fic - two chances : 8

Two Chances : 8

J had ample warning before Dekim came into the lab, though there was not much to hide.  They were always prepared for an unannounced visit from Dekim.  These visits were really not as 'surprise' as Dekim thought they were.

He took advantage of his old age as an excuse to lever himself out of his chair in greeting, slowly enough that he didn't have to say much of anything before Dekim made his pronouncement.

"What's this I've heard about your little pet?"

The topic was what J had been expecting.  He knew Dekim had his moles in the lab.  They didn't have access to anything really juicy, of course, but this hadn't been something they could keep under wraps.  "Circumstances in the field changed between the setting of the charges and the detonation."

"Hmpf."  Dekim tapped the floor with his decorative cane as if he was making some sort of point.  Probably the point was just that he was an irritable old man.  That was often why J did it himself, honestly.  "You spoke more highly of him than that."

"The boy has learned his lesson," he said mildly.

Dekim snorted.  "'He'll do better next time'?  Is that your only response?"

"Sometimes the best lessons are learnt the hard way.  Failure has a steep price, worse than any punishment we might give him.  He won't soon forget it."

"Punish him anyway," Dekim ordered flatly.  "He needs to learn that we won't just let mistakes slide, no matter what else happens.  Punish him, re-train him, and no more mistakes, or he's out.  Make sure he understands that."  And having said his piece, he turned with a small flourish of his cape and left.

J wished he could still derive satisfaction from a good roll of his eyes.  The boy wasn't going anywhere.  Dekim had been trying to replace him with his own pet candidates for years, but the boy's performance had been so conclusively superior to them all that even Dekim had a hard time making a case.  The boy was taking this mistake hard, true, but J still had faith in him.  He was the right person for the job.

Maybe the fact that he was taking this mistake hard was proof of that.






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