It was so late, and yet Jacob couldn't sleep. He had his own room now—a bathroom in the midst of remodeling—so he didn't have to worry about disturbing anyone as he wrestled with himself. Merrick had tried bugging him an hour ago, but Nina had wisely dragged him away. She and Gloria could tell that he wanted to think on things, not that Jacob had the head to think of anything. Nina's little puppet light show was still buzzing in his head like an angry hornet, as were other things. The night was still, quiet. For perhaps the first time in the last month, Jacob had a chance to really think.
His first thoughts were, of course, of his Uncle Laramie. Even now, he still considered him his uncle, despite evidence to the contrary. Just who was Laramie, now that he thought about it. Well, he was the man that raised him for fourteen years for one thing. There wasn't a day in Jacob's life that Laramie hadn't been a part of it. It was a simple, easy to understand fact. But another fact, a fact that he had grappled with for many years, was that he was quite simply not his uncle. That opened an infinitely greater floodgate. If Laramie wasn't his uncle, then just who in the blazes was he? Life on the road isn't easy, and it's even harder when you're having to feed, clothe, and educate a child along the way. It was also pretty apparent he had ticked off some form of authority that put him on the road in the first place. So, why? Why did Laramie care for Jacob? Where was that origin story puppet show? Long gone, Jacob supposed, now that Laramie was no more. Nothing but more questions and mysteries for Jacob to try, and fail, to wrap his head around.
Then there was Judas Scarlett. Jacob had never told anyone, but he still remembered that very thinly veiled threat the casino man had dropped on him back at the Bazaar. It was obvious Judas was the Slumlord people had been gabbing about, and clearly he had decided there was to be beef between their houses, so to speak. It was also the Slumlord that stirred up the Lowtown thugs, and Jacob would wager his left foot he was responsible for the Lowtown Legion and their antics. But, if so, to what end? What was he getting out of the chaos sown, and why had he set his fangs against Jacob? Well, part of that had been Jacob's own fault, he figured. He had fought Blazer, which definitely would have put him on Scarlett's hitlist, but there was also the Bazaar brawl as well as the smackdown in the Carnation Cougar. Then there was throwing Andy literally half across the city, which had definitely turned a few heads.
This of course brought him to his third point. Why on earth did he care? Jacob had always followed one rule: never grow attached. He and his uncle had been on the road so long that Jacob had never been able to make a lasting relationship. No friends, no crushes, no neighbors: it was a lonely life, but it was a life Jacob had enjoyed. Frankly, there was security in such a lifestyle. You were more worried about where your next meal would come from or having enough gas in a leaky tank to make it to the next city than you ever would be wondering where the heck you came from. While Jacob always suspected, he never felt inclined to learn if Laramie truly was family or if he had somewhere else he truly belonged. Belonging meant hangups, and hangups meant complications. Jacob thrived on mediocrity, living in dismal conditions and enjoying the small kindnesses when they came. In short, simplicity was truly best.
But now, Jacob knew. He knew the truth, and, much as he hated to admit, he believed it. Oh sure, none of it made a lick of sense, but in light of everything that had happened he was hard pressed to call it a lie. After all, magic armor and floating glowing people tended to be a sign of insanity, and he had lived with a shrink long enough to know he was...completely crazy. But why? Why now? Laramie clearly had the Sterling Star since Jacob first came into his care, given to him by Jacob's own mother, and the Luminos could appear before whoever was within the Sterling Star's radius. So why did they wait so long to speak to him and drop all of this nonsense on his head. The sad part was that, no matter how much Jacob wanted to know, he refused to call them out and ask them. Asking questions led to answers, and the answers promised to be even more complicated than everything before. Complicated in a way that would destroy his desire for simplicity forever. It was a step he wasn't sure he was ready for.
But that wasn't the only complication. He thought of Howard, whose apartment and livelihood were wrecked just from Jacob spending the night there a short while. He thought of the faustian bargain Deborah had made on his behalf, and all pretty much for nothing because Laramie was dead. Last, and certainly not least, was Lance, whom opened his home to a total stranger for nothing, and he kept doing that. Porque puedo was a powerful sentiment, Jacob realized, especially since it had brought himself into action. Then there was Midtown as whole. Granted, Jacob hadn't experienced too much of it despite living in it for the better part of a month, and yet he felt so...intrigued. Despite their part of the city all but falling down around their ears, the people of Midtown quickly rallied to one another, helping where they could and just being friendly. The fact that no one, not a single soul, had reported Lance for living alone in an old abandoned building and instead gave him a steady supply of work to pay for his necessities spoke volumes. While there was certainly a question of intelligence, there wasn't a doubt about heart. Jacob wondered how he fit into the whole thing, and he wondered if he actually did.
Just then, there was a soft knock at the door. Jacob, who had been lying on his cot sideways with his feet on the floor, sat up straight.
"Uh...come in?" he called out.
The door opened a crack, and in stepped Howard. His presence shocked Jacob, as the doctor didn't usually stay in Paradiso past seven in the evening.
"Heya, doc." Jacob said, his head tilted. "I thought you'd been long gone by now. Everything alright?"
"You tell me," Howard said as he took a seat next to Jacob. "I heard you had something of a conniption earlier today. Are you alright?"
Jacob tried hard to hide his blush, though his stomach churned all the same.
"Alright is for people that don't have magical star pendants with three wisecracking homewreckers inside." he verbalized sardonically. "I just...wasn't impressed by the puppet show. That's all."
Howard hummed a tune, fixing Jacob with a more curious eye.
"It was Nina's most popular story to date." he observed. "Wanna talk about it?"
"Not particularly." Jacob huffed.
Howard then shrugged.
"Ok then." he said.
He got up, and he started back for the door. Jacob watched him go, suddenly slack jawed, and he got to his feet.
"Wait a minute! That's it? You barge in, and then you just walk out?"
Howard stopped short, quickly putting away a smug grin before looking back.
"Why not? You clearly don't want to talk, so there's no need for me to be there?"
He let the mask slip just a bit as his lip curled up in one corner.
"Unless, of course, you do have something on your mind?"
Jacob bit his lip, suddenly feeling like he had stepped on a bear trap. He opened his mouth to offer a rebuttal of some kind, but all that came out was air and a groan. Howard's smile parted in full, and he made a motion for Jacob to follow. Reluctantly, Jacob arose from his cot and followed the man. They made their way up a flight of stairs towards the roof of the building. Lance had already been in the process of turning it into a small observatory complete with globes, some glow in the dark star decorations, and a few telescopes in various states of disrepair pointing towards the sky. Howard, however, ignored all of this, making for a pair of lawn chairs that were situated on the far side of the roof. He took a seat, and he motioned for Jacob to do the same. Jacob wordlessly obliged, and the two of them sat in silence for a long while.
Well, silence was hardly the word for it. Even now, there were sirens going off in the distances, a cacophony of horns from various cars driving in the night, and of course the usual dirge which came from Uptown which bled into the streets of Midtown. Jacob could even hear a foghorn from some passing ship a distance away from the pier. Many were sleeping, but the city was far from silent. Howard had his eyes closed, Jacob noticed, and he appeared to be soaking up the noise with a contented look on his face.
"Ah, good ol' white noise." he sighed. "I tried living in the country, once, but it was far too quiet. I really don't know living without the constant beat of the heart of a city."
Jacob studied Howard curiously, unsure of the man's motives. It's not that he felt Howard was a harmful person, the exact opposite actually, but he wasn't sure what Howard was planning with this late night rendezvous. The man at last opened his eyes, and he looked to Jacob quizzically.
"So?" he asked, letting the word hang in the air.
Jacob twisted his mouth to one side, and he tilted his head back to look at the sky. Jacob typically preferred his time on the road as opposed to when he and Laramie stayed in a city. Uptown alone made it too bright to see the stars, which only made Jacob feel more isolated and cornered.
"It's...." he started, but he couldn't find the words to speak.
How could he explain what he was feeling? He didn't understand it himself. He didn't know where to start or how to process anything that had happened for the last month, and it was only compounded by recent revelations. Howard was patient, but it didn't take him long to figure out the problem. He nonetheless remained silent, waiting for Jacob to speak.
"It's all...so much." Jacob finally said. "Too much. I mean...I don't know!"
"Just start small." Howard encouraged. "We've got all night. Or, rather, we have all the time we need. You don't have to talk about everything in this small sitting. I'm certainly not going anywhere far away anytime soon."
"But that's part of it!" Jacob snapped, though he bit his tongue at his own vice. "I mean...you, Lance, the detective, those three pains in my neck..."
Jacob reclined in his chair, looking utterly exhausted yet perfectly wide awake.
"I miss him. I miss us. When it was just me and Laramie against the entire world. It wasn't an easy life, but it was a life I understood. A life that made me happy. I didn't have to question anything because there was nothing I needed to know beyond the doors of our van. My entire existence was divined by the distance it took to go from one city to the next with no other contrivances or worries."
Howard offered a nod, but he said nothing.
"But now," Jacob went on, lifting up the Sterling Star from his neck, "now...I have a past. A past I never wanted to think about in the first place. A past that made my simple life complicated. It was so easy just having Uncle Laramie as my only family. I didn't need anything else, because he was all I ever had. But now, I have a grandma, and what I'm going to guess are a great uncle and great aunt, as well as parents that apparently loved me but are now dead."
He clapped a hand over his face and gave an aggravated cry.
"I have dead parents! AGH!"
"Woah, now, easy!" Howard exclaimed, reaching out and touching the boy's shoulder. "No need to get episodic. Breath, Jacob. In through the nose, out the mouth. Like me."
Howard breathed in deeply, and then he let it out slowly. Jacob, though dubious at first, slowly breathed in a deep gulp of air, and he likewise let it out again. It flushed his chest coolly, and he felt his mind and heart settle into a more stable rhythm. Howard gave him a moment to settle, and then he sat up straighter.
"Jacob," he said in an even tone, "forgive me for being presumptuous, but let me ask you a question. This isn't so much about your past as it is your future, isn't it?"
Jacob looked at him. Howard's words weren't condescending so much as perplexing. Of course he was panicking about his past, because it made absolutely no sense. But, now that he really thought about it, the more the dots seemed to connect in a different way. To something else he had been forcing to the back of his brain, lest he entertain its implications in full. He looked to the stars again, as though asking them for guidance.
"Uncle Laramie had a plan." he said softly. "He was working on some sort of doodad, and he kept it in this big trunk. He had it for as long as I could remember, and he said it had something to do with his old college days. His magnum opus. Supposedly, when he finished it, we'd be on easy street, or so he'd say. I admittedly never gave it much thought. I'd read enough TV Tropes to know what a bungling inventor was, though I'd never say it to his face."
"But in terms of the future?" Howard pressed.
"I would leave it to him." Jacob confessed. "I mean, what did I have to think of? I knew I didn't have a birth certificate, or at least I had never seen it. I didn't go to school, though I'd like to think I'm smarter than the average Tom, Dick, and Larry. I never stayed in a town to make any sort of lasting relationship."
He gave a dry laugh, leaning forward as he curled up his legs and rested his palms on his knees.
"Kinda pathetic, huh?"
Howard twisted his mouth thoughtfully, and he shook his head.
"No, I wouldn't say that. Actually, you're in a position of great potential."
Jacob wheeled on him, his jaw slack and his brow raised.
"I be your pardon, doc?"
"Let me explain." Howard said. "You are, what I like to call, a blank slate. I've treated several like you, particularly homeless teens who lost their parents to tragedy."
Jacob's brow quirked just an inch higher.
"Let me finish, there will be a point." Howard assured. "Usually, when a person is told they have potential or a bright future, it's usually attributed by sizable wealth or some form of academic achievement that grants them prestige. While you're far from an idiot, as you yourself observed, you've other skills I believe are worthy of notice. Case in point, your powers."
He pointed at the Sterling Star.
"From the moment you first called to your armor, you've done some incredible things. You've saved lives at the Bazaar, you took on Lowtown's worst and most vile, you hurled a grown man several miles through the air after saving my and Lance's life, and you've single-handedly laid down the law like you were John Wayne on the frontier. Granted, that last part is a bit pathetic on the local police's part, but my point still stands."
Jacob scoffed at that.
"So what? My future is that I'm going to be some sort of superhero out of the comics?"
"Way I see it, that's up to you. Nobody asked you to start helping people. Certainly not Lance who has only been concerned with reopening Paradiso. Yet, you rushed into a fire to save a small boy you didn't know, and that action led to folks down on their luck coming here. Heck, you all but begged them to stay. You had no reason, no cause to ask any of these folks to be here. In fact, it's to your detriment given that the police are still after you and you have a price on your head. You have even less reason to be fighting off the serpent society, or whatever those miscreants call themselves, and yet you have risked your neck each and every day this last week. Why is that, I do wonder?"
There wasn't a doubt in Jacob's mind that the man already knew the answer. As for Jacob himself, he hadn't the first clue. Or, rather, he didn't think he knew. These last several days had been running together to him, so he had thought he was just going with the motions. After all, the Serpents were going on their rampage because he had beaten up their boss. Then again, Jacob supposed he didn't have to beat up Andy. Then again, by that logic, he didn't have to be at the Carnation Cougar, which put him under the radar of Lowtown's thugs in the first place. Even more, he didn't have to be at the Bazaar where he first put on his armor. But before any of that, he didn't have to stay at Paradiso with Lance, where he duked it out with Blazer and thus put him onto the path he now found himself in. At any point, he could have, and perhaps should have, run away. Nobody could have or would have stopped him. Sure, he'd likely have met the Luminos regardless, but they were just along for the ride and hadn't had much agency beyond protecting him, results may vary. So, Jacob wondered to himself, why had he done all of those things? He puzzled, and he puzzled, and slowly the answer bubbled to the surface of his mind. It was an odd answer, but it was the right one all the same. An answer he had been given by another.
"Because I can." he said softly.
The ends of Howard's mouth twisted up in a victorious grin, and he leaned forward expectantly for Jacob's explanation.
"I don't like bullies." Jacob went on. "I don't like when people look down on others. My uncle and I, we had our fill of it. I knew when people would look at me and then shoot my uncle a sneer, thinking he wasn't doing enough to take care of me when I knew he was doing his best. Then I saw Lance...gosh, that kid really gets into your head. He's got it worse than me by far, and yet he's had my back from the beginning. The truth: I wanna be him when I grow up."
Howard tried to hide a snicker, earning him a side eye from Jacob.
"You think I joke, but it's the truth. He's so strong, and he's literally half my age. He never asks for anything, but he's always ready to do what he can because he can."
"Porque Puedo." Howard cited.
"Something like that." Jacob muttered. "I guess, what I'm trying to say is, I want to do what I can. I don't know what I can do, or even if I'm doing the right thing, but I know if I just hung around, or, worse yet, tried to run away from everything, I'd feel horrible. Like I'd be letting down good people. People I...that I..."
"That you care about," Howard finished. "It's an interesting feeling, isn't it? The idea that your inner circle is no longer limited to one, but many."
He reached over, and he lightly took the boy by the shoulder.
"Jacob, you have nothing to be afraid of. Whatever you wish to do, whoever you choose to become, you don't have to face it all alone. You have me, Deborah, Lance, and of course your Lumino friends."
"Still not sure I call them friends yet." Jacob said bluntly, and Howard noticed a melancholic glow from the Sterling Star. "But," Jacob went on, "I think I see your point, Doc, and don't think I ain't grateful. You, the detective, Lance, you all have gone to bat for me time and again, and I'll never be able to repay you."
Howard genuinely laughed at that.
"That's the easy part, my boy. You don't have to. We're all in this together, and none of us would have it any other way."
Having said his part, Howard arose from his chair, and he turned towards the door.
"You coming?" he asked.
Jacob thought a moment, and then he shook his head.
"I think I'm gonna stay out here for a little longer. Think over a few more things."
Howard gave an understanding nod, and he bade his young man good night. Jacob leaned back again into his chair, looking out at the stars above. He reached to the Sterling Star, and he held it up in his hand. It shimmered in the evening with an ethereal light, a spectral flame seeming to dance in the citrine center. Did his father look upon it once like this, Jacob wondered. The idea of just who his father apparently was begged even more questions. Still, the more he thought of it, the more he wondered if it actually mattered. The past was over and gone, and nothing but memories remained. All that mattered was the future, and, for better or for worse, he had plainly chosen what that future was as his own words repeated in his head.
I am the storm you can't weather. The shield that you shall never break. I am Midtown's guardian and Lance's friend. I...AM...MIDKNIGHT!
He found himself rolling his eyes at the memory.
"Good grief, talk about your cliches."
He had a good laugh at that, but soon that laugh turned into a yawn. The Sterling Star fell from his grip, and soon he was dozing dreamlessly as the gentle rhythm of the city cast its spell over him. As he slept, a slight thump began to form in his chest. It was a tiny spark flickering to life, its purpose still unknown. But it would certainly be needed, for a dark shape began to move away from Paradiso's loading area in the back. In its possession was a precious cargo, and amidst the din of the city came the tiniest of pleas.
"Help me."