Steve Harper shifted uncomfortably and pushed a hand against his back. It still ached, even six months after the accident that took his memory.
"Hey, Harper, y'okay?" Harris Lucas called from his desk in the cubicle facing his.
"I'm fine."
"Come on, you're doing your pregnant woman act. You're hurting, aren't you?"
Steve shrugged and winced. "Okay, yeah. A little bit. Back's kinda sore."
"Got an answer for that," he cracked his knuckles and Steve laughed.
"Thanks, Harris, but no thanks," he said firmly and turned back to his computer.
"I keep telling you, you've just forgotten. Let me help you and I guarantee you that you'll find it all come flooding back," he leered cheerfully and Steve scrunched up a piece of paper and threw it with pinpoint accuracy so it bounced off Lucas' head.
"I'm pretty sure my orientation didn't change when I got amnesia. Sorry," he grinned, "I've got ten more lines to do here and I'm done. You wanna get a drink?"
"Sure. Game's on -- wanna go find a sports bar?"
Steve shrugged. "If you want."
Lucas frowned, picking up on the drop in Steve's mood instantly.
"You sure you're okay?"
Steve's shoulders slumped. "Been a year, and I still don't know what team I should be supporting."
Harris' eyes lit up, but without even looking up Steve added, "But I know which team I'm playing *for*, so quit that right now!" Harris laughed, and shook his head.
"You malign me, my dear Steven. You malign me."
Steve head swum for just a second, and Harris' words were overlaid with a southern accent. When his vision cleared he was slumped over, head between his knees and someone's hand rubbing his back.
"Buck?" he whispered.
"Steve? Y'okay there, kid?" Harris's voice was urgent. "Look, someone call a taxi. I think he needs to get home asap."
"I'm fine." He tried to sit up but the hand on his back held him down. "No, please!" He shoved harder and the hand flew away. He sat up and discovered Harris crouching in front of him.
"Hey, easy, easy, Steve. It's just me, just Harris, okay? I think you're feeling under the weather. Wanna get a raincheck on that beer?"
"Sure." Steve closed his eyes again and leaned back against the desk chair. "Sorry," he added a couple of minutes later.
"Hey, no worries. Us weirdos gotta stick together, right?"
"Like glue, man, like glue." They waited in comfortable silence, Harris perched on Steve's desk. He shifted to peer at the clock on the wall behind him, then started drumming his blunt fingers on the desk.
"Spit it out."
"What?" Harris asked innocently.
"You. You do that every time you wanna ask something you think I'm going to get upset about."
Harris sighed. "I don't wanna make you sick again. But you said something, when I was trying to pick you up off the floor."
"I *said* something? What?"
"I dunno, could have been nothing."
"Just spit it out, Lucas."
"You said 'Buck'?"
"Who's Buck?"
"You tell me, kiddo. You tell me."
Steve frowned. "You think I had a memory return?"
Lucas shrugged. "You got another explanation? Unless you've been dating this Buck guy behind my back." He got thumped for his pains.
"I got a memory!"
"Don't get too excited, Steve. You told me yourself, if you haven't got it back by now, you're probably not going to."
Steve sighed, and closed his eyes again. "I know. I know."
"You wanna go see the psych guy again?"
"Nah. They'll just give me more of those damn drugs to try and help me remember."
"You sure? Because we can be there in no time at all?"
Steve kept his face still and his eyes closed. "I don't even remember saying it, Harris, never mind who it was. I was probably trying to say something else entirely."
"Your call," Harris raised his hands in surrender.
"Your ride's here, Harper," Katie Anderson stuck her head round the door way. "Security just called it down."
"I'll give you a hand."
"Escorting me from the building," Steve joked. Harris and Anderson laughed, and helped him to his feet. he pulled away from their hands. "Really, I'm fine."
He leaned against the screen separating his cubicle from Harris's until he felt completely steady, then grabbed his leather jacket and headed purposefully down the corridor.
He relaxed in the taxi, letting his eyes drift shut. The Company would pick up the tab, and he'd heard Harris telling the driver his address. He yawned hugely, and tried to keep his eyes open.
"Sir? *sir*!"
Steve woke abruptly. "Sorry, did I--?"
"We're at the address your friends gave me."
"Oh. Right. Thank you." He rummaged in his wallet and passed a couple of bills to the driver. "Thank you."
He climbed stiffly out of the car, and sighed. His back was still aching, and his left leg was starting to throb. He over-compensated for the backache by standing and sitting crookedly. It took him three tries to get his keys in his door, and he yawned again. Why the hell was he so tired?
He locked the door behind him reflexively and keyed the activation code into the security program without even thinking about it. the air conditioning was on full blast, but he turned it off and opened a couple of windows, throwing the alarm switch for each one. Fresh air. Apartment alarmed. Not a word spoken.
He yawned again and muttered. "Bed."
Ten minutes later he was curled up under the plain comforter, feigning sleep, and thinking hard.
Another memory. This time someone with a southern accent. And maybe a name: Buck. That fitted.
Still no answers, but he was starting to think that his most paranoid suspicions weren't paranoid enough.
Who am I? he wondered. It had been the first question when he woke up, and for all the wealth of detail about his life he itched, as though wearing an ill-fitting shirt that pulled and ribbed in all the wrong places. Not by much, but enough.
Sometimes he told himself it was just paranoia. That it was wishful thinking that made him ache when the psychologists backed up his friends and colleagues and told him he had no family. No-- he hesitated, half afraid to even think it-- no brothers. His heart twisted and he shook his head under the covers.
It had taken him a month to stop accepting what they said. Another to realise that it was words like 'brother' and 'family' that tugged hardest at his doubtful mind when he tried to retrieve his lost past. He'd stopped taking the medication a month after that but he hadn't gained anything but migraine after migraine. He'd hoped it would suddenly uncloud his mind, but nothing so simple. He'd quietly restarted taken the tablets and a week or so later the headaches faded away, along with his certainty.
Was he really Steven Harper? Software designer and boy genius at the Mellors Foundation, an international anti-terrorism think tank. Or was he someone else.
In his dreams a name lingered -- something beginning J, Not John, or Jack, or James... something different that he couldn't ever pin down. Sometimes, looking in the mirror dark blue eyes laughed at him and he turned, convinced someone had called his name... but not *his* name. Not Steve.
He'd tried looking at work, and had come to a grinding halt when his ability to access the internet was cut off. A firm wide policy of cutting down on wasted working time. He'd thought of trying to run his prints. Get taken by the police... except Stewartville was tiny, and the police were thick as thieves with the people at the Foundation.
Or leave.
He stomach churned and he breathed deeply and steadily. In through his nose. Out through his mouth. He concentrated on reciting his eleven times table in his head. He didn't know who taught him that trick for defeating nausea, but when he remembered, he'd have to thank them.
And when he caught whoever had programmed him to start having panic attacks at the thought of leaving Stewartville, he was going to kill them. He had been vaguely surprised at his calm conviction that he could and would take a gun and shoot someone. The first time he'd thought it he'd wondered what kind of a psychopath he was. Gradually he had come to realise that his whole world was wrong.
It was as though he watched the world through imperfect glasses that distorted and twisted reality. Somewhere behind the glass there was another person, screaming to get out. Sometimes, like today, that man broke through, just for a few seconds. Perhaps he had multiple personalities. He doubted it.
Perhaps it was just megalomania, the way his psychologist had suggested, when he felt that his whole world had been rewritten.
And perhaps, it really had.
I. Remembrance | II. Lost from Sight | III. Some Desperate Glory | IV. Time's Rags
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the fandoms listed herein. I am certainly making no money off of these creative fan tributes to a wonderful, fun show.