He told me once you could've gone either way.
"Movement"
A story about death, faith, and science, and making sense of it all. Set in and around season seven.
Gen, Goren&Eames with a side of Ross, rated M-ish
The living are careful and oftentimes caring. The dead are careless, or maybe it's care-less. Either way, they don't care. These are unremarkable and verifiable truths.
- Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking
We dreamed that whole leviathans lay rotting in the reeds.
- The Pogues, "Drunken Boat"
This is a story about cause and effect:
Somewhere beneath the Franco-Swiss border, between the Alps and the Jura mountains, lies the Large Hadron Collider. Two separate complaints were filed against the companies and scientists involved: one in the District Court in Hawaii, one in the European Court of Human Rights, both about the fear of black holes, both eventually dismissed. The Collider went online on the tenth of September, 2008, and nothing happened.
Reading the morning paper, September 11th, Robert Goren pretended he wasn't even a tiny bit disappointed.
10.
Prison is a world within the world, and the mental observation unit an island in it, and then Isolation, like Russian nesting dolls, the gleaming white center being Heaven, which is where he gave up.
His name was William Brady and he was a high school history teacher. Every day after work he'd come home and grade papers with a glass of whiskey in one hand, red pen in the other. He bought a red brick for twenty dollars and threw it through a car dealership window, glass shattering onto the grass outside. There was a history of mental disease in his family. He was an orderly man and kept a clean home, everything in its place, alphebetized. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States and was assassinated in 1963, two years after he was born, and his mother bought an outfit just like Jackie's. Curtains in the windows and television set in front of the couch, liquor cabinet, filing cabinet. There was no one they should call, no.
He was a high school history teacher and he knew there were worlds within the world. Worlds within words. History is a story we tell ourselves. History is cause and effect, history is the spider-fracture of plate glass, his missing fingerprints, cyclical becoming and unbecoming. Isis was the Egyptian goddess of fertility and the sister and wife of Osiris, whose annual death and resurrection ensured the fruitfulness of the land. He knew the symbolism and the corollaries and hoped that Eames would not read too much into it, because he knew that of course there was everything to be read.
His name was William Brady and he knew that there was a tap on his phone, that he was being listened to right now, so keep your voice down, please. It took three of them to wrestle him down. Sodium amytol isn't supposed to work (interrogations were always inconclusive, unreliable, he'd read the studies) but the nurse slid the needle into his arm and he forgot who he was supposed to be, the right answer tangled up somewhere behind his unwilling tongue. The universe is binary but sometimes both answers are right. His name was Robert Goren, detective, Major Case Squad. They're killing people here.
And no, no, it's Brady, William Brady (his father's name was Mark), and Isis, he was still on his cruise, and he hadn't found out anything yet, and Isis this made so much more sense at the time, this hadn't seemed so crazy, and it's not fair -
9.
On the first day of his suspension he woke up at 5:30, took a shower, shaved. He was halfway through a bowl of corn flakes before he remembered he didn't have anywhere to be. Still, he was already up and dressed. He spent two hours at the library reading the New York Times and lightly filling out all the puzzles in pencil. A rumpled, probably homeless, man sat down next to him with a stack of books on 9/11, and they exchanged a sort of comradely look, being members of the club of men with nothing better to do on a Tuesday morning than waste time in a library. Crossword finished (23 down: Where you can never go again, which he thought at first might be 'past' but had to be 'home' due to the 'oceanic' running through it), he spent another hour walking up and down the stacks, pulling out books, putting them back.
On the fourth day of his suspension he ran out of things to do. He read, mostly. At midnight the infomercials started and he watched with an inexplicable fascination. Set it and forget it. Who knew.
On the 15th, 16th, and 17th days of his suspension he experimented with drinking all the time. Eames dropped by on the 18th and he could tell she was wondering if he'd make it through this alive. They watched a documentary on tv about Humboldt squid, and he felt a strange kinship with these creatures blinking their lights at each other in the farthest reaches of the sea, down in the dark, talking about whatever it is squid discuss. He imagined what it would have been like if some hiccup in humanity's distant past had caused people to be squid-shaped instead of monkey-shaped, what squidly things they'd have, squid cars and squid stock markets, if everything would be just the same except they'd be wielding weapons with suckers instead of palms.
On the 30th day of his suspension he noticed that his fingerprints had grown back. His name was Robert Goren and he was a detective, Major Case, pending a psychological evaluation and some kind of miracle. Pending getting out of bed. The sun streamed crooked through the blinds, impossibly bright. He stared at his hands. If he didn't move it wouldn't hurt. If he stayed here, no one would notice. He had the time to waste. If nothing else, he had the time.
On the 48th day of his suspension he discovered that there was, in fact, such a thing as too much pizza. He switched to Chinese, though he was aware that the real solution here was to stop eating like he was looking for a heart attack. But General Tso's chicken went better with beer than salad did and if his suits didn't fit anymore, well, it wasn't like he needed them right then.
On the 91st day of his suspension he admitted to himself that he missed Eames more than was appropriate. He did not call her, but resolved to answer the next time she called him.
On the night of the 124th day of his suspension he dreamt that his mother was still alive. He dreamt that Eames was shot and there was nothing he could do to save her, he dreamt that he was shot and he was alone and the asphalt pressed against his cheek as the blood seeped out. He dreamt that he was transferred to the CIA and was in charge of investigating an alien invasion, though he was pretty sure that was just a result of pastrami-induced indigestion. The nights after that he slept less and less, or drank until he did't dream, and his future was endless and empty.
On the 153rd day of his suspension he almost let Patrick Copa beat the shit out of him. Five minutes later a stranger gave him a business card and a gun.
8.
His name was Robert Goren and history followed him around like a dog. He bought bottled water by the crate and kept it everywhere. He left his cuffs and collar unbuttoned, his watch in the dresser drawer, his ties hung up in the closet. Eames looked him up and down each day like she'd expected this to be the morning he pulled himself together. Eames looked like she wanted to forgive him but didn't know how.
This was all he could do. He knew the last thing that they wanted to hear, and he knew just how to say it. He thought like other people, stood outside himself, hated having to draw his gun but knew intimately the details of a hundred murders. He was on familiar terms with death. He knew the last thing he should say to Eames and he said it anyway, over and over again, words stuttering out almost against his will, part of his brain stepping back and saying good show, Goren. The gun Stoat gave him was fully loaded and he shot it dry. History like a black hole. They were building a particle accelerator in the neutral zone, and that's what this was, just collision after collision after collision.
He was still on his cruise.
This is a world within the world: his name was William Brady and his fist hitting that bastard's face was the most satisfying thing he'd felt all year.
7.
He half-cried once, in the interrogation room with Declan. He'd sucked it up, wiped his eyes, let Eames drive him home, waited, and - nothing. It's not like he was too manly or something, he wasn't that kind of guy, but all he could do was sit on his sofa and feel awful and watch the condensation from the beer bottle soak into his jeans. In the car, she'd expounded obliquely as she could (a weak lead-up about her nephew's birthday party) on the benefits of a good, shoulder-shaking, hurricane-style cry.
"Like coughing up phlegm when you're sick," she'd said.
He wondered what they would do with the heart. Shop around for an interested ex, maybe, though he couldn't picture her having a funeral. Shove it in cold storage somewhere. Donate it to science. And he wondered, though he tried not to, what Declan had done with the body, whether he'd ever tell, whether that was the last part of the puzzle he'd made. And this was the kind of guy Goren was, see, someone else's word wasn't good enough, and DNA wasn't good enough, not for her, because he still couldn't quite believe that there was even a body at all. He needed to be there with her, smell the mix of perfume and hand lotion and decomp, run his fingers along the wound, do his thing, do his job. But Declan hadn't talked and Goren wouldn't be on the case anyway so he sat, palms itching, eyes dry, watching the bottles accumulate, the Jameson gradually disappear.
Declan had been like a prince descending on Seoul. He dressed like a Southern gentleman, always linen suits and matching hats, but spoke with an unplaceable accent and talked faster than the average New Yorker. Goren never bothered to ask. Declan was charming and fiercely intelligent, taking over wherever he could because if it was going to be done right, it had to be done his way. Goren had been enthralled. How could anyone have resisted? Because remember this was before the breakdown, at his height, that brilliance and recklessness, that rebelliousness, and Goren was young and chafing under Army rule and was thrilled at being taken under the wing of this marvelous mad professor. Back in the states they were still Bobby and Dec, holding court over the teetering piles of evidence, but by the time Declan's paranoia and desperation to prove himself right cost him his job, reputation, and health, Goren had already left the nest. This new ruined Declan, he didn't want to think about. They lost touch, or he cut it off. Until Jo.
In the morning he wasn't so much hungover as he was still drunk, fell off the couch with a thump and some internal creaks he'd be alarmed at if he had his wits together. He stayed there for a while, listening to his alarm go off, then stop, and then to the small sounds every New York apartment made. Water running, floorboards shifting, doors closing. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
He knew how to do this, he'd done it twice before. His annual death and resurrection. Easy-peasy.
Eames came over that afternoon, bringing the cold and light in with her, crumbs of dead leaves clinging to her sweater. She made motions in the kitchen like she wanted to make him lunch, and he gestured at the pile of take-out menus on the counter. Her face scrunched up in disapproval. He briefly considered telling her that he'd tried to buy groceries, really, but instead spent an hour sitting in his car in the supermarket parking lot watching people coming and going, the tangle of carts and bags and children, shopping list leaking ink all over his sweating fingers, so many of them and so much and he just turned the ignition back on and came home. He tried, he did. But he knew what that meant, like he knew what the Jenga pile of bottles in the recycling bin meant, and there was no reason to add to the worry radiating off her.
"C'mon," she said, grabbed his shoulder and yanked. "Let me buy you something approaching a decent meal."
She took him to a restaurant with cloth napkins and ordered for him. He almost made a crack about how at least he didn't have scurvy because he took his gin and tonics with lime, then remembered alcoholism isn't a good conversation topic.
He wanted to say he was sick of being involved in the world's longest car crash, of living some ridiculous Shakespearian tragedy, of sitting around and moping like the pathetic, self-involved bastard he'd become.
"Uh, Eames - " he said as she reached over saying "Bobby," her hand landing on his where it was tracing patterns on the tablecloth.
You first, he motioned with his free hand.
"Look. I'm not saying I get it, because I don't. And I know we're a mess, and that's partially my fault, but I want you to remember that I'm here, if you need anything. I might not know what it is you need because Christ, Bobby, you're incomprehensible sometimes. If there's anything I can do..."
"Just, uh, just be you." He squinted and hoped she got what he meant.
"I think I can manage that," she said. "You were about to say...?"
"N-nothing, I, uh." Fucking hell, Goren, a brain the size of Texas and you can't make a basic sentence come out right? "Thanks," he choked out. "For everything. And I want, I, I'm trying -" Come on.
"I know," she said, and maybe she did.
The Arrowhead Pequod Inn had smelled like potpourri and coffee. The box on the bed, he'd known, absolutely known, that it was Donny's and he was officially out of family. He spent the ride back to the city trying not to hyperventilate. Eames, she wrapped her own grief up as tight as it would go. Goren wanted to apologize for leaking his everywhere. He tried, but his heart had been stitched out on his sleeve since childhood and to be perfectly honest he was a wreck. She was silent, he watched his fists shaking like they belonged to someone else. An hour into the ride he unclicked the seat belt and left it off.
And now all in a rush he remembered how she flinched when the nurse pulled back the curtain, how small she looked in the hospital bed, and his heart lurched into his throat all over again.
6.
There's a number of things Captain Ross did not need. To see Todd's smug face ever again, for one. Flack from Logan. Pointless calls from the Chief of D's. And vying for first place in the list of shit he should not have had to deal with was goddamn sympathy from Goren.
He'd wound up half a mile down the coast of the ocean his ex-lover shot her husband into. That's a sentence he didn't need to contemplate. A car had still been waiting when he found his way back, Goren and Eames thankfully gone, and the officer at the wheel did his best to avoid eye contact. Because the way it worked was, he put himself to sleep at night thinking about how it could be worse. Things aren't that bad.
Things really aren't all that bad.
"I'm not sure this is a good idea," Ross said, in a tone of voice that indicated he was sure it wasn't.
"He has to be the one to do this, Captain. I don't think Gage would talk to anyone else." Eames stood straight and stiff, every muscle tensed.
This was a terrible idea. Except, Ross conceded, Goren was doing it, a little wobbly maybe, but pulling the perp's strings like he always did. He knew how this would go, it usually went the same way, but it seemed like Eames was vibrating with the effort of not moving and he was just praying Dear God don't let him do anything stupid, don't let him snap.
"Goddamn bastard," Eames murmured.
Goren stood up and Ross was still slightly amazed at how big the guy was (and frankly a little terrified, it's not like he thought Goren had actually meant to punch him but he could've misjudged the distance and fake-out or no there had still been 280 pounds of angry, unstable detective behind that fist), and what he had in that interrogation room was either a finely-tuned instrument or a wrecking ball and what if something went wrong.
"Captain," Eames said through clenched teeth. Gage was laughing and Goren suddenly looked very small and Eames was doing some kind of controlled-breathing exercise and Ross, well, Ross was just happy the mess in his department hadn't gotten any bigger. He didn't have the energy to feel anything else.
"You should go help him...wrap up."
She nodded and went in and he dropped the blinds.
5.
He hated the beach, all that sand lodging in his shoes, the uncertain footing, the careless flaunting of skin and youth and family cheer. A crime scene on the beach meant no fingerprints, meant evidence drifting away with the wind. Goddamn beaches. But he liked that case, Rick Agiza with his breathing tube cut, cast back onto land after death in the silent deep, camera still hanging around his neck. There was poetry to it, gold coins hidden in an abandoned warehouse, the beautiful woman and the handsome men, the ex-husband carrying a torch, the adventurer, the wrecks, the ship floating abandoned and unanchored, the weight of history under the shifting waves.
And he liked that Ross took so long to show up because then only the Coast Guard and Eames witnessed his split-second temper tantrum when the undercurrent (ha) of fathers and forefathers and the legacies they leave came to the surface (double ha) and Simon Harper accidentally hit the big red Family Issues button Goren felt must be installed smack in the middle of his forehead. The bastard, leaving orphans in the water like driftwood, letting the ocean take them in and then dump them on the shore. Throwing Harper into the drink was one of the easier things he'd done, just a flick of the wrist.
"Fish him out," Eames had said, then fixed him with a Look. One of these days he was going to stop doing this.
(They're killing people here. New York is an island and the ocean is already dirty and exhausted when it hits the shore; the Hudson splits it from the mainland and the Hudson is no place to swim or fish. Shoot a man into the water and the blood will wash away. Cut his stomach and he'll sink like a stone.)
4.
Ross hated attending funerals but it was part of his job now. A captain was there for his detectives, even the ones he didn't like, so he picked out a sober tie and drove to Brooklyn to stand shivering while Goren's mother was interred in the improbably green earth.
Declan Gage sidled up to him, swatted his arm with a rolled-up newspaper. "I'm suprised to see you here, Captain. Bobby said you two didn't get along. Is it procedure now to mourn with your detectives?"
"We've...had our differences, sure, but this has been hard on him. I'm -"
"Forgiving him for being a mess, aren't you. I mean, that's what this is, isn't it? Getting some leverage on him for the next time he breaks a rule?"
"I'm just showing my support, thank you." Ross really, really didn't get what Goren saw in Declan. He pointedly looked away, to where the sexton was leaning on a shovel and sharing a cigarette with the hearse driver.
And over where the casket was slowly lowering, Goren was reminding himself that death was normal. Death was elemental. There were millions of ways to be killed but they were just variations, elaborations, on the original crimes committed when a caveman discovered another caveman was fucking his cavewoman: whack him with a heavy object, light him on fire, throw him in the lake. The bat, the gun, the, well, still the lake, because there'd been no real improvement there, just occasional changes in the particulars (a bathtub, say). There was a 100% mortality rate among humans and a few percentage points belonged to violence, maybe more than a few; in New York City it seemed like half the population checked out early via the bat, the gun, the Hudson. And Goren and Eames and everyone else who had the dubious honor of investigating the V.I.D.P.s were privy to the more inventive forms of murder, and knew that even the newest precision-engineered poison was still just a variation on 'eating the wrong thing'. Cause and effect. Death is causual and sometimes casual and always inescapable. The wound from the bullet from the gun from the hand from the mind. The dark spot on the x-ray, cells dividing and dividing and dividing.
Goren remembered getting the August 1985 issue of Scientific American (which he still had tucked away in a drawer somewhere) that had the Mandelbrot set on the cover and its logarithm inside. And he'd tried to understand more than what he'd already believed, understand that something could come from nothing. (Mandelbrot based his work on that of Gaston Julia, who lost his nose in World War I and covered the area with a leather strap, and Goren had difficulty figuring out how that worked, too.) So he had faith, he believed, or at least suspended his disbelief, because when the magician cuts the beautiful woman in half, the audience gasps but knows that there is always a trick.
The secret to reading minds is the good chance guess: most of the crowd has lost someone, remembers an old lover, will give each detail away to anyone who can read their body language. Another good chance guess: life was created in an instant, out of nothingness, and life will end in an instant, into nothingness.
3.
For all the theories and conspiracies, the psychologies, the secret emotional lives he untangled, what it came down to was flesh and bone. This is what a body looks like with a bullet in its head, this is what a neck looks like when it's been broken, these are the tracks poisons leave in the veins. What it came down to was the fingerprints and powder burns and the cold of the morgue, the efficient autopsy, bodies returned to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, forever and ever, amen.
What it came down to was a sunny October morning, birds chirping and the alarm clock squawking, when he remembered that he'd never claimed his brother's ashes. There was no time for it now because he'd declined personal leave, citing a lack of desire to enter the Frequent Flier program of not going into work, and he was due there in an hour. So he picked out a suit with no obvious blood stains and a shirt that wasn't unforgivably wrinkled, ran his fingers through his hair, made and drank a cup of coffee, glanced at the paper's headlines, then left as he usually did because this was a usual day.
He begged off for an extended lunch break, and Eames covered for him, like she'd always done, and he couldn't wait, couldn't fucking wait, for the day when he no longer asked for favors and she no longer complied with sad confusion. I could go with you, her body language said, the uncertain set of her mouth. I could help.
Alone on the train he studied the ads by the ceiling and the people below them, here a businessman with a cell phone in one hand and a Blackberry in the other, Wall Street Journal balanced on his jittering leg; there two children staring at the lights blinking past in the darkness outside, a young couple on the stairs of this station trying and failing to not touch.
The funeral home, like all funeral homes, was pastel and populated with the sort of furniture that hadn't appeared in the homes of the living for decades. He sat in a too-small armchair with his knees somewhere up by his chin and waited for the courteous black-suited dismal trader to return from the depths of the building with the cremains.
"If you would just sign here, Mr. Goren." Blake, or maybe he was part of the '& Sons', had the apologetic firmness of all those who work with death. If you would just sign here, I regret to inform you, we need to ask a few questions, I'm sorry for your loss.
Goren thanked him and did not explain why it took two and half weeks to return for his brother. There was a copy of the relevant forms and a black box less than a foot wide with his brother's name on a neatly-typed label and then a paper bag scrounged up from somewhere when Goren came back to the desk and said haltingly that he's taking the train, and is there anything...?
What it came down to was three pounds, give or take, of ash and bone and bits of cardboard. He tucked the bag under his arm and Eames didn't ask. When they got back to the squad room he put it in his gun locker and he caught her eyes flicking over, like did you really have to do that?
When he clocked out for the night he took his binder and the bag and clutched both close to his chest like he was afraid the whole world knew the secrets each held. His apartment was bright and quiet as it ever was. He placed his parcels on the kitchen counter and slid the local news out of the paper and a beer out of the refrigerator and tried (and failed) to relax, but he was exhausted, and his brother was on the kitchen counter.
He had half-heartedly looked into interring the ashes but those places charge money (How much for a hole in a wall? You've gotta be kidding me) and then what he told himself was that he was holding off on buying an urn until he could afford something nice so what happened was he got a black cardboard box and a paper bag that last was in service carrying Thai takeaway, judging by the smell, because the Asshole Brother In Comical Amount Of Debt package did not include the tasteful reinforced-cotton urn tote. His brother smelled like Thai. Frank hated Thai.
"Jesus Christ," Goren said loudly into the silent apartment. He picked up his cell phone and stared at it blankly for a few seconds and then held it up to his ear for another couple of seconds wondering why it wasn't ringing before he remembered he hadn't actually hit any buttons. The battery burned his ear.
"What is it?" she said groggily.
"Come over."
"It's late, Bobby. Unless it's something important I'm going back to bed."
"Please. Alex." Maybe one of those was the magic word because she said "fine" and then "give me half an hour" and she hung up and he poured himself a drink.
When she came he didn't say anything and she looked exasperated, like come out with it, like this better not be about the case, like if you fuck around with me anymore I'm done.
"Can I get you something to drink?"
"No, thanks." Come out with it already.
He poured himself another drink and she watched him doing it and watched him down it and watched him slump onto the couch. She stayed standing.
"You ever think about black holes?"
"I'm guessing you do."
"I know they're statistically impossible, but it's like when I was a kid staying awake all night after watching some monster movie. You know, some people think, this Large Hadron Collider, it gets turned on, poof, we all get sucked under Sweden. The idea of it...just, all of a sudden, nothingness." He waved his hands to demonstrate.
"You have guns pointed at you on a weekly basis and you're worried about black holes?"
He laughed. "Right, I know. Fear of the unknown, I guess. I can imagine what being shot to death feels like, but being sucked into a void?"
Eames smiled slowly, bit her lip. "So you think about death a lot?"
"Oh, nice. I don't need therapy. I'm not - "
"Bobby," she said, quietly, but he wasn't in a mood to listen. He was standing now, pacing, breathing hard, his voice getting louder and louder and he couldn't stop it because he could never stop it.
"Of course I think about death a lot. Death is my living. I go to funerals as often as normal people go to concerts. I know more dead people than I do living." He paused, caught his breath, held a hand out shaking towards the counter. "And for fuck's sake I don't even know what to do with my brother's ashes so they're just - "
Eames, who never quite knew what to with public displays of emotion, stood up and did the one thing that usually seemed to work in situations like this, which was hug him.
"What are you doing?"
"Playing tennis. What do you think I'm doing, you doof."
He untangled himself enough to wrap his arms around her and she was so small, she'd looked so small in that bed. The wreck, the waves, the blood and the bone. His mother bought an outfit just like Jackie's three years before Kennedy was shot, one year before he was born. He had a picture of it and so did his father. His name was Robert Goren and he was leaving fingerprints on her shirt, and this was a place apart from everything else. He started to cry.
2.
Here are a few facts: Nicole Wallace was dead. His mother was dead. His father was dead. His other father was dead. His brother was dead. Declan Gage was in the mental ward at Rikers. He pulled himself through each bill payment by the skin of his teeth.
Another few facts. Eames was still alive. He still had his badge and his partner and most of his health. Life wasn't easy because it was never easy; he still drank, still ate too much, still fucked up. He was still on intimate terms with death, when cases wouldn't let him go, when the knee he'd twisted back in Narcotics bothered him a little more each year, the inexorable accumulation of age and weight pressing down and drawing out the ghosts of old pain until he was limping around like he had one foot in the grave. But, all things considered, it could be worse.
1.
Indian summer had hit the city like a right hook. Eames kept the air conditioner up as far as it would go, rattling contentedly in the windowsill.
"Alchemy," Goren said.
"Hmmm?" Eames didn't look up from the mass of papers on the coffee table.
"His tattoos are alchemical symbols. And that lab in the basement. You know, trying to turn lead into gold. Something from nothing."
"Oh great, another dead magician. One of these days we'll get a call and it actually will be a trick, and the body will pop up like Bela Lugosi and we'll all go home and go back to sleep."
"Not today, though." Goren rifled through the coroner's report. "And Lugosi never played a magician."
Eames rolled her eyes. "So this Mr. Robinson. Charlatan or loon?"
"Too early to tell."
"Of course." She watched him sink into it, his eyes flickering over photographs.
"You can go, you know."
"What?"
"Today's the..." She trailed off, scrunched her mouth. "It's been a year, since Frank..."
"I know."
"You don't need to do this right now."
"I know. I want to. I'm not ignoring it, I'm just...I want to be here, now." He leaned forward, held her gaze.
"Suit yourself. I'm kicking you out before midnight, though."
"Fine by me." They shared a smile.
"The creator of modern chemistry was beheaded during the French Revolution," he said absentmindedly a few minutes later. "Lavoiser."
"Somehow I don't think that's what happened here." Another smile. Not quite a resurrection, he knew, but damn it if he didn't feel almost normal. Across from him, Eames simultaneously tucked her legs underneath her and poured Skittles into her mouth in a bizarrely graceful move. Really, he didn't feel half-bad. He went back to the photographs.
One more good chance guess: whatever end would come, he'd be alright in the meantime.
A story about death, faith, and science, and making sense of it all. Set in and around season seven.
Gen, Goren&Eames with a side of Ross, rated M-ish
The living are careful and oftentimes caring. The dead are careless, or maybe it's care-less. Either way, they don't care. These are unremarkable and verifiable truths.
- Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking
We dreamed that whole leviathans lay rotting in the reeds.
- The Pogues, "Drunken Boat"
This is a story about cause and effect:
Somewhere beneath the Franco-Swiss border, between the Alps and the Jura mountains, lies the Large Hadron Collider. Two separate complaints were filed against the companies and scientists involved: one in the District Court in Hawaii, one in the European Court of Human Rights, both about the fear of black holes, both eventually dismissed. The Collider went online on the tenth of September, 2008, and nothing happened.
Reading the morning paper, September 11th, Robert Goren pretended he wasn't even a tiny bit disappointed.
10.
Prison is a world within the world, and the mental observation unit an island in it, and then Isolation, like Russian nesting dolls, the gleaming white center being Heaven, which is where he gave up.
His name was William Brady and he was a high school history teacher. Every day after work he'd come home and grade papers with a glass of whiskey in one hand, red pen in the other. He bought a red brick for twenty dollars and threw it through a car dealership window, glass shattering onto the grass outside. There was a history of mental disease in his family. He was an orderly man and kept a clean home, everything in its place, alphebetized. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States and was assassinated in 1963, two years after he was born, and his mother bought an outfit just like Jackie's. Curtains in the windows and television set in front of the couch, liquor cabinet, filing cabinet. There was no one they should call, no.
He was a high school history teacher and he knew there were worlds within the world. Worlds within words. History is a story we tell ourselves. History is cause and effect, history is the spider-fracture of plate glass, his missing fingerprints, cyclical becoming and unbecoming. Isis was the Egyptian goddess of fertility and the sister and wife of Osiris, whose annual death and resurrection ensured the fruitfulness of the land. He knew the symbolism and the corollaries and hoped that Eames would not read too much into it, because he knew that of course there was everything to be read.
His name was William Brady and he knew that there was a tap on his phone, that he was being listened to right now, so keep your voice down, please. It took three of them to wrestle him down. Sodium amytol isn't supposed to work (interrogations were always inconclusive, unreliable, he'd read the studies) but the nurse slid the needle into his arm and he forgot who he was supposed to be, the right answer tangled up somewhere behind his unwilling tongue. The universe is binary but sometimes both answers are right. His name was Robert Goren, detective, Major Case Squad. They're killing people here.
And no, no, it's Brady, William Brady (his father's name was Mark), and Isis, he was still on his cruise, and he hadn't found out anything yet, and Isis this made so much more sense at the time, this hadn't seemed so crazy, and it's not fair -
9.
On the first day of his suspension he woke up at 5:30, took a shower, shaved. He was halfway through a bowl of corn flakes before he remembered he didn't have anywhere to be. Still, he was already up and dressed. He spent two hours at the library reading the New York Times and lightly filling out all the puzzles in pencil. A rumpled, probably homeless, man sat down next to him with a stack of books on 9/11, and they exchanged a sort of comradely look, being members of the club of men with nothing better to do on a Tuesday morning than waste time in a library. Crossword finished (23 down: Where you can never go again, which he thought at first might be 'past' but had to be 'home' due to the 'oceanic' running through it), he spent another hour walking up and down the stacks, pulling out books, putting them back.
On the fourth day of his suspension he ran out of things to do. He read, mostly. At midnight the infomercials started and he watched with an inexplicable fascination. Set it and forget it. Who knew.
On the 15th, 16th, and 17th days of his suspension he experimented with drinking all the time. Eames dropped by on the 18th and he could tell she was wondering if he'd make it through this alive. They watched a documentary on tv about Humboldt squid, and he felt a strange kinship with these creatures blinking their lights at each other in the farthest reaches of the sea, down in the dark, talking about whatever it is squid discuss. He imagined what it would have been like if some hiccup in humanity's distant past had caused people to be squid-shaped instead of monkey-shaped, what squidly things they'd have, squid cars and squid stock markets, if everything would be just the same except they'd be wielding weapons with suckers instead of palms.
On the 30th day of his suspension he noticed that his fingerprints had grown back. His name was Robert Goren and he was a detective, Major Case, pending a psychological evaluation and some kind of miracle. Pending getting out of bed. The sun streamed crooked through the blinds, impossibly bright. He stared at his hands. If he didn't move it wouldn't hurt. If he stayed here, no one would notice. He had the time to waste. If nothing else, he had the time.
On the 48th day of his suspension he discovered that there was, in fact, such a thing as too much pizza. He switched to Chinese, though he was aware that the real solution here was to stop eating like he was looking for a heart attack. But General Tso's chicken went better with beer than salad did and if his suits didn't fit anymore, well, it wasn't like he needed them right then.
On the 91st day of his suspension he admitted to himself that he missed Eames more than was appropriate. He did not call her, but resolved to answer the next time she called him.
On the night of the 124th day of his suspension he dreamt that his mother was still alive. He dreamt that Eames was shot and there was nothing he could do to save her, he dreamt that he was shot and he was alone and the asphalt pressed against his cheek as the blood seeped out. He dreamt that he was transferred to the CIA and was in charge of investigating an alien invasion, though he was pretty sure that was just a result of pastrami-induced indigestion. The nights after that he slept less and less, or drank until he did't dream, and his future was endless and empty.
On the 153rd day of his suspension he almost let Patrick Copa beat the shit out of him. Five minutes later a stranger gave him a business card and a gun.
8.
His name was Robert Goren and history followed him around like a dog. He bought bottled water by the crate and kept it everywhere. He left his cuffs and collar unbuttoned, his watch in the dresser drawer, his ties hung up in the closet. Eames looked him up and down each day like she'd expected this to be the morning he pulled himself together. Eames looked like she wanted to forgive him but didn't know how.
This was all he could do. He knew the last thing that they wanted to hear, and he knew just how to say it. He thought like other people, stood outside himself, hated having to draw his gun but knew intimately the details of a hundred murders. He was on familiar terms with death. He knew the last thing he should say to Eames and he said it anyway, over and over again, words stuttering out almost against his will, part of his brain stepping back and saying good show, Goren. The gun Stoat gave him was fully loaded and he shot it dry. History like a black hole. They were building a particle accelerator in the neutral zone, and that's what this was, just collision after collision after collision.
He was still on his cruise.
This is a world within the world: his name was William Brady and his fist hitting that bastard's face was the most satisfying thing he'd felt all year.
7.
He half-cried once, in the interrogation room with Declan. He'd sucked it up, wiped his eyes, let Eames drive him home, waited, and - nothing. It's not like he was too manly or something, he wasn't that kind of guy, but all he could do was sit on his sofa and feel awful and watch the condensation from the beer bottle soak into his jeans. In the car, she'd expounded obliquely as she could (a weak lead-up about her nephew's birthday party) on the benefits of a good, shoulder-shaking, hurricane-style cry.
"Like coughing up phlegm when you're sick," she'd said.
He wondered what they would do with the heart. Shop around for an interested ex, maybe, though he couldn't picture her having a funeral. Shove it in cold storage somewhere. Donate it to science. And he wondered, though he tried not to, what Declan had done with the body, whether he'd ever tell, whether that was the last part of the puzzle he'd made. And this was the kind of guy Goren was, see, someone else's word wasn't good enough, and DNA wasn't good enough, not for her, because he still couldn't quite believe that there was even a body at all. He needed to be there with her, smell the mix of perfume and hand lotion and decomp, run his fingers along the wound, do his thing, do his job. But Declan hadn't talked and Goren wouldn't be on the case anyway so he sat, palms itching, eyes dry, watching the bottles accumulate, the Jameson gradually disappear.
Declan had been like a prince descending on Seoul. He dressed like a Southern gentleman, always linen suits and matching hats, but spoke with an unplaceable accent and talked faster than the average New Yorker. Goren never bothered to ask. Declan was charming and fiercely intelligent, taking over wherever he could because if it was going to be done right, it had to be done his way. Goren had been enthralled. How could anyone have resisted? Because remember this was before the breakdown, at his height, that brilliance and recklessness, that rebelliousness, and Goren was young and chafing under Army rule and was thrilled at being taken under the wing of this marvelous mad professor. Back in the states they were still Bobby and Dec, holding court over the teetering piles of evidence, but by the time Declan's paranoia and desperation to prove himself right cost him his job, reputation, and health, Goren had already left the nest. This new ruined Declan, he didn't want to think about. They lost touch, or he cut it off. Until Jo.
In the morning he wasn't so much hungover as he was still drunk, fell off the couch with a thump and some internal creaks he'd be alarmed at if he had his wits together. He stayed there for a while, listening to his alarm go off, then stop, and then to the small sounds every New York apartment made. Water running, floorboards shifting, doors closing. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
He knew how to do this, he'd done it twice before. His annual death and resurrection. Easy-peasy.
Eames came over that afternoon, bringing the cold and light in with her, crumbs of dead leaves clinging to her sweater. She made motions in the kitchen like she wanted to make him lunch, and he gestured at the pile of take-out menus on the counter. Her face scrunched up in disapproval. He briefly considered telling her that he'd tried to buy groceries, really, but instead spent an hour sitting in his car in the supermarket parking lot watching people coming and going, the tangle of carts and bags and children, shopping list leaking ink all over his sweating fingers, so many of them and so much and he just turned the ignition back on and came home. He tried, he did. But he knew what that meant, like he knew what the Jenga pile of bottles in the recycling bin meant, and there was no reason to add to the worry radiating off her.
"C'mon," she said, grabbed his shoulder and yanked. "Let me buy you something approaching a decent meal."
She took him to a restaurant with cloth napkins and ordered for him. He almost made a crack about how at least he didn't have scurvy because he took his gin and tonics with lime, then remembered alcoholism isn't a good conversation topic.
He wanted to say he was sick of being involved in the world's longest car crash, of living some ridiculous Shakespearian tragedy, of sitting around and moping like the pathetic, self-involved bastard he'd become.
"Uh, Eames - " he said as she reached over saying "Bobby," her hand landing on his where it was tracing patterns on the tablecloth.
You first, he motioned with his free hand.
"Look. I'm not saying I get it, because I don't. And I know we're a mess, and that's partially my fault, but I want you to remember that I'm here, if you need anything. I might not know what it is you need because Christ, Bobby, you're incomprehensible sometimes. If there's anything I can do..."
"Just, uh, just be you." He squinted and hoped she got what he meant.
"I think I can manage that," she said. "You were about to say...?"
"N-nothing, I, uh." Fucking hell, Goren, a brain the size of Texas and you can't make a basic sentence come out right? "Thanks," he choked out. "For everything. And I want, I, I'm trying -" Come on.
"I know," she said, and maybe she did.
The Arrowhead Pequod Inn had smelled like potpourri and coffee. The box on the bed, he'd known, absolutely known, that it was Donny's and he was officially out of family. He spent the ride back to the city trying not to hyperventilate. Eames, she wrapped her own grief up as tight as it would go. Goren wanted to apologize for leaking his everywhere. He tried, but his heart had been stitched out on his sleeve since childhood and to be perfectly honest he was a wreck. She was silent, he watched his fists shaking like they belonged to someone else. An hour into the ride he unclicked the seat belt and left it off.
And now all in a rush he remembered how she flinched when the nurse pulled back the curtain, how small she looked in the hospital bed, and his heart lurched into his throat all over again.
6.
There's a number of things Captain Ross did not need. To see Todd's smug face ever again, for one. Flack from Logan. Pointless calls from the Chief of D's. And vying for first place in the list of shit he should not have had to deal with was goddamn sympathy from Goren.
He'd wound up half a mile down the coast of the ocean his ex-lover shot her husband into. That's a sentence he didn't need to contemplate. A car had still been waiting when he found his way back, Goren and Eames thankfully gone, and the officer at the wheel did his best to avoid eye contact. Because the way it worked was, he put himself to sleep at night thinking about how it could be worse. Things aren't that bad.
Things really aren't all that bad.
"I'm not sure this is a good idea," Ross said, in a tone of voice that indicated he was sure it wasn't.
"He has to be the one to do this, Captain. I don't think Gage would talk to anyone else." Eames stood straight and stiff, every muscle tensed.
This was a terrible idea. Except, Ross conceded, Goren was doing it, a little wobbly maybe, but pulling the perp's strings like he always did. He knew how this would go, it usually went the same way, but it seemed like Eames was vibrating with the effort of not moving and he was just praying Dear God don't let him do anything stupid, don't let him snap.
"Goddamn bastard," Eames murmured.
Goren stood up and Ross was still slightly amazed at how big the guy was (and frankly a little terrified, it's not like he thought Goren had actually meant to punch him but he could've misjudged the distance and fake-out or no there had still been 280 pounds of angry, unstable detective behind that fist), and what he had in that interrogation room was either a finely-tuned instrument or a wrecking ball and what if something went wrong.
"Captain," Eames said through clenched teeth. Gage was laughing and Goren suddenly looked very small and Eames was doing some kind of controlled-breathing exercise and Ross, well, Ross was just happy the mess in his department hadn't gotten any bigger. He didn't have the energy to feel anything else.
"You should go help him...wrap up."
She nodded and went in and he dropped the blinds.
5.
He hated the beach, all that sand lodging in his shoes, the uncertain footing, the careless flaunting of skin and youth and family cheer. A crime scene on the beach meant no fingerprints, meant evidence drifting away with the wind. Goddamn beaches. But he liked that case, Rick Agiza with his breathing tube cut, cast back onto land after death in the silent deep, camera still hanging around his neck. There was poetry to it, gold coins hidden in an abandoned warehouse, the beautiful woman and the handsome men, the ex-husband carrying a torch, the adventurer, the wrecks, the ship floating abandoned and unanchored, the weight of history under the shifting waves.
And he liked that Ross took so long to show up because then only the Coast Guard and Eames witnessed his split-second temper tantrum when the undercurrent (ha) of fathers and forefathers and the legacies they leave came to the surface (double ha) and Simon Harper accidentally hit the big red Family Issues button Goren felt must be installed smack in the middle of his forehead. The bastard, leaving orphans in the water like driftwood, letting the ocean take them in and then dump them on the shore. Throwing Harper into the drink was one of the easier things he'd done, just a flick of the wrist.
"Fish him out," Eames had said, then fixed him with a Look. One of these days he was going to stop doing this.
(They're killing people here. New York is an island and the ocean is already dirty and exhausted when it hits the shore; the Hudson splits it from the mainland and the Hudson is no place to swim or fish. Shoot a man into the water and the blood will wash away. Cut his stomach and he'll sink like a stone.)
4.
Ross hated attending funerals but it was part of his job now. A captain was there for his detectives, even the ones he didn't like, so he picked out a sober tie and drove to Brooklyn to stand shivering while Goren's mother was interred in the improbably green earth.
Declan Gage sidled up to him, swatted his arm with a rolled-up newspaper. "I'm suprised to see you here, Captain. Bobby said you two didn't get along. Is it procedure now to mourn with your detectives?"
"We've...had our differences, sure, but this has been hard on him. I'm -"
"Forgiving him for being a mess, aren't you. I mean, that's what this is, isn't it? Getting some leverage on him for the next time he breaks a rule?"
"I'm just showing my support, thank you." Ross really, really didn't get what Goren saw in Declan. He pointedly looked away, to where the sexton was leaning on a shovel and sharing a cigarette with the hearse driver.
And over where the casket was slowly lowering, Goren was reminding himself that death was normal. Death was elemental. There were millions of ways to be killed but they were just variations, elaborations, on the original crimes committed when a caveman discovered another caveman was fucking his cavewoman: whack him with a heavy object, light him on fire, throw him in the lake. The bat, the gun, the, well, still the lake, because there'd been no real improvement there, just occasional changes in the particulars (a bathtub, say). There was a 100% mortality rate among humans and a few percentage points belonged to violence, maybe more than a few; in New York City it seemed like half the population checked out early via the bat, the gun, the Hudson. And Goren and Eames and everyone else who had the dubious honor of investigating the V.I.D.P.s were privy to the more inventive forms of murder, and knew that even the newest precision-engineered poison was still just a variation on 'eating the wrong thing'. Cause and effect. Death is causual and sometimes casual and always inescapable. The wound from the bullet from the gun from the hand from the mind. The dark spot on the x-ray, cells dividing and dividing and dividing.
Goren remembered getting the August 1985 issue of Scientific American (which he still had tucked away in a drawer somewhere) that had the Mandelbrot set on the cover and its logarithm inside. And he'd tried to understand more than what he'd already believed, understand that something could come from nothing. (Mandelbrot based his work on that of Gaston Julia, who lost his nose in World War I and covered the area with a leather strap, and Goren had difficulty figuring out how that worked, too.) So he had faith, he believed, or at least suspended his disbelief, because when the magician cuts the beautiful woman in half, the audience gasps but knows that there is always a trick.
The secret to reading minds is the good chance guess: most of the crowd has lost someone, remembers an old lover, will give each detail away to anyone who can read their body language. Another good chance guess: life was created in an instant, out of nothingness, and life will end in an instant, into nothingness.
3.
For all the theories and conspiracies, the psychologies, the secret emotional lives he untangled, what it came down to was flesh and bone. This is what a body looks like with a bullet in its head, this is what a neck looks like when it's been broken, these are the tracks poisons leave in the veins. What it came down to was the fingerprints and powder burns and the cold of the morgue, the efficient autopsy, bodies returned to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, forever and ever, amen.
What it came down to was a sunny October morning, birds chirping and the alarm clock squawking, when he remembered that he'd never claimed his brother's ashes. There was no time for it now because he'd declined personal leave, citing a lack of desire to enter the Frequent Flier program of not going into work, and he was due there in an hour. So he picked out a suit with no obvious blood stains and a shirt that wasn't unforgivably wrinkled, ran his fingers through his hair, made and drank a cup of coffee, glanced at the paper's headlines, then left as he usually did because this was a usual day.
He begged off for an extended lunch break, and Eames covered for him, like she'd always done, and he couldn't wait, couldn't fucking wait, for the day when he no longer asked for favors and she no longer complied with sad confusion. I could go with you, her body language said, the uncertain set of her mouth. I could help.
Alone on the train he studied the ads by the ceiling and the people below them, here a businessman with a cell phone in one hand and a Blackberry in the other, Wall Street Journal balanced on his jittering leg; there two children staring at the lights blinking past in the darkness outside, a young couple on the stairs of this station trying and failing to not touch.
The funeral home, like all funeral homes, was pastel and populated with the sort of furniture that hadn't appeared in the homes of the living for decades. He sat in a too-small armchair with his knees somewhere up by his chin and waited for the courteous black-suited dismal trader to return from the depths of the building with the cremains.
"If you would just sign here, Mr. Goren." Blake, or maybe he was part of the '& Sons', had the apologetic firmness of all those who work with death. If you would just sign here, I regret to inform you, we need to ask a few questions, I'm sorry for your loss.
Goren thanked him and did not explain why it took two and half weeks to return for his brother. There was a copy of the relevant forms and a black box less than a foot wide with his brother's name on a neatly-typed label and then a paper bag scrounged up from somewhere when Goren came back to the desk and said haltingly that he's taking the train, and is there anything...?
What it came down to was three pounds, give or take, of ash and bone and bits of cardboard. He tucked the bag under his arm and Eames didn't ask. When they got back to the squad room he put it in his gun locker and he caught her eyes flicking over, like did you really have to do that?
When he clocked out for the night he took his binder and the bag and clutched both close to his chest like he was afraid the whole world knew the secrets each held. His apartment was bright and quiet as it ever was. He placed his parcels on the kitchen counter and slid the local news out of the paper and a beer out of the refrigerator and tried (and failed) to relax, but he was exhausted, and his brother was on the kitchen counter.
He had half-heartedly looked into interring the ashes but those places charge money (How much for a hole in a wall? You've gotta be kidding me) and then what he told himself was that he was holding off on buying an urn until he could afford something nice so what happened was he got a black cardboard box and a paper bag that last was in service carrying Thai takeaway, judging by the smell, because the Asshole Brother In Comical Amount Of Debt package did not include the tasteful reinforced-cotton urn tote. His brother smelled like Thai. Frank hated Thai.
"Jesus Christ," Goren said loudly into the silent apartment. He picked up his cell phone and stared at it blankly for a few seconds and then held it up to his ear for another couple of seconds wondering why it wasn't ringing before he remembered he hadn't actually hit any buttons. The battery burned his ear.
"What is it?" she said groggily.
"Come over."
"It's late, Bobby. Unless it's something important I'm going back to bed."
"Please. Alex." Maybe one of those was the magic word because she said "fine" and then "give me half an hour" and she hung up and he poured himself a drink.
When she came he didn't say anything and she looked exasperated, like come out with it, like this better not be about the case, like if you fuck around with me anymore I'm done.
"Can I get you something to drink?"
"No, thanks." Come out with it already.
He poured himself another drink and she watched him doing it and watched him down it and watched him slump onto the couch. She stayed standing.
"You ever think about black holes?"
"I'm guessing you do."
"I know they're statistically impossible, but it's like when I was a kid staying awake all night after watching some monster movie. You know, some people think, this Large Hadron Collider, it gets turned on, poof, we all get sucked under Sweden. The idea of it...just, all of a sudden, nothingness." He waved his hands to demonstrate.
"You have guns pointed at you on a weekly basis and you're worried about black holes?"
He laughed. "Right, I know. Fear of the unknown, I guess. I can imagine what being shot to death feels like, but being sucked into a void?"
Eames smiled slowly, bit her lip. "So you think about death a lot?"
"Oh, nice. I don't need therapy. I'm not - "
"Bobby," she said, quietly, but he wasn't in a mood to listen. He was standing now, pacing, breathing hard, his voice getting louder and louder and he couldn't stop it because he could never stop it.
"Of course I think about death a lot. Death is my living. I go to funerals as often as normal people go to concerts. I know more dead people than I do living." He paused, caught his breath, held a hand out shaking towards the counter. "And for fuck's sake I don't even know what to do with my brother's ashes so they're just - "
Eames, who never quite knew what to with public displays of emotion, stood up and did the one thing that usually seemed to work in situations like this, which was hug him.
"What are you doing?"
"Playing tennis. What do you think I'm doing, you doof."
He untangled himself enough to wrap his arms around her and she was so small, she'd looked so small in that bed. The wreck, the waves, the blood and the bone. His mother bought an outfit just like Jackie's three years before Kennedy was shot, one year before he was born. He had a picture of it and so did his father. His name was Robert Goren and he was leaving fingerprints on her shirt, and this was a place apart from everything else. He started to cry.
2.
Here are a few facts: Nicole Wallace was dead. His mother was dead. His father was dead. His other father was dead. His brother was dead. Declan Gage was in the mental ward at Rikers. He pulled himself through each bill payment by the skin of his teeth.
Another few facts. Eames was still alive. He still had his badge and his partner and most of his health. Life wasn't easy because it was never easy; he still drank, still ate too much, still fucked up. He was still on intimate terms with death, when cases wouldn't let him go, when the knee he'd twisted back in Narcotics bothered him a little more each year, the inexorable accumulation of age and weight pressing down and drawing out the ghosts of old pain until he was limping around like he had one foot in the grave. But, all things considered, it could be worse.
1.
Indian summer had hit the city like a right hook. Eames kept the air conditioner up as far as it would go, rattling contentedly in the windowsill.
"Alchemy," Goren said.
"Hmmm?" Eames didn't look up from the mass of papers on the coffee table.
"His tattoos are alchemical symbols. And that lab in the basement. You know, trying to turn lead into gold. Something from nothing."
"Oh great, another dead magician. One of these days we'll get a call and it actually will be a trick, and the body will pop up like Bela Lugosi and we'll all go home and go back to sleep."
"Not today, though." Goren rifled through the coroner's report. "And Lugosi never played a magician."
Eames rolled her eyes. "So this Mr. Robinson. Charlatan or loon?"
"Too early to tell."
"Of course." She watched him sink into it, his eyes flickering over photographs.
"You can go, you know."
"What?"
"Today's the..." She trailed off, scrunched her mouth. "It's been a year, since Frank..."
"I know."
"You don't need to do this right now."
"I know. I want to. I'm not ignoring it, I'm just...I want to be here, now." He leaned forward, held her gaze.
"Suit yourself. I'm kicking you out before midnight, though."
"Fine by me." They shared a smile.
"The creator of modern chemistry was beheaded during the French Revolution," he said absentmindedly a few minutes later. "Lavoiser."
"Somehow I don't think that's what happened here." Another smile. Not quite a resurrection, he knew, but damn it if he didn't feel almost normal. Across from him, Eames simultaneously tucked her legs underneath her and poured Skittles into her mouth in a bizarrely graceful move. Really, he didn't feel half-bad. He went back to the photographs.
One more good chance guess: whatever end would come, he'd be alright in the meantime.