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[regan_tam]

Regan doesn't want to think about personal security in all situations.

Regan is aware that, as the wife of a senator -- and, more, as the mother of Simon and River Tam and the wife of the senator proposing the controversial Interplanetary Infrastructure and Guardianship Act -- she doesn't have the luxury of avoiding it. As the day Parliament votes on the act gets closer, their chief of security has been increasingly vigilant about reminding them of this.

Therefore, she's at her desk, resignedly reviewing the dossier of procedure Mark Jiang handed them both last week.

Comments

[gabriel_tam]

His voice echoes down the hall from his office as he says,

"Let's get you settled down, baobei. I know it's early, but I don't like this at all."

[regan_tam]

Regan lifts her head, frowning slightly.

If Gabriel brought River home, there's a reason. And, whether Regan likes it or not, that reason is likely to be bad news.

She stands, barefoot in the thick carpet, and turns towards the door. (Her shoes are downstairs by the front door, tidily arranged; her slippers have been toed off under the desk.)

"Gabriel?"

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"I'm not tired yet," Mary complains, fretfully. "Sleeping when I am not tired is not going to help -"

And then she hears the voice call out, and falls silent, standing stiffly next to Gabriel.

The voice doesn't sound familiar.

[gabriel_tam]

"We're in here, Regan," he calls, then addresses Mary.

"It certainly can't hurt."

[regan_tam]

...That's not River's voice.

(Thoughts of the security procedures she's just been reading rise unbidden, and are suppressed; this is Gabriel sounding concerned but not strained, and a child. There's no cause for worry.)

Regan moves into the hallway, and stops in surprise.

"It's nice to see you again, Mary," she says politely after a moment, with a warm smile, while her eyes flick a question at her husband.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary's gaze fixes on Regan, and stays there.

Is that meant to be her mother? It would make sense, she supposes - and although she has a vague recollection that mothers are meant to be warm and welcoming, it does not feel strange that hers does not seem to be.


Still, she waits for her father to explain.

[gabriel_tam]

Gabriel's own answering look doesn't appear to be hiding anything, and yet there's a flicker of some odd blankness there as he says with wry humor,

"Surely we haven't been gone that long, have we?"

He puts one comforting hand on Mary's shoulder and leaves it there. Gabriel adds,

"I'm afraid Mary isn't feeling well. Why don't I get her settled in her room while you get the scanner?"

[regan_tam]

"...Her room?" Regan's eyebrows rise in carefully restrained confusion.

She's waiting for this to make some kind of sense. Any kind of sense.

And it almost does -- there are perfectly rational reasons he might bring Mary to their house, since Regan knows he thinks well of her and can clearly see he's worried -- but there are too many things off.

(Listen to gut feelings, the procedures repeated again and again, until Regan wanted to snap at the paper that she'd learned that lesson a long time ago, and learned its limits too.

The procedures are on her mind right now.

This situation doesn't make sense.)

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"He thinks I ought to go to sleep," Mary explains.

Her voice is clipped, and still wary. She's not sure how to act around - her mother? - this person; it's not really comforting that the woman doesn't seem to know how to act around her, either.

[gabriel_tam]

"Dāngrán."

Gabriel looks slightly confused now, as well.

"Why-- do you have a different suggestion?"

[regan_tam]

Has Gabriel lost his--

Bad question.

"You mean," Regan says carefully, "her room in this house?"

[gabriel_tam]

"That's exactly what I mean."

He's frowning, a little, and his expression's tightened.

"I don't think it's serious enough that she needs a health center tonight, although certainly we'll make that decision tomorrow--"

Gabriel breaks off here, looking down at Mary.

"-- and yes, we will, young lady, so don't even think to argue the point. If you're not better in the morning, we'll wave your brother."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"I am not sick," Mary says, sulkily.

(It's a familiar conversation, and she is at least sure of her role in it.)

"It is only I have forgotten things - that is all."

[regan_tam]

Regan seizes upon this clue to rationality, in a conversation that's rapidly beginning to feel like quicksand.

"What have you forgotten, Mary?"

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Not everything."

It's an important qualifier.

"Only I forgot my name at first - and who I was - and who everybody else was. And where I came from and things like that. But I still know how to do things. And about things that everyone knows."

[gabriel_tam]

"She'd even forgotten that we were her parents," he puts in. Gabriel essays a light laugh, but there's worry in the glance he gives Regan.

"Have you ever heard anything so absurd?"

[regan_tam]

Regan's smile in response is more than a little strained.

"Absurd," she echoes.

"Did you -- did either of you meet anyone strange at Milliways? Or, or go anywhere, or anything like that? It is Milliways, after all."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"If we did," Mary says, a little impatiently, "I have forgotten."

[gabriel_tam]

"Mary, don't be rude to your mother."

It's kindly said, but very firm. Gabriel shakes his head.

"Nothing like that, no. We -- "

A flicker of hesitation.

"We stopped in for dinner."

Even if he can't remember actually arriving, or why.

[regan_tam]

"And nothing strange at all?"

She will not be desperate. She will not be desperate. She has learned more than enough, over the past years, to cope with this.

Her face is controlled, her voice normal, but one hand fists tight behind her back where Gabriel can't see it.

I'm dreaming, she thinks, and in the same instant, Stop it, please, somebody just stop it.

[gabriel_tam]

"Not that I recall," he says, with the barest touch of dryness.

His gaze flicks from hers toward Mary, just enough to indicate that he's unwilling to speak freely in front of their child.

He's confident she'll understand.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"We met Lord Robert," Mary volunteers, suddenly.

"That was after, though - else I should not have remembered either. He said he knew us though. And he did look awfully queer when he saw us."

[regan_tam]

Lord Robert?

She won't ask. Not immediately.

She does understand Gabriel's glance, though -- of course she does, and it's nice, she would think if she were letting herself think about this more than she had to, to understand something -- and she comes to a decision.

"Gabriel," she says, with a small smile at the girl tucked against his side, "why don't you take Mary to her room?"

This is something of a test, as well.

"I have a few quick things to finish before I can close my work for the night, but they won't take long. You can get her settled, and I'll be along in a minute with the tempscanner. We'll see about getting this sorted out."

[gabriel_tam]

"I think that's a grand idea."

He smiles at Regan and then down at Mary.

"Come on, băobèi. Let's go."

Gabriel guides her out of the office and the two of them start down the hallway-- but not toward the guest rooms, though.

They're headed toward the rooms that are always kept ready for Simon and River, just in case.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary follows, though none of this looks - or feels - familiar, and doesn't glance back at the mother who seems almost less familiar than the walls and the floor and the odd-looking furniture.

Tomorrow she'll remember, most likely. Anyways, it seems she knows all the important things.

[regan_tam]

Regan is bleakly unsurprised to see which direction Gabriel is taking Mary. She wonders, a little, what he'll do when he comes to River's room. Will he be confused, or simply carry on as if everything were normal?

She doesn't wait to see. She returns Gabriel's smile, spends a few more seconds making sure of where they're headed, and then turns back to her office. The door closes behind her with a soft click.

And then she's at her desk, letting her hands clench (finally, just for one stolen instant, finally she can let the stress show) as she shoves paperwork aside, and forcing herself back to a semblance of composure as she puts in the call to a very familiar number.

[aj_crawley]

It's answered rather more quickly than normal, although the screen does not blink to a very familiar face; it announces, rather, blue against black, VISUAL UNAVAILABLE. The explanation comes a moment later, when the first sound to carry over the wave is the low purr of a fast-moving skimmer.

(No pilot-side video during ground transit; Londinium regulations.)

"Shénme?" enquires a very familiar voice.

[regan_tam]

Oh thank heavens.

She knows the hours he keeps, especially with political events heading up, but still--

"Crowley," she says, voice as level as she can make it.

"There's -- do you remember anything about memory loss? Or sudden delusion? Related to Milliways."

The channel's secure, of course. All of theirs are, and their source boxes automatically triple-encode when connecting to certain numbers.

[aj_crawley]

"Regan," the speakers say, "speak of the devil. Not... off the top of my head. Depends what you mean by delusion, I suppose. I mean, probably not a week goes by that someone doesn't pull some sort of mind-altering shit in there; I remember everyone got turned into puppets, once, and GET OFF THE ROAD, YOU LIÚ KŎUSHUǏ DE BIǍOZI HÉ HÓUZI DE BÈN ÉRZI Nyarlathotep takes it into his head to run riot every now and again."

Pause.

"Why?"

[regan_tam]

Speak of the devil is always a slightly more unsettling phrase than usual coming from Crowley, but Regan ignores that fact. She also makes a mental note, for approximately the 459th time, to never get in a vehicle Crowley's driving. No matter how much he can cheat the laws of physics, it's not worth the strain on her nerves.

(If he doesn't remember, well, that means it passed quickly and without any fuss, doesn't it?)

"Because," she says, with a dry precision that betrays a certain level of stress, "Gabriel just came home with little Mary Lennox, and so far as I can tell both of them are seriously convinced that she is our daughter. And Gabriel is deeply concerned, because she seems to have lost large chunks of her memory. Neither of them remember anything strange happening."

"I was hoping," and she will not let her voice quiver or sound weary or anything but brisk and in control, "that you might know how to sort things out."

[aj_crawley]

"Bollocks," Crowley says conversationally. The engine revs, escalating into a whine. "Well, I was on my way over anyway. Sit tight, I'm coming off Liàngmào now - I'll be there in two minutes."

(Fā Liàng Mào Zi Plaza is a ten-minute drive from the Tam house, in good traffic.)

[regan_tam]

From anyone else, 'two minutes' from Liàngmào would be a figure of speech. Regan is reluctantly growing used to this sort of thing, and right now is too grateful to bother being disconcerted.

"Indeed," she says, and for a moment she finds herself smiling. It's a tight, ironic smile, with no real humor, but it's still a relief.

"Xìexie, Crowley. Just ring the bell and I'll come down to meet you." He'll let himself in, of course; Crowley is one of a scant handful keyed to the locks. Regan mostly prefers not to think about the fact that he could bypass them anyway if he felt like it.

[gabriel_tam]

Meanwhile, down the hall...

"There."

Gabriel's led the way into the room and started for a dresser that stands against the far wall. The pajamas that he takes from a drawer are of good quality and of a size that would fit Mary-- almost.

They might be a little large.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

What strange-looking undergarments.

"Have I not got any nightgowns?" Mary asks, a little doubtfully.

[gabriel_tam]

"Of course, if you'd rather--"

He sounds a little surprised, but starts looking through folded clothes.

[regan_tam]

She was afraid of this.

"Gabriel," Regan says quietly from the doorway -- with little warning; the hallway has a rug down the center, and her feet are bare, and River inherited something of her silent grace from each parent -- "this is River's room."

She can't not say it.

(She could. If she had to. But this, too, is a kind of test, and she can't stop hoping that he'll snap out of it if only she says the right thing.)

[gabriel_tam]

He has his back to them both, searching through the dresser drawer, but despite that, it's easy to see him grow very, very still.

Something about this is far, far too familiar to him, although he can't say why.

But as it turns out, this isn't the first time that Gabriel Tam has been induced to lose his memory--

(you've forgotten the faces of your children)

-- where his son and daughter are concerned, and as a result, it's much easier than one might think for him to quickly reconcile pieces that shouldn't fit quite as well as they seem to.

"Of course," he says as he turns, smiling wryly. "But I didn't think River would begrudge her little sister the room, now that she's left home-- hence the switch."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"This is not my room?"

Mary straightens, looking around with renewed interest. No wonder the underclothes had looked odd; they're not hers.

"- is it a bigger room than my room?" she asks, and then stops, and says, "I think I should like to see mine; I want to know what I have."

[regan_tam]

"...Of course," Regan echoes, forcing a smile.

Gabriel gets to deal with Mary's question. Regan is not going to.

Regan is going to listen, and take mental notes, and hope for Crowley to arrive and know what he's doing.

[gabriel_tam]

"It is now," Gabriel says, with the sort of resigned weariness that comes from long years of dealing with stubborn children.

"I know you don't remember, but trust your bà bà-- you couldn't wait until you could do everything your sister could do, including move into a room that was better suited for an older girl."