milliways_bar | (no subject)

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(no subject)

When your colleague and former intern confesses to working with a serial killer, it generates a lot of paperwork.

Especially when you work for the federal government.

Higher-ups want to know how it could have happened, if there had been any signs, how it had slipped through the cracks. They obtain this information via lengthy and detailed questionnaires. Brennan, who had hired Zach as her intern three years ago, has a stack only slightly shorter than Cam’s, who, as the boss, is dealing with the worst of it.

Brennan is slowly and steadily working her way through hers, her forehead propped on her hand. It’s all a waste of time—the questions and reports, and the psych evaluations for the team that the administration is discussing. The damage has already been done. Extreme CYA measures now aren’t going to undo it.

But Brennan can’t even work up the wherewithal to care. She just neatly completes another page, flips it over into the ‘finished’ pile, and starts on the next.

One foot in front of the other.

[Post-Pain In The Heart]

[Work may call for slowtime]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Brennan looks up with an automatic, but very genuine, smile.

"Jim!"

She frowns, tilting her head.

"What are you eating?"

"It's a stovepipe hat cupcake. Lincoln's birthday. And Darwin's, as well." He suspects she would appreciate that more. "Bar knows I'm a Lincoln buff.

"How have you been? It's been a long while."

"It's the 12th?"

Brennan's been a little distracted lately. But yes--the 12th would make it Darwin's birthday. She doesn't know Lincoln's off the top of her head, but she trusts that Jim would know the accurate date.

"It has been. Too long," Brennan adds, flipping her papers face down and coming over to his table.

"I'm alright. How are things with you?"

"Generally fine at home. Relatively routine star mapping, some diplomatic assignments, occasional patrols along the Neutral Zone." In other words, too quiet. "Here, though...do you know Katherine Barlow?"

Brennan shakes her head.

"I'm not familiar with the name, no."

"She's a friend of yours?"

He nods. "She's a young woman from Texas. From just after the Civil War. And she just watched man get shot for the crime of kissing her.

"He was a man of color." The disgust and anguish in Jim's voice is strong. "It's one thing to study that era. And another to see a friend suffer for its mindset."

Brennan nods.

"A couple of years ago, my team and I were involved in a case revolving around an interracial couple who were involved in the 1950s. The man was white, the woman was black. He was murdered in DC while trying to get enough money together for them to leave the country."

"The attitude persisted long after the Civil War, I'm afraid."

He nods. "I know that, of course. My studies of the Civil Rights Era aren't as broad as those of the Civil War, but I know about Dr. King, Selma, and so forth. But it's one thing to study it and another to see someone affected by it."

"This is true."

Brennan has seen the results of extreme human rights violations, oftentimes the result of tensions between ethnic groups. Just not within the boundaries of her own country.

She is quiet for a moment before asking, "How is Ms. Barlow?"

Even as she asks it, she knows it is an illogical question. How else would one feel in such a situation? But it is the thing to ask.

"Last I saw her, she was a total wreck, unfortunately. There wasn't much I could do. Sometimes it's best to not try to do much.

"I haven't seen her since. I am hoping her boyfriend found her and cleaned her up." He will never forget the look of shock on Katherine's dirty face.

"Sometimes discreet distance is more helpful," Brennan agrees.

She and her colleagues have been practicing that a lot lately, it seems.

"Unfortunately, I would imagine that there's very little, if any, legal recourse that can be taken in her world?"

Brennan considers the last bit for a second. "Then...the man who kissed her and was subsequently murdered was not her boyfriend?"

It would stand to reason that the answer would be know. But it's Milliways. It pays to ask for clarification.

"I honestly don't know. It's possible that I misunderstand her relationship with...well, I'm not entirely sure it's with Doc Scurlock, but that was my impression." Katherine never actually spelled any of it out, but Jim does recognize certain signs. "But beyond that, it took me a while just to find out what happened at all.

"She might have had a second boyfriend, which is possible but a little unlikely in that era. Or it was an innocent kiss between friends in a time when that was rare." Exposure to the ideas the Bar offers could lead a young woman to kiss a friend in a way totally all right in later times, after all. "I don't think that situation matters. A man is dead, a woman saw it happen, and people calling themselves the law will get away with murder."

"You seem to take that quite personally," Brennan says.

Not that she faults him. The situation is a tragic one. And, sadly, authorities getting away with murder is not even remotely unique.

"I probably shouldn't, Temperance. It's not my time or my world. But it's not just that Katherine is a friend. It's that...I don't like abuse of power. Even in the name of justice. When it's in the name of hatred, it's inexcusable. And to say, 'well, the world was like that then' doesn't satisfy me." Nor does the certain knowledge that there won't be justice.

"I don't blame you. On any of those counts."

"But...there is nothing you could do, or have done to change the outcome of the situation. Don't allow it to eat away at you too much."

Giving emotional advice is not Brennan's forte. And it shows. But she hope that Jim will take it with the good intent that it comes with.

And it's possible that she's thinking of another situation in which those words could apply.

"I'll try not to. But it goes with being in command. Even when you are not in a position to fix things, you want to. That, above all else, is why we have a temporal prime directive. Someone needs to remind us that the past is past." He still isn't rushing to eat that cupcake. He's not that hungry.

"That makes you a responsible person. But a lot of things are simply beyond our power to fix."

The cupcake is....really a little disturbing. Is the entire hat made of frosting?

"I'm not sure I'd want to be able to change things in the past even if I had the power to do so. But I can see where enough people would be tempted that such a directive would be necessary."

Brennan ponders that for a moment.

"Assuming you would be able to tell if anyone had. And wouldn't just carry on thinking that the change was normal."

"You can tell," he says with a bit of an edge. "At least sometimes. But in all cases, it's best to leave well enough alone."

"Yes. It's best."

Brennan keeps staring at the cupcake. Not for any real reason. Just because it is there.

"Difficult. But for the best."

If such a thing had been possible with Zach, where would her team be now?

Probably best not to even think about it. It doesn't do any good.

"You want the cupcake?" He could stay on the topic of the flexible nature of time. But then he'd remember Edith and isn't in the mood to add that to worrying about Katherine. "It's yours if you want it."

Brennan shakes her head.

"I'm just intrigued by the engineering. I've never seen a cupcake wearing a top hat before."

Really? Anything is a good distraction from Zach and Gormogon at this point.

Even something as random as baked goods.

"I suppose Bar's alternative would have been to give it a beard."

"A beard could have covered both Lincoln and Darwin, though they have very different facial hair.

"And I think the hat is chocolate. I also think there is a kind of baking that specializes in items like this." Alas, reruns of Ace of Cakes don't exist in the 23rd century.

"I don't do a lot of baking."

Brennan watches little enough television not to have discovered any of the more colorful specials on the Food Network. (And how sad for the both of them.)

"My dad bakes cookies periodically."

"We have cooks within the fleet who specialize in baking. And my mother was the best baker in Iowa. But it's not something I know about, either.

"I just know that this cupcake wants to be Lincoln." He still doesn't touch it, though.

"And admirable goal. For any cupcake."

Brennan does, on occasion, display a sense of whimsy.

Blame Angela.