Chapter Text
“Not sure what you expected to happen, but you didn’t lock your door. So. I’m coming in.” Joan stood in the doorway to JFK’s room. “The stupid ’No girls allowed sign’ doesn’t deter me”
Joan glared into the dark room, her eyes slowly adjusting. She made out a small silhouette balled up on JFK’s bed. It was Jack. He had curled up onto his unmade bed, clenching his eyes shut.
The room was dim with only the cloudy light from outside illuminating the space through the windows.
She’d only been in his room once before. It felt different without JFK loudly blabbing on and on about how exactly they should slander Lincoln while they made the smear campaign for the student election together. They barely got the video complete, between JFK being obnoxiously distracting with his endless ideas and Joan trying to film and edit the thing with him. But the end result was honestly great. And effective. She hated admitting it then, but they were a good team. Odd. But good.
The memory made Joan grin sentimentally.
If only that Joan could see her now, 20 years later and yet barely older than she was then, begging JFK to talk to her instead of begging him to shut up.
Joan felt a pang looking at Jack holding himself together, cocooned into a lonely ball on his bed. Jack looked so sad and… small. He looked like a totally different person: an unrecognizable husk of his former self.
Joan padded across the carpet and crouched down next to JFK’s face. She watched his eyes flicker under his lids and his eyes pinch tighter as she approached.
She set her arm on his bed. Her hand patted the sheet JFK rested on.
“Seriously Jack? I know you’re awake. C'mon, please talk with me”
No reaction.
Joan rolled her eyes and gently slid her hand up to his face. His skin was clammy and cold. She traced up to his eye and rested on his temple, setting her thumb on his lower lid and her index on his upper. He didn’t flinch.
Joan carefully opened his watery eye with her finger tips, exposing his grey-green iris and reddened sclera. It angled itself away from her as she held his lids open.
“Hey. C'mon.”
He driftily glanced around before settling on Joan. Joan looked into him expectantly, raising her brows.
JFK rolled over with a growl and turned imself away, causing Joan’s arm to flop down onto the now-vacant mattress. Joan sighed frustratedly, resting her chin on the edge of the bed. Great. Now he was out of arm's reach. Again.
Hold on.
Joan slowly stood up. Her heart raced as she studied the open spot next to him.
Joan took a deep breath to steady herself.
“Dammit”
She never ever imagined herself climbing into any bed with JFK, let alone HIS bed(or the one at prom), but there she was, quietly cursing at herself as she did so.
The smaller clone stiffly settled onto JFK’s bed. She gently pulled the sheets and blankets up around Jack and herself, careful to not hurt his or her own bruised bodies. The soft blanket completely swallowed her up, surrounding her in Jack’s scent as it warmly draped over her form. She instinctively secured the blanket around herself, breathing it in and slowly exhaling.
Maybe it would be okay.
Joan relaxed into the residual warmth Jack had left behind on the side of the mattress she laid on. It almost felt like he was holding her again.
She looked up at JFK’s bent back and the nape of his mussed hair. Joan reached out warily to play with the wrinkly folds on his tshirt, pushing them around his back with her fingers, making different shapes.
She brought her fingertips up to his shoulder blade and gently drummed with them.
“What’s wrong.”
“…Nothin’…”
“Jack…”
There’s a pause as Joan waited on JFK to say anything. The wrinkles on the back of his shirt disappeared as JFK folded himself tighter. His voice was low.
“I don’t wanna bother ya with it all, really Jo. I uh just need a minute…” He trailed off into silence.
Joan stretched her stiff hand as flat as she could onto his back. “You don’t HAVE to share it with me, but… you’ve been acting so weird all week after the party and after classes and after the fight and in the car and in the kitchen today and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay and not, like, internalizing everything that’s been happening. Because, personally, from personal experience, that sucks” Joan traced down his spine. “I mean, that’s what I’m here for. To help you through this shit. As a friend… and as your sweet little ‘Joanie-Wonie’”.
Joan slipped her right hand under the hem of his shirt and teasingly pinched the side of his waist, earning her a ticklish squirm and a squeak from Jack. He snatched her hand with his left and rolled back around to face Joan, giving her a bitter glare. Joan smirked at him. But her smile quickly dissipated back into concern when JFK coldly released her hand and wrapped his arms over his chest, gripping his shoulders. His face faded back into blankness.
Shit.
“Um you-you really don’t have to say anything if you really don't want to. I just wanna be here for you if you need me, at least. I was just teasing. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.” Joan murmured softly, folding her arm back to herself. “I’m sorry.”
Not wanting to push him anymore, she pulled the blanket tighter around herself and closed her eyes, occasionally cracking them open to peek at Jack. He would look focused and then look at Joan and then back down. His finger and thumb rubbed his shirt hem nervously between them as he did.
Joan was content simply lying there with him, listening to his shallow breaths, as he thought things through the way he wanted.
She had almost fallen asleep when Jack's hushed voice drifted into the silence.
“How… Do you do what you do?”
“Hm?” Joan’s tired eyes peered open at him, quickly blinking out sleep to listen to him. JFK kept his eyes downturned, his lashes hiding his eyes.
“How are ya able to uh not feel pressured ta be like yer clone mother… I uh… always admired that ‘bout ya. I guess I never really figured it out fer myself…”
His voice trickled off.
Oh.
“Oh um I… I just stopped caring a couple years back. I chopped off my hair and then dyed it. Um… I stopped going to church everyday ‘cause I was tired of pretending like I wanted to be closer to some asshat god… I gave up on forcing myself into some crazy idea of myself that would be impossible to reach.” Joans eyes ducked and her voice fell. “To be honest I still… really haven’t um… shaken the pressure. It's stuck to me. To all of us. Forever. I mean what’re you supposed to feel, what’re you supposed to do when you’re raised to become a person that has already existed?!? You- you end up fucked up… The whole thing is fucked up.” Joan felt JFK’s eyes glance up at her downturned eyes and her shaking bottom lip. “Giving up is letting go and… and I guess I just haven’t… completely given up yet.” Joan’s voice cracked. She blinked the welling tears out of her eyes, hoping Jack wouldn’t see, and sniffed. “In the end, I just hope I’ll accept whoever I become. Because me becoming a perfect clone of Joan of Arc is just not gonna happen, no matter what me or anyone else might do.”
Joan watched out of her peripheral as JFK’s hand started unfolding shakily towards her. It paused, then curled back to his chest hesitantly. She looked up at him. His eyes squinted and his mouth flattened, wincing.
“It’s-it’s easier said than done,” Joan grumbled. “Getting rid of all that doesn’t happen overnight”
Jacks wince morphed into a distraught frown. His lower lip shook.
“But uh I dunno what ta do… If I did that I’d feel like I’m giving up on mys-“
“Jack, it’s not giving up on yourself if that self isn’t you. You're allowed to want to be like your clone father, but you can’t ever be him. And no one should ever expect you to be. Because, above all else, you” Joan tenderly placed her bandaged hand on Jack’s upper neck, cupping his jawline. He looked up at her with his heavy lidded eyes. “are your own person. You just… be you.”
Joan could feel his jaw shudder under her palm.
“Jo, but… you’re so much like your clone mother. And you uh don’t even try for it. How…?”
Joan grimaced. “That’s just the nature of Joan of Arc pulling through by itself. I don’t WANT to be like her. At all. And man I hate to admit it, but I do catch myself doing the things she would at the weirdest times-”
“Y’mean like when ya beat Lincoln out of er uh basketball team captain by dressin as a smokin hot guy?”
Joan looked back at JFK. His brow was quirked but his face was still sullen. The scuffed hand on his shoulder had now moved to cautiously graze the back of Joan’s on his neck.
“Yeah just like that”
“Hm” Jack hummed and looked focused again.
(Ins. more convo abt dissociation issues and fear of opening up and Joan’s anxiety)
Identity was an agonizing thing for JFK. Was the real JFK a good person? A bad one? Could people be grey? How subjective are those perspectives? He didn’t know why he was confused about who he was when his own blueprint was right in front of him. A macho womanizing stud that conquered the moon? He could stick to that. And he found that he loved that identity. But he always felt like he was lacking something.
Some… autonomy. Self direction.
But creating that required work and pulling dames was wayyy easier than self reflection for JFK.
From the instant he’d known he was a clone, he’d approached everything with a single question: ‘Would my clone father do this?’.
If he thought the real JFK would, then he’d do it.
If he thought he didn’t, then he didn’t.
Simple standard.
But then every waking minute started to be weighed on that scale. Jack became constricted to a tight set of self-imposed rules that soon turned into a social expectation around friends and classmates. And he was fine with that. JFK fit the mold set for him just right.
But something had cracked the mold
And Jack found that he had started to slowly drip out of it.