Archive of Our Own ^beta

so raise a glass to the turning of the season
and watch it as it arcs towards the sun
and you must bear your neighbor's burden within reason
and your labors will be borne when all is done
♫ Don't Carry It All by The Decemberists

There's a file delivered to Oh's desk before her first day, labeled CONFIDENTIAL, FOR EYES OF CHIEF OF OPERATIONS ONLY. Inside contains the basic need-to-knows of the job, as well as a myriad of notes from Zed himself. The sheet of paper warning her from getting the pair of senior partners to conform is the first page, as though Zed thought it was more important than any other part of her job, and that makes her frown.

“Surely this is a joke,” she asks him, holding it up from the doorway of his private medical room. She hides her wince at the cords running from him, connecting to the quietly humming equipment.

“It's mostly vitamins,” Zed says to her, but he doesn't sit up further in his bed. “They wouldn't approve of my spa treatment with our friends from Poxicoran. You should get it changed for me,” he grins at her, “You are in charge now.”

“No,” she denies him easily. It's nice, being in charge. “And this?” she shakes the piece of paper.

“Not a joke.”

She rolls her eyes to the ceiling and sighs, stepping further into the room and placing the paper above his blankets.

“There's only so much you can get them to agree to, Oh,” Zed explains.

“Right,” she says, her tone of voice contradicting her agreement.

“They will grind their heels in if you try to restrict them too much.”

“Fine.”

When she leaves, taking the sheet with her, it's obviously not fine. She thinks Zed must have simply gotten complacent after so long, and that this change of position gives everyone an opportunity for a fresh start. There are regulations, after all. They're there for a reason, not something to be an annoyance to agents, but to protect them.

She doesn't know Jay very well; she was a field agent before he started, and switched to various other departments until she settled in administration—taking charge, thank you, not a meager secretary like she was in the early days with Ex at the helm.

But Kay... they're friends. Surely he will see eye to eye with her on this matter, and everyone can transition smoothly.

There's only one reason that any sort of “smooth transition” looks like it's even possible, and that's because the partners are giving it time.

“Why are we giving her a buffer zone on this?” Jay asks, feet up on the chair across from him, even though he knows Kay hates that. There's probably something he should be doing, but he can't be assed to do it right then. He knows nothing planet endangering has to be taken care of, so that's what matters.

They're in a very small cafe that has far too many black suits than Jay is comfortable with. Someone gives Jay an excitable wave and Jay manages something weak and annoyed in return. Thinks the guy works in customs, or something.

Kay flashes him a quick, almost dangerous smile, “Because it could have been me in her position.”

“Riiiight. I get it.” Jay nods thoughtfully, then starts to cackle. “But you know, if you had become chief, I'd give you such a hellish time.”

“And I would have assigned you the worst replacement partner I could have gotten my hands on.”

Jay thinks of Double-A and holds his hands up in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay. So we let her ease in a bit, and then go back to doing our usual?”

Kay frowns, but after a moment he makes a quiet sound of agreement.

“Great.” He pushes at his plate of food, unable to find his appetite. “I hate eating at MIB-sanctioned establishments. Ugh.”

It's working. Oh grins at Zed from the doorway. “I know what I'm doing in all this.”

“That's good. There's a reason you were one of my choices.”

“And the other was Kay. What would you have done if we both refused the job?”

He tries to shrug a shoulder, but his body fails to cooperate. “I would have figured something out, but I was certain one of you would accept.”

“I imagine Kay wasn't going to get the same 'welcome package' that I did.”

“Well, no, but it would have been amusing to see his face if he did!” Zed laughs loudly. It breaks away into a cough. He shakes his head at Oh's worry, as though he could shake that away, too. “Just wait. That's what they're doing.”

She huffs. “Kay is a perfectly reasonable man! He won't just—”

“He's never been a perfectly reasonable man,” Zed interrupts. “He just hid it slightly better, and then Jay came around. They bring out the best and the worst in each other.”

“You need to listen—”

“No,” Kay breaks in, louder. “This isn't going to work the way you want it to, Oh.”

“That's Chief—” she hisses.

He sighs, raises a hand up to rub at his brow, then turns and exits the office.

“You are not dismissed, Agent Kay!”

He doesn't listen.

“Heard about your match with Oh. That was a bit harsh, even for you,” Jay says from the passenger seat.

They're parked in the garage, which is why Kay gets away with hitting his forehead against the steering wheel.

“Wow, emotion!” Jay remarks. “This must really be eating you up.”

Kay arrives earlier than normal to headquarters, coming in separate from Jay, and delivers a steaming hot cup of coffee—the good stuff—to Oh, placing it on her desk. He wonders what time she had been in, or if she even left that night.

“And this?” Oh asks, voice clipped, not looking up to even acknowledge him.

“An apology.”

“Or bribery?”

Kay shrugs a shoulder and grins. “Think of it as you will,” Kay says, and leaves with better ease than the last time.

“How on Earth did you put up with them?” Oh asks Zed, voice hushed. She's sitting at his bedside for once, fingers laced, head resting against them. Zed isn't as responsive as he has been in the past, she knows they're getting... close. Still, she talks. “I know Kay! I know Kay very well! And yet... when you mix him with Jay... he's impossible to deal with!”

“You'll get used to it,” Zed answers, much to her surprise, “it's okay. I'm telling you... There's certain things you can push them towards. Things that are truly for their own safety... That's still a little difficult. You gotta learn how to compromise with them. It's the only way you're going to survive with any sanity. Even then they'll test you. But that test keeps you on your toes. That's the one you gotta look out for.”

“I don't understand,” she admits.

“When everything's a mess, and everything's on your shoulders to deal with, they know best about how to help. They'll know if they need to push you to your limits, or they'll know...” he trails off, smiling, “when they need to bring you a cup of coffee.”

She remembers the cup Kay delivered to her, weeks ago. Maybe it wasn't simply a peace offering. She smiles, too.

“They have different ways of dealing with it,” Zed continues. “You know Kay. You probably don't know Jay very well. And they're partners to the end—they will tagteam you do death. Trust me!” he laughs. “I know.”

Her smile grows despite the timing of the joke. It's awful. She's afraid to lose him.

She learns, as Zed knew she would. She takes tricks from him that she was personally familiar with, how he stood back and watched the agency move and work. Take the hands-on approach when necessary, yes, but one can understand so much more from taking a step away and seeing the bigger picture.

Maybe that's why she starts to notice something... very out of place. She isn't even sure what jars her senses, just knows that something is wrong.

She'll pin it down. She knows she will. She just needs to give it a little more time to work through.

In that little bit of time, Zed passes on. The doctors phone her desk at a strange hour, quietly telling her the time of death, and stating that he went without pain.

In her head, she thinks anything is better than being killed in the field.

“Thank you, I'll be right down,” she replies. She sets the phone back on the receiver and doesn't move. She only has a sense of time because of his TOD. At this twilight hour, most agents are asleep. She chews at her lip. Her hand still covers over the phone. Two thoughts tumble over each other in her mind:

Does she truly want to go down to the medical ward alone?

Should she call Kay and let him know?

She picks up the phone again and presses a button. It connects to Kay's communicator.

“Kay,” she says when he answers.

She goes down to the ward alone, anyway, but within half an hour a bedraggled Kay, sans black jacket, is walking through the door, first looking at the unmoving body, and then over at Oh. He hands her a cup of what she expects to be coffee, but catching a sniff of it, discovers that it's tea. She nods her thanks and wraps her hands around the Styrofoam.

“Does anyone else know?” he asks her, pulling up a chair and sitting next to her.

“Other than his doctors, no. I thought about sending out a text alert, but...” She shakes her head. “He'd want everyone to sleep.”

Kay nods in agreement.

“Though I admit, I almost expected you to have called Jay.”

To her confusion, he bristles at the name. Odd.

“He going to be upset that you didn't?” she asks him, pushing further. A part of her still-churning mind remembers about that wrong feeling she previously had.

“More than likely,” he answers after a moment. “It doesn't matter.”

Her mind latches onto that sentence and tucks it away for later. She's found the trail, now. She'll follow it further when she can.

It's been a month of one near-invasion, two kidnapped models, and a spattering of the usual cases. It's also been a month since she's taken to watching Agents Jay and Kay very closely. She's given them the space they desired and in return they've given her exemplary service. Zed, of course, was right. She wishes she had told him, before he was gone, but she's certain that he already knew.

Now, any chance she can afford, her gaze is following them.

Something's changed. Significantly. And she's not the only one who's noticed; most agents give them a wide berth, not even greeting them or pausing to talk. They avoid them entirely. The partners themselves aren't in-sync as they usually are. There's a tension there, keeping them both off-kilter. They snap at one another, and it isn't nearly jokingly at all. There's bite. They're trying to hurt one another.

All the alarm bells are going off in Oh's mind.

All of them.

She corners Kay. She had to actually stake him out to do so.

Quietly, in her head, underneath all her mental alarms, she's proud of herself.

“What's going on?” she asks him, worried. There's no room for argument in her voice. There's no use in him acting like things are normal.

So he doesn't even try. He gives her a grim sort of smile. “That time of year,” he says in way of explanation.

It doesn't tell her anything. “What are you talking about?” There's nothing about this time of year that particularly gives them problems.

“I don't really know myself, but... part of me does.” He looks away. “And that part of me isn't ready.”

That doesn't make her feel any more relaxed. At all. “Whatever I can do, Kay... It's yours, always.” She watches him go, then her eyes seek out Jay. She bites at her lip. “This... isn't going to be good.”

She settles in to work on her eulogy. One thing at a time.

Oh goes to sleep one night worried about her friend, and wakes up the next day with none of it. She settles into a video chat with one of their age-old allies and talks more to catch up than of politics. That chat is disturbed by Agent Jay's rather loud arrival—which isn't entirely new, but the fact that he's yelling about someone who's very much dead brings up more memories than Oh cares to remember. She very abruptly cuts her call short and goes to sort out this mess.

And then, accompanied by green lightning, time rights itself.

It's all awfully confusing, even as she reads over the report left by Agent Jay. And reads it two times more afterwards.

This is why she hates time travel.

And she still has other problems to deal with, doesn't she? She can't just have two senior agents sniping at one other any chance they get, she doesn't care how much rope she needs to typically give them—this has been too much. It's unprofessional and sets a bad example.

But when she sees them arrive later in the day, the tension between them is gone. They share in laughter.

She wonders that if like the timeline righting itself, they did, too.

It's Oh that brings him a cup of coffee for once, slipping into his office.

“Want to talk?” she asks.

He smiles at her.

“It's just, well, you were apparently dead for a day,” she continues.

“That time of year,” he repeats.

She frowns. “Is that so,” she murmurs. “But you couldn't have known...”

He brushes together a stack of files, lining up the edges and keeping his focus on them, instead of Oh. “Not... entirely, no. But it's as I told you: a part of me did. Anticipating... Knowing it was time.”

“And you took it out on your partner,” she scolds.

He has the heart to look stricken. “I didn't—”

She isn't used to seeing him at a loss for words, and she's known him a long time.

He tries again, still not meeting her eyes, “Do you remember that boy I brought back to headquarters?” he asks, his voice very small. “After Boris.”

It scares her. “Yes,” she answers. “You wouldn't say much of anything about it, and you...” she hesitates, “shut down even more after the boy had been taken care of.”

“Boris killed the boy's father. I couldn't stop it.”

She stays silent, realizing he's still trying to feel around the rest of his words.

His gaze meets hers, finally. “The boy's name was James Edwards.”

Her eyes widen. He can't mean—

Oh's looked through the files of every agent that works for MIB. Their full file, including their “past lives.” Who they were before they came to be an agent. She knows the name James Edwards, and she knows “coincidences” aren't really a thing.

She turns her attention beyond the glass to the main floor, where Jay's talking and gesturing at another agent excitedly.

“Yeah,” Kay rasps.

“You weren't taking it out on him,” she says, understanding, “you were trying to distance yourself.”

He doesn't reply.

She lets out a shaky sigh. “I see. That's...” She licks her lips. “Well. I do hope this isn't going to become an annual thing. When Zed said I would be inheriting your troubles, I don't think he meant quite this.”

Kay manages a chuckle.

“I don't know of anything else like this. I certainly don't want it to become annual.”

She gives him a small wave and heads for the door. “See to it. And do try to behave.”

“'Behave', Chief?” he answers, and there's that mischievousness that Jay bring out, back in his voice.

Oh rolls her eyes just slightly and looks over her shoulder, “Within reason,” she says tightly.

She isn't about to try and stick him and Jay in a box labeled Regulations.

The hassle involved isn't worth it.