AN: Today I have been walking that fine line between avoiding spoilers and my habitual internet use. IPS aired several hours ago in America, but until I find a decent source to download it from and actually download it, the internet is a potential minefield of spoilers. All this is my convoluted way of asking any IPS fanfic authors reading this to make sure your titles and summaries are as spoiler free as possible for the first couple of days after an episode airs. Or at least clearly marked, up front. I once read a summary for a Gilmore Girls fic that said 'What if Richard had died in the hospital? Spoilers for ep xxx'. Thanks for that, whoever you were! By the time I read the warning I already knew that Richard was in hospital and that he survived! The only thing the spoiler warning told me was which episode all this occurred in! Anyone wondering why I put so many spoiler warnings at the top of the chapter, when I only mention the events in passing, you now know why.
Okay, rant over.
Albuquerque, we have a problem
Chapter 10 – Porn Isn't the Answer.
An uneasy truce had been silently agreed to by the two marshals by the time the MoU was finished.
"Any questions?" Mary asked the standard, final question.
Mike looked shiftily between the pair of them before asking, "What about online identities?"
Mary narrowed her eyes in contempt. What part of 'no contact' did these people not understand?
"I use a screen name online, nobody knows my real identity," Mike explained.
"What sort sites are you using these screen names on?" Marshall enquired, cringing as he pre-empted the answer.
"World of Warcraft is the main one, I've spent years building up my character's skills on that, but I'm also the moderator on a tech advice site and a couple of chat rooms."
Mary sat back and rubbed her forehead in anticipation of the headache this was going to give her.
"The tech site and the chat rooms will be too easy to trace," Marshall told him, relieved the answer hadn't been 'porn', "but we may be able to arrange something about the World of Warcraft account."
Mike nodded, understandingly. He knew how easy it would be to track someone using a static IP address, but he was pleased with Marshall's reassurance about his Warcraft character. He signed the thick document without further comment. Mary stood and gestured to Mike that it was time to leave. Marshall picked up the three copies of the MoU they had been using and followed Mary and the witness out of the room. He put the signed MoU on his desk, to be filed later.
"Wait here," Mary told Mike, as she dove into Stan's office.
"Are you taking me back to the motel now?" Mike asked Marshall, while he waited.
"Mary will in a minute."
"Are you not coming with me?" Mike asked, nervous at the prospect of being left alone with Mary.
"No, I have to go over to the DOJ office to file your paperwork," he responded.
Mary finally re-emerged from Stan's office, Stan in tow, just as Marshall was gathering the necessary paperwork for the DOJ. She motioned for Mike to follow her and they headed for the door.
"Will I see you at home?" Marshall asked casually, as Mary headed out.
"Yeah," she agreed, knowing she couldn't go home to Raph without facing his questions. And he would have a lot of questions if she went home a day earlier than planned.
As they both exited the office neither of them saw the shock and puzzlement on the faces of Stan and Eleanor as the implication of Marshall's question registered.
As the doors of the elevator closed on the trio, Stan turned to Eleanor, "Do you think there's something...?"
"No," Eleanor replied adamantly.
"You sound sure. What do you know that I don't?"
"Many, many things," she joked.
"Seriously, you didn't think that was odd?" Stan tilted his head in the direction of the elevator, indicating the just departed marshals.
"Oh, it was odd, all right, but there's nothing going on between them," Eleanor affirmed as she sorted through her pile of paperwork.
"How do you know?" Stan lent against the filing cabinet.
"The tension's still there," she shrugged.
"Oh," Stan said. He contemplated her answer a moment, before, "Hang on, what tension?"
Eleanor looked at Stan, wondering how he could be so oblivious.
"Oh, God. If there is something going on, it could be an administrative nightmare," Stan rubbed his hand across his forehead.
He muttered to himself, listing all the potential implications, Eleanor didn't catch most of the list but she did hear him mutter, "I'd have to find new partners for them..."
Eleanor snorted, causing Stan to stop his mumbling and look at her.
"I don't envy you the task of trying to find someone else willing to work with her."
Stan chuckled, "He's no picnic either, he had five partners in as many months before he came here."
"Really?" Eleanor asked, surprised. She cocked an eyebrow at Stan, inviting him to tell her more.
xxx
Marshall got back to his house before Mary. Ellen was in the living room working through his DVD collection. She'd picked the Robert Redford classic Brubaker as that afternoon's viewing and Marshall joined her for the last few minutes of the movie.
As the credits rolled, Ellen turned to face her brother who had been brooding since he got in.
"Can you talk about it?" she asked.
He fidgeted uncomfortably, considering all the things he would like to talk to her about.
"I think I'm going to need to tell Mary something better. About you," he revealed, slowly.
Ellen considered what he was saying for a moment then got up and went into the kitchen, returning shortly with two bottles of beer. Marshall accepted the offering, tacitly acknowledging that the conversation was the sort that required beer.
"Which bit is she questioning?" Ellen asked after taking a swig from her bottle.
"All of it," Marshall picked at the corner of the bottle's label, "She's even questioning if you're actually my sister."
"Why would she do that?"
"She's Mary. She's suspicious of everybody. And I lied to my boss, about you, today."
"So what story would she buy?"
"I don't know," he admitted quietly.
"Should I talk to her?"
"And say what?"
"No idea, I'll think of something."
"It might be better to let me handle it. Then she'll only be pissed at one of us," he added with a wry smile.
Ellen let the subject drop as she heard a key turning in the lock, signalling Mary's return.
xxx
Mary was standing at the sink, washing up after Ellen had cooked dinner for the three of them. She was reviewing what she had to do the following day and didn't hear Ellen enter the kitchen over the sound of running water.
Ellen picked up a dish cloth and leant with her back against the sink, ready to dry. Mary observed her for a moment. Ellen contemplated the floor. Finally she said, "For someone who should know better, you sure ask a lot of questions."
Mary paused, her hands in the soapy water, "What do you mean 'I should know better'?"
"I just meant for someone in your line of work..."
"What do you know about my line of work?" Mary enquired suspiciously, ready to berate Marshall for his double standards regarding Raph, when his sister also knew.
"Nothing, really. I know you work with Marshall, and while I don't know what he does, I could make an educated guess," she said.
Her response only served to confuse Mary, "You've never wondered what Marshall does?"
"Sure, I've wondered, I may have even speculated from time to time, but I've never asked."
"Why not?"
"I would never put my brother on the spot like that. I love him too much to have him lie to me. Plus, it's just not what our family does. No, we just memorise trivia," she muttered the last under her breath, but Mary heard.
Mary focused on the plate in her hand, rubbing it much longer than was necessary, as she contemplated Ellen's words and the warning behind them.
Ellen nudged her and pointed to the plate forcing Mary's attention back to what she was doing. She handed the plate over.
"So, what does your family do then? What's with the trivia?" Mary asked, genuinely interested.
Ellen shrugged, "We couldn't be like other families, sitting round the dinner table discussing their day, so we would discuss the things we had learned that day, bits of trivia we had picked up. It became a competition between Marshall and myself, to find a obscure fact that Dad didn't know. We never succeeded. That man knew everything! Or, at least, he pretended he did." She smiled in reminiscence.
"Sounds like fun," Mary said sarcastically. But even to her own ears it missed sarcasm by a mile and sounded more than a little envious.
Ellen stayed mercifully silent. They continued washing up, each thinking their own thoughts.
As they neared the end of the stack of dishes, Mary returned to the original subject.
"No one that knows Marshall would ever believe he had disowned his sister. You should come up with a better cover story for whatever it is you do," she advised, already applying herself to finding a more plausible lie for the pair.