#primary visions

A/N: Set sometime mid-season 3, probably around episode 5. Title from the Simple Minds song “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”, of course. Disclaimer: I don’t own 12 Monkeys, or the characters.

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Jennifer sat on the floor of her room, surrounded by dozens of sketches, charcoal in hand. Her face and arms were smudged with charcoal dust—but she paid it no mind as she scribbled, shading in a dark spot with fierce cross-hatching. She was drawing the same images, over and over. A dying man. A mausoleum. Again. Again. Always dying. She couldn’t save him, but she had to. Somehow, she had to save him—

She pressed too hard and the charcoal snapped, leaving a dark streak across the man’s back. Jennifer tossed the broken stub aside and crumpled the drawing, tossing it into the corner with a few other failures.

She closed her eyes for a moment, flexing her aching fingers. How long had it been since she’d taken a break? She’d lost count of the drawings she’d scattered around her—finishing each one sparked a new vision, a new facet of the blurry something she couldn’t quite grasp on to but had to capture, and there was no time to contemplate the ones past. She was so tired…

But there it was again, replaying in her mind like a nightmare she couldn’t shake: the mystery man, the pool of blood.

Save him, you have to save him, the chorus in her head repeated.

She pressed her hands to her temple and rocked, back and forth, back and forth, trying to block out that horrifying picture. But her fingers were twitching, vibrating with an energy that only sketching could diffuse.

Before she could stop herself, she was reaching for another piece of charcoal.

Save him, save him.

Hot tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped onto the new drawing, making the wounded man look as though he were truly bleeding.

You must save him.

I don’t know how! she told the voices. Tell me how!

“Ahem.”

That was a real voice, not one in her head.

Jennifer looked up, hurriedly wiping her eyes. Deacon was leaning in the doorframe.

“You’re really going to town in here, huh?” he said. If he’d seen her tears, he didn’t mention it.

“I can’t save him,” Jennifer said, gesturing to the tear-spotted paper in front of her. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Deacon stepped into her nest of sketches—one foot on a portrait of Jones, the other on a mausoleum—and squatted down next to her. “Who says you have to save him?” he asked.

Jennifer let out a snort, startled. “I can’t just let him die!”

“You don’t even know who he is,” Deacon countered. “You’ve got to look out for your own. Let time worry about its own problems.”

“This is part of my purpose,” she insisted. “Time gives me these visions for a reason.”

Deacon leaned back on his heels and sighed. “If you’re sure this is all fate, don’t you think you’ll know what you have to do when the time comes?”

Jennifer thought about this for a moment.

“Anyway,” Deacon said suddenly, pushing himself to his feet, “Jones wants us all in the meeting room. You’ll have to come back to your existential crisis later.” He reached out a hand to help her up.

“Figures,” she grumbled, taking his proffered hand with her own charcoal-smudged one, pulling herself to her feet. “She always did know how to ruin a good crisis.”

“Don’t worry,” Deacon told her, “There’s plenty to go around.”

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