June 1954

"Why did you recruit me?"

Hal barely heard the question at first. It was not until his new recruit repeated himself that the Old One looked up from the report he had been reading. There was a brief hint of conflicting feelings and far away thoughts in his eyes before he wiped his face clean of emotion and responded in his usual vaguely smiling manner to the annoying young man who had come, uninvited, into his study. "I would have thought it was obvious," he sneered, a wicked grin flicking across his face as he added, "But then, you have been disappointing me an awful lot, lately." He cast a lazy smile at Cutler, then returned to his reading, hoping that the younger man would get the hint and leave. Unfortunately for Hal, Cutler was persistent.

"See," he said, his voice sounding almost despondent, "that's what I mean. You expect me to do all these things, kill all these people, and all I ever do is fail you." Cutler was scuffing his shoe on the ground at this point, hunching over as he always did as though to protect himself from the world. Hal found it pathetic. Originally, he had hoped that Cutler would outgrow such human insecurities once he was more than human, but he persisted in acting so much like a man when he could have been so much more. It was irritating.

Hal hesitated a moment, wondering if Cutler would eventually leave if Hal just ignored him. However, he knew the younger man would continue to stand there, waiting for either an answer or a more blunt dismissal, and he was getting scuff marks on Hal's nice, clean floor.

"I recruited you because I thought you were clever."

Cutler was silent for a beat, confusion clear on his face. It was almost humorous, but Hal had been feeling restless lately and didn't laugh as he once would have. "Clearly you were wrong," Cutler muttered, bitterness evident in his voice. He finally turned to go, and Hal found, to his consternation, that he wanted to say more. He was about to get what he had been hoping for just a moment before as Cutler reached for the door, but he ruined it by speaking.

"Do you remember the Butler case, in '47?" Cutler froze, one hand on the doorknob.

"That was my first case. I botched it up completely; it's what made everyone at the firm think I were an idiot." Cutler's voice shook, his accent becoming more pronounced than usual as he spoke of his first failure, one that had occurred before he ever knew Hal existed.

Hal sighed as he glanced briefly at the reports lying on the desk at which he sat. He was torn between the desire to say more, to explain, and the desire to take back his previous words and tell Cutler to leave. Now that he had begun, however, he found himself talking almost before he realized it.

"You came awfully close to discovering things that you shouldn't have been discovering, during that case." Cutler looked back over his shoulder, confusion still filling his eyes. They were such soft eyes; even after four years with Hal, the younger man still retained such odd vestiges of innocence. Hal did not understand it, but he continued speaking, keeping his other musings to himself. "Do you remember the files that mysteriously disappeared before you could show them to anyone? You brought up things we had thought we hid well enough that they could never be dug up, but you found them anyway and brought them up in the trial. We had to send Fergus in to destroy the case, to make you lose."

Cutler stepped closer, whispered, "That was you-" before Hal cut him off, continued speaking in his calm, emotionless voice.

"Then there were the Windsor killings, a few months later. You should never have been involved there, but somehow you wriggled your way onto the case, and once again we had to intervene more than we expected." Hal glanced at Cutler, who was staring back at him with his own emotions clear on his face. There was the ever present confusion, but there was also pain, uncertainty, and a certain desperate hunger to hear more. "At that point, the other Old Ones wanted to kill you." A soft intake of breath gave away Cutler's fear at those words. Once again, Hal found himself uninterested in laughing at the fear, something which normally would have amused him greatly.

Still, he could not stop the undignified snort that escaped his lips. "Do you really think you would be standing here now if something had not persuaded them otherwise?" Hal asked. Shame crossed Cutler's face as he realized how clearly he had displayed his fear a moment before, and he ducked his head.

He could not stop the question, though. "Why aren't I dead, then?"

Hal leaned back in his chair, watching Cutler through unreadable eyes. "I told them not to." Cutler's head shot up, though when he met Hal's eyes he immediately looked away again. Hal felt a stab of pleasure at the action, as it stirred a hint of that part of him that had seemed to be fading lately. He loved the knowledge that he was so feared that no one could dare to look him in the eyes. A moment later, the feeling faded again, and the urge to continue speaking returned.

"I saw that you were clever. You used tricks we Old Ones did not think of, because we are too old sometimes to see how the world changes. I convinced them to watch you, to observe, and gave you tests." Cutler still would not look at Hal, but he visibly hung on every word, his desire to hear more painfully obvious. So Hal obliged. "You did not always pass my tests, but your cleverness became indisputable when you passed any of them at all. So, I decided that I would recruit you." The ugly part of Hal that loved pain chose that moment to rear its head from wherever it had been hiding lately, and he could not help but add, "I have wondered, since then, if I should have just let the others kill you as they wanted to."

Cutler flinched at the last addition.

A part of Hal, born of the restlessness that plagued him lately, wanted to comfort Cutler. The pain so clear on the other man's face at his constant inability to live up to Hal's expectations stirred something unexplainable in Hal. Fortunately, the unpleasant feeling receded as Hal watched Cutler open his mouth to speak.

"Now," he said, cutting the other man off, "I have answered your question. I would advise you to get out of my study now, and if you ever bother me with stupid, uninvited questions again, I may just kill you myself." Cutler practically ran out the door, Hal's soft laughter chasing him on his way.

As he watched Cutler flee, Hal realized, to his great displeasure, that his mood swings were becoming more frequent. The pleasure at Cutler's departure was fading, being replaced by the unpleasant feeling from a few moments earlier. This time, however, he could identify the feeling. He had felt it before, though he hated it. It was a feeling that he had not felt in nearly fifty years, and it made him want to destroy something for feeling it now.

Instead of raging and breaking things, however, Hal merely leaned farther back in his chair, closed his eyes, and did his best to ignore the guilt.

So, I have not decided yet whether this will be a one-shot, or a full chaptered story. I found Cutler's story fascinating, and I hated his ending. It was sort of like the writers said, "Hey, let's create a character who spends his whole life being overlooked and ignored, who had a super shitty past and lost everything he cared about, and then have his last attempt at an actually quite clever plan be completely underappreciated and ruined, then we'll kill him off as he fails to do anything at all useful to even advance the plot." Therefore, if I do continue this, the rest of it will take place in season 4 and then the future, and will turn AU.