off kilter, chapter 10: alchemy

Author: yankee306
Pairings: Mary and Marshall, bien sûr
Spoilers: None

Summary: Marshall has to know if therapy's working or he needs a Plan B.

A/N: I reorganized and rewrote this chapter much more than I have with other pieces, so I'm especially interested in hearing about things that didn't work for you or didn't fit.

Thanks to greenstuff for the 1st draft beta.

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In our last chapter . . .

Over in Marshall World, things hadn't progressed nearly as far.

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Chapter 10: Alchemy

Mary had given herself a job to do, but she wasn't sure how to go about it.

Task: To be a better friend to Marshall.

Mary didn't kid herself. She wasn't going to understand Marshall the way he did her anytime soon, but, Jesus, she could pay some attention to him as a separate person, not just an extension of herself. Even when she wrestled with planning to leave WITSEC, she largely considered her own sorrow, not the way it would affect Marshall.

Step One: Here's where Mary's mind drew a blank. She wasn't used to approaching relationships cerebrally. Like most things for her, it was all gut and heart. Usually, she took what she wanted and she gave to those obviously in need: her mother and sister, her witnesses. To be clear, she didn't consider what they thought they needed. She gave them what they needed according to Mary.

One of the things that made Mary very, very good at her job was her ability to read her witnesses. She got to know them well enough to decide that they needed handholding or a ride to work; a motivational speech or a night out dancing; a good, hard slap or a day of respite from caretaking. She certainly wasn't always right, but when she was, nobody was more tenacious in getting those needs met for them. When she was wrong, she was just as dogged in figuring out the right answer.

As for her family, Mary had 30 years of experience to guide her. Brandi needed, Mary believed, a combination of tough love and big sister encouragement. Jinx mostly needed a swift kick in the ass. And, Mary allowed, maybe some support now that she seemed to be serious about sobriety.

What about Raph? Mary's ruling on him was that he didn't need anything from her he wasn't getting. She was his lover and fiancée and he had as much of her attention as she could spare. But she was learning lately that Raph saw things differently. He said he needed more from her, like her time and her secrets. He needed her to share decision-making with him and to compromise. Like hell, Mary thought, before pushing thoughts of Raph to a back corner of her mind. He wasn't the topic at hand.

That would be Marshall. Self-sufficient Marshall. Calm, content Marshall, who seemed to have what he needed to stay that way. He was fine. Wasn't he?

Admittedly, he could probably use more respect from her and fewer edicts and hassles. That was something she could give him. Mary resolved to be more conscious of how she treated him, especially in front of other people. She tried to stop interrupting him—as much. She listened more and tried to make her responses less snide. She was still a smartass and still teased him, because she knew they both loved that, but with less of a sting, she hoped. There were still the sarcastic asides to him, the shared jokes, usually at others' expense, the eyebrows raised for his benefit.

Were there other things he needed from her? She would find herself staring absently at him, turning the question over in her mind, until he glanced up and she quickly averted her eyes, flushing like she'd been caught ogling the cute boy in class.

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Several times lately Marshall had looked up from his desk only to see Mary looking at him with a thoughtful expression. When he caught her eye, she flinched and turned away, obviously uncomfortable.

"What?" he'd asked the third or fourth time it happened.

"Nothing. Just thinking."

"Well it's disconcerting. Could you go back to just reacting before anything has a chance to pass through your cerebral cortex?"

A brief smile and laugh was Mary's only response. Why did she let him get away with that?

The fact was that Mary had been behaving quite oddly and Marshall couldn't help but be suspicious. She had started to be . . . polite. Largely gone were the snapping and sneering—not that Marshall minded doing without those—but what did it mean? The (always lopsided) give and take of their work was changing. Instead of "Jesus. Stop whining and go do the damn threat assessment," it was, "Would you mind doing the threat assessment?" More consideration was welcome, but Marshall felt like Mary no longer took her partner's reliability as a given. Mary was even doing substantial amounts of her own paperwork.

She wasn't displaying the sickly sweetness she sometimes used to wheedle favors; nothing so obviously insincere. Nor was it the paper-thin veneer of pleasantness she put on for idiot judges who had power over her witnesses. Some of her interactions with Marshall had a forced quality, cheerful but at arm's length, as though they were acquaintances chatting at a cocktail party.

"Hey, how are those mambo lessons going?" Mary asked over breakfast tacos one morning.

Confused not by the question by her asking it, Marshall answered tentatively, "Um, they're going fine. Why?"

"Just wondering. What exactly is mambo, anyway? Is it the same thing as salsa?" Soliciting information from his vast storehouse of knowledge that she usually considered utterly pointless? Something was seriously amiss.

"Did you just ask me to share some irrelevant drivel with you?"

"What? I can be interested in things."

This was downright weird. It felt like that night a few weeks ago when she'd been trying to steer any conversation away from the reason she was distant, the night she'd tried to avoid telling him she was going to quit WITSEC. What was she trying to distract him from this time?

Marshall answered her questions about mambo and salsa, giving only half a mind to explaining the interrelated styles of music and dance steps, with a bit on the rhumba thrown in for good measure. Meanwhile, he used the other half to reflect on Mary's unsettling behavior.

It wasn't just her polite expressions of interest that were unfamiliar. She was patient. Listening. Not interrupting him more than two or three times in a conversation. In other words, not Mary. Or, rather, not Mary Shannon. This was Mary Shepherd, the Mary who rocked scared witnesses in her arms and spoke earnestly to them about building a new and better life.

Marshall considered whether he was witnessing the positive effects of Mary's therapy, but that explanation didn't really fit. It was only toward that him that she'd been acting differently. With everyone else she was as bossy and uncooperative as ever. With Marshall, she was gentle, protective. The whole point of the therapy was for Mary to feel less protective of him, less like he needed special handling. Yet here she was, doing just that.

No, the more plausible explanation was that Mary had concluded she couldn't stay at WitSec with him.

The kid glove treatment must be her way of slowly disengaging from him, easing away from the intimacy that, for better or worse, had always allowed her to say any damn thing she wanted to him. Apparently, she wasn't planning to storm off, just to fade away.

Marshall's thinking careened between the two theories. When he contemplated the latter, panic crept in.

Oh god, what was he going to do? It's not the end of the world, he kept reminding himself. Even if she quit, she wasn't going to disappear. They'd have new partners, but he and Mary would still each other's best friend.

The problem was that Marshall just didn't want any partner other than Mary. The trust they'd built went beyond any he'd had. Sure, he could eventually learn to trust a new partner, but it was a lot of damn work and it would never be this strong. His romantic feelings for her aside, there simply wasn't anyone he'd rather work with, be in the office with, go on long road trips with, watch crappy hotel room TV with. Imagining long workdays without their teasing and kibbitzing was just grim.

So Marshall scrutinized Mary as closely as he dared. If therapy with Shelly wasn't going to work, he needed to come up with Plan B.

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Mary continued to pay more attention to Marshall, the man, rather than solely Marshall, Mary's partner and confidante, rabbi, straight man, and errand boy.

It wasn't as though she wasn't well aware of his good qualities, much as she tended to take them for granted.

He was whip smart, of course. He didn't suffer fools any more gladly than she did, but he rarely felt the need to demonstrate that fact with yelling or swearing. When he did, look out.

Brave, tough, loyal. Nobody better to have on your side in any kind of fight. Tall, strong, as badass as they came. Traits that had their uses outside of work, it occurred to her. What kind of badass was he in . . . other situations? Whoa. Where the hell did that come from? Focus, Mary.

Despite, or maybe because of, his general dorkiness, he was quite charming, really—if you could get past the trivia about railroad spikes and the orations on German expressionism. Hell, some people probably even liked that stuff. She had seen that firsthand with Dana and Shelly. He and Bobby seemed to converse easily. Truth be told, Mary sort of liked it, too. Not all the time; it could be annoying and distracting and sometimes boring, to be honest. But she liked that he knew so many things and had a lively and engaged mind.

He was kind and patient. He cared about his witnesses as well as hers and anyone else in pain. He cared about her. (There was a thought. Marshall liked to take care of people. How much of his relationship with her was motivated by that? Mary put that aside for further contemplation.)

As Mary ran through the list of Marshall's strengths, she remembered what she'd said to him:

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you're actually a nice person, aren't you? Why am I even friends with you?"

The real question, it turned out, was why he was friends with her.

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Three weeks of meeting with Shelly, and Mary still hadn't said one word to Marshall about any of it. Marshall desperately wanted to ask Mary how it was going, but he held his tongue. He knew he had to give her time—Mary always needed time to let things settle before she wanted to talk about them—but how much?

His optimistic streak focused on the fact that she was going to therapy at all. Presumably, if the therapy was going nowhere, Mary wouldn't keep going back. She didn't have that kind of patience. In fact he was amazed that she'd stuck it out this long.

For them.

For him.

His realist self poured gallons of ice cold water on that hope. Given Mary's recent behavior, it was more likely that she was just trying to figure out how to make her exit. Mary's deafening silence on the subject only served to reinforce Marshall's worst-case scenario.

He considered "accidentally" running into Shelly, but dismissed that as too adolescent, not to mention completely transparent.

So one afternoon when Mary was out helping a witness get a new driver's license, Marshall made the 15-minute walk to the federal courthouse that housed the rest of the U.S. Marshals Service and Shelly's small office, tucked away on the fourth floor.

Marshall knocked on Shelly's open office door. "Hey, Shelly. Got a minute?"

Looking up from the case notes she was writing, Shelly said, "Hi, Marshall. Come sit down." She gestured toward the deep red couch and Marshall sat in Mary's usual spot.

"Shall I guess why you're here?"

Marshall gave her a bashful smile but didn't say anything.

Shelly knew exactly what was on his mind. "You know I can't tell you anything about Mary's sessions with me."

"Yeah, I do know and it's stupid for me to even be here. It's just . . ."

"Just . . .?" prompted Shelly.

"Mary's been different with me lately, really not herself. I can't figure out what it means, and I don't want to be caught off guard if she decides therapy isn't working and quitting is her only option." Marshall was fidgety, lacing and unlacing his fingers.

"Marshall, you know I can't tell you anything specific." Shelly hesitated. "But since you know why Mary initially came to see me, I will tell you this much: I'm asking her to do a lot of hard work, as I would with anyone who faced the same issues. It wouldn't be surprising if anyone in Mary's position were different from her usual self. All it means for sure is that there's a lot going on internally."

Marshall tried to read Shelly's expression to see if she was telegraphing any further information, even though he knew she took her professional responsibilities too seriously for that.

Still a little embarrassed that he'd come to Shelly when he was well aware she couldn't tell him what he wanted to know, Marshall said, "Right. Well, I guess that'll have to do for now. One more thing: What does she know about us?"

"I've never said anything to her inside or outside of therapy, so whatever she knows, she knows from you."

"It's not as though there's really anything for her to know, but she'd feel blindsided if she found out we'd had a few more dates than I told her about. Anyway, thanks, Shelly . . . for everything."

"You're welcome." Shelly knew he was thanking her for more than this conversation. His gratitude for whatever role she had played in keeping Mary around this long was evident.

Feeling still uncertain but lighter, Marshall strode down the long corridor and took the stairs down to the bottom floor two steps at a time. Shelly hadn't confirmed either Marshall's fear or his hopes, but she had definitely given him some reason for the latter. "I'm asking her to do a lot of hard work." "There's a lot going on internally."

Marshall took a slow, circuitous route back to the office, savoring the perfect weather and the thought that kept running through his head:

Mary was working hard.

In therapy.

For them.

For him.

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A couple of days later, Marshall simply couldn't take the internal turmoil anymore. He gathered his courage while they were having lunch on the roof terrace of their office.

"Sooo . . ." said Marshall, with an exaggerated air of casualness.

"Yeeesss?" Mary replied, mimicking his tone.

"So, remember that whole thing where you were going to quit the only job you've ever loved, or else I would die facedown in the dirt, and it would be your fault, and then I told you that you didn't have to quit, and then you started meeting with a shrink to try to figure it out? Do you remember that whole thing? Ring any bells up there in the Mary belfry?"

"Hmm, maybe."

"Because it's been almost, oh, let's see, a almost a month, I think, since you've mentioned anything about it. So I was, you know, just sort of wondering if you were still planning to ditch me. I mean, just out of curiosity."

"Right, like you haven't already written the want ad for your new partner: 'Partner needed for long hours, crappy pay, and mortal peril. Must be willing to tolerate endless stream of minutiae.'"

"You forgot 'Must be champion ass kicker,'" added Marshall. Then his tone turned serious. "So . . ."

"So, it's been okay. It turns out Shelly is pretty good at her job."

"Uh unh. Do you want to tell me what that means?" Marshall's heart was in his throat.

Mary stood and walked to the railing, gazing out over the city for a moment. Then she said, "It's . . . it's sort of like. . . alchemy."

"Really?" That was unexpected. "How so?"

Mary turned around to face Marshall and tried to explain. "It feels like she's—we've, I guess, made something . . . solid out of thin air. And all I've done is to keep telling her the damn story of that damn day over and over again."

"What's the 'something'?"

"I don't know how to describe it. Confidence, maybe? No, that's not really it. Faith? But tangible, like I can almost touch it. Which is really the opposite of faith. Hell, I don't know. What I do know is that the only thing—the only thing—that matters more to me than having you as my partner is for you to be alive and . . . "

"Me too," interjected Marshall quietly.

". . . and I think I can do this. The fear is still there, but it's in perspective now. I think I understand how to set it off to the side when I need to."

Marshall needed to make absolutely sure that he understood. He walked over and stood next to Mary. "So you're staying?"

"I'm staying."

"Because you cannot quit." Marshall looked straight into Mary's eyes. Incredibly, she didn't look away as she answered him.

"I know."

There was a long beat and then, right on cue, Marshall launched into, "Did you know that alchemy, in addition to being a metallurgical pseudo science, is a philosophy held by . . . ."

Mary gave a genuine smile and settled in to hear Marshall's treatise on magic, inorganic chemistry, and the eternal quest to create something from nothing.