Title: A Little More Conversation

Author: Regency

Characters: Jean Innocent, James Hathaway

Rating: Everyone/G

Word count: ~2,900

Warnings: None.

Summary: Jean Innocent is now stationed in Suffolk. James Hathaway is having a wander and happens to wander her way. This is the first in what may be many friendly conversations.

Author's Notes: Written for the Women of the Morse Universe Fanworks Challenge. I planned to complete at least two longer pieces, but life very much intervened. They're still chugging along, though, so I'll post them later on my own time. This may be the first of several parts or may just stand alone. I haven't decided.

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters, settings, or plot elements recognizable as being from the television series (Inspector) Lewis. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

Jean Innocent had just made her great afternoon escape from the office when she saw James Hathaway again for the first time in a year.

She was treating herself to something indulgent and sweet from Starbucks and he was standing on line waiting to order. Even where men were tall James Hathaway had a tendency to rise flaxen-haired and broad-shouldered above the rest. This line in this coffee shop was no exception.

Her former subordinate looked well, more or less. Alive, she supposed, was better than the alternative. Crow's feet and lines of vexation were beginning to creep out from the corners of his eyes. There was a lighter pallor than his customary pale. He'd got the look of a man worn thin. Work is catching up to you. It must have been. She couldn't remember him any other way.

James Hathaway, Robbie Lewis's steadfast right hand, the thinking man to his beating heart was thinking himself to death.

It shocked her in retrospect that she could have missed it before. There must have been a time when his internal struggles weren't so apparent to her. They're unmistakable to her now, with the benefit of experience in a new setting with an even broader range of people. Where officers at the Suffolk Police were as staid as could be expected, pressure built more often and more publicly than Jean was accustomed to. Tempers flared and died away on more separate occasions in day than they might in a year in Oxford. Only careful observation had saved Jean from suffering the brunt of persistent bad moods from her superiors and poor coping skills by toiling subordinates. She'd once believed she knew James Hathaway well. She couldn't convince herself of that anymore.

Under penalty of perjury, James Hathaway would deny intending to come to this particular coffee shop on this particular street. He meant to buy something to recharge his batteries after a sleepless night at the flat he's watching for a friend. He'd been at loose ends, again, for the eighth consecutive day of his personal leave and so had resolved to go for a wander to clear his head. His feet, all too attuned to his cluttered psyche, had led him here of their own volition. To this Starbucks down the block from the administrative office of the Suffolk Police, where Jean Innocent had been working to great effect for upwards of a year.

I don't know what I expected.

When you've worked in close proximity with someone for years, picking them out of a crowd is a matter of habit rather than choice. Years of dodging the sounds of her footsteps during high-profile cases, listening for the unique pitch of her voice, catching a glance of her typically inoffensive yet occasionally eye-searing ensembles as she turned a corner had given James something he might call an Innocent-Sense. Which he would never speak aloud to avoid inevitable ridicule. The name didn't quite pass muster to his own thinking, either. Nonetheless, it existed and the moment she called his name in the crowded coffee shop, his attuned ear picked her out of the general chaos and he turned to answer.

She waved at him with her coffee and he waved in startled recognition as he picked up his drink at the end of the counter.

He was already at her table before he meant to approach. "Is it all right if I sit here?"

Innocent lifted a surprised brow but relented, waving toward the chair. "Please."

He sat and for a moment silence reigned. He and Jean Innocent had only rarely shared confidences, and a mutual lack of ease in social situations was sure to make any potential sharing harder. But we've done it before.

He stirred his coffee for something to do besides look at his former chief super. "This is fortuitous."

"That's certainly one word for it." Wry amusement colored in her voice. He was oddly comforted to hear it again. "How are you, Detective Inspector?" He still got a thrill to hear his new rank from her. She hadn't the chance to use it much before her transfer was approved and she was more ghost than presence in Oxford CID.

"I'm surprised to see you," he confessed.

"Surprised to see me in the city where I live, on the street where I work." She tutted in familiar admonishment. "Surely you heard what's become of me."

"Hadn't, actually. You disappeared like a thief in the night. A leaving do but no final parting words. No grand goodbye." He turned his paper cup to read the writing on the cardboard ring. "I somehow thought there'd be more time."

Innocent pushed up her sleeve to check the hour. "I'm free for the next little while, at least until my assistant storms the doorway to drag me to another police advisory meeting. Save me from dwelling on dreaded bureaucracy and tell me how things are."

James fidgeted—there was no other word for it. He longed for a cigarette. "Things…are."

"Although that qualifies as a sentence via technicality, I generally like more detail in mine. Things are what?"

"Complicated."

"We've resorted to monosyllabicity. Very well." She sat down her cup to cross her arms. "James, you sat down to join me, do you regret that?"

"No."

"Are you struggling to put your thoughts in order?"

"I suppose I am."

"Then, don't. We'll sit here and drink our coffee and leave our thoughts in disarray. I've never been much good at talking anyway."

"That's not true." She lacked Lewis's ease with casual conversation, but she often knew what he needed to hear, whether he was ready for it or not. "You do all right."

Serves me right for asking.

"Thank you for that rousing endorsement, Inspector."

Jean rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. It's like conferring with my ex-husband all over again. The view had something to recommend it, at least.

"You're not very good at silence, are you?"

He quirked a sardonic half-smile around his latest sip. "Not for lack of trying."

"Then, I encourage you to follow my lead. Take a drink." She gulped her caramel macchiato gladly. He mimicked her action at a much more sedate pace. She put up her hand to stop him before the inevitable flood of questions followed. "Ah ah, no. Drink again. All the way to the bottom. Breathe, of course, between sips. Finish, think, contemplate, consider speaking; then, don't."

"Think and contemplate are synonymous."

Jean planted her chin on her fist. "I distinctly remember less blatant cheek from you a year ago."

There was a bit more recognizable Hathaway spark in his eyes this time. "A year is a long time not to change."

"So it is."

"And you, ma'am? How have you changed?"

"I gained a promotion and lost a husband." She considered her empty cup. Hathaway considered her. "What, no polite apologies for my divorce?"

"Everyone at Oxford was aware that you were unhappy in your marriage. Why should anyone apologize for an ending to that unhappiness? Are you unhappy that it's over?"

"Not really unhappy, just…I suppose I am somewhat upset that it's ended. The marriage, I mean. You can be sad at a loss and be happy all at once; emotions are bloody useless that way."

"So I've found."

"What are you sad at the loss of?"

He laced his fingers together beneath his chin. "The status quo."

"You have Robbie back, don't you? I heard tale that Moody's approved his continuing on as a consultant for the time being."

"Hear everything from Suffolk, do you?"

"I have my sources. Believe it or not, some like to keep in touch with their old chief supers." Jean couldn't resist the impulse to needle him. Edict against favoritism or no, she had had her favorites. It couldn't help but sting when that partiality wasn't mutual.

"I can only imagine." On someone less composed, the slight shifts in his posture would qualify squirming. Her son could more stoically withstand her scrutiny. She decided quickly to put the younger man out of his misery.

"Christ but we're a pitiful pair. Out with it, then. What's wrong?"

"It's not the same." Hathaway rushed to correct himself, "It is and it isn't."

"Because of Sergeant Maddox, or something else?" So far as she knew the trio of Hathaway, Lewis, and Maddox were still managing just fine.

"Because of all of it. Because of me." Hathaway pulled a paperclip from god knows where and began to unfold it in quick practiced motions. She'd seen struggling public speakers do as much to keep focus in the past. "I'm not the same."

"Is it the job, do you think? Aren't you enjoying it anymore?"

"I don't know. I don't know anything. I enjoy bringing criminals to justice. I enjoy solving crimes, for lack of a better phrase. I just…I don't know that I enjoy doing it this way any longer. And I'm unsure how to change that."

"Have you considered transferring to another duty station? Ah, but that would require doing without Lewis, which if not the crux, is a vital part of the issue."

"Maybe, maybe not."

"I'm afraid there's no maybe." Jean considered her rapidly melting macchiato and mentally calculated the odds of drafting her former sergeant into replacing it for her before giving it up as a bad job. "You forget, I've known you since before Lewis's return from the Virgin Islands. You were never so ambitious or motivated as when you were allowed to team-up with Robbie Lewis. You were the only one to request that assignment and you took to him splendidly as a duck does to perfectly suited water."

Hathaway's neck pinked up. "Do I want to know what that says about me?"

"Merely that in perfect conditions you're perfectly content, no more or less than anybody else." Nobody liked change when they were happy. She'd say that was when most liked it least of all. Transfer and promotion had been at the bottom of her priorities when her private life had imploded.

"What was your catalyst? Did you leave for lack of contentment? Was Oxford no longer enough?"

Never one for the soft peddle, is he? That certainly hasn't changed. Leave it to James Hathaway, ever the detective, to ask the least comfortable of questions.

Innocent's well-manicured nails tapped out a beat of impatience on the tabletop and James had to take a moment to think over his question to see that he hadn't overstepped his bounds. Were there still boundaries here without their hierarchy to guide them?

"It's funny you should ask me that, because I think I put my ambition to bed in Oxford."

"Sorry?" If he remembered anything about his former chief super, it was how opposed she was to ruffling the feathers of the elite. If not for the promise of advancement, he couldn't see the bother.

"No one's more confused than I am about that, trust me. Oxford was supposed to be a stepping stone to—here, I suppose." She gestured at the police station down the way and greater Suffolk around them. "As you may have heard, I worked my way up the ranks quickly, from PC at twenty to chief superintendent at forty-one. I meant to go farther, rapidly. I wanted to make Chief Constable by fifty-five. I was on track to do it, too."

"But?"

"But I stopped. No particular reason I can name. My son was of age, stable, and beginning his own career. My marriage had not entirely collapsed as yet. I don't know why. I just…stopped seeking the next rung up the ladder. I got comfortable, I settled for Oxford. It was a good beat. I had good officers. I enjoyed my jurisdiction and the caliber of people I met and the circles into which I was invited. I became complacent, I suppose." It was impossible to imagine, Innocent complacent when she was easily among the most ambitious woman he'd met in his life.

"And that changed last year. What changed? Was it Mr. Innocent alone?" He'd never had the pleasure of meeting the man, had often wondered if he existed, and now he was glad he hadn't. He didn't think he'd favor a man capable of so thoroughly diverting his stalwart chief superintendent.

Innocent smiled self-consciously. "I wish I could tell you it wasn't. I would like to say that I made the decision to change my life free of discomfort or embarrassment related to a straying spouse or failed marriage, but I can't. I wanted to start over someplace free of all memory of him, however sparse they might have been. I chose to leave because there was nothing stronger in Oxford to bid me to stay. So, ultimately, I followed the only thing I had left: my career. And it brought me here."

"Do you regret it?"

"A year on, no. Who's to say how I'll feel in five years?" Too often now James struggled to look to the next week, much less visualize the year ahead. He excelled at chess because visualization was as easy as breathing. When he could no longer foresee the months before him, he worried what that might mean.

He rubbed his jaw. "What if you're unhappy in five years?"

Innocent looked down at her hands, absently running the pad of her thumb across her ring-less wedding finger.

"If I feel as discontented in five years as I felt in Oxford toward the end, I hope I will have had the courage to tender my resignation in the interim. You don't remain someplace in misery praying that it will magically change if you stick it out."

"But what if it does?" James had regrets enough not to want any more of them on his conscience. He clinched his dominant hand around his paperclip, wishing he had a cigarette or that he was even allowed one in this establishment. Not since the anti-public-smoking laws had come into effect.

Innocent's fingers twitched as though she was planning to take his hand only to think better of it. He had a reputation for responding poorly to sudden, unsolicited touch. She exhaled in soft exasperation, yet made no further mention of it. Boundaries, always the boundaries.

"And who's to say how you'll feel in five years? Nobody is asking you to suffer, if that's what you're thinking. Not myself, not DCS Moody, not Sergeant Maddox nor Lewis. We all want the best of you, but no more than you are willing and able to give."

Just then Innocent's thus far unnoticed mobile began to chime and vibrate on the table.

"And that, I'm afraid, signals an end to our touching reunion."

"Not so fortuitous, that." Perhaps as much as he could expect.

She wagged a finger at him. "There's that cheek I mentioned."

He allowed for a minor smirk. She'd expect at least that much from him. She'd earned that. "No idea what you mean."

"Very nearly convincing, that. Your skill at completely snowing your superiors is improving. How utterly terrifying to witness."

"I aim only to improve, Assistant Chief Constable."

"You do all the time. If only you saw what the rest of us see looking at you."

"Ma'am?"

Innocent tapped quickly at her mobile screen. "You and I are of similar temperament. You need time to get your words across and I need time to understand them. I don't mind. Nothing you say to me will go any further."

James fumbled over the sudden conversational turn they'd just taken. He rarely fumbled.

"I assume your mobile number is the same."

"It hasn't changed."

"Wonderful to know. I'd have hated to send my current address to a perfect stranger. Might give the wrong impression."

"Pardon?"

She evidently took pity on him and went on to explain, slowly, for his benefit. "I've texted you my current address. I'll be there at nine with dinner. If you decide not to appear, there will be no hard feelings. If you do, you can say whatever you need to without fear of reprisal or judgment." She leaned across the table, speaking softly as though afraid to spook him. James had been afraid of things before; he figured by now that he was out of things to fear. "I'm not your boss anymore, but I would eventually like to be your friend, if that's something you'd be interested in."

James clenched his momentarily hanging jaw. He could always do with another friend. Perhaps one he had overlooked in years where propriety and other concerns took precedence. "I think I would be."

"Nine." She tapped the screen of her mobile and rose to gather her handbag and coat. "That address. Think about it."

"Yes, ma'am."

Innocent wavered on the spot, seeming to concede to some unspoken instinct with a sigh. "Here's a more terrifying prospect, if you can imagine it: Call me Jean."

His manners taking hold, James rose to offer her his hand as though they were meeting again for the very first time. "Jean, call me James."

She smiled warmly, more warmly than in their nearly decade's long acquaintance.

Yes, a year can be a very long time.

"Hello, James. The pleasure's all mine."

James would have to find the words to name all that was wrong, but it was comforting to know that there'd be someone familiar, someone safe to do the listening.