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One of the biggest problems with being from a cursed family is that it leaves lots of holes in one's life.
Not, Fargo would have hastened to assure anyone who actually asked (although as yet no one had) that he really believed in curses. It was a metaphor, a bit of mythic thinking that served to explain on a merely emotional level why his life was the perpetual combination of tragedy and just plain mess that it was. It wasn't like he organized his life around the idea. If he occasionally ran a search on a given real-world occult tradition after it popped up in a piece of Buffy fanfic, looking for ways of lifting hexes that he might be able to try on his own, well, everyone deals with things in their own way, and it wasn't as if he'd actually performed any of the rituals. (Well, okay, there was that once, but it only involved salt, water, and a clean knife. And he hadn't broken anything for three days after that. He knew that was just the placebo effect, and no one ever needed to know about any of that.) It was a mind game he played with himself, nothing more.
It helped fill some of the small holes, at any rate. The bigger ones took a lot more work.
---
It was his work on linguistic processing in artificial intelligence that had gotten him the interview at Global Dynamics. Fargo was something of a generalist; his first doctorate had been in computer science, and that was in some ways his first and best academic love, but he could keep up in particle physics, physical chemistry, even biochem and microbiology. In some ways, that was unusual at GD; they tended to recruit what Fargo privately referred to as 'Wolverines' - people who were the best in the world at what they did. People who could work in more than one specialty were rarely outstanding performers in any one area. So, when his grandmother let him know about the opening, he'd tailored his application for AI. That first interview, with the retiring head of Global Dynamics, had gone well and had had few surprises.
The second interview had gone much the same, until the very end - when the incoming head strode in with five minutes to spare in the interview process. He was much, much younger than Fargo had been expecting - a mature enough man, but if he was much past forty, he didn't show it. He was also brusque - he snapped out a curt "Good afternoon, gentlemen," picked up the file on Dr. Harrowman's interview table, and started flipping through it, stopping every once in a while to read a line or two. Then he tossed the folder back on the table, and sat perched on one corner, peppering Fargo with questions - starting with AI and upper-level math, then going on to cognitive science and physics, and spiraling out from there into a spiderweb of barely-related topics. The last one had been about Victorian literature.
Then he'd looked back at Dr. Harrowman and said "This kid isn't the right man for the Section Three job."
The greying chemist adjusted his glasses and scowled. "I assure you, Dr. Stark, he is by far the most qualified applicant for the position; his curriculum vitae is most impressive - "
Dr. Stark waved one hand sharply, to shut him up. "No, I need him closer to my office. Make him the executive assistant to the head of Global Dynamics."
Fargo squeaked, and then turned beet red, trying to pretend he hadn't heard himself. Dr. Harrowman looked astonished. "You want our premier artificial intelligence researcher as your secretary?"
"If he'll take the job. I need someone who will understand what any given section head is screaming into the intercom at any moment. No offense to her, I'm sure she's an excellent secretary, but Ms. Inbruin isn't it." The dark-haired man in the crisp charcoal suit looked at Fargo in a way that made him want to sit up straight and salute. "How about it, Dr. Fargo?"
"Sir, I'd be honored to work under you at Global Dynamics in whatever position you think you can use me," babbled Fargo, the tension in his solar plexus suddenly throbbing into warmth.
"Good! Glad we got that over with; I wasn't looking forward to interviewing for that position." Dr. Stark stood up suddenly, shifted his shoulders in what might have been a stretch, and walked back out of the interview room as suddenly as he'd arrived, without giving Fargo another glance. Dr. Harrowman shook his head and gave Fargo the directions to the human resources office.
---
It wasn't easy, working for a man as driven as Nathan Stark; Fargo started taking the brunt of the Nobel Prize winner's displeasure as soon as they both started their respective new jobs. Fargo had inherited a desk and a position that were both antiquated, at least by Global Dynamics standards, and he quickly found out that while Dr. Stark was pleased enough to let him order new equipment, he wasn't the least bit interested in helping Fargo figure out what his actual job duties were. As far as he was concerned, they were whatever he asked Fargo to do that week - plus answer the phones, coordinate the department heads, and keep his schedule straight. Fargo found himself keeping an eye on two different metaviral biology experiments while talking to a Department of Energy liaison on the phone and debugging code for a side project of Dr. Stark's on his laptop on Wednesday of his third week on the job, and realized with a start that this was just how it was going to be.
And of course, the curse started manifesting right away. Nothing ever went so wrong that it couldn't be fixed, and Fargo solved more than his share of problems - both caused by himself and otherwise - but every time Sheriff Cobb had to step in and clean up the mess, Fargo could feel Dr. Stark's green-eyed stare burning into the back of his neck, and the shame swallowed him whole.
But it filled something, too, this sense of having let down an authority figure he respected so much. Fargo craved a single word of praise from Dr. Stark, true, and he knew he would never get it. But the angry, authoritarian father figure was better than the lack of one he'd had, ever since Dr. Thomas Fargo had pushed the wrong button, set a laser splitter on "timer" instead of "standby," and walked back into the testing lab.
Those green eyes might bore into the back of his neck, but they looked at him with disappointment, not pity. Here, now, Fargo wasn't some fatherless son of a bastard who had somehow managed to complete two doctoral degrees despite his disadvantages; he was a scientist that Dr. Stark expected things of. And if Fargo couldn't quite reach those expectations . . . well, could anyone, really? Dr. Stark had high standards for everyone - for all his employees, for his wife, for himself. It was better, Fargo told himself, for him to try and meet those impossible standards and fail, than for no one to ever expect anything from him.
He even believed it, most of the time.
---
"But you can't leave!" Fargo's hands were pressed flat against the glass of Dr. Stark's desk, palms sweating and leaving marks. "Think of all the experiments you have in progress! Think of . . . " He swallowed; that damned thing in Section 5 made him want to believe in curses after all. "Think of your work with the Artifact."
Dr. Stark's expression softened for a fraction of a second at the mention of the Artifact, then went back to its bland neutrality. "I know, Fargo, but I don't really have much of a choice. The DoD made its decision, and I don't currently have the political clout to fight it. And I can't see how my staying in Eureka working for someone else as the head of Global is going to result in a good work environment, for anyone." He made a face as if he'd smelled something unpleasant as he looked at his computer screen. "I've put in a good word for you with Dr. King. I think he'll keep you on as the executive assistant. He'll be completely new to Eureka, so you'll have to show him the ropes. Think you can handle that?" He didn't look back at Fargo until he got to the question mark.
"Of course. Thank you, Dr. Stark." Fargo didn't know what else to say. He wanted to scream You can't leave, you can't abandon me like everyone else, but of course Dr. Stark could, and it wasn't Fargo's place to put his own personal needs on the table any more than he had already. He swiped at the smudges he'd left on Dr. Stark's desk with a sleeve, and shuffled out the door of the glass-walled office.
It wasn't until he was safely out in the hallway and away from the hidden security camera over the office door that he plucked off his glasses and rubbed the same sleeve over his eyes.
---
It wouldn't have been so bad if Dr. King hadn't been so easily manipulable. He knew his stuff when it came to astronomy and astrophysics, of course, and he was a damned good mathematician, almost as good as Dr. Stark, but he was terrible with the biosciences and not so facile with the chemical sciences, either. Fargo found that he was doing fewer and fewer projects, and more and more herding department heads. He had to explain half of the project reports that came to Dr. King's office - not the basic ideas, of course, but the details, the nitty-gritty that Dr. Stark had always immediately understood and started firing off questions about. Fargo had started by prodding Dr. King into asking the right questions, or at least what Fargo thought were the right questions - not as piercing as Dr. Stark's would have been, to be sure, but better than what Dr. King was coming up with on his own.
But over time, it had become easier and easier to talk Dr. King into letting Fargo do pretty much what he wanted with GD's equipment as long as he kept all the computer simulations running (including Dr. King's martial-arts training program, which Fargo had had to re-code from the ground up), answered the phones, explained what the non-physics half of GD was doing, and kept his mouth shut about Warren's little thing with Dr. Blake. Something about how Dr. King had taken Dr. Stark's place there, too, made Fargo feel sick to his stomach, but he knew Dr. Blake had to be hurting worse than he was. If Dr. King couldn't fill that hole for Fargo, then maybe he could for Allison.
Fargo threw himself into another project. The old B.R.A.D. defense program in the abandoned bunker just outside of town had been a good try at a working artificial intelligence, and its flaws were pretty obvious. Fargo thought he could combine a reworked version with the 'smart house' technology that Section 2 had abandoned and come up with something patentable. Even if not, it would be worth it for the practice in AI programming - he'd gotten rusty over the past few years.
He was thrilled when S.A.R.A.H. started responding in natural language text to his typed commands. He was overjoyed when she responded to spoken requests. He couldn't describe what happened in his chest when she asked him, unprompted, for a voice of her own. When he showed up late to Dr. King's office the next day, throat sore and his voice almost gone, Dr. King sent him home and told him not to come to work with a cold, that he didn't want to catch it. Fargo didn't explain, he just went home and fell asleep.
Well, if he couldn't have a father-figure, maybe he could be one. The last thing he thought before drifting off was It's a girl!
---
Fargo was well aware of how complicated Dr. Stark's re-arrival in Eureka made things for Dr. Blake, and now for Sheriff Carter, too. He wasn't that blind to social cues. He was also aware that it meant his time on easy street, job-wise, was well and truly over. While Dr. King had never respected him, he'd depended on him, and that meant total job security. Dr. Stark, on the other hand, showed signs of wanting to start fresh, and that meant Fargo had to prove his worth all over again.
And that invoked the curse once more. Rarely did he fail Dr. Stark completely, but his screw-ups seemed to multiply. Even when he solved the problem, he never got credit for it. And he kept pushing the wrong buttons, over and over and over.
Pushing the wrong button was precisely how he got his first near-death experience. Maybe it was because he'd been floating in the force-field all day; to some extent, he'd gotten used to not touching the floor, to just being suspended. He'd felt the intense shock, and oddly less intense pain, of the sonic pulse when Deputy Lupo had shot him through the heart with it. Then his body had fallen to the floor, and he'd . . . stayed where he was. He'd watched Dr. Stark rip his shirt open and try to shock him back to life once, before the white light obscured his vision.
He'd read (not that he'd made any great study of such things, of course; that was just more of the little mind-game) that your deceased relatives were supposed to show up to guide you through the tunnel. A shiver of anticipation ran through his, well, astral body? Soul? Dad? he called into the spiraling light, but no one answered. He was alone here, too.
Then he'd looked down at Dr. Blake trying to thump the life back into him, and at Dr. Stark and Sheriff Carter looking on with what was - not exactly anguish, but certainly looks of pain. Something yanked at him just behind his solar plexus, and he had exactly the sensation of a falling dream, when you wake up just before you hit bottom.
The world was out of focus and he hurt in more places than he could count. But he was alive again, and Dr. Stark was relieved that he was, and that was something.
---
They were standing in Dr. Weinbrenner's lab, and time was running out, possibly literally. "I can't teach you a song for this one, Carter. It's a little too complicated." Dr. Stark's tone wasn't joking enough. What he said was true, but he was protecting Sheriff Carter - the only one of the three of them with a child. Well, a living child, anyway. S.A.R.A.H., proud as Fargo was of her, didn't count the same way.
But to re-synchronize the photon manually - they'd already seen what happened if someone tried it and failed. Fargo didn't even think; he just spoke. "But not for me." He swallowed. "I know how. I'll do it." I won't let that happen to you. Eureka needs you two. It doesn't need a cursed orphan boy. I'm dispensable.
The green gaze that fell on him spoke volumes. Dr. Stark knew exactly what Fargo was offering, and most of why. His voice was soft as he asked "How well did you know Weinbrenner?"
Fargo wasn't sure what Dr. Stark was getting at, but his tone made Fargo's stomach sink. "I didn't."
And Stark turned him down, gently, logically. He'd worked on the device; Fargo hadn't. He had the best chance of success of the three of them. It was logical. It made sense. Fargo hated it. He could see, from the tension in the Sheriff's shoulders, that Carter did, too.
"Go synch me up. I'll do it." Stark was calm, almost unnaturally so. Fargo turned to the computer, doing what needed to be done from the console, while urgent words passed between the scientist and the sheriff. Was he telling him what to do if this didn't work, to convince a Fargo who wouldn't remember what had happened this time though the loop? I won't need convincing, if we find Dr. Stark's charred corpse like we found Weinbrenner's. I'll believe. Trust me, please! Fargo shook off the thought.
"Dr. Stark?" He thought he'd kept the shaking from his voice.
"Keep pushing buttons, Fargo." Somehow, Fargo could tell that for once, Dr. Stark trusted him completely to press the right ones. "I'll see you around, Jack."
The timer whipped around and the computer blinked and processed. After an instant that lasted at least a century, it flashed the blessed message that time had resumed its normal course, and Fargo's heart leaped. "He did it!" He whirled around and ran to Carter's side, facing Dr. Stark. "You did it! We're moving forward!"
Something was wrong; Dr. Stark wasn't moving. Fargo knew, even before Carter's soft "Yeah, we are." Before their eyes, Dr. Stark dissolved into the time-stream.
Fargo wanted to scream. He wanted to rail against whatever cosmic force had cursed him like this, cursed everything he touched and took away everything he loved. He wanted to beat his hands against the glass, to grab at the particles that came unstuck in time and space and force them back into place. Dr. Stark must have known that this was going to happen. He knew, and he stopped us from doing it.
He sacrificed himself to save us, to save Dr. Blake, to save Eureka.
He left me again.
"He's gone," Fargo half-whispered without quite meaning to. "He's really gone." Sheriff Carter stared into the emptiness of the glass enclosure, emotions flickering across his features like a film about to break.
Fargo smothered the sobs rising in his throat. Suddenly there was a hand on his shoulder, squeezing tightly, simultaneously offering support and taking it. He reached out and returned the grip, wanting desperately to bury his face in the sheriff's shoulder and pour out his grief, knowing that neither of the two of them could do anything like that until they'd told Dr. Blake that today would be a funeral rather than a wedding. They both needed to be strong, for her, for GD. He swallowed his tears, and let go.
As he and Sheriff Carter climbed the stairs from the lab in painful silence, Fargo felt the old hole in his life opening up again. He glanced at the man beside him, the one Dr. Blake would surely turn to to fill the Nathan-sized void in her own.
Sheriff Carter was more of a dad than a father. But maybe a dad was closer to what Fargo needed now, anyway, if he'd have him.