He's caught inside the most overwhelming, nauseating sense of déjà vu he's ever experienced as he finds himself looking up from his desk the same way he remembers having done five years ago, only the difference is now he's the omniscient viewer, holding on to his own thoughts even as he's aware of everything Babá thinks, feels, and knows. Only through tremendous self-effort does he manage to remain in place, screwing his face into the same disinterested mask he knows the scene requires of him and barely turning to glance over his shoulder as O'Hara and Powell part like the Red Sea and let Babá through.
He's incredibly good-looking, Alastair thinks, and then it hits him that he's not the only one thinking this, which nearly serves to knock him off his mark for the second time. He catches a glimpse of himself in a small mirrored plaque by the door and is startled briefly by the unfamiliarity of his own face -- because the man who looks back at him is good-looking, or at least more so than Alastair is in real life: jaw strong, hair neatly styled, wearing in a sweater vest that looks sharp and not frumpy, coming off as nothing of the mythic monster his superiors have scared Babá into expecting and everything of the master of his craft at home in his own ruled domain, a sort of shorter, psychic-er James Bond--
Alastair does a quick check to make sure that his own subconscious (or hell, he should own it, conscious) desire isn't influencing the scenario before him, but no, everything about that memory authenticates as having been generated wholly by Babá's brain. He doesn't have time to linger on the consequences of this, though, because he has to push back from his desk and stand to greet his guests. Good afternoon, gentlemen, he says -- or he tries to say, at least, but Babá's only been studying English for the past two years and he's never heard someone speak it with a German accent before, so there's a delay between what comes out of his mouth and the moment it starts making sense. Alastair doesn't know this at the time, though, so he continues undaunted: This must be the new partner I've been told to expect.
Alastair, says Captain O'Hara (who's known Alastair since he was twelve and this is one of the few people in the Agency who feels he's merited first-name privileges), I'd like you to meet Sebastião dos Anjos. This is his first day in the main offices, so we've been showing him around a bit, but if you could complete the tour, that'd be most kind of you.
Babá barely -- just barely -- remembers not to extend his hand; instead, he gives an awkward sort of half-nod, half-bow, keeping his hands in his pants pockets so his freezing fingertips warm against his hot palms. It is very nice to meet you, he says to Alastair, because it's the simplest, politest thing he can come up with on short notice. He shifts inside his ill-fitting suit, wishing that he'd taken the Assistant Director at his word when he'd said, there's no dress code here, as long as you can do your job in it, you can wear anything you want. But he wants to make a good impression so much, and now he's scared that in seven words and an awkward gesture, he's ruined his chance.
But Alastair sizes him up in an instant, and though he doesn't smile, he nods. Please, he says, stepping back from the door and indicating the side of the room vacated not two weeks previous by the last rookie they tried to throw at him, come in and get settled; I can show you where to put your things.
I have no things, says Babá, who immediately feels stupid for having said it, and amends, but when I get things I will need them somewhere to put, so yes, thank you, please.
O'Hara and Powell share a smile over Babá's head, a completely unprofessional look of isn't he just precious? and Alastair might feel more offended by that (on Babá's behalf, of course) if they weren't so correct. He is precious, small and bright and eager to please and apparently egoless, and when he walks over to his desk he gives the impression that his feet might not be making full contact with the floor. He looks it over, slightly overwhelmed -- he's never had a desk before, and he isn't entirely certain what to do with one now that he has it, but he's not going to make a further fool of himself by asking -- then gives it a nod to look like it meets his standards and turns back to his supervisors with a smile.
Powell, always something of a soft touch down to his unbridled optimism in assigning Alastair yet another no-doubt-temporary partner, claps his hands together and grins. Well, then, we'll leave you both to get acquainted, he says, and he and O'Hara disappear, shutting the door behind them.
Alastair knows this dance well by now: the supervisors leave him with his new partner; his new partner starts a conversation to be friendly despite lingering discomfort from everything everyone else in the Agency has said about the peculiarities of its most talented cleaner; Alastair responds badly or misinterprets a friendly gesture or lets his obsessive tendencies show through too soon; the new partner's discomfort gets worse; and no more than six months later, the new partner has found a different assignment. By this point, he's come to accept it as inevitable, and he turns to his newest new partner, determined as ever not to get attached.
When he gets there, though, Babá is smiling and actually sitting on his desk, letting his little feet kick in the air. He's not looking at Alastair; he's looking at Alastair's exceptionally neat workspace, and the bookshelves above where Alastair has placed some of the souvenirs he's acquired from past assignments. Alastair knows all the stories behind how he acquired the objects, of course, but to Babá they're completely new, and his imagination takes off until he's picturing Alastair doing all sorts of heroic things while acquiring them: solving cases, helping the helpless, rescuing the perishing, and basically just plain saving the day. Babá looks at the little blue-and-white porcelain bowl, the tiny watercolour of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, the wooden figure of a peasant fisherman and his basket of jade fish on his back, the hand-sized brass statue of a lion-maned dog, the tiny monkey carved from a peach pit, the obsidian knife with the deer-bone handle -- and thinks, in a moment of perfect clarity: you're not the monster they've made you out to be at all.
So, Alastair clears his throat, and Babá looks back to him with an earnest open smile, would you like me to show you more around the office?
Yes, very much, please, says Babá, and he hops off the desk, landing lightly on the floor; of all the powers he's learned to harness during his training, levitation is definitely, definitely the best. Alastair pulls the door open with a mental tug and--
~*~
The sudden change of venue startled him enough that he stumbled forward, and when he put out his hand to catch himself, it came to rest on the same cold white walls as he'd seen before. A quick glance around, however, revealed that he was indeed somewhere different; the hallway was shorter now, and slightly rounded, with doors only on one side. He'd made it through.
As modes of transport went, though, it was far from easy. The cognitive dissonance of having two consciousnesses active at once was alone enough to give him the mental projection equivalent of a headache, and what happened if he hit a dead end? After all, they'd only been partners for a fifth of Babá's life, which meant there'd no doubt be far more memories withoutAlastair than with. Besides, this method of travel had no way of controlling its destination; he was at the mercy of Babá's connections, and there was no telling what the organizational system was or how much the weapon had corrupted it.
It was perhaps a commentary on how dire the predicament had become that the knowledge that Babá might be as attracted to Alastair as much and as long as Alastair to him, something that under any other circumstances would have been earth-shattering for Alastair, didn't even place in the top ten of his considerations at the moment.
No, he needed to focus on what he could do, and that was to keep pushing forward. There were only four doors here, excluding the one he'd just passed through, and a quick glance through each revealed four scenes: Babá, very young, kneeling on the floor next to a woman about to give birth; a giant street carnival, full of lights and music; a tiny room with two women Alastair recognized as Agency scouts, giving Babá what was probably his first lesson in psychic ability; and the inside of a crowded cocktail party Alastair recognized from one of the first missions they'd gone on together. At the periphery of the scene, he saw himself at a far table, and took the opportunity to slip inside.
~*~
The Target has her fingers tucked inside the crook of Babá's arm, and they've been talking for the past half hour so intimately that everyone else could probably get up and leave, and the Target, at least, would never notice.
Babá would, though, because he's kept a low-level connection open with Alastair all evening: nothing fancy or invasive, just two people holding the ends of a string taut, each ready to act the second the other side goes slack. Before stepping into the room that evening, he'd worried for hours about how badly he might stick out, with his rural upbringing and general lack of refined social graces; by now, he's realized that those actually make him more charming to the right people, provided they've had enough of High Society to become bored with it. He tells the Target it's the first time he's ever worn a tuxedo, because it's true, and she laughs and air-kisses his cheek in a way that shows affection but doesn't mess up her lipstick. Her father's company did business in Brazil when she was a child, so she tries out her rudimentary Portuguese on him, and he gushes overmuch about how good her few phrases sound. Babá almost feels bad about having to do this to her.
Alastair, however, does not. Even if he were inclined to sentimentality about his job, which he isn't, they've got good reason: she's got information stored in her head that she doesn't know she has, knowledge of an event that could destroy her older brother's business if it gets out, her father's murder witnessed but suppressed years ago. At least, that's what her younger brother thinks, and why he's contracted with the Agency to find out if it's there, and, if so, to clean away the blockage. If it turns out to be true, she stands a chance of spilling a secret that will take down a company connected to sweatshop labour and oppressive governments.
Her older brother, in Alastair's opinion, is a bit of a bastard.
They've chosen the cocktail party as their way in for a variety of reasons, most prominent being that the Target's older brother keeps close tabs on her at all times -- yet while he would no doubt raise the alarm at any unexpected guests that came her way, who could object to her being won over by a charming new acquaintance at a friend's reception? Alastair doesn't even enter into the picture: his unique ability to dive remotely means he can stay comfortably at his chair in the corner all evening, evaporating his martini at a reasonable pace. Only Babá has to get close enough to her to touch, and he's had no problem doing that.
In fact, he likes her a lot, and loves the semi-drunken way she wants to get her hands all over him as much their circumstances will allow. He loves being touched, pet, kissed, caressed, stroked, hugged -- and even though he knows this evening won't end in sex for a multitude of reasons, that knowledge doesn't bother him. After all, his evenings out rarely end in actual clothes-off-fluids-spilt sex, and he definitely dodges one-night stands, even ones as pretty as she is. He likes her, but he doesn't love her, and thus he won't shed any tears over giving his regrets outside the door to her room and never stepping foot inside.
(Somewhere, in the part of Alastair's mind not occupied with playing the memory out to the other side, this information set a number of interesting trains of thought off from their stations, but he'd have to finish this first; he could have time later to consider their destinations.)
Before they can get to that good-night kiss, though, there's a job to be done. He offers to freshen her drink and takes both their glasses back to the bar; Babá's had a number of mojitos through the evening, though he's sent nearly every drop of them into the base of the potted plant beside their chairs, and he hopes that ficus likes mint. As he stands there, waiting on the bartender (a handsome older gentleman with a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard, and the way he grins at Babá lets Babá know he'd like to do things to Babá that Babá very much likes to think about letting him do), he tugs on the string between them and asks Alastair, in sensations as much as words, are you ready?
On your count, Alastair nods, and he can't hold back a smile as the corner of Babá's mouth quirks into a grin. Are you ready?
I think so. Babá glances back over to where the Target is sitting, playing with the hem of her dress and looking pleasantly tipsy. You're going to be with me the entire time, right?
I've got your back, Alastair thinks, and when this surprises Babá enough that he actually turns to give Alastair a look of surprise, Alastair chuckles into his drink. Time to step up. You lead and I'll follow.
Excitement hums down the connection between them; Babá's apprehension over the particulars of their mission has been overwritten by the thrill of actually doing it, and the idea that Alastair is going to let him take point makes him so giddy he has to concentrate on not floating off the ground and blowing their cover right then and there. He takes the drinks and goes to sit back down next to the Target, taking her hand with one of his and letting the other rest on his knee.
Agency rules mandate all non-consentual dives into unfamiliar minds be done in tandem, which is why the Agency insists that Alastair have a partner, regardless of whether or not that partner likes him. Three days ago, however, Alastair came into the office to find a single, unopened, plastic-wrapped cupcake sitting on his desk and all his paperclips rearranged into the wordshappy first aniversery! (he would go to his grave without pointing out that misspelling), a milestone he never thought he'd hit, and as he watches Babá extend three fingers across his knee, then slowly retract one, he wonders what the hell is so magical about Babá that he keeps making the impossible possible.
Babá retracts a second finger, counting down, and he smiles sweetly at the Target. I want to show you a trick, he says, can you close your eyes? Her lids shut with trusting anticipation, and Babá curls his hand into a fist as he tugs on the line between them, then dives forward, Alastair barely a thought's length behind him, on their way in--
~*~
This time, what waited on the other side of the memory was not a hall, but a room, a circular space with three doors, one of which he'd just tumbled through. He didn't know if having his options narrowed was a good or a bad sign, but he decided to lean toward optimism. Now he'd only have to check out two memories before finding out how to proceed.
Yet try as he might, he couldn't seem to push himself forward without coming to terms with a piece of information that was becoming unavoidable. Babá had lovers, Alastair knew, or at least he'd thought he knew; Alastair had watched him flirt and laugh and kiss with countless numbers of attractive people of all types, and had always just assumed that whenever he excused himself and retired for the evening, what happened next would be ... whatever happened next. Even though Alastair's particular difficulties had kept him from nearly all human physical contact for the past thirty years of his life, he understood the theoretical parameters of sex, and at least assumed that Babá was one of the people in the world who had it as much and as often as he wanted. And why wouldn't he? He was charming, funny, and amazingly attractive, and Alastair had seen the way even the most unlikely people got that hungry look in their eyes around him.
But he'd seen the great psychedelic disco on the top level of Babá's brain, and it occurred to him that they'd all just been ... dancing. Madalena hadn't played to type (but what could you expect from a self-aware projection?) and he didn't know what to make of the men in the bathroom, but with those exceptions, everyone had just been moving to the music amongst the great human crowd, touching and pressing and moving away again. It had been sexual, certainly, but it had been just as much about contact and not being alone.
...He couldn't think about that now; he shouldn't even have seen that, any of that, and to use it past the mission would be the worst invasion of privacy Alastair could imagine. He resolved to forget everything he'd seen as soon as they surfaced again. Babá's private life was his own, and if it pained Alastair that he'd never be a part of it, well, that was because of Alastair's problems, not Babá's, and he'd lived long enough with his gloves and his phobias and his solitude to know that there wasn't anything that could change him now. Wishing it were otherwise was a waste of time.
He stood where he could see both doors and tugged them open. The doorway on his left showed a midafternoon parade at the Carnevale di Venezia, and he recognized the mask he'd worn on that mission, when they'd chased an assassin through the crowd and caught him before he could reach his target, an act of cunning that had won them (secret, of course) commendations from the prime ministers of five different countries. The doorway on his right revealed a night scene, the mostly-deserted street outside a thirty-story Melbourne office building where they'd once been sent on an information-gathering mission that had failed badly and nearly cost Alastair his life.
Of all the things Alastair had expected, a choice hadn't been among them.
The Carvenale had been a triumph, no question, and Alastair couldn't deny that would be his preference for re-living: racing through the streets in full plague doctor costume, keeping constant mental contact with Babá, outwitting one of the most cunning men in the world before innocent lives were lost. Honestly, there were times he wished every mission could be as challenging and exciting as that.
But whatever was happening inside Babá's mind, it was bad, and he wasn't going to get there following a trail of happy breadcrumbs. With a heavy heart, he pushed the left door closed and stood before the right. Alastair didn't see himself in the still frame before him, but he remembered the location well, and could feel the misery of the experience vibrating from well beyond the threshold. Before he could think better of it, he threw himself without hesitation through the door.
~*~
He's falling, plunging straight toward the ground, his head throbbing from a giant bleeding gash across his forehead, unable to stop thinking about the pain long enough to think about anything else, and it's only as he passes the twentieth story on his way to the nineteenth that he remembers exactly why he hates remembering Australia.
At the same time, however, he's aware of the ground beneath him -- and not just of how fast it's coming toward him, but what the world looks like at that level, and what it feels like to receive the sudden slap of a deep, visceral sense of catastrope. Babá turns, a wash of horror sweeping over him as he first sees the falling man, then recognizes the flailing limbs of his partner. Agent Szilágyi, the mission commander, wants them all to maintain psychic radio silence, keeping their shields up in case enemy operatives were listening, and thus all Babá knows is that Alastair went up to the top floor and now seems to have been tossed off it, and that if he doesn't do something, this will all end very badly.
Babá's easily a hundred meters distant, well outside expected TK range even for small objects, much less large ones, much less large moving ones that are approacing very terminal velocity with only eight floors left to go. Fifty meters is the farthest seperation at which the Agency tests for ability, and even then they expect fully 93% of potential agents to fail at that distance; Babá was part of the minority that passed, and that had involved nothing more than pushing an empty cardboard box half a meter to the left. He'll do the math later and write the awareness of the impossibility back on top of the memory, because he doesn't think about it as it's happening; he has no time.
It's a one-in-a-million shot, which of course means that not only does Babá pull it off, he does so with style. Alastair doesn't stop with a jerk so much as with a pillow, his descent slowing over the last five flights of his fall until he comes to a complete halt two feet from the ground. He struggles a little against the catch, still not quite able to believe he isn't dead, then pivots himself forward until his feet touch the ground and he stands on his own shaky legs.
Niemand! someone shouts, and it's Szilágyi; his ridiculous combat boots thunder against the ground as he races over, followed close on his heels by his own partner, an agent by the name of Mumtaz who has the distinction of beng the only active agent Alastair has ever met who's actually smaller than Babá is. What the hell happened? Szilágyi frowns at the cut on his head, then nods to Mumtaz, the team's most trained medic.
Alastair nudges her delicate hand away gently before she can examine his head, even though the blood has started to trickle into the corner of his eye and sting. There's a dozen of them on the top level, he says, glancing up toward the balcony from whence he'd been thrown. They must have known we were coming.
Mumtaz starts to say something, but Alastair isn't paying attention to either of the agents by him, or the fall that nearly killed him, or even his own aching head. What he sees is Babá, who in this memory sees him too, and he's hit with such a wave of pure, undiluted relief that he almost can't believe it's not his own. Babá is racing toward him, speeding his feet along as fast as his powers will allow, fighting back tears as the adrenaline gives way to the cold knotty terror that Alastair might have died. He nearly has to use his telekinetic abilities a second time to stophimself from doing what he wants to more than anything in the world, which is flinging his arms around Alastair, burying his face in Alastair's neck, clinging to the dark wool of his jacket, begging him: hold me, please, don't let me go, don't leave me.
He wants to so bad it nearly kills him, but instead, he digs his feet into the ground so they're just out of arm's reach of one another. Are you okay? he asks keeping his hands balled into fists by his sides, so tight they hurt; it's a trick he's learned from Alastair.
Back to the safehouse, Szilágyi orders, scratching at his bushy moustache; he taps his forehead and sends brief come back pulses to the other four agents in the building. We need to think this through, and you, he looks at Alastair, need to get that looked at.
I'll be fine, Alastair protests, but he knows better than to argue with a mission leader. The pain in his head has caught up with him, and he's glad that the blood gives his eyes an excuse to water.
Babá clears his throat. Here, he says, and he produces a handkerchief from his back pocket, floating it the last few feet beween them; he knows it's clean, but doubts it's up to Alastair's standards of clean, and thus promises himself not to be offended if Alastair doesn't take it.
But Alastair does, plucking it from the air and pressing it to his forehead. Thanks, he says, and then adds, nice catch, Sebastião.
You fall, I catch! chirps Babá, spreading a grin across his face so wide it hurts, so forced it doesn't reach his eyes. The others have started on ahead, and Alastair turns to follow, indicating that Babá should follow -- but Babá's shaking so bad he can't move, and he's afraid he might throw up if he tries. There, on the street in the dead of night, he watches, helpless and mute, as Alastair walks away. Babá reaches out a hand as though to place it on Alastair's shoulder, but the distance is too great already, and will always be too great, and as he resigns himself to feeling like this forever, Alastair steps into the car--
~*~
He came out the door into a long hallway, so long that he had to squint through his glasses to make out the single door on the far end. Something was more than distance was obscuring his vision, though; he took a deep breath, trying to center himself, and wound up coughing out smoke. The white plaster walls here were stained grey, damaged too long to have any hope of ever regaining their original state. The black clouds that billowed out from beneath the far door must have been the source, then, not only of the damage here, but of the burning smell that seemed to have permeated every part of Babá's psyche.
He took off at a run toward it, ignoring the way it burned his lungs, not even stopping long enough to remind himself that it wasn't real -- because it was real, at least for Babá. Alastair considered for a moment that the weapon may have infected the memory, but when he got close enough to the door, he could see that the heavy mahogany slab was already swinging loose on busted hinges, and what looked like more than a dozen heavy padlocks and chains lay busted on the ground. Whatever lay behind this door had become a monster on its own long before today; the weapon had just let it out.
Alastair placed his fingers close to the splintered door frame and felt a crack that shocked his hand numb, and knew exactly what kind of memory was inside.
Psychic potential was a rare enough trait in individuals, and the Agency estimated that maybe a tenth of those with it would see full psychic powers activated in their lifetimes. The reason was simple: they had to be triggered. Trigger memories differed from psychic to psychic, but what unified them is that they were invariably traumatic. Some had happy endings, of course -- he'd known one clerk at the Agency, a low-potential matronly woman from Cardiff, who'd mentioned in passing how she'd had her powers kick in as she'd kept her two-year-old son from being mauled by a feral dog pack -- but by and large, individual psychics found their powers activated only in the face of agonizing loss and horror. Such was why not even the Agency's most talented researchers had ever put forth a plan to actualize psychic potential: after all, who would volunteer for such a thing, who would be the one to construct a traumatic situation severe enough, and, worst of all, what would happen if it didn't work the first time?
Alastair's mother had called his own triggering event 'The Accident', even though there had been nothing accidental about it. He'd been ten years old, sitting outside with his class at recess, when a girl named Moira Baum had kissed him, without warning, on the mouth. He'd been so stunned he'd done nothing, and after she'd run off giggling -- not with malice, but with delight, her first foray into the world of romance an apparent success -- he'd gotten up with all the calm of pure shock and indicated to the teacher that he was going to the toilet. He'd stopped at the janitor's closet between the bathrooms, though, and had found the bottle of bleach on the first shelf, the same brand his mother used for scouring his room when he couldn't sleep for fear of contamination; he'd poured it over his mouth, then inside his mouth, then swallowed whole mouthfuls of it in a desperate attempt to make himself clean again. He didn't remember much about what came next, only the violent shocks through his body, first from his stomach and then from his brain, and the sound it made when every piece of glass in the school shattered in unison. It had also been the first and the last time someone had kissed him.
Whatever had been locked behind the door, that was Babá's trigger, and Alastair understood for the first time the 'unable to administer' note on Babá's potential report. However, this made things difficult: Alastair hadn't met Babá until a full two years after his abilities had awakened, which meant that his usual technique of riding his own projection through Babá's memories was no longer useful. He'd have to think of something different.
The door, of its own volition, swung off its hinges and fell to the ground with a clatter, and Alastair felt a blast of heat hit his face. He saw a city street, cobbled and lined with houses, and in the distance a great pillar of black smoke belched into the air.
There wasn't time to consider any more than this. He didn't know how long he could hold up the deception, but he hoped -- prayed, even -- it would be enough to get him out the other side. He put his fingers close to the frame again, concentrating not on the scene, but on Babá himself, trying to get the rhythm of his feelings and emotions enough that he might pass unnoticed just long enough. He reached for that familiar mind, looking for his partner, and pulled himself through.
~*~
It's burning, it's all burning, and he should be burning with it, and he's not, and he's going to go to Hell for it.
Someone shouts, the seminary is on fire! and he sprints out of the club without a moment's hesitation, locked in the grip of the purest panic he's ever known. He's gone out to dance, snuck out even though it's against the rules, because that's all he does -- he dances, and he talks, and he laughs, and he feels alive. He's accepted that his family has sent him to the seminary to become a priest and tame his wild ways (even though they don't harm anyone and actually help many, but they only shake their heads when he tries to say so), and he's actually looking forward to becoming a priest and doing God's work, but priests don't dance, they barely touch, and so he slips out every so often instead of keeping the night vigil, not because he wants to sin, but so he can remember what it is not to be alone.
His sandaled feet hit hard against the ground, and the sharp rocks cut through the thin soles to his flesh, but he can't think about that pain; he's running so hard he can barely breathe, and he gasps for air, wheezing as his lungs start to take in the far edge of the smoke. As he gets closer, he sees a crowd has started to gather, mostly people from nearby houses, people he knows, parisoners he's seen at mass and just walking around the town. What he doesn't see, though, is anyone from the seminary.
The town has a fire brigade with one rickety engine, a hand-me-down from one of the bigger cities, and the firemen are bustling around it, trying to make its ancient mechanisms work. He tries to sprint past them, and one of them, a big man about his father's age, grabs him in his arms and lifts him effortlessly off the ground. You can't go in there! he shouts, as though any prohibition against running a burning building should be obvious.
They're my friends! Babá shouts, kicking and flailing, for all the good it does; being held by this man is not unlike being caught in a tree. I've got to get them out!
What, are you crazy? The firefighter shoves Babá backward, toward the crowd that has gathered to watch and fret, keeping a safe distance from the fire. The building is small, and every window pours forth smoke and flame; the chapel is still only half-scorched, while the dormitory burns so high that it must be the source of the fire. No doubt its first flicker was from a little thing, some votive burned down into the wood beneath, some taper left too close to a curtain, maybe even a lantern knocked over during some priest's late-night check of the quiet halls.
Maybe they've all gone out the back, he thinks, and he races away from the fire engine, around the side of the dormitory, hoping that he's right, that the shortest exits turn out to be to the grounds away from the main road, that everyone is huddled there but fine. He has to believe it's true because the other options are unthinkable, and he keeps believing it right up to the point where he rounds the corner and sees nothing there but fire. He looks up, scanning the windows for anything that isn't the orange monster -- and his heart falls into his stomach as he seees movement in the window of his own room, the coughing, soot-covered face of his roommate, Rafael.
(He was also feeling the beginnings of electric crackling along his bones, something Alastair could recognize, but that Babá could not have understood at the time: a current, conducted by adrenaline, feeling the urgency and starting to respond.)
Fael! he screams, and the nickname strips his soot-scorched throat raw. He waves his hands, trying to get Rafael's attention, but the fire roars like the ocean, and no matter how loud he screams, he can't make himself heard. Fael! Babá can see him so clearly there, slumped against the wooden window frame three flights up as thick black smoke pours out from behind him. They're brothers from different mothers, everyone teases them, and Babá, one of eight children, gladly admits that Fael looks more like him than any of his blood siblings do. Babá loves him, too, in a way he wants to believe is pure and chaste, though some nights he dreams of slipping into Fael's bed and kissing all his laughter from his mouth, and though he'd never say anything about his unrealized plans, he believes deep down that Fael would kiss back. And now he's dying, and Babá can't even make himself heard to say anything.
There's a crack, a great crashing sound as half the dormitory roof gives way, and Fael disappears from the window, slipping out of sight, and that's it -- Babá makes a run for the building, ignoring the shouts from the approaching firemen. The entrances to the living quarters are all engulfed in flames, but there's still another way. Head down, arms up to block his face, he plows through the chapel's side door, headed straight for the heart of the fire.
It's either God's providence or God's punishment, and for the rest of his life he'll never be certain which, but the moment he steps inside the stone chapel, the dormitory collapses.
He knows -- he knows -- that it's only the sound of exhausted timber, grinding against itself all the way down, unable to bear its own weight anymore, much less the weight of the seventeen lives inside it. Knowing, however, doesn't matter; he'll wake up for years afterward remembering the sound as their dying shouts, crying mercy from anything and receiving none from anywhere. Sometimes he remembers joining them, shouting himself hoarse as he watches the fall through the chapel's heat-broken windows. He staggers back against the altar, grabbing its stone top, shaking so hard he can no longer stand on his own -- and something inside him gives way as easily as burnt wood. He feels a second collapse, but this one comes from inside him, and the shock wave radiates out from his body in a hurricane-like gale, ripping out of him with a pain he still remembers in excruciating detail. He falls to the ground himself, convulsing in agony and terror and helplessness.
It feels like a hundred years pass before his body remembers to breathe again, and when he gasps in his first lungful of air, the half-conscious rational portion of his brain is surprised at how clean it is. It's only then that he notices: fire is gone.
They'll call it a miracle, he's certain, but he doesn't stay around long enough to hear. Instead, he turns and runs. His memory of his exit is hazy; maybe he pushes aside the stone structure himself, or maybe he just slips through gaps already inflicted on the masonry, but he escapes out the side of the chapel closest to the seminary's orchard. Unseen by anyone (except maybe God, if He's still watching), Babá sprints as fast and as far as he can go, not knowing where he's headed, but knowing too well what he's leaving behind.
Memory begins to fragment and fade here, losing the coherent thread of the narrative in an adrenaline-fueled set of moments that all bleed one into the other. There's a dim retrospective awareness that he'll eventually collapse with exhaustion, be found by a sugar-cane merchant with his donkey cart, and beg a ride to the nearest anything that isn't in the direction from whence he's come. But that future seems distant enough to be impossible, and the present reality is overwhelming -- his fear, his physical pain, his stomach-sick guilt over his disobedience and the disaster which followed in its wake. No matter how fast he runs, that will never let him escape.
~*~
Alastair stumbled forward as though thrown from a moving object, gasping for air; he coughed, and felt smoke grit against his lungs and throat, so present and disgusting that he felt inclined to vomit, and stopped himself only by reminding himself quite firmly that this was not real, any of it, and vomiting would be at best a symbolic act, and thus totally unnecessary. His projected body conceded he had a point, but was reluctant about it.
When he could look up, Alastair saw a burning chapel that was now very familiar to him, as he'd seen it only moments before through Babá's eyes. The chapel in Babá's memory had been damaged by fire in ways consistent with an actual fire's progression, showing damage only where it touched the dormitory that had most likely been the source of the blaze; this one burned on all four sides, scorching but not consuming, a prison made of fire. Alastair turned behind him, but there was no door through which he could retrace his steps, only a wall of flame preventing any retreat.
That didn't matter, though, because even if he could have gone back, he wouldn't have wanted to: he'd found his destination.
At the other end of the small chapel stood an altar, dark wood with a white stone piece on top, and at the foot of the altar lay Babá. He was naked, and Alastair feared for a moment that he might be dead, except for how he was clutching himself tighter than even death would allow. He looked so small there, a wounded bird flown into a glass window and collapsed, stunned because it never saw the damage coming. Alastair stepped forward. "Sebastião," he said, and his voice bounced off the high ceilings, "I'm here to bring you home with me."
If anything, the little body in front of the altar grew smaller, tucking into itself, and Babá shook his head. Alastair took another step forward down the space between the pews, then another, careful of what traps he might spook on the way here. This place, though, gave off no impression of being external; in fact, for all his travels down through the man's psyche, Alastair didn't think he'd seen another place so purely Babá, so untouched by the weapon's influence, and that broke his heart. So that was what the weapon did -- it drove your inner self down inside its own fears, locking that away so it could wreak havoc unchecked everywhere else. It was brilliant, really, and Alastair wanted to kill anyone who'd had any part in making it.
"Sebastião," he repeated, this time a little louder, and it worked -- Babá didn't look up, but he turned, a definite response to the sound. "It's time to go. Come with me." He cleared his throat. "Please."
Babá shook his head, and Alastair felt like falling down and giving up right then and there. He'd been through so much and taken so many stupid risks, and now to get here and have to argue with Babá to save his own stupid self felt ... exhausting, that was a polite word for it. Alastair sighed and balled his fists again, contemplating striking the hard wood of the pews to see if the pain would make him feel better about things. "Sebastião--"
"You keep calling me that," said Babá, and his voice was a quiet whine, but it cut through all other sounds in the room, perhaps even in the universe. To Alastair's ears, he had the same lyrical accent he always did, and despite linguistic differences, Alastair understood every word perfectly. "Why?"
Alastair stopped in his tracks, frozen. He cleared his throat. "...Because it's your name," he said, feeling lame even as the words came out of his mouth, remembering everything Madalena had said to him. He took a deep breath and tried again. "Because we're partners. It's," and this sounded even worse than his initial rationale, "professional."
Babá laughed, but it was a bitter, petulant sound. Alastair had never seen him like this -- he was always so bright and optimistic, and even when he was scared, he never let his anger go to being childish. ...But this wasn't just Babá, it was the base of his personality, the childish part of him that formed first and grew with him but never quite grew up. Everyone had this kind of construct inside, Alastair knew, but never once, in all his years with the Agency, had he actually gone deep enough to meet one, not even his own. "Leave me alone," Babá moaned, drawing back into his fetal curl. "I've been bad. Leave before it gets you too."
"No!" Alastair cried, so sharp and automatic that his voice made Babá cringe, and he was immediately sorry. "No, you've been good. You've been very good. You're ... my partner and my friend, and a very good agent, and you've helped a lot of people and saved a lot of people, and," he became aware he was babbling, and scrambled for something that would make his case more clearly, "you saved my life! Off the building, if you hadn't caught me, I wouldn't be here."
That made Babá look up at him, really look this time, and Alastair could feel the fire lessen its intensity and slow its progress, because it was encroaching, Alastair could see that now, the walls were closing in on them and they had not much time left -- and then Babá shut himself in again, and the fire raged. "You don't want me," he shook his head, and before Alastair could say that of course he wanted Babá to be his partner, Babá added, "not like I want you."
If Alastair's projection had been detailed enough to include a heart, it might have plunged into his stomach. "I...." He took a deep breath, steadying himself against the sick ache he felt bubbling up inside of himself. He couldn't claim he didn't know how Babá wanted him, because by now, even a completely brainless stone would have found all the evidence overwhelming -- and the last thing he wanted to do was admit that he didn't know how he wanted Babá, because regardless of how true it was, it came off sounding like an admission that Babá was right. Instead, he came close to Babá until he was just out of arm's reach and knelt until Babá was on his eye level. "I do," he said, trying to make his statement sound as true as it was.
Babá scoffed. "Liar," he said, and he covered his face with both arms.
"It's true." Alastair leaned forward, bracing himself on his closed fists. "I swear, Babá, I swear it's true."
The sound of his name got Babá's attention, and he peeked out at Alastair again; his eyes were red-rimmed, and his cheeks were shiny and wet. He was naked, too, something that hadn't entirely escaped Alastair's notice earlier, but which became an even more critical factor at this distance; his sun-browned skin glowed orange with the light of the fire. "...Look at you," said Alastair, and this violated every sense of propriety and reserve he had, but now this had long ago ceased to be the time to let his own problems get in the way. "You're beautiful. You're ... you're so beautiful, sometimes I can't stop looking at you."
"Then why don't you ever touch me?" Babá asked, reaching out his hand to Alastair like he had that night by the building -- and Alastair, to his incredible shame, flinched. "See?" Babá withdrew again, pulling away so far that his back came to rest against the altar. "I've been bad. And the fire has come back for me."
Alastair put his hand over his mouth and took a deep, difficult breath through it. All around him, he could hear the crackle of the fire as it closed in, and had the clear, real thought that they would both die in here. Babá said he wanted Alastair to leave, but at the same time was holding on to him with such force that even if Alastair had wanted to escape, it would have been impossible; the weapon had done its damage, and all of Alastair's bridges had literally been burned behind him. Even if everyone inside the Agency combined their efforts and tried to pull him out, they would get nothing back. Babá's brain would stop functioning eventually, there in that hospital bed, and his own body would just ... topple over, absent anything left to tell his heart to beat or his lungs to breathe. The doctors would be left with a pair of empty shells, burnt out from the inside, firebombed buildings where the roof still held but nothing was left inside.
Babá at least had an excuse; he'd been attacked, and could no longer control his own mind. Alastair was just a coward, still the little boy who'd nearly succeeded in killing himself because he didn't know how else to deal with his brain's lies, who'd never tried to fix anything he could run away from, who'd spent five years in love to the point of agony with someone who could neverreally love him back because he was too pathetic to deserve love in return--
"No," said Alastair, spitting the word in defiance of his own fear. "I won't let it have you." He looked Babá in the eye and said, with all the conviction in the world: "You're mine."
If he'd had longer to plan the logistics of it, the move might not have come off quite as awkward as it did, but there was no time. Alastair rocked back on his heels and pushed himself to his feet, as if to run away -- and then ran straight to Babá, slipping one arm around his shoulders and another beneath his knees, and sweeping him off the ground, into his arms. Babá strugged for only a second, then threw his arms around Alastair's neck, burying his face against Alastair's shoulder and sobbing.
Holding as tight as he could to his partner's impossibly light body, Alastair turned to the fire and stared it down. His own initial proficiency potential for pyrokinesis had only been in the twelfth percentile, and though age and practice had both contributed to his current skill level, even on his best days, he was barely average at psychic thermal manipulation -- but the fire didn't know that. What the fire knew was what he wanted it to know: that he was furious, and that if it wanted Babá, it would have to go through him first. The comfort Babá felt in Alastair's arms shook the weapon's hold on his brain, just for an instant, but instants were all Alastair had ever needed. In that gap, he sent out a mighty shock wave with his mind, hard enough to rattle the mental foundations of the chapel, more than hard enough to put out the fire.
The silence that followed rang in his ears, but the air tasted cold and clear, a sharp contrast that he knew from Babá's own memory. Alastair turned his head and buried his face in Babá's curls, which smelled not of smoke, but of sunshine, the way Alastair had always imaged he'd smell. "Shh," he whispered, "I've got you. You're safe. I'll keep you safe."
Babá lifted his face enough that Alastair could feel Babá's lips brush his bare throat, and he was shocked that what he felt was not disgust, but desire. "Stay with me," he pleaded. "Right here, just like this."
This, admittedly, had not been a contingency for which Alastair had prepared. "But ... we've got to go back." He stroked Babá's shoulder as much as their position would allow.
Babá shook his head. "I just want to stay in your arms. That's all I want. I've waited so long, Ali, I can't be alone again."
"You won't be!" Alastair hugged him close. "There are so many people out there, and they're all waiting for you. They're all worried about you. That's why they sent me to come get you, so I could bring you back."
"You're the only one that matters," said Babá, and he kissed Alastair's throat. "You're the only one that I want."
"You have me." Alastair swallowed. "Here and there. I'm yours."
"It's not enough." Babá shook his head again, and wrapped himself so tightly around Alastair's neck that Alastair was grateful he didn't actually have to breathe here, because he was certain this would make it difficult. Babá was so small and fragile, but at the same time so powerful just beneath the surface. "I want to stay with you."
At first, he was certain he was imagining things, but Alastair smelled the air again, and there it was, distant but faint: the smell of smoke, not lingering but returning. "The fire," he said, looking at the black-burnt walls of the church; he'd managed to drive it away for a time, but he hadn't succeeded in the more difficult task of getting Babá to send it away, and now, like a cancer that hadn't been cut out all the way, it threatened relapse. "It's coming back."
"It will take us both." Babá sighed, sounding like he was making an effort to be resigned to his fate, but his voice still shook. "It comes back every time. I ... can't stop it."
"Yes, you can." Alastair extracted himself from Babá's embrace enough so that he could see Babá's face; he managed still to look beautiful even when he was crying, and Alastair didn't think that was wholly an invention of Babá's brain. "Come back out. Come out with me. We're not safe in here, so please, follow me out."
Babá's lower lip trembled, and he caught it between his teeth; he looked so young there, innocent and frightened, and it was all Alastair could do to keep from telling him yes, they could stay here forever, anything Babá wanted, Alastair would never say no again. "You...." The word died in Babá's throat, and he hid his face against Alastair's neck again. "You won't even touch me there."
Alastair pressed his face into Babá's hair again, choking back a sob of his own, the closest he'd come to crying in as long as he could remember. "That's not because of you," he promised, knowing how pathetic it sounded.
One of Babá's hands tightened in Alastair's shirt. "You don't love me," he whispered, the words barely a whimper.
"I do." Alastair closed his eyes. "I swear to you, I do."
"Then show me," said Babá, and he turned his face toward Alastair's.
The demand sent Alastair's brain into a panic, every dark anxiety bubbling up and reminding him how dangerous touch was, how contaminative, how disgusting, how it had hurt him before, how it would probably hurt him again -- and standing there, holding Babá in his arms, Alastair was for the first time in his life strong enough to tell all the monsters in his brain to go to hell. Using a tiny psychic nudge to lift Babá upward, Alastair turned and put Babá down on the altar, which seemed a little sacrilegious, but was at least better than the floor. Babá didn't protest, either, just held on, waiting for Alastair to prove his claims, and Alastair took a deep breath before pressing their mouths together.
He had intended to be gentle about it, a chaste kiss like the ones that woke up the cartoon fairytale princesses, but Babá parted his lips and thrust his tongue into Alastair's mouth, and grabbed both sides of Alastair's head to make sure he didn't pull away. Babá in the waking world would never have been this forceful, Alastair knew, but this was the core of Babá's desire, the pure and perfect center of I want, and would not be placated with halfway. Thus, Alastair climbed atop the stone altar with him, stretching their bodies in the same direction until his lay atop Babá's smaller frame, and he could feel Babá's bare toes kick playfully about his mid-calves.
The very act of kissing seemed strange to him, mostly because he found he liked it, which made little sense, given his previous disaster; the brain could be inventive, but didn't tend to replicate accurately anything except that which it had already experienced. (For instance, he'd been shot inside psychic projections multiple times before he actually took a bullet in the real world, and had been most distressed to learn that his brain had been underestimating the sensation by a serious degree.) But Babá had the experience, Alastair realized as he sucked at Babá's lower lip, and he was close enough to the center of Babá's psyche that experiences could transfer easily. Every time his anxieties objected, they were overridden by Babá's need, which became his own need, which led him to run his hands through Babá's soft curls and kiss his mouth again and again.
"Yes, please," Babá begged him, and he took his nimble legs and wrapped them around Alastair's waist, pulling their bodies close enough that Alastair could feel Babá's cock push against his belly. He'd seen Babá at the Agency's gym pool before, wearing only his giant smile and his tiny swimsuit, and thus had come to this encounter with some idea of what Babá was packing beneath his clothes -- but to feel it, present and hard, and to know it was hard for him ... well, that was overwhelming. "I want your hands on me." Babá leaned his head back, exposing his throat, and Alastair knew to kiss it, to suck little red marks into the skin, smiling as Babá laughed and moaned in his arms. Bracing himself on one arm, Alastair took his other hand and explored Babá's sleek, muscled body, feeling how amazing and warm he was. Everything about him was made of sunshine, warm and light and good and clean, and Alastair wanted all of it.
His fingers traced the lines of Babá's chest, learning with his fingers the contours his eyes had memorized, finally getting his hands on something he had suspected would never be his. But now Babá was, and he wanted more, and every time Alastair touched him, Babá made a noise of encouragement, sometimes words, sometimes just gasps. Alastair's fingers reached the flat plane of skin just below Babá's navel and hesitated, and Babá grabbed his hair and pulled him into another kiss. "Touch me," he whispered into Alastair's mouth, and he leaned his hips forward so the damp head of his cock nudged against Alastair's hand. An invitation like that was impossible to refuse; Alastair circled his fingers around Babá's cock, amazed at how different it felt from his own, how thick and hot and so hard, all for him. "Yes, yes," Babá nodded, letting his head fall back against the altar and exposing his throat again, "I need you to touch me."
Alastair didn't need more encouragement than that. He began to stroke Babá with no tease or hesitation, feeling the strength of Babá's need and responding in kind. Babá gasped and thrust his hips into Alastair's hand, and Alastair's mind began to fill with all sorts of thoughts he knew hadn't originated from his own imagination: he wanted to take Babá's cock in his mouth and suck him, learning the taste of his skin and come; he wanted to throw Babá's legs over his shoulders and thrust his cock inside (though he couldn't quite think about the specifics there, his brain wasn't ready for that yet) until they both came; he wanted to roll onto his back and let Babá ride him, grinning down at him, his fingertips in Alastair's mouth as they fucked (and that was a new concept to Alastair's brain, not just sex but fucking) one another to exhaustion. Babá was amazing at mental projection, as the flood of images that filled his brain would attest, and where Alastair might have felt awkward before trying to envision these fantasties, now they were all he wanted. "Yes," Alastair nodded, "I want it, I want you--"
That was apparently all it took -- Babá came then, into Alastair's hand, shuddering and crying out wordlessly, beautiful and perfect and wholly, finally Alastair's. At last, his hips relaxed again, and he wrapped his body around Alastair's once more. "Please, Ali," he whispered, sucking on Alastair's earlobe, "stay here with me, make love to me...."
Any other man in the universe would probably have said yes, and been correct to do so, but Agent Alastair Niemand shook his head and pulled back. "I can't." He pulled his hips back, because the contact was making it difficult to remember his mission, and he was harder than he'd been in his entire life. "I ... don't know how it feels. I can guess, and I can let you share, but Idon't know. I've never ... before."
Babá's eyes went a little wide, and he touched Alastair's cheek with his fingertips. "Never?" he asked, and the question was kind, not cruel.
"Never." Alastair shook his head. "Please, Seb-- Babá, I want your skin. I want you to teach me how. But...." He looked away to the unseen outer world. "I'm out there. Come back with me."
"And you'll," Babá swallowed, and Alastair could read in his expression as logic won the argument, "be with me there?"
"Come teach me how to make love to you," said Alastair, and he pressed one more light kiss to Babá's lips before reaching down and taking Babá's hand in his own. Babá shut his eyes and nodded, and Alastair pushed, the way a diver might shoot up from the ocean floor, rocketing up through fluid, carried by inertia and his own buoyancy ever upward, feeling Babá's hand clamped like a vise to his as he tore his way toward the surface--
What happened next was a nightmare of cold, bright noise, and Alastair had only the faintest awareness of toppling back off his stool, being caught in the arms of someone who wasn't Babá as the hospital room exploded into sound and activity. Like that diver come up from too deep too fast, he'd given himself the bends, and he thrashed about even as he felt a cold needle stab into the bare side of his throat. His skin felt raw, and Alastair tried to grab at anything he could, just to get someone to tell him if Babá was all right; he kept reaching as they dragged him out the door onto a waiting gurney, where he called Babá's name again and again until the sedative kicked in and he blacked out.
~*~
"Ali?"
It wasn't until he heard his name called that he realized he'd fallen asleep in the chair. Alastair blinked away drowsiness, and looked up to see a pair of bright brown eyes and an equally bright smile turned toward him. "...Good morning," he said, standing and straightening his clothes, trying to look like he hadn't spent the past three days in that same suit, in that same place. The doctors had finally allowed him to leave his hospital room on condition that he didn't stray from the medical ward, and he'd been true to that promise. "How are you feeling?"
Babá smiled and sat up a little, raking his fingers through his wild hair. "How long since...?"
"A week." Alastair pulled his stool closer to the bed and sat on it, still teetering a little. Physically, he was great, but his mind hadn't quite yet re-adjusted to the confines of reality, and thus he still had to proceed anywhere with caution. "I should tell someone, Dr. Baker in particular will--"
"No, wait." Babá reached for Alastair's hand, then hesitated -- then visibly screwed up his nerve and took it anyway, grabbing Alastair's leather-covered fingers with his own. "I ... remember."
Alastair swallowed, fighting back the lump that had suddenly calcified in his throat. "I wasn't sure you would," he said, letting his gaze drop. He also hadn't been sure Babá would ever wake up again, period, but that ghost had been banished with the sound of Alastair's name -- so perhaps other impossible things could be true, too.
Babá nodded, brushing the back of Alastair's hand with his thumb. "You do not have to ... what you promised." He smiled, and that expression might have fooled the rest of the world, but Alastair knew better now. "I know my mind, I made you promise things to me, but ... when you saved me when I was...." Babá closed his eyes and shook his head, the way he did when he ran out of ways to make himself understood in English. "You are my friend and my partner, and it is enough that you are, so you should not ... anything you would not want...." His voice trailed off, and he closed his eyes.
It would be so easy, Alastair knew, to take the opportunity to go back to the way things had been before. They were still an amazing team, effective and strong, and Alastair would never have to worry about disappointing Babá when he couldn't control his own anxieties, and Babá could go off and find someone or a hundred someones to be with instead, lovers who weren't afraid of the world, and they could still love one another from a distance, just as they always had, and just as it had always been, it would have to be enough.
Instead, Alastair withdrew his hand from Babá's and reached for the cuffs of his gloves. He tugged at their fingertips, then pulled them off his pale, bare hands, setting them aside on the table by the bed. That done, though his his heart fluttered in his chest and every anxiety that had ever taken up residence in his head screamed DON'T!, he reached again for Babá and twined their fingers together in the same way Alastair had held him when they'd escaped together. "...I may be hard to teach," he admitted, swallowing his fear without quite banishing it, "but I want to learn."
Babá looked at him for a moment in awe, his eyes welling with tears -- and then he grinned, like the sun breaking over the edge of the eastern horizon, warm and new. "I will be a very patient teacher, my love," said Babá, and as he gripped Alastair's bare hands tight, Alastair found he never wanted to let go again.