He was always there for Max — he insisted on being a constant in her life, as busy as he was with his other work. From the very beginning, he made a point of being there.

Max complained of nightmares, baffling the lab techs assigned to her — get Batchelder, he'll know what to do, someone asserted. He unlatched the door of her cage and sat up with her all night.

It wasn't just her that he cared for — when she and the other two avian-human recombinants got sick one winter (eventually their symptoms were traced back to a new drug that had been tested on them, and Jeb commented dryly that it didn't seem to have worked very well), he put everything else aside, working around the clock to find a cure, staying with them in the quarantined upstairs room in Animal Testing whenever he could find the time.

They feared and hated the other scientists — already, they were conditioned to fear the smell of disinfectant, the white of a lab coat, the sting of a needle — but not Jeb. They recognized more faces than usual at a surprisingly early age, learned to associate them with names and occupations -— although to them, the only occupation that existed was doctor. That was all they knew, after all — interchangeable doctors in white lab coats.

Except Jeb, who always had a smile for them. They feared white, except when it was his lab coat — well, why shouldn't they fear white, when in all their experience it only brought pain?

Jeb was permissive with them where the other scientists were strict. They bit, scratched, hit, and kicked — but he never raised a hand against them. He spoke gently to them, never lied, was always there to reassure them — and this was the same Jeb Batchelder who sometimes slapped his lab assistants when they didn't do exactly as he said. The same Jeb Batchelder who was sometimes so violent and unstable that no one would work with him — was gentle to these subjects, these children.

Around the time Nudge was born, Jeb's dosage of the drugs that kept him stable was increased. For a few weeks he still slipped into rage at the smallest slight, but as his system readjusted he turned slowly into a smiling, near-catatonic shadow of himself. If Connie didn't remind him, he'd neglect to put his shoes on in the morning. He forgot to eat, forgot to sleep - it simply slipped his mind, he said, and no one was very surprised when he eventually collapsed.

But to the kids, to the flock, he remained the same - for them, somehow, he remained the man he'd always been to them: gentle, sweet, and kind.

Eventually, his dosage was reduced, and then he was switched to a new medication entirely. Everyone waited with bated breath, but as time went on, it became clear: the new, mellow, quiet Jeb was here to stay. No one really missed who he'd once been.

He kept working, and through it all remained a constant for the children. Jeb was the only adult they knew on a first-name basis — he refused to be called Doctor Batchelder, gently discouraged them when they attempted to get around that by calling him Doctor Jeb. Eventually they settled for calling him just Jeb.

In Germany, Marian already regarded the subjects they created as only parts of a grander design — but there, in isolation at the School, each of the recombinants, each of the children, was an individual work of art (at least to their creator). He put a little of himself into each of them, and that was why, when Marian could create a small army in the same amount of time, all Jeb had to show was a tiny group of avian-human recombinants — well, them and the Erasers, but the Erasers were never dear to Jeb's heart, not in the way the birdkids were.

(Far away from the School, in Germany with Marian, Roland kept up with Jeb's work. He was fascinated by the man, admired him deeply: the way each of the experiments bore something of his personal touch — the way he obviously cared for each one — showed up even in his cold, impersonal reports on their progress. Roland admired that quality of him, and struck up a casual correspondence with Jeb, who he sensed from the beginning was far more than just another workaholic mad scientist. There was something tender and genuine in the way he wrote of "his" subjects, and Roland wondered sometimes why it was that Jeb showed that sort of compassion to no one and nothing else in the world. What had made him so cold? Roland wanted to know — and that, which began as a mad scientist's curiosity and drive to fix things that are broken... that was when Roland began to regard him as something more than just a casual acquaintance, a comrade. He became, to Roland, something like a friend.)

The kids got older. All of the avian-human recombinants tested blindingly intelligent for their age - even little Gabriel, barely two years old. Encouraged and exhilarated, Jeb began work on a new project, using material from Gabriel's genetic parents. He became immersed in his work - not all of the scientists at the School liked his "style", but most of them agreed that when Jeb was engaged in the design of a new experiment, he became something like an artist.

Connie, now pregnant with his son, saw her husband again, fleetingly, become the animated, charming man she fell in love with. Though distracted by his work as always, he seemed alive again, no longer a zombie, no longer made artificially quiet, withdrawn, and numb by the medication that kept him sane.

This made sense, of course. Though Jeb was too canny to tell anyone, he'd stopped taking his meds every day — he took a reduced dose every other day, just like he'd always done when he was hard at work on a new project.

Eventually, he went too far. Though for the kids he was still as stable as he possibly could be, the people he worked with started to notice: he was hyperactive, always cheerful, more creative than usual, and spent long hours in his lab, day and night.

Thankfully, he never became violent, though it was clear sometimes that it took all his restraint to keep a calm façade. He retreated into his work, immersing himself in it. This worried Connie, who did her best to keep Jeb grounded. She knew he'd be a good father to their child - how could he not be? She'd seen how kind he was to his "children", how fondly he spoke of them, how well he cared for them.

The only trouble was going to be keeping him grounded in reality.

As the months he spent on the experiment increased, he began to call it — call her — by a name. Angel. She'll be beautiful, he insisted - beautiful, intelligent, remarkable in every way.

Beautiful she might someday be, but designing her was killing him, and Connie saw that in painful clarity. Day by day, Jeb was losing himself — he refused sleep, striving to perfect this or that tiny aspect of his design.

To Jeb, the subject was forever Angel — but as his obsession grew and deepened, other people began to learn of the design's existence, of what Jeb believed she'd be some day. Subject Eleven. Grudgingly, he allowed a few people to look at his designs for her.

All came away with similar thoughts: my God, the man's insane. But he's brilliant - and such an elegant design, too...

Away from the lab, he drifted in an uncertain haze, as if, leaving his designs behind, he left part of himself as well. The children were confused, and a little worried — Max was already showing hints of a leader's strength and concern, and from somewhere Jeb found pride for her. He told them he'd been working very hard, that sometime soon he'd be all right again — and in the strictest sense, that was true.

Ari was born. Jeb knew that — he wasn't completely lost (only mostly) — but remained distant.

Connie took matters into her own hands.

Jeb was hard at work as usual that day, but he was nearing a breakthrough, he just knew it.

He wasn't prepared when Connie opened the door — he was doing some exploratory research with one of the Erasers, and he was fairly sure he'd left instructions that he was not to be disturbed.

Erasers are, after all, dangerous.

No one was ever sure what happened after Connie stepped inside — in that more easygoing time at the School, there were no security cameras in the labs to see what happened. And of course, two of the three people who were involved couldn't describe what had happened — and the other one remembered nothing.

When Jeb stumbled from the lab, his hands were bloody, his clothes streaked with drying blood. He called for help, then resorted to banging on doors until he found someone — Doctor Harrison, as it happened.

Seeing Jeb as bloody and panicky as he was, Harrison forced him to wait for her in her office while she goes for help.

"Please hurry," he told her, eyes wide and distant. "Connie is in trouble."

Harrison barely paused to persuade Prescott to come with her before she went into Jeb's lab.

It was a bloodbath. The Eraser had ended up a bloody mass of fur, fangs, and claws — limp, huddled unmoving in a corner, both Prescott and Harrison were sure it posed no threat.

Connie wasn't much better off — she was breathing, but between the two of them they knew that, even if they could get her to a hospital, she wouldn't live long. She was bleeding too much.

(Here was where their opinions differed: Harrison believed that the Eraser attacked Connie, and Jeb tried to defend her from it. Prescott believed that Jeb killed his wife and deliberately enraged the Eraser to cloud the evidence. Where Harrison attributed the shocked emptiness in Jeb's eyes to loss, Prescott believed it was just good acting.)

Jeb was quietly hysterical when they came back — he stopped pacing, demanded to know where Connie was, since he didn't see her with them.

Harrison attempted to reassure him, but he didn't hear her — only stared for a moment, wide-eyed, before fainting. He must have seen it in their faces — there was no good news for Connie.

He came to soon after, mildly embarrassed to be lying half on the floor of Harrison's office, glasses askew, blood on his hands now smeared on the tile. But he wasn't himself again, didn't even act like Jeb again, for another few weeks — in the middle of a silent cup of coffee with Harrison, he suddenly asked if she'd seen Connie yet that day.

She couldn't give him a straight answer, but the more she struggled to find one, the more he knew something was wrong.

"She's gone, isn't she?" he said, with smooth, dead confidence. "Don't lie," he pleaded.

She couldn't bear to lie to him, not when he looked so... pitiful. But she had to, and she told him that Connie had been in a car accident — to her, it didn't make sense, but to him, it must have. It had to.

note:

It's been about three years, so posting this falls under the "Hey, check it out, it's my old writing!" clause.

If anyone is interested, Reality Check was once supposed to be part one of a three-part series, and this was a draft chapter for part two. It obviously never washed out.

Also I have this horrible addiction to Jeb fanfiction and I figure at least one other such person must exist, so here you go, Internet friend.