Shaun Mars never really understood why, how his Father had been able to complete Scott Shelby's challenges to save him.
Gunned down by paranoid cops seconds after saving Shaun's life. Ethan Mars, murdered and martyred in the same evening.
With the assistance of Madison Paige – and to a point, Agent Norman Jayden, until the man's psychiatric problems had become apparent – the authorities had managed to piece together Ethan's role and the killer's macabre games.
Shaun hadn't learned much of what his father had endured – at least outside of what the press ferreted out which was surprisingly little, particularly considering how much Madison knew – until after he turned eighteen and submitted an information release request.
Jayden had delivered the paperwork personally.
"You got big." Jayden said, face hidden behind mirrored sunglasses though the thin bones of his hands holding the files and the way his suit hung on him implied what the glasses hid. Norman Jayden was an ill man. Shaun could see several cartons, the style used to store files in offices, stacked in the ex-Agent's car's backseat.
Shaun welcomed him into his mother's home. His mother, guilt wracked even then by his father's death and her outburst at the police station the last time she'd seen him, couldn't be in the same room with the files, had tried to keep Shaun from bringing them home in the first place. She was at her mother's for the next week.
"Yeah everyone says that." Shaun said with a half-smile and held the door open for the painfully thin man.
Shaun had grown, after all it had been nearly a decade since he was rescued. He was rapidly approaching the six foot mark, had a muscular build thanks to high school sports, and, as he had grown, his hair had darkened and he'd grown to resemble his father more. He still had his mother's eyes but could pass as Ethan's brother just the same. He liked that, liked looking in the mirror and seeing the dark unruly hair he'd inherited from his imperfect hero father.
"I really appreciate this Agent Jayden."
"Norman, call me Norman. It's no problem Shaun, truthfully I had to deliver it, I had most of the originals in my possession anyway, had to check 'em back in and run copies." Norman said quietly and stifled a deep, wet, chest cough in one elbow. The vaguest hint of his Boston-but-not-Boston accent colored his words. Diffused by time, age, and distance.
In the time since his Ethan Mar's death the truth of the ARI program had gone public. A revolutionary interface between man and machine intended to arm astute investigators with all the assets of a crime lab and an international cutting edge database of facts, figures, and records. Only it had gone horribly wrong. Every Agent plugged in had medically retired. Some faced crippling life long side effects, others only the occasional head ache, a handful had opted for suicide over the recurrent hallucinations they'd earned for their service. Heads rolled and the ARI project was shut down – over the protests of many of its users, including Norman Jayden.
Jayden's problems went beyond the ARI to the drug he'd used to cope with the side effects, triptocaine. Together the two had robbed Norman of years of health.
"How are you Norman?" Shaun asked as the Agent carefully walked to a couch and sat as though his bones were made of glass.
"I get by." Norman said with false cheer.
Shaun didn't push it.
"Can I get you some coffee? Tea? Maybe a beer?"
"Tea please." Norman said. Shaun nodded and moved to leave the room, he kept an eye on Jayden as he walked half hoping to catch a glimpse of the eyes behind the glasses. He flipped an electric kettle on as he entered the kitchen then retrieved two mugs, a box of tea, and two small lightly dusty covered bowls, in one he poured sugar - after carefully wiping it clean, in the other cream.
"So you been keeping busy Agent?" Shaun called into the living room.
"It's just Norman these days." Shaun winced at having to be reminded, to him Agent Norman Jayden was synonymous with Watson of Sherlock fame. The man behind the scene supporting the main player...Ethan Mars. He knew the two men had barely interacted but still... "I get by, do what I can, consult occasionally. How about you? You should be graduating soon." Norman asked.
"Mom has me going through college brochures. I'll graduate in..two months?"
"You don't want to go to school? I'd've thought most would be full by now anyway?"
"I don't know I think I want to do something more with my life –" Shaun paused as the kettle clicked off, he poured hot water into the mugs, slid them onto a tray, and picking up the tray loaded it with the condiments and left the kitchen.
"- uh well to be honest I kind of feel like I owe you guys more than just college and two point four kids." Shaun said slightly sheepishly as he set the tray down on the coffee table. Jayden straightened and sat up carefully then set about fixing his tea.
"You don't owe me shit kid, Scott Shelby stole your life from you, if I.." – he thought then of the triptocaine fits, the stress, Carter Blake all of it that had cost him the precious time and information he could have used to save Ethan Mars – "I think we'll all be happy with whatever choices you make Shaun. It's your life."
"No it's not. He died for me and, well Madison has done okay with her book and all but you…"
Norman laughed hollowly.
"This? This isn't your fault kid, this is…shit this is almost entirely self inflicted." Norman set his tea aside and leaned back on the couch, still maintaining his strangely stiff and aware posture then ran a hand over his tired face and rubbed his eyes under his glasses.
"Ethan was murdered by that fuckstick Carter Blake Shaun, that's not your fault, it's Carter's, and if y'wanna blame someone other than him blame Shelby that son of a bitch has a lot blood on his hands."
"Has?" Shaun asked startled. "Lauren Winters killed him, didn't she?"
Norman went very still for a few painfully long seconds then drew in a sharp breath.
"Yeah…yeah she did."
Shaun felt uneasy then, the broken down crazy ex-agent…could he be trusted?
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I am, mostly…for now. Look, Shaun, don't blame yourself for this" – Jayden gestured toward himself –" this is…well if I hadn't hit a wall face first on your case it would've been another, it was inevitable."
"I did a paper on the ARI scandal, few months ago in my ethics course."
"Good topic." Jayden said wryly and Shaun noted the man's accent grew thicker with the emotion behind the words.
"So…uh which of the y'know…the side effects –"
"I lost my shit kid, pretty literally. Spent some time finger painting with my own shit. Completely incapable of telling reality from my head games. I'm okay now though, really, all ARI side effects controlled by medication and training." Norman insisted.
Shaun wanted to believe him, believe that it wasn't the Origami Killer case, Shaun's case, that had finished off Norman Jayden and his bright career.
Shaun sat on a love seat across from Norman and began making his own tea. His mother's antique clock – inherited from his grandmother, a bitter upright woman who had never forgiven Ethan for Jason's death but had managed to speak civilly of him for Shaun's sake since his death – ticked and tocked loudly in the corner, marking the still moments of Shaun and Norman's coexistence.
"But –"
"Cancer Shaun, unrelated, I promise."
Shaun froze and looked up, Jayden removed his sunglasses and Shaun dropped the spoon he'd been using to stir his tea.
Norman Jayden wasn't just thin and pale, his cheekbones looked like razor blades pressed to the wax paper of his flesh. His eyes were so deep set that they looked like embers burning in a skull, his lips were simply areas of demarcation between the wax paper and his flashing too large teeth. His neck was chicken thin giving his head a bobbling unstable look. Norman swallowed and Shaun imagined he could see the former federal agent's neck vertebrae press to his skin as his adam's apple bobbed.
"Oh." Shaun croaked.
"If you hadn't called I would've come by anyway. I ... I don't have much time left kid, and I want to be able to answer any questions you have as best I can while I can." Jayden hesitated over the speech then spat it out as though he'd rehearsed it a thousand times but hadn't expected to ever say it. Shaun wondered if Jayden really would have reached out to him before he died if Shaun hadn't made that call. Maybe Jayden would have been happy to let the pain of the past die with him and leave Shaun untouched.
He had expected someone to drop off a few boxes and files maybe make him sign something and then he would go through the paperwork when he had time. Part of him wondered if he would ever have been able to crack open the files and read about Scott Shelby's terrible purpose, read his own father's autopsy report, read about Carter Blake being dismissed while the other officers that had opened fire that day escaped censure – officially at least. Shaun knew of at least one that had eaten a bullet five years to the day of Ethan Mars' death. He had half expected to keep the paperwork in his mother's attic, content knowing the answers and information were at hand…
"Okay, I appreciate that." Shaun said taking a slow breath, he absently tweaked a strand of dark hair out of his eyes.
"Do you remember him?"
Shaun looked at Jayden's terrible eyes.
"Ethan." Jayden prompted.
"Some, I mean I have photos, even some home videos so I'll never really forget him only…well, most of those were taken before Jason died. So, so I have memories, and an idea of who he was as a successful architect, with a happy family y'know? But that's not the guy that saved me, not…not the man that crawled through broken glass…for me."
Jayden died four days after Shaun's graduation. The dying lawman made it to the ceremony, he wore a satisfied smile as Shaun shook his hand and Shaun thought, he would never know for sure, but he thought he heard Jayden say, 'See? We did it Ethan, now we can rest." to himself. He hoped that was the case, that Norman had gained some satisfaction seeing Shaun graduate, knowing Shaun had a good future ahead of him, before the cancer shut Jayden down forever.
Madison sent a generic happy graduation card with a significant check inside. Shaun never deposited it. He knew some of what had occurred between her and Ethan, not all the details but he didn't want guilt money, blood money, didn't need it.
Norman had taped hours of his ramblings about the case, about Ethan, and even Shaun and his mother. A lot of it was addled by Jayden's ARI battered mind, his pain meds, or simply the passage of time but there were gems to be found.
The boxes of files and reports gained a permanent home in three filing cabinets in Shaun's room, he had read each scrap and asked Jayden every question he could think of at every opportunity recorded every answer. He poured over it all memorized every aspect but it still didn't show him who post-coma Ethan Mars had been beyond some idealized media image of a broken man with only the love of his son to guide him. But that didn't tell Shaun how a man so broken and battered had been strong enough, determined enough, to save one little boy.
Shaun met Alexandra in graduate school, she was a temp in the loan office. He had a decent trust fund macabrely fortified by donations from a shocked and concerned public after Ethan's execution. Ironically after reading the reports and seeing the footage from the police helicopter that had hovered over it all that rainy night Shaun understood the adrenaline fueled decision to murder Ethan, he did, though forgiving and understanding weren't necessarily bedfellows. Still the fund was designed to only allow a certain amount of cash flow per month so he was short on tuition.
He and Alex had lunch and one thing lead to another lead to a spring wedding after Shaun's graduation. Then came a job with an architecture firm whose controlling partners had known Ethan, a house and finally one day with tears of joy in her eyes Alex had said they were pregnant.
Ethan dogged Shaun's life, his pointless death after all he had endured and achieved haunted Shaun. He had spent most of his young adult life trying to understand Schott Shelby and Ethan Mars, had gotten into his school of choice - eventually - because of his name and past and secured an excellent job because of Ethan's contacts. He lived in the echoing shadow of a man he'd barely known. At the bottom of it all, under the paperwork and well wishes from dour middle aged men he'd never met who spoke well of the man who'd made the ultimate sacrifice, under it all was one question, how had Ethan Mars done it? Why?
The Origami Killer's other victims...their fathers, all of them, had failed their challenges or never even tried... so how had Ethan succeeded?
It wasn't until Arriana was squalling in his arms and Alex lay sweaty and blood smeared laughing to see her in his arms that he had some idea of just what kind of man Ethan Mars had been, truly been, what had made him do the impossible and die happy for it.
He'd been a father.