Who: Olivia Shepherd & Zach Evans What: Getting the bad news about James When: Backdated to Saturday, January 3rd 2015 Where: Her apartment in D.C.
The phone call from Lydia was one of the worst he had ever taken. It was up there with learning his brother had died. That his sisters had been shot, and one was in a coma. This was the reason why he had never gotten into a relationship again. This reason right here, that he could lose, again, someone who meant everything to him. Not that James had actually meant everything to him, but he meant a hell of a lot more then just some regular old person that he slept with a few times. This was going to stay with him for a long time, but he felt that he had made the right choice in not telling James how he felt about him, before he left. It left things unsaid, yes, but it was for the best.
Because if James knew, Zach didn't know how he might react to it. If maybe he wouldn't take the protection he was being offered. Maybe that was just ego on his part, thinking that he might stay behind if he knew how he felt. But Zach knew that it could have made a difference. Maybe made it harder for him to leave. Something. Which was one of the reasons why he had told Lydia that he would be the one to tell James' family. He had loved a member of that family, and they deserved a personal touch when it came to finding out about this. Leaving a message on an answering machine, or talking to them over the phone just didn't feel right to him.
And he did want to know some things. Like what James had actually told his sister. What he'd told her. How much did she know about what he was doing. If she knew who Zach was. The first three were fine, the last one was selfish, and he knew it. But Zach needed to know, and as he rang the doorbell for Olivia's apartment, he mentally prepared himself for this. The main thing was that James was okay. And he was okay. He just kept reminding himself of that. He was safe, and he could do this.
---
Olivia had worked until pretty late the night before, but just like every other day, she'd been up by 7AM and immediately onto her daily routines. It was a Saturday, she technically had the day off, but Olivia had a hard time not keeping busy. So after gulping down a protein shake, she'd gone on a run, taken a shower, gotten dressed, and had already finished the crossword puzzle with her morning coffee by the time 9AM rolled around. Olivia was nothing if not efficient.
But of course, after just a few short hours, she was already starting to feel restless. It was a real problem for her, and she was flip flopping between devoting the day to cleaning the entire apartment or just going into work when the doorbell rang. Temporarily distracted from her dilemma, Olivia reached for the remote to turn the TV off that she hadn't even been paying attention to. She had no idea who could be at the door, but she assumed it was either James or Peter. Pathetically, not many people outside of her brothers or her partner ever dropped by without calling first.
She answered the door, coffee mug in hand (her second cup of the day), ready to receive whichever of the two was on the other side of it and faltered as her eyes fell on the unfamiliar looking man. Was he a new neighbor? She thought she'd already fully checked out the last person who'd moved into the apartment building, and the photo from their background check hadn't looked anything like him. Yes, she was that kind of FBI agent. ".... Uh. Hi? Can I help you?"
---
He knew what she looked like, so there was no reason for him to ask if he had the right door. The two of them didn't look quite as similar as, say, he and his sister did, but he could see James in her features, and that was tough. Breathing in slowly, he restrained himself from putting his hands into his coat pockets. A nervous trait he'd inherited from Jack, it always helped if you could hide the fist you were making when you talked to someone.
Instead, he kept his hands at his sides. "Ms. Shepherd, my name is Zachary Evans. I work for Camelot." He pauses, because that one was probably obvious. His face was on TV almost every other night, and since she worked in the FBI, well. They were not the biggest fans of their group. James had told him all about the folder they had on his family.
"I need to talk to you about James. Can I come in?"
---
Now that he'd introduced himself, Olivia did realize she recognized him. She didn't always keep up with the latest reincarnate affairs, after all, that wasn't her division. That had been James. But she was still FBI, and they were supposed to know some names, mostly who was speaking for reincarnates on a regular basis and who represented their... government. Which she still wasn't totally sure how that worked, but now wasn't the time to get side tracked by an internal monologue, Olivia.
The second realization that hit her was that this must be Zach. James had told her very little about the person in Camelot he was seeing. Just his name, really, but at the time Olivia hadn't made the connection between him and the PR guy from Camelot that the FBI sometimes looked at. Her brain was working overtime in trying to play catch up so much that she didn't fully register the last thing he said. That is, until it sunk in like an anchor being dropped to the bottom of the ocean and she felt a resounding thud in her chest. In the FBI, if your partner or a family member died, they usually showed up in a somber looking suit to talk to you about their death. She didn't know if Camelot did that, or what they would even wear if...
"Oh, god..." Olivia's face went white, and in a sort of daze she unconsciously stepped back from the doorway. She thought she might have nodded or made some sort of half-mumbled gesture to invite him in, but she couldn't be sure. "Is he...?"
---
Zach hadn't been looking into a mirror at the time of that phone call, but he was pretty sure he looked exactly like she did in that moment. He wasn't sure if she was going to fall backwards, or stumble, or something, so when he came into the apartment, he automatically reached out to steady her gently, a hand on her elbow.
It also didn't help that Olivia also suspiciously looked like another person he'd loved and lost as well. "He's all right." Zach said quickly, shutting the door behind him. He'd already made sure no one was around when he knocked; the last thing he wanted right now was to put Olivia into a harder position then she was already in. He didn't know what she was going to do when it involved her job as well.
"He's not dead. And he's safe, he is very safe, where he is right now." Looking around her place, he gently steered her to the couch, taking a seat next to her. Not too close, and he didn't remove his coat. Right now he really wished for a strong drink.
"I don't know how much James told you, about what he was involved in, with Camelot..."
---
Some part of Olivia was aware that Zach had more or less maneuvered her into her own apartment and shut the door behind them. She was still too out of it to really care, or alert enough to be paranoid about anyone seeing them. She vaguely remembered him steering her to the couch, where she sat down and barely noticed. She couldn't get her brain to move past the notion that something terrible had happened to James, even after Zach had reassured her that he was fine.
When you lost almost your entire family the way they had, it sort of became your worst fear no matter what. After the Boston attacks, losing her last two remaining siblings became a constant, mind numbing worry of hers ever since. Which didn't help, considering the jobs she and James had, and in that split second it had taken before Zach tried to quell her worst fear, she'd been paralyzed by it. It took her more than a few seconds to shake herself out of it, and when she did, Olivia didn't feel any better. Just more aware. She finally glanced over at Zach and slowly shook her head.
"Not... not much. Just that. He was involved." Still reeling a little, Olivia bit her lip and silently willed her heart to stop racing. "... He's really okay?"
---
"He's really okay." Zach tried to reassure her again with it, much like Lydia had done for him. He knew the power of words, and how you said them, and he didn't want to do anything but reassure her. Not that words would make much of a difference either, he knew. You could say something all you want, but when someone was feeling a certain way, it was hard to make them feel another. That really was the one problem with having feelings. You couldn't make them do what you wanted to. Zach hated that.
"He's safe. I promise you, he's safe." And Zach never made promises. "James has been working for Camelot for awhile, now. I can't tell you specifics about what he was doing. But he was helping reincarnates. Helping to protect them from... a hell of a lot of bad things." He ran a hand through his hair.
"He was... is... and amazing person. I guess that part doesn't really come as much of a surprise to you."
---
Olivia was relieved to hear that James was safe, but she wa still having trouble processing everything. She still didn't really know why Zach was here, he'd said he needed to talk to her about James. It had sounded so ominous and final that naturally she'd jumped to conclusions, and even though Zach had more or less defused them, he still hadn't really given her a viable alternative. If James was fine, why was Zach here on a Saturday morning to talk to her about her brother? (Olivia wasn't even sure what time it actually was. For all she knew, morning was over.)
"Okay..." She spoke slowly, deliberately. Letting Zach's words sink in a little as she mentally got a hold of herself. It was a little like PTSD, having the shock of thinking your loved one is dead turn out not to be true doesn't make the emotional and mental ramifications of the experience any less severe. She was having trouble getting past it, but something Zach said struck a severe chord with her.
"I know how amazing he is." Her voice came out a little more hysterical than she intended, but she looked up at Zach with a certain level of indignation. It was funny, for someone who was in the FBI, she really hated all these secrets. "If you can't tell me what he was doing, what can you tell me? Can you even tell me why you're here? If he's safe, then where is he? Where's my brother?"
---
Maybe he should have considered the timezone difference thing again, but this had come as a shock to him, so maybe it was a little fair... no, that was just mean. He really hadn't considered the timezone difference, since it hadn't mattered too much when he was with James. It wasn't like they had a set schedule for this thing they were doing. And he was really going to miss this.
Sometimes Zach hated secrets, too. "I don't know where he is." He looked at her before he had to look away again for a moment. That information, that part, that was what was going to hurt the most. At least, if someone was dead, you knew where they were. But this unknowing, this part where someone you love could be anywhere in the world, and you not know, it cut like a knife.
"Yesterday, his cover was blown. The FBI found out that he was a part of Camelot, and they were moving in on him. We know about what your government has been doing, in suspected reincarnate arrests, and we didn't want that to happen to him." Zach paused. "So we got him out. But... we're not a government. So, to make sure they couldn't get to him again, we had to put him into our own version of a witness protection program. Only two people, at most, know where he is, and I'm not one of them. And you won't, either. I'm sorry."
---
"That's not... that's not my division.." Olivia mumbled, mostly to herself as she sat there and ingested this new information, only half hearing it while also completely internalizing it. James was gone. James's cover had been blown. James was being hunted down by the FBI. The FBI had found him out? A new wave of confusion washed over Olivia, but she wasn't entirely surprised she hadn't been called yet. The job she'd dedicated her entire life to was doing some very ethically questionable things when it came to dealing with reincarnates lately. If they knew James was a reincarnate, and with Camelot, well... they were probably getting ready to bring her in for questioning. Though taking a quick glance at her phone, she realized it was on silent and had a few missed calls. She'd have to look at those later.
She drew in a deep breath, mostly to give herself time before responding but also because she'd actually forgotten to take one. She'd unconsciously been holding her breath through Zach's explanation, still afraid that he was going to tell her that her brother was dead. He wasn't dead, but he was gone. She knew what witness protection was and she knew what that meant, but that didn't make hearing this any easier. When she finally spoke, her voice was incredibly small, almost child like.
"He's... already gone? I can't see him?" Olivia knew that answer to that, but the words were out before she could stop them. It was ridiculous, but she felt like she was grieving. He wasn'd dead. But he might as well be. she'd never see him again.
---
Zach shook his head, having to take in a deep breath himself before he could look at her again. "I'm sorry. It all happened suddenly, and from what I was told, there wasn't any time to get any sort of message to him." A lie, but a lie he knew he could tell well. Maybe, if he had taken Lydia's offer of a message to him, he wouldn't be able to tell this lie as well as he could. But he knew that if he had given him a message, then it would have hurt more then it would have helped. He just had to hope that James knew how much the people he loved, loved him as well. It would have to be good enough, because there was no other option.
"He's already gone. I'm so sorry that I have to give you this news. But like this, he's safer then anyone else in the world right now, I can promise you that." Zach was terrible at the comforting thing, especially now. But he knew he was the right person to be here, right now.
---
"So you didn't see him either?" Part of Olivia felt relieved. The idea that someone else had gotten to see James before he left made her irrationally angry. At the same time, she felt a strange sort of comfort in Zach's words, and part of her wished she knew that Zach had seen for himself that James was okay before he'd left. She didn't know the intimate details of their relationship, if they had even had one. She assumed that this was the Zach that James had spoke of, simply because Zach was here. Telling her personally what happened. You didn't do that for just anybody.
She felt that nagging prickling in the corners of her eyes that told her tears were threatening to become embarrassingly visible, and she did her best to violently bite them back. She didn't want to cry. Not now. Not in front of anyone. When she forced herself to look right at Zach her eyes were suspiciously watery, but nothing spilled over. She spoke through the increasing tightness in her throat.
"He told me about you. Not much. Just your name, mostly. At least, I'm assuming that was you, since you're here, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Don't worry, he wasn't telling me any Camelot secrets. But he seemed... happy." She was babbling now. She did that sometimes when she was too shut down to really do anything else.
---
"I didn't see him, no." Zach shook his head again. Yes, it had hurt at the time, but this way, his last memory of him, of the time they were together, was a good one. Maybe that would be the same way for Olivia, of the good times with her brother, versus what this last time would have been. He'd rather picture someone like that, versus whatever this might have been. But the only people who had seen him were his sister, and whoever was on the team at that time. Zach would never tell her that, though, either.
Fuck, but that look in her eyes was tough to see, and her next words made his own throat threaten to close up. "I... I'm sorry that we had to meet like this." He swallowed hard. "He wanted me to meet you sooner, but we... I didn't want to put him in anymore danger then he was already in." Finishes softly, it seems like such a stupid thing now, but at the time, the last thing he wanted to have happen was that. Zach would have never forgave himself if he had been the reason why James was caught.
"...He made me happy, too."
---
She should have known this would happen. When James first told her about Camelot, Olivia couldn't ignore the sinking feeling in her gut that had told her this would only end badly. But James wouldn't listen, and she didnt try too hard to convince him otherwise. He would always do what he thought was right, that was just who her brother is, so she accepted his choices because they were all part of him. Even when it hurt like hell to do it. She was grateful that he was safe somewhere, but it was somewhere she could never go, so how the hell was she supposed to deal with that? This was too much. This was all too much.
Olivia turned her gaze to the ground and stared at it for a long time, or what felt like a long time. In reality it was probably only a minute at most, but she was too busy training her tear ducts to shrink back in and get a real grip on herself. She would have to, if she was going to be questioned later. She had no idea how this was going to affect her, now that her brother was officially MIA and wanted by the people she worked with. But Olivia couldn't begin to try and think about that right now. Right now, she just needed to get her head around the fact that she'd never see James again. It almost felt like she couldn't breathe.
"Thank you... for coming to tell me. I really appreciate you doing that." Zach had been a stranger, but he was somehow less strange to her than anyone else from Camelot would have been. He had meant something to James, so in a way, he meant something to her too. When she turned her head, the smile she gave him was pained, but still a smile. At least she knew James had been appreciated there. That was worth something, at least. "Don't be sorry. I'm glad you were trying to keep him safe. Still trying to keep him safe. I...I won't forget that."
---
That's what he was going for. Someone needed to tell the family, and... that's one of the reasons why he did this. He actually knew someone in the family, even if he had never wanted to do this before. But he still had one more person to tell, someone who he was going to right after this. He wasn't sure if talking to Noah was going to be harder, or easier, but he knew that he didn't want to stretch this out over a day or two. Best to just get it all done, as soon as possible. That way, when he was finished talking, he could hole himself up in his flat and go to town on a couple of bottles of the only true loves of his life.
"I wish there was more I could tell you, or that I... could make more promises, even though I don't like to make promises." Zach gave her a small smile back, though it was probably just as pained. "If you have any other questions that I could maybe answer, or if you want someone to talk to, you can call me. On my personal cell, I'll give you the number. I don't know what you plan to do with his apartment, if the FBI is going to go through it, but there's nothing of mine in there that you'll need to... anything. Not that it would matter anymore."
---
"It's okay. I know how this goes, kind of. I work for the FBI. We deal exclusively in secrets." Meant to sound like a joke, even if it really wasn't, and she couldn't will her voice to sound that casual about it. In some ways she blamed the FBI for this more than Camelot. If they weren't so anti-reincarnate, maybe James wouldn't have had to run. Maybe he would still be here, and she'd still be able to see him every day, just like before. It was those sorts of thoughts that were going to drive her to drink later, after Zach had left and she could officially unravel without judgement.
Olivia sighed heavily, not wanting to think about things like dealing with James' apartment or the FBI. Or both at once. She was sure they'd want to search his place, if only because they could, now that he was gone. They could probably even get by without a warrant, considering the negatively biased way most judges leaned towards reincarnate cases these days. She'd have to deal with that later too. Right now, just knowing that James would be safe from them was enough.
"Thanks. And yeah, they'll probably search the place. I'll brief you as needed." The words sounded so formal to her coming out of her own mouth, but once she was emotionally numb, Olivia basically became a robot. It was something James used to make fun of her about, once she was in a better mood.
---
Luckily for Olivia, Zach was very used to dealing with emotionless robots. That was pretty much how most people in Camelot reacted when being told bad news. They shut up, got back to work, and drank themselves to semi-death once they got home and were as far away from people as possible. Of course, he couldn't actually comment on that part of it, even if he could see the tell tale signs. Zach hesitated for a moment before standing up.
"Here." Zach pulled a business card from his pocket, pulling out a pen as well, and he wrote his cell phone number onto the back of the card. "This is my private number. I know the timezone difference can be tricky, but if you call, day or night, I'll pick up. If you have any questions, or want to talk, or... anything. I'll pick up." He handed her the card, putting his hand back into his pocket. He looked at her for another moment before going to the door.
"...I'm sorry for delivering such bad news." At least she hadn't shot the messenger, so that was something. One last look, and he was gone.
---
Olivia took the card numbly, thinking that she might have nodded in response but she wasn't entirely sure. She stared at the number he'd written, already committing it to memory (she was pretty good at that sort of thing), but she'd keep the card anyway. Somehow, her brain was rationalizing it as a last link to James. Or maybe that was more Zach than anything else. She'd never met Zach before today, so he might as well be a complete stranger to her, but in so many ways, he felt like her last real connection to James. She would have to break the news somehow to their other brother, but she knew that whatever she told him, it wouldn't be the truth, so there was a certainly misery she couldn't ever share like she could here. Maybe she'd use the number someday, maybe she wouldn't. Either way, she was glad to have it, just in case she ever decided she needed it.
"Thanks..." It was barely a mumble, but it was there as Zach got up. Screw what time it was, she was already thinking about where she'd hidden the booze, intent on breaking it out as soon as he was gone. If the FBI came for her today, oh well, they'd just have to deal with a drunk agent in their interrogation room. She finally looked up just as he was walking out the door, wanting to say something else, anything else, but the words just weren't coming to her. She let the door close behind him without another word, shuddering slightly as she was suddenly enveloped in the complete, near eery quietness of her apartment. She thought about calling Peter, but instead, she wrapped herself up in the blanket that hung from the back of her couch and got up, shuffling slowly into the kitchen where the gin lived. That would just have to do, for now.