Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Everyone should have a little fugue, she says,
the young conductor 
taking her younger charges through
the saddest of pieces, almost a dirge
written for unholy times, and no, 
not for money.
                Ready? she tells them, measuring out 
each line for cello, viola, violin.
It will sound to you
not quite right. She means the aching half-step
of the minor key, no release
from it, that always-on-the-verge-of, that
repeat, repeat.
              Everyone should have a little fugue--
I write that down like I cannot write
the larger griefs. For my part, I 
believe her. Little fugue I wouldn't
have to count.

--Little Fugue, Marianne Boruch

╭─────────╮

He didn’t used to hear the lights. 

Sure, it was still a basement, with all the usual boiler and pipe noises one might expect to hear in a glorified subterranean storage room, but Holden is certain that the lights were never something that used to bother him before.

It wasn’t until after—after Atlanta—that he started to hear them; started to feel their clicks and hums reverberating through him every single day like some sort of fucked up symphony’s unending, electrical crescendo. 

He’s been feeling a lot of new things since Atlanta, to be honest. Guilt, doubt, heightened anxiety, fear. Holden has dreams every night about Camille Bell. Sometimes he’ll catch a glimpse of his reflection in her glasses, only to see somebody broken and shrivelled and grotesque staring back at him, and then he’ll wake up in a sweat, unable to breathe, as if he’s choking to death on the putrid stench of his own inadequacies and flaws. It’s overwhelming. Exhausting. All the self-doubt wrings him out like a mop. And he does his level best to keep a lid on these bubbling insecurities at work, but being around Bill so much makes it tough. After all, it’s Holden’s fault that Bill’s marriage fell apart six months ago; Holden’s fault that Bill lives alone now in a sad, empty house. He doesn’t understand how Bill can stomach being around him, really. Most days, Holden can’t even stomach being around himself. 

The fluorescent bulb outside his door buzzes and flickers like a shitty strobe light, and Holden grits his teeth. He really doesn’t want to be in the office today, but the Department of Health and Human Services just issued new regulations last week for interviewing human subjects in accordance with the ‘79 Belmont Report, and now they have to fill out detailed summary reports on every interview they’ve ever conducted to prove their study is ethically compliant. They won’t be allowed to interview any new subjects until all the paperwork is reviewed, and Gunn is dead set against decelerating their timeline, so they only have until 10am tomorrow to get all the submissions completed for the DHHS. On top of all that, Gregg is out for the day because one of his kids caught the chickenpox, and his wife couldn’t find a sub this morning to teach her third grade class, which means Holden really has no choice but to be here. Here, right here, in the gloom of the basement, listening to the electric hum of the lights.

It’s difficult to concentrate. Holden mechanically flips through one of the transcripts on his desk in an attempt to buckle down, but the effort is a wash; his eyelids droop and all the words blend together into a garbled mess, like some kind of sick, serial killer version of alphabet soup. He watches the trainees in the main office flitting around with singular focus and wishes he still had some of that fire left in him. 

“You are what they call a blue flamer. You know what that is? You're so eager to do good, you have a big blue flame shooting out of your asshole.”

Well, Bill certainly wouldn’t say that about him now. Now Bill knows that his young, bushy-tailed partner is nothing but a colossal fuckup who turns everything he touches into volcanic ash—a walking Mount St Helens, always two steps away from blowing it for their department and disappointing everyone depending on him to get the job done.

Holden hasn’t seen Bill yet this morning, but it’s only a matter of time. Bill is always in here, 'checking in,' because Gunn read him the riot act last year for not keeping Holden on a tighter leash, and then made himself clear to Bill that he wouldn’t tolerate it happening again. 

Thankfully, Gunn is still under the baffling misapprehension that Atlanta was a rousing success, otherwise they might all have been given their marching orders in June.

Bill finally shows up in Holden’s orbit at around half past ten. He perfunctorily raps on the open office door and then saunters over to Holden’s filing cabinet with a look of steely determination.  

“Hey, I need the Robert Rusk transcript, did you put it back in here?” 

“Huh?” Holden stares back at Bill with a completely blank expression. He didn’t sleep very well last night, and now his brain feels like it’s wandering through a fog. He’s not trying to be aloof; it’s just not possible to provide an intelligible answer when the question hasn’t even been registered yet.

“The Rusk transcript,” repeats Bill, barely masking his irritation. “I handed it over to you after our unit meeting on Tuesday so that you could rereview the notes. Where is it?” 

Holden suddenly feels a terrible but all-too-familiar panic rising in his throat. The Rusk transcript. Shit. He’d been so tired earlier in the week, so prone to dawdling and spacing out… he had just wanted to catch himself up to speed, so he… 

“It’s, um…” gulps Holden; his palms are getting sweaty. “The thing is, I… I…”  

“You… ?” Bill shifts impatiently. “I’m not Uri Gellar, kid. I’m gonna need you to actually finish your sentence.” 

“I left it at home,” Holden squeaks out. Home. It’s at home. He fucking left it at home. On his coffee table, right next to the remote. Shit shit shit shit shit.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” 

“I’m so sorry, Bill. I-I didn’t mean to; I was only… isn’t there another copy?” 

“Not one with the notes in it, Holden!” snaps Bill, angrily slamming shut the filing cabinet. “Jesus fucking Christ. What the hell is wrong with you, huh?”

Holden swallows thickly and fidgets with his hands. What is wrong with him? He desperately wishes to hell he knew. Then maybe he could fix it and stop being such an abominable screwup all the time. He could finish his work, and sleep through the night, and lead a life unpunctuated by chronic despair. Or just not leave important BSU files sitting in his living room, at the very goddamn least.

Before he can get underway with another round of grovelling, Wendy appears in the centre of the doorway, her mouth forming a discontented moue. 

“Bill,” she hisses, casting a sideways glance over toward the trainees, “while I share your frustration with Holden’s… forgetfulness, I think we could all make do without the verbal pillorying today.”

“Excuse me?”

“I appreciate that this puts undue strain on our timetable, but given that a standing Congressional committee just lined up the FBI’s budget in its crosshairs, I think it would be prudent for us all to avoid any altercations that might make the unit seem potentially expendable.”

Bill scoffs. “Do you know what else might make us seem ‘potentially expendable,’ Wendy?” he asks, jerking a thumb in Holden’s direction. “Agent Numbnuts over here causing us to miss an important deadline because he used our interview transcripts as bedtime reading.”

“I’m not denying—” 

“That just seems a little bit more pressing to me than whether or not some pencil pushers in Washington think we’re a Quantico throwback to the Partridge Family.”

“All right, fine,” replies Wendy, shrugging coolly. “So let’s talk strategy, then.”

Holden looks over and mentally winces a little bit when he realises she’s leaning against their column of Ed Kemper greeting cards, but he keeps his mouth shut. Wendy is basically running interference on his behalf right now, and it would be beyond stupid for him to say anything that might tick her off. Besides, even he’s not that much of an ungrateful twerp, despite what somebody like Shepard might think.

“It may be a bit tight,” Wendy continues, “but… I think if Holden brings the transcript back here bright and early tomorrow morning, we could probably still have everything ready for Gunn’s sign-off within the allotted time frame.”

“Sure, I can do that,” affirms Holden, staring up expectantly at Bill. “I can get here really early tomorrow, I promise.” 

Bill just glowers at him. “No,” he says flatly, “no fucking way. First of all, I’m simply not willing to let this go down to the eleventh hour. And secondly, you’ve skulked in here late nearly every morning for the past three weeks, so I’m not really sure why I should even believe that you won’t pull the exact same crap again tomorrow.” 

“Bill, I swear, I won’t—”

“Just shut up and listen for once. Can you do that?” The rancour in Bill’s voice makes Holden flinch. 

“I… yes.” 

“We are finishing these reports today, come hell or high water. So here’s what’s going to happen: You’re gonna get in your car now, drive home, pick up that transcript, and have it back here, on my desk, before lunch. Then you’re going to get your ass in gear, and do your fucking job like the rest of us, without any further excuses or complaints. Okay, Holden?” 

Holden nods furiously. 

“Okay, Bill,” he whispers, hovering dangerously close to the brink of tears. He stands up at his desk and takes a slow, unsteady breath, praying to whatever god there might be that he’ll have the intestinal fortitude to hold himself together just long enough to see this DHHS project through.

“Good,” declares Bill, sarcastically clapping Holden on the back, “glad we talked. Have a nice drive, kid.” 

Holden grimaces. He can suddenly feel the din of the lights coursing directly through his chest, and the sensation is almost paralysing. He dumbly shuffles over to the coat rack and fumbles with one of the wooden hangers, his hands trembling as he finally grabs hold of his black trench coat and slips it on over his shoulders. Nobody says goodbye to him as he walks out the door—or maybe they do and he just can’t hear them because the lights are so goddamn loud. 

He didn’t used to hear the lights, but now they torment him every single day. 

They don’t even let up when he gets outside; they’re still ringing in his ears when he bundles into his car and pulls out of the parking lot, the looming shadows of Quantico disappearing behind him as he slowly drives away.

╭─────────╮

He stops at the gas station because he can’t breathe.

Holden thought he had finally managed to calm himself down by playing road trip games on the I-95, little exercises that forced his brain to focus on tangible, everyday things like licence plate numbers and car models. But then he’d seen a white station wagon not unlike the one belonging to Wayne Williams, and that had reminded him all over again of Atlanta, and the grieving mothers like Camille Bell, and all the horrible things he’d said that day on the riverbank to Bill, whose life he just keeps making worse, and—

He pulls up alongside a row of gas pumps and haphazardly throws the car into park. His lungs feel like they’re being dunked into kerosene. He wishes to Christ that he still had some Valium left to take, but he polished off the refill from his CMF prescription in early July, and he can’t get any more without seeing a psychiatrist. 

Except, he’s been too scared to make the appointment. Everyone thinks he’s weird enough, already; he doesn’t need it getting back to the Bureau that Special Agent Holden Ford is nothing but a benzo-popping mental case who cracks under the slightest hint of pressure. Gunn has been largely tolerant of his antics thus far, but if he ever found out about Holden’s breakdown in Vacaville, he would almost certainly change his tune. Holden would be tossed out of the BSU faster than Jerry Brudos ejaculating into a patent leather stiletto. And maybe he deserves that, because he’s an arrogant, self-serving little shitheel of a fuckup, who’s no good at anything apart from destroying people’s lives, but… this job is all he has. It’s all he has, and perhaps he’s not worthy of it, but he needs it, probably more than he needs anything else in the world. Definitely more than Valium, he thinks. 

Though, right now, that might be debatable. 

Holden inhales sharply and tries willing his heart to stop thumping like a jackhammer. Not now, he tells himself between staccato gasps for air. There is no time for this now. 

Bill tasked him with running this errand because they’re on a tight deadline, and he can’t let Bill down again today, no matter how much he feels like curling up into a ball and compressing himself into nihility. Holden has already torpedoed Bill’s marriage and put him under scrutiny from their superiors on multiple occasions. If nothing else, he owes it to Bill to deliver the Rusk transcript without any further hassles or delays. 

You can do this, he reassures himself, fighting hard for every breath. It’s okay. You’re okay. Just pull yourself together. 

He clutches at the steering wheel like it’s a life preserver. The leather feels sticky against his increasingly clammy palms, but Holden doesn’t particularly care. He just wants to calm himself down again and get underway. He remembers how the road trip games helped him relax earlier, and decides to repeat the experiment by looking for licence plates with double number sequences. The first car he sees doesn’t quite fit the bill, though it’s got two Ts side-by-side, which he supposes is close. The second car is so badly covered in mud that he can’t even be sure, but the third one… 

It’s a brown Pinto Runabout with Pennsylvania plates, number N29-644. Good, that’s good. He’s done it; the two fours make that round of the game a success. He glances over at the owner of the Runabout, who’s dutifully scraping bugs off her windshield, and wonders what’s brought her down this way from Pennsylvania. Maybe she’s travelling for work like he does with Bill. Or maybe she has a boyfriend out here. He pictures a nice, normal couple holding hands in the park; long-distance lovers together for the weekend. He imagines they’re happy, and wishes he could be, too.

The owner returns the squeegee to its receptacle and gets back behind the wheel of her car. She’d had her back to Holden before, but now he can see her face in profile. And suddenly, the world takes on an eerie quality, like it’s being spliced with reels from a grainy home movie that somebody left flickering across an old, whitewashed wall.

Holden sees things in flashes: A brown suede coat. Blonde, stringy hair. Eyes puffy from tears and smeared with mascara. Blue lights glinting off colourless skin. And blood. So much blood. On the ground. Over the doorway. On the cuff of his sleeve. Oh god, his sleeve. There was blood lining the cuff of his sleeve, and he scrubbed and scrubbed, but it wouldn’t wash out, because a man died that night and it was his fault. It was all his fault. His fault. His fault. His… 

He hears a scream. Or perhaps he feels it, surging through him like an electrical pulse. Or maybe it’s just the static from the lights. She screamed that night, but he can’t think about that. He can’t think about it because there’s a pyre of failures blazing in his lungs, and the projector playing the film in his head is sputtering wildly out of control. Everything in his brain is dissolving rapidly, like celluloid burning against scorching white heat. And the Pinto is gone, but it doesn’t matter, because the world has become impossibly bright. It’s too bright for Holden, and he doesn’t belong. Doesn’t fit. Doesn’t even exist. He hears the scream one more time, echoing through the streets of Braddock, Pennsylvania, and then follows it down into the dark heart of nothingness.

Chapter Text

Bill drops the smouldering cigarette butt onto the hallway floor and then crushes it with the heel of his shoe. Normally, he would have the common decency to pick up his own mess and throw it in the trash, but not today. Today he has enough shit to manage without worrying about a little bit of ash dirtying up the Bureau’s linoleum. He makes sure the butt is completely out, and then trudges back over to the bullpen wearing a harried scowl. 

“Anything?” he asks, already half-knowing the answer. 

Wendy shakes her head. 

“Fucking…” Bill pinches the bridge of his nose. “Should we be getting worried? It's been two and a half hours. He should have been back by now.” 

“Is it possible that he just hit bad traffic? Construction?” 

“Maybe? But... I dunno, he's been kinda off lately. I mean, it's Holden, so he's always a little off, but—” 

“No, I know what you mean,” agrees Wendy. She closes the file on her desk and leans back, arms folded squarely over her chest. “He's definitely been more… detached.” 

Bill nods. He looks up at the clock for the umpteenth time since Holden left, and then lets out a long, exasperated sigh. 

“He's probably fine,” he says, eventually, “I just... y'know, I'm supposed to be watching him, and I really don't want the fact that I reamed him out over that transcript to be the reason he's gone AWOL on us again.”

“I'm sure it's not, Bill.” 

“Yeah? How sure?” 

Wendy purses her lips. “I'll call him again in a few minutes, all right?” 

“Yeah, okay,” mutters Bill, nervously tapping his index finger against the doorknob. “But if he's still radio silent by one thirty, I'm sending in the cavalry.” 

“Would that be you in this scenario?” 

Bill shrugs. “What can I say? I always loved Rio Grande.” 

“Rio Grande,” repeats Wendy, raising one eyebrow. “Interesting choice.” 

“Yeah, why's that?” 

“Well, it was directed by Ford,” she explains, with just a hint of wryness to her voice. 

The comment almost prompts Bill to choke on his own tongue. 

“Oh, fuck me,” he groans. He shakes his head, lights up another cigarette, and then wordlessly slinks back out into the hall.

╭─────────╮

Bill's knuckles turn white as he grips the steering wheel with ever-growing apprehension. He's certain at this point that something is wrong, that something bad has happened to Holden, but beyond that he's completely in the dark. 

“In the dark, huh?” 

“We are! I have studied everything we have. I've taken this ride here, listened to everything you've been kind enough to teach, but we're talking about something we don't understand in the slightest…” 

Jesus fuck.

It's nearly 3pm now, and he's already been by Holden's apartment complex. The doorman hadn't wanted to let him up at first, but between the badge and Bill's tone of urgency, he'd ultimately been convinced to hand over the spare key. And Bill had half expected to find Holden just inside the entryway, curled up in the foetal position and hyperventilating—or whatever the fuck he did during one of his episodes—but that theory hadn't panned out at all. 

Instead, he'd walked into a modestly furnished but otherwise empty apartment, with very little to indicate anybody actively lived there, save for one dirty cup in the sink, the recently used ironing board, and, most worryingly, a thick, thumb-worn document left sitting out on the coffee table that Bill instantly knew could only be one thing: The Robert Rusk interview transcript. He had called Wendy at that point, a cold pit opening in the depths of his stomach as the sobering realisation forming in his brain was grudgingly voiced aloud: “I don’t think Holden ever made it home.” 

He keeps driving. It’s not a long journey between Fredericksburg and Quantico—usually about 35 minutes tops—and unless you’re the woodsy type, there aren’t too many compelling detours to make along the way. Given that Holden thinks loafers and button downs are the epitome of casual wear, Bill doubts he’s much of a hiker, though he supposes if the kid felt low enough to go find a body of water or something like that… 

No, stop it, he thinks, mentally rebuking himself for even entertaining such a bleak theory right off the bat. He’s probably just off sulking somewhere, cut it out. But the reassurances ring hollow in his mind, and with every forested turnoff he passes, he finds himself becoming more and more concerned.

By the time he pulls into the parking lot at Quantico, his heart is practically beating in his throat. Part of him wants to turn right around and go trawling every back road between here and Holden’s apartment complex for insights or clues, but he knows that’s impractical for a myriad of reasons; inadequate leads, no clear timeline to speak of, a serious lack of daylight. It’s mid-afternoon, but they’re well into December, and the sun already looks like it’s ready to quit on them for the day, drooping low toward the horizon like a deflating, orange balloon. 

Me too, pal, he thinks as he snatches the Rusk transcript up from the passenger seat. Me fucking too. 

In no time at all, he’s back down in the basement, anxiously perched on the edge of Wendy’s desk with an unlit cigarette pressed tightly between his lips. 

“I don’t know what the hell to think,” he remarks glumly. “I mean, it could just be he’s out there somewhere throwing a fucking tantrum because I really pissed him off earlier, but… I dunno, I’ve got a weird feeling about all this.” 

“Should we call someone?” Wendy asks.

“Call who? We’re the goddamn FBI. How the fuck is that gonna look?” 

“Well, I don’t really have any other suggestions, Bill.” 

He squeezes his temples between both thumbs, and then exhales deeply. “Yeah, okay,” he acquiesces, taking the unlit cigarette out of his mouth. “Lemme use your phone.” 

He dials carefully and draws another stiff breath, priming himself for any switchboard operators or receptionists he might need to chat with before getting to Carl Bauermann. It’s rarely simple, calling up other big law enforcement agencies; there’s always a major chance of hitting red tape. Thankfully, it doesn’t take too long today for Bill to get through all the requisite channels, and he only has to endure a few bars of bad Muzak before hearing a familiar voice down the other end of the line.

“Hey Carl, Bill Tench here,” he states, attempting to keep his tone as casual as possible. “Yeah, how the hell are you? Good, good. Listen, we’re a little stuck on a minor investigation over here and I was just wondering: Did you guys get any accident reports, suspicious vehicle sightings, or anything of that nature for a light blue Chevy Nova today? Virginia plates. I don’t know the exact year; ‘77 or before. If you wouldn’t mind, that would be great. Sure, yeah, it’s extension 0182. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Carl.”

He puts the receiver down and then turns to give Wendy a lukewarm shrug. “My buddy with the Virginia Department of State Police will let us know if they get any hits on Holden’s car. I think that’s the best we can do for the time being.”

“All right. Good,” says Wendy, nodding slowly. “So, I guess the only other thing to do now is… finish the reports.”

“Guess so.” Bill slaps his knee, and then ambles over to the coffeemaker in the bullpen, still feeling hugely unsettled as he dumps a truckload of sugar into his cup of joe. He tries telling himself that Holden is an adult, and that nobody else bears any responsibility for his choices, but the little voice in the back of his head is quick to call bullshit. You didn’t have to be so hard on him, it scolds. He suddenly remembers that fight he had with Nance, back when the babysitter found a crime scene photo under Brian’s bed. He had been needlessly hostile that night, too, shoving images of mutilated women in Nancy’s face just to make a point. And then suddenly he was sorry—incredibly sorry—and ugh, he just wishes he knew the kid was okay.

“Can you stay late?” enquires Wendy, calling after him.

“Uh, yeah,” he responds, trying his damned hardest not to stare too long at the empty, adjacent office with Holden’s nameplate by the door. There are plenty of empty rooms in his life, already. He doesn’t need to collect one more. “No problem. I mean… come hell or high water, right?” 

╭─────────╮

Bill is already on his fourth slice of pizza when Wendy drops an overstuffed bankers box onto the sideboard behind his desk.

“I think that’s everything on my end,” she says, settling into an empty chair. “You?” 

“Finished about fifteen minutes ago,” replies Bill. He snarfs down another bite and then crumples up a handful of napkins. “Hey, you sure you don’t want any? It’s Contini’s; good shit.”

Wendy demurs. “I don’t think I have the stomach for anything greasy right now. I’ll buy you a drink, though, if you’re up for it.” 

“If?”

“Well, I thought you might be tired.”

“Oh, I am tired; it’s not even nine o’clock yet and I’m already fucking exhausted.” 

“I sense a ‘but’ coming…”

“But—I also want to murder about a half a pint of scotch before I get flat, and I wouldn’t mind the company. That is…” 

Bill pauses just long enough to flash Wendy a look of sheepish contrition. It’s not their first time doing this dance, and he genuinely hates himself for that. The offenders they interview are always full of excuses as to why losing control wasn’t really their fault, but that shit doesn’t fly with Bill. His bad behaviour is on him alone, and now he has to buck up and apologise for being a jerk.

“Look, um…” he takes off his reading glasses and folds them into his shirt pocket, “I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier. You were only trying to protect the unit, and I had no business jumping down your throat the way I did.”

“I appreciate that, Bill,” says Wendy, smoothing down the front of her skirt, “but, really, it’s water under the bridge at this point. Besides, you’ve been dealing with more than your fair share of difficulties lately, and I probably should have been more sensitive to that.”

“All the same,” he imparts, with a sort of penitent shrug. “I just thought I should throw that out there. Especially since you were making some good points about the Congressional budget cuts. I hadn’t really—”

He breaks off when the phone on his desk lights up with a shrill, startling ring. 

And suddenly Bill’s heart is pounding like a racehorse’s, because he isn’t sure he’s ready to hear the information waiting on the other side of that call. It might be nothing; security checking in, or simply even an extension misdial. But it could also be Carl Bauermann ringing up to let him know they found Holden’s Nova half-submerged in the Potomac, and fuck, he just really hopes the kid is all right.

Bill shares a fearful glance with Wendy, and then anxiously picks up the receiver.

“BSU. Tench,” he barks down the line. 

At first, there’s only crackling coming from the other end; a kind of breathy static suffusing the connection. But then he hears a voice—earnest and soft—croaking out his name, and every single muscle in Bill’s body unclenches. 

Holden. It’s Holden. Boy Wonder is still alive and kicking. Thank fucking Christ. 

“Bill?” Holden repeats, his voice practically jumping an octave.

“Yeah—yeah, I’m here, kid. Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on? Because, frankly, Wendy and I have been pretty fucking worried about you.” 

The question doesn’t really elicit a response. Instead, Bill just hears a whimper and the sound of shallow wheezing. 

Well, shit. 

He snaps his fingers a few times to get Wendy’s attention and then points to a phone on one of the steno pool desks outside his office.

“Line two,” he mouths, before running a hand back through his flat-top. If Holden is as brittle as he sounds, then it might at least prove useful to have a psychologist listening in. Besides, they agreed before Berkowitz that if the kid had any further episodes, they would both know about it, so why not provide her with a front row seat from the get-go?

Wendy gives Bill a loose thumbs up through the window, and then he takes another shot at extracting more information from his partner.

“Holden, what’s wrong?” Bill asks, in the most even tone he can manage. “Did something happen? Are you all right?”

“Bill, I… I…” starts Holden, clearly distraught, “I don’t know where I am.”

“Huh? Whaddya mean?”

“I don’t know where I am,” Holden says again, teetering on the verge of full-blown hysteria. “I don’t know where I am. I… I don’t know where I am. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t—”

“Hey, hey, hey—calm down, kid. Just calm down.” 

“But I don’t know where I am! I don’t know, Bill. I…” Holden chokes out a pitiful sob.

Jesus, this is bad. Really, really bad. The kid has gone off and whipped himself into a total frenzy. And Bill thinks offhandedly that he didn’t sign up for dealing with this, but then again, he thought the same thing last year when shit really started going south with Brian, and look how that turned out. Maybe it’s just time for Bill to accept that he can’t control the ways in which people need his support.

“Holden,” he says patiently, “I can tell you’re upset, but I need you to breathe, okay? Just take a few deep breaths and then we’ll work this out, I promise.” 

“Okay,” bleats Holden, and Bill hears him trying to slowly inhale and exhale a couple of times over. 

“Good, kid, that’s real good. Now, listen: I need you to tell me exactly how you’re making this call. Is it a private line? A pay phone?” 

“P-pay phone.”

“All right, and is the phone booth near any landmarks? Maybe a store, or a house? Something like that?”

“It… it’s abandoned,” quavers Holden. “It was a g-gas station, I think, but it’s all b-boarded up now, and I… I…”

“That’s okay, Holden,” Bill reassures. He kneads his forehead, and then lets out a long, beleaguered sigh. “Look, have you considered calling 911? Because local emergency services might be able to get—”

“No!” insists Holden, his voice cracking. “Can’t. Can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Vacaville.” 

“What about Vacaville?”

“I d-don’t want that again,” Holden explains. “To be p-put in restraints. It hurt, and I was s-s-scared.”

Jesus Christ. It’s not like him to be emotionally affected by stuff, but Bill is suddenly struck by an overwhelming urge to reach through the phone and wrap up Holden in his arms. God, and to think he yelled at him this morning. This whole thing is probably all his fault. He got short-tempered and pushed buttons until Holden mentally collapsed, because apparently that’s just how Bill treats all the people in his life worth caring about. Fuck, maybe he did sign up for dealing with this, after all.

“Okay, kiddo. Scratch that,” mollifies Bill. Holden is already frightened enough; he doesn’t need to make it worse. “I know you said the gas station was abandoned, but is there any signage?”

“H-half a sign. It says ‘Kwik’ with a ‘K’ and maybe ‘Mary’? I don’t know, Bill. It’s d-dark and I… I don’t—”

“Hey, that’s all right. Don’t sweat it, you’re doing good. Now, what about the pay phone? Does it have a callback number listed somewhere?”

Bill can hear more wheezing in the background as Holden pauses to examine the phone booth.

“You still breathing over there?”

“Y-yeah. Sorry.” 

“That’s fine, just keep at it. Any progress on that phone number?”

Holden reads out a string of digits in a thin, ragged voice. Bill thinks he recognises the area code as being in-state and thanks his lucky fucking stars for small favours. He scrawls all the information down onto a legal pad, hoping to hell Reference Support will still have some after-hours staffers around to lend him a hand.

"Okay, that’s nice work, buddy,” Bill says encouragingly. “Great job. Now, listen to me carefully: I need you to stay exactly where you are. Because I’m going to head upstairs in just a second to have somebody help me match all these details to a location, and then I'm gonna come and find you. But that will only work if you calm down and stay put. Do you understand me, Holden?”

The kid rasps out an answer in the affirmative, and Bill can’t get over how fragile he sounds.

“Good,” he soothes. “You just hold tight ‘till I get there, kiddo. It’s gonna be all right.”

He tells Holden to leave a message with the Bureau switchboard if anything changes, and then reluctantly ends the calls. 

“Did you get all that?” he asks Wendy, while simultaneously scrambling to pack up his things.

“I did,” she confirms, looking suitably dismayed. “Bill, this is…” 

“A fucking goat-rope?” he retorts, shrugging into his suit jacket. “Yeah, I’m aware.”

“It’s more than that; this could have extremely serious, long-term consequences for everyone in the unit, Holden especially. If he isn’t—” 

“I know. Believe me, I know. But before we get into that, I need to go out and actually find his ass. Otherwise, we’ll be buried under so much shit, this is all going to smell like the White House Rose Garden by comparison.”

Wendy nods soberly. “You’re right, I’m sorry. Do you want me to come with you?”

"I hate to ask, but would you mind staying here for a while in case he calls back? I can tell the switchboard—” 

“Of course.”

Bill lightly squeezes her arm. 

“I’ll call you with updates,” he promises as he makes his way out the office door. “Oh, and Wendy?”

“Hm?”

“It’s not too late to change your mind about the pizza.”

They exchange brief smiles, and then Bill makes a beeline for the elevator, ready to turn up every stone in Virginia until Holden is safe and sound by his side.

Chapter Text

It’s nearly midnight by the time Bill’s Plymouth Satellite rolls to a stop in front of the Kwik-Pump Station in Maryport, Virginia. He’d thought all those years of driving solo for Road School had made him an expert on navigating country routes, yet even with all that experience behind the wheel, he’d still almost missed the place. Holden hadn’t been exaggerating when he said it was dark out here; Bill doesn’t think he’s seen another pair of headlights or a streetlamp for at least twenty minutes. No fucking wonder the gas joint closed up shop. 

He jumps out of the car and begins surveying the landscape for any signs of life. He sees the abandoned service building with only half a sign and a bank of fuel dispensers overgrown with weeds, but no traces of his partner anywhere—not even the Nova. Someday, Bill will ask Holden how the hell he ended up stranded on the outskirts of a jerkwater town near the Nottoway River without a vehicle, but that’ll have to wait. Right now, he just needs to find him and make sure he’s safe.

Bill yells out Holden’s name, and then curses through his teeth when the call goes unanswered. For fuck’s sake. Didn’t he explicitly tell the kid to stay put? Granted, it’s supremely typical of Holden to brush off other people’s instructions, but this is an emergency—Holden’s emergency. He couldn’t listen to Bill this one goddamn time? 

Then again… 

Maybe—just maybe—that’s exactly what he did.

Bill spots a rickety phone booth on the opposite edge of the forecourt and darts over to it, pushing open the bifold door with bated breath. 

Sure enough, Holden is hunkered just inside, trembling and rocking against the wall, like a wounded animal hiding itself in the brush. He looks absolutely shattered in every sense of the word, and Bill can’t decide whether he ought to be flooded with dismay or relief. 

“Holden?” he says, slowly crouching to the ground. No reaction. Bill watches the kid rock himself for a few more seconds, and then calls to him again, this time gingerly placing a hand on his knee. And that does the trick; Holden breaks out of his trance and looks up at Bill, his blue eyes wide and brimming with tears.

“Bill?” he whispers, through short, hiccuping breaths. “Is it r-really you?”

Bill nods. “Yeah,” he replies, his voice gravelly but soft. “It’s really me, kiddo. I’m here.”

Holden chokes back a ragged sob. “I… I don’t know where I am, Bill. I don-don-don’t know.” 

And shit, Bill’s suddenly not so sure he's the right person to handle this. He can analyse crime scenes and catalogue psychos, even smooth things over with local cops or top brass when the situation requires it. But he can’t be a supportive shoulder to cry on—at least not very well. If he had any talent in that arena, he might still have a wife and a son at home, instead of a ‘For Sale’ sign plus some ad-hoc pieces of furniture.

None of that really matters at this point, though. Because Holden didn’t phone the ‘right person’ during his moment of need; Holden phoned him. Holden phoned Bill, in spite of all the times Bill’s chewed him out or made wisecracks about his panic disorder, and Bill still came running, disposition be damned. And there’s nobody else here to take the reins, so it’s all on him now to calm the kid down, whether he’s any good at being comforting or not.

“Bill, I don’t…”

“Hey, hey,” he says, inching forward until he’s close enough to wipe away Holden’s tears with his thumb, “it's all right, buddy, it’s all right. I've got you. Just breathe, now, okay?”

Holden expels a few blubbering gasps, and Bill can’t help but wonder how this quivering wreck hunched beside him could possibly be the same smart-aleck motormouth he’s watched manipulate some of the world’s most infamous killers. This is the kid who exposed Son of Sam and unnerved Richard Speck so much the fucker filed a complaint; now he’s balled up in a phone booth, totally addlepated and trying not to hyperventilate. Wendy sure hadn’t been kidding when she said this whole panic attack thing could really screw up Holden’s health. Why hadn’t Bill taken it more seriously?

“Keep at it, kiddo,” he coaches, as Holden fights off another wave of breathlessness. “Just nice and steady. You got any Valium on you?”

Holden shakes his head. “Ran out,” he confesses, blenching slightly. “After Atlanta. In-inactive status… c-c-couldn’t cope.” 

Jesus. Bill knew the kid had been pretty dissatisfied with the outcome of the case, but he hadn’t realised it was actually eating away at him that whole time. Of course, he’d been deep in the weeds of his own personal shitstorm by that point, but still; maybe a better partner would have noticed.

“Nevermind, then; forget I mentioned it. Are you good, otherwise? Any cuts or bruises I should know about? Bumps on the head?” 

“Bumps?”

“Yeah, you know, just… does anything hurt?” 

“Not hurt,” rasps Holden, his panting gradually abating, “at least, I don’t think so.” 

“Well, that’s something, huh?” Bill rises halfway and holds out his arm. “C’mon, let’s get you in the car.”

Holden swallows hard and then grabs tightly onto Bill, who can’t help but notice the kid is still shaking like a leaf. 

“Easy does it,” he murmurs, as they make their way toward the Plymouth. “It’s okay, I’ve still got you.” 

They manage to stagger about halfway there before Holden stops abruptly in his tracks, eyes suddenly round with concern. 

“My car,” he says hoarsely. “I left my car…”

“Don’t worry about it, kid.”  

“No, no, I left it… up the road. It was out of gas, and I—” 

“Holden,” interrupts Bill, gently sliding two fingers beneath his partner’s chin, “look at me: It’s all right. The car isn’t going anywhere, and I’ve already flagged it up anyway with the VDSP. It’ll be fine, I promise.”

“But, Bill—”

“We’ll call for a tow first thing in the morning; it’ll be back before you know it. But right now, I need to take you home. You get that, don’t you?”

And it’s strange, because Bill can literally feel the lump forming in Holden’s throat; can feel the flush of heat rising from the kid’s collar to his cheeks. And he can’t be a supportive shoulder to cry on—has proven he’s no good at it time and time again—yet, somehow, that doesn’t prevent Bill from scooping up Holden into his arms, drying his tears, and then patiently, sweetly, coaxing him into the Plymouth.

“Okay, buddy,” he says, once he’s finally got Holden snugly buckled in. “I’m just gonna call Wendy to let her know you’re safe, and then we’ll start making tracks back to Fredericksburg, sound good?”

“Uh-huh,” sniffles Holden, barely holding himself together. He seems disoriented again; vulnerable. Like somebody found a way to give acute anxiety to a goldfish. God. It’s so wrenchingly pathetic, Bill can hardly stand to look at him. 

He grabs a handful of loose change from a tray inside the glove compartment, and then goes to dial Wendy, who thankfully picks up on the very first ring. 

“Bill?”

“Yeah, hey. Sorry I kept you waiting so long. This place was a real nightmare to find. But it’s okay, now; I’ve got him.”

“Thank god,” she utters, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Is he all right? How does he seem?”

“Honestly?” Bill rubs tiredly at the bridge of his nose. “Like a toddler who lost his mom at the mall. He’s really out of it, Wendy. If it weren’t for the panic disorder, I’d almost think he was on something.”

“Is that a possibility?”

“Nah, I doubt it. You know Holden, he’s a fucking boy scout. When he’s not conducting interviews, anyway. Kid told me he doesn’t even have any Valium left. Apparently, Atlanta has really been weighing on him. I had no idea.”

“This isn’t good, Bill,” remarks Wendy tersely. “We need to figure out precisely how we’re going to approach this, and we need to do it fast. Because if Holden’s mental health deteriorates any further, I guarantee you, there will be repercussions—for all of us.”

Bill lights a cigarette and then peevishly exhales a plume of smoke through a large crack in the side of the phone booth. 

“I get that,” he acknowledges, “really, I do; but can it at least wait until the morning? Because I’m staring down the barrel of a two hour drive, plus what I suspect may be a long night of babysitting, and I don’t think I have it in me to draw up any plans on top of all that.” 

“You’re going to stay with him all night?”

“Well, somebody has to,” retorts Bill, glancing worriedly at Holden through the light of his high beams. “I told you: He’s a fucking wreck.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and Bill swears he can almost hear Wendy thinking over the din of the static.

“All right,” she says finally. “Here’s what we’ll do: You’ll bring Holden into the office tomorrow—providing he’s lucid enough to appear functionally competent—and we’ll stash him on my sofa until after the meeting with Gunn. Then I’ll talk to him to get a better idea of what’s going on with his psyche, and we’ll strategise from there.” 

“And if he isn’t lucid enough?” 

“Then you may need to consider entrusting him into the care of clinical professionals.” 

“What, you mean dump him in the psych ward?” Bill asks, incredulous. “I can’t do that.” 

“I realise it’s not ideal, but we need to be pragmatic. Hopefully, it won’t come down to that, however, in the event—” 

“Okay, okay,” he says concedingly. Bill knows Wendy is likely right, but he doesn’t think he can handle continuing this conversation just now. “Listen, I really gotta go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He thanks her again for waiting by the phone, and then promptly hangs up, feeling suddenly awash with self-doubt.

Should he really be involved in managing all this? There’s so much at stake here, so much to protect, and Bill doesn’t exactly have the greatest track-record with keeping the stuff he cares about intact. On the other hand, maybe that’s precisely why he feels so strongly about rectifying this situation—because if he can’t look after his partner and salvage the unit, then, really, what the fuck is left?

Also, Holden may be an overweening pain in the ass most days, but after Nancy and Brian, he’s still probably the person to whom Bill is closest. So doesn’t the kid deserve at least a little bit of effort now, especially given the way Bill has treated him lately? 

Bill can’t be a supportive shoulder to cry on—has never been good at that sort of thing—but he isn’t useless, either. And just because he failed at the simple act of being there for his wife and son doesn’t mean he’ll repeat the same mistakes this time around with Holden. 

No, he can’t do that. He won’t. 

Bill inhales deeply, and then begins walking back to the car—back to his partner and to the final chance he may ever get to do right by somebody depending on him for help.

╭─────────╮

Holden appears to be half-catatonic by the time they pull into the Essex House parking lot, but Bill still takes a crack at making small talk with him, anyway.  

“Looks like we made it, huh?” he asks, trying not to let his tone betray how absurdly tired he feels. “Back home, safe and sound.”

“Safe,” echoes Holden. It almost sounds like a question.

“Yeah.” Bill walks around the front of the car to open the passenger door and then carefully helps the kid to his feet. “All right, up we go. Think you can walk on your own?”

Holden nods, but Bill isn’t too sure. The kid is still trembling like a newborn colt; hasn’t stopped since they set off from Maryport. He takes about two steps forward, and then immediately falters, knees almost buckling under the weight of his emotional distress.

“Whoa! Easy there, Nadia Comaneci,” says Bill, catching his partner by the shoulders, “you gotta stick the landing.”

“Huh?”

Bill sighs. “Nothing,” he replies, sadly shaking his head. “Just let me help you, okay? You’re still a little wobbly.” 

And Holden doesn’t protest; doesn’t say a single word as Bill guides him through the lobby and into the elevator—not even when the doorman casts an inquisitorial glance or two their way. He just stays the course with Bill, shambling alongside him like a slightly asthmatic zombie.

“I probably should’ve asked this before,” notes Bill, once they find themselves approaching the front door to Holden’s unit, “but you do have your keys, right?”

“Pocket,” Holden croaks, “left.” He doesn’t make any discernible effort to retrieve them on his own, so Bill ultimately has to fish the keys out of the kid’s slacks himself. And it’s a little bit ridiculous, but his partner looks so utterly overwrought that it’s sort of difficult to feel anything for him beyond the obvious choices of pity or concern. 

Bill unlocks the apartment door and ushers Holden inside, swiftly flicking on the lights before marching both their asses straight into the bedroom.

“All right, kiddo,” he puffs out, depositing Holden onto the mattress. “End of the line. Whaddya say we get ready for bed?” 

“Bed?” 

“Yeah. I’m pretty beat, aren’t you?”

“But…” Holden looks confused, “what about the reports?” 

The question makes Bill’s heart take a swan dive into his stomach. He’s been looking after Holden for well over two hours, now—did the kid genuinely think Bill was only helping him this whole time to make sure some paperwork got finished? Is that how little the people in his life think he cares about them?

“No, kid, it…” Bill exhales wearily, and then gives Holden’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze, “it’s fine. Wendy and I finished the reports hours ago. You don’t need to worry about that.”

“I don’t?”

“Not at all. You just need to focus on getting some rest. That’s it. Okay?”

And Bill is doing absolutely everything he can to sound reassuring—warm, even—but the words are barely out of his mouth before Holden unexpectedly bursts into tears. 

“I’m sorry,” he bawls, a glob of snot suddenly bubbling out of his nose, “I’m s-s-s-sorry.” He starts wheezing again, and then hiccups so violently, Bill is almost afraid he’s going to make himself puke. 

“Whoa, hey now,” exclaims Bill, raising up his palms. “You don’t have to be sorry. Not for anything. Nobody is mad at you, kiddo.” 

“I… I don’t know what h-happened,” snivels Holden. He looks positively stricken. “I meant to get the t-t-transcript, I r-really did. I wasn’t trying to leave you with all the w-w-work.”

“We know that, Holden. It isn’t a prob—”

“N-no, I… I let everyone d-d-down again, and n-now you’re being really n-n-nice, and I… I don’t know what h-happened, Bill. I… I…”

“Shhh,” soothes Bill, enfolding Holden in a tight embrace. “You gotta relax, okay? Just take a few deep breaths and relax.” And Bill feels a pang of guilt for all the times he wasn’t there this past year and a half to hold Nancy while she cried; to hold Brian, even (who knows, maybe it would have helped). He wasn’t there—was anywhere but there when his family truly needed him. And now, somehow, he’s sitting here at fuck o’clock in the morning with an inconsolable Holden practically melting into him, and perhaps it’s all too little, too late, but this time Bill isn’t running out the door.

They stay that way for a while—with Holden curled up in Bill’s arms, face pressed against his chest, quietly sobbing, while Bill intermittently encourages him to breathe. Ultimately, the kid lulls off into a bleary-eyed stupor, dazed again from the day’s ordeals. 

“How ‘bout we get you into your pyjamas, huh?” suggests Bill, once Holden is sitting upright on his own. “Where are those?”

Holden listlessly points to a drawer. Bill goes over to it, pulls out a pair of blue flannel pyjama pants, and then sets to work, helping Holden out of his coat, and removing his shoes; taking off his tie and even unbuttoning the very top of his crisply ironed shirt.

“Think you can do the rest?” Bill asks, praying he won’t personally have to strip the kid down to his skivvies. 

“You can still dress yourself, can’t you?” 

Oh, shit. He really hopes it didn’t come off that way; really hopes Holden knows he isn’t judging him this time. Because Bill’s days of sneering and cracking jokes about smelling salts are officially through, and he wants to do everything possible now to ensure that’s all abundantly clear. God knows he’s already done enough today to make his partner feel awful as it is.

Holden picks up the pyjama bottoms and gives a limp nod, so Bill momentarily ducks out of the room. He grabs a cigarette from his front pocket and jams it between his lips, sucking through the filter just hard enough to scratch his itch for a bona fide smoke. It’s probably all psychosomatic, he realises—his brain responding to the familiar action more so than having any real response to nicotine—but fuck, it feels good. If Holden wasn’t such a mess, Bill thinks he’d probably be tempted to go downstairs and chain smoke the whole goddamn pack. He can’t leave the kid alone, though. Not like this. So the unlit cigarette will just have to do.

He lets another few minutes pass and then returns to the bedroom, where Holden has, thankfully, managed to change into his PJs without incident. 

“Okay, buddy, let’s get you down,” enjoins Bill, peeling back the covers.

Holden blinks at him. “I… I didn’t brush my t-teeth.”

“I think you can skip it just this once.” He takes the kid by the elbow and steers him into the bed. “C’mon, in you go.”

“I won’t g-get a c-cavity?” mumbles Holden, as he sinks into the pillows. “I… I’ve never had a c-cavity before. Don’t… don’t wanna—”

“It’ll be fine,” assures Bill, gently combing his fingers through Holden’s sweat-matted hair. “Just fine.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, kiddo,” Bill affirms. He has a feeling they’re not really talking about dental health anymore. “I promise. Everything will be okay.”

Bill watches as Holden drifts off into a deep, much needed sleep and hopes to god he’s right.

Chapter Text

Holden jolts awake to the feeling of cold fingertips pressing against his bicep. It’s not uncommon for him to have nightmares that involve being grabbed at by hands belonging to angry, decaying corpses, but he’s fairly certain this isn’t a dream. For one thing, he’s clearly in his own bed; Holden recognises the brown knit duvet and the percale sheet set Debbie made him buy at Leggett just before they broke up. For another, he can feel a thin veneer of drool coating his left cheek, which tends to be one of the classic Holden Ford hallmarks of waking up after a bad night.

So, if he’s not dreaming, then who… 

“Hey there, kid.” 

Holden hears Bill before he sees him. Inhales a deep whiff of stale cigarette smoke before remembering why his partner might be perched at his bedside on a random Friday morning, voice rough with tiredness and concern. But as Holden becomes more lucid, certain recollections from the night previous slowly begin to filter through: Intense panic. Fear. Having to call for Bill to come and save him. A long car ride home. Tears…

Oh, fuck. 

He cried all over the front of Bill’s suit jacket last night. Sobbed, really. And then Bill just hugged him tightly and tucked him into bed like it was nothing; like Holden hadn’t royally screwed up again, and let everyone down, and shit, shit, shit, he still can’t remember, has no idea—

“Easy,” murmurs Bill, as Holden breaks out into a nervous cold sweat, “it’s just me. You’re all right.”

“I…” begins Holden, unsure of what to say. He takes a shaky breath and then uses the back of his hand to wipe the sheen of saliva from his face. “I didn’t know you stayed.”

“Yeah.” Bill flashes him an almost pitying smile. “Crashed on the couch; got a few good hours. How ‘bout you? You feeling any better?” 

Holden nods slowly, though frankly he’s uncertain as to whether or not it’s really the truth. He’s definitely less hysterical now than he was the night before, but it seems more like a reprieve at this point than an actual recovery. Everything in his brain is still so scattered, and he finds his lack of mental clarity to be profoundly disturbing. At the same time, even the simple act of reflecting on what happened yesterday feels utterly overwhelming to him. Maybe it would be best if he just tried not to think about anything at all…

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. 

“So listen,” broaches Bill, unwittingly interrupting Holden’s new interior mantra, “I know you must be tired, but Wendy would really like for you to come into the office this morning.”

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. 

“You’re not in trouble, or anything like that. She just wants to gauge how you’re doing in light of last night’s… incident.”

Holden cringes. Of course, it makes perfect sense that Wendy would want to talk with him about this. She’s a psychologist, after all, and she already knows about Vacaville and his panic disorder. But the very idea of discussing what happened makes him nauseous to his core. He just wants to bury it all deep down inside himself and never look back; never contend with these feelings of confusion, and humiliation, and abject fear that are simmering beneath the surface. 

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. 

“Kid? You with me?” Holden looks up to see Bill regarding him with a worried frown. 

“Y-yeah,” he gulps, his stomach clenching. “I’m with you. I, um… I can go in to see Wendy. That… that’s fine.”

It’s not really fine. It’s the opposite of fine. Holden would rather chew glass right now than let Wendy do a clinical analysis of his latest fuckup. He’s only consenting to the request because he stuck her and Bill with a mountain of paperwork to get through yesterday, and now he feels like he owes it to them to provide an explanation for his behaviour. Granted, he’s not sure he has one, but still—it would at least behoove him to make the effort. 

Bill stands up. “Okay, great,” he declares, with an air of feigned nonchalance. “I’ll just leave you to get ready, and then we can hit the road. That is, um… unless you need me to help—” 

“I’m all right,” utters Holden, his cheeks reddening. He really doesn’t want Bill to start handling him with kid gloves, but it’s likely that particular die has already been cast. To be fair, it’s his own fault; he allowed his partner to see him in an extremely vulnerable state, and now he has to live with the consequences. Holden will probably have to demonstrate that he can still do his job a million times over before Bill will have any faith in him again.

God. The thought of contending with it all sends his heart rate skyrocketing. How is he ever going to live this incident down? How will he ever be able to look either of his colleagues in the face again after all the crap he’s put them through? A searing-hot wave of shame ripples through him, followed by an irrepressible pang of self-loathing. Bill mumbles something about heading downstairs to have a smoke and grab some dry-cleaning from the trunk of his car, but Holden can hardly hear him. His ears are ringing, and everything around him suddenly seems very close and stifling.

The moment Bill leaves the room, he shuts his eyes tightly and shrinks back against the headboard. Don’t think, Holden tells himself as he draws in a few slow, unsteady breaths. The noxious feeling in his gut is quickly becoming intolerable.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

He needs to completely empty out his mind; to block out all feelings or thoughts beyond what’s required to perform basic human tasks. Because he can’t risk having another panic attack—not now. Not when Bill is just downstairs, fresh off a long, gruelling night of dealing with Holden’s bullshit. It wouldn’t be fair, and Holden can’t afford to cede his last few remaining scraps of dignity like that, anyway. No, he’ll simply have to bottle everything up and hope for the best.

He grips at the sheets until his palms go numb, straining to make his mind go blank. It’s a tall order, but after a few minutes of intense concentration, Holden is finally able to drag himself out of bed and into the bathroom without feeling like he’s going to vomit. Racing thoughts of the place Bill called Maryport still rumble in the corners of his brain, but he’s mercifully able to shove them down just long enough to shower and carry out his morning routine. 

Once Holden is dressed, he gingerly pads into the living room, where Bill is casually thumbing through a day-old copy of The Free Lance–Star and drinking a glass of orange juice. 

“Hey, kiddo,” says Bill, in a tone he usually reserves for grieving family members and traumatised witnesses. “Doing okay?”

“Yeah.” The gentle tenor of his partner’s typically flinty voice makes Holden squirm with embarrassment. “Doing fine.”

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

Bill throws him a sceptical look, but doesn’t challenge the assertion.

“I’m gonna wash up a little,” he tells Holden, snatching up two plastic-wrapped hangers of dry-cleaning from a nearby chair. “I’d tell you to eat something, but I’m not sure frozen fruit and pasta sauce go together, and I don’t see that you have much of anything else.”

“That’s for blending smoothies,” explains Holden, grateful for the opportunity to engage in a conversation that doesn’t pertain to the status of his mental health. “Well, the frozen fruit is; not the pasta sauce.”

Bill looks amused. “You make smoothies?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing… if you’re a fucking toucan. Don’t you at least have any coffee?”

Holden shakes his head. “There’s tea. I could boil some water and—”

“Forget it. We’ll just swing by a McDonald’s or something on our way to work. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

“Bill, you don’t have to—”

“Yeah, I do, Holden. I can’t deliver you to Wendy underfed and uncaffeinated. She’ll have my ass in a sling.” 

The comment sends a dull ache spreading through the centre of Holden’s chest. Right. Wendy. Bill is fucking delivering him to Wendy. To be scrutinised, and scolded, and regarded with contempt. Because he’s an incompetent loser who can’t even run a simple errand without bringing the whole world crashing down around him. And he still can’t remember, has no goddamn clue—

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

He repeats the phrase on a loop in his brain in an effort to reassert some control over himself. He will not let these overwhelming thoughts get the better of him. He will not spiral out again in front of Bill. Instead, he’ll just keep his mind suspended in a state of pure nothingness until it’s time to leave, and then everything will be okay. 

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. 

Bill doesn’t take long to scrub up and change. In fact, they’re out the door and on the road before Holden even knows it.

“Whaddya think, kid?” queries Bill, once they’re a little bit closer to the commercial end of Fredericksburg. “Mickey D’s still good? I see golden arches looming just past this next intersection.”

“I… I’m really not that hungry, Bill,” says Holden quietly. He’s still feeling relatively queasy from the two mini-anxiety attacks he endured back at his apartment.

“No?” Bill narrows his eyes. “Tell me, when was the last time you ate something?”

Holden fiddles with the end of his tie. “I don’t know,” he whispers. The words echo dimly between his ears. 

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.
 
He clears his throat. “I guess it’s been a while.”

“You guess, huh?” Bill looks over at Holden askance, and then wordlessly pulls into the McDonald’s drive-through, where he asks for two Coffee and Egg McMuffin combos.

“I want that whole thing down your gullet by the time we get to Quantico,” he stipulates, once they have their order in hand. “You can’t just run on fumes all day. It’s bad for you.”

“So is chain smoking two packs a day,” mutters Holden, not quite realising how impudent the comment sounds until it’s way too late to take it back.
 
Oh no. Oh shit. Shit shit shit.

How the goddamn hell could he say something like that? How could he be so incredibly flippant to Bill, of all people, after everything Bill’s done for Holden in the past 12 hours?

Fuck. Shepard was right: He’s an arrogant, vainglorious, little scumsucking twerp who ruins peoples’ lives with his titanic lack of judgment. He is a failure and a fraud, and now a fucking mental case, on course to spend the rest of his life strapped down to some hospital bed, confused, and frightened, and utterly alone. Because he still can’t remember, hasn’t even got the slightest of inklings—

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.
 
Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

Bill sighs.

“Just eat the fucking McMuffin, Holden,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Jesus.”

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.
 
Holden nods. He opens the wrapper and begins to chew, swallowing down every feeling, every thought, every short-spoken word, until there’s nothing left of himself but crumbs.

╭─────────╮

They get to Quantico at roughly a quarter till nine. 

Once upon a time—back before Holden fucked everything to hell with OPR, and Atlanta, and his stupid panic disorder—he used to always come into work early, feeling energised and eager, ready to take on the world. Lately, however, it’s been a battle just for him to make it to the basement on the right side of nine thirty. With some consternation, he realises this is probably the first morning where he’s shown his face on time in weeks.

“Still doing okay over there?” probes Bill, his brow furrowing as Holden slumps himself against the elevator handrail. “You seem awfully squirrelly.”

Holden chews his bottom lip. He really wants to say no. Really wants to tell Bill this chat with Wendy is simply too much for him to handle right now, and that he just wants to go home and bury himself in sleep until he can finally stop feeling like he’s about to hurl. 

He can’t do that, though. He can’t back out—not after all the trouble he’s caused. It would just give his colleagues more reason to despise him. If Holden doesn’t want Bill and Wendy to completely freeze him out, then he needs to comply with their requests, whether he’s feeling up to the task or not.

“Yeah,” he lies, slowly drawing himself upright. He flashes Bill a watery smile. “I’m fine. Really.”

Bill frowns, but doesn’t say anything, and they continue on for the rest of the elevator ride in silence.

The vaguely fraught dynamic between them only lasts until they make it down to the bullpen, where Gregg—yes, Gregg—appears to be laughing it up and chattering away with Ted Gunn, who in turn can’t seem to stop beaming at something perched on Gregg’s desk. It’s a downright baffling sight, not least because Holden had previously been under the impression that Gunn disliked Gregg, and didn’t particularly want him in the unit. 

Jesus fucking Christ, was he wrong about that, too? 

It belatedly becomes clear that the ‘something’ on Gregg’s desk is actually a child—an apple-cheeked little girl with honey-blonde curls, who Holden surmises is probably all of two or three-years-old. She’s clutching a small box of animal crackers, the corner of which is pressed against her mouth, wet and glistening with kiddie saliva. 

“Oh, it’s such a great age,” Gunn says to Gregg brightly. “My eldest niece, Tara, is eight-and-a-half now, but back when—ah! Gentlemen, good morning!”

“Uh… good morning, sir,” replies Bill, looking every bit as perplexed as Holden feels. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not here!” quips Gregg, hiding his face behind upraised palms. “You didn’t see me.”

Bill scowls. “Why the… I thought you said your kid had chickenpox?”

“Gracie has chickenpox,” corrects Gregg, as he dotingly hoists the little girl into his arms. “Holly hasn’t caught them yet, and we’re trying to keep it that way. Aren’t we, sweetheart?”
 
“Yeah,” the child nods soberly. “Don’t want Gracie’s pox.”

“Security just let you bring a kid in here?”
 
“The Bureau is a family-friendly institution, Bill,” chides Gunn. His tonal delivery is so dry, Holden genuinely can’t tell if he’s being serious or not.

“Anyway,” continues Gregg, “I’m taking Holly out for the whole day—y’know, to keep her exposure down to a minimum. And Julianne’s mother is driving out later from Harrisburg to lend us an extra hand with the childcare, but I left my spare set of house keys in the desk here, which is why—”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. I get it.” Bill’s gruff expression softens. “So, uh… this is your youngest, then?”

Gregg beams. “Sure is! Sweetie, can you say ‘hello’ to Agents Tench and Ford?”

“Hiiii,” mumbles Holly, looking markedly disinterested in her father’s co-workers. Before Gregg can ask her to say anything else, she pulls an elephant-shaped animal cracker out of the box and wedges it tightly between her lips.
 
“Aww, c’mon Holly-cakes! You can do a lot better than that!”

“It’s really fine if she doesn’t want to talk, Gregg,” Bill says kindly. “We understand, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” coughs Holden, suddenly very aware of the fact that he hasn’t actually spoken a single word to either Gregg or Gunn yet, himself. “I mean… animal crackers are important business. I used to go nuts for them when I was a kid.”

Holly giggles. “Elph-ants likes nuts, too,” she declares, taking the cracker out of her mouth. Then, with a showy flourish, she stretches out her little arm and ceremoniously thrusts the half-eaten elephant into Holden’s hand.

“Aww, Holly, that’s so nice of you!” exclaims Gregg. “What a good girl you are, sharing your snack with Agent Ford!”
 
“Y-yes… um, thank you,” sputters Holden, staring down at the damp, soggy cracker in mild dismay. He isn’t entirely sure what he’s supposed to do with it. Toss it out? Eat it? Oh god, he really doesn’t wanna have to eat it.
 
At the same time, he also doesn’t want Gunn to presume he’s some sort of child-hating monster. Because, actually, Holden likes kids. Well… in theory, anyway. In practice, he’s always been a little bit spooked by them. And maybe this, right here, is why—because whenever he goes near a child, he encounters something like sticky fingers, or grating, repetitive noises, and fuck, fuck, he is literally cupping somebody else’s saliva in the centre of his palm, and he’s not sure in the slightest what he’s supposed to do about it. Not sure what he’s supposed to do about anything that’s happened since yesterday at all, and—

“Well! This is certainly an unexpected scene.”

Holden, Bill, and Ted Gunn all turn their heads in unison as the faint smell of jasmine perfume wafts slowly into the bullpen.
 
“Dr Carr! Good morning!” greets Gunn. He takes a step back to make room for Wendy in their little cluster by the desk, which blessedly gives Holden the opportunity to slip the sodden animal cracker into his pocket undetected. 

“I’m not here!” repeats Gregg, lightly chuckling as he shifts Holly from his right side to his left. “Just passing through.”

He reprises the whole song and dance about getting extra house keys for his mother-in-law, and then spends the next few minutes glacially migrating toward the door, while Gunn and Wendy take turns cooing over Holly and commending the idea of fathers subverting gender norms by doing childcare, respectively.

By the time Gregg finally makes his departure, Holden thinks he’s heard enough anecdotes about Gunn’s nieces to last him a fucking lifetime. Who even knew the guy liked kids so much? After all, there were dead ones cropping up all over Atlanta for fifteen months and he never so much as batted an eyelid over it.

“What a delight, huh?” Gunn sighs fondly as he walks back to the centre of the bullpen. “Just what I needed to get this morning going. I have to admit, I am very much not looking forward to slogging through all of these compliance reports.”

“Well, that’s entirely understandable, sir,” Bill comments warily, “but, uh… I didn’t think we were scheduled to meet for another hour, still.”
 
Gunn’s hands go up in mock surrender.

“That is true, Bill,” he concedes, “and if you and Dr Carr are unavailable now, I completely understand. However, if we could get a head start by moving things up, it would be a huge boon for my afternoon schedule. Associate Director Adams has requested my presence in DC for an emergency budgetary meeting.”

Bill and Wendy shoot each other furtive glances over the transcription desk.

“I, um… I think that would probably be all right,” Bill begins cautiously. “Unless… Wendy, do you have any major concerns about postponing that other meeting we talked about yesterday?”

“I actually think the plan was to have that meeting after this one,” she replies, darting a quick look in Holden’s direction. “So, in a way, it might be beneficial to move things up. Assuming there were no urgent developments in the intervening hours since we last discussed things, of course.”

The exchange makes Holden want to curl up and die.

Obviously, he appreciates Bill and Wendy’s careful use of discretion, but this isn’t just about saving face in front of Gunn. Holden still knows they’re talking about him, and the indignity of that alone is excruciating. It makes him feel like a little kid. Like some problem child whose parents are desperately trying to keep him out of trouble. He’s not a partner or a colleague anymore; he’s a situation that needs to be contained. It’s humiliating. Deflating. And the worst part is that there’s nobody he can blame for any of it except himself.

“That should be fine, then, sir,” he hears Bill say, and Gunn seems inordinately pleased. 

There’s a brief discussion about who will bring all the filing boxes into the conference room, and Wendy asks if she has time to brew herself some coffee. It occurs to Holden that he must look ridiculous just standing around doing nothing, so he hangs up his coat, and then slowly trudges over toward his office. He isn’t really up for doing work, but maybe he’ll be able to nap at his desk for the next hour or so. That is, if the sound of the lights doesn’t keep him up.
 
Why are the lights always so fucking loud these days?

He never used to hear them.

“Holden!” Gunn calls out to him and it’s so unexpected, he nearly jumps out of his own skin. “Care to join us?”

The question sucks all the air straight out of the room. Wendy’s eyes go wide and Bill looks like he’s accidentally just swallowed a chicken bone.

“I… I, um…” Holden gulps. He has no idea how he ought to respond.

“Actually, sir,” interjects Wendy, with a clearing of her throat, “Holden wasn’t scheduled to take part in this meeting. Just Bill and me.”

“I am aware of that, Dr Carr, but given Holden’s vast familiarity with the material, I don’t see how it could be anything but beneficial to include him. And who knows? Maybe some of that killer instinct will rub off on me, for when I’m sniffing out allies on the budgetary committee later this afternoon.”

Gunn chuckles. Holden thinks he might throw up.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

“All right, sir,” says Wendy through tightened lips. She and Bill exchange a worried look, to which Gunn is thankfully oblivious. He corners some trainees in the annex behind the bullpen, and asks them to help Bill move the filing boxes from his office to the conference room.

While Gunn’s back is turned, Holden removes the soggy animal cracker from his pocket and drops it into the trash, wishing fervently, deeply, and oh so wearily that he could shrink himself down and crawl in beside it.

Chapter Text

The meeting with Gunn is utter agony. Holden tries his best not to seem on edge, but the longer he listens to Bill and Wendy going over details from report sections that he ought to have written himself, the more he feels his composure slipping away. His knees are trembling beneath the table, and the racing thoughts he’d previously suppressed are coming back now with redoubled force. 

He thinks about winding up on the outskirts of Maryport. About footslogging over gravelly asphalt in the pitch-black of night. About leaving his car on the side of the road. 

Oh shit, his car.

Bill promised he would call somebody about having it towed, but Holden’s not so sure he did. He hasn’t mentioned it yet today. Maybe Holden should ask. Or he could simply handle the situation himself like a normal fucking adult. Because, really, it shouldn’t be Bill’s job to clean up after him all the time. He probably had no business making Bill a party to this whole mess in the first place, but it’s done now, and he can’t take it back. He can’t do anything, apparently. Can’t function at work. Can’t find his car. Can’t remember. He still can’t remember. He can’t—

“Cat got your tongue there, Holden?”

“What?” He blinks to attention and realises that Gunn is staring at him expectantly. Fuck, what were they talking about? He sits up as straight as he possibly can and begins leafing through papers, futilely trying to get himself caught up to speed. “S-sorry, I didn’t—”

“We were just wondering if you still had the notes from your very first interview with Kemper,” Wendy explains delicately, “to include as supplemental material for his compliance report. From a funding perspective, that session predates the official start date of the study, so we’re not obligated to share the notes, but Ted feels—and I agree—that it couldn’t hurt to be thorough.” 

“Oh. Um… yeah. I—” Holden pauses to choke down a lump of rising bile. “I have those. I can make copies.”

“Great.” Wendy forces a small smile and then turns back to Gunn. “Is that all for supplementary materials, then, sir?”

Gunn nods haltingly in response. He inhales with a sort of bemused sniff, and then fractionally inclines his head. “Holden, are you… all right?” he finally asks, eyes narrowing in scrutiny.

Holden suddenly feels a fresh beading of sweat pouring off his forehead. “All right?” he parrots nervously.

“You just seem a bit… well, frankly, very unlike your usual self.”

“I, uh…” Holden’s heart begins to beat like a drum. He’s completely bereft of ideas. “I just—”

“That’s actually on me, sir,” interrupts Bill. He flashes Holden a brief, conspiratorial glance and then lights up at Gunn with an affected grin. “I um… I may have pressured Holden into having a whiskey or several last night, in celebration of finishing up the reports. Only thing is, I forgot what an absolute lightweight he is. The kid can interrogate a sociopath like nobody’s business but—between you and me—he can’t hold his liquor for shit.”

For just a moment, the conference room is deadly silent. Then Gunn breaks out into a throaty laugh, and the pall immediately lifts.

“Ah, a hangover!” he says, clapping Holden on the back. “I understand entirely. Say no more.”

Holden mumbles an apology, but Gunn waves him off. “It’s fine, just don’t make a habit of it. We don’t want anything dulling those famous insights of yours! Though, truth be told, I had my fair share of hangovers at Stanford and still managed to maintain a perfect GPA. In fact, this one semester,” he chortles to himself, “I was at a swim meet, all the way out in Minneapolis—of all places—and my teammates and I, we decided…”

Gunn continues his tale of drunken college antics with animated fondness, yet Holden barely hears a word of it. He’s too distracted by the barrage of fragmented images swirling through his brain to really process his surroundings, save for the sound of the fluorescent lights, which he’s sure are becoming louder and louder with each passing second. It’s overwhelming, and confusing, and he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know how any of this happened. Can’t remember, can’t—

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

He balls his hands into tightly clenched fists and pulses them in rhythm with the mantra. It’s less effective than it was before, but he still somehow manages to make it through the rest of the meeting without falling apart. He even musters up a wan smile in response to the orange-juice-and-egg-yolk hangover cure Gunn suggests on his way out the door.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. 

Once Gunn is finally gone, Bill walks around to the other side of the table and carefully pulls Holden up by the arm. 

“Okay, c’mon,” he says, sliding back into the same measured, assuasive tone of voice he used earlier that morning. And Holden is completely powerless to do anything other than shuffle along as Bill gently frogmarches him into Wendy’s office and settles him down onto the lumpy, grey sofa.

Bill perches himself on the nearby credenza, while Wendy pokes her head out into the bullpen to ensure that nobody is lingering nearby before surreptitiously shutting the door.

“All right.” She sits down in her office chair and swivels to face her colleagues. “We’ll keep our voices low, but I don’t think there are too many people out there today.” 

“TGIF, huh?” remarks Bill wryly.

Wendy furrows her brow. “Do you need another minute, Holden? I know sitting through that meeting must have been challenging for you. I’m so sorry.”

“No, I’m…” Holden squirms. “It’s fine. I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?”

He swallows thickly. Nods. It’s a lie, of course. He isn’t all right—far from it. There are droplets of sweat pooling at the nape of his neck, and it feels like his chest has been stuffed into a pressure cooker. But he can’t just say that. Not here; not to Wendy and Bill. They’ve put up with enough. And, besides, who knows? Maybe if he repeats the same lie often enough, he’ll actually convince himself that it’s the truth.

“Okay, then.” Wendy pauses for a beat and then leans forward. “Holden, I realise this may be difficult, but if possible, I’d really like for you to tell me about yesterday. It’s just… Bill and I, understandably, have some concerns, and we feel that getting the whole picture may be beneficial.”

He nods again, but doesn’t speak—isn’t entirely sure he’ll be able to. His mouth is so dry, it feels like somebody forced him to swallow down the entire Mojave Desert with a sawdust chaser. His throat isn’t much better.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

Wendy sighs. “Maybe you could start by telling us what happened after you left work yesterday?”

“I… I drove back to Fredericksburg,” he eventually croaks out, “to get the Rusk transcript.”

“All right. But my understanding is that you ultimately didn’t get the transcript. So when exactly did you alter course?”

Alter course. Leave it to Wendy to find the most clinically detached way to ask somebody precisely when and how they screwed everything up.

“I, um… I had to pull over. At this gas station. Not—it was a different one from where…” he glances over at Bill and grimaces. “Anyway, I wasn’t actually that far from home, but I couldn’t… I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Not feeling well in what sense?” 

He fidgets wordlessly.

“Holden,” prods Wendy gently, “were you having a panic attack? Is that what you’re implying?”

“Yes.” His response is barely audible.

“Okay. And what specifically precipitated the episode?”

“I don’t know, I…” he exhales shakily, “I guess I felt bad about forgetting the transcript—and about some other stuff, too—and it all kind of… came to a head.” 

“Other stuff. Like… Atlanta?” Wendy speculates.

Holden cringes. It occurs to him that Bill probably told her what he said about not coping well with the inactive status designation, which presumably means she also knows he ran out of Valium a while back. Great. Of course, it makes sense. They always compile detailed dossiers on their interview subjects. There’s no reason why Bill and Wendy would cease to be thorough just because the subject today is him.

He makes a strangled sound in the affirmative and tries to avoid Wendy’s unyielding gaze.

“Do you think about Atlanta a lot?” she presses.

Holden nods reluctantly.

“In what ways?”

Every muscle in his body goes tense. He doesn’t want to talk about this. He can’t. Because there aren't words for it; not really. The way Camille Bell and those other mothers looked at him, knowing well before Holden did that he was just leaving them with more broken promises and grief? He can’t describe that. The morass of despair he was plunged into upon learning that those kids would never get justice because he didn’t do his job well enough? It defies explanation. He crumpled right in front of his television set that night and part of him never got up again. He’s still there, and always will be, and no language in the world will ever have a vocabulary bleak enough to put that feeling into words.

“I don’t want to talk about Atlanta right now,” he whispers, not wholly able to mask the catch in his voice.

Wendy’s face softens a fraction. “All right,” she says evenly. “That’s fine. Let’s just go back to yesterday, okay?”

“Okay.”

“So,” she eyes him cautiously, “you were pulled over at a gas station, having a panic attack. Then what?”

“I tried to calm down.”

“And did you?”

Holden shakes his head. “I was getting there, I think, but then I saw something that… upset me.”

Gruesome scenes from that night in Braddock begin to flicker through his mind. The gunshot. The scream. Blood on his sleeve. Puffy eyes. 

“Can you elaborate on that?” prompts Wendy heedfully.

Holden has to fight off the sudden urge to jump up and bolt for the door. This was a mistake; a terrible mistake. He should never have agreed to come in this morning. Should never have even gotten out of bed. But he can’t get cold feet—not right now. Bill and Wendy just covered for him in front of Gunn. Outright lied on his behalf. He has an obligation to set things right. Or at least to try.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

“Sissy Miller,” he finally blurts out, burying his face into his hands.

Wendy looks searchingly at Bill, who responds with a gallic shrug. “That an ex-girlfriend of yours, or something?” he asks, frowning.

Holden pulls a face. “No, she…” he shifts uncomfortably. Screws his eyes shut. The thought of speaking aloud about Cody Miller’s suicide makes him feel deeply nauseous, but he knows remaining silent is hardly a viable option. He sucks in a breath and tries to find his voice again, eventually managing to force a jumble of stilted sentences from his lips.

The effort takes a lot out of him. By the time Holden’s done telling Bill and Wendy everything about Braddock, and the blood, and the brown Pinto Runabout, he can barely sit up straight. His chest is heaving and his stomach seems to be gunning for a spot on the next Olympic men’s gymnastics team.

“Wait, lemme make sure I’ve got this straight,” mulls Bill, once Holden has finished speaking. “Sissy Miller is this guy’s wife? The one who shot himself?”

Holden gives a nod.

“Shit,” Bill stares down at him, clearly appalled, “did she recognise you?”

“I… I don’t think she saw me,” he murmurs raspily. “I definitely saw her though, and after that… everything just… it all just went blank.”

“Blank?” probes Wendy, visibly concerned.

Holden shudders. This is the part of the story he’s most loath to get into; the part that makes him physically sick with fear. Because he doesn’t know.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

“It… it’s difficult to explain. I was at this gas station, having a panic attack, and then… I don’t know, it was like my brain just… just turned itself off.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not really sure,” he admits abashedly. “The next thing I knew, I was still in my car, but it was dark out, and I… I was parked alongside this country road, with no idea of how I got there. It turned out the car was out of gas, so I… I walked, for about ten minutes, maybe? Until I f-found that p-payphone, and then…”

He throws a sheepish look over in Bill’s direction. His heart thumps wildly.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

“So, if I’m understanding all of this correctly,” begins Wendy, her forehead creasing, “you’re saying there are roughly nine and half hours from yesterday that you’re not able to account for—is that right?”

Holden hangs his head.

“Jesus Christ, kid,” Bill exclaims under his breath. He sounds surprisingly sad about the whole thing, and Holden wonders if he ought to apologise again. He doesn’t want Bill to be burdened any further by this fiasco—or Wendy, either, for that matter. He just wants it all to be over; wants to sleep for a million years and never think about yesterday again.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

Wendy pauses thoughtfully for a moment, and then reaches for a dark green, leather-bound tome from the bookshelf behind her desk. “Do either of you know what a fugue state is?” she asks, flipping through to the table of contents.

“N-no…” squeaks Holden. His insides clench. Both he and Bill shake their heads. “W-what is that?”

“I believe the DSM-III has it listed under a slightly different name, now,” she replies, still skimming over the front matter, “but, broadly speaking, it’s a rare subtype of dissociative amnesia with a certain set of defining characteristics.”

“What, like a blackout?” queries Bill.

“To an extent. But blackouts are generally brought on by chemical changes in the brain; recreational drugs, insulin levels, that sort of thing.”

“Right, that was an issue with Brudos—he had hypoglycaemia.”

Bitter acid rises in Holden’s throat. “It’s like Brudos?” he asks, quailing with fear. Wendy shoots Bill a pointed look.

“No,” she assures, making a placating hand gesture, “that isn’t what I’m saying. Here, look at this,” she slides the book across the desk and taps at one of the entries with her forefinger, “under the heading for ‘psychogenic fugue’; that’s the updated name.” 

Something about the term makes Holden flinch. He shrinks back, wrapping both arms around his belly, and then gazes up imploringly at Bill, who puffs out his cheeks with a weary sigh.

“All right, fine. Lemme see it,” Bill says grudgingly. He fishes the reading glasses out from his front pocket, and then reaches for the book, squinting briefly at the text before reading it aloud:

“Psychogenic fugue, also known as a fugue state, is a dissociative event caused by extreme psychological trauma. An affected individual will temporarily lose their sense of personal identity and impulsively wander or travel away from their home or place of work. They often become confused about who they are and may sometimes exhibit highly uncharacteristic behaviours…”

He stops reading and looks over at Wendy, nonplussed. “Fuck, Wen. You really think this is what happened?”

“I certainly think it’s likely,” she answers, making a steeple of her fingers. “Obviously, I’m not in a position to make a formal diagnosis at this stage, but… the fact that Holden was already in a state of extreme psychological distress at the moment he was confronted with the memory of this earlier trauma, paired with both the amnesia and unplanned travel, at the very least suggests…”

Holden doesn’t really hear the rest of Wendy’s sentence. He can see that her lips are moving—can perceive that she’s producing sound—yet he somehow lacks the ability to make out anything more distinct. It’s like he’s deep underwater, or moving through Jell-O. Like a radio is playing at the end of a long hallway, and the broadcast is in an ancient language he doesn’t know how to speak.

Part of the problem, of course, is the lights. They’ve become so loud he can almost feel them vibrating against the walls of his skull. But there’s something else, too; something sticky, and hot, and cloying deep inside of him. It’s made up of words, he’s pretty sure. Made up of the words Bill read from the book. They’re echoing in his brain, and churning in his gut—roiling inside of him like a note in a bottle someone tossed out to sea.

“You still okay, kid?” Bill’s voice somehow manages to cut through the din. “You’re looking kinda pale.”

Holden breathes heavily. “I… I don’t feel so good,” he garbles out. “I think I might… think I’m gonna…” 

In one swift motion, he slides off the sofa and drops to his knees, dry heaving once, twice, three, times, before retching violently into Wendy’s waste paper basket. He tries in vain to push the nausea back down, but that only serves to delay the inevitable. In a matter of seconds, he’s doubled over again, spewing out more chunks of bile and Egg McMuffin. Sweat drips from his pores and makes him shiver uncontrollably. 

“I’m sorry,” he bleats, once all stomach contents have been thoroughly squeezed out of him. Hot tears spring forward and blur his vision. “I-I’m s-s-sorry.” 

The burn of shame blooms across Holden’s face. Something like a sob escapes from the back of his throat, and he doesn’t think he can be here anymore. Doesn’t think he can withstand the humiliation. He can’t—

“Shhh.” A sturdy pair of hands come to soothe him, rubbing his back in gentle circles. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” 

Holden just whimpers feebly. He’s completely worn to a frazzle now. It’s all he can do to keep his head from lolling forward as the hands gingerly pull him up by the armpits and guide him back to the sofa.

“Just hold tight, bud; Wendy’s gonna bring you some water, and then we’ll get you all cleaned up.”

“M'sorry,” Holden slurs again; it’s the only thing he can think of to say. Somebody holds a cup to his lips, but he can’t seem to swallow all that much without coughing. He feels a damp cloth wiping at the corners of his mouth, and then lets the hands help him out of his jacket, shoes, and tie.

“All right, just lie down, now.” Bill sounds very far away, but Holden still obeys; he’s too exhausted not to. “That’s it; attaboy.”

He moans softly and curls up on his side. The nausea is slowly beginning to ebb away, leaving his body worn raw with fatigue. He tries apologising again to Wendy and Bill, but the words don’t come out right, and he’s promptly ordered to hush. He’s vaguely aware of something—possibly a coat—being caringly tucked around him; Holden nestles his cheek against the thick, woolly material and then lets himself drift off to sleep.

Chapter Text

He wakes up later, stiff-necked and sore, with the imprint of a seam line pressed into his face. In his bleary haze, Holden wonders if he’s back in Atlanta, balled up in the backseat of some smoky patrol car, while Bill waits impatiently for the end of a stakeout shift. But then he sees the sofa cushions, and the oh-so-familiar fluorescent lights, and it all comes flooding back to him, one embarrassing freeze-frame at a time. 

Fuck. Fuck. He was supposed to come in today to make things right, not worse. There’s no way he won’t be kicked out of the BSU now. Wendy and Bill were already sick of him when he was just a know-it-all with a panic disorder—why the hell would they elect to keep him around after all this? Not that he blames them, of course; Holden wouldn’t want to work with himself either.

He blinks downward and belatedly notices that the makeshift blanket he’s been burrowing under this whole time is actually Wendy’s plushy new camel hair coat. The realisation makes him blench; there are probably streaks of his sweat all over the lining now. Well, at least you didn’t puke on it, he tells himself derisively. On a day as catastrophic as this, he supposes that might as well be counted as a win. 

Holden heaves a sigh and then carefully wriggles out from underneath the coat. He makes an attempt to sit himself upright, but the change in position sends a dull throb radiating from the back of his head. He pushes the heels of his palms against his eyelids and watches hypnotically as large purple splotches swim across his line of vision. 

“Oh, you’re awake.”

He flutters his eyes open just in time to catch sight of Wendy breezing back into the office, carrying a small stack of files. She drops them hastily onto her blotter, and then leans against the edge of the desk, brow furrowed. 

“How are you feeling?” she asks, not-so-subtly giving Holden a thorough look-see. “Is the nausea still bothering you?”

“M’okay. Head hurts a little.” He sniffles and wipes at his eyes. “What time is it?” 

“Just after four.”

After four? Christ. They finished their meeting with Gunn at roughly ten thirty. That means he’s been asleep for over five hours. He glances uneasily around the office and sees that the waste paper basket has a new liner in it. His jacket and tie are hanging nearby from the doorknob, looking rumpled but otherwise fairly pristine. Just another mess of yours that Bill and Wendy were left to clean up, his mind admonishes. Great job. Fantastic.

“I think there may still be a few tablets of aspirin in the first aid kit,” remarks Wendy helpfully. “Why don’t I run down the hall and take a look for you?”

“I… I appreciate the offer, but I really don’t want to impose any more than—”

“It’s fine. Bill will want to know you’re awake, anyway; he’s been worried about you.” 

Holden blushes. Obviously, it’s been a relief knowing that Bill isn’t angry with him anymore, but this sudden outpouring of sympathy coming from his usually gruff partner is unexpected to say the least, and more than just a little bit embarrassing. Really, if he’s being honest with himself, it’s actually straight up mortifying. Holden has no idea why he decided yesterday to drive halfway across the state to some desolate country backwater, but in this particular moment, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea; he could hide in that abandoned service station and never show his face ever again. He doubts anyone would miss him.

Wendy heads off to ransack the first aid kit, leaving Holden alone on the sofa. The second she’s out the door, he cups a hand over his mouth and tries to determine exactly how bad his breath smells. There’s been a sort of gritty, acidic taste lingering on his tongue ever since he woke up, but it’s difficult to know how much of that is scentable without doing a little bit of firsthand reconnaissance. 

Thankfully, it turns out not to be all that bad; after a few big whiffs, Holden is pretty sure there’s only a very faint odour, and that it smells more oversweet than outright offensive. It’s not ideal, but dear god, he’ll take it.

Granted, bad breath is probably the least of his worries. The really concerning thing right now is his psyche. He’s literally going crazy. Having a panic disorder was bad enough; now he’s dealing with the after effects of a major dissociative episode to boot. What was the official term, again? Right—psychogenic fugue. Fuck, it even sounds bad. Like the kind of thing that only happens on daytime soap operas. And even after all the crying, and the talking, and the goddamn puking, he still can’t remember, has absolutely zero recollection—

His troubled thoughts are abruptly cut short by a soft knocking at the door. 

“Hey, kid.” He lifts his head to see Bill leaning in the doorway, a sad smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He gives Holden a brief once-over and then walks around to the other side of the desk. “Heard you were up and at ‘em.”  

“Well… up, anyway,” Holden responds, raking a hand through his probably unkempt hair. He pats it down a little and hopes Bill doesn’t notice. Needless to say, in the grand scheme of it all, it’s a fairly trivial thing to care about, but he just can’t help it.

Bill chuckles. “Better than nothing,” he quips, settling himself in Wendy’s chair. “Once we got you down, you were out like a light.”

“I, um…” Holden feels his shoulders hunching up, “I guess I was still tired.” 

“Yeah, no shit. Wendy and I sat here talking for almost two hours and you barely moved a muscle; I think the snoring was the only thing keeping you from being a dead ringer for a stiff.”

“I was snoring?”

“You could say that.”

Jesus fuck. Fresh feelings of anxiety and shame begin gnawing at Holden’s gut. “I-I’m really, really sorry about all of this. I swear, I never meant—”

“Holden, it’s okay.”

“No,” he insists, his voice almost breaking, “it’s not. I don’t… I don’t understand what’s wrong with me, Bill. I mean…” he gestures vaguely at Wendy’s copy of the DSM-III, which is still sitting out on the corner of her desk, “maybe now I should, but it’s just… it was—” 

“It was a lot to take in. Wendy said you probably weren’t ready to process it, or… something. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s not… I mean, you shouldn’t feel…” 

Bill trails off. He lets out a mildly frustrated grunt and then drags a hand over his face.

“Look,” he spits out finally, “I know I haven’t always been the most sensitive about all your… stuff. But I promise, from now on, I’m really gonna—” 

His words are interrupted by the sound of clacking heels. They both look over as Wendy comes striding back into the office, her hands full with aspirin tablets and a lightly steaming mug.

“Here,” she says, dropping two oblong pills into Holden’s palm. He pops them quickly onto his tongue.

“Wha’thith?” he asks, peering down as Wendy holds the mug handle out toward his chest.

“Peppermint tea. I thought it might help to settle your stomach.”

Holden nods gratefully. He swallows the aspirin, and then sighs with relief as the minty-fresh brew washes away all the lingering tangs of vomit. Of course, he’ll still have to do a thorough brushing later on, but this is definitely a big improvement.

Wendy adjusts the hem of her skirt and then sits down beside him on the sofa, her hands loosely folded over her knees. She glances momentarily over at Bill, and then turns back to Holden, her eyes soft with professional concern.

“Holden,” she begins, speaking even more delicately than before, “I understand that you must be feeling extremely overwhelmed and vulnerable right now, and the last thing I want is to push you into talking about issues you’re not emotionally ready to discuss. However—”

Holden gulps with apprehension. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. 

“—I also think, if you’re amenable, that it would be productive for the three of us to bring our earlier conversation to some sort of conclusion. Do you feel that’s something you would be capable of handling right now? Or do you need more time? Because we could always revisit—”

“It’s okay,” he blurts out, his voice shaking slightly. Obviously, he doesn’t want to keep talking about how impossibly fucked up he is, but it’s probably best at this point just to rip off the BandAid. 

“You sure, bud?” Bill flashes him an uncertain look. “Because it’s really fine if you’re not ready.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Holden whispers, giving an almost imperceptive nod. He places the mug of tea on Wendy’s desk and then straightens himself up, quickly smoothing out a few wrinkles from his slacks. “I… I want to.”

Bill shrugs. “Okay,” he responds, unsubtly raising his eyebrows at Wendy. “Over to you, Doc.”

“Well…” she smiles grimly, “there are really two points I think we ought to address at this stage, the first one being plans for treatment.”

The ghost of a chill threatens at the base of Holden’s spine. He breathes in sharply to ward it off, pushing his knuckles deep into the upholstery.

“Holden, have you sought any professional help for the panic attacks? Talked to anyone about managing your anxiety or depression symptoms long-term?”

“I… I talked to you,” he mutters, his face growing hot, “at the Command Post.”

“Yes, but that was one conversation, over eighteen months ago. By your own admission, you’ve been struggling to keep your mental health in check since at least mid-June. You’re saying there hasn’t been any other follow-up with a doctor or therapist in that time?”

Holden shakes his head. He understands how irresponsible it must seem, letting his panic disorder get this out of hand, but it wasn’t like that. He wanted to get help; was desperate for it. The day after his Valium ran out, Holden actually tried phoning a local psychiatry practice twice, only to chicken out both times and hang up on the receptionist. For all the want in the world, he couldn’t go through with it—couldn’t run the risk of becoming too dependent on the benzos, or jeopardising the career he had worked so hard to build.

And besides, what right did Holden have to think he deserved any relief from the pain he was experiencing, anyway? He failed all those children in Atlanta. He let down their grieving mothers. He destroyed Bill’s marriage, brought the Wade family to ruin, and forced Shepard into an early retirement. Who’s to say the panic attacks weren’t just payback—a sort of divine retribution for his monstrous ego?

No, it wasn’t carelessness that led to this situation; it was karma.

“All right,” states Wendy, matter-of-factly, “in that case… I’d like for you to see a former colleague of mine, Dr Larry Alpert. He’s a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Georgetown, with a research background in post-combat stress disorders. He retired from academia a few years ago, but he still maintains a part-time clinical practice in Dupont Circle. I spoke to him earlier this afternoon, and he’s agreed to take you on as a patient—if you're willing to go, that is.”

Holden frowns. “You already talked to him about me?”

“I didn’t give him your name yet, or divulge anything personal beyond telling him about the panic attacks and the dissociative episode,” she assures. “And if you would rather see a different psychiatrist of your choosing, that’s certainly fine, too. But I’ve known Larry for years, and I can, at the very least, promise that he’ll be both empathetic and discreet.” 

“Discreet,” repeats Holden, nervously scratching at his cheek. “So… Gunn won’t have to know about it? Y-you’re not going to tell him about yesterday?”

“Between the Bureau’s budgetary issues and Gunn’s investment in your interrogation skills, Bill and I feel it’s best for the unit if we can keep everything just between the three of us—”

Oh, thank god. Maybe he can still salvage just a little bit of his dignity here, after all. 

“—presuming, of course, that we’ll have your full cooperation going forward. In other words, you’ll adhere to a treatment plan, and consent to some monitoring on our part until everyone’s satisfied that you’ve made enough progress.”

Or maybe not.

“Monitoring?” he asks leerily. He can’t help but to notice it sounds an awful lot like ‘babysitting.’ 

Wendy and Bill share another one of their furtive glances. “Well, that brings me onto our second point of discussion,” she says measuredly. “Larry unfortunately can’t fit you in until the last week of January. Unless you would rather find another psychiatrist with earlier availability—which, again, is fine—that leaves us with the question of how we’re going to manage your mental health symptoms between now and then.” 

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

“Initially, I was going to suggest that you take a short leave of absence over the holiday period, but Bill feels it would be better to keep you here on light duty, and I concede his point; if you’re at work, we can easily monitor your emotional equilibrium, and I can provide assessment tools and coping strategies to help mitigate your stress. Is that an arrangement you might be open to?” 

Holden stares unseeingly at the floor. He doesn’t really know how to feel about any of this. On one hand, the proposal is more than fair—perhaps even generous. He fucked up, and fell apart, and if his colleagues wanted to send him off packing to some dead-end desk job processing NAT files instead of offering to keep his breakdown underwraps, frankly, it would serve him right. 

On the other hand, though… well, he would almost rather jump off the Cobb Parkway Bridge than to endure six long weeks of Bill and Wendy babysitting him like this. Can’t they see he’s already been humiliated enough? Granted, he would probably be even more miserable if they forced him to take a leave of absence, but still; it’s not really much of a choice. 

“Kid?” prompts Bill, ducking his head slightly to meet Holden’s gaze, “You still in there?”

Holden nods haltingly.

“Look, I promise we’re not trying to make you feel bad here. I just… I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be on your own right now. You get that, right?”

“Yeah, I get it, Bill.” He’s barely able to speak around the knot in his throat. Everything about this conversation is mortifying, and more than anything, he just wishes it would stop. 

Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

“You, uh… you got any plans for the holidays? Spending a few days in Milwaukee or wherever?”

“It’s Greendale,” Holden corrects quietly, “and no; I’m staying here this year. My parents are going on a Scandinavian holiday cruise with some of my dad’s Air Force buddies.” 

“A Scandinavian cruise?” Bill nearly lapses into a smirk. “Well, that’s… different.”

“Yeah, I don’t know, either. It’s…” Holden bites his lower lip. He’s not really sure why he divulged that detail. He almost never talks about his parents—certainly not at work. That sort of chat usually feels so unprofessional. But he supposes they’re already well past that now. 

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

“Anyway, I’m not going anywhere. Unless…” he casts a sheepish glance in Wendy’s direction. “C-could it happen again? The… fugue thing?”

She taps her chin thoughtfully. “Fugue states tend to be one-off events, but it is technically possible for them to recur. I don’t believe that’s too likely to happen in your case, but we can’t rule it out entirely. It’s certainly one of the main reasons why I think establishing a support plan is so critical right now. If we can successfully manage your stress, that will go a long way in preventing any repeat episodes.”

Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

“We have about eight weeks until we hear back from the DHHS,” she continues, “which luckily buys us some time in terms of our work. I think the only major project will be sifting through all of the consult requests, and Bill has already offered to take the lead on that. You can perform light tasks as needed—nothing too demanding—and then hopefully we’ll start to see some improvements once the sessions begin with Dr Alpert, and you’re being properly medicated again. Does that sound all right?”

“I guess so,” Holden mumbles. It’s certainly nothing to be enthused about, but what choice does he have?

“Okay, good. Do you have any questions? Concerns?”

“Will I…” his whole body twitches, “will I ever remember what happened yesterday, during those nine and half hours?”

Wendy regards him with such a sympathetic look, Holden almost wishes he could take the question back.

“It’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility,” she imparts gently. “Generally, though, once an affected individual regains awareness, their memories of any events that took place during the psychogenic fugue are no longer retained. I couldn’t say at this stage what your particular experience will be. Either way, I don’t think it’s something you need to be hyperfocusing on. Instead, I would concentrate on moving forward with our plans, and making sure that you feel safe and supported in getting the help you need—all right?”

“Yeah, all right.” It makes him bristle to be patronised so much, but Holden knows it’s pointless to complain. He brought this on himself, after all.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. 

“Okay, Kemosabe,” puffs Bill, as he rises from Wendy’s chair. “I think that’s enough heavy lifting for today. Let’s head out.”

Those last three words are like music to Holden’s ears. Taking Bill’s lead, he hastily slips on his shoes, and then jumps up to collect his tie and jacket from the doorknob.

“There was a little bit of expectoration on your tie,” Wendy tells him, “but I managed to get it out.” 

Expectoration. Because Wendy is either too polite or too clinical to just come out and say he drooled on himself.  

“I didn’t notice any major stains on your jacket, but there were some… cookie crumbs, I think… lining one of the pockets, so I cleaned that out, too.”

“Oh,” murmurs Holden. He’d almost forgotten about the animal cracker incident. “Thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, not just that, obviously. I… I know you both did a lot on my behalf today and I really am—”

“Of course,” interrupts Wendy, clearly biting back a smile, “I’m glad I could help. Goodnight, Holden.”

“Yeah, g’night.” He takes a few steadying breaths, squares his shoulders, and then follows Bill out into the bullpen.

╭─────────╮

They drive back to Fredericksburg in relative silence. 

It’s just fine with Holden. He doesn’t really feel like talking, and figures Bill probably prefers the quiet, anyway. Besides, he’s still kind of sleepy. His eyelids have been getting progressively heavier since they pulled onto the I-95, and his thoughts keep drifting vaguely out of focus. He supposes it’s better that way; if his thoughts are dull around the edges, maybe the pain will be, too.

Then again, that’s probably how he lost control yesterday; he let his brain dull everything to the point of shutdown, only to find himself later in a cold, unfamiliar place, with a brand new set of terrifying problems. Because he sows disaster wherever he goes. Braddock, Atlanta, Maryport—they all have the giant stain of him all over them, just like Shepard’s career.

Braddock, Atlanta, Maryport. Braddock, Atlanta, Maryport.

It’s strange how his biggest demons are just coordinates on a map. In a way, it makes sense; his whole life could probably be distilled into a string of unhappy places. Brooklyn, New York. Box Elder, South Dakota. Bellevue, Nebraska. Knob Noster, Missouri. Greendale, Wisconsin. They moved four times when he was a kid, at the ages of one, six, ten, and fourteen. His parents still live in Greendale, but it isn’t really home. For a while, Holden believed the basement at Quantico had become his first bona fide home, but he sees now that thought was stupidly naive.

He still doesn’t know why he told Bill about his parents’ cruise earlier. Maybe just because he talked to his mom on the phone a few days ago, and she sounded impossibly excited about the whole thing. Holden personally doesn’t get the appeal, but that’s irrelevant so long as she’s happy.

His mom was sick a lot when he was growing up. Young Holden would frequently come home from school to find her visibly shaking in bed, choking back tears as she pressed a hot water bottle tightly against her abdomen. He’d fix himself a snack and then tidy up the house so that his father wouldn’t get into a huff later on about the place being a pigsty. Then he’d curl up next to her with one of his Hardy Boys mysteries, reading aloud while she lovingly stroked his hair.

Sometimes he would show her his special casebook—a small, pocket-size notepad he bought at Kresge’s for seventeen cents, in which he wrote down copious clues and theories so that he could try to crack the case before Frank and Joe. His mother would gush about how sweet and clever he was, and then he’d help her out of bed to get dinner ready just before his dad came home from whichever Air Force base they were living near at the time.

Holden never showed the casebook to his dad; knew he wouldn’t have approved. His father always complained that he read too much. That Holden should be outside, playing sports or climbing trees, not holed up indoors with his nose stuck in a book.

“He needs to toughen up, Marion. Get a little fresh air into his lungs; build some character.”

“Holden has plenty of character; he just doesn’t like it when the other boys play rough.”

“That’s my entire point! Boys are supposed to play rough; it’s their goddamn nature. Come on, do you really want him to be branded as a poindexter for the rest of his life? Or worse—a sissy?”

“Les, shhh! Do you want him to hear you?”

In retrospect, he probably did.

The tacit disapproval didn’t really let up until his sophomore year of high school, when Holden finally decided to go out for the JV cross country team, partially just to get his dad off his back. It worked, more or less, but the tension between them never quite went away. It’s hard to love a weird kid, he supposes—especially when that kid is still a weirdo at the age of thirty-one.

The car rumbles to a stop, and Holden forcibly groans himself awake. He squints heavily in anticipation of being dazzled by the sight of his complex’s brightly-lit lobby, but it’s not the entrance to his apartment building Holden sees when he finally opens his eyes. Instead, he finds himself staring out at a quiet suburban street, and a large, white ‘For Sale’ sign that’s been staked into the neglected lawn of an oddly familiar raised-style ranch.

“Bill?” Holden blinks at his partner with a puzzled frown. “Why are we at your house?”

“Just gonna pack up a few things to bring back to your place,” replies Bill, casually stubbing out his cigarette before yanking the key from the ignition. “Shouldn’t take too long. C’mon, I’ll get you a beer while you wait.”

Holden is brought up short.

“Wait—back to my place? As in… what, you’re staying over?”

“Yeah…” Bill turns and looks at him askance. “Kid, come on; we talked about this.”

“Did we?”

“Well, when I said it wasn’t a good idea for you to be left on your own, what the hell did you think I meant?”

“I-I-I thought you were talking about work,” splutters Holden. “You know, like… the whole leave of absence thing. Not… not this, Bill. Jesus.” 

They lapse again into an uneasy silence. Bill restively drums his fingers against the steering wheel, emitting a long, drawn-out ‘fuck’ under his breath for good measure. Holden knows he probably ought to say something more, but there’s a bitter lump forming at the back of his throat, and he’s afraid if he tries to speak up again, he’ll cry. Crazy or not, getting snot all over Bill’s dashboard is unlikely to do him any favours.

Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

Bill scrubs a hand over his face and sighs. “Look, I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear,” he says eventually, “but this is just how it’s gotta go, all right? I mean, for Chrissake, Holden, you literally have fucking amnesia. What the hell else do you expect me to do with that, huh?” 

Holden stares dumbly into his lap.

“I’m not trying to embarrass you—really, I’m not. But this is some serious shit, and with everything Wendy said about repeat episodes and stuff, I just… until we know more about what’s going on in that head of yours, I’m not letting you out of my fucking sight. And you can be mad about that if you want—I probably would be, too—but… this is what we’re doing now, and that’s it.”

And that’s it.

It’s funny—he used to be a hostage negotiator. Used to make bargains with angry, desperate perpetrators waving around guns. Taught classes on it, even. He did entire lectures on de-escalation and communication; gave instruction on how to find commonalities with people making demands. 

Yet, somehow, in this moment, Holden is completely unable to advocate for himself. 

He can’t argue with Bill about what he’s capable of handling, or push back against being treated like a child—he can’t even muster enough courage to look Bill in the eye. Because there’s almost nothing left of the person he used to be, and he genuinely doesn’t know anymore if that’s good or bad. He doesn’t know anything, really, except that he’s broken; that he’s frightened, and tired, and he wants to go home.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. 

“Okay, Bill,” he utters hoarsely. His bottom lip quivers, and a few stray tears come spilling onto his cheeks. Holden brushes them away and prays it’s dark enough outside that Bill won’t notice.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. 

“Okay. Good.” Bill unbuckles his seatbelt and clambers out of the car. “Let’s get inside, I’m fucking freezing my balls off, here.”

Holden gives a nod. Together, he and Bill trudge across the sloping lawn, and then disappear into the grey, empty house.

Chapter Text

Bill is driving him crazy.

He gets that his colleagues are worried about him—with good cause—and Holden doesn’t want to seem ungrateful for their concern. But gratitude aside, the fact still remains that Bill is driving him up a goddamn wall, and it’s only frickin’ Tuesday. Not exactly off to a flying start. 

It isn’t just the untidiness thing—though that’s certainly a big part of it. Normally, the uncluttered, orderly state of his apartment is something that gives Holden great peace of mind. But with Bill around, it’s a totally different story. Now, suddenly, there are empty beer bottles dotting his coffee table, and hardening globs of toothpaste all over the bathroom sink. Nancy didn’t leave much behind in the way of suitcases, so Bill ended up having to haul most of his stuff over in trash bags. He’s currently got them piled up in a corner of the living room, like a Hefty sack volcano spewing out lava made from dirty undershirts and socks. Holden hasn’t been able to vacuum there in days.

Still, that’s not the worst of it. What’s really grating on his nerves is the hovering. He can barely get a minute’s peace to think without Bill asking him if he’s feeling okay. It’s maddening, and also just plain strange. After all, this is Bill—the same guy who used to snipe at Holden for invading his personal space, and then grumble about how their LEAA funding should cover separate motel rooms. Now he’s acting as if none of that ever happened; as if he didn’t spend the past few months making it abundantly clear how much he resented having to be Holden’s ‘babysitter’ on top of all their other work. It’s a total one-eighty and Holden hasn’t quite managed to wrap his head around it yet. Frankly, if Bill doesn’t stop smothering him like this, he doubts he’ll be able to wrap his head around anything ever again.

He’s lucky, at least, that Bill takes so many cigarette breaks. For all his other bad habits, Bill’s been surprisingly considerate of the fact that Holden lives in a no-smoking unit. He hasn’t tried to light up inside even once. Instead, he simply goes out to his car at regular intervals, leaving Holden blissfully alone for at least ten minutes a pop. It’s just enough time to recharge his batteries—to come up for air before the waves start bearing down on him again.

Occasionally, he’ll sit in a chair with his eyes closed and try to destress with slow, measured breaths, but more often than not, he just spends the time ironing. He realises it’s weird—Bill’s teased him about it more than once now—but the truth is, he finds it soothing. The only problem is that he’s running out of clothes to press. He wonders if maybe Bill would let him iron some of his shirts next; god knows they could use it.

It’s not something he’s too inclined to bring up right now, though. The request would only come off as odd in the present context, and Holden’s a little bit ticked off at the moment, anyway. He probably shouldn’t be—this is ultimately all his own fault—but it’s difficult for him not to feel slightly peeved about the way Bill’s handled the situation with his car.

Basically, by the time they got around to calling AAA for a tow on Saturday morning, the Virginia Department of State Police had seemingly already taken possession of the Nova. However, they couldn’t get any actual confirmation of this until late Monday afternoon, when Bill’s pal, Carl Bauermann, finally rang up with the location of an impound lot in Suffolk. There was some back and forth about burying the official documentation to keep Holden’s DMV record squeaky clean, and then, once that was finally settled, Bill had to arrange for yet another tow truck to haul the car back up to his mechanic in Fredericksburg. 

Holden’s stomach is still in knots from all the uncertainty (what if it turned out his car had actually been stolen? What if he had to disclose details about the psychogenic fugue in order to file an insurance claim or police report?) and although it’s probably ungracious of him to be annoyed, he can’t help but to think that if Bill had just called for a tow early on Friday like he promised, this whole VDSP ordeal could have probably been avoided. 

That didn’t happen, though, so now they’re stuck waiting outside in the drizzly morning cold for a cab to come and take them to the automotive shop, with Holden’s mood actively souring by the minute.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. 

“I know I’ve said this before,” comments Bill, trying to alleviate some of the awkward tension between them, “but you’d be a hell of a lot less fidgety if you smoked.”

Holden shrugs coolly. He realises Bill is trying to be amiable, but he simply isn’t in the right frame of mind for making smalltalk at the moment. His emotions feel far too stormy, and he wishes he could be alone.

Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

“Kid, c’mon,” laments Bill, as he mindlessly flicks the butt of his cigarette out into the complex parking lot, “you can’t seriously still be pouting about this.”

“I’m not pouting. I just don’t see why we couldn’t have taken your car instead.”

Bill gives him an exasperated look. “You know why,” he says reprovingly. “So just drop it, already, huh?”

“Maybe I don’t want to drop it,” Holden mutters back irritably. This really isn’t the time or place to pick a fight—the doorman is standing barely twelve feet away from them—but he just can’t seem to keep things bottled up anymore. Whatever, fuck it. “I mean, honestly; waiting for a cab in this shitty weather because of one roundtrip commute? It’s ridiculous.” 

“Holden—”

“I can still drive, Bill; I’m not some little kid you need to keep under your thumb all the time.”

Bill fixes him with a piercing scowl. “You’re really unbelievable sometimes, d’you know that?”

“What? I’m only trying to make things easier.” 

“Oh, yeah?” The sudden heat in Bill’s voice could melt an iceberg. “Well how about this, Holden: The next time you go jaunting off on one of your little Jack Kerouac psychogenic road trips, why don’t you try to at least end up someplace that’s easier for me to find on a fucking map? Y’know, Norfolk, Baltimore, Myrtle Beach—”

“Bill, I wasn’t—”

“Hey, I hear Hilton Head is nice this time of year; maybe I could get in a few rounds of golf before I peel your ass out of another goddamn phone booth! How does that sound?”

The rebuke hits Holden like a slap in the face. His frustrations immediately bleed away, leaving him wincing with embarrassment and shame. Bill is right; he’s being myopic at best and downright petulant at worst, snapping at his partner over a situation for which he really only has himself to blame. It’s inexcusable. It’s pathetic. He’s pathetic. Because he can never just leave well enough alone. Instead, he has to pick at everything like an unhealed scab, which always results in a horrible, oozing mess, yet he never learns, he doesn’t—

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. 
 
“I-I didn’t mean…” he stammers, as Bill fumingly looms over him. “I sh-shouldn’t have—” 

Before he can say anything else, a light green Impala with a faded ‘taxi’ roof sign comes barreling up the drive and screeches to a halt directly in front of them. 

“One of you Tench?” asks the cabbie, stretching across the front seat to roll down the passenger-side window. “Going to Sal’s Automotive Repair on Kenmore Ave?” 

“Yeah, that’s us,” verifies Bill. “Just one second.” 

He picks up his briefcase, and then grabs Holden roughly by the arm, wrenching him nearer until they’re practically standing hip-to-hip.

“You’re gonna lose the attitude right now and sit your ass down in this cab,” he hisses sharply. They’re so close together, Holden can literally feel Bill breathing down his neck. “We’ll take care of everything at the garage, and then I will drive us to Quantico. And you will not pitch a fit about it, or even so much as mention any of this shit again. Do I make myself clear?” 

Holden nods frantically. He lets Bill hustle him into the backseat of the Impala, and then gazes shrinkingly at his knees. He feels thoroughly chastened, just like he did on that riverbank in Atlanta, yet he seems to be utterly incapable of expressing his contrition. It’s like his mind is frozen, or there’s something slowly pressing on his throat; like he’s suffocating under the weight of all his failures, and he doesn’t mean to be this way, he really doesn’t, but he can’t—

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. 

He takes a few deep breaths and then grips tightly onto the ashtray in the door panel. You cannot have a panic attack, he warns himself as they zip out into the morning traffic. Not here, not now. Not here, not now. He literally just promised Bill that he would behave himself; if he goes back on his word, there’ll be hell to pay. No, he has to get it together. Has to stay calm. Because things aren’t so bad. Really, they’re not. He only fucked up a little bit. Again. Oh god, he fucked up again. He always does this, he always—

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. 

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. 

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

“Hey! Holden! Come on, look alive, bud.” The sound of his partner’s voice makes Holden jolt to attention. He rubs his eyes and then looks over at Bill, who’s flapping a well-worn twenty dollar bill just inches from his face.

“S-sorry, did you say something?” asks Holden muzzily. His heartbeat slows from a gallop to a trot.

“Yeah,” Bill jerks his head over to the cabbie, “we gotta pay. I asked if you could make change for a twenty.”

“Oh,” he didn’t even notice they’d arrived. Christ. “Sure. I can pay for it, actually. Let me just…” he fumbles for his wallet and then clumsily thrusts a fistful of cash over the seat divide. Normally, he would take some time to calculate out the exact tip, but he’s far too disoriented for that at the moment. Hopefully, it’s fine. 

They alight from the cab and walk into the little front office, which smells overwhelmingly of Jiffy Pop and motor oil. From the looks of the faded wood panelling and Concorde-style waiting chairs, Holden’s pretty sure the decor hasn’t been altered since at least 1964.

“Make sure you’ve got your keys, and licence, and stuff ready,” instructs Bill, just before smashing his palm against the call bell on the counter. “Sal’s really doing us a favour with the turnaround, so I don’t wanna—”

“‘Aay, Bill!” A burly man in navy blue coveralls with bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows suddenly emerges from the back, wiping his hands on a threadbare rag. “Just the guy I’ve been waiting for! How’s it going? The engine on that old Plymouth of yours still purring?”

“Like a tiger cub, thanks to you.” 

The man—presumably Sal—snorts and turns to Holden. “You know, he’s never gonna get rid of that piece of junk. You watch; I’ll still be ordering parts for him ten years from now.” 

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” retorts Bill, lightly chuckling as he plucks a starlight mint from a bowl near the register. He tears the wrapper open and then nods in Holden’s direction as he pops the candy into his mouth. “This is Special Agent Holden Ford, by the way—my partner at the Bureau.”

“Hey, yeah,” Sal extends his hand for a shake, “Sal Baggio, how ‘ya doing? I pulled your registration already to get a jump on the paperwork. Everything’s good to go.” 

“Th-thank you,” Holden murmurs, feeling oddly shy all of a sudden. “I—we—really appreciate you rushing this. I hope it wasn’t too much of a hassle.” 

“Please, I wish all my jobs were like this. I just filled her up and took a quick look under the hood. Easy peasy, everything seems fine. You’ll probably want to get the oil changed in about six months, given your mileage—though you’ve got nothin’ on this guy over here. I keep telling him…”

Sal subjects Bill to a few more minutes of good-natured ribbing before they finally get down to business, and Holden can’t help wondering why he’s personally so inept at replicating that same brand of friendly teasing. He can be earnest, or he can be caustic, and there doesn’t seem to be much of an in-between. Every time he takes a crack at being more outgoing, he always ends up behaving like a jerk and pissing people off. It seems safer just not to try in the first place.

Once everything is settled, Sal directs them out to the Nova, which is parked in a small lot, right behind the service bays. It looks fine—no obvious scratches or dings—and Holden is relieved. Maybe now he can let himself relax a little bit. Take a short nap, even. After all, it’s not like he’s going to be the one driving. 

“I’m just gonna grab a smoke before we go,” announces Bill, as he unlocks the car and ushers Holden into the passenger seat. “I’ll make it quick. You good?” 

Holden nods. He watches Bill jog over to the edge of the parking lot, and then slams the door shut to shelter himself from the chilly December wind. It’s definitely weird being on the passenger side of his own vehicle, though he’s pretty sure Bill drove the last time they rented a Chevrolet for work. Perhaps he ought to just spend the day pretending it’s a rental.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. 

With a weary grunt, he reaches back for the seatbelt and pulls it across his body. But before Holden can buckle himself in, he spots something laying out in the footwell, just beside the centre console. Upon further inspection, he realises it’s a handbill—printed out on bright red paper, with two tacky snowman graphics flanking a jumble of text. It wouldn’t be terribly interesting, except for the fact that it’s here in his car, even though Holden’s dead certain he’s never seen it before. Well, as certain as he can be for a person with amnesia, but that’s kind of the whole point.

He catches sight of Bill approaching out the corner of his eye, and quickly stuffs the handbill into his pocket. It’s probably not a good time for him to be keeping secrets from his partner, but there’s a definite chance Bill would just take the flyer away from him ‘for his own good,’ and Holden’s nowhere near ready to let that happen yet. He needs more time to investigate what this might mean about those nine and half hours without worried colleagues buzzing over his shoulder and telling him it’s best to move on. Because he doesn’t want to simply move on; he wants to know. 

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. 

“Okay,” Bill hefts himself into the car and starts tinkering with the mirrors. “Mind if I adjust the seat?” he asks, not really waiting for permission. Holden just shrugs. He usually has everything set exactly how he likes it, but it’s pretty clear that Sal’s moved things around already, anyway, so he might as well be flexible.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. 

Bill starts the car and then gets them underway, deftly navigating through unfamiliar-looking side streets to avoid local traffic congestion. Once they make it onto the interstate, he starts fiddling with the radio dials, flicking through stations with a dissatisfied frown. 

“I can’t get into this New Wave shit all the DJ’s are playing,” he complains, before settling on a generic rock station. “Makes me feel like my old man, saying that, but I’m really not grasping the appeal.” 

Holden doesn’t answer. Isn’t sure he's supposed to. Because Bill seemed pretty intent on making him shut up earlier, and he doesn’t want to get chewed out again for not keeping himself in check. He nods silently and hopes it’s enough.

Bill sighs. 

“Look,” he says, not ungently, “I know you’re upset that Wendy and I flagged up your car with the VDSP, and I understand why, but… honestly, what the fuck else did you expect us to do? I mean, the last time you went missing from work, you ended up chained to a hospital bed for two days, and that was before you started acting all, you know… off. We were worried about you—rightly, I might add. And I’m sorry if you don’t like how we’re handling things, but you’ve clearly been in a bad place for a while now, and Wendy and I are doing our best here to—”

“To protect the unit, I know.” 

“—to keep you safe,” Bill corrects tersely. “I mean, yeah, sure, it’s important to protect the unit. Like Wendy said, we don’t want to seem expendable during a federal budget crisis. But that’ll still happen anyway if you get yourself worked up again and do something stupid—only then, I’ll be down a job and a partner at the same time. And frankly, I don’t really wanna be known as the guy who let his partner get lost and starve to death in the Alleghenies or drive himself off a cliff.”

“You… think I’m going to starve to death in the Alleghenies?”

“I don’t know, Holden! I have no goddamn clue what you’re capable of doing to yourself during these fugue episodes, and more importantly, neither do you. And that’s precisely why you’re not getting behind the wheel of a car right now, or going anywhere by yourself, until Wendy or that shrink you’re gonna see gives us the okay. So can—oh, come on!” 

Bill breaks off to yell at the ancient Cadillac Coupe de Ville in front of them that’s moving at a pace relative to semi-hardened molasses. In the background, a song crackles through the speakers that Holden vaguely remembers hearing at Debbie’s—an upbeat tune with incongruous lyrics that always struck him as being kind of depressing:

I do my best to understand it
But you still mystify and I wanna know why
I pick myself up off the ground
To have you knock me back down, again and again

“So, anyway, are we good?” asks Bill, changing lanes around the Cadillac and picking up speed again. “Because I’m getting really tired of feeling like the bad guy here.” 

“Uh, yeah,” squeaks Holden, straightening up in his seat. The response feels slightly dishonest, given the handbill he’s got hidden in his pocket, but it’s probably better to lie than to cause another fight. “We’re good.” 

“Okay.” Bill relaxes a bit, and then cranks up the dial on the volume. 

You gotta be cruel to be kind, in the right measure
Cruel to be kind, it's a very good sign

He wonders if that’s true—if you can be cruel in the right measure to somebody out of kindness. It doesn’t sound right, but then again, he’s not exactly au fait with the rules of social etiquette. Debbie once told him he had the naivety of a monk, and she was apparently right. He just doesn’t understand people, least of all himself.

The song ends, and something else comes on that Holden doesn’t recognise. Outside, the blustery drizzle turns to showers, with fat drops falling softly onto the hood. He leans his head against the window, shuts his eyes, and lets the pattering rain lull him off to sleep.

╭─────────╮

They keep their fragile peace intact for the remainder of the day.

Holden makes them Denver omelettes for dinner, even though he’s not very hungry. He avoids watching back-to-back reruns of The Odd Couple with Bill by insisting that he needs to do a thorough cleaning up in the kitchen, and then feigns a headache so he can retreat to his room even earlier than usual. It’s not that he’s angry or sulking this time; he just doesn’t have the energy to be even remotely sociable. 

Instead, he reads. Wendy gave him a book called The Relaxation Response, which she said would get him better acquainted with the basics of meditation. He takes notes and even tries a few of the exercises, though his heart’s not really in it tonight. He’ll have to try again when he’s better able to concentrate—whenever that might actually be. For the time being, he’ll probably just stick with ironing.

At some point, he overhears Bill on the phone, speaking with artificial enthusiasm at first, and then switching over to a hushed, bickering tone about halfway through the call. Talking to Brian, and then to Nancy, by the sounds of things. He recognises Bill’s cadence from all the phone calls he had with Nancy during their Road School days. 

It’s still not entirely clear what’s going on between them. Holden knows that Nancy and Brian moved back to Schenectady, where she and Bill both grew up, and that Nancy is currently working for her brother-in-law’s property management company. However, everything beyond that remains a total mystery. Bill calls Brian most nights before bed, but the conversations are typically pretty one-sided, and there’s been zero mention of going back up soon for another visit. 

Holden just hopes Bill hasn’t postponed his next trip out there solely because of him. 

Despite getting into bed at a reasonable hour, it still takes him forever to actually fall asleep, likely because he napped too much in the car earlier. He can’t help it, though—the nightmares always leave him so exhausted during the day. Sometimes he wakes up in such a state of panic that he has to take a cold shower in the middle of the night just to calm himself back down again. Frankly, he’s amazed that hasn’t happened in front of Bill yet. Thank god for small favours. 

Tonight he dreams about the march in Atlanta. It’s a frequent setting for these late-night terrors, though the featured cast of characters tends to rotate. Sometimes, Camille Bell will be front and centre, leading a zombie parade of all the murdered and missing children for whom he failed to get justice. Other times, she’s just an onlooker, watching as Ed Kemper glides up to the church with his gaggle of ghostly spirit wives. Once, the Manson Family showed up. They tackled Holden, stabbed him, and then beat him senseless with the fucking wooden cross until he woke up flailing and kicking against his own sheets. 

On this occasion, though, the street is empty. Deserted. He stands atop the steps of the church, just waiting, waiting, waiting, but there’s nothing. Nobody. The world is still.

Finally, after what feels like eons, he spots a car sputtering down the road—a brown Pinto Runabout with Pennsylvania plates. Holden braces himself for a confrontation with Sissy Miller, but when the car eventually stops, she’s nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s a man who emerges from the Pinto. Well, a man’s body—tall, and wearing nothing but denim overalls, headless and spurting jets of blood from his grotesque stump of a neck. 

The figure stands beside the car, and then points damningly at Holden’s wrist. With mounting dread, Holden looks down, only to see the crimson hue of blood lining the entire cuff of his sleeve. Frantically, he unbuttons his shirt and races into the church, desperate to find a font of water, or a sink, or… anything, just so long as he can wash this off. Except, he knows in his heart the stain won’t come out. It won’t, because Cody Miller is dead and it’s his fault, his fault, his—

Holden breathes in so sharply that his eyes pop open. And suddenly, the church, and the Pinto, and Cody Miller are all gone, and he’s alone in the dark—curled up in his bed, exactly where he belongs. It was a dream, he tells himself, as his heart rumbles like thunder in his chest. All just a dream. A bad dream. He’s fine. He’s okay.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s—

No, it’s not. It’s not okay. Because he doesn’t think he can go on like this. He knows it’s karma and that he deserves it, but couldn’t he just have one full night of sleep? One single night, without a nightmare, or a panic attack, or a goddamn psychogenic fugue? Crashing on Wendy’s sofa Friday afternoon was the most restful sleep he’s had in months, and that was preceded by a freakout so visceral that he practically vomited on himself. It’s not normal. It shouldn’t be this way. He can’t—

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

Holden exhales. Grips at the duvet. He lets a few frustrated tears fall out onto his pillowcase, and then stares up at the ceiling, waiting for dawn.

Chapter Text

Bill drops the telephone receiver onto its cradle and thinks unexpectedly of Monte Rissell. 

It’s not that he actually identifies with the scumbag; if somebody at the Richmond Penitentiary were to introduce their shiv to the little bastard’s jugular vein, Bill wouldn’t exactly lose any sleep over it. But he’s grappling with yet another curveball right now, and for whatever reason, it’s Rissell’s words that seem to be bubbling up to the fore:

“Nobody wanted me, man! Nobody on this earth ever wanted me.”

Granted, Bill’s life has never been anywhere near that bleak. In all likelihood, he’s lived through more good times than bad. But he’s been feeling increasingly useless ever since Nancy left, and it’s become fairly evident these past few days that Holden doesn’t want him around, either. He gets that the kid is less than thrilled about being monitored at every turn, but still—it’s not like Bill decided to stay over there just for kicks. He’s been trying this whole time to make things right; to actually be there for somebody who needs his help. And now… well, he should have anticipated that Holden would find a way to throw it all in his face. 

Or, more accurately, to sneak around behind his fucking back.

Goddammit. 

Bill lets out a sigh. He really doesn’t want to deal with this right now, but obviously it can’t be helped. He drums his fingertips against the armrest of his chair for a few seconds, and then rises reluctantly to his feet, snatching up the open folder on his desk marked LIONEL/MEHERRIN VALLEY ROTARY CLUB POISONINGS before lurching out the office door.

He’s not exactly sure what Holden is up to—whether the kid is trying to prove his mettle by single handedly taking on a new investigation, or simply scratching at a curiosity itch to distract himself from the whole nervous breakdown thing—but whatever’s going on, it needs to stop. Bill just hopes Holden hasn’t initiated contact with any outside law enforcement agencies yet, or god forbid, enlisted support from Gunn.

As if he didn’t already have enough on his fucking plate. 

Bill seethes as he marches down the hall, his infuriation growing with every step. By the time he makes it to the bullpen, his nostrils are probably the size of golf balls. He storms into Holden’s office, slams shut the door, and then drops the Rotary Club file smack onto the middle of the kid’s desk.

“Uh, hey, Bill,” says Holden, staring up at him, nonplussed. “What’s this?”

“Take a wild fucking guess, Sherlock.”

Holden just sits there scratching his head. “I don’t…” he starts, squinting at the file. He seems legitimately bewildered, though it’s possible he’s just slow on the uptake because he’s so tired. They haven’t actually talked about it at all, but Bill’s pretty sure the kid hasn’t been sleeping well lately. “Sorry, I’m not following—is something going on with the new consult requests?”

Bill scowls. Is this kid for real? He’s fairly confident the dissociation symptoms haven’t recurred, but maybe Holden’s tried so much of that transcendental meditation bullshit over the past few days that it’s started fucking with his head somehow. Is that even possible? Christ, he should have thought this through better. 

“Bill?”

Too late. 

“What’s ‘going on,’” he replies cynically, “is that I just put in a call to Barb O’Halleran, asking if she could send down maps for a few different counties in North Carolina.”

That does it. In a matter of seconds, Holden’s body language shifts from casual mode to high alert. Bingo. 

“Oh yeah?” he coughs out, trying and failing not to look like a deer caught in headlights. For a guy who trades so heavily on his ability to butter up sociopaths, the kid is remarkably bad at lying sometimes.

“Yeah,” growls Bill, anger swirling through his veins, “and guess what, Holden? She told me that you had already come by to retrieve them, along with a whole stack of newspaper clippings about recent police activity in Northampton county.”

The kid shrinks back into his chair with a grimace.

“This is the only open investigation in that region we’ve been approached about. So do you wanna tell me what the hell you’re up to? Because I thought we made it pretty damn clear that you were off consults and casework until at least the end of January.” 

“Y-you did, and I haven’t…I mean, this isn’t…” Holden breathes in sharply. “It… it’s not what you think.” 

“Not what I think?” The fucking nerve of this kid. “Are you shitting me right now?”

“Bill, I swear! I’ve never even seen this file before. It’s all just…” 

“All what, Holden? Huh? It’s all just a total coincidence that you happened to request a bunch of files—behind my back, I might add—pertaining to one of the same counties in which a potential case of ours took place? Is that honestly the story you’re pedalling here?”

The kid doesn’t speak. Instead, he flinches with an audible wheeze, and then begins nodding almost imperceptibly. His expression is etched with such profound solemnity that even in the pique of rage, Bill can’t help contemplating the possibility that Holden is telling the truth. Except, that would mean—Oh. Oh, shit. Shit. Boy Wonder is up to something else; something that might actually be ten times worse than the scenario Bill initially imagined. 

“Christ on a fucking Triscuit, Holden,” he groans, dragging a hand across his face. All the anger inside of him fizzles out suddenly, giving way to spine-chilling dread. “Just… whatever the hell is going on, you need to tell me—right now—or… Jesus, I don’t even fucking know.”  

A thin beading of sweat breaks out on Holden’s forehead. He rubs sheepishly at the back of his neck and then points nervously at the wall opposite his desk.

“Is Wendy…”

“She and Gregg are still at that grants seminar. But I know for a fact she didn’t put you up to this, so you can kiss that excuse goodbye right now.” 

“I-I wasn’t going to…” begins Holden, squirming defensively, “I mean, Wendy hasn’t seen…” 

The kid trails off. He glances around nervously for a couple seconds, and then slinks over to one of the filing cabinets. 

“I just… I need you to promise me you won’t tell anyone,” he whispers, as he takes out an overstuffed manilla folder from one of the middle drawers. “At least, not yet.”

“Kid, c’mon,” chides Bill, his gut suddenly twisting into one gigantic knot. “I can’t do that. Not if it’s about your… not if it’s something Wendy needs to know.” 

If he doesn’t nip this on-the-QT shit in the bud right off the bat, it’s gonna give him a fucking ulcer.

Holden frowns. He shies back, hugging the folder tightly to his chest.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“All right, look, if it’s minor enough that I can sit on it for a few days, fine. I don’t have to tell her right away. But otherwise—”

“Yeah, okay.” The kid doesn’t look wholly convinced, but he takes a few steps forward anyway. “So, the other day, when we picked up my car… before we left, you went off to have a cigarette, remember?”

“Yeah…”

“Well… while you were outside smoking, I found this,” Holden plucks out a bright red handbill from the folder and offers it to Bill, “on the floor, near the front seat.”

Bill hastily puts on his reading glasses and then narrows his eyes at what can only be described as a visually assaulting block of text:

‘TIS THE SEASON!!! JOIN US FOR SOME
“FROSTY” FUN 
AT THE 11TH ANNUAL
XMAS TREE LIGHTING AND COOKIE SWAP
DECEMBER 12, 5PM 
COLEFORD TOWNSHIP BAPTIST CHURCH 
(CORNER OF BOONE AND OLD FARM RD)

“All right…” he says, not really sure what the hell he’s supposed to make of it, “well, I hate to break it to you, but I think you missed the cookie swap.” 

Holden glares at him. 

“So it was in your car, so what? Maybe Sal left it there by mistake. Or one of the AAA guys. I mean, they had your valet key, right?” 

“No, Bill, it…” the kid lets out an exasperated grunt. He removes a roadmap from his stack of papers—likely one of the very same maps Bill had previously been looking for—and meticulously unfolds it over the top of his desk. 

“Look,” he urges, tapping his finger onto a spot in the upper right hand corner, “this is Coleford, North Carolina. There’s no other Coleford in the United States. I checked. And it just so happens to be right near the Virginia border, only about 20 miles South of—”

“Of Maryport,” Bill finishes. He’s beginning to understand. 

“Exactly.” 

“Okay, so… you drove across the border to North Carolina. You probably drove all over the place. That's how you ran out of gas.”

“Well, obviously I stopped at some point. Otherwise how did that get into my car? It’s reasonable to assume—”

“Holden…” starts Bill, cutting off his partner with a firmly raised palm. He needs to reign all this crap in now, before the kid works himself up into having another episode. “I get that you’re frustrated by this situation—I do. And if I blacked out for the better part of a day, I’d probably be itching to know what happened, too. But Wendy already told you this isn’t worth focusing on. That all your energy should be devoted to working on getting better. Don’t make this stuff harder for yourself than it has to be.”

Holden chews his bottom lip. 

“There’s something else,” he murmurs, dipping his hand back into the folder. “I checked all the local newspapers to see if there was any mention of… I don’t know, a strange man behaving erratically, or something. I didn’t find anything like that, but I did see this.” 

He pulls out a photocopied newspaper article and passes it over to Bill, who mentally steels himself before holding it up and reading:

PENDLETON WOMAN FOUND DEAD; POLICE SUSPECT FOUL PLAY 

PENDLETON, N.C. — A death investigation is underway after a woman was found dead at a home off Vaughan Creek Road.

Police were summoned to the residence for a welfare check early Friday morning after a neighbour noticed the front door to the property had been left open overnight. Officers at the scene entered the home, where they reportedly found the woman lying on the kitchen floor.

The victim was later identified as 32-year-old Jo Marie Grundy, a part-time employee with the Severn Peanut Company. 

Although few details about the case have been shared, police are divulging that “evidence at the scene has led primary investigators to suspect foul play.” They are also presently seeking a “grey or blue compact vehicle” that was spotted near the property late Thursday afternoon. 

Grundy’s body will be sent for autopsy to confirm her cause of death. Anyone with pertinent information should contact the Northampton County Police Department.

Bill blinks. “Please tell me you’re not genuinely suggesting this had something to do with you,” he says, unsure yet whether to be concerned or amused. 

“It all fits,” insists Holden, his voice trembling. “The car, the time of day, the location. Look at the map. Pendleton is just outside of Severn—there—which, if you’re following the road, is almost exactly halfway between Coleford and Maryport. If I was doing a loop, heading back north, it’s possible that I could have—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he gently grips the kid by the arm. “Calm down; just calm down. This is… you didn’t kill anybody, okay?” 

Holden shuffles his feet. “You don’t actually know that,” he contends hoarsely.

Bill sighs. “Kid, I’ve spent more time with you over the past four years than I have with my own fucking shadow. Don’t you think I would have noticed by now if you had antisocial tendencies? I mean, sure, you can be annoying little shit, sometimes, but… y’know, you’re a good person.” 

“That’s just it, though!” Holden gulps. “I… I might not have been me.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you remember the description from the diagnostic manual? The last part mentioned that people affected by fugue states can sometimes exhibit ‘highly uncharacteristic behaviours’. And you even said the other day, we have no way of knowing what I’m capable of doing when I’m like that.”

“To yourself. I said we have no way of knowing what you’re capable of doing to yourself. I wasn’t implying that you were suddenly going to become Ted Bundy.” 

“Okay, but why not?”

“Why not? Are you even hearing yourself right now?” 

“Just last week you were comparing the fugue state to Brudos’s blackouts. How is this any different?” 

“Because it…” Bill exhales wearily. This whole conversation is fucking surreal. “Listen, I’ll tell you what—if the autopsy report comes back saying the victim was tied up, forced to watch the killer iron her clothes, and then slowly talked to death about criminal psychology, then maybe I’ll consider that you were involved. Okay?”

The kid looks utterly offended. “I can’t believe you’re joking about this,” he huffs indignantly.

“Yeah, well I can’t believe you aren’t. I mean, come on, I…” Bill clears his throat before lowering his voice, “I put you to bed that night, Holden,” he hisses out. “Don’t you think I would have noticed if you’d been covered in scratches or somebody else’s blood? Not even to mention the fact that the front of your shirt still looked like it was on a department store display table.”

“That doesn’t prove anything. The Yorkshire Ripper committed several violent murders without getting any blood on his clothes at all. I read in his confession last year that on at least two occasions—”

“Okay, you know what?” Bill snatches the manilla folder from Holden’s grasp. “We’re not having this discussion anymore.”

“What? No, you can’t just—”

“Yes, I can,” he counters bluntly. “Because you’re behaving irrationally right now, and if you keep obsessing over all this crap, you’re just going to make yourself sick again. That is the only thing this is going to accomplish. So I’m gonna take the maps, toss out everything else, and then we’re both just going to forget you ever even brought this up in the first place.”

“No, no! Bill!” the kid pleads with him as he packs away all the relevant documents, “Stop! You could be destroying evidence!” 

“There is no evidence, Holden!” Bill exclaims. “You found a handbill in your car advertising an event that was held in a totally different town from the one where a suspected murder took place. That’s it.”

“What about the blue compact vehicle?”

“Or grey. Blue or grey. It doesn’t mean shit.” He pauses for a beat and then pats Holden reassuringly on the back. “Trust me, kiddo. You’re getting worked up over nothing here. Just let it go.” 

Holden flashes him a disgruntled pout.

“Hey, one of the steno pool gals brought in a box of candy canes,” he says, swiftly shifting topics. “You want a candy cane?” 

The kid rolls his eyes. “No, Bill. I do not want a candy cane.”

“They’re actually pretty good. Full-sized, too; none of that miniature shit. C’mon, I’ll grab one for you, and then we can go over some of those travel expenditure forms together.” 

“Do I have a choice?”

“What, you don’t like my company?” asks Bill, drolly raising an eyebrow. He ignores the sullen expression on Holden’s face and opens the door. “Let's go, Kemosabe. Fall out.” 

He nudges the kid forward, switches off the desk lamp, and then shoves the horrible feeling rising in his chest as deep down as it will possibly go.

╭─────────╮

He’s usually a heavy sleeper. Back in the day, Nancy used to tease that if a nuclear bomb fell on Quantico in the middle of the night, Bill would probably sleep through it and then try to leave for work the next morning. “Dead to the world until the sun hits your eyes,” she’d say, laughing, and he would be forced to agree.

That’s certainly not the case tonight, though. Tonight Bill’s getting about as much shut eye as the Princess and the Pea, tossing and turning, and he isn’t entirely sure why. Well, apart from the fact that Holden’s couch is about as comfortable as a slab of concrete, but he’s been making do with that just fine until now. 

He supposes he’s still riled. Or doubting himself, maybe. He didn’t end up telling Wendy about Holden’s hush-hush handbill murder file, which probably wasn’t the wisest of moves, but he ultimately just couldn’t face it. In Bill’s opinion, the whole thing would be better left forgotten, anyway. Fugue or no fugue, he knows damn well that Holden isn’t capable of violence, so why indulge the kid’s paranoia? 

Besides, somebody Bill cares about already was involved with a murder in the past year. So unless the big guy upstairs really has it in for him, the odds of history repeating itself that way seem pretty goddamn low. Not that he really wants to think about that. Normally, Bill would be way better at compartmentalising things, but this bullshit with Holden is really pushing his buttons. Ugh. No fucking wonder he can’t fall asleep. 

More time ticks by, but nothing changes; Bill is still lying there, restless and awake. He considers getting himself a beer from the fridge, or even lugging his ass downstairs for a smoke. However, before he can reach any sort of decision, he suddenly becomes aware of a faint wheezing noise coming from the bathroom.

“Holden?” he calls, pushing himself upright. “That you?”

No reply. 

He listens again to make sure he’s not imagining things, and then tiptoes cautiously to the bathroom door. “Holden?” he repeats, with heightened urgency. He doesn’t want to barge in on the kid if he’s using the can, but given that Bill can hear gasping breaths, along with the sound of a running faucet, that scenario is becoming more and more unlikely by the second. “Look, buddy, if you don’t answer me, I’m gonna have to come in,” he warns, his hand already turning the doorknob. He lets a few more seconds pass, and then charges full tilt into the bathroom, his pulse racing madly.

What the…

At first, Bill’s not entirely sure he understands what’s going on. Holden is standing hunched over the sink, scrubbing furiously at the cuff of a white button down shirt that Bill saw him ironing a few hours earlier. He has a wild, almost haunted look in his eyes, and he’s panting like crazy. His whole body seems to quake.

“Holden,” Bill says again, this time a bit more forcefully. He reaches forward with his left hand to shut off the faucet, and then gently grabs his partner’s wrist with the other. “Holden. Stop.”

The kid wrenches away from him with a whimper.

“Bud, c’mon. It’s nearly three in the morning. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Th-th-there’s blood,” Holden whispers, his voice laden with fear. “It w-won’t wash off… it-it won’t—” 

“Shhh, hey,” a cold lump forms in the pit of Bill’s stomach as he carefully pries the shirt from Holden’s grasp. He’s finally putting it all together. “Kiddo, look at me,” he entreats, curling a finger beneath the kid’s chin, “there’s no blood. You’re just having a bad dream, okay?” 

“Bad dream?” echoes Holden, practically swaying on his feet. 

“Yeah. It’s not real. I’m pretty sure you’re sleepwalking.” 

The kid’s brow furrows. “B-but, Cody Miller, he… I thought—”

“It was a nightmare,” Bill assures. “That’s all. Nobody’s gonna hurt you, okay? You’re safe.” 

Holden’s lip quivers. He lets out a broken, warbled sob and then slumps into Bill’s arms like a discarded marionette.  

“All right, it’s all right,” consoles Bill, half-dragging the kid away from the sink. “Let’s just get you back into bed, huh?” 

As they stagger into the bedroom, Bill notices that Holden has big splotches of water all over the front of his t-shirt. He wonders briefly if he ought to help him change into fresh pyjamas, but ultimately that idea just feels too weird. Whatever, it’s only water. Besides, the kid’s probably too far gone to tell the difference; he’s still wheezing like fucking donkey. 

“You gotta try to breathe,” Bill implores, as he steadily ushers him over to the bed. “In and out. In and out. That’s it. Keep going.”

Holden has a green upholstered scoop chair in the room that he normally keeps beside the radiator. Bill removes the slacks and tie that are draped over the back, and pulls the chair right up to the edge of the mattress. 

“I’ll just stay here until you fall asleep, all right?”

The kid shakes his head. “Don’t… don’t have to…” he croaks raggedly.

“I know,” replies Bill, sitting himself down, “but I’m gonna.”

Eventually, the panting slows. Bill instructs Holden to lay down flat and then tenderly pulls the duvet all the way up to his chin. “There we go. Now whaddya say we work on getting those eyes closed, huh?” 

“Okay, Bill,” slurs Holden, clearly already fading. “Just…”

“Just what?”

“Do… do you really think I’m a good person?”

“Huh?”

“You… you s-said earlier… said that I was… and I…” the kid rubs tiredly at his face, “I dunno what to think, because I… I just… I don’t wanna hurt anybody.” 

The last half of Holden’s sentence is muffled due to the fact that he’s more or less garbling directly into his pillow, but Bill understands the gist, nonetheless.

“Yeah,” he says, choking back a strange tightness growing in his throat. “Yeah, you’re a good person, kiddo.” He reaches forward and begins softly stroking the kid’s hair. “One of the best I know. Now get some rest, okay?”

Holden mumbles something unintelligible and then curls up onto his side. Barely a minute passes before he’s sound asleep, a thin trickle of drool seeping out from the corner of his mouth. Bill wipes it away with a crumpled Kleenex and then sits there awhile, his mind racing with unanswered questions. 

Has the kid been having nightmares this bad the entire fucking time? Could Bill actually be that oblivious? He guesses it’s possible. After all, he didn’t notice until today that Holden had started investigating himself as the prime suspect in some random Podunk murder case—what if that’s all just the tip of the iceberg? Granted, Bill did suspect before that Holden hadn’t been sleeping well, but he sure as shit didn’t anticipate anything like this. Jesus. How is he ever gonna help the kid if he’s always this far behind the curve? Is there more he could be doing? Should be doing? 

Fuck if he knows. 

Bill glances over at Holden's alarm clock and realises it's almost a quarter past three. With a heavy yawn, he retrieves the blanket from his makeshift bed on the sofa, and then settles himself down again in the scoop chair, finally ready to get some sleep. He may be mostly useless at this whole babysitting thing, but if Holden has another nightmare, Bill will be right here, ready to soothe him, and that’s enough for tonight.