#knock knock it's sad about georgie and jon o'clock

[bubonickitten]

There’s a lot about MAG 120 that hurts, but I think this is one of the roughest:

ESPECIALLY because, when he wakes up and Georgie says goodbye?? 

Jon still has to see her in his nightmares after that, and he can’t talk to her or even look away because the Eye won’t let him. He just has to... watch. 

He has to stand there for however long the Eye wants him to and Behold what Georgie sees when she looks at him (or what he thinks she sees, anyway): a lost cause, no longer human, past the point of no return. Everyone in his life is reinforcing that belief, and seeing Georgie is probably a constant reminder of his diminishing grasp on his humanity. 

And Georgie -- one of the big reasons she left, aside from Jon just not being safe to be around (not his intention, but still -- she can’t feel fear, so she has to take extra precautions to keep herself safe), is that she’s just burned out. 

Jon’s fatal flaw is his curiosity; it fuels his pattern of self-destructive behavior (moth to a flame, anyone??). He’s always been like that (Georgie said as much), and his current situation has only amplified that for him. Sure, there’s a lot more going on than Georgie knows, and there’s a lot Jon really doesn’t have control over -- e.g. he didn’t realize when he was staying with her that reading statements went beyond psychological compulsion and was actually physical dependence -- that there was a reason he couldn’t stop, beyond just his insatiable curiosity. Just stopping and walking away was never an option, unfortunately. 

Still, though, Georgie can still see that he’s a tragedy waiting to happen, and she knows she can’t fix him, and even though she still has empathy for him, she doesn’t want to stick around and watch him burn. 

Of course, it’s painful to watch, especially because Jon made a decision (first in “A Guest for Mr. Spider,” and again in his testament just before the Unknowing) to (1) try to ask for/accept help from others and (2) trust others, even though neither of those things come naturally to him. And when he wakes up from the coma, he tries to do that, but... there’s no one left. Georgie was one of the few who was actually nice to him, and she’s abandoned him. And Martin’s gone, now, too. He’s left with people who distrust, blame, hate, and/or fear him, and/or see him as a tool to be used and then locked safely away as soon as he’s fulfilled his purpose.

Georgie told him once that if he thinks he’s becoming a monster, he needs people around him to remind him that he’s human. And now he doesn’t have that, and if he doesn’t believe he’s human, and no one else does either, well. It’s really no wonder he starts embracing the more inhuman parts of himself. He can’t be liked or trusted, so he may as well be useful, right? (And people keep telling him to be more like Gertrude, after all.) 

In the midst of all that, he’s still having these dreams every night. Still has to see Georgie, still has to Behold yet another reminder of the humanity he feels he no longer has and can no longer take part in. (And Jon’s guilt and poor self-worth probably make it hard for him to believe that Georgie still has empathy for him. He’s more likely to interpret her look as just plain condemnation and rejection.) 

And Georgie, for her part, still has to watch what’s happening to Jon, watch how he’s changing, watch him self-destruct, when one of the big reasons she left in the first place was that it was becoming toxic for her and she couldn’t see it getting better any time soon.

How the hell are Jon OR Georgie supposed to be able to truly say goodbye, or move on, or reconcile, or do anything even remotely healthy, when they’re constantly forced into close proximity but never even able to talk about it??? They’re just stuck in this stalemate and god, that hurts to think about.