James

[moonshadows]

He opened the door and the man on the other side gaped lopsidedly. It would have been comedic except that the last five years had been pain and ash that suddenly combined into irrational anger. "For the love of God, Arthur! It's not enough that you ruined your life and mine, now you can't even stay dead properly?"

One thick finger pointed waveringly at him, and Arthur gaped like a demented fish out of water. "J-James?" he stuttered. "N-no, it can't- you're- there's no way- i-it's just not possible," he finished with a tone that was trying to be firm but shook like gelatin. "You can't be James. O-or at least, not my James."

He arched one eyebrow eloquently, still holding the door open. "Because I'm dead?" he asked, the words stiff with sarcasm.

"W-well, yes, but more important...I'm not. That says to me that one of us crossed a dimensional barrier somewhere."

He had a point. James wasn't used to his partner being so astute. "You'll have to forgive my outburst," he said dryly, conceding the point without saying so directly. "The last time I saw my Arthur, he stranded me in Hong Kong while he and the Warehouse died to a bomb smuggled in by Walter Sykes."

Arthur paled, one hand roaming nervously over his face and into his hair. "James," he said in a strangled voice. "Tell me you didn't use the astrolabe."

The piercing look he gave the specter of his partner found only earnest concern and personal tragedy. "No," he said warily. "Arthur did, or so he claimed. You may as well come inside, no need to give the neighbors something to gossip over."

The pudgy man stepped awkwardly inside, black bag clutched in both hands, eyes darting everywhere as though afraid to stay too long on any one object. Delicately, he asked, "Did...I...use the astrolabe?"

"No," Arthur said heavily. "I did. Don't blame yours for dying with the Warehouse; the downside is...unpleasant."

"How unpleasant, exactly?" he asked as he put the kettle on.

Arthur fixed him with a dry look. "I grew my own evil twin who tried to destroy everything I love and was responsible for the global one-day pandemic a few years back." A glint in his eyes said that he was testing James somehow.

He really wasn't used to an Arthur who wasn't a complete bumbler. "At least you saved your Warehouse," he said bitterly as he scooped loose tea into mesh balls.

"H-How do you..."

James smiled sharply at him. God, it was just like his Arthur only maybe better. "The world hasn't lost hope." The kettle peeped, and he poured water into two mugs.

Hands shaking only a little, his guest accepted one. "That doesn't mean anything," he said in a solemn voice. "If I'd known I'd come back too late to defuse Sykes, I would have run directly to aisle 989B and shoved Pandora's Box through the portal, along with everyone and everything else I thought I could save."

While his tea steeped, James unlocked an antique wardrobe and pulled out a black bag nearly identical to the one sitting by Arthur's feet, caressing it briefly as he did. "That's precisely what my Arthur did. I found myself in Hong Kong with nothing but this bag, in which he'd stashed false identification and access to some very generous funds, along with some other items. No one attempted to contact me, thinking me dead. Sykes had killed my agents, most of the Regents, even the innkeeper. Officially, there was a fire in the acres and acres of tax records. Unofficially, the Warehouse and the Regents died in the same secrecy with which they'd lived. I tested it, you know," he said as he sat, bag perched in his lap like a beloved pet. "Paid Mr. Keeler's store a visit, purchased the required items."

Arthur pulled the mesh ball out of his tea and sipped cautiously. "What happened?"

"I paid for my purchases and left."

The flinch was expected, but this Arthur scowled as well. "What did they do with all the items in the Regent's Vault?"

"I've no idea." James tested his tea and removed the mesh ball. "By the time I broke in, the vaults were empty.

"I don't know how you got here," Arthur said fervently, "but I'm glad you are. I've been...discussing Warehouse and Regent protocol with Mr. Kosan."

Eyebrows up, he sipped his tea and asked, "How is that endeavor going?"

"Oh, pretty well." The light tone hid an amount of steel James hadn't expected to be there. "The fact that he owes his life to me breaking protocol helps. Then there's his guilt over not providing mental health care until I became a danger to myself and others...really, I've got him over a barrel, and I'm taking advantage of that fact. I'll be running things behind the scenes within a decade."

"Arthur, I'm impressed." And he was. This was an Arthur who to all appearances was not letting anything stop him, all the potential he'd watched being wasted for fifteen years seemingly realized at last. "And they let you come back after that incident with the Phoenix?"

The other man nearly choked on his tea. "M-me? James...it was you who..."

Oh. Well, that was disappointing. "I hope you turned me in," he said in as mild a tone as he could manage. "I've no doubt that I would do something...rash...should I suffer banishment the way you did in my version of things."

Arthur shuddered. "Oh, God. I don't want to think about what your version of me did if he was...if he used the Phoenix to save Carol."

"I won't tell you, then," he couldn't help teasing, taking a sip of tea to hide his grin. "Did I...?"

"You know yourself better than that," Arthur chided him. "Rash? No. Elaborately planned and flawlessly executed, yes."

James sipped his tea, weighing and analyzing. "Not flawless, if I died. Where was my miscalculation?"

"Well..." The man who was and was not his partner sipped tea while thinking. "We wouldn't have caught y- my James if Claudia hadn't snatched the thimble so Myka could pretend to be HG."

"Wells?" He sat up in alarm, nearly knocking the bag from his lap. "I unbronzed H. G. Wells?" When the other man nodded, he sank back down with a groan. "That was my miscalculation, no matter what else happened."

Arthur gave him a wry look. "Not your finest moment, in retrospect. She killed you. I-I mean, the you...here."

That was discomfiting to think about. James stroked the bag. "So we both felt the pain of our partners being banished and acting...unwisely. I presume that you, like me, spent fifteen years watching agents come in and die before your partner re-appeared in your life and died in a way that did not allow for much closure."

"That about sums it up, yes." He pointed at James's bag. "So what did...your me...consider worth saving?"

He reached inside, feeling the interior shift to accommodate his desire. "Pandora's Box, of course," he said, lifting it briefly out. A few useful tools, Farnsworth, tesla...the diorama, and..." he hesitated, watching the face of this strange Arthur carefully. "The...seed of the next Warehouse.

Now it was Arthur's turn to sit up in alarm, staring very hard at the black bag that was not his. "You..." he pointed at the bag, an almost reverent tone in his voice. "That's...and you..." He licked his lips before meeting James's eyes. "You're the Caretaker to a baby Warehouse, and it's in that bag instead of a building."

Warily, James nodded.

The ecstatic smile on the right side of Arthur's face was unexpected. "James, that's great! Amazing! It's - do you have any idea what this means?" Without waiting for an answer, he hurried on. "Warehouse Thirteen - my Warehouse - gave me an apple- uh, it's a long story but the short version is that she effectively has two Caretakers, Mrs. Frederic who inherited it from her sister who inherited it from- well, you get the idea - and me, who she chose to be with her forever because in two thousand years..." he trailed off, awe and love suffusing his features. "No one has loved her the way I do."

Eternity hadn't seemed very appealing, but having an Arthur who didn't make him want to tear his hair and scream to share eternity with...that brightened his outlook significantly. "Please don't take this the wrong way," he said gently, "but I've known you for less than an hour and already I like you better than the Arthur who saved my life and ruined it in the same stroke. I look forward to decades of swapping stories with you." He frowned. "Arthur, why did you come to my door?"

“Oh! Um…” He rummaged in his own bag for a minute before pulling out the Mason’s Square. “I nearly lost my Warehouse to the Regents twice,” he said with quiet, firm tone that brooked no argument. “I don’t intend to give them that opportunity again. I came here looking for a place where I could leave this and be sure it would remain safe in case I needed to move her on short notice.”

James found himself smiling. “I have a root cellar,” he offered mildly.

Slowly, Arthur smiled back.