Jon continues to hate airports.
It’s not so much the airport itself. The Randy Newman Memorial Night Vale Airport is small but cheery, and the staff seems pleasant enough. No, the real trouble with airports is what they represent. They represent travel, over long distances. They represent separation and partings and the sense of being very far from home. He’d thought it would be better going on this trip than it had been when he left on his largely pointless journey around the world following Gertrude’s footsteps and came back with nothing but a new mark and Gerry’s page from Mary Keay’s book, because at least Tim and Martin and Charlie were with him, but there had still been the keen sense that there was something crucial he was leaving behind.
He has the same sensation now.
It isn’t crowded this time of day. There is only a single terminal with enough space for two passenger planes, one a day to a handful of destinations, and very few people even leave Night Vale, let alone come into it. Fortunately, that means there’s no one to witness this moment.
Esteban doesn’t seem particularly aware of what’s going on; Jon wonders how his fathers are going to explain to him why Charlie is going somewhere he can’t and why he won’t be back soon. He doesn’t really remember his own childhood, but he imagines he must have been quite bewildered the first time Carlos left and didn’t come back in the morning. For his part, Charlie is clinging to Martin’s hand in a way he hasn’t done in almost a year—Jon tries not to think about the fact that it’s the way he clung to him when the Primes brought him up to Yarmouth to visit Tim, still and near lifeless on his hospital bed. Martin is humming quietly, and Jon recognizes it as “The Leaving of Liverpool.” Tim seems sorry to be leaving, but nowhere near what Jon feels.
Carlos, too, has a haunted, almost lost look in his eyes, which he’s pretending to hide as he studies the departure board. It’s nothing fancy. In point of fact, Jon gets the impression it hasn’t changed in any way, shape, or form in years; it’s not even electronic. It’s a simple marquee sign like you would see outside a theater or a concert hall, neatly arranged, one side listing arrivals and one side listing departures. Their arrival from Los Angeles is still listed; according to the departures board, the plane heading to Los Angeles departs at quarter to seven at night, but they aren’t flying back through LAX. He doesn’t really understand how airlines decide the most efficient routes to and from various locations, or why you don’t simply retrace your steps in reverse necessarily, but the flight they’ll be taking home leaves Night Vale and goes to New York City, where they will have around five hours, enough time to get through Customs and possibly get something to eat, before their flight leaves for London.
If all goes well, they will be home by lunchtime on Sunday. The Primes will have them over for lunch, or possibly dinner, and Sasha and Basira and Melanie and Georgie will most likely be there as well, and they’ll ask about the trip and what they experienced and pretend not to be worried about Tim or notice there’s anything to worry about. Which maybe there isn’t, Jon thinks, stealing a glance at Tim, who’s over at the ticket counter checking them in. He looks…fine. Better than. He certainly sounded fine when he was on the radio show yesterday, and he’s been almost like his old self—his pre-Unknowing self, the self that insisted on taking care of them after Prentiss attacked and comforted Martin through the worst of his panic over the worms—in the last couple of days.
On the other hand, that may or may not be a good thing.
“You’ll call us when you land, won’t you?” Carlos says, turning to face Jon. Anxiety shines in his eyes, which are the same shade of brown as Jon’s—the shade the Keeper called a warm, guileless brown in his statement—and carry the same weight of anxiety that his often do. “In New York and in London. And don’t worry about the time. Remember, we are quite a bit earlier out on this side of the country than the East Coast, certainly than the UK, and even if it wasn’t, time is—”
“I know. Time is weird,” Jon completes, managing a small smile. “We’ll call. I promise. Ah, we should be to New York City in about five hours, and then five hours to wait, and then to London about seven hours after that, so it might be a bit early in the morning…”
“Jonny, I literally could not care less how early or late it is,” Carlos interrupts him. “I want to know you arrived safely. And I’m going to want to hear your voice again. I missed you before I saw you again, but it was the kind of missing that’s easy to put out of your mind because it’s been a part of your life for so long. Now I’ve been able to see you again, so the kind of missing now is going to be the kind of missing where you know what you’re missing.”
Jon swallows against the lump in his throat. He tries to come up with something to say in response, but words fail him. Instead, he simply steps forward and holds out his arms for a hug. Carlos, who like Jon is not a hugger and sometimes does not want physical contact, responds instantly and wraps him up in a tight bear hug.
In that moment, Jon is four years old again, lost and bewildered and not understanding why his mummy hasn’t come home or why the grandmother he hasn’t seen since Papa’s funeral is packing all of his things or what the big box is for, and his older and wiser cousin has come to him and squished him into a tight hug and promised him that they’ll never, ever have to be alone again. And the thing is that they both believed it at the time, they both thought they would always have each other, but neither of them were counting on his father’s mother both resenting him for the burden being placed upon her and refusing to allow him to be separated from her by an ocean. They didn’t know that Rebecca Robles, née Espinosa, would be denied the custody of her only sister’s only son because she was of no fixed address and lived in the United States, and that she wouldn’t really fight that because one child was hard enough to control at a dig site. And neither of them could have imagined at the time the course their lives would take, the strange, unhappy, lonely nature of their separate childhoods interrupted only by an occasional visit, a rare letter, and the thin thread of blood, stretching across an expanse of salt water and time.
But now he does know. They both do. And this hug feels a lot like that one, because they’re going to be separated again by water and sand and obligations, and who knows when they’ll see one another again?
“You’ll come back to visit again, won’t you?” Carlos asks. His voice is just a little pathetic, just a little pleading, and when he pulls back from the hug enough to look down at Jon, his eyes are just a little desperate and just a little sad. “Maybe next summer? Or for Blood—um, for Christmas, maybe.”
“We…” Jon bites his lip. The truth is that he’s not sure. He isn’t entirely certain how they found Night Vale to begin with; he tried several variants on searching before he was able to snag tickets, and there was some confusion at LAX before they were directed to the correct gate that makes him wonder if everyone at the airport was even aware this was a real destination, let alone an actual flight or a genuine ticket. Now that they’ve been, it might be easier…but then again, it might not. He struggles to figure out how to phrase it, then finally says, “Do we…belong here?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Charlie asks, looking up worriedly. “Are we not allowed to come back?”
“Charlie, no, of course you are,” Carlos assures him hastily. “It’s just…very difficult to find Night Vale sometimes. If you don’t know the way.”
“The planes do,” Charlie says. “Don’t they? They have to get here somehow.”
“Most of the time,” Tim says, rejoining the group with their tickets in hand. “We’ll be fine.”
Charlie looks up at Tim with the same expression he often gives Jon Prime—the one that says he knows if anyone knows the answer to his next question, it’s him. “Will we be able to come back and visit?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Carlos looks a little uneasy. Jon isn’t entirely sure why. “Finding Night Vale is…not always that simple. The city decides who belongs here and who doesn’t.”
“We’ll be fine.” Surprisingly, that comes from Martin, not from Tim. When everybody turns to look at him in surprise—even Cecil—he shrugs and gives them all a small smile. “We belong here. Maybe not forever, but we belong. And Night Vale knows it. I mean, when’s the last time you heard anyone shout ‘interlopers’ at us on the street?”
“I—” Jon stops and thinks, really thinks about it. They certainly heard it a lot the first day, pretty much every time they got out of the car to look at something; the only one who didn’t call them such was Erika, the angel who seemed to know Tim—they never did ask him about that. And he remembers everyone greeting them that way when they went to the lab on Tuesday, except for Nilanjana, who is from outside Night Vale too and has only just started not being called an interloper herself. But they didn’t hear it at all at Pine Cliff, or the diner in Cactus Park, and now that he thinks about it, when Carlos and Cecil convinced them to come to the Arby’s with them on Thursday to take their minds off worrying about Tim…and last night at the basketball game, not only did no one call them interlopers, Charlie got invited down to the court for the free throw contest like he was any other Night Vale resident.
“You’re right,” he says, surprised.
Tim smiles and claps Charlie on the shoulder—he’s wearing his new beanie, so he can’t ruffle his hair like normal. “We’ll definitely come back to visit. And you all will have to come visit us some time. I’d love to show you around the Institute next time you’re free. Besides, you have to see the Primes.”
“Yes.” Carlos’s smile is a bit wistful. “I would love to do that. We’ll have to see when Cecil can get time off from the station.”
“And maybe wait until Esteban is a little older,” Cecil adds. “I’d like him to be able to remember and appreciate the trip. But we’ll definitely take you up on that sometime.”
“There is no rule that says you can only come once,” Tim points out. “And you will always find your way back to your town.”
“True.” Cecil shifts Esteban to his hip and—to Jon’s surprise—reaches out to give Tim a hug. “Our time and space will match up again someday.”
“It’s been good meeting you.” Tim hugs Cecil back, catching Esteban up in the hug as well.
Cecil gives Martin a hug, too, although Carlos just shakes his and Tim’s hands, and then Cecil shakes Jon’s hand, seeming to understand he’s not up for any more hugs. Then it’s Charlie’s turn. He hugs Carlos and gets one in return, then hugs Cecil. Esteban lunges for him and, surprised, Charlie catches him. Jon gets a lump in his throat at the sight of the two of them hugging. Charlie’s quite a bit older in relation to Esteban than Carlos is to Jon, almost twice as big of a gap, but it’s obvious they’ve grown close.
Jon catches Carlos’s eye and manages a smile; Carlos gives him almost the exact same expression in reply. Yes, they definitely need to see one another again.
“We’ve got to go,” Martin says, reluctantly. “We need to get through security, and they’ll be calling for our plane to board soon.”
“Safe travels.” Carlos pulls Esteban away from Charlie—as gently as he can, but from the way Esteban’s face screws up, it’s not gentle enough. Jon tries not to think about the Keeper’s description of the look on Walt’s boy’s face when I pried mine away from him and said we had to go. It’s not the same, he tells himself. Not at all.
“We’ll call,” he promises. He smiles at his cousin and sings quietly, “He promised to bring me a fairing to please me…”
Carlos smiles back and joins in. “And then for a smile, oh, he said he would tease me…”
Esteban’s unhappy face melts away, and he lights up in delight as his papa and his cousin—uncle? Jon’s not sure, but Janice called him uncle and Charlie calls Carlos and Cecil the same so that’s probably what they should go with—sing the lilting little children’s song they used to sing while kicking their feet in time to the rhythm to make the swings go higher or while skipping down the paths at the park or, more commonly, when one of them woke up screaming from a nightmare they were afraid to even describe to the other and ended up clinging to each other and singing to push back the night and the fear. A teasing little song Jon’s own mother sang to him in place of scolding when he let go of her hand and wandered too far away, one that always brought him back.
One that always led him home.
They hug one final time. Jon places a quick kiss on Esteban’s forehead. And then he walks back to join his family and takes Charlie’s hand as the airport tannoy crackles to life. “Now boarding at Gate Two, flight 5648 to New York City, JFK International Airport. All passengers for Flight 5648 to JFK, please report to Gate Two at this time.”
“That’s us,” Martin says, unnecessarily.
They head down the concourse. Jon doesn’t let himself look back.
They show their tickets, board the plane, and situate themselves in their assigned seats. Jon and Tim take two seats, Charlie and Martin sitting behind them, and settle in. Jon is about to pull out his book to distract himself when Tim taps him on the shoulder and points out the window. He turns his head and discovers that he can see into the airport terminal, clear as day. And there, standing up against the window, are Cecil, Carlos, and Esteban. Carlos still has Esteban in his arms; Cecil has his arm around Carlos’s shoulders, pulling him close. As he watches, Carlos points at the plane, looking down at Esteban, then looks back up.
Jon waves. He isn’t sure if they can see him from where they are, but he can see them and that’s what’s important…no, they’re waving back to him, so they must see him. Or they’re just waving on the off chance he can see. Either way, he decides, it doesn’t matter. He keeps waving until the airplane starts up and pulls away from the terminal, until it turns away from the airport to face the end of the runway and picks up speed and then finally, finally takes off, soaring over the twisted wreckage of the other planes that routinely crash in the Sand Wastes and heading back east, back towards New York.
Back towards home.
He settles back in his seat with a sigh, glancing down at the cover of his book, but he doesn’t open it, not yet. Instead he looks up at Tim and manages a smile. Tim seems to understand, though, because he drapes his arm over Jon’s shoulders and pulls him close. Jon leans his head on Tim’s shoulder, needing the warmth, needing the comfort. They may be going home, but he has still left a part of himself behind.
“Tim?” Charlie says from behind them.
“Yeah, buddy?” Tim twists himself around to peer through the gap between the seats without actually letting go of Jon or getting up. Jon stays in the position he was already in.
“You weren’t just saying that, right? We will actually go back and see them?”
Jon does look up at Tim at that. He wants the answer to be yes, but…he also acknowledges, if only to himself, that it’s not really up to him. Something’s happened to Tim since the Unknowing, since his coma, and the final decision for a lot of things rests with him. Including and especially time spent away from the Institute. If he says no…
But the smile on Tim’s face goes a long way towards reassuring him that he won’t.
“Of course we will,” Tim says. “They’re family.”