milliways_bar | (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

"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.

"It could be worse. I could be wearing the hat instead." No hat appears on Jim's head. Will wonders never cease!

Brennan contemplates Jim for a moment.

"Even if the parameters were expanded, and you were given a real, full-size top hat instead of a small chocolate one....you'd still look funny."

Possibly just because she would have a hard time reconciling the disparate time-frames involved.

"The number of people in all of human history who looked good in a stovepipe hat was exceedingly small. And it's a wonder than a gawky man with a scraggly beard and no mustache was one of them." Never mind that no one in Starfleet wears a hat.