, it’ll be lovely,” she tried to take Morrigan’s arm and lead her to the door of Room 85, but she took a step back.
“No, I have to do this,” for some reason her hands were trembling on her brolly but she ignored that. Not important right now. “I have to go and help them, if I don’t help them then they won’t find Jupiter and- and-” she was crying now, blubbering like a big baby, there was snot streaming out of her nose for crying out loud!
“Whoa, whoa, hey, Miss Morrigan,” she came closer but didn’t make a gesture to touch her until Morrigan reached out for her, almost falling into her arms. Martha held them both up as she tried to say things about how she had to get help to save Jupiter, and that she was worried and she really didn’t know what to do.
At some point, Martha helped her get to bed, when she was fully cried out, and made her drink a glass of water because she was dehydrated.
She woke up with the sun streaming in through her windows, a late morning, maybe midday already, and she pulled herself out of bed, unsure of what she was going to actually do today other than hope, and just- maybe try again on that plan about the Gossamer Line. Third time’s a charm.
Someone was knocking on her door though, right after she got dressed, and she opened it, wondering if it was Martha with breakfast or something.
It wasn’t. It was over six foot of gangly limbs and ginger hair beaming down at her, looking utterly exhausted but definitely, absolutely, terrifically alive.
“Hello, you,” said Jupiter North.