Phantoms and Paramnesia: The Psychological and Physiological Consequences of Chronic Abandonment, the Heart’s Escape From the Rib Cage, and Deterioration of the Scalpel
Authors: Dr. Artemus Yang.
Abstract: A very not well adjusted surgeon-turned-time traveler with severe abandonment issues, memory loss, and a penchant for faking it but never making it goes into a destructive spiral when their friend/confidant/lover/narrative foil/mirror/echo/other half/companion/partner decides to wreak havoc on the timeline their place of employment works night and day to maintain.
" oh, come on, " hemingway sighs, disappointed by the pushback against his absolutely brilliant idea. because it is great, no matter what baldwin says. " and i do remember last new years very well, contrary to popular belief. " talk about a hangover; he definitely overdid it with the drinking—he doesn't do that very often but he did then and was painfully reminded of the fact that he's pushing forty.
" i thought everyone loves getting serenaded with sinatra. voice of an angel, that one, " hemingway says, trying to keep his bubbling laughter back. he fails, obviously. it's like he can hear london's screeching as he speaks. he even scans the room to see if he's imagining things but no, he's over there just talking to thoreau. " i wish someone had taped it. what a performance. but okay, fine. he's the only one excused. no one else. what's your pick? i think i wanna do dolly parton. "
baldwin subconciously follows hemingway's line of sight, gaze sticking on london. they're too far to hear the conversation, but london throws his head back in the familiar contour of his laugh when he's truly caught off guard and baldwin desperately needs to know what thoreau said to make him do that.
his drink is too diluted for for this. he let the ice melt; he can't afford to do a jump tomorrow morning hungover.
it takes baldwin a moment — an extended pause between what hemingway asked and a response from baldwin. it's happening more frequently, this being-caught-off-guard thing. his mind is distracted even when he's alone. he finishes off his glass and adamantly does not look back over at london, keeping focused on hemingway's shoulder instead. "pour me something stronger and i'll see if i can convince him into a duet. you'll have to choose the song, i don't know anything, and you can consider it a birthday gift." they got him a real one too: a set of cufflinks, silver with a depiction of the ocean on the face. the small box is hidden in the pile of boxes wrapped in garish paper on the other table, declarations of hemingway's importance (baldwin cannot bring himself to think of stronger words) to everyone in the room.
when / september 2nd, 1996
where / a meeting room
with / @agentbaldwin
Observation has come naturally to Elise since her own consciousness made itself known to her. She is a quiet woman, always has been. She will watch the world around her from a corner in silence, she will notice things others brush over and she will store them away in a little compartment in her brain, probably not even to be used but simply to keep. It's come in handy over the years. When her grandmother would make her tea and give her an extra cookie before bed, she'd know her mother had just called asking for money — and the next day when she showed up strung out and pleading, Elise would be adequately prepared. When an experiment would go wrong, she could feel the shift in her supervisors before orders to fix the issue would even come down the line. She felt the shift in Agent London before he blew their world up. She's felt the shift in Agent Baldwin for much, much longer.
And she would blame it on London (much like she blames most things on London, since seemingly the beginning of time) but perception tells her that London's defection has compromised only a fraction of Baldwin's strange behavior.
Baldwin is not foolish enough to keep their back to the only exit in the room, but for once she's quicker than them, side stepping between the agent she wants to speak with privately and the rest that have filed out of the room for a well-deserved lunch break. It must be unnerving, the way she positions herself in front of the door so he can't leave, like a statue that's just been built on a moment's notice. Bishop is often oblivious to her own sometimes imposing presence — but not now. Now she intends to use every inch of intimidation she can muster in herself to her advantage, so she can finally get this elusive creature to fucking speak to her.
"So," she starts, arms crossed and head tilted as if they're about to engage in normal, casual conversation. As if he's not been dodging her at every given opportunity for Lord knows how long. "There goes our holiday weekend, hm? Any Labor Day plans of yours get disrupted?" They don't make holiday plans. He knows it and she knows it too. But it's an easier way of asking him 'were you planning on being shady and making yourself scarce yet again after this meeting?' without actually having to voice those words.
baldwin has game plans for game plans, and impromptu meetings are not exempt from this. very little, if anything at all, can throw a wrench into his routine when he has so many contingencies mapped out.
except for agent london and agent bishop. the two of them have always manged to turn things on their head no matter the circumstance. he's always the last one in and first one out. never sits with his back to any exit — including windows that are supposedly unable to open — and always keeps the primary door within eyeline. people are predictable and take the same seats they've had since the beginning , and while baldwin has his preferred arrangement , he changes it often.
it's no surprise people think him overly paranoid. he has his reasons. there is nothing wrong with being prepared.
last one in — check. he's the one that closes the door behind everyone half a second before the meeting leader starts speaking.
first one out — fuck. baldwin is fast, but he should have known something was up with bishop from the second he scanned the room. he's been distracted for obvious reasons lately, though it hasn't stopped him from walking the other direction when she appears in his peripheral vision. she blocks the door like her damn life depends on it, and he seriously considers testing just how stuck closed those windows really are.
she says some bullshit about labor day and he stops himself from scoffing in her face. that isn't why she's standing here, anyone can read that much. "the new york jets called. they want you as their linebacker if this time agent thing doesn't pan out." he's not bitter that she stopped him at all. why do you ask?
"ellie," he pleads, eyes widening in a mockery of sincere pleading. baldwin isn't as good an actor as he is a liar, but maybe the nickname will pull its weight. "i was planning on working through the weekend anyway. speaking of, we should both get on that. i'm sure you have an indecipherable report to get to just like the rest of us." baldwin angles his body, back to the wall, and tries to slip past the fraction of available towards the door. if he ducks really well, he might just make it.
WHEN : oct 15th, 1995 ; hemingway's birthday party <3
WHERE : thoreau & whitman's apartment
STATUS : open to everyone
"man, i love a sunday party. hope all of us show up with a raging hangover tomorrow," hemingway chuckles as he finishes making his drink—a very unsophisticated mix of vodka and some disgustingly sweet soda. it's great. about ten more of these and maybe he'll start feeling them.
"thanks for being here, by the way. i really appreciate it," he grins at them, warm and genuine. he's only learned to enjoy his birthday in the last ... five ? six years ? ( does it even matter ? considering ... ) before then, it felt like an uncomfortable burden; a rock stuck in your shoe you can never get rid of. who knew you just needed the right people to make it better ?
"i'm making everyone sing karaoke. it's my party and y'all sing if i want you to," he sings the words to the tune of the lesley gore song, then bursts out laughing. "i think london should do cyndi lauper."
baldwin doesn't understand birthdays. or parties, for that matter. they do, however, understand the importance of showing up, and even if they don't consider hemingway a friend, he's still someone they hold in high regard.
the acronym fomo won't be invented until the overwhelming surge of social networking sites in 2004, but they suppose that the term covers their reasoning for being here well enough. monday morning hangovers or not, they'd be remiss to not at least skulk around and eavesdrop.
hemingway's comment gets their attention pretty quickly for two reasons: for one, he's the man of honor, and two, absolutely not. "please. no. don't give him ideas. i'll do it if it means you won't make him do it. remember last new years? i can't have a repeat of that. i can't."
Victoria Chang, from Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief; “Dear D,”
[Text ID: “We often speak of memory as something that lingers, that returns again and again. Maybe memory is more like a homicide, each time it returns, it’s a new memory, one that has murdered all the memories before.”]
stein is not sentimental enough to call the bureau home, nor is he self-aggrandizing enough to romanticize it as myth. now, some might disagree with with the rejection of both characterizations—after all, these are people who have developed the means to master time, and have sacrificed all but each other in the journey.
( i suppose that last one's not quite right, given the circumstances. )
stein, however, is a pragmatist, which is why he sees the bureau as merely an employer and the london mission as merely another high-priority assignment.
( do you think, if given enough time, that even damocles would have resigned himself to the sword? oh, time. the bureau may have found a way to travel through it, but they've yet to figure out how to alchemize its fundamentally finite nature. )
and so stein is most certainly not caught off-guard when baldwin catches him halfway to his office with an offered cup of coffee. if he stiffens, it's nigh-imperceptible, surely.
i made too much, baldwin says, and a poet might call it confession. it is, if nothing else, something of a quantifiable anomaly, and though stein's natural reaction is to investigate, he refrains. such audacity belonged on someone like hemingway. he spares the cup a cursory glance—no cream—but accepts it without question nor comment. "thank you," he says, and once again the air rots in his throat before he can say more. he swallows it down with a pensive little sip of coffee.
unsweetened. prepared for nobody in particular, then?
to baldwin's question, an admission: "not as much as i would like." call it quid pro quo, call it collegiality. "what we've been given is . . . " baldwin has been sitting in the same meetings as stein; they can fill in the blanks. "well. and i've never been able to read london well. still," his gaze drops to the mug in baldwin's hands, "we do as we must. i suppose you're not ready to give up for the night either?"
at the center of everything is this: you are in a house that burns because you threw a lit match onto a gas stove and stoked the fire and you cannot save them and you cannot save yourself. you can escape unmarred, but not unscathed. do you take the hand that is offered?
yes. yes, baldwin does. and then as they are pulled out, they look back, and the image is seared into their mind even if they don't want it.
(maybe there are some positives to memory leaking out of their ears. highly recommended medical treatment for those seeking to forget unsavory memories of exes, family, work, and everything else in their lives. possible side effects include but are not limited to: tremors, forgetting things and people that are dear to you, sleepless nights, caffeine addictions, increased paranoia, and approaching people you otherwise would talk to.)
stein mentions london by name and baldwin's jaw tenses of its own accord. there's very little discussion anymore that happens that isn't about him , and in all fairness , baldwin started this one by bringing up progress. this really is a fucking joke if even stein is being held back from what's needed.
unless, of course, he's lying. something about stein in particular grinds their gears, and as soon as they figure it out... they're not quite sure. they'll cross that bridge when they get to it.
"i think everyone is doubting what they thought they knew about him." baldwin isn't. maybe it's wishful thinking or plain foolish naivety, but they knew him the best, and someone can't falsify their entire personality for over ten years. at some point, something changed , baldwin just has to find out what and they need to do it faster than the rest. they shake their head no, because they aren't a person who gives up, and certainly not with this. "but, i mean. if you have any records pertaining to him that the rest of us don't have access to, i am still our best shot at looking over them. i know everything he said and did as long as he was within my range of vision. i am a wasted resource paging through redacted records that have little to no relation to the situation at hand."
"oh, wow, you're probably the only person who's clearing their head at the office," hemingway replies; he keeps his voice light and slightly teasing but in no way rude. though he's pretty sure—been told so, even—that he's got a reputation for being incapable of that. he tries not to be, being an asshole was the obvious shield equipped in the army that took too much energy; he hated it. and there's no need for that here, nothing he needs to defend himself against and so he can be himself—warm smiles, words of encouragement, everything he does packed with i love this; i love you. hemingway would sooner be caught dead than be mean or disrespectful. especially with the team.
"is it working, though?" he asks, takes a good look at baldwin and ends up feeling for them. the office is definitely not a place they should be at, they belong at home, in bed and resting. hemingway is tempted to offer to drag them back himself, tuck them in if he has to. they look like shit, plain and simple and hemingway isn't surprised but he is worried. he's just not sure how to say it yet—both the looking like shit and the worried part. "i think i might be clocking out soon. probably won't get anywhere tonight. gotta sleep sometime too." an indirect suggestion—you should as well.
hemingway laughs, almost spills the coffee with the way his body shakes. true, there's very little faith around, the general mood is ... disappointment? the bureau is being surprisingly helpless and in more disarray than he would expect of them. and yet—he's got faith. it's probably very naive of him, to believe that their superiors know what their doing, that they're doing the best they can, that they're withholding things for a reason.
deep down hemingway knows it's bullshit. he gets the team not knowing everything there is to possibly know at all times but if there ever was a time to declassify some things, it's now. and yet.
there should be some kind of a game plan. hemingway knows it, baldwin knows it and it's starting to feel like taking things into their own hands sounds like the best course of action. but they can't. there's rules and there's a sort of conduct that's expected of them and hemingway's become so, so awful at breaking rules.
"i'm sure there's—" hemingway starts but struggles to finish. he's really not that sure. impossible to be these days. "i mean, any day now. they'll send us back, see if there's anything we can do to track him. we'll do some field work soon, i'm sure." he isn't. he's just hoping.
"i don't know, i just think that if i go completely hopeless, everything will fall apart. more than it already is," hemingway says, laughs a little because he doesn't want the admission to sound too serious, too personal even though it is. "you know, it's always best case scenario, things happen for a reason with me. we'll figure it out. we'll get there."
and it probably means nothing to baldwin. a bunch of empty words that probably won't hold up because london's going to make catching him hard work, real hard. but hemingway still needs to say it, if not for them then for himself.
this is what he is at his core. fake it till you make it. sometimes things come true. and sometimes you end up disappointed.
"i'm frustrated but i'm trying, you know? all i can do right now," he says, unable to stop himself from another half-profound bit. he tugs at a corner of a report, stares at the date—tries to mentally catalogue it because it seems important.
then he looks up at baldwin, wonders if they're tired of his misplaced optimism. the worry resurfaces. "are they grilling you a lot? i mean, considering," he shrugs, never finishes the sentence but baldwin must get the idea. hemingway doesn't really know what the relationship between them and london was ( is ? ) exactly but he know they were close. and he likes to think of himself as good at people and good at guessing. he also knows when things aren't his business. "if you need anything, i'm here. you know that right?"
" if i was really trying to clear my head , i would have a scalpel in my hand. " but no operating room would let a surgeon with shaky hands and a deteriorating memory scrub in , and he can't quite blame them. he itches to be cutting into a person with the intention of saving them ; practicing sutures on bananas and oranges stolen from the dining hall can only calm his nerves so much. he's in a strange place — one might even deign to label it a bad place , but if he thinks of himself sinking any lower than he's convinced himself of doing , he might be having his breakdowns in public instead of behind the safety of closed doors.
hemingway means well. he's sincere , optimistic , hopeful , and very obviously holding something back. baldwin focuses his gaze on hemingway , but never on his face. he doesn't have to look him in the eye to pick up the undertones of the declaration that hemmingway is considering going home. he's continuously pulled back to the office even when it's the last place he wants to be. the environment lulls him into a false sense of security , fools him into thinking this is just another day working on just another case. he's torn in three directions : his mind , his heart , and his hands. if he's not keeping busy , even if the work is futile , what's the point of being here ? when he rests , he's alone with his thoughts , and he's become too comfortable sleeping with someone else in the room to try and do it all alone.
no one warns about the dangers of co-dependency when entering this career.
baldwin swallows thickly and keeps both hands wrapped around the mug. he doesn't even want the coffee , it's just nice to feel the warmth. " if everything happens for a reason , which one do we use to explain what he's doing ? " late in the night right when the exhaustion is weighing his eyes down , he draws up a list of reasons , each more nonsensical than the last. he comes to realize an awful truth : that he doesn't even know who london is and that it wouldn't change anything he thinks about him anyway. one doesn't become an agent because they've lived a happy life. a certain degree of traumatic experience is required , written down in the fine print. baldwin sees that whole ordeal a rather large flaw. why recruit people who have events they want to change ? maybe a trai—rogue agent—was much overdue. but it didn't have to be him.
" i thought about breaking into the records room more than once , " he admits , because hemingway has a way about him that makes confessions happen. baldwin gives him a sidelong glance to guage his reaction. " not even for anything regarding this. they're holding my cases hostage. " which , in any other scenario would be perfectly fine , he does have perfect recall of written text and verbal conversation. having the file physically is different , is what he tells himself. this has nothing to do with the headaches. he cranes his head to catch a glimpse of the report hemingway is working on. " went through that one already. nothing we don't already know. "
he takes a large sip of the coffee to avoid answering immediately. baldwin has always been the interrogator and he finds that he doen't appreciate being on the other side. the only thing keeping him from lashing out during the recent interrogations is that he can't do something about london if he's being held back as a precaution. he provided carefully worded , succinct answers to probing questions , and held his tongue during the rest. " yeah. but i don't know anything. " he knew enough to be worried and hindsight is twenty-twenty.
the silence is more uncomfortable than the bleak rooms he was questioned in. he reaches for his messenger bag hanging off an adjacent chair and swings it across his shoulder. " you said you were clocking out ? " the walls feel like they're closing in , and very suddenly he doesn't want to be anywhere near here.
when normal people clock out for work at their jobs, they go home. but home is such a funny ( odd ) concept these days.
he thinks of the girl from kansas / schoolteacher from harlem, with her little dog, desperate to get back to her own time & place after being dropped in a foreign place & time. and looking around, he imagines he could be dorothy right about now, thinking of home.
but what is home? as he hears footsteps approaching — cutting through the rare silence of this office — he supposes home could be a physical location, but without the people there, places lose their meaning & their power.
and then baldwin's extending a cup to him & that definitely puts things into perspective. fitz accepts, because he doesn't have the heart to tell baldwin he despises coffee, but he carefully finds the nearest surface to let the hot cup rest, keeping his hand loosely around the rim. this needs a disturbing amount of sugar & cream.
when he looks at baldwin, reminded of their circumstance, fitz recalls two things: maybe a home can be found in other people, across time & space, but most importantly —
in this scenario, he's definitely toto.
"progress? well, i ...", fitz pivots at the last moment, given the company, "haven't made much, to be honest. surprise, surprise. i think i'm just hoping my brain will finally shut off long enough so i can get up and go ...," home isn't the right word, so he finds a replacement, "back to my ... living quarters?" he shrugs at how it sounds, but whatever — words can be hard.
after a beat, he nods to the cup in his fellow agent's hand. "how often are you making full cups of coffee after midnight, anyway?"
baldwin catches fitz's stumble in phrasing. there's something missing between the meaning of home and living quarters that goes right over their head , and it's a distinction they've come to realize others here hold as well.
home has always been where they rest for the night , where their cluttered belongings scatter. it's a place. that's all. before the fire , home was their house in lakefield , and after , it was numerous foster homes. since 1990 , home has been their assigned quarters on bureau grounds , and rarely do they ever leave the facilities. although , for a long time between then and now , they found themself resting in london's room , or london in theirs.
their hands clench around the warmth of the ceramic mug. whatever. home is where someone lives and any further linguistic dissection will drive them mad. " it isn't easier to shut off when you're at home ? "
they look over their shoulder at the lounge , then back to fitz. " the midnight part is a new habit. eleven nights over the past two weeks. no — um — twelve. " shit. fuck. pivot. don't mention the second cup. turn the question back over. " how often are you staying so far past five , anyway ? " logically , they know they should have this information already. they clock everyone the second they walk in , if not by the distinctive sound of their footsteps , then by actually looking in their direction. baldwin convinces themself that they're preoccupied with much bigger issues , that there is a finite amount of connections that can be made in the human brain , that they are still just human. the same mantra they've been telling themself for a year now. denial is a powerful thing.
@agentbaldwin has put him at a significant disadvantage.
INSCRIBED into the epistomelogical esoterics of empiricism, a headstone and a headline rattling about his head like a heliocentric model that fondled idiocy no matter the über-legalization of divorce, were three words that agent whitman was most familiar with out of nagging necessity, during those bygone bar trivia battles of yore: scientia potentia est. power, potential – was there any real difference when it came to the bureau? but there was no agent whitman sitting in his sector at the bullpen, perfect back perpendicular to paperwork he might have worked past if he had stayed, attained the ultimate nirvana of potential, and neither was there any interrogation for agent whitman to conduct as he played janus of the law; good cop, bad cop, ugly cop. there and then was raphael, hindquarters sliding off the ethically sourced quadrants of a neon pink sacco chair, staring at the bandage on agent baldwin’s hand. no, no, bad raphael. his fingers snap to the beat of the storm slashing his windows apart and his vision drifts to the wooden chessboard. try it on the tongue, raphael, but don’t let the sound past your teeth. agent artemus. drop the title. bald yang. keep the title. agent doctor greatest regret artemus yang. by god, why couldn’t they have celebrated new year’s by stopping a simple, straightforward case of first-degree arson? not that it was particularly impossible, considering the amount of sparklers raphael had left over from a new year’s party nobody attended (not that he was bitter, and not that he believed anything was impossible except for people attending his parties).
oh, it was white’s move.
knowledge was power, and raphael had accepted eons ago that he was not meant to be powerful. raphael had also accepted that he was not good at permutations and probabilities that did not have to do with people, so he accepts his defeat at the hands of doctor yang’s totally truthful research with a deep, solemn nod. he swears he can hear something crack when he looks back up. well, he argues with his joints before actually speaking, he wasn’t going to give artemus the bad beanbag. “i’ll have you know that you lost before we began through the power of the pawn’s gambit, a specialized technique developed in a labarato–”
oh, it was black’s move.
“really, doctor,” raphael gasps, one hand to his pummeled heart and two eyes wider than the synthetic imitations stuck to his only fashionable pair of sunglasses. the other hand rakes a cluster of barely-combed hair backwards. “i can’t fathom the tournaments you must have won to pull off a move like that.”
‘a move like that’ being one of the best and most obvious moves possible, of course, considering it sets him up for a sort of en passant predicament where either move will open up his queen far before he’d planned, but he relents. he looks at artemus with a tentative smile, leaning back in his own chair by the slightest degree. curiosity has never killed the cat, but it has killed his social life in the apartment complex, and he cannot handle losing another friend.
knowledge was power. he adored artemus, but there were some fields that had to keep level. “something big, obviously. a union, maybe. between governments, between timelines, between.” a pointed look at artemus’s ring finger. “agents. honestly, though, as much as i miss being a fugitive before birth, we should hope i never come back. i’m out of practice, out of touch, and certainly out of the patience needed for a proper mission or recruitment. hypothetically.”
knowledge was power. wisdom was punning one’s way into winning. “doctor, hypothetically, have you ever tried to eat a clock?”
triumphantly, he knocks away the knight with a blueberry-juice-stained bishop. don’t ask. “it’s very time consuming. laugh. applaud. sob at the loss of sir horseyriding. and i think i have the better question: who’s going to die soon? you or the recruit? and, er, how creatively? look, if you need to hide a body in some 1960s hippie van, you know i’m your man.”
whitm— raphael. raphael's place is... it's concerning. the first few times artemus visted was out of selfish necessity which slowly evolved into a mission to save a dear friend from his very obvious mid life crisis. artemus really isn't the person to be talking about interior design when sixty three percent of his concept of design is books and small medical devices littered everywhere ( so an organized cleaning space isn't a priority , sue him ! he's got much bigger things to worry about than sorting novels and medical journals appropriately. ) but still , nothing in this room matches , and he's sure the same can be said for the rest of this home. is this unique to raphael's eccentricism or a side effect of dedicating your adult life to a cause that eats away at all agents that survive long enough to make the decision to retire ?
something london whispered to him a few nights ago when he thought artemus was asleep comes to mind , and he brushes it away with haste. artemus is a good liar , which in turn means he is excellent at convincing himself that certain conversations did not happen even if the transcripts are permanently residing within the recesses of his brain. or he's just mediocre at ignoring problems until they go away on their own , but that's neither here nor there.
bottom line is this : artemus yang is loyal to a fault but only to people , not their convictions. he knew by their fifth meeting that he would go to hell and back for [ london ] without question. a cut and dry case of telling someone to jump and them asking how high. the first time he sat down with whitman , artemus did a brief mental assessment of the man — the same he did with the surgical attendings at new york presbyterian — and deemed him an acceptable mentor. he is loyal to the two of them and certainly to a degree inviting self destruction , but he doesn't know what else there is outside of it.
raphael is a friend. surely , it should be okay to take a friend by the shoulders and look him in the eye and tell him that he needs help. lovingly. artemus is delicate with the boundaries between them because he is a friend. he's already toed the line with an intrusive question that he suspects isn't answered to the best of raphael's abilities. it's cryptic and laced with humor and —
artemus follows raphael's gaze to the ring finger of his undamaged hand. his hand flexes , then clenches into a fist before it can shake. metaphors and insinuations have the tendency to slip past him , but he understands this implication with clarity. " relations between agents are frowned upon , " he recites , though there is some pause and unnecessary emphasis. he lies to himself. convinces himself of things that are or aren't true. frowns at raphael. if his goal was to subtly deflect from the specifics of the answer artemus was gunning for , then he's succeeded.
the puns... that's what he was missing. they're awful and predictable but he enjoys the game of it and the theatrics raphael puts on for delivery. " you shouldn't eat clocks. the symptoms might be minute but the prognosis is deadly. you can die within seconds. "
he shifts in his seat ( artemus is incredibly aware that he is sitting on something he might have seen in a college student's dorm and forces the thought away ) and considers the posed question once his knight is taken. " his name is sir lancelot , actually. and i think it's better if i go to the source to take care of my problem. stein. maybe faulkner. " he's joking. artemus stares at raphael and conveys as such. this is a confidential conversation and they are making lighthearted jokes to cope with the reality of managing timelines. " i've seen too many creative deaths to know that's how you get caught. i may ask for your help in hiding a body , but leave the planning to me. "
artemus stares at the board. he's prone to making bad moves on purpose to keep the game interesting and remain unpredictable , the same way he'd watch his mom expose her queen too early while playing against his dad. he swallows the memory and knocks raphael's bishop down with his rook. he itches with the thought of touching whatever has stained the piece , and carefully pushes the fallen bishop to the edge of the board with the rook.
here's a secret : artemus comes to these appointments with a list of questions already prepared. he takes time priming raphael with the easier questions before digging into what he really wants. " do you know of any adverse side effects or complications resulting from regular time jumps ? not the nausea and dizziness. that goes away with practice. something chronic. long-term. " no reason in particular for him to ask this. none at all.
Dickinson’s hands close around the mug offered to him without a second thought. He then brought the ceramic vessel up to his lips and took a sip, mind on autopilot as he stared at a dark spot on the wall in front of the desk he was sitting at. Was this even his desk?
He hissed suddenly, pulling the mug away from his face, and grimaced. Partially from the pain and the acidic bitterness of the dark sludge the rest of the office drank on a daily basis. Years of muscle memory (ten years) betraying him into expecting the coffee to be the ‘optimal temperature for drinking’ from the moment it was handed to him. ’140°’ a voice that is not his own supplied from the recesses of his mind.
Annoyed, Dickinson let out another displeased groan. Then, he got up to make his way to the lounge to try salvage the beverage before he realized the person who had given him the coffee in the first place was talking. Dickinson stopped in his tracks and turned slowly to stare at the figure standing in his peripheral.
It was Artie Agent Baldwin.
Dickinson blinks at them with faux placidity. He wasn’t even sure if they had realized who they were talking to, nor how he should respond to their question. Mainly because Dickinson hadn’t heard it in full. ‘It was something about progress,’ he thought, surprised that they had been the one who brought him up. But considering the circumstances, there was little much the other agent could be asking about.
He’d figured that Baldwin would have been avoiding that topic the same way Dick had been avoiding his own ex-partner. A part of him twinged with sympathy for his colleague, knowing that the two of them were on the same half capsized boat, trying to keep their heads above water as a storm raged on around them. The other, more dominate, part of him churned with suspicion, however.
Of course he hadn’t made any progress. No one could make any progress with the miniscule drops of information the higher ups were willing to give them. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the two of them were decidedly at the bottom of the current office hierarchy; the bureau still deciding what they were willing to disclose to them, if anything at all.
Licking his dry lips, Dickinson grabbed at the brim of his hat and looked at the ground as he decided on how to proceed. On whether or not Dr. Artemus Yang was a threat or not; an enemy or not.
The memory of his bones fracturing into pieces as his skin tore apart caused him to flinch and take a step back and away from Baldwin. He already knew the answer to that first question. The real dilemma was the second.
Raising his gaze up to match eyes with the other agent, Dickinson croaked out in a near monotone, “I’ve made as much progress as you have. Unless you’ve got some sort of big break…?’
baldwin's hands are stained with blood. he came to terms with this fact a very long time ago. rarely , if ever , does he regret any of his actions , but there are three people who died because of his actions for whom he can't help but want to show contrition : his mother , his father , and agent dickinson. he can run his hands under the faucet and stand under the shower after particularly vivid nightmares and pretend like the water and soap is washing the memory and the blood away. it doesn't , no matter how many times he tries. he remembers the words people spoke and the emergency vehicles and the lectures in perfect detail.
figures that when he wants to forget , he can't , but when he doesn't want to , it all slips away like sand through a sieve.
dickinson flinches , backs up , and baldwin can't do anything but watch. guilt churns in his stomach , ugly and rotting and permanent. did he apologize ? he must have apologized. would i'm sorry even have done anything ?
he washes away an incoming headache with a scalding sip of coffee. his tongue burns so bad that he can't taste the sweetness of the second sip. a third and fourth , and he leans back against the desk behind him. they stare in dickinson's direction , but never at him , always a few inches off , like if they don't look at him , nothing ever happened.
" i don't think we're going about this the right away. " they're distantly proud of themself for not fucking up on the delivery , the same way a ghost watches the body it leaves behind. only threads are keeping them going , baseless connections they make on the endless trek from the office to their apartment to the office to their apartment to the office. every journal they've ever written , every item he has ever touched is collected in an organized mess on their living room floor. they're unraveling at an exponential pace , and to their horror , dickinson doesn't seem too far behind. " our unique situations aside , going through mission files won't give us anything we didn't know. the reports are written objectively. there's no determining motive. maybe , if we're lucky , we'll stumble across where— " baldwin frowns. takes a too large sip of the coffee and flexes his free hand in a dexterity exercise born out of anxiety. " the chance of finding the next point that will be changed... it's just unlikely. "
a pause that stretches on too long. " did he seem off to you ? before it happened ? " there. question asked. bandage ripped off. wound still bleeding. they think they're the last one that saw him , but they can't be entirely sure. besides , a less ... personal view of him would probably yield better results. a view that isn't colored with memories that they can't determine are real or made up.
Normally on paperwork days, Agent Faulkner resides in his office — one which he had co-shared with his ex-partner since September 1, 1990, turned solo suite since March, 1995 — however, with the impetus of Agent London’s sudden departure, Agent Faulkner has chosen to spend the night poring through the declassified London’s files at a table within the agents’ bullpen. Furthermore, his official office hours are nine hundred hours to twenty-one hundred, only. It would be disingenuous to have the light on at his suite, which could lead to potential misunderstandings and ambiguity about the times listed on the small sign which adorns his door.
Presently, the time is seventeen minutes after one-hundred hours, and only a few agents have prevailed past their mandated work time, clocking in on possible overtime. Now into his tenth hour (requested for and approved from the higher ups), Agent Faulkner lowers his headphones to his neck and turns off his Walkman, ejecting the cassette tape of Cher’s Cher, released in 1987, after a riveting round of “Hard Enough Getting Over You” coupled with a deeper dive of Mission File #1681. The information regarding the Stockton, California, jailbreak glosses over the finer minutiae of the event, however, Agent Faulkner believes in the Bureau’s superiors. There must be a purpose to the prudence.
Determination settling into his slowly aching bones and weaning the pain away, Agent Faulkner allows himself the smallest of breaks. He glances around, distinguishing the effects of a workweek pushing more than forty hours among his teammates.
At his desk, Agent Hemingway has his legs propped on top of its surface, holding a standard pencil No. 2 hostage in between his lips as he appears to be zoning out. On the other side of the bullpen, Agent Dickinson slouches in his seat, sharing Agent Hemingway’s mental whereabouts by staring at the greige wall. Markedly, the man is not at his assigned desk. Agent Faulkner wonders if Agent Dickinson is aware of this detail, and considers alerting the agent of this fact when he can smell the oncoming wave of coffee, its scent spraying up like seafoam against sand with every subtle slosh he can hear against its cup.
He turns to the voice. Agent Baldwin, and two sets of coffee cups, bear him a greeting, one which is surely a solution to the inconvenience of sleep slowly sapping one's faculties. But Agent Faulkner does not require nor desire it.
At the offering, Agent Faulkner’s natural poker face and ingrained mannerisms inhibits any distaste from occupying his politely smiling features. He understands Agent Baldwin’s act isn’t a malicious one. Not many know of Agent Faulkner’s palate and that he actually does not drink coffee, as such classified and unnecessary personal information should not be distributed during office hours, so he doesn't fault the other agent. As such, he holds out his hands and receives the cup of black coffee as to not arouse any ill feelings from the gift-bearer. Maybe he can repurpose the brew later for tiramisu.
“Thank you, Agent Baldwin,” he replies, not even taking a sip and placing the cup to the side of the desk, at the farthest corner away from the copies of the London documentation and Faulkner’s own brand of notes. (If he has a coffee spill, it would be quite a setback.)
“I am covering all of my bases wherever I can.” He answers, referring to the notations he's making. Coordinates. Weather. London's own background in comparison to the events. The one key information Faulkner doesn't have, and admits would never have, is the nature of London's caprices. That, Agent Faulkner has gathered, is only something to the privy of London's closest. Or, past-closest.
Unmentioned prior, but important still, is the one additional reason Faulkner has for joining the agents at the bullpen. From behind a grainy intercom, there was the inferred order from the superiors when they asked Agent Faulkner to “keep vigil of activity.”
It is not personal to the other agent currently standing by Faulkner’s side, his own coffee in hand. It is for the betterment of the Bureau to prevent another Operation London. In addendum—
Innocence is innocent not because it rejects but because it accepts; is innocent not because it is impervious and invulnerable to everything, but because it is capable of accepting anything and still remaining innocent; innocent because it foreknows all and therefore doesn’t have to fear and be afraid.
Agent Faulkner threads his fingers together and gently places them on his lap, contemplating his response to Agent Baldwin.
“What about yourself? Have you discovered anything new about your former friend, Agent?” He asks with genuine curiosity and smile, hoping that the files have unlocked something in Agent Baldwin's remarkable memory. At this point, he will allow Agent Baldwin to prove himself. Baldwin must, or Faulkner will follow his protocol as commanded.
the bullpen is a spot-the-difference game and one glaring difference is severely overpowering the more subtly hidden ones. scratch that — two major differences. agent london's desk is uncharacteristically unmanned and agent faulkner is down here. baldwin hates the ache in his chest and the way he catches himself taking subtle glances at london's desk like he'll materialize out of thin air.
he never does. the desk stays empty. faulkner stays keeping vigilant surveillance of the team. baldwin stays and forces himself to catalogue every minor detail like it's a life or death scenario , which it may turn into any day now. if he remembers enough of the small stuff , maybe he'll be able to patch together the gaping holes in his memory , but he's never been one to hold on to things like hope.
baldwin really couldn't care if faulkner outright took the coffee and dumped it on the floor ( though a completely improbable scenario , it would have brought some life to the half-hearted work the few people who are still here are putting in ) , he really was just looking for a segue into talking to him. there's only so much ( read : very little ) that he can learn from the short snippets of irrelevant files that his access allows. if he can't pour himself into research , the least he can do is try to pry some information out of people that are more likely to know anything at all.
he glances at faulkner , then at the file and notes he's looking into , and decides fuck it. if baldwin has to torture himself , he may as well get something out of it. he grabs a chair from an unoccupied desk , drags it over , and takes a seat by faulkner without asking or being told. it's entirely unlike him , but desperate times certainly call for desperate measures.
a generous sip of his overly sweet coffee helps mask the way faulkner's use of former friend stab into him like a poisoned dagger and twists. everything about the phrase ignites a fury that he's been doing a poor job of calming recently. former implies that they aren't friends anymore , that baldwin's first instinct upon seeing london won't be to reach out and ... and what ? what comes after that ? for once in his life , he has no plan and no sense of direction. even when following bureau orders , he tends to go off script and finish missions in a way that isn't particularly sanctioned , but gets the job done well. everyone knows this , and up until now , they must have accepted it. what changed ?
nevermind friend. sure. yes , he supposes friend is the right word. if one can clearly separate their life between Before-Friend and After-Friend , then that's it. fine. whatever. normal things that happen in friendship. anyone with their head on straight would agree with faulkner's assessment without a shadow of a doubt.
baldwin's beginning to think he's the problem.
" admittedly i am having a bit of a difficult time on that front. i have to jump through hoops to access my own mission files , forget anything that has to do with his. " he leans forward , resting his elbows on his thighs and lacing his fingers together. not making eye contact is not something out of the ordinary for baldwin , and he chooses a spot on the far wall to stare down as he speaks , keeping his voice steady. " he comes back alive , but then what ? this is unprecedented , we don't have anything in the guidelines denoting what happens to a rogue agent. why alive ? you interrogate him for a week or maybe two , and then he gets thrown into some cell somewhere to rot ? " he can feel his hands starting to shake involuntarily and clasps them together tighter to stop it from happening. this is a normal thing to ask. there needs to be an after. it isn't out of the ordinary to want to know.
it takes a few seconds for hemingway to come back—with his legs kicked up onto his desk, pencil in between his teeth, he's been zoned out and staring ahead. five minutes, ten minutes, maybe more, who knows how long he's been frozen like that for. the files lie open in front of him, forgotten for the sake of—what exactly? hemingway can't even remember what distracted him in the first place. probably doesn't matter. if he can't remember, it was probably something as inconsequential as ... considering whether he should buy a plant. brighten up the place and shit. maybe he should.
he straightens himself out, sits at the desk properly, starts rereading the file again but the words seem to escape him. his watch tells him the reason why and just when he starts considering packing up for the night, baldwin shows up at his desk. well, he can't leave now.
"what are you still doing here?" hemingway asks as he reaches out for the coffee, a bright smile as a thank you. he realizes the question could just as easily be reversed (though it's baldwin after all, so it probably won't be) and that he doesn't really have an answer so he's not expecting much. "thought it was just me and the cleaning crew at this point. and, well—stein but, like, does he ever even leave, right?"
he sighs at the question, takes a sip of the coffee, then another one and another one but no proper answer materializes itself in his brain, ready to be spit out. "uh, well," he shrugs, pauses, swallows. hemingway struggling with his words, now, that's a first. "it's difficult to put the puzzle together when you don't have all the pieces," he says eventually, his eyes scanning across the sections of the reports with big, bold BRIEF UNAVAILABLE or RESTRICTED ACCESS. it's infuriating, that it's been days and they're still getting scraps instead of full reports. "but i have faith. i'm sure we'll start getting somewhere soon." full of conviction, that's the only way to deliver those words, even if you have to force it a little.
now, the million dollar question. hemingway wouldn't be himself if he didn't ask it. "how are you doing? just, you know—in general."
they step beside a random desk ( london's ) and pluck a random pen ( baldwin's favorite pen that london enjoyed 'borrowing' ) from the holder. the pen twirls between their fingers , repeating a complicated pattern of spins as they set the mug down on a coaster at their own desk. their situation isn't much better than hemingway's , desk equally as burdened with the weight of heavily redacted files and a list of predictions that are more than likely to be proven incorrect.
" i needed to clear my head , " baldwin says , because it's a better excuse than self destruction by proxy of research that will get them nowhere. they haven't slept a full night in months and it hasn't gotten any better in the past two weeks. coffee and twenty minute power naps can only get them so far.
there's some sympathy — only the slightest amount , they don't have much to spare — for hemingway. his work is incredible , yet he doesn't have access to the full story. how much of puzzle can be completed when over half of it is missing ? they tried and failed the other day to get access to some files from the record room , and of course they knew they'd be restricted but was this not an extreme circumstance in which some leeway could be given ?
" you might be the only one with any faith right now. how is anyone supposed to get anywhere without full access ? " the bureau is falling apart at the seams. while he doesn't see the operation as urgent , there's disappointingly little that's really being done , and that brief had done nothing to soothe their concerns. they begin sorting through some of the open records , replacing documents that they're finished with into their respective files.
hemingway's question catches them entirely off guard to the point that he places information on #38002 into #38200. not a single response that comes to mind is satisfactory. i'm not. everything's fine. oh , you know. they've wasted too much time deliberating and they take a sip of coffee to grant them another precious second. how plausible is it for them to not have heard hemingway in the first place ? it's dead silent aside from the two of them ( and supposedly stein , in his office a few stairs up ) and their lack of response will only give him an answer.
" i'm frustrated , same as the rest of us. there's no concrete plan. " and baldwin needs plans. " i can't imagine that you're doing any better ? "
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