Who: Julius Weaver What: Some days are worse than others. Where: Weaver International offices in New York City, New York When: Tuesday, June 20; afternoon. Warnings: Mental health issues (panic attacks, PTSD).
All Jules really wanted to do with his afternoon was take a nap. He hadn't slept well the night before. Nightmares, for one, after he'd managed to fall asleep. Laying in bed staring at the ceiling and worrying, before that. He was still trying to make sure the board didn't find a way to overturn the progress he was making liasing with Camelot and the Agency to make certain that the money that he'd set aside from a public show of support for reincarnates got to the places where it was needed the most. Most of the board wasn't exactly feeling favorably toward reincarnates. They never had; it was worse now that hate was getting more popular. No one was going to come out and say it. Not with Kassidy a reincarnate and Jules pushing her to be public about it the way that he never had been. The way that he probably never would be. It was too late for him. All he could do was make sure that he found a way for his niece to live in a family, in a world, that gave her the kind of support that she deserved.
That was another worry altogether. Kassidy. The way that introducing herself to her reincarnate's friends hadn't exactly gone well. Jules blamed himself of course. He'd been the one to push her to do it. She hadn't told him it was his fault. She wouldn't. That didn't make it any less his responsiblity. He'd been the one to push her after all. She'd even told him that she wasn't ready and that she didn't feel comfortable with it. She wouldn't have done it if Jules hadn't pushed her to though. That put it on his shoulders. There was a lot on Jules' shoulders. He wasn't going to break under one more burden stacked onto all the rest. If that was going to happen, it would have happened a long time before. He would just get a little less sleep than usual until he figured out how to fix it. There was always going to be a way to fix it. He just wasn't looking hard enough.
It was harder when he wasn't sleeping though. Everything was harder when he wasn't sleeping. Finding the right answer. Fighting the good fight in the only way he could. Getting through the day without slacking off like the boy he'd been before Amsterdam. He couldn't shake the idea that if he just laid his head down for a few minutes he'd be alright. He knew what happened when he did that. When he did that he fell asleep at his desk and then... then, if his father caught him at it, it was going to be even harder for Jules to convince him that he was responsible, that what he was doing was going to be what was best for the company. If he slipped up even the once... that would be enough to convince his father that he was going back to his old habits. Jules knew it. Even without his father saying it he knew that he was going to be on thin ice for the rest of his life, after the decisions that he'd made as a younger man.
At first he thought that he was imagining the footsteps behind him. He did that. Sometimes. Heard things that weren't there. That was worse when he was tired too. It could have just been water in the pipes, or the air conditioner, making that soft tap tap sound behind him. Knowing that it was just in his head didn't make his shoulders stop tensing up. Didn't make his heart stay slow and calm. Just his imagination... it was just his imagination. There was no one behind him. There was no reason for anyone to be in that hallway but him. No reason for...
A hand landed on his shoulder and he gasped like a dying man.
Jules was frozen for precious seconds that would have left him dead if there'd actually been someone with a knife behind him. Then he was turning, quickly, arms up to defend himself. He was in an alley in Amsterdam and the world was out of focus and there was a man with a knife there. Old scars ached like they were fresh. If Jules had a gun... if they had a gun, he and Goodnight could have--except they were no good up close. Neither of them.
Maybe a heartbeat more and then the world started to right itself. Jules wasn't in Amsterdam. He was dressed in a suit, not his old club clothes. He was at work where he was supposed to be and the woman standing behind him with wide eyes was his father's secretary Anna. Knowing that he was safe, that Anna wasn't going to pull any kind of weapon on him, that didn't make his heart stop racing. "Sorry. Sorry, you... you surprised me. I wasn't expecting you there." Jules managed a shaky smile. It didn't look anything at all like normal but it was the best that he could do. Anna smiled back anyway; hers didn't look normal either. "I was focusing so hard on what I was doing that I forgot there were other people in the building." That was true enough. Of course there were other people in that hallway. Of course there was an innocent reason for there to be footsteps behind him.
Of course not every noise was either his mind playing tricks on him or someone actually out to get him. It never had been. Just because it was the former sometimes, and had been the latter one time, it didn't mean that every time there would be something that he ought to be afraid of.
"I'm sorry. I said your name, I thought..." Anna placed a hand over her heart, then straightened her shoulders. "Your father was hoping you'd come by his office to talk to him. At your earlier convenience."
"Of course." Jules could feel it creeping up on him. Not here, he told himself, not at work, but there came a point when telling yourself didn't do you any good at all. "Fifteen minutes." That would give him enough time to get it together. He thought it would at least. Normally he would have waited for a response, smiled and thanked her for letting him know. This time it was all he could do to keep moving until he found a door he would be safe behind.
A conference room. A small one, one that nobody used unless Jules was using it for some kind of department training. Not as private as he'd like. The best he could do though; he was barely through the door before he was bracing himself against it and sinking to the floor, hands shaking no matter how tightly he clasped them together. The room spun around him until he wasn't sure which way was up. Someone had sucked all the air out of it too, until his lungs ached and he gasped for every breath that he managed to pull in. Goody crooned in the back of his mind, one of the songs that had been forgotten by the time that Jules was even born. Sometimes it was enough to bring him out of it.
Sometimes Goody got sucked right along with him until they were both stuck in memories with no way out.
Fifteen minutes and then Jules would wipe the sweat away and put on a smile. Fifteen minutes to remember how to pretend that he was alright. He couldn't do it. It was impossible... but for the sake of keeping the peace, he'd do it if it killed him.