Trains are phenomenally conducive to writing. More than three quarters of this was written in transit between Union Station and home; I feel like I should visit downtown Chicago more often if it means train rides to get writing done.

Granted, time to make the trip is necessary. I've been working super overtime, and while the money is excellent, I've been a) strapped for spare time and b) mostly asleep when at home. As such, let me know if you spot errors, as my proofreading might not have been perfect. :)

Every institution with an historical campus had its proverbial crown jewel, a building singled out from the rest as an exemplar of the institution's achievements, history, or ideals. Old as it was, Rudbridge's was one of those institutions, and, being an academy, its library was treated as the paragon of all things Rudbridge.

Unlike the favoured buildings of some institutions, the Maurice Rudbridge Memorial Library actually merited its vaunted status, even if the academy itself never quite lived up to the standards the Library was meant to symbolise. Designed and built at the height of the Gothic Revival movement, it was one of those buildings whose worked-stone exteriors led passers-by to pause and take note and whose glowing, polished oak and cherry interiors quieted visitors more effectively than any policy or curator. That quiet, more than anything, was what drew Archie to the library every weekend. The books did a fine job of it, too—the Library boasted just as many upper-level texts and references as it did novels and class books for the typical secondary school student—but quiet had a gravity all its own, and Archie was wholly caught in its orbit.

The week after meeting the man with the wizard's eyes had been a fraught one. With Uncle Ulysses still huffing and puffing over the man's presence, Archie had decided to delay a second visit until he could be certain that he wouldn't get assigned a roommate 'for his own good'. He'd arrived at school on Monday to learn that his teacher was out after having an emergency surgery, and the substitute was strict bordering on despotic. Archie had completed his maths and science homework for the week, but he still had a paper on 'any single topic he wanted' that had to be done, and he couldn't for the life of him settle on just one thing to write about, never mind keep himself to under seven pages as the substitute had asked. On top of all of that, three of Uncle Ulysses' students had started taking out their classroom frustration on Archie, making it impossible to eat his dinner or spend his weekends in peace anywhere outside of his room or the Library.

"Morning, Mr West," Bette said as Archie shuffled past her desk. "Long week, was it?"

Archie still found a smile for the elderly librarian despite his weariness. Tiny and perfectly coiffed, Bette had been a fixture at the Library for as long as Archie had been visiting, and often seemed as unchanging as the building itself. She was so ever-present that, were she to miss a day, Archie might very well phone the police. He appreciated her constancy; she was as much a part of the Library he'd come to love as any of the shelves, portraits, or books. "Yeah," he said. "It's good to have some quiet."

Bette smiled. She liked Archie, even though their interactions had never gone beyond greetings and farewells as he arrived and departed. "Stay as long as you like, Mr West. You're always welcome here."

Superficial though their interactions were, Bette's warmth always left Archie feeling a bit better. He made his way back to the 900s with a bit more of a spring in his step—with the whole of Saturday in front of him and the entire Library open to his perusal, he felt confident that he could make a start on his paper at the very least.

Archie unloaded his laptop (another gift 'with love from Mummy and Steve', also received during the winter hols by post), his notebook, and the list of potential topics he'd considered for the paper as he settled in at his favourite table. Most of them were historical; Archie had always had a head for collating facts (something Sherlock had noticed), but he had discovered a particular strength in finding patterns in the way people and groups of people acted, and what was history but a timeline describing the way various peoples had acted and interacted? What he needed now were sources, but good ones— as much as he could understand why his school's library only stocked oversimplified summaries and biographical blurbs, it was still irritating to be forced to resort to other locations for fuller, more nuanced accounts.

A long-fingered hand bearing a golden band on the ring finger broke into Archie's field of view, startling him out of his thoughts, and picked up the paper with his list of potential topics. Twisting in his seat, Archie swallowed his protests—the man with the wizard's eyes was standing beside the table and seemed very focussed on Archie's list. "Mr… er. Sir?"

"Jensen," the man with the wizard's eyes responded lightly, glancing over Archie briefly. He returned the paper. "Your week has not been kind to you, I perceive."

Archie wasn't sure whether to be awed, ashamed, or relieved by the way Mr Jensen seemed to just know after only a glance. "No, sir."

Mr Jensen pulled out the chair next to Archie's and placed his bag on the table as well. Most of the things that he unpacked were unremarkable and handled casually, but Archie noticed the way Mr Jensen's hands lingered for a few moments over two items— one, a battered little black notebook, and the other, a beautiful, slim pen of lacquered cherry. They were important without a doubt, but Archie could only imagine why. "In my experience, with the right help, one can wring some good out of an unkind week." Flipping open a binder, Mr Jensen perused a schedule and what appeared to be notes or a lesson plan before turning his dark eyes back onto Archie. "Your choice of subjects is interesting. Have you decided?"

"No sir," said Archie.

Mr Jensen didn't smile or nod, but Archie suspected he would have, were he a more smiling sort of person. "Very good, Archibald. Come with me; I suspect I can offer some assistance in my spare time."

Archie nodded and scrambled to his feet.

"It isn't unusual for someone your age to be interested in war and warfare," Mr Jensen said as they strolled through the 300 shelves, "and I suppose an awareness of politics is increasingly typical in today's world, but I have found that that awareness only rarely moves beyond partisan talking points, even in adults."

Archie shrugged. "Looking at things from only one side made it impossible to guess what would happen," he said, "so I stopped." At least, he had stopped inasmuch as his guesses went. He still had his own opinions, of course but they never factored into the guesses he made—he hated being wrong more than he hated losing. He was getting much, much better at the guessing, too, especially since getting his laptop and access to the Internet.

"Guess?" Mr Jensen echoed, looking down at Archie briefly.

"Mhm," Archie said. "I used to read old newspapers and history books, and I started seeing patterns in how things happened. It was kind of like a game. I read about little things, made a guess based on that pattern, and then read more to find out if I was right. Like.. money. There are a lot of patterns with money. Big ones." So big they were impossible to miss, really; money patterns had been some of the very first that had stood out clearly to him.

Mr Jensen had stopped midway through taking a book from the shelf. "Oh?" He was looking at Archie; yet again, Archie wondered just who Mr Jensen really was, to have such a pressure behind his gaze. Teachers generally had an intense 'look' that they could turn on and off as they needed it, but this was a whole different level of focus. "What sort of patterns?"

Archie looked up at Mr Jensen, incredulous. No one had ever afforded his patterns even the slightest import, never mind legitimacy; having them suddenly treated like some sort of groundbreaking scientific discovery was downright jarring. Still… someone was listening. How could he resist? "Not good ones," he admitted. Most of the money patterns he saw were the kinds that led to violence. "When it's just a person, they don't act the same if they've got too little or too much money, and the ones without enough start hating the ones with too much. When it's groups of people, it's worse." He looked up at Mr Jensen and, for a very brief moment, witnessed an expression of… not pity or empathy, but sympathy— he understood. "You see them too, don't you?" he asked quietly.

Mr Jensen nodded. "I do."

"All the time?"

Another solemn nod.

Archie let his eyes rove over the titles on the shelf next to him. They were standing next to a section on Margaret Thatcher; somehow, given the topic of conversation, it seemed apropos to be looking at titles about a leader whose legacy was so heavily tangled in money and money-making. "Then you know what I mean when I say money patterns aren't good." It had taken him a long, long time to come to terms with what he was seeing, especially when so many of the signs pointed to a dangerous confluence of long- and short-term patterns. He hadn't wanted to believe that the modern world and all of its progress could still leave room for such possibilities, but too many of the dimmer outcomes had become reality for him to deny it any longer. "Money lets people do whatever they want if they have enough of it, Mr Jensen. With enough of it, you can buy anything." He suspected he didn't need to spell out what that meant to Mr Jensen; a glance up confirmed that hunch. "It's dangerous if no one's watching over it."

Mr Jensen pulled one of the books on Margaret Thatcher, made briskly for another section of shelf, this one devoted to someone named Keynes, and pulled another book. "Do you mean controlling who gets the money?" A book on a 'Milton Friedman' joined the other two; it was flipped through by deft, well-practiced hands before being shelved and replaced with a different book on the same man.

Archie made a face. "No. It works as an idea, but to do the idea, you have to have people in charge of it." He hardly needed to explain why that bodged everything up.

"Do you mean to say, then, that there should be no controls?"

Archie looked up at Mr Jensen. He thought for a moment of his mother and the blank aspect she took on sometimes when she talked with him, the way her face would seem to close like shutters on a window. For another moment, he marvelled—looking up at Mr Jensen, his mother's 'blank' suddenly resembled nothing so much as a caricature, emotions exaggerated almost to the point of morbidity. It was as if he was suddenly in the company of a man carved from living, indifferent ice, and he suspected immediately that he was being tested. "That's just as stupid," he replied, blunt and honest. Mr Jensen's flawless, pleasant inscrutability didn't waver; Archie's suspicion ticked over into near-certainty. Mr Jensen had no reason to be so actively diplomatic, so his only reason for expending the extra effort was because Archie had proven worthy of it.

Unless, of course, it was a double bluff, and Mr Jensen was feeding him a false sense of self-importance for his own entertainment. Or, perhaps, it was a triple bluff, designed not only to assess Archie's analyses of patterns but to evaluate any tendencies to paranoia. Regardless, Archie determined to treat the situation at face value: he was learning a great deal from Mr Jensen simply by observation, after all, and it really wouldn't be very productive to end their interactions early by failing or seeming unduly suspicious. "It's sort of like a classroom," he continued. "If the teacher is too controlling, the students are too angry or scared to learn. If the teacher treats them all like they're the same, the struggling ones get left behind and the advanced ones don't learn the way they could. If the teacher just doesn't control them at all, no one learns anything unless they want to, and even then it's probably not anything useful in real life."

Mr Jensen pulled down another book (Will and Political Legitimacy) and added it to the three he was already carrying. "You're right, of course, even if the metaphor is somewhat simple," he said once they were back at the table. He set the books down in front of Archie. "I suspect you know the complicating factors quite well, however, and believe you will find these resources to be both relevant and quite interesting." Mr Jensen then turned to his binder and lifted a stack of what appeared to be exams to be marked. His hands were delicate and almost reverent as he picked up the lacquered pen and tested the nib. "If you have any questions, do feel welcome to ask. Marking is tedious at best, and I will undoubtedly welcome the distraction."

Archie nodded. Picking up Will and Political Legitimacy, he opened the book to its first page and settled in to read.

I love the idea that Archie took to Sherlock so well because he's a little genius, too, just a bit quieter about it.

I can't promise I'll be able to update next week, or even the week after; hopefully the demands work is making will ease off and I'll have more time and energy to put into this story. Also, I want to thank you for reading! It means a lot to me that people seem to be interested in this piece; I really hope that it'll do right by your interest as the plot continues to unfold. :)