Friday: Free For All
Happy weekend folks! Hopefully LJ is a little more cooperative today, but we apologize for the difficulties this week in the context of the DDoS attacks. Mostly our hosts and our mods could not get in, or if they could, were unable to post. Assuming LJ remains stable, regular service will resume
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The public records didn’t mention them and the laws didn’t account for them, but enough people in power were either Immortals themselves or recruited by The Watchers to watch those immortals, that their existence was institutional knowledge to a certain extent.
As a minor bureaucrat in the Ministry, Mycroft had no specific need to know, but as the individual responsible for making sure things went smoothly, he made sure that the CCTV cameras recorded what they should and did not record what they should not. He had visited the central Watcher archives a few times and, despite the initial boredom, had been delighted to discover the existence of one Adam Pierson.
Mr. Pierson was a minor cog in The Watcher organization, researching one of the older immortals and providing translation services to other Watchers. He was, Mycroft realized, in a similar role to Mycroft himself who officially was a minor cog in the Ministry, researching efficiency and providing services to other ministry officials. And just like Mycroft, Mr. Pierson knew everybody and every thing, and could be depended on to direct events to their best conclusions. And he judged what was best.
As soon as Mycroft had ascertained this flow of power, he changed his liaison assignment so that he didn’t have to ‘bother’ any high-ranking Watchers and could ‘simply’ interact with Mr. Pierson.
Everything was much more efficient that way.
And Mr. Pierson seemed equally pleased with the situation. If he hadn’t been, Mycroft knew, then the situation wouldn’t have developed.
He did wonder, sometimes, how Mr. Pierson had identified him as a power hub for the British Ministry. Mycroft, after all, had had the advantage of seeing Mr. Pierson working in his own setting, while Mr. Pierson had been handicapped by meeting Mycroft as merely a visitor.
It didn’t really matter, though, so Mycroft didn’t spare it much thought. It was a delightful and rare treat to have identified an equal.
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Even at the height of The Watcher’s restructuring, Mr. Pierson had still made time for their quarterly meeting.
“How did affairs reach this point?” Mycroft asked. Watcher’s killing Immortals, Immortals killing Watchers, and seemingly everyone turning on everyone else. Mycroft had had higher expectations of Mr. Pierson.
But Mr. Pierson had merely shaken his head. “It happens every few centuries. Mortal memory, even supported by institutional memory, is relatively short, while Immortal memory is obscenely long. A controlled fire with as few casualties as possible is the best that one can hope for in order to reinforce the lesson on both sides.”
That should have been Mycroft’s first clue.
Or perhaps his fifth clue, but it wasn’t until his last luncheon with Mr. Pierson that Mycroft began to realize with whom he was sharing a table.
“I have enjoyed our relationship immensely, Mr. Holmes. And I hope to continue it for some years to come. However I’m afraid,” Mr. Pierson had said, “that it is time for Adam Pierson to die.”
Mycroft had enough control to keep the uncertainty from his face. But his thoughts whirled.
“Has something happened that is taking you away?”
“No, no. It is merely that The Watcher situation no longer needs such direct attention. And time moves ever onward. Adam is approaching his 40th birthday, after all.”
It was a stunning realization that Mycroft had somehow missed the fact that over the years, his companion had aged in his hairstyle and his body language but not his face or skin tone.
Mr. Pierson must have noticed his surprise, because he was audibly surprised as well, “You hadn’t realized?”
Mycroft felt like he was playing catch up, a game he had never much enjoyed and hadn’t played since he was a teenager, despite all of Sherlock’s attempts.
Well, better to admit it than to hide it poorly. “No, I hadn’t realized.”
“Ah well. I don’t, as a rule, tell people, but it is so rare that I find anyone so like who I might have been…”
Mycroft was who this man might have been had he not had years, centuries, possibly millennia, more experience. Mycroft suddenly felt very callow and unsure of himself. He shook that feeling off.
He had inserted himself into the British Ministry when others saw him as nothing but a callow youth. This was merely a similar situation on a larger playing field.
“Since I know my parents and quite resemble my mother, I doubt that I will ever be facing you as a true equal.”
“Age is not everything or even most of it. I hope you are willing and interested in maintaining our relationship, because I think you are one of the few people capable of maintaining a relationship across multiple identities.”
Mycroft inspected his teacup as he considered the situation and his own emotions.
“I think I would enjoy that.”
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And everyone else thinks they're just using each other, but they are both genuinely *enjoying* that mutual manipulation. (Which sounds a bit dirtier than i had originally intended. Ah well.)
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