#found this languishing in my caps folder

[rad-roche]

man the lighting in the vault is great

[seenashwrite]

The Midwife: Part One

Status: Complete (1 of 4) Word Count: 3K Category: Mini-series; Behind-the-scenes canon compliant; Historical; Mystery; Teamwork; On-the-hunt   Rating: Teen & Up Character(s): Various O.C.s; References to familiar people/places Pairing(s): N/A  Warnings: None Overall Summary: In the mid-1950s, a member of the New York City chapter of the Men of Letters is sent to the United Kingdom to assist with what appears to be another stack of cold case dead-ends, when he suddenly finds himself questioning one of his closest-held convictions. 

          *~* The Midwife : Master Post *~*

There was once a small pocket of unmoved time in Kansas, about half a century's worth, and it came to an end simply, no magic required. A turn of a key in a lock, two sets of steps across a threshold, then it was over, just like that. Simple maneuvers were in contrast with the Men of Letters' old hat routine but the new occupants of their abandoned shelter under Lebanon favored such actions when they had the option.

These legacies were not alone in that position, though they may have found the premise hard to swallow as the years went by, as their knowledge grew. Their encounters with a few of the more interesting members of their inherited fraternity would have done little to convince them otherwise. Seeing is believing, and what-have-you.    

Proof. Tangibility. Something solid, something that could be held in the hand, studied, documented. Rumor meets research meets methodology. Hunter meets weapon meets monster. So, in that respect, more Men of Letters than not.

No one would have faulted the Winchester brothers for missing the typewriter at the very back of the lowest, farthest space, under the rotting table, inside the water-damaged and disintegrating box, completely covered by shadows and cobwebs in that brick-walled cellar of a storage room.

Perhaps some fault - they had lived there for years by the time the typewriter's keys began to move for the first time in decades - maybe that room should have long been discovered, its items sorted. The youngest would have found the books of value, slightly molded as they were. The eldest most assuredly would have found the vintage weaponry of interest, if not use.  

Should they ever go hunting in their home, and should that hunt take them to the dark corner, and the box, and the rusted device, a yellowed paper wrapped on the roll, filled with words in faded ink would await them, though they'd need to be timely: things of such nature do eventually tend to fall to pieces.

Kendricks Academy, just outside London - 1956

.

I've heard it said that if you question your own sanity, then the thought in-and-of itself means you're not. Insane, that is. I found that reasonable, though I suspected many a lunatic had to have felt it creeping on, so reason, yes; comfort, no.

Burt flicked a tiny paper ball across the huge library table to get my attention, and I tilted my head slightly in his direction, met mischievous eyes with my own, ones I suspected were dull and glazed-over and a step shy of insanity. A small snicker was my confirmation, and it was quickly shifted into a mild throat-clearing when our monotone host glanced over his shoulder in our direction. Undeterred, the long, thin stick in his hand went back to pointing - poking, really - at the projected data on the wall, the droning getting right back on track.

This was how I'd die.

He was such a promising young man, they'd write. Twenty-four, taken long before his time, found still sitting up in the chair, his beloved research scattered around him. He is survived by an incredibly angry fiancée, bereft over the meticulously-yet-indecisively-planned wedding that shall never occur. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his name to the Men of Letters, United Kingdom Headquarters, London. Please earmark as funding for booze-filled credenzas in all meeting rooms.

It wasn't just the London chapter - my home chapter in New York City was filled with fellows who could bore with the best of them, and though I loved my job, this assignment was working my nerves. I'd thought my breaks in the cold cases department - especially the last one - would send me into the more active areas of our duties. Active without action, for the most part, but I would've happily taken it.

Instead they’d sent the Lily Sunder investigation on without me, then sent me across the pond, a stack of ice-colds awaiting me in the United Kingdom. And, of course, the not-so-brief briefings delivered in succession by brethren who grew increasingly brain-numbing. Thank heavens for Burt.

Per usual, he seemed to take everything in stride, easygoing to a fault. He was only around five years my senior, though his somewhat girthy physique and heavily balding scalp made him look older. And while he supported me in my desire to see what else our secret society had to offer, he seemed perfectly content languishing with the cold cases.

Even the fact that we'd been boarded at the school didn't seem to faze him, thin mattresses and bland food be damned. His pockets were always filled with candy, a bit grandfatherly, but I found myself grateful. I'd taken to munching whenever he did, and after almost three weeks, my waistband had started to protest - made sense why Burt was perpetually suspendered. Still, I took the offered piece of wax-wrapped taffy as we walked back to the dormitory.

"No more bubblegum?" I asked, pulling the sticky wad in two before I stuck it in my mouth.

"Nah," Burt replied, talking around an entire piece of taffy settled into his cheek, where it was causing a giant bulge. "Got in my mustache the other day."

"Stop blowing bubbles."

"Then what's the point, Jacky?"

"Got me."

"Say, you heard anything from home?"

"Colleen changed her bouquet again."

"I meant Lily."

"No, lilies were three bouquets ago."

"The Sunder case, you moron."

"Ah. No. Last time I asked, Peterson said it was now 'eyes only'." I capped off my response with rolled eyes, then went ahead and stuffed the other half of the taffy in my mouth. Burt knew better. I hated talking about it.

"Still makes me mad," he replied in a sympathetic tone.

"Nothing makes you mad."

"Well, that did! Jack, you're the one that found the lead, confirmed the Canada sighting---"

I sighed. "Burt---"

"And for pity's sake, the Nephi---"

I hocked my taffy into a nearby bush before I stopped in my tracks, turned, gripped his forearm. "Burt!" I hissed, glancing up and down the walkway. 

Smatterings of students were still lingering and walking about, most headed into the common areas or their next class. And though we were outside, I still couldn't believe he was speaking so loudly, so casually. Saying that word aloud at all.

Burt's brow creased slightly and those always-rosy cheeks pinked up a notch, but then he swallowed his taffy and grinned. "Wanna skip that lukewarm, eighty-percent-dough-shepherd's pie in the canteen, head to a pub? I know one that serves actual hot meals, overfill the pints...." He trailed off in a slightly sing-song voice, wiggled his eyebrows so much they almost hit the rim of his cap.

I sighed again, then shrugged my shoulders. "Why not?"

It wasn't simply that they'd taken what I'd come to consider my case away from me. It was the nagging feeling I had that despite the fact Sunder had caused no harm to civilians to our knowledge - well, excepting herself - the Men of Letters' continued interest in her was more than just loose-end tying. No reason but the pangs in my gut to think it was some kind of vendetta. Then they'd allowed more and more access to the files once my early, modest hypothesis showed promise, and I'd stumbled upon quite the reason during a fact-finding mission to the chapter house in Kansas.

House. Ha. Basement, more accurately, and the cold case guru there, Haggerty, was so excited to have company he would've let us redecorate the place in pastels if we'd asked nicely enough. Anything to keep me and Burt there longer, keep him occupied.

He was one of the more enthusiastic members, reminded me a lot of my father, truth be told. More into the metaphysical than I was, sure, but with a logical mindset. I understood why I'd been ordered to consult with him, given the nature of Sunder's appearance in the grainy photograph we'd obtained. The professor hadn't aged a day since the time she'd disappeared from what was left of her life, and our working theory was witchcraft.

Witchcraft didn't just mean magic in my business; it was one of several sub-classifications under the magical umbrella. And if you wanted the skinny on the workings of witches, you called on Haggerty. Even though he'd retired not long after we'd met, he never hesitated to get back in touch with any thoughts he had on the ideas I'd written to him about, the more far-fetched ones  I'd want to bounce off of someone before writing them up for field work consideration. Besides Burt, he was the most open-minded member of our little club. At least, that I'd ever encountered.

Which was why I was glad it was just Haggerty in the room with me when I'd had to sit down due to my shock, right there on the concrete floor, deep in the bowels of that small-town basement, just to the front of the rickety file cabinet I'd been plundering.

"You okay, kid? What's that you got there?" he'd asked.

In reply, I'd simply held out the folder to him when he'd come over and stooped down beside me.

He'd let out a low whistle, went from a stoop to taking a knee as he flipped through the papers. "This must've come from your neck of the woods, you know," he'd said cautiously. "Not sure I know how an old northeast recruitment file would've ended up here."

I knew.

They'd chalk it up to a mistake if I'd asked, a clerical error fifty-some-odd years gone, that the documentation should've gone to storage with anything else not germane to the ongoing nature of our work. Besides, they would say, it doesn't matter to the case, didn’t change the goal. Lily Sunder needed to answer for her meddling in otherworldly affairs, she needed to be monitored, needed to be questioned on her intentions.

But the truth was obvious - to me, to Burt, to Haggerty - that the real reason the file had been sent away from the New York house all those years ago was because they were embarrassed.

Sunder had refused no less than fourteen separate invitations to join the Men of Letters before the turn of the century. They'd been after her research talents since she was barely into adulthood, based on her early work in apocalyptic studies. They got more aggressive once her teaching career took off, and - judging by the verbiage in the copies of the letters they'd sent and the documentation of multiple recruitment trips to Maine - they were practically salivating over the thought of having a bonafide angel expert in their ranks.

"I still think it's why the Moles sent us here," Burt was saying, using our pet name for the ancient, die-instead-of-retire administrators in the Men of Letters.

He took large swig of beer to wash down the meat-and-two veg he'd just polished off. The rationing from the war had ended in the not-so-distant past, and it seemed all the cooks in the land - excepting the ones back at Kendricks, that is - were excited to get to do things up right again. Not that I had much of an appetite, but if we'd had to be banished, it had come at an ideal time, at least in that respect.

"We weren't banished."

Oh. I must've said that part aloud.

"Eat your food."

Burt was channeling his mother then - I knew because of the full British accent on all three words. His father was an American Mole, while his mother was the daughter of a very well-respected professor at Kendricks, not to mention all the uncles and cousins on both sides. Their family visited London for several months each year, so between that and hearing his mother every day, he was good for the occasional drift from American English, though he’d let loose around me from the jump.

There was some beef that kicked up off-and-on between the American and British leadership, and I never got invested, but a few of the older members in New York would dole out side-eyes and huffs at Burt's sporadic "pints" at "pubs", "mash" and "chips". It was more than the accent thing, though.

He kept close to the vest in general. I think because they weren’t shy about their resentment - some odd contempt for him for not being more of a go-getter, double legacy and all. Though about all that pedigree garbage, Burt couldn't have cared less. 

They didn’t know how hard he worked behind the scenes, how much Burt cared about our mission. Not how I knew. And I also knew how much he cared for me.

So I obeyed, eating a few bites of some of the best fish I'd probably ever had, and he went on.

"I'm telling you, them pulling us out here right after Sunder? It's not a coincidence. Tell me you're not thinking the same thing."

I set down my fork, wiped my mouth, then looked at him as seriously as I could manage. "If I think too much about it, I'm going to get mad. Besides, she's not out here, and they know it. She may've been, but it's not as if there's any way to determine it - she's been running since Zeppelins were all the rage. I don't know what it is, but it's not Sunder."

Burt pulled his small, leather-bound notebook from his inside pocket and untied the strings, ready to make his case. I started stuffing carrots I didn't want into my mouth so I wouldn't slip from my current irritation at his pressing into that anger I'd just warned him about. My best friend was an absolute mule.

"Wales: Llandudno - old Liddell summer home location - nothing.  Cairnholm - what was left of the Peregrine house - mild trace. You know how many kilometers we covered in Wales, total?"

"No idea, but I bet you---"

"Nine-hundred eighty-seven-point-eight, Jacko. You know how many miles that is?"

"Burt, are you going to be arriving at a point anytime in the near---"

"Then here," he continued, flipping a page. "Bloomsbury - former home of the Darlings - mild trace. All those random train depots - all the tunnels, ALL of them, Jack---"

"I was there," I said, downing the last quarter of my pint quicker than I should've, mentally crossing my fingers that his end point would have an actual theory behind it this time.

"---and we only confirmed potential - just potential - trace on one."

"You do recall when they ponied up about already knowing all this? I wanted to punch that guy."

"The short fella, the white-haired gentleman, who likely would've died on the spot if you had done?"

"Yup, that’s the one," I shot back casually, then glanced around. I caught our waitress' eye and held up my empty mug with what I hoped was a somewhat genuine smile. Burt was still going.

"All-in-all, not a definitive sign of an active hidey-hole to be found."

"I hate when you call them that."

"Window, door, aperture, passage, thinning, portal - still a hole. I stand by it."

"Fine."

"Kirke estate - every single room - not even a hint of anything."

"I'm going to rescind your best man status if you keep this up."

"Colleen can’t stand me, she'd be thrilled. Hell, Jack, make it her wedding present for all I care."

I frowned. “Jeez, Burt. What is with you?”

Then he frowned. “I was actually listening to their briefings. Were you?”

"Barely," I replied honestly. "They're sending us on follow-up field trips that first year initiates should be handling, and I actually miss our office and the city and my family and even that stupid tiny room in that overcrowded chapter house."

"And your fiancée."

I gave him a look. "I'm tired of chasing down what have always been children's stories with bits of truth in them somewhere. Bedtime tales that have been around long enough - plenty long enough - that if there were anything important to them, the Moles would've sussed it out when they were initiates."

Thankfully the waitress brought over our next round then, and I set into mine like a man just crawling in from the Sahara.  

Burt huffed at that, then said, "Tomorrow's the first time we're going somewhere that's not a rehash. You didn't notice anything new and different about the briefing today?"

"That it's the closest I've gotten to empathizing with the undead."

He flipped his notebook around to face me and planted a finger above several sets of numbers. "Exact latitudes and longitudes, exact area of square kilometers to cover." He flipped another page. “And here's the inns we'll be staying in. We're gonna be gone for a few weeks, and I know it's not just a hop-skip from here, but this shouldn't take more than four or five days, give-or-take.”

I set my mug down slowly, scanning over the notes quickly. He was right. I raised my eyes to his. He grinned when he saw he finally had my interest.

“I think they might've been testing us with all this other stuff, make sure we were accurate on the traces we'd found, see how thorough we were in following up with any living witnesses, how detailed we were in reports. I think this trip is why we're here. Because if I wanted to whip up a nice little spread, keep people away from my hidey-hole? This is exactly the type of place I'd put it.”

I stared at him for a few moments, my normally whirring, ever-processing mind at a complete standstill.

Now he leaned in closer. “And I think I have an idea about how it connects to the Sunder case - to your theory.”

Burt wisely didn't say the word - though the volume of the pub's patrons would've likely drowned it out anyway - and instead just kept studying my face.

“Spit it out,” he finally ordered.

I inhaled and exhaled a deep breath, glancing down at the scribbled locales, then back up, obeying Burt once more.

“What in damnation do they think is out on the moors?"

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