ptahrrific | Fake News: State of Grace, chapter 34

Title: State of Grace, Chapter 34: Jon, Full of Grace
Fandom: The Colbert Report
Rating: R
Disclaimer/Warnings: See the table of contents.

For some reason, beyond understanding, she seems to love him now more than ever, even though I get the sense that he hurt her something fierce in the early years. I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.
—William P. Young, The Shack

Clips referenced: candy and air; will this help; just come up!

Jon, Full of Grace

November 2, 2007
(Continued)

While Jon fixed himself up with an ice pack, Charlene shepherded an unusually subdued Tyrone into the laundry room and set him to folding rompers.

She ducked outside long enough to bring in the dogs, getting them across the threshold just as the first few drops of rain speckled the porch steps, and returned to find her cousin slouching in the cheap metal chair, staring aimlessly at a pair of tiny socks. "Steve," she said, shaking him out of his reverie. "What happened?"

"Dog died," replied Tyrone with a shrug. "Lorraine was pissed. I think we broke Stephen."

Charlene leaned against the dryer. "Broke him...?"

"Kids are finally getting old enough to say 'fuck you' to his rules," muttered Tyrone, before shifting into Stevie, eyes welling up with tears. "I dunno what to do. I never know what to do. Don't even know when I've broken a rule until somebody says so, but then they punish me and it's okay, only Jon won't, an' I know he's mad, and—!"

He dropped the socks on the card table to bury his face in his hands, glasses bouncing up to his forehead and perching unsteadily on his fingertips.

"Stephen's s'posed to know what to do," he keened. "Even when it doesn't make sense, he's s'posed to be able to shout until everything comes out like he wants it to. If he can't do that, an' Jon hates me, then how...?"

"Honey, don't talk like that," insisted Charlene. "Of course you can't yell reality into the shape you want. You never could. But Jon loves you. All of you have people who love you."

His hands didn't move, but it was Stephen who answered. "Well, I do, at least," he said distantly. "Who needs dogs? Audiences are just as good at mindless love. And they never try to give you dead squirrels."

"All of you do," repeated Charlene. "And, unlike your audience, we're not going to evaporate during the strike."

Stephen tilted his head, one eye peering between his thumb and fingers to squint at her. "Wha?"

A frisson ran down Charlene's spine. "The strike? The one with the writers. You spent all of yesterday at breakfast complaining about how greedy it would be if they didn't back down. Well, they didn't."

"I know that," said Stephen impatiently. "But what does it have to do with my audience? I'm not a writer. I'm not going anywhere."

Charlene clamped down on the urge to run far, far away. Someone had to tell him. "Stephen, without the writers, your show's going off the air. Jon's too. Everyone in late-night is going into reruns."

There was no reading the expression on Stephen's face, even as his hands fell away, but if looks could drill then Charlene would have had two holes bored straight through her. "How long?"

"We don't know. Maybe weeks. Maybe months. However long it takes for them to get a contract that's fair."

"'Fair'?" Stephen slammed both palms down on the card table, rattling its flimsy legs and sending an avalanche of socks tumbling to the floor, and drew himself up like a skyscraper crumbling in reverse. "It isn't fair for them to sabotage my show!"

"Stephen—"

"Just because some lazy union workers don't want to put in a respectable ten hours a day doesn't mean the rest of us should have to suffer!"

"Ste—"

"I can't go off the air! I can't disappear!" cried Stephen, taking an unsteady and slightly hysterical step towards her, his focus somewhere in the distance. "I'm a public figure, I'm a media sensation, I have two Peabody awards! People would notice if I disappeared!"

"That's the point!" exclaimed Charlene. "People will notice that you're gone, they'll complain to the networks, it'll pressure them to patch it up with the writers, Stephen, breathe!"

As both Colberts tried to catch some air, Stephen's features twisted through expressions too fast and fragmented for Charlene to keep up with: fury, terror, confusion, anguish, and a stalled blankness. As if the memories and emotions he was trying to load were so high-resolution that they needed to pause for buffering.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, catching his breath after a blank spot. "I'm sorry, I—"

With a grimace of panic, he vaulted himself out into the hall.

◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊

Jon would fix this.

As straws went, it was a fine one to grasp, but in the absence of anything hardier Stephen clung to it with all his strength. There was always something Jon could do, even where the full might of the Nation fell short. Some string he could pull, some lawyer he could call—what was the point of having all those Emmies if you couldn't throw their weight around?

The rain pouring against the windows washed out any subtler sounds, but there was a light flickering in the den, and Stephen sprinted for it. Two lights, as it turned out: a ball game low on the television, some blog on Jon's laptop, while Jon with his back to Stephen tracked both, obviously without enough attention left over to notice that George's bouncy seat had stopped bouncing.

"Jon!" exclaimed Stephen, making a beeline for his son, juggling protectiveness and indignation. Keep busy. Don't stop, and nothing will catch up. "Say it's not true, Jon! Here you go, baby boy." He knelt by the seat and jiggled its frame, making the dangling plastic stars and planets bounce enticingly. "Isn't that better? That's right. Jon, you can't let the shows go on s—"

He stopped.

Over the padded arch that held up a swaying plastic moon, a gel-blue ice pack was lowered to reveal Jon's face ascendant, newly marred by a shining purple bruise high on the left cheek.

"Slow down, Stephen," urged Jon softly, shifting the ice to his temple. "Are you talking about the strike? Because it's on. Nothing to do now except wait."

"Jon..." How long? What are we supposed to do until then? What are they going to put on the air while we're gone? How can I be so unimportant that they would just cut me loose? "...was that me?"

"What, this?" Gesturing to the bruise, Jon winced. "Yeah. One of you, at least. But it sounded like you."

Stephen gripped the edge of the bouncy seat for support, discovered the inherent flaw in this idea, and sank down to brace himself against the carpet. There was a deathly calm in Jon's voice that he couldn't recognize, much less understand—

"I don't suppose you deserved it?" he said weakly.

Jon's eyes fell briefly closed in what might have been agony or exhaustion. "No," he murmured. "Just like you never deserved it. Not from O'Reilly or anyone else."

The feeling in Stephen's hand kicked back to life all at once: knuckles stinging, palm throbbing.

"You seemed pretty out of it at the time," continued Jon. "Do you feel up to talking yet?"

No. Not yet. Not now. Not ever. "Of course. I'm not weak, Jon."

After looking him up and down with that relentlessly calm and level gaze, Jon nodded, beckoning Stephen up to his level. He closed his laptop and fumbled for the remote while Stephen gathered himself and stumbled over to sit on one end of the couch; the television winked off just as he sank into the patterned blue fabric. It felt much too large and empty for one person, but Jon was firmly settled in the armchair, with a regal weariness that Stephen didn't dare challenge.

"What do you want me to say?" Stephen whispered.

"Just listen for a minute," said Jon, voice low. "Do you remember when I told you I wouldn't humor you about important things? That if you really crossed my lines, I would let you know? Well, this is it. Physical violence is more than I can deal with."

Stephen's vision began to go swimmy—

Two Jons sat before him: the wronged beloved, deserving of all his penance and then some; and the faithless traitor, promising to be his salvation only to vanish when Stephen needed him most.

"How dare you?" he hissed at the traitor. "I trusted you! You tempt me and lie to me and string me along, you walk me right up to the edge and I let you—over and over!—because you swore you'd hold my hand! Where do you get the balls to push me over and then abandon me while I'm falling? Please don't abandon me," he added, choking, driven to desperation by the pain in his beloved's eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Let me make it up to you—please—I'll do anything, whatever you want, whatever it takes, please, just don't leave!"

"I can't parent you, Stephen!" burst out Jon. "I can't shelter you from everything, and I can't be the one in charge of punishing you, and I definitely can't hold you back when one of you is throwing a tantrum. I'll support you wherever I can—you know that. But you need to work out some basic internal ability to take care of yourselves."

Stephen's heart soared. Self-control. He had been good at that once. Hadn't he?

"Which is why you need to start talking to a therapist."

Stephen stopped breathing.

◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊

After a few frozen heartbeats Stephen collapsed onto the floor—fallen or fainted, Jon thought wildly—but no, he had thrown himself prostrate with the fervency of a worshiper at an altar. "Please," he sobbed, grasping at Jon's ankles, "please, no. Not that. Please, don't make us, we can't—!"

"All of you, stop!" Pushing away Stephen's begging hands, Jon knelt to meet him/them, trying to get a grip on anything that would hold him steady. All of this was blocked from George's view by the chair, but there was no telling how much the baby could overhear before being set off. "I'm not gonna demand anything you can't handle, okay? You don't need to come up with some kind of miraculous turnaround. Just start making the effort. That's all I ask."

"Ask something else!" cried Stephen, clutching at his shirt. "Anything else. Anything. We'll be whoever you want us to be, we'll take any punishment and never complain, we won't ask you for anything ever again, but please, please, not that!"

"Listen to yourselves!" exclaimed Jon, forcing the other man's drawn and teary face upward. "How can you promise something like that? After everything you've been through—if I'm so important that you'll risk it all again—what could possibly happen in therapy that's worse?"

Now Stephen was gasping too hard to answer, quaking with breathless sobs, pupils dilated so far that his irises were thin brown rings.

"'Could'?" he echoed at last, dry as a cracked desert riverbed.

"...'did'?" guessed Jon.

◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊

Fresh tears welled behind Stephen's lenses.

"You've gone before," realized Jon: blurred and washed-out, all low tones and muddy greys.

Had he? Someone had gone. Didn't mean it was him. "Last year..."

"Oh," breathed Jon. "You went with Lorraine."

"Said she would divorce me if I didn't go," choked Stephen. "So we—but she did—and the counselor testified—sided with her on everything—"

"Oh, Stephen—"

"—which is how she got the kids!" Stephen's voice was a hair's breadth away from a shriek. "I thought I would be okay with George instead, but they're still missing, it still hurts—I can't go through that again! Don't even have the right to see them—like she thinks I'll hurt them—sure, I could be a little strict, but I would never—Jon, you know I would never—!"

Chest tight, gasping for air, he searched Jon's eyes for confirmation, reassurance, soothing.

Jon's silence was deafening. The bruise spoke for itself.

A wail of pure despair soared forth and crescendoed through the room.

For a moment, Stephen was convinced it was his—

The fingers digging into Jon's shirt twisted, Stephen's face curling into a snarl. "Why didn't you tell me he was here?" he demanded, over the baby's anguished sobbing.

Shock wiped everything else from Jon's features. "Stephen. You played with him when you came in. Don't you remember?"

◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊

Without so much as the space of a breath to sift them, Jon's thoughts crowded together, tumbling and overlapping and collapsing in on each other.

Stephen's were unreadable. Ashen, his face registered fractured glimpses of emotion before running up against a fractured blankness. As if his emotions were a record that kept clicking to a stop, screeching backwards, and slamming through the same few chords over and over.

"I can't do this," he whispered.

Scrambling out of Jon's grip, he bolted: past the chairs, past George, with pounding footsteps into the hall.

◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊

Stephen flew past Charlene without looking at her. A burst of rain echoed down the hall, drowned only by the crying baby before it cut off with a slam.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught the motion of Jon nearly vaulting himself through the door, catching himself just in time. She met his panicked look with her own (How much did you hear?—Enough), waved down the hall as he gestured back into the den, and blurted "Will you get him?" at the same time as Jon stammered "Can you take him?"

Jon swallowed. Charlene nodded. One or both of them stepped forward and pulled the other into a fierce hug: mutual anchors in the midst of the storm.

"I'm so glad you're here," gasped Jon.

"It's okay," breathed Charlene, not realizing how true it was until she heard it. "I'm not going anywhere."

◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊

He was halfway down the front path, rain cold on his face and feet splashing through puddles, before he fell too short of breath to run any longer.

I can't do this.

Nothing felt solid anymore, least of all himself. He had been blown apart and remolded half a dozen times in the past half hour, was teetering on fragile foundations and papered-together fissures; the downpour soaked through him.

God doesn't want me. Nation doesn't need me. Lorraine can't stand me. Kids won't see me. Pets die on me. Charlene might leave me. I spent all this time trying to protect Jon, and now...!

Among the shattered fragments of himself he scrambled for something, anything, to lean on—

"You have to protect the baby," hissed Sweetness. "No matter what."

What if he couldn't? What if he was too sick to raise a baby right? What if George would be better off without a father like him?

"Then leave!"

Sweetness' voice had shaded into another: like Stephen's, as if heard from somewhere far away.

"You're not good enough. You'll never be good enough! They'd all be better off without you! Give up—go away—disappear—"

"STEPHEN COLBERT, DON'T YOU DO IT, BOY!"

◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊

The light from the doorway poured out over the front porch, glittering off of the raindrops, streaming down the path.

Jon could just make out Stephen's feet at the edge of his shadow.

"Don't do it!" he repeated, shouting into the downpour. "Not after you've kicked and screamed and clawed and fought to make it this far! You had to rip your soul into pieces to get through everything that's happened to you, but you did! You survived! So don't you dare leave us now!"

"What do you care?" demanded whoever was out front. "You don't love him! You'll throw him away if he doesn't change!"

"Love doesn't mean you never get to set limits!" countered Jon. "This isn't about punishing him for having the wrong kind of feelings, or forcing him to become something he's not. Can't you see that it's better for everyone if he can cope without hitting people? Better for him. Better for all of you. Better for George!"

The other man turned back toward him in a slow, stumbling circle. "Don't talk about the baby. He hasn't hurt the baby!"

"But one day the baby is going to grow up!"

A flash of white: Sweetness had bared Stephen's teeth.

"Kids trigger him! Isn't that right?" When Sweetness didn't deny it, Jon forged on. "Especially boys. Being around my son makes him anxious at the best of times. His oldest wasn't even in the building, and still triggered him hard enough to sock me over it! George is little enough that you can convince yourself he's perfect, but what do you think is going to happen when he gets old enough to make messes? Or draw all over the walls? Or say the word 'no'?"

There was a long and rainy pause before the answer finally came. "You think I'll hurt him. Then how can you want me around?"

"Stephen," breathed Jon, weak-kneed with relief. "Stephen, if I thought it was inevitable, I wouldn't want you going to therapy. When George needed you to know how to warm a bottle, or change a diaper, you learned. Now he's gonna need you to have coping skills. You can learn those too."

"What if I can't?"

"You can! It'll take more time and effort, but I know you can do it. I don't buy for a second that you're unfixable!"

A laugh, edged with hysteria. "What if there's no me to fix?"

Jon squinted into the gloom, as if that might help him understand.

◊ · § · ◊ · § · ◊

The earth should have moved. Lightning should have flashed; mountains should have crumbled; the sky should have torn apart at its seams. A revelation like this deserved to be heralded.

"I'm not real, Jon!" cried Stephen, and only the sudden lightness of a pretense abandoned told him it was true.

"I'm a shell," he continued, weights falling from his heart with every word. "A chocolatey coating of truthiness around a hollow center. Candy and air! I'm not the original Stephen—I never was—can barely even be myself five minutes in a row anymore! How can I expect George to count on me when there's no me here to count on? How can you love me now that you know—"

"I already knew!"

The world blurred as it spun on its axis, hurtling alone through the void.

"I know you're not the original," continued Jon. "Figured it out a while ago. About five minutes before I realized that it doesn't matter which of you came first, or how you got here, or why. You're different. That's all it is! It doesn't make you worth any less. It doesn't mean you can't be a good father!"

"How can you be sure?"

"I have faith!"

Stephen quaked with a sob of confusion and cold.

"You can do this," repeated Jon, a dim silhouette haloed in gold. "I have faith in you, Stephen. You can do this. Say it with me now."

"I can—" Stephen choked, teeth chattering. "Will this help? Will it be true if I say it enough?"

"It's already true. We're just saying it to help you believe it. You can do this."

"I—I can do this."

"I believe in you."

"You believe in...m-me. In me."

"You're real."

"I'm...." Sniffles; more shivering. "I'm real."

"You're real, Stephen, and I love you!"

"I—I'm—!"

"I can't hear you!"

"—I'm real!" I shouted, the earth wet and squelchy but solid against my feet. "I'm real, and I'm your Stephen, and I love you!"

"Then, Stephen," exclaimed my Jon, holding open his arms, "come here!"

—and we were stumbling across the grass, reaching the foot of the porch stairs before we couldn't manage another step.

"Come up here," repeated Jon, looming large in my vision as he held out a hand.

"I can't!" I cried. "I'm too afraid!"

"Just come up! It's easy! Stephen, my Stephen, what are you afraid of?"

"Jon," I said helplessly, looking down at the sorry state we had let ourselves fall into, "I'll get you wet!"

With a burst of laughter like a sunrise, Jon shook his head and stepped out into the rain.

Fake News: State of Grace, chapter 34

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