(no subject)
I got an unexpected day off of work today, giving me surpries free afternoon.
I probably should have used this to do schoolwork, or catch up on the drabbles I owe people (I'm sorry, guys! I will get to them soon, I promise!) But instead, this fic got into my head, so, um. Here it is. Written in a couple of hours and mostly unedited, for which I apologize.
Set between 2x09 and 2x10; Sandra Bennet receives a visitor.
You cannot take a memory without looking at it.
You cannot make a woman forget the gun in her husband’s briefcase without also knowing that she thinks the briefcase is hideously ugly and that her first choice of place to stay if she left her husband would be her sister’s house in Massachusetts, with her parents’ house in Illinois coming a distant second. You may lose track of the things you know; you are not Charlie Andrews and your brain is not a database. Still, you have learned them, and many of the things you learn you make an effort to remember. The things you have stolen, you should value. The memories you have taken should not go to waste.
***
It is three in the morning. Claire is in her room. Lyle is in his room. They may be asleep; in any case, both of them have their doors closed. Lyle has not spoken a word to Claire since he heard the story of what happened. Sandra needs to fix this, somehow, but she can’t right now, can’t get her mind around more than the immediate necessities: since sleep is impossible, stay in the kitchen. Prepare food, because even when their world is falling apart her children need to eat. Keep her eyes on the door, which is locked, because even after all this her daughter is still not safe; how can she ever know her daughter will be safe?
You do not know for sure that she is thinking all of this, but from the light in the kitchen and from many memories taken from other times and other crises, memories taken from Sandra and Lyle and even from Claire, you are fairly certain that it is so. From these memories, and your judgment of timing, you choose when to go to the house and when to knock on the door and ask of Sandra permission to enter. (This is the courteous thing to do. It is something you have never been able to do before.)
After you knock, here’s a long, startled silence from inside the house, and then wary, cautious footsteps, and then the clicking of a lock. Sandra Bennet opens the door with a gun in her hand.
When she sees who it is, she immediately takes several steps back, out of arms’ reach. “I know you,” she says, frightened and angry; you always forget that she can become this angry. “I know what you do, and don’t you come a step closer.” She’s pointing the gun straight at you; her hands are shaking a little, but not enough that there’s any risk that the bullet wouldn’t fly true.
Moving right now would be very stupid, so you don’t. “That is not why I am here.”
She doesn’t look convinced. This is unsurprising. “You people have taken my husband from me every last way but one; you want the rest now? Am I supposed to wake up tomorrow thinkin’ I’m still Sandra Gillis,” she spits, “never married, and wonderin’ where the hell I got two kids and a dog from? That the idea?”
“I do not work for the people you are speaking of anymore.” Your voice is steady. “I am not here on their behalf.”
“Yeah? Whose behalf is it you’re here on?”
“I worked with your husband,” you say. She knows this, but it will do good to remind her that he was not the enemy, but a partner. A friend. Not, perhaps, that this means very much when one is dealing with the Company. It did not mean very much to the invisible man, or to the Russian; but of course you and the man who is now dead have together made certain that Sandra does not know these things. “I have come only to pay my respects.”
“I’m supposed to believe that,” she says. It isn’t a question. “You all think I was born yesterday?”
You meet her eyes and hold them as well as you can. “It is the truth.”
She doesn’t say anything. Her anger is cooling, now, but the suspicion and fear are not gone. You wish that you, too, could also say nothing; it is often the easiest thing to do, but that is not why you are here. It is knowing what to say that is the difficult part. “He was a good man,” you offer up, finally.
She shakes her head, taking her eyes off of you for the first time. You remember how she looked even a year ago; there is no difference in her appearance that you can describe, and yet the change is immeasurable. “Noah was a lot of things,” she says. “A lot of admirable things, even. But a good man?”
If it were Claire standing before you, you would tell her not to say such a thing, and at this time - a day after his death - you would say it with anger. But Sandra has a right to say this that Claire does not; the crimes of the man who is now dead were not committed for her. And you do not, in truth, have the right to contradict her.
“He loved you a great deal,” you say, after a silence. “I know this to be true. What I have done to you was done for that reason; I am sorry for it, all the same.”
“Did you come to tell me that?” she demands. “My husband loved me, and you’re sorry?”
Perhaps you have. “Yes.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says, flat, but she lowers the gun a little - enough so it’s pointing to your leg and not your chest. She regards you for a long moment, and then, finally, sighs.
“Well, you may as well come inside. But you wake my children, and I will shoot.”
***
There is a long silence once they enter the kitchen. You feel no need to break it, this time; you are comfortable with silence. She moves to stand on one side of the table, and you keep yourself on the other.
“So I guess you know just about everythin’ there is to know about us.” It is the sort of thing she might offer up, at a different time, with the bright social cheer she always uses in awkward circumstances. Now she is just resigned, and uncharacteristically bitter.
“Not everything,” you say. “I did not know you were able to use a gun.” This may be a lie, but if you did know it at one point - as seems likely - the fact has been buried under a hundred images of Sandra icing cupcakes, babbling at the dog, staring in confused fear at something she should not have seen.
Sandra looks down at the revolver in her hand. She handles it with a matter-of-factness you recognize from another memory, Sandra with a cleaver, chopping up bloody steak for the dog’s third birthday. “I’ve been shootin’ since I was sixteen. My mother used to take me down to the range. Always meant to take Claire once she was old enough, but then I got out of practice and the appointment kept slippin’ my mind -”
She shoots a sudden sharp glance across the table at you, and you shake your head. “That was no doing of mine.”
“Ah,” she says, and then, “I guess I can’t blame Lyle forgettin’ to take the garbage out on you, either, then.”
“No,” you agree, “though if he knew of me I am sure he would not hesitate to use the excuse.”
Sandra smiles at that, but it has nothing to do with the joke. “Oh, he does know of you. He knows all about you, and to run straightaway if he sees you. I’m not havin’ you takin’ any more pieces out of my son; you’ve taken enough out of me.”
If Lyle ran, you could easily bring him down, and render him unconscious with your power, but this seems an unwise thing to say. “I see no reason why I should have to erase your son’s memories in the future,” you say, instead.
“That’s a real comfort,” Sandra says, dryly, and points to a chair. “You can sit down if you want.”
You sit.
Sandra hesitates, and then turns around, setting the gun down on the counter - far out of your reach, and in easy grasp of hers. She reaches up to a cabinet filled with boxes of tea, cans of instant coffee and hot chocolate powder. “Earl Grey or peppermint? The peppermint’s herbal. No caffeine.”
If she finds comfort in playing the hostess, it befits you to accept the hospitality. “Peppermint,” you say. “Thank you.”
She takes the box down and busies herself with the business of making the tea - filling the kettle with water, putting it on the stove, her back towards you the entire time. She doesn’t turn around, as the water starts to warm. She does say, abruptly, “Why are you here?”
“I have told you,” you say, and she turns around.
“No, you didn’t. Why are you here?”
You don’t say anything. If she chooses not to believe your words, there is little you can say to convince her.
You stay like this until the kettle starts to let out a faint whistle, and she turns around again to remove it from the heat and pours it into a pair of teacups with a bag of peppermint tea in each. “You know,” she says, conversationally, “I’m not sure you even know why you’re here.” She picks up one cup with one hand and stirs the bag inside it around meditatively with a spoon with the other, and holding both of these, cup and spoon, she turns around once more. “Are you grieving my husband?”
You stare at her; you suppose your surprise might be plain on your face, because she says, a little impatiently, through a throat that is choking up, “You worked with him for years. You knew more about what he was doin’ than I ever did. You were his partner, you said, so you tell me now: are you grieving for him?”
It takes you a long time to respond. Perhaps this is because you have almost forgotten how to answer this sort of question; it is a very long time since anyone has asked you how you felt about something, although, in fairness, most of the people you have been associating with were not aware that you could answer. And it is a complicated question - complicated as all things associated with the man who is now dead are.
“Yes,” you say, after you have thought about this for a long time; looked through all your memories, yours and not yours, and remembered each and every sin you have committed together, and the reasons for them. “I grieve for him.”
The suspicion isn’t gone, but after another long moment of waiting, Sandra nods, and says, “Then I guess that’s why you’re here.”
She hands you the teacup, and then wipes her nose and eyes on her shirtsleeve. “You know, I never did ask Claire - what’s your name?”
There is so little you don't know about Sandra Bennet, and so little you do.
You tell her.
I probably should have used this to do schoolwork, or catch up on the drabbles I owe people (I'm sorry, guys! I will get to them soon, I promise!) But instead, this fic got into my head, so, um. Here it is. Written in a couple of hours and mostly unedited, for which I apologize.
Set between 2x09 and 2x10; Sandra Bennet receives a visitor.
You cannot take a memory without looking at it.
You cannot make a woman forget the gun in her husband’s briefcase without also knowing that she thinks the briefcase is hideously ugly and that her first choice of place to stay if she left her husband would be her sister’s house in Massachusetts, with her parents’ house in Illinois coming a distant second. You may lose track of the things you know; you are not Charlie Andrews and your brain is not a database. Still, you have learned them, and many of the things you learn you make an effort to remember. The things you have stolen, you should value. The memories you have taken should not go to waste.
***
It is three in the morning. Claire is in her room. Lyle is in his room. They may be asleep; in any case, both of them have their doors closed. Lyle has not spoken a word to Claire since he heard the story of what happened. Sandra needs to fix this, somehow, but she can’t right now, can’t get her mind around more than the immediate necessities: since sleep is impossible, stay in the kitchen. Prepare food, because even when their world is falling apart her children need to eat. Keep her eyes on the door, which is locked, because even after all this her daughter is still not safe; how can she ever know her daughter will be safe?
You do not know for sure that she is thinking all of this, but from the light in the kitchen and from many memories taken from other times and other crises, memories taken from Sandra and Lyle and even from Claire, you are fairly certain that it is so. From these memories, and your judgment of timing, you choose when to go to the house and when to knock on the door and ask of Sandra permission to enter. (This is the courteous thing to do. It is something you have never been able to do before.)
After you knock, here’s a long, startled silence from inside the house, and then wary, cautious footsteps, and then the clicking of a lock. Sandra Bennet opens the door with a gun in her hand.
When she sees who it is, she immediately takes several steps back, out of arms’ reach. “I know you,” she says, frightened and angry; you always forget that she can become this angry. “I know what you do, and don’t you come a step closer.” She’s pointing the gun straight at you; her hands are shaking a little, but not enough that there’s any risk that the bullet wouldn’t fly true.
Moving right now would be very stupid, so you don’t. “That is not why I am here.”
She doesn’t look convinced. This is unsurprising. “You people have taken my husband from me every last way but one; you want the rest now? Am I supposed to wake up tomorrow thinkin’ I’m still Sandra Gillis,” she spits, “never married, and wonderin’ where the hell I got two kids and a dog from? That the idea?”
“I do not work for the people you are speaking of anymore.” Your voice is steady. “I am not here on their behalf.”
“Yeah? Whose behalf is it you’re here on?”
“I worked with your husband,” you say. She knows this, but it will do good to remind her that he was not the enemy, but a partner. A friend. Not, perhaps, that this means very much when one is dealing with the Company. It did not mean very much to the invisible man, or to the Russian; but of course you and the man who is now dead have together made certain that Sandra does not know these things. “I have come only to pay my respects.”
“I’m supposed to believe that,” she says. It isn’t a question. “You all think I was born yesterday?”
You meet her eyes and hold them as well as you can. “It is the truth.”
She doesn’t say anything. Her anger is cooling, now, but the suspicion and fear are not gone. You wish that you, too, could also say nothing; it is often the easiest thing to do, but that is not why you are here. It is knowing what to say that is the difficult part. “He was a good man,” you offer up, finally.
She shakes her head, taking her eyes off of you for the first time. You remember how she looked even a year ago; there is no difference in her appearance that you can describe, and yet the change is immeasurable. “Noah was a lot of things,” she says. “A lot of admirable things, even. But a good man?”
If it were Claire standing before you, you would tell her not to say such a thing, and at this time - a day after his death - you would say it with anger. But Sandra has a right to say this that Claire does not; the crimes of the man who is now dead were not committed for her. And you do not, in truth, have the right to contradict her.
“He loved you a great deal,” you say, after a silence. “I know this to be true. What I have done to you was done for that reason; I am sorry for it, all the same.”
“Did you come to tell me that?” she demands. “My husband loved me, and you’re sorry?”
Perhaps you have. “Yes.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says, flat, but she lowers the gun a little - enough so it’s pointing to your leg and not your chest. She regards you for a long moment, and then, finally, sighs.
“Well, you may as well come inside. But you wake my children, and I will shoot.”
***
There is a long silence once they enter the kitchen. You feel no need to break it, this time; you are comfortable with silence. She moves to stand on one side of the table, and you keep yourself on the other.
“So I guess you know just about everythin’ there is to know about us.” It is the sort of thing she might offer up, at a different time, with the bright social cheer she always uses in awkward circumstances. Now she is just resigned, and uncharacteristically bitter.
“Not everything,” you say. “I did not know you were able to use a gun.” This may be a lie, but if you did know it at one point - as seems likely - the fact has been buried under a hundred images of Sandra icing cupcakes, babbling at the dog, staring in confused fear at something she should not have seen.
Sandra looks down at the revolver in her hand. She handles it with a matter-of-factness you recognize from another memory, Sandra with a cleaver, chopping up bloody steak for the dog’s third birthday. “I’ve been shootin’ since I was sixteen. My mother used to take me down to the range. Always meant to take Claire once she was old enough, but then I got out of practice and the appointment kept slippin’ my mind -”
She shoots a sudden sharp glance across the table at you, and you shake your head. “That was no doing of mine.”
“Ah,” she says, and then, “I guess I can’t blame Lyle forgettin’ to take the garbage out on you, either, then.”
“No,” you agree, “though if he knew of me I am sure he would not hesitate to use the excuse.”
Sandra smiles at that, but it has nothing to do with the joke. “Oh, he does know of you. He knows all about you, and to run straightaway if he sees you. I’m not havin’ you takin’ any more pieces out of my son; you’ve taken enough out of me.”
If Lyle ran, you could easily bring him down, and render him unconscious with your power, but this seems an unwise thing to say. “I see no reason why I should have to erase your son’s memories in the future,” you say, instead.
“That’s a real comfort,” Sandra says, dryly, and points to a chair. “You can sit down if you want.”
You sit.
Sandra hesitates, and then turns around, setting the gun down on the counter - far out of your reach, and in easy grasp of hers. She reaches up to a cabinet filled with boxes of tea, cans of instant coffee and hot chocolate powder. “Earl Grey or peppermint? The peppermint’s herbal. No caffeine.”
If she finds comfort in playing the hostess, it befits you to accept the hospitality. “Peppermint,” you say. “Thank you.”
She takes the box down and busies herself with the business of making the tea - filling the kettle with water, putting it on the stove, her back towards you the entire time. She doesn’t turn around, as the water starts to warm. She does say, abruptly, “Why are you here?”
“I have told you,” you say, and she turns around.
“No, you didn’t. Why are you here?”
You don’t say anything. If she chooses not to believe your words, there is little you can say to convince her.
You stay like this until the kettle starts to let out a faint whistle, and she turns around again to remove it from the heat and pours it into a pair of teacups with a bag of peppermint tea in each. “You know,” she says, conversationally, “I’m not sure you even know why you’re here.” She picks up one cup with one hand and stirs the bag inside it around meditatively with a spoon with the other, and holding both of these, cup and spoon, she turns around once more. “Are you grieving my husband?”
You stare at her; you suppose your surprise might be plain on your face, because she says, a little impatiently, through a throat that is choking up, “You worked with him for years. You knew more about what he was doin’ than I ever did. You were his partner, you said, so you tell me now: are you grieving for him?”
It takes you a long time to respond. Perhaps this is because you have almost forgotten how to answer this sort of question; it is a very long time since anyone has asked you how you felt about something, although, in fairness, most of the people you have been associating with were not aware that you could answer. And it is a complicated question - complicated as all things associated with the man who is now dead are.
“Yes,” you say, after you have thought about this for a long time; looked through all your memories, yours and not yours, and remembered each and every sin you have committed together, and the reasons for them. “I grieve for him.”
The suspicion isn’t gone, but after another long moment of waiting, Sandra nods, and says, “Then I guess that’s why you’re here.”
She hands you the teacup, and then wipes her nose and eyes on her shirtsleeve. “You know, I never did ask Claire - what’s your name?”
There is so little you don't know about Sandra Bennet, and so little you do.
You tell her.