“Everything alright?”
The question startles Rue badly enough he nearly drops his phone, as Jesse sidles up, pressing up against his back and wrapping his arms around his middle. Automatically, Rue leans back against his chest. He had been so lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t even heard Jesse enter the room. On the counter in front of him, sits his bowl of cereal, and the open jug of milk from where he had been in the middle of making breakfast before he had gotten the call.
He considers lying. Then he says, “No.” Then he says, “I’ve got to go.”
“What?” Jesse asks, as Rue slips out of his hold, and heads back towards their bedroom.
“Rue.”
He’s halfway through shoving a random handful of clothes into his suitcase when Jesse catches up with him. “What the fuck? Where are you going?”
“Littlefork, Minnesota.”
“Uh,” Jesse says, when Rue doesn’t elaborate further than that. He stands in the doorway, watching as Rue shoves another handful into the suitcase, before moving on to the bathroom. He’s pretty sure that he’s grabbing some of Jesse’s things in his haste, but Jesse doesn’t say anything about it so he doesn’t either. “Okay. I’m coming with you.”
“No,” Rue says immediately. He dumps the toiletries into the suitcase then zips it shut. Jesse ignores him, already grabbing some of his own things from the closet, although he’s slightly more careful about it.
“No,” Rue repeats. “It’s not a good idea.”
“Why?” Jesse asks, as he carries over the shirts he’s picked out. He goes to unzip the suitcase Rue just zipped, but Rue slaps his hand away. Jesse scowls at him. Rue scowls back.
“It’s just not.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.” Jesse reaches for the suitcase again, and this time Rue catches his hand. Jesse sighs, and looks up at him. “Give me a better answer, and I’ll let you go. Otherwise I’m coming with you.”
Rue doesn’t have a better answer though. Not one that Jesse would understand. As his silence stretches on, Jesse’s gaze softens. He twists his hand around until their fingers are intertwined. “Hey, whatever’s going on, you can tell me. We’re partners, remember? Where you go, I go.”
He remembers. He remembers getting wine drunk, when their relationship had first started to get serious. After a certain point in the night, Rue, normally not one for PDA, had refused to leave Jesse’s lap. While he was leaning sleepily against Jesse’s chest, he had hooked their pinkies together and made him promise. That they would be together forever. That they would never leave the other behind. That they were partners, partners in everything.
And when he got a full-ride to Cornell a few months later, despite it being hours and hours away, Jesse had come with him.
“My family,” Rue says, before he can chicken out. “My family lives in Littlefork.”
“Okay,” Jesse says, and he does a good job of keeping the surprise that Rue knows is there, out of his voice. “I still want to come.”
Rue bites his lip. Rubs at his forehead. And then he nods. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” Rue lets go of his hand, unzips the suitcase for him, and takes a step back. “Hurry up and get packed before I change my mind.”
He can still hear Jesse’s grumbling about his horrible packing skills as he leaves the room. There’s a closet, at the end of the hallway, and at the very top of the shelf sits a lockbox that’s been gathering dust. He pulls it down, and slips it into a bag before Jesse can see it.
“Ready!” Jesse calls, dragging the suitcase out of their bedroom.
Rue turns to give him a wan smile. “Let’s go. It’s a 20 hour drive.”
“Shit, seriously?”
He clicks his tongue, as he leads the way out to his car. “You’re the one that wanted to come.”
----
Rue sometimes wonders if it would have been better, or worse, if he remembered his birth parents.
He, and all his siblings were adopted, at various ages and from various sources. The Arianrod’s adopted children like they were collectibles. Often treated them like collectibles. To be prepped, and polished, to be shown off. Although unlike collectibles, they were not expected to sit on a shelf, gathering dust.
Rue was the first, and he was too young to remember it. Same with his brothers Sebastien, and Angus, and his sister Barbara. But Hasina, she was ten when she was adopted, and her transition had been rough.
He remembers sitting in the front lounge with his other siblings when he was eleven, waiting for their parents to bring her home. Angus was coloring in a book on the coffee table, while Barbara pretended to feed a baby doll. Despite being the oldest, and the one who should be babysitting them, Sebastien sat in the corner away from them all, doing something on his phone.
“What are you drawing?” Rue asked Angus. He held it up. “Emilia!” he said proudly.
Rue told him it was good, because that’s what you’re supposed to tell a four-year old who shows you a drawing. But he doubted their new sister was a giant purple blob, with green hair and yellow sticks for arms and legs.
There was the distinct sound of a car coming up the drive. Angus was on his feet in seconds, rushing towards the door, before Rue caught him and brought him back to sit in the living room. Barbara was still more interested in her doll, and while Sebastien tried to feign indifference, the way he glanced towards the door every few seconds when he didn’t think Rue was paying attention, gave him away.
Emilia was not, in fact, a purple blob with yellow sticks for arms. Instead she was a girl, about the same size as Rue, maybe a little shorter, with long black hair tied back into a ponytail and dark skin. Not as dark as Angus or Barbara, but much darker than Rue and Sebastien. She was pretty, for a girl. Though there was a deep frown on her face.
“Kids,” said their father, who stood behind the girl. “This is Emilia. Emilia this is -”
“That’s not my name!” she snapped, and with nowhere to run but further into the house, she did just that, disappearing up the stairs.
Their mother scoffed, and made to follow her. “Ungrateful little bi -”
“Let her go,” their father said, placing a hand on her arm. “We can talk to her later.”
Rue found her, an hour or so later, in his bedroom, sitting on his windowsill. She didn’t look up, even as he walked over to stand next to her. “What’s your name?” he asked her. “Your real one.”
“Hasina,” she said. She was much calmer now. There was still a frown on her face, but it was less angry. Maybe sad. “What’s yours?”
“Reuben.”
“Is that your real name?”
“I think so.” He paused. “I don’t know.”
She looked up at him, and crinkled her nose. “They’re not your real parents, are they? You don’t look like them.”
“No, I guess I don’t,” he said with a shrug. He sat down on the windowsill next to her. “But they’re the only parents I have.”
Her breath fogged the window as she looked out into the yard, a cloud of grey against the green. “I miss them,” she said softly, and Rue knew she didn’t mean the Arianrods.
They sat like that, for a long time, until their parents found them. Later, they would come up with nicknames to call each other. Rue didn’t want to call her Emilia, like their parents did, but he couldn’t call her Hasina either, as the few times he tried they got in trouble. After some trial and error, they ended up going by their favorite animals, and eventually Angus and Barbara ended up going by nicknames as well. Or, like in the case of Rue, if their favorite animal didn’t make for a good nickname, they went by their second, or third.
Sebastien never wanted to join in, deeming himself “too old”. That didn’t stop them from calling him
‘Bear’ though.
Sometimes he’d catch Hasina staring out the window, with that sad frown on her face. And he thought maybe it wasn’t so bad he didn’t remember his birth parents after all. He had the ones he had. Even if he rather he hadn’t.
----
The ride is actually a little over 20 hours long, which they split over three days, and take turns driving. Not once does Jesse pressure Rue into telling him what’s going on, even as they get closer and closer to their destination. Jesse’s always been like that, letting Rue come to him on his own time, his own terms. It’s one of the reasons they work so well.
And Rue puts it off, as long as possible. Isn’t sure how to explain, or how much to tell. Since they’ve started dating, Rue has mentioned his family very little. Jesse knows the basics: that he was adopted, that they don’t get along, him and his family, that he was disowned and that he only talks to a few of them, now. But Rue has never gone into depth, and for good reason. There are things Jesse wouldn’t understand, couldn’t understand, and the closer they get, the more he regrets letting Jesse come along.
“My mother’s sick,” he blurts out, finally, as they’re an hour out from Littlefork.
“Oh,” says Jesse, sounding half asleep and is just waking up from a nap so it probably wasn’t the greatest time to spring this on him but if he doesn’t do it now he won’t do it all. He clears his throat before continuing, “I’m sorry. I, uh, assume it must be bad.”
“Yeah,” Rue says. He pauses a moment. His grip tightens on the steering wheel till his knuckles turn white. He doesn’t look in Jesse’s direction, where he’s sprawled in the passenger’s seat next to him. “She’s - she’s dying.”
“Shit, Rue.” Jesse sits up straighter to place his hand on Rue’s thigh. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, and means it. “I just…”
Jesse doesn’t rush him, as he struggles to put it into words. Just squeezes his thigh gently, a reminder that he’s there.
How
can he put it into words? In a way that doesn’t make him sound like a complete sociopath? Jesse, who hasn’t had a fight with his parents worse than over who would do the dishes, couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to have such complicated feelings for the people who raised you. Couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to be
glad that your mother is dying.
“I’m fine,” is what he finally settles on. “I don’t care, really. And I know that makes me a horrible -“
“It doesn’t,” Jesse interrupts firmly. When Rue spares him a glance, all he sees is open acceptance on his face. “She hurt you. You don’t owe her any feelings.”
“Yeah,” he whispers, and turns back to the road.
Jesse squeezes his thigh again. “You’re not a bad person Rue.”
Throat tight, he nods, and tries not to feel guilty over it.
One day. They would stay one day, max, and then this would be over, and Jesse would be none the wiser about the things Rue has done.
He may not be a bad person, but he certainly isn’t a good one.
----
He told himself he would stop, when he left his parent’s. But it’s never as easy as that.
Rue met Jesse at a gay night club, their sophomore year of college. It was popular among the queer students at the University of Minnesota, for looking the other way when fake IDs came through the door.
It was a Friday night. He had just gotten off the phone with Hasina, they had had another fight, and earlier that day he had failed another test. If he failed one more, he would risk losing his scholarship, and that pressure was getting to him. So his plan was to get wasted as fuck. Maybe go home with someone. It didn’t quite work out that way though.
He doesn’t remember, really, what about the situation caught his attention. Maybe it was the way Jesse was so disastrously drunk he could barely stand up straight, sloshing his beer all over the counter a few feet away, as another man leaned into his space. Maybe it was the clumsy way he tried to push him away, with a heavily slurred
“No, stop, no thank you,” even as he laughed it off. Maybe it was the look on the other man’s face, the glint in his eye, how the way he held himself made the hair begin to stand straight up on the back of Rue’s neck in a conditioned fear response.
Before he was conscious of the fact he was moving, he found himself between the two. “Hey, man. Take a hint. He told you to stop.”
The man’s smile was sharp, canines glinting in the low light. “I don’t think this has anything to do with you.”
Rue didn’t say anything more. Instead he simply braced one hand against the bar, a barrier between him and the man behind him. While he was taller, and broader than Rue, he didn’t back down, waiting till he scoffed, and disappeared deeper into the bar.
A weight draped itself over his back. “My hero,” he slurred in Rue’s ear. Rue cast his eyes skyward.
He contemplated leaving him, but the guy was such a mess it didn’t feel right to. Plus, Rue would only admit this to himself later, he was kinda cute. Probably would be much cuter when he was a bit more sober. It took some wheedling, and a hell of a lot more patience than Rue thought he possessed, before he learned that his name was Jesse, that no he was not here with anyone else (
“But I could be here with you,” he’d simpered, with a wink. At least, Rue had assumed it was a wink, as he’d done it with both eyes) and after promising to exchange numbers, he was able to get Jesse’s address to order him an Uber.
He felt eyes on his back, as he helped Jesse from the club.
Jesse would text him, the next morning, horribly embarrassed about the whole ordeal, but they would go out for coffee because, for whatever reason, Rue found himself helplessly endeared. And the rest, as they say, was history.
Once he had gotten Jesse safely into his Uber home, he went back inside and found the man from before, the one who had tried to accost Jesse. All it took to get him to follow Rue out into the alley, was a couple of bats of his lashes, and a tilt of his hips.
“You know, this wasn’t very smart,” he purred. In the slanted moonlight of the alleyway, his eyes glowed. His grip turned bruising on Rue’s wrist, nails lengthening into claws, just as Rue was palming the silver dagger he had promised himself was only for self-defense. In a way, it was still self-defense, wasn’t it?
Rue made sure to drag the body into the darkest corner of the alleyway before calling Hasina. She picked up after the second ring. “If the first thing out of your mouth isn’t an apology, I’m hanging up.”
“Um -“
“Alright. Goodbye.”
“Wait!” he blurted, before glancing around to make sure he hadn’t drawn too much attention. “I’m sorry, Mouse. I was a dick earlier,” he said, quieter.
“And?”
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And you’re the best, most wonderful sister ever for putting up with my bullshit.”
“That wasn’t what I was looking for, but that’s good too.”
He couldn’t help the little laugh that escaped him, before he quickly sobered.
This wasn’t going to be fun. “Listen, Mouse, I need your help.”
“I’ll be there in a few,” she said, after he had explained the situation. Then she hung up.
He couldn’t look her in the eye, as he helped her get the body into her car, unwilling to confront the disappointment he would surely see there. Unwilling to see the same glow, when the light from the almost-full moon hit them right.
He had known that he didn’t have to go back. That he didn’t have to find that man again. He could have left it alone. He told himself he would stop, when he left his parent’s.
But the thing about killing is that there’s a certain addictive thrill that makes it hard to.
----
They reach Littlefork late in the afternoon on the third day, and almost immediately stop at a gas station so Jesse can use the bathroom. While he’s gone, Rue sneaks the lockbox out of the trunk, and pulls out the key he keeps on him at all times. He’s in the passenger seat before Jesse gets back, a knife hidden in his boot, and a pistol strapped to his waist.
He could never be too safe, when it came to his family.
His parents live on the edge of town, on a massive estate that’s been passed through the family over the generations. Roughly 1,000 acres of land, the house itself taking up about 8,000 square feet. Jesse whistles softly, as they’re buzzed through the front gates. Rue can only manage a weak smile. He feels like puking. He doesn’t want to be back here.
“Rue!” his sister shrieks as soon as he steps out of the car, throwing herself into his arms. He can’t help but laugh, as he catches her. “Hey, Birdy.”
Angus is much more cautious, eyeing Jesse warily. “Who’s this?”
“Uh, hi, I’m Jesse,” he says with a little wave.
“My boyfriend,” Rue supplies. “We met at school.” He catches Angus’s eye, and gives him a look. It’s a look that says,
He isn’t a part of this life, and I don’t want him to be. He gets a nod in return.
Angus has grown a lot since he left, Barbara too. They’re no longer the scrawny kids he remembers. Barbara is almost seventeen now, and Angus is taller than him.
“That’s funny. I thought you were fucking Emilia,” drawls a voice from the doorway, and Rue looks up to see Sebastien, leaning against the frame. He looks older too. The scar marring his face looks darker, uglier than Rue remembers.
Both Barbara and Angus flinch. Rue draws in a deep breath, holds it for a count of three, and then lets it out. Instead of rising to the bait, he turns to Angus. “Will you show him around? I’m going to go see mom,” he says, nodding towards Jesse.
“Yeah,” Angus says, casting Sebastien a glance, before gesturing for Jesse to follow him. Jesse looks back over his shoulder at Rue, and he gives him a reassuring nod.
“I’ll go with them,” Barbara says.
Rue knows he’ll be in good hands, but he still can’t help it. “Take care of him,” he calls after them. Barbara flashes him a smile.
Sebastien’s gaze is heavy on them, as they round the corner and disappear into the backyard.
“Touch a hair on his head, and I’ll kill you,” Rue promises, as he passes Sebastien to enter the house.
“You shouldn’t have brought him,” is all Sebastien says. And Rue knows that, he does. He shouldn’t have brought Jesse, doesn’t know why he did.
Maybe it’s because a part of him didn’t want to come alone.
----
The first rule of hunting, is that there is no such thing as an innocent werewolf. It’s in their nature to kill. Even if they haven’t killed yet, it’s only a matter of time before they do. They are a pest to be exterminated, a disease to be cured, a curse to be purged.
The second rule, is never tarnish the Arianrod name. The Arianrods were an old, and proud family of hunters that stretched back generations. They were a figurehead in their profession, and as members of the family they had to handle themselves with dignity.
The third is never get bitten, and most importantly, never, ever go through the change.
He used to think that they were the good guys. Protecting the innocent from the things that go bump in the night. For as long as he could, he held on to that. It was easy, sometimes. But the world isn’t as black and white as his parents made it seem.
----
As soon as he enters the room, he wants to leave.
His parents bedroom is the same as he remembers it. There’s a matching set of mahogany dressers and an armoire, and the walls are painted a deep green, so dark it’s almost black. The only spot of light, in the darkness of the décor, are the white curtains framing the windows. A large, four-poster bed dominates the room, pressed against the far wall. This is where his mother lays, propped up on pillows, looking so small and frail. So unlike herself.
It’s clear that the windows have not been opened in a while. There’s a cloying scent of flowers, of mothballs, and faintly, of bodily fluids. It’s suffocating. He thinks about opening the windows, but watching as his mother folds forward into a coughing fit.
“So. You came,” his father says, where he’s seated at her bedside. He’s got one hand braced on the bed, the other at his hip, where Rue knows a gun is hidden.
“Harry,” his mother chastises, in that sharp voice of hers that he remembers. “Enough. I asked for him.”
His father doesn’t relax, however, and she lightly slaps his arm. “
Harry. Leave us.”
The way his father passes him on his way out of the room reminds him eerily of how he had threatened Sebastien just moments earlier. He tries not to think about that too hard.
“Come here, Reuben,” his mother says, gesturing to the chair his father had just vacated.
He doesn’t move. “You look like shit.”
“Yes, I
am dying. Come sit. I want to speak with you.” She gestures to the chair again.
He doesn’t move. “Why?”
“Can’t a dying mother speak with her son one last time?”
You haven’t spoken to me in six years, he wants to say.
You haven’t cared about me for six years. Last time we saw each other you tried to kill me and now you want to talk?
Rue doesn’t say any of that though. He doesn’t say anything.
Her arm drops back down to her side. “I regret it, you know,” she says, after a long moment of silence. “Letting you go. You were one of our best.”
For a moment there, he had felt surprise, before it fell, because of
course that’s what his mother is more concerned about. And she doesn’t mention Hasina, although
that he’s not surprised about. His lip curls. “Don’t let Sebastien hear you say that.”
“Ah, Sebastien,” she sighs.“He’s a good hunter. But he doesn’t have the natural instinct for it. Not like you.” The blue of her eyes, even as they swim in jaundiced yellow, pierce him where he stands. “How has
civilian life been treating you?”
“Fine,” he says curtly. If the amused tilt of her lips is anything to go by, she doesn’t believe him. It itches beneath his skin, and he looks away. “I’m surprised you’re still here,” he says, as a way to change the subject. “Thought you would have wanted to go out with dignity, and all that.”
His mother sighs again. “Yes, well, I asked your father and Sebastien to do it, but well…”
And suddenly, Rue gets it. Why he’s here. Why she asked for him. He wants to laugh, and inexplicably, he wants to cry. He does neither. “So, you thought
I would kill you?” he asks, because he wants to be sure. “Does father know about this?”
“No, but I assume by now he’s guessed.” His mother’s expression doesn’t change. “Will you?”
He smiles. “No.”
That catches her by surprise. “But you hate me,” she says.
“Yes. I do. Too much to kill you,” Rue says, as he turns to leave. “Good luck, mother. I hope it hurts.”
----
The thing is, the Arianrod children were never really viewed as
children. They were always meant to be soldiers, pawns to be moved on a board game, a war of their own creation. Trained, sharpened, and at the end of the day, disposable, like the weapons they were.
He doesn’t remember exactly when he first realized his parents didn’t really love him. Maybe a part of him has always known. But he does remember it was painstakingly clear, the night Hasina was bitten.
It didn’t matter how long they spent planning a hunt, sometimes shit just went wrong, and the hunt this particular night had gone
very wrong. They had gotten split up, his father had taken a nasty fall, and Sebastien had been clawed across the face. After getting home, in the chaos, Hasina pulled him aside.
“What?” Rue snapped in irritation, before it quickly morphed into concern. “What?”
She looked over his shoulder nervously, and shut the door, closing them off from the sounds of their mother shouting for Angus to fetch the first aid kit. Instead of answering him, she moved her jacket out of the way and lifted her shirt. His blood ran cold.
“Is that -”
“Yes.”
“Hasina.”
“I know.”
On her left side, was a bite wound. Already, the blood had begun to slow, and he knew, all too well, that within the next few hours it would be completely healed. It had been pounded into their heads, again and again, over the years, the process of a werewolf bite. In just a few hours, the transformation would begin to take place and it would be too late.
With shaking hands, he reached out towards her, like he could fix it somehow.
“Rabbit,” she whispered, wide, terrified eyes fixed on his face. “The full moon’s tomorrow.”
Fucked. They were so
fucked, because even as the very idea of his sister turning into - into one of those things made his skin crawl there was no way in hell he was turning his back on her. It wasn’t even a question. He couldn’t say the same about the rest of their family. And with the full moon the next day, there was no way they would be able to hide it.
But, as it turned out, they didn’t have even that long.
The door flew open. “Hey, Reuben -”
Hasina dropped her shirt and tried to cover the bloodstains with her jacket, but it was too late. It was just poor luck, that the one to go looking for them was Sebastien, Arianrod poster child. After that, it was a whirlwind of screaming and tension and guns drawn.
They’d always been told that should one of them manage to be bitten, they would do the right thing and die with dignity. Kill themselves, or if they couldn’t do it, let someone else do it for them. Rue had always thought that it would never come to that. Had thought that, up until the point he was standing in front of his sister, with his mother pointing a gun at his face.
“Let us go,” he said. “Let us go, and you’ll never have to see us again.”
“You know we can’t do that, Reuben,” his father said. He had his gun pointed at Hasina, who had the back of Rue’s leather jacket in one hand, her gun in the other, which she aimed right back at their father.
Rue wasn’t looking at his father though, he was looking at his mother. “Let us go,” he repeated.
“You know what she’s turning into,” Sebastien spat. There was gauze covering one side of his face, spotted with blood. He must not have felt comfortable holding a gun, since all he held was a silver dagger. “You’re really gonna choose her, over us?”
“Yes,” Rue said, without hesitating.
“Mom,” Hasina said, leaning around his shoulder to look at her pleadingly. “
Please.”
Their mother looked away from him, to Hasina, then to take in the rest of the room. He could see her calculating. They were all too well trained to miss. Finally, she nodded.
“Angela,” their father said, scandalized. She ignored him, gesturing with her gun for Rue and Hasina to shuffle past her towards the front door.
At the top of the stairs, down the hall, he could see Angus and Barbara peeking down at them from where they had been ordered upstairs when everything had started. Rue tried to give them a smile he hoped was reassuring.
“You’ll always be an Arianrod,” their mother said, and it sounded ominous, despite her actual words. She was looking at Rue. “Don’t forget that.”
That night, they left Littlefork and drove the four and a half hours to Minneapolis, only stopping to use the restroom.
Once she turned eighteen, Hasina legally changed her name back to Hasina Amari. Rue contemplated changing his own name back to what was on his birth certificate, but in the end settled with only changing his last name from Arianrod back to Cho. In the six years since they left, they haven’t had contact with their parents, or Sebastien, although he has kept in touch with Angus and Barbara. It took a while, before they were ready to talk to Hasina again too.
----
He finds Jesse at the end of the hall, looking at something around the corner that Rue can’t see. His face is pale, and Rue feels a mounting sense of dread.
“Jesse, we’re leaving,” he says, stalking closer, just in time to see Sebastien pat Jesse’s arm.
“See ya, Jesse,” Sebastien says, and there’s a smirk on his face as he walks away.
“What’d you say to him?” Rue calls after his brother. Sebastien, predictably, doesn’t answer. He turns to Jesse. “What’d he say to you?”
Jesse shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says quickly, but his eyes follow Sebastien down the hall. “Let’s just go.”
They end up taking Angus and Barbara out to dinner that night, his younger siblings demanding to spend a bit more time with him, so it isn’t until late that he and Jesse are alone again. That night, they stay at an inn in Littlefork. Jesse doesn’t say much, on the ride over, and lets Rue check them in. When he tells Jesse he’s going to take a quick shower, all he gets is a nod, rather than his normal flirtatious offer to join.
Rue hesitates, in the doorway to the bathroom, watching as Jesse picks through the suitcase for his things, an unreadable expression on his face. He doesn’t look up once.
When Rue comes back out, rubbing a towel over his wet hair, he finds Jesse standing over the bed, staring down at Rue’s lockbox, the bag he had carelessly hid it in discarded on the floor. “What are you doing?” Rue asks, unable to keep the note of fear out of his voice.
Jesse looks up. “What’s in here?”
“Nothing,” Rue snaps, snatching and shoving it back into its bag. “It’s none of your business.”
Jesse lets it go, but there’s that same, unreadable expression on his face.
It isn’t until the lights are off, and they’re waiting for sleep to claim them that Jesse whispers into the darkness, “You aren’t a bad person, Rue.” It sounds like a question.
Rue pretends to be asleep so he doesn’t have to answer.