[Founders] - Sad Clown Hours

Joel has been uncharacteristically pacing for the last half hour in relative silence. Every attempt Dell had made to communicate, or joke, or comfort had gone largely unnoticed and unresponded, to the point of him going for back-up. Of course, the people who would’ve made the biggest difference *caused* this mess in the first place, so that meant that he had no choice but to drag Jean into the shitshow and hope for the best.

“He’s in here,” Dell starts, upnodding to Boardroom 4. “--he’s just pacing. If we don’t stop him soon he’s going to wear a line right through the floor.” It’s a joke that fails because of the concern in Dell’s voice. Jean wouldn’t have laughed even if the delivery had been better. Dell knows this.
	“Okay. I’m going in.” And with that, Jean splits away from the remaining Seatholder and pushes their way into the boardroom. Dell had put on music before he left but had been afraid of seeming like an ass for the songs he was playing, so it was just some local radio station. There was currently a commercial playing for a local creamery. Joel was looping back from the Project Screen towards the empty table at the rear of the room. He doesn’t seem to notice Jean, or if he does he’s intentionally choosing to ignore them. Either way, Jean doesn’t appreciate being snubbed.

“I know it’s stressful right now.” Jean says, unhelpfully. Joel doesn’t lose pace.

“Skaianet can survive this.” Also unhelpful. Joel knew the numbers already, of course Skaianet could survive this.

Joel continues to pace.

---

“My dad’s going to kill me!!!” The panic in Joel’s voice is tense, consuming, and not at all proportionate to the scene at hand. His toes curl into the soles of his shoes and he brings his cross-legged knees up tight, doubling forward on the busted statue and holding it close to his chest. He doesn’t even care that the right side of his face is starting to bloom with an angry red that would *probably* develop into a bruise later on, he doesn’t care that Jude’s trying to apologize through fake water works or that Remy and Dawn had already rushed off to get someone more responsible than the bunch of kids that were standing around,dumbfounded.

Dell is overwhelmed, also pushed to the point of tears despite his only claim to this sad scene being that it was *his* suggestion they play dodge-ball. Seeing Joel and Jude cry was too much and it just kind of made him lock up his shoulders and stand there, staring at the ground and not saying a word. June was too busy trying to calm Joel and Jude to notice that Dell was upset. He didn’t blame her. His tears were quiet.

“No, he’s not.” Jean says, coming to kneel on the ground beside Joel. They’re young now, still opressedly feminine and wearing a denim skirt with overalls and a lime-green t-shirt that was stained here and there with dirt and mechanical grease. They rest a hand on Joel’s shoulder and it makes his curl in even tighter.
	“You d-don’t underst-stand....” Joel mumbles into the broken halves of the harlequin statue through tight sobs. “....this is one of HIS st-statues, he trusted me w-with it, and I-I b-broke it!” It didn’t matter that the only reason Joel broke it was because he got pelted in the Face, an illegal move, by Jude and had stumbled into the display pillar it’d been sitting on. It didn’t matter that Joel *attempted* to catch it and skinned his knees on the carpet in severe and angry rug burn. To him, he was a clutz, and he had broken one of the few tangible things that his Father had given to him.

“Can I see it?” Jean asks softly, wrapping a hand around the rope of Joel’s upper arm and gently prying. Joel allows this to happen and lets Jean do all the work of moving his arm. Once it’s out of the way, Jean carefully reaches into Joel’s lap and retrieves the parts of the sad and broken clown from the sad and broken clown.

It was a clean break. One of its outstretched arms had broken off at the shoulder to reveal the horrible inky blackness hidden away inside its hollow body. The tip of one of its curly shoes had also snapped off and was lying on the carpet a few feet away. Joel hiccuped into the crook of his elbow.

“I *knew* we shouldn’t be playing in the house!!!” Jude cries exasperatedly, having never once expressed this thought before they started or during the entire 15-minute game. “--Now Joe’s going to get in trouble and it’s all because I fumbled the ball! Bloody hell, it’s all going to fall apart!!” He was still crying and acting like he *hadn’t* intentionally smashed the ball into Joel’s face. June was still rubbing his shoulders.

“No, it’s okay. Joel’s Dad is a real stand-up chap, he’s going to be so understanding that it’s going to knock everyone’s socks off. Shhh....” June croons, wasting her support on probably the only upset person in the hallway that *wasn’t* actually upset. Dell and Joel were too inexperienced to see that Jude was just blowing smoke. Jean could tell he was faking because they’d seen Jude cry-cry before and his nose and ears got painfully red when he was genuinely upset, and now his nose was barely pink and his ears were fine.

“I can fix this.” Jean offers softly. Joel turns his face to look over at them, blue eyes even bluer because of the redness of his whites. He doesn’t say anything from his trembling lip, but Jean can translate the look into something to the effect of ‘don’t lie to me. Can you?’ to which they give a sharp nod and shove the busted fool back towards Joel. He takes it so carefully he almost doesn’t have a grip on it when Jean finally releases it and stands up. They brush off their skirt.

“I will be right back.” Jean says loudly to everyone around them, speaking over Jude’s theatrics and Dell’s stunned silence. As they head back up the hall towards the elevator to get to their room, they stop, give Dell a tight, awkward, and overall uncomfortable hug that he very-much appreciates, and feigns to *punch* Jude in a false swing above their head that June doesn’t see because Jean was behind her. Like a pussy, Jude flinches. This brings Jean great joy.
	Once their better piece had left, the hallway was silent except for the trailing, slowing sobs and hiccoughs of Joel on the floor. Jude had seen that Joel and Dell weren’t going to come lavish him in support and affection and had spontaneously grown a Stiff Upper Lip. June was proud of him for managing to pull himself out of it. Jude was disappointed that he hadn’t put on a big enough show for people to care.

Dell was finally moving. His Fight, Flight, or Freeze released enough that he could awkwardly shimmy over to Joel and sit on the carpet beside him. They both stared down at the broken clown statue sadly.

“I’m sorry, man.” Dell offers.

“It’s not your fault.” Joel declines.

“No, but I can still feel sorry for you dude. Sorry it happened. Sorry I suggested it.” Dell scoots his butt over by lifting himself up off the carpet, moving until the outside of his leg is touching the outside of Joel’s. Joel’s skin is hot, feverishly so past his shorts and it almost burns Dell as he sits there with him. “I know what it’s like to have that feeling of ‘oh, shit, this isn’t replaceable’. It’s gross. It’s, like... cold slugs in your stomach and cold water down your back.”

Joel gives a sniffle, and a nod. Dell hooks an arm around Joel’s shoulders and pulls him in so he’s half-crumpled over and half against the Strider. Joel doesn’t protest.

“I can’t believe you’re crying over a Clown.” Jude says loudly, and insipidly. June shoots him a ‘look’. Jude pretends not to notice. Teasing the boys on the floor was more interesting than getting approval from his Sister right now.

“I *should* believe it, though. Clown-Clown Solidarity is a thing that exists.” Jude says. It would’ve wounded Joel if Joel had known what ‘solidarity’ meant but only June had as advanced of a vocabulary as her brother, and it made her slack-jawed and angry to hear him say that.

“Jude!” She cried with a solid *punch* to his shoulder. It made Jude half-stumble to the side and a hand shoot up to the point of impact. While it *did* hurt, and it radiated a numb and mounting pain down to his elbow and sent zinging zips down to his fingers, it didn’t hurt *nearly* as much as he puts on. Again, the waterworks start, but June’s still shocked at how *mean* he was being and doesn’t immediately coddle him the same way she usually does.

“--Looks like the only broken clowns here are the statue and you, *Judy*.” Dell says flatly. Joel laughs. *Jude does not.* “--and I don’t think neither me nor Joel are gonna be crying over you, buddy.”

“Fine! Whatever! Have fun cuddling, weirdos! Maybe Jean can glue *you* two together when she gets back, too!” Jude exclaims before dramatically pushing himself off the wall and storming up the hallway. Everyone winges, not because of Jude’s trademarked angry outburst but because he broke an unspoken Rule: Jean wasn’t a girl. Sometimes Jean was a boy but never, *never* a girl. June apologizes for her brother and trots off to follow him.

It’s just Joel and Dell now.

“Fuck him,” Dell says, being cool because he knows so many swears and how to use them properly. Joel just stares down at the broken porcelain in his hands. “--Jude’s just mad because he cried twice as hard as you and nobody cared because he’s the one who threw the ball. If you want to blame anyone, blame him.”

“I don’t.” Joel says quietly. Dell gives his shoulder a squeeze.

“Why not?”

“Because... I know I’m overreacting. I don’t think my Dad even likes the clowns, I think he thinks I like them.”

“Do you?”

Joel scrunches up his face and his glasses nearly fall off. “No, but that’s not the point!”

Dell laughs. “Okay, so, your Dad doesn’t even *like* them but how is it not Jude’s fault?”

“Well,” Joel has to take a minute to try to answer that question in a way that doesn’t sound mean. “--Jude’s Guardians are really mean and strict. I don’t think it’s his fault because he doesn’t know how to be nice.” He doesn’t succeed in his attempt.

Dell blows a puff of air up past his nose and to his low-hanging bangs. “My parents aren’t nice, either, and I’m not smashing people in the face with dodge balls and getting mad when people hug.”

Joel doesn’t have time to properly formulate or reply before Jean comes running back up the hallway, carrying a few different things. “Where’s Ju-ju?” They ask, noticing the distinct lack of the Brother-Sister pair. Dell gives a wordless shrug. Joel doesn’t do anything.


By the time Remy and Dawn come back with one of the Board’s ‘Nannies’, Jean had already repaired the Statue. The glue they’d used made the breaks in the porcelain almost completely unnoticeable, except for the fact that the tip of the curly shoe wasn’t exactly properly aligned, but they’d all been convinced that nobody was going to look at the statue close enough to tell that. The nanny had helped pick up the fallen pillar, replace the statue, and given a warm but *stern* scolding about playing dodge ball in the building. ‘Something could get broken’.

She had no idea something already had been.

---

“It’s going to be hard for a bit.” Jean says again, still attempting to speak to the pacing, lanky boy before them. “But we’ll make it through this.”

“No!” Joel shouts, so loud and so suddenly that it makes Jean nearly jump right out of their skin. He turns from where he’d been pacing, red in the face and red in the eyes. He’d been crying at some point recently, but not now. His cheeks were dry and flushed in ugly blotches. Jean noticed that Joel’s nose and ears went red when he was upset, too.

“It’s not going to be ‘okay’! We *lost* some of our Family today! They just *LEFT*, Jean, don’t you care? What did I do wrong? They’re going to come back, right!?? They’ve got to! My Dad’s going to be so upset!” Joel’s speaking quickly and jumping from problem to problem, which Jean was fairly sure was because his anxiety was doing the exact same thing. They stood up from their boardroom chair and walked over to Joel. He shrunk slightly as they approached.

“We lost family today. They might not come back. It’s not your fault.” Jean presents their words as softly and as matter-of-factly as they can while their arms snake around the lanky teenage form of Joel. They give him another hug, far too tight in all the wrong ways, but it’s exactly what he needs right now; even if it goes on for a little too long.

“..yeah.” Joel says defeatedly.

“John will understand. You didn’t make them leave, Joel.”

“No, Jude did.” Dell says from the doorway of the Boardroom. Both Joel and Jean look over to him. “He’s poison. The only reason Rich and Dawn left was because of June, it’ll all fall apart over there eventually. We’ve just gotta be here when they realize they backed the wrong horse.”

Jean looks at Dell to communicate ‘don’t get his hopes up’. Dell doesn’t meet their gaze.

“...yeah. Okay.” Joel says with a nod, bringing up the back of his hand to the underside of his nose.

“...They might not come back.” Jean re-iterates.

“Yeah, but they *could*.” Dell reaffirms.

It wasn’t the glue that fixed the Statue.

It was the realization that John hated it as much as Joel did.