The first thing waiting for him back in DC was an email from Carruthers demanding his presence. Jayden was so terrified he vomited in his office trash can before he went. He was certain that he was fucked. Miller must have ratted him out.

It took a lot of effort to sit down calmly across from Carruthers. The man's face was so desolate that it made Jayden's heart sink further.

"I'm sorry," Jayden said, wondering if he was visibly sweating. "I don't feel very well today. I'm a little out of it."

Carruthers barely responded. "These are a difficult few days for me, Norman. Special Agent Eric Belasco passed away over the holiday."

The words were so horrific they were unreal. "No," Jayden said, as though he could deny the sentence out of existence, "What? No." A thousand images passed through his brain. Some of them were memories: Belasco waiting for Jayden outside his hospital room, yelling at Craig and Jackson. Some were possibilities: Belasco seizing himself to death, vomiting blood, screaming in terror until he gave himself an aneurysm. Jayden couldn't stop seeing that wall of children's drawings that lived in Belasco's ARI. "He's always so careful."

Carruthers was nodding, miserable. "He was. It had nothing to do with ARI, as far as we can tell. He got hit by a car. Internal injuries. They're still figuring out exactly what happened, but it looks like it was just someone running a red light. Maybe drunk. Don't know yet."

"That's so . . . stupid." The meaningless of it immediately began to twist in his belly. Even when just working his desk job, Jayden knew of agents who had been killed or injured, but this was surreally unjust. "He works for the FBI and teaches all this risky shit, and he gets hit by a car? He needs . . . he should have been, he . . . he shouldn't be dead. He's got kids."

"Yeah. I think everyone pretty much feels that way. I know I do. He was a genuinely good guy. He was a good man, and this shouldn't have happened, and I don't think I can say much more than that right now." Carruthers stared down at his desk, then looked back up at Jayden. "I hate to dump that on you and ask you to leave, but I'm working on telling this to . . . pretty much everyone in the ARI program who's in DC at the moment. Look, if you need to take today off, you go do that. I'm going to give you the card for the grief counselors, okay?"

Jayden accepted the card automatically, knowing he'd never go. "Yeah. Thanks. I'll probably stay here to keep busy. Sorry, Henry, I feel like I should be handing this back to you; I can't imagine having to tell people over and over again."

Carruthers looked furious. "Do not," he snarled, "Try to start comforting me, because I will not be able to do this all day if you do." Jayden flinched, and the other man sighed, composed himself. "Sorry. If you stay, people might ask you about what happened because they know you're in the program together. So you might have to do it all day, anyway. Just keep that in mind."

Jayden rose to his feet. "Yeah, thanks. Grapevine. I got it. I guess someone'll probably start up a fund for a memorial or his family or whatever?"

"Almost certainly. And Norman, you should know . . . I've already been asked to start thinking about recommendations for who should take over for him. Your name came up as someone I should talk to about the possibility."

"No," Jayden said, immediately. "I'm no good."

"I'm not asking you right now, I'm just saying that I'll probably want to talk to you sometime in the next week."

"No," Jayden repeated. "I can't. I'm not careful." He slammed his way out of Carruthers' office without bothering to explain.

He didn't go home. He would feel better being productive, and he could be more productive at work. He cut off his colleagues and the curious by snapping monosyllables at them:

"Agent Jayden, did you hear –"

"Yes."

"Do you –"

"No." It didn't matter what they'd been intending to ask; no matter what it was, he almost certainly had no interest in answering it. Five o'clock was, at first, a relief, because it meant the building began to empty out, and Jayden could work on without interruption. But after forty-five minutes, he realized he was close to wearing himself out; he'd been so rigid with frustrated tension all day that his muscles were actually aching. Going back to his empty apartment wasn't appealing, but neither was working until he fell asleep in his chair. He grabbed a few things to look over at home, and left.

He didn't even crack his briefcase when he got home, just dumped it on his kitchen counter, followed by his tie. He slumped into a chair and stared at the kitchen table for an eternity, then pulled out his ARI glasses and glove, placed them in front of him, and stared at them, too. They were eventually joined by the still half-full vial of triptocaine that he fished out of his pocket. His tiny pile of addiction stared at him sullenly. "Do it all wrong," he said to himself, softly. "Like Miller, and maybe fuck up your brain, go to jail. Die. Or do it all right, like Belasco, and die anyway."

He called Miller, who was hard to hear because of background noise. He sounded drunk when he answered: "Norman? Jesus, me and some of the guys are at the Round Robin talking about, you know. Eric. Do you want to come out with us?"

"No. I'm tired of you being my pusher. I want the name of your connection for the tripto, and if I don't get it, I'll blow you out of the water. You, and me, and whoever else is putting that shit in our brains. I'll head straight to Carruthers with all the info I have."

There was a long pause. ". . . are you insane?"

"Probably."

"What the fuck is wrong with you? I'm on a phone in the middle of a fucking bar! Fuck off, Jackson, it's none of your fucking business. Jayden's lost his fucking mind."

"Tomorrow. Call me tomorrow with the information. I mean it." Jayden hung up while Miller was still sputtering.

Jayden wondered if he'd just burned some of those bridges forever. Maybe. Probably. It was more a question of how many. He'd miss them. It had been nice, being part of a community. It had been a little less nice once he'd realized the sorts of secrets those helpful faces were hiding.

He played with his half-full vial of tripto. He'd been working inside ARI for most of the day, and now he could feel his brain starting to curl up around the edges a little. He'd let it keep curling for a while, do a little more work; snorting the drug when it was starting to really hurt was more gratifying than simply maintaining comfort. Pain and release, pain and release. It made it feel more like the first time.

Jayden's first love had been the ARI, and it always would be. But he had a mistress now, too.

A/N: Bonus points if you can figure out what movie I was watching when I started writing this. It's hard to come up with names, you know.

. . . okay, I lifted Emeric Belasco (who was renamed as Eric because Emeric is a stupid name), and Fletcher, and Fisher. Fisher is the worst theft: he's played by Roddy McDowell in the movie, and I stole his entire persona for the story. Nervous dude with goggling eyes? Yep.