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“I forgive you.” John promises, hefting up his first test over Cecil’s head and letting it drop.
And it’s true, really. When all teachers fail you, to become the teacher is the most rewarding revenge of all. To get through to all the students who’d never listened when it matters—and John knows that Cecil hadn’t listened, ignoring all of Jill’s pleas and the terror in her eyes, the way she cradled her belly and her heaving breaths, back sliding down against the wall. John is a better man than Cecil, which is why he doesn’t ignore any of Cecil’s moans and pleas, his large wet eyes and the way he grunts and groans against the blades.
His wrists are a brilliant red, his face is a tapestry of teaching, and John has to take a step back to properly admire his test in action.
This is the moment of epiphany.
It's why John insists that Hoffman watch every minute of Paul’s struggle—insists that he strip him first, so that not a single section of his flesh escapes the twisting, tugging wires. They catch on his plump legs, his hairy chest, wrapped around his belly, and John leans close over Hoffman’s shoulder, watching the watching. A wire snags around Paul’s wrist, metal digging into his skin in a mockery of every time he’d lifted that broken bottle and promised this would be his last night on earth, and John thinks of Cecil’s writhing, screaming body, trying to escape but only digging himself deeper--and smiles.
Wires and collars, gags and chains—all perfect for John’s means. He sees it so clearly these days, when Amanda is insisting he rests and Hoffman is out again, lifting and dragging in the men John needs—how barbed wire will snare William’s secretaries, choking their breath and forcing them to stand on their toes, balancing for their lives, and how five collars will fit so snugly on the necks of liars while they’re still attached to their bodies, how Hoffman will open his mouth so easily for his crimson gag, obedient when it matters and how Lawrence will cry and scream but understand deep down that there’s only one way to escape what— who —he’s been chained to.
This clarity helps him, when he is too weak to move when he wants to, forced to rely on his students for help, dragging and documenting and making sure John has all the information he needs. John is an organized man, one who keeps track of all his purchases, receipts and bills pinned together by the month, documenting tests and tools and their prices. He keeps the photos too, all of them, and it’s the only time he lets himself think of the innocent man Lawrence had left, the only time he wishes that that innocent man had been a little more slow, a little more reasonable.
John would appreciate an experienced photographer.
The photos he does get are blurred at the edges instead, hindered by Amanda’s constantly trembling fingers and Hoffman’s inability to properly center a subject. Lawrence would have steadier fingers, he’s sure, find a good use for those surgeon’s hands, but Lawrence refuses to touch a camera.
Hoffman is looking away from the camera in John’s favorite photo of him, his furrowed brow and thick lips on full display, wearing windswept hair and one of the jackets he’s owned for too many years. His expression is somewhere on the line between thoughtful and stupid, and it’d been taken by John himself a week before John had cornered Hoffman in the elevator. John likes to think he has an eye for photographs, an understanding of when to wait and when to press the trigger.
He watches Hoffman put up the photos for each upcoming test, tacking them up on his boards and staring at them for hours like it’ll make all their broken pieces come together. John is endlessly patient of all his students’ quirks, blessed with the knowledge that this is how Hoffman shows his passion for their designs. Amanda rolls her eyes for him.
It's important to know when students require more force, when a simple slap on the wrist isn't enough. Sometimes, John thinks nothing will be. Best to burn it all down, learn from that mistake, and use the ashes to build something better.
That burning thought has him leaving the nail bat propped against one of the thin, wooden walls of the House. He'd assured Hoffman that any conclusion he expected was the foregone one, and it's why he knows who'll be picking up that bat-- glad for the insurance. John strokes the wood thoughtfully, and wonders how many Xavier will take down with him.
Later, he’ll have the footage to know for certain, and he'll have the remote, the worn down buttons, to burn in the lesson as many times as he needs.
The photos pale in comparison to that.
Of course-- reality always beats the pale imitation of it, and John itches to re-enter his own games, to remember the first spark of the feeling that Cecil had brought out of him. The confidence in his own teachings.
It's this longing and the steady ticking of the bomb at the back of his brain that urges him to tie the knots all neatly together, bringing old students to meet the new deep in the mouth of his warehouse.
In his makeshift hospital bed, under the watchful eye of Lynn, the mental timer goes off in John’s head, and crystalline shards shatter behind his eyes, blocks of ice screeching and smashing, bleeding red into blue as the brain of Eric Matthews finally explodes under the pressure. The shards will rain down, skull fragments mixing and melding with the half-melted water, blood splattering over the walls and floors and Hoffman’s gagged face.
“John—” Lynn says, emotion steadily filtering back into her voice. Bypassing the years of learned apathy.
Apathy, apathy and anger—always the cocktail that John searches for, stewing in the gut of the cop who insists he loves his son, that he knows how to love his son, how to do his job and that he doesn’t know what brutality means. What brutality? What brutality?
“Raise your fingers.” Lynn says, and the fourth finger on his left hand twitches with a phantom ache from where detective Matthews had made sure John was watching him before he’d broken it. Two weeks into their first month together, John had returned the favor fivefold, crushing Eric’s knuckles underneath his wheelchair. He hadn’t braced those, and if the ice somehow doesn’t shatter, Eric is going to have to learn how to write with his other hand.
These prices comfort John, when he thinks about the terrible possibility of lessons going unlearned, of his patients escaping untaught. Amanda had been kind enough to take shaky photos of Art’s face after he’d survived the first step of his test, as John had known he would. Trevor’s tape had almost gone unrecorded, because John knows his lawyer—and though Art never was respectful enough to keep his mouth shut, he’d still had that spark.
Perfectly crooked polaroids showcase lips oozing blood in thick strands, dripping puddles onto the mausoleum floor. Jagged new cuts that’ll heal wrong, into scars that weave and bend, forever dividing his face. It’s Lawrence who had sewn him up—when the shock had finally hit and Art had passed out—and again, John mourns the possible lack of learning, or worse, the lack of seeing the learning.
John’s own price, his own inevitable prize, is his biggest comfort now. That comfort swells in his chest when Jeff finally enters the hospital room, one arm wrapped around his wife’s body, keeping her from falling while the other points the gun, fingers steady on the trigger—all that practice paying off. Once Lynn has slid down to the floor, all blood-matted hair and heaving breaths, fading fast but still with the hope she makes it alive inside her, that comfort melts into joy. When Jeff stands up from her side, silent and single-minded, hands steady on that beautiful buzzsaw, moving towards John-- joy pulses deep in John's gut.
“I forgive you.” Jeff says, eyes hollow and screaming blade lifted, an avenging angel finally cleansing him of his sins, and John experiences the little death before the big one.