The thing is, Jon, right now you have a choice. You’ve put it off a long time, but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but still too human to survive. You’re balanced on an edge where the End can’t touch you, but you can’t escape him.
There is a scene in the Discworld novel Going Postal where a character is offered a job and if he doesn’t want to take that job, he is free to leave the office he is currently in
Behind that exit door is a bottomless pit- he can take the job or he can die, those are his options
When he protests this, the person offering him the job argues that he has complete freedom of choice, the ‘prospect of freedom’. Oh there is no actual hope of survival if he doesn’t make the choice the other man wants- but he certainly has the option
In Discworld, it’s played off as dark comedy. But here in Jon’s case it is anything but.
A choice between monstrous servitude and death is no choice at all. Oliver knows it, Elias in his little jail cell knows it, Annabelle Cane knows it.
And somewhere, lost in his own mind Jon knows it too.
Much like the other ‘choices’ in his life, he really doesn’t have any option to doesn’t royally screw him over
Even though Oliver is much more benign, I’m reminded of Elias’ speech in 092, that Jon made his ‘choices’ every step of the way even if he wasn’t aware of them
This is another example of Jon being put in an impossible situation and later being judged for the only option he could have possibly taken
Even more horrifying is that there is some awareness in him that making this decision separates him even further from his already tenuous humanity
but what choice does he have?
