Chapter Text
As a US Marshall, and then the Sheriff of Eureka, Jack was used to putting others wishes and needs before his own. It was his job to protect, not his job to want or need, and old habits died hard.
Nathan was Allison’s first, and Jack knew that she still missed the scientist, it was ingrained in Jack to care for Allison’s needs before his own, and stepping aside for Allison seemed natural. So Jack left Nathan to Allison.
Dr Zoe Carter stood by the wall, as near as she could get to her patient, Dr Nathan Stark, and observed him closely. This party was a mistake, it was far too much, too soon.
Zoe had never been privy to exactly what had gone on when she ran off with Callister to escape her mistakes, believing that her dad had had enough of her. But she had seen the depth of emotion in Nathan Stark that night that she hadn’t believed, or been led to believe that he possessed. Nathan (as he had insisted she call him) hid his feelings deep, but Zoe had some experience with deeply hidden feelings and right about then she could tell that Dr Nathan Stark was faking it.
Badly.
Zoe watched Dr Allison Blake smile and nod, and engage with the group of scientists surrounding her and Nathan without even the slightest idea that her former husband was distressed.
Zoe had run a full panel of every test, Nathan was stable, he was fit (very) and healthy, but he had been deprived of touch, and sensory input for a long time, and big, noisy crowds were obviously too much for him to handle. He had been recovering at his own pace. Now, Allison was forcing the issue and it was clear she was oblivious to Nathan’s distress.
When Allison put her hand on Nathan’s back, and he flinched, if he had tensed up any harder Zoe was sure he would have snapped his spine. There was the briefest flash of irritation on Allison’s face. Enough was enough, Zoe pursed her lips in annoyance, and stepped in. “Dr Stark,” she interrupted, “I wonder if we could discuss your follow-up appointment.”
The look of gratitude that Nathan shot her, the speed with which he moved away from Allison and the crowd, and the purse-lipped look Allison gave Zoe told the young doctor that she had done exactly the right thing.
Nathan clenched his fists in an effort to stop his hands from shaking. It had taken him months when he first returned from the dead to deal with more than one person in his space, the Library gave him that freedom. He had once spent a week alone with a book in the reading room. The Librarians seemed to understand him, and gave him the time to learn to be in the world again. Meeting Moriarty had had a beneficial effect at a time when everything felt like it was collapsing in on itself. Learning that magic was real threw him for another loop. Moriarty telling him his own story, had put things into perspective for Nathan and he started to reconnect to the world in a new way. Finding out that Jack and Allison married made him realise that he didn’t want to go back.
Then Jack had shown up, even after all this time, and Nathan could understand and accept that it was a decade since he had seen the Sheriff, but something stirred in his heart, something he could not deny. So he had wanted to see where this went, because for the first time in a decade Nathan Stark felt something real was possible.
Jack was a constant.
So he had packed some stuff, asked Moriarty to come too, and returned to Eureka. Where everything was different and the same, and Jack Carter clearly thought that Nathan Stark was still hung up on his ex-wife.
Coming back to Eureka was clearly a mistake. It felt as though the only one in the whole damn town who got him was young Zoe Carter.
Feeling suddenly very tired, Nathan made his way to the bench across the street, under Zoe’s watchful eye, and sat down. It was obvious now that he had been deluding himself about Jack, and Jack’s feelings for himself, he thought as he hunched over, resting his elbows on his knees and dropping his head into his hands.
A small hand rubbed his shoulder, and Nathan was grateful for the gentle, kind contact.
“Nathan.” A calm voice said quietly, “Are you alright?” Nathan glanced up to see Moriarty crossing the street towards him. He could have lied, but the large lump in the back of his throat wouldn’t let him, dropping his gaze again, he shook his head. Moriarty sat on the bench next to his friend and waited.
Zoe pulled a small bottle of water out of her bag, and fished out a bottle, cracking the lid she extracted two tablets, and dropped them into Nathan’s hand, passing him the bottle as she cracked the lid on that. The Dr Stark she had known before his “death” would not have accepted either the tablets or the water without question, but this ‘new’ Nathan did. It was not lost on Zoe either his calm acceptance or the minute tremors in his fingers. He was rapidly reaching the end of his rope.
Zoe dropped them back at the Bed and Breakfast. It was late, but she was going to have this out with her father. She loved Jack, but sometimes he was just so frustrating. He never seemed able to put himself before others. Zoe had figured that Nathan had no intention of pursuing Allison when he returned to Eureka, it was like Jack was expecting him to resume the same stance that he had when they first met and Nathan and Jack were competing for Allison’s attention.
“SARAH, door.” Zoe cast a slightly apologetic glance at the ceiling as she entered, she figured she shouldn’t have snapped, but this was desperate.
“DAD!”
Jack was staring at her in open-mouthed astonishment. “Zoe.” He waved a hand at the door. “What’s going on?” He looked ever so slightly furtive, which stoked Zoe’s annoyance.
“I thought, once you had persuaded Nathan to come back here, that somewhere along the line you were finally going to admit that you have feelings for the man.” Zoe crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot. “Instead you push him off onto Allison.”
“Now Zoe.” Jack began.
“Really Dad.” Zoe charged ahead, “because Nathan’s had enough. He’s starting to think you don’t care, and Allison definitely doesn’t.” She narrowed her eyes at her father who was shifting from foot to foot and blushing. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that Allison really doesn’t want Nathan back either. He’s definitely no longer the guy who disappeared on their wedding day. The long hair, scruffy beard and board shorts are something of a giveaway.” Truthfully, Nathan’s near shoulder-length curls, messily untamed, and extensively sun-and-salt bleached, coupled with the tee shirts, board shorts and flipflops were ever so slightly unnerving to Zoe. It had taken some getting used to, her memories of the severely and meticulously groomed Dr Stark. Seeing him dressed in the suit tonight, clearly uncomfortable, his curls dragged into a tight ponytail, underscored by his tense and defeated body language and Zoe knew that Jack needed to talk to Nathan, and soon.
“Don’t you start, young lady.” Jack ticked his finger at her. “Allison and Nathan…”
“Are washed up. You and Allison are washed up. She has moved on. Nathan’s moved on. Only it seems like you haven’t.” Zoe sighed. “Look Dad, when I first saw Nathan, first examined him when he came back to Eureka, it was weird, but he was genuinely happy. Relaxed. He had obviously come to terms with a lot of things, including being sensorily deprived for five years, and floating around in the ether. Now…” She shrugged, “he’s tense, unhappy, he isn’t going to go back to being Director Stark, he’s not the guy Allison married, or the guy she was going to remarry. He came to Eureka for one thing, to find you Dad, and right now…” Zoe gulped, seeing the real sadness in her father’s eyes. “Right now, he’s wishing he hadn’t.”
“Nathan died. Then somehow, he got a second chance” Jack began. He faltered. “I wanted him to be sure of what he was missing, if he chose me.”
“So this is… what now… you showing Nathan that he can choose you?” Zoe rolled her eyes. “You have to tell him that, Dad, all he has seen since he arrived back, apart from the infirmary, and the many, many, many people who want to take a look at him and possibly touch him, which by the way is far too much for him, if James wasn’t running interference, I doubt we could have gotten him out of his room at the bed and breakfast after the second day. Anyway, all Nathan has seen since he got here is you shoving him at Allison.”
Jack tilted his head to one side, “and James Moriarty… there’s something weird about that guy.”
Zoe nodded. There definitely was, but even though Nathan and James had confided in her, and she wasn’t quite sure that she believed it, but the science told her the truth, it wasn’t her story or her secret to tell. The former fictional was a good friend to Nathan, possibly one of the very few who could actually understand the exact circumstances and the emotions that Nathan found himself in. Different stories, similar situations. After she had examined Nathan, and run a battery of tests, at Nathan’s insistence, Zoe had examined James.
He appeared to be a normal, healthy male in his mid forties, but when she started running tests, the data had nearly blown her mind. His physical being was roughly seven years old. So intrigued was she by all of this, she had invited both men to her home, made them dinner, and then given them the look. “Spill.”
She had to admit to being surprised when they had glanced at each other and then it all came tumbling out. James being Moriarty, Conan-Doyle’s fictional foil to Sherlock Holmes, supposedly held within the bounds of his story, but made mortal by his love for Colonel Eve Baird, Guardian to the Librarian… Magic was real. Well Zoe was a little skeptical on that one, but also completely intrigued, and good at keeping secrets. With two hopeful pairs of eyes staring at her (and a little mental note to self, one day one of those men might be her stepdad), Zoe found it an easy choice. She would keep the secret, and James would be a patient when he needed a doctor.
God, she loved her job. Working in Eureka gave her possibilities beyond the wildest imagination of what an MD would normally deal with.
Knowing what she did, not entirely comfortable with keeping the secret, but it wasn’t her secret to tell, and since James was currently Nathan’s only support, and driving him away would be really bad for everyone, Zoe fixed her father with a stern look. “I agree that James is a little… strange, but since he’s currently the only one that Nathan turns to for support, and Nathan is a lot more fragile than you think he is…. Dad… Stop remembering him, and really look at him. He would never admit it, because pride and he hasn’t changed that much, but he needs you. He wants you, and the longer you hold off and back away from him the harder it gets. For him especially.” She looked up at the ceiling, no idea why she was still doing this, SARAH was everywhere.
“SARAH.”
“Yes Dr Carter.” The AI’s slightly prissy voice answered, and Zoe knew she was not off the hook for the snap earlier.
“I know you have access to every camera in Eureka, please show Dad what he just won’t see.”
A steady stream of images and videos began to march across the large screen in the den, for a second Jack seemed as though he would protest, but then he slumped down on the couch. “SARAH, beer me.”
Replaying the mental images and the videos in his head was hard enough, but actually seeing the chronicle of events as they had transpired over the last three weeks, well that was something entirely different, and being aware of Nathan’s emotions was not quite like seeing evidence.
Jack looked at the crushed, tense, unhappy look on Nathan’s handsome face, the body language, the obvious stress every time Allison laid a hand on him. She laid a lot of hands. Jack frowned a little, Allison had never been as tactile with himself, even during their marriage, as she was being with Nathan. He obviously didn’t want to be touched, but photographic evidence showed that she still touched him. And Jack couldn’t really recall Allison being as touchy-feely with Nathan all those years ago.
Was she trying to make some kind of strange point?
Then came Allison’s party last night, Jack watched Nathan snap to attention, watch Zoe guide him away from the group surrounding them, and saw the relief and sadness on Nathan’s face.
SARAH paused the screen, freezing on Nathan’s face as Zoe led him out of the building. Jack was certain he had never seen defeat on Nathan’s face before. He swallowed. “I need to talk to him.”