You Say Jump

Chapter 1: Quirin

Quirin makes the discovery when Varian is barely a year old, not many months after his wife Ulla disappears from their lives.

"Are you hungry, are you tired, what is it? What do you want?" he mutters under the sound of his child's seemingly endless crying, it having gone on for an hour now with no end in sight despite the pounding in Quirin's head. Surely the little set of lungs must ache with all that they're doing, surely they should stop soon—

—But they don't. They don't, and Quiring knows who it is that they would stop for, but she's not with them anymore and who knows if she'll ever come back. Yes, in truth he already knows what Varian wants. He curses under his breath at the rekindled grief that this thought brings, and in frustration he pulls the child from where he's cradled to his chest and looks him in the face from his arms' length away.

The child lets out a louder wail at the loss of contact and wincing, Quirin orders him, "Stop crying!"

He feels immediate regret, already knowing that this will do nothing but make his poor son cry harder... yet to his surprise, the infant's sounds cut off into snuffles and his distress-crinkled eyes open wide to look up at his father.

Already-formed tears roll down flushed cheeks, but no new ones form as the two of them stare at one another, both seeming startled.

Quirin recovers from surprise, gratefully swiping the remnants of tears away and pulling his child close again. "There you go," he murmurs, "It's all right, son, I'm here. I'm here. I know I'm not your preference, but I'll always be here for you. Look, it will be morning soon and there is so much to be done tomorrow. Won't you go to sleep?"

Varian's eyes stay on him, big and no closer to closing than before. Quirin sighs, gently lays the baby down in his crib. His son begins to pout, his breaths speeding up. Quirin's head pounds in anticipation. "Go to sleep, Varian," he almost begs.

And then, to both their surprise yet again, the child's eyes close. His breaths even out to the calm rhythm of sleep.

Quirin stares.

It takes some test of confirmation in the days and weeks following, but this is the night that he begins to learn: Varian is obedient.

There is no apparent reason for it, that the father can tell. He only possesses a bare portion of the scientific knack that his wife had, and he knows far less than she about experimenting, but he does put in the effort to discover that only direct orders result in obedience. Asking and suggesting do not have an effect. He expects a different outcome to occur at some point, but it never does, even as the boy grows.

From an infant to a toddler to a young child- Varian remains obedient to his father's instructions. His son grows up just as curious as his mother and is in many ways what Quirin would call a "handful". Of course he loves his son and obtains whatever he can to help him fuel his learning, but when the boy wanders to close near rivers or wild animals or other dangers far bigger than him— then is especially when Quirin orders Varian.

It turns from "Varian, eat your vegetables" into "Varian, put that spider down" and "Varian, don't touch the blacksmith's things". These too change as years go by into "Varian, put your gloves on before touching those chemicals" and "Varian, you do not experiment on the livestock".

Eventually he ends up with a twig of a boy (too excitable to ever sit down and eat his meals fully) who wears gloves and goggles at all times and will cheerfully babble on and on about things Quirin has never even heard of. He feels like a rooster raising a kitten, some days.

"Varian, time to start your chores," he calls, poking his head into the room he'd recently given as a dedicated space for Varian's experiments (to contain the disasters) and which Varian had quickly dubbed his "lab".