Chapter 4: Hatred

Warren threw himself onto his bed, not bothering to turn on the lights or even take off his shoes. He was rubbing his temples, praying the Tylenol he had taken would kick in soon and get rid of the massive pounding headache that he walked away from the dinner with soon.

He couldn't quite decide what the highlight of the evening had been. It was a toss up between when the Tramp Trio had decided to see if they could order champagne and spray it all over each other like it was a bachelorette party, when Mrs. Cohen had slapped Melody across her face for slipping and spilling wine on her suit, an action both he, Jack, and Crispin had verbally, and non-verbally in Crispin's case, objected to, or when one of the waiters came in and Dr. Fontane discovered he was a landed merman and spent the rest of the evening shouting questions as he passed and kept trying to feel him up for science. Warren was pretty sure he saw Jack pass the poor merman an enormous tip as a sort of apology for Dr. Fontane's actions, he knew Brooklyn definitely increased her tip for him.

By the end of the night, Dr. Fontane wasn't the only one shouting. It started with Cohen trying to yell over him because she wanted her opinion heard over everyone elses, then Eisenhower shouting because he liked the sound of his voice, then the Tramp Trio giggling and hitting on everyone in the room including the females and the waiters. By the time the three of them had left, each one clinging onto Eisenhower's pudgy, unattractive frame, they were all so drunk they couldn't walk without assistance.

It wasn't even the yelling that had given Warren the headache he was praying would take mercy on him and abate even just a little. It was the personalities of nearly everyone there.

Eisenhower had treated the evening like a social event and didn't contribute at all to the work conversations. Every time the topic came up, he would look at the Tramp Trio and encourage whatever socially unacceptable, please keep it behind closed doors, behavior they were doing at the time. The girls themselves, who Warren might have felt sorry for, certainly didn't seem to mind being rude, loud, and trying to dance to the classic music in the air like they were in the club. Eisenhower's reaction to the announcement of a surprise inspection had been a hardy laugh, a slap to his rather rotund belly, and a cry that they were welcome to come over. He had then launched into a completely unsolicited lecture/speech about his beautiful gallery in New York that he kept his offices in and how they just had to see this amazing new painting he had by a lovely changer woman. He had even slipping the incredibly low price into the speech because he knew they would just die to have it.

Warren decided that the likelihood of that idiot being involved in anything related to Intrebari was incredibly low. He was a coward, a total buffoon, and the kind of guy who saw himself as the king of where ever he happened to be at the moment. He would never get his hands dirty, he certainly didn't have the guts needed to do anything close to spying. Added to the fact that he pretty much point blank refused to discuss work made Warren sure he was the least likely of the suspects to be guilty. He would still investigate him, of course. Just because he and the Tramp Trio were probably not guilty didn't mean that someone in his department wasn't.

Then of course the lovely Mrs. Cohen. She regarded Mr. Ozera with a great deal of respect and eyelash fluttering but she treated the other department heads like particularly annoying siblings and all the assistants, Brooklyn and Warren included, like mud and slaves. Melody, who Warren wanted to recommend report the woman to cops, spent the entire evening shaking and being terrified of the overbearing woman. He might have had some sympathy and may even have liked White who didn't seem to quiver in fear from Mrs. Cohen except that the man just let his boss beat and berate the poor abused Melody. He was polite and nice to everyone who spoke to him, but at the heart of it, Warren could tell, he was just as cold as his boss. He was only nice so long as it would further himself. He, Warren decided, could be a spy and a traitor. Melody, Warren highly doubted, was guilty of anything except stupidity for just taking the abuse Mrs. Cohen dished out.

And even though the wicked woman had Jack, Crispin, and Warren snapping at her for the way she treated the poor girl, she had only smirked as if enjoying their attempts to make her feel ashamed of herself. Warren wondered if he could get away with punching the woman in her face. He was pretty sure Jack would help him get out of any assault charges but he doubted Mr. Ozera would be all that pleased.

Besides, as a head of MCRC, Warren wouldn't be able to bring himself to actually physically harm the woman. It was a horrible downside of his species and his vaki that he had never had a problem with before tonight. Because she was of MCRC he would give his life to protect her. He wouldn't be able to stop himself, more, he wouldn't want to. Yet, somehow despite that, he could still despise her with the entirety of his being. She was a completely horrid human, despicable and repulsive, but Warren couldn't ignore his baser instincts. He seriously hoped that she was the spy just so he could take her down.

The lawyer woman had made it abundantly clear that she did not want Brooklyn anywhere near her Washington office or her person at all. When she found out that Warren had been promoted to Mr. Ozera and Brooklyn's bodyguard, she had made it clear she only thought that it had happened that way because Mr. Ozera had a soft spot for Brooklyn and had picked him for her. Since Jack had already warned him that would happen, it hadn't bothered Warren much. It, however, had been incredibly annoying when Mrs. Cohen had begun sending little verbal jabs at Brooklyn about it. Warren had considered 'accidentally' spilling his wine on her suit but he hadn't needed to because Brooklyn had jumped to her own defense. He had listened to the two women exchange weirdly passive aggressive insults at each other for the entire dinner. He was pretty sure Brooklyn won and he was also sure he was completely unbiased in that opinion.

And he couldn't possibly forget Dr. Fontane who, with his constant yelling, was one of the least annoying aspects of the night. Despite his weird obsession with mythics, because he not only practically sexually assaulted the poor merman waiter, he also quizzed Warren the entire night, he had been a rather nice guy, especially in comparison to the other dinner guests. Every other few minutes he would have a question shouted at him by Dr. Fontane who had been sitting right next to him. His eating habits, his sleeping habits, any reoccurring themes in his dreams, his vaki, his parent's vakis, strangely intimate details about puberty; there was not a single question the good doctor thought too personal to ask.

Warren had thought about removing him from the list of possible spies again just based on his personality. He had all the subtly of a brick wall and enjoyed shouting the first things that popped into his head. So Warren had almost counted him completely out.

Until the good doctor had switched his sparkling cider with white wine.

Warren should have known something was up when he had suddenly fallen silent and had taken to just watching him out of the corner of his eyes. It had been a good thing Brooklyn had started to say something to him just as he raised the glass to his lips to take a drink. He had paused, smelled the alcohol, and realized almost too late what had almost just happened.

Alcohol wasn't instantly fatal to his kind. Just a few sips would just make him violently ill though. Hard liquor could kill him almost immediately, but the wine would have just been incredibly annoying, painful, and probably require a trip to the hospital to make sure no lasting damage had been done.

Dr. Fontane had just said he had wanted to see what would happen and Brooklyn had jumped to his defense, lecturing the creepy ass doctor so hard she had actually silenced the room for a few moments. She was tiny, but she was fierce and Warren dearly loved that about her. Jack had apologized at the end of the night for Dr. Fontane's little experiment and promised to have a talk with the old man about it.

It didn't matter though because Warren had bumped him to the top of the suspect list.

There was nothing wrong with science and sometimes experimentation was the only way to find something out for sure. But Warren had definitely not volunteered for that experiment and that was the crux of the problem. So since the doctor had proved himself able to perform experiments on unwilling participants, Warren decided he could definitely be part of Intrebari who did the same thing just on a much larger, much more grim, scale.

In fact, the only bright point of his evening was that he had spent it in Brooklyn's company.

He smiled into the darkness of his bedroom as he thought about her.

Watching her fight for him in between fighting for herself, the way she carried herself with dignity no matter the insult Mrs. Cohen threw at her, how she had walked away from the hectic evening without a hair out of place; it had truly been a pleasure to watch.

He was going to be working with her starting tomorrow, that in and of itself was exciting and a bit unnerving.

All through the dinner he had had to remind himself to stop watching her out of the corner of his eye, to stop imagining her out of the beautiful dress and laying in his bed, to absolutely not say something sappy and embarrassing.

What was it about her, he wondered, that affected him so?

He remembered Ilia, the lovely fairy. She had a very strong glamor, able to dazzle him with a smile. He had been unable to not desire her. She was a fairy, it was just part of her mythic species no different than his inability to 'accidentally' pour hot soup in Mrs. Cohen's lap and hope it burned.

However, what he felt when he looked at Brooklyn, that was different.

She seemed to stabilize his universe, everything just seemed right when she was around. He knew he wouldn't have made it through that awful dinner without her at his side, he could only imagine how great his life could be in general to have her in it. He felt lost without her stunning brown eyes, he was cold even now from missing the warmth of her body just sitting next to his.

And her mind? Oh, her mind...

It wasn't just the fact that she had a photographic memory, though that was amazing in and of itself. She was also smart. She didn't flinch from a challenge and her quick wit had kept her going head to head with the dreaded Mrs. Cohen all night long. He was looking forward to seeing how she faced the next battle when they went to her offices and began their search.

It wasn't even just desire, though there was plenty of that. The dress she had worn wasn't revealing at all, it wouldn't have been out of place in a church service. Yet, somehow, he couldn't stop himself from picturing all the creative ways he could take it off of her. She wasn't a sexual creature like Ilia had been, but that didn't mean she wasn't attractive to him in the most basic of ways.

But alongside that desire, there was just this almost overwhelming urge to care for her, to look over her, to never leave her side. Watching her walk back to her car after the maitre d' waived them out, the poor man looking on the verge of tears from their less than civil gathering, had been a torture to him. He hadn't wanted to let her go.

And that was an enormous problem.

The smile that had broken out over Warren's face faded.

She was distracting him again, he wanted nothing more than to abandon MCRC for her, he could feel a pull in his heart, in his soul, trying to shift his focus from the organization to her but Warren fought it.

He had a job to do. He had to find the traitor in MCRC, a traitor he very well might have met tonight. He couldn't afford to lose focus. The last time he had lost focus...

He had failed.

Warren sighed as the headache finally let go of its death grip on his mind but a new pain, a terrible sinking feeling, started in his chest.

Warren was a failure as a guardian. He had had only one job and he hadn't been able to do that properly.

Brooklyn's presence, a presence he dearly want to remain there forevermore, had distracted him from his job he was sure. She had done nothing wrong, just been her same old amazing self. Yet that was enough to distract him.

He couldn't be distracted.

If he failed again...

He couldn't fail.

Haltija's had their own histories. They had been guarding humans and many things on their planet for as long as their had been haltija's. A haltija who failed, who truly failed, couldn't live.

Not to say the punishment for failure was death. It was just that a haltija's vaki was so powerful, so deeply ingrained in themselves, that losing the focus of that vaki would drive a haltija to madness, to suicide. There were so many stories of it happening, Warren had lost track of them all and couldn't even separate which ones were true and which were just exaggeration.

Not that it mattered. Failure, for a haltija, meant death. It was that simple. No other haltija would even try to stop one from killing themselves. It was just better to die than to live with that failure, the break it created in your very being.

Josh's death had created a crack in him, Warren knew. He wasn't the first MCRC agent to lose their life, but he was the first Warren had ever lost that was directly in his care. The poor man's death wasn't enough to drive him to insanity, but it was enough to create a hallow space in his chest.

Warren hadn't lost MCRC, he hadn't lost the organization that was the true source of his vaki, but he had lost a piece that had been under his care.

And the pain of it, the horror of his own failings, was enough to drive even Brooklyn from his mind. Who was he to think of staying by Brooklyn forever, of letting himself forget MCRC for her, when he was so inadequate?

Warren groaned and jumped from his bed as the wicked, self hating thoughts filled his head again.

Failure.

Worthless.

Nothing.

Useless wretch.

Crying out in self agony he ran into his garage and stopped right in front of his punching bag and began beating his frustration out onto the athletic equipment, still in his khaki pants and polo shirt. Every single insult that passed through his mind accented by a punch into the bag.

He couldn't stop thinking, he couldn't stop hating.

Josh's dead body filled his head. He had never touched a body so cold before. Every part of him had known that it was wrong. And it had been his fault.

So he punched the bag, trying to keep hold of his mind, trying to work out all of those self hating images and words and trying to find some way to stop the crack in his soul from spreading.

He didn't feel the tears running down his own face.

XXXXXXXXXX

“That could have gone better.” Jack said to Crispin as they walked through the front door of his house.

Though not particularly rich, Jack did all right and the place he called home sat in the middle of the three acres of land his grandfather had worked and bled for. The three story house was old, but beautiful and well maintained. The decoration was spartan and clearly masculine. There were a few candles here and there but those were the work of his housekeeper. The woman who cleaned and maintained his home left them there to make the otherwise stark house a little brighter. There weren't a lot in the way of pictures on the walls either, but there were a few here and there of a rather strong looking woman with straight black hair, a few of those with Jack in the frame.

His wonderful daughter, his precious Tina. She alone meant as much to him as MCRC did. It was too bad he hadn't seen her in over a year now.

“Could have been worse.” Crispin signed with a smile making Jack shake his head.

The siren was right. It had been worse before. All in all, the evening hadn't been all that bad. They hadn't even been banned from ever returning to Memoire. There were at least five places that refused to host any dinner of the MCRC heads.

“It's not like we didn't expect it.” he agreed leading the way to his home office. Not like Crispin needed to be led around. There had been nights Jack had worked the guy so hard he had needed to sleep in the guest room for the night. To Jack's eternal happiness, Crispin never once complained about what Jack put him through. He was the perfect assistant. “Ozera is going to have our department searched first, then Lester's just because we're the closest.”

“Warren will be doing most of the searching.” Crispin signed as they walked into his study. Jack was really good at being able to read his sign language and work at the same time. It was a skill Crispin admired as there was no shortage of those who had to spend a few minutes trying to figure out even the most simple of messages. “Are you sure he'll be...okay for this?”

“He'll be fine.” Jack sat at his desk, grabbing some ibuprofen from the top drawer. He never didn't have a headache after one of their dinners. “Josh was a traitor to MCRC. That will be enough to keep Warren from going too close to the edge. And putting him back to work will give him something else to focus on.”

“It seemed to me that he was focusing a lot on Brooklyn.” Crispin pointed out. Being unable to join in most conversations had made him extremely observant about the people in them. It was amazing the details you could pick up when you weren't focusing on talking.

“I noticed that.” Jack nodded. “As long as it doesn't affect his work, I don't care. Besides, maybe she can help him with what he's going through.”

Crispin nodded in agreement. Jack wouldn't have given Warren that week off if he hadn't felt the haltija truly needed it. Jack was harsh, but he was fair and understanding. The qualities, Crispin smiled to himself, of a great leader.

“Anyway, I need you to contact Ilia.” Jack said. “Tell her to boot up her computer and get me everything she has on all the heads and all of their assistants. And when she lies and says she doesn't have her computer remind her that I know damn well she never leaves her house without her computer and the sooner she gets me what I want the sooner she can go back to the vacation I'm being gracious enough to let her have.”

Crispin's chest shook with silent laughter. “She won't be happy to hear it.”

“I don't care.” Jack took the pills without water and wondered, not for the first time, why he was surrounded by so many frustrating women. Tina who barely spoke to him, Ilia who drove him half mad with irritation, and Brooklyn who acted like his mother and damn if she didn't carry herself with the very same no-nonsense air his own mother had.

“Joe text me while we were at dinner.” Crispin told him. “She said she sent you her latest report on their last attempt to bring up the base from the ocean floor and to hurry up and read it because she now has an underwater base that is no longer underwater and she wants to know what you want done with it.”