This was just going to be the intro to the next chapter - but I've had it written and sitting on my computer for months now. So instead it'll be the chapter itself and I'll see about writing the next one sometime soon (month at most - not years). Please leave your comments/advice in the reviews :)
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When lieutenant Clearwater brushed past Sam, she couldn't decide whether she wanted more to shoot him or to scream. Either way, she was at the end of her rope when it came to being dismissed and put off in her own base. The wizard, Potter, had proven himself far more dangerous and far more a mystery than she, or anyone else on base, had given him credit for. And Samantha Carter was quite unaccustomed to being in the dark when it came to anything under this mountain.
Still as much as she might want to call after the soldier and reprimand him for his inappropriate behavior before a superior officer, she was quite certain she knew where he was headed. It seemed to her that this may just give her an even better insight into the situation than her questions might have. So it wasn't to follow the lieutenant, but instead to the elevator three floors up that she headed, to a small cramped room filled by two airmen and a wall of monitors.
"Bring up G block on floor 23, outside the wizarding department. And get me audio to go with the feed as well." She demanded upon entering the room, depending upon just how quickly Lieutenant Clearwater was moving, she may have already missed the beginning. Just meant she'd have to go back to the recording later though; there wouldn't be a stone unturned or a scrap of information unexamined when she was done.
"Ma'am," one of the airmen acknowledged, quickly bringing up the requested feed and then vacating his chair for the Colonel.
Sam's gaze was fixed on the feed as she slid into the seat. They'd had an overhaul of the security systems just a couple years ago, with a not inconsiderable amount of Asgard tech used, so the video and audio were crystal clear and managed to capture both men in the view easily.
"So are you going to run away again?" Clearwater asked. "It's only that if you are planning to do so, I'd rather know now so I don't waste my breath."
"I didn't run away. My time in Washington merely came to an end and I moved on." Potter replied. The camera was in the hall over Clearwater's shoulder in such a way as to get a view of his back, and past him, Potter sitting at his desk not facing either the doorway or his guest.
"Oh, sure. How silly of me to think you were running like a coward." The vitriol was scathing and Potter visibly winced in his seat. When lieutenant Clearwater began speaking again it was in a low, quietly angry tone, "You were wrong you know, in all the years since then I've never imprinted on anyone else. Never stopped thinking of you. Never stopped missing you. You can't even say I didn't accept the idea of imprinting on anybody else because I gave up on the idea of ever seeing you again a long time ago. These years have given me something else, though. Perspective. I've matured since I was fifteen, I've seen lots of the world- both the good and the bad, and I realized something. Of the two of us, it's not me that's immature, it's you. You were confronted by something slightly outside of your comfort zone and you immediately packed up your things and made for the hills! You can't even face me now, the moment I entered the room you literally flee to the other side of the galaxy and commit an act of gory violence!" Clearwater's voice had risen almost to a shout by the end, and he took a moment to visibly collect his emotions and breath before continuing. "What was it you said then? That we would never see each other again, that you'd make sure of it. Well guess what! You fucked up. 'Cus I'm certainly seeing you right now. Your posturing failed. It failed then, and it's failed now. I'm not intimidated by your display and I'm not going to let you flee without speaking to me this time."
"That means you god damned look at me when I am speaking to you!" Seth thundered, causing Sam to jump and Potter to flinch in the video.
Finally, after a long pause, Potter shifted in his seat, turning to look at the man in his doorway. Carter wouldn't have ever called Harry Potter an intimidating individual before today, certainly she would never have let a few words and a nervous look chase her away from his office yesterday, but he did always have a certain indefinable presence. Watching the wizard being confronted by lieutenant Clearwater through the security camera footage from a secure terminal room a couple floors away, that presence was utterly absent. He looked utterly miserable and defeated; pitiable even. That was something else she never would have called him either, a pain in the ass, arrogant, certainly. Not pitiable.
"I- I want to say you're wrong Seth. I want to tell you that you don't understand the circumstances. And there are certainly aspects of it that you don't understand, but yes, I was a coward. Yes, I ran away. No there certainly wasn't any magic that prevented us from meeting again in the future, unless you count the mundane magic of political borders." Potter's attempt at humor fell rather flat, neither Seth nor their secret audience were impressed. "The truth is that at this point, you almost certainly are the more mature of the two of us- I'm just the immortal thirty-four year old who will forever be stuck with the emotional maturity of a scared fourteen year old who was told he had to save the world by killing the most powerful Dark Lord of a millennium." The wizard sighed, letting his gaze drift away from the lieutenant. "I've developed a dozen different tools and crutches that allow me to fit in, at least superficially, with a more adult crowd, to pretend to be my actual age. But I'll never really get there, I'll never truly comprehend romantic love or anything more than rather weak platonic friendship." He said, firmly and bitterly. "I- and this isn't just a sob story, though it may come across as such- I was not a loved child. I knew from a very young age that I was not welcome or wanted. Just as that inability to comprehend love is now integral to my being so too is my desperate desire for the family and love that was denied me as a child. So yes when you stood in front of me and promised everything I wanted, everything I had wanted for more than a decade if all I could do was love you in a way I was incapable..." His voice trailed off for a moment before picking up the thread again. "I ran. I- in that instant, part of me hated you. I knew there were better ways to handle the situation, I knew my explanations and letter weren't enough. I knew that leaving as I did would be unfairly distressing for you." Carter couldn't look away from the screen, this was definitely not what she had been expecting.
"And I did it anyway, vindictively. You placed a bountiful harvest in front of a starving child and asked for the one thing he didn't have. I could have given you riches, slaves, the world on a silver platter. Any unreasonable demand you could have made, and I could have provided it, but you wanted the one thing I couldn't give. The one thing I can't give. The one thing I'll never be able to give." There was a quiet, but clear note of defeat in the wizard's voice as he spoke. "You can shout any imprecations against my character you want, and undoubtedly most will be true. But the fact of the matter is that I can't give you what you want any more today than I could seven years ago. I won't run, this program, this opportunity means too much to me, and for the sake of that same program and my own rather atrophied sense of fair play, I won't have you removed from the program either. But right now I'm going home, and I don't want to see you at my office when I get here tomorrow morning for work.
"For what it's worth, I am sorry, Seth. I hope you do well here, but I don't want to go through what I did last time we saw each other."
Potter pushed past lieutenant Clearwater and into the hallway making it only a few steps before pausing. For the first time, since Sam had begun to watch the video feed, Potter was facing the camera almost full on. The larger form of the lieutenant at his back watching him with a palpable intensity even through the small monitor.
Anything less than the Asgard tech in the microphones and Sam doubted she would have heard his last words. "I don't want to put you through what I did the last time we saw each other either. I-" Carter watched with something between awe and horror as the camera caught in perfect detail the tears that were falling down the wizard's face, out of view of the lieutenant. Potter shook his head roughly, his back still to Seth, then set off at a determined pace down the hallway all signs of distress melting from his features between one step and the next, in what was clear to Carter's senses and the camera's excellent resolution a result of magic.
"I'm sorry, Seth."
And then Potter was out of the camera's view, around a bend in the hallway, and the lieutenant had slumped against the doorjamb, and unreadable expression on his face.
Carter herself leaned back in her seat, having at some point slid to its edge, only to jump, her heart hammering when someone let out an awed 'wow' just over her shoulder. Whipping around Carter barely held in the impulse to curse, she'd been so caught up in what she'd been watching that she'd completely failed to notice that - either in her rush to get to the security office, or due to the security airmen she'd dismissed from her mind almost the instant she sat down - they'd drawn a crowd of almost a dozen airmen. She was about the order them not to speak of what they'd seen, for all the good it would likely do, when another thought occurred to her and she spun about an entered a few commands into the terminal.
She did curse when she saw the result. The video feed had been and was currently being accessed by more than thirty different terminals in the building. The cat was well and truly out of the bag and there'd be no putting it back. Gossip, the one force faster than Asgard hyperdrives had struck again.
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