Here is everything I've written, everything I'm currently working on, and the ideas I've got planned for the future if I ever get around to them.
If there's ever anything you want me to try writing, just ask and I'll see what I can put together!
WIPs:
A Sister’s Vigil - 5 times Rachel visited her sister in hospital and 1 time she didn’t.Â
Completed:
Abby/Townsend:
Warm tequila - Set about 5 years after the events of UWS, Abby and Townsend explore the Christmas markets in London. (2,121)
Mismatched socks - 6 and a half years after UWS, Abby and Townsend face an early winter morning with the twins (3,491)
Lips against a hipbone - The winter before the events of LYKY, Abby and Townsend are a couple months into an op in Buenos Aires when years of tension finally comes to a head. (3,690)
Silent films - Set in between OSOT and UWS, Townsend and Abby are doing surveillance on the Winters in Rome when they start talking about the past. (3,243)
Doctor’s orders - A year before the events of LYKL, Abby and Townsend’s assignment in Buenos Aires ends in disaster, and they wind up having an argument in her hospital room. (2,668)
Ursa Major - Half a decade before the events of LYKY, Abby and Townsend are completing a mission in Dubai over Christmas with Abe Baxter in tow. (4,527)
Last call - While in Rome between OSOT and UWS, Abby and Townsend celebrate The New Year together in a bar. (2,712)
Catherine/Townsend:
A hotel bar - Shortly before the events of OGSY, Catherine tracks Townsend down for a long overdue catch up. (2,949)
A necklace knotted around a fist - Over 15 years before the events of LYKY, Townsend discovers that Catherine isn’t all she claims to be and tries to confront her about it. (2,710)
Cammie/Zach:
An attic - Zach and Cammie are spending the Christmas after the events of UWS at her Grandparent’s ranch in Nebraska with the rest of her family, and they manage to find a moment of peace away from the adults together. (3,836)
Joe/Rachel:
Bitter coffee - About a month after the events of DJGC, Rachel turns up at Joe’s cabin for a catch up before she plans to fly to London. (2,569)
A brown leather belt - Towards the end of OSOT, Rachel tries to get Joe alone for a chat. (2,457)
A wax-sealed envelope - Only a few weeks before the events of LYKY, Rachel makes one final attempt at convincing Joe to step out of the field and into a teaching role at Gallagher. (2,884)
Matt/Rachel:
Knees pressed into soft carpet - Over a decade and a half before the events of LYKY, Rachel and Matthew get distracted while on an assignment. (1,388)
Saltwater - In her first winter as headmistress of The Gallagher Academy, Rachel takes a moment to remember warmer and happier times. (1,882)
Abby & Cammie:
Rusty nails - After rediscovering her father’s grave in OSOT, Cammie finds her aunt outside and catches her in a rare vulnerable conversation. (3,315)Â
Abby & Joe:
White silk - Set during Rachel and Matt’s wedding, a decade and a half before the events of LYKY, Abby and Joe meet properly for the first time. (3,337)
Weathered boxing gloves - Not long after Joe wakes up in OSOT, he goes for a walk around the school grounds at night and comes across Abby in the P&E barn. (3,949)
Abby & Macey:
Bodyguards - Set during DJGC but before the adults learn that Cammie is the target of The Circle, Abby keeps Macey from leaving the Academy one October morning. (3,700)
Abby & Matt:
Overprotective - Nearly two decades before the events of LYKY, Rachel and Matthew discover an intruder in their home when they get back from work. (2,557)
Abby & Rachel:
Red wine - 10 years after their father died, Rachel has exciting news for Abby. (3,135)
A safehouse - While on an assignment in Bahrain, 8 years before the events of LYKY, Rachel and Abby disagree on the group’s next move after one of their cover’s is blown. (3,035)
Catherine & Joe:
Old friends - A decade before the events of LYKY, Catherine needs help with her son and knows just who to go to. (2,364)
Catherine & Zach:
Tall evergreen - After one term at Blackthorn, Zach spends the Christmas 3 years before LYKY trying to get through his mother. (2,130)
Cammie & Matt:
A sous chef - Almost a decade before LYKY, Rachel is feeling under the weather, so Matt and Cammie try to make her feel better (2,399)
Cammie & Rachel:
A gold tooth - 3 years before the start of LYKY, Rachel and Cammie find a quiet escape during Matt’s funeral to have an important chat. (2,600)
Joe & Matt:
Sawdust - Two decades before the events of LYKY, Matt brings Joe to Nebraska on a pre-Christmas get away (2,793)
Joe & Townsend:
Figs - While spending the Christmas after UWS at the Morgan ranch in Nebraska, Joe and Townsend try to clear the air between them. (2,897)
Rachel & Townsend:
Spiral stairs - Set between Cammie and the girls’ graduation and Rachel and Joe’s wedding, Townsend is met by Rachel when he arrives to take Abby out for dinner on her birthday. (4,870)
Townsend & Zach:
A broken teapot - A year and a half after the events of UWS, Zach joins Townsend (and Abby) for Christmas at his parents house back in England. (3,241)
A breakup - 6 years after the events of UWS, Zach goes running to Townsend after a fight with Cammie. (4,196)
Upcoming:
Codenames - Chameleon. Bookworm. Duchess. Peacock. To anyone with less than level 4 clearance level, those four words mean nothing more than what they mean. But to anyone who knows what truly goes on behind the walls of The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, those four words tell the story of the teenagers who banded together to help take down a terrorist organisation before they even graduated high school. These are the stories of how they became known as such.
Red wine - 3 times a Cameron woman let slip that that they were expecting.
It hurts to miss you, but it’s worse to know - Matthew Morgan had two funerals. Joseph Solomon attended them both.
A safe house - Abby is dedicating all of her time and strength to casing the entire continent of Europe for her brother-in-law. Rachel is dedicating all of her heart and soul to bringing what was left of her fractured family back together to grieve as one. These two states cannot peacefully coexist for long. Of course it all comes to a head in Rome.
Overprotective - 4 times a Cameron woman revealed their boy troubles to the someone who loved them dearly.Â
Walking away with your kiss on my cheek and a bruise underneath - Abby and Townsend are not perfect. It isn’t love at first sight or a slowly developing affection that binds them to one another. Their relationship is carved from spitting venom and blazing fire, from tearing through one another’s cracks and crevices with vicious words and scathing accusations, from holding one another close in the fallout and vowing never again. Somehow, what holds them together is fighting tooth and nail against one another and basking in the familiar wreckage that this leaves. They wouldn’t have it any other way. Or, the fights that made Abby and Townsend’s relationship what it is.
Edward Townsend had always been a patient man. As the eldest of three, he had patiently waited for his younger siblings almost every day of his childhood, for their teeth to be brushed and their bags to be packed and their shoes to be tied. When his aspirations outgrew him, he had patiently waited for his opportunity to break out of the constraints of his home town and carve his way to greater pastures. For almost twenty years, he had patiently waited for the opportunity to take down the woman who nearly incinerated his career before it grew beyond its roots, to dismantle the organisation that housed her like a damp dungeon might house a Black Widow. Where some people were programmed with a paper fuse the length of their arm, his was carved from iron and stretched infinitely beyond his reach.
Yet when it came to Abigail Cameron, when it came to her quick snark and her sharp wit, her probing and teasing and mocking, her stubborn disobedience and complete disregard for anything regarding a schedule, his patience was whittled down to a single spec of white phosphorus that burned as bright and fast as her heart.
It was no wonder the two of them fell into petty arguments and fights almost as often as they fell into bed.
Her voice climbed through the open doorway to the bedroom. “Well, that depends. Do you want me to look hot or do you want me to look really hot?”
To Edward, Abby looked stunning in an oversized hoodie and his old boxers, dark hair messed up from a night of sleep and yesterday’s sweat still stuck to her skin, exhaustion clinging to the crust in her eyes and to the drooping of her lids. He refused to believe that any additional effort spent on her hair or her makeup or her outfit could make his heart race and steal his breath away any more than the sight of her first thing in the morning does.
Not that he was going to tell her that.
“I want you to look ready. Its nearly eight.”
Because she hated him, and she could read his mind, and she always had to be right which meant that he always had to be wrong, she leaned around the doorframe and seized the air from his lungs.
“It’s not even eight yet? Why are you rushing me, the locals wont be eating for another hour yet?” Responding only to the mildly dumbstruck expression on his face with a slight smirk, she briefly tucked her head back inside the bedroom. The couple seconds of reprieve were just long enough for him to regain his composure, his expression returning to exacerbated as she returned her gaze to his, head cocked and eyebrows drawn together in question. “The clock in here says it’s half past?”
It was a struggle to force life into the words trapped in his mouth, the parched dryness which now caked his throat making his voice croak. “I brought that one forward. Foolishly, I thought it might make you ready on time.”
“Edward Townsend calling himself a fool, will wonders never cease.” Smile teasing and soft and so infuriatingly gorgeous, she shot him a wink that made his heart skip then disappeared into the depths of their room just long enough for the fires of Edward’s patience to spark again. He was about to call out for her again, glare fixed on the turning hands of his watch and feet tapping against the wood-paved when the clacking of high heels alerted him to her arrival. “Alright fine, lets go.”
He looked up. His heart stopped.
Damn her.
Edward had never been a religious man, had never paid any weight of thought towards God or angels or Heaven, had replaced faith with truth and put stock in science and fact instead; it seemed the universe was now laughing in his face for it. The improbable perfection that was her face had to have been dreamt up by some sort of deity, the ripples and bends of her body were surely carved by some immortal artist, Michelangelo or Bernini gifted eternity in exchange for their meticulous sculpting of her curves, and the red chiffon that hung between his hands and the warm vastness of her skin must have been designed by some cruel imitation of Satan himself.
She was sunlight personified, was the heat of July beating down on fields of flowers, was the brief warmth of January breaking through the clouds and sustaining life for one more day. She was the endless night, was the ever-constant glittering stars, was the ever-changing smoothness of the glowing moon. She was the first fall of snow, the final fall of rain, the daffodils breaking through the spring ground, the amber leaves sailing through the autumn sky.
She was everything, and by some miracle she was his.
A twinkle of amusement shone in her eyes, a flicker of pride mixed thick into her voice. “Is there something on my dress?” Spinning on her heel, the skirt of her dress flared out around her thighs like fire and the curls of her hair twirled around her head in a fluttering wave.
A ripple of love, a wave of yearning, a tsunami of want flooded through his blood.Â
Measured steps took his bounding heart in close proximity to hers, the patter of her chest pressed against his so that when it beat it sent sparks of electricity along his bones. Jasmine and vanilla flooded his senses, tickling his nose and swimming across his tongue, ringing in his ears and swarming his vision and dancing along his skin. His hands found purchase on her hips, holding tight to the firmness of her body, holding himself upright as a surge of dizziness struck him, holding the two of them together so that nothing short of the sun burning through its reserves could ever separate them again.
He swallowed. He hummed. He rested his head against hers.
His voice was dark, deep, filthy. “Hmmm. You should definitely take it off.”
She tasted of cherry and lightning and desire, tendrils of heat rising from her throat and sinking into his as their lips came into crushing contact. Fingers carved through the darkness of his hair, the hardness of his scalp, the thinness of his spine. They hovered around his neck, lingered on his pulse point, scraped gently along the lie of his vessels. If she wanted, she could dig her nails through the paper that was his skin, slit open the arteries and veins that kept his brain chanting a song of Abby Abby Abby, let the rivulets of his blood flow through her hands as he collapsed into her.
He wouldn’t mind. Not really.
Unfortunately, since Abby hated him and revelled in his suffering, she pulled her lips away from his after only a few lifetimes, not nearly long enough in his opinion. Despite his valiant efforts to chase her mouth down, she turned her head away from his and giggled breathily in his ear, leaving his lips cold and empty until they found a home in the space behind her earlobe, in the slope of her neck, in the crook of her collarbone. Laughter growing stronger, she pressed a gentle hand to his chest and pushed; once again The Devil found a way to erect a wall of air between them. “Nope. You have to feed me first.”
He signed in mock disappointment, but couldn’t hold back the smile that spread across his face.
Taking her hand in his, he began walking them both towards the hotel room door when he felt resistance against his outstretched arm. Abby was frozen in place, her yellow heels piercing through the wooden slats where she stood. Her head was turned towards the towering windows, gaze locked on the surveillance equipment set up for watching the Embassy, a painting of confliction stretched across the crease of her eyebrows and the shining of her eyes.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter that she was the most exquisitely perfect specimen on the planet, that her face was a song and her body poetry, because all Edward really cared about was the fullness of her heart, the depths of her love, the completeness of her devotion.
Edward knew that Abby’s loyalties were being stretched thin. Knew that she had promised her family, her sister and the brother that she lost, that it was Cammie, protect Cammie,above all else. That getting off the phone with Rachel left her with a renewed vigour for taking down any remaining members of The Circle, all of the Winters included. He knew that Cammie’s own please were different, that she wanted her aunt to pay special attention to the boy, Preston, to make sure he was safe and protected and kept as far removed from the espionage life as possible. Similarly, Macey McHenry had been on the phone countless times imploring Abby to get him out, to essentially kidnap him out of the care of his parents and the United States Government and bring him to a school he had no right hiding in. He knew that Joe had been in contact with updates about Catherine and questions about how she was going to proceed, how she was going to track her down and bring her in, as if her time wasn’t currently completely occupied with a different international terrorist.
All of these people loved Abby, he knew, but they would always love someone else first, someone else more. They were blinded by their divided affections and couldn’t see how their conflicting requests would slowly tear the woman they loved apart, the guilt of not doing everything that everyone wanted burning through her until she was a husk of herself.
That was made him different. There was only her for him.
“Hey.” In response to his voice, to the gentle fingers he caressed against her jaw, Abby’s gaze locked onto his. “The Winters are celebrating the New Year inside the Embassy Abigail. They’re being watched by Marines, Secret Service, and a team from Interpol. They’re not going anywhere tonight.” A thousand emotions danced across her eyes, a thousand conflicting thoughts wove through her face. He pressed his forehead back to hers, reassured her in a whisper. “You can take the night off.”
Their noses brushed up against each other and she smiled, featherlight and wistful.
“First you call yourself a fool, now you’re telling me to relax and take time off on an assignment. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
The hand she jokingly pressed against his forehead was cool, frost spreading along his skin. He gently peeled it off and warmed it up with a kiss, finally succeeding in pulling her towards the door. “Come on, we can grab a drink before dinner if you’re going to complain about being early.” He eyed her bare arms with trepidation. “Are you sure you’ll be warm enough?”
Her eyes rolled so deep into her skull he worried they might get stuck there. “I’m a big girl Townsend, I think I know how to dress for the weather.”
Twenty minutes later, with his relinquished suit jacket draped across her goosebump riddled shoulders and her fingers entwined with his, the two of them took a seat in a bar just across the street from the restaurant holding their reservation. After ordering drinks for them both, a pint for him and an Aperol Spritz for her, they fell deep into conversation.
With fingers still tangoing on top of the table, they reminisced about old times together and they shared stories of their childhoods. Abby cackled at his retelling of his 6th birthday, when he begged and pleaded to go to the Natural History Museum and had thrown a fit when he found out the dinosaurs there weren’t real. Edward felt his chest surge with warmth at her reminiscing over sharing a birthday cake with her nanny and her sister, at the faraway look in her eyes and the soft smile dangling from her lips. They bickered over their choices of drink, over the choice of bar, over the music playing from the speakers and which of them the bartender was flirting with. They debated over current events, over the best locations for a holiday, over the perfect way to spend a weekend. They made up stories for the people around them, how the group of lads across the bar were celebrating a stag night, how the young couple next to them were going to split up by February, how the elderly gentleman in the corner was a widower missing his wife. The collage of chatter and conversations around them faded to nothing, the symphony of glasses clinking and guitars blaring ceased to exist. They were the only two people in the city, the only two people in Italy, the only two people in the world.
And then a bell rang out through the bar and a deep voice called out in seamless Italian, in broken Spanish, in accented English. “Last call.”
What?
A quick glance to his watch revealed the disguised passage of time, the long hand resting squarely on number 9 and the short hand sitting achingly close to the 2. Like the drops of beer dripping down his glass, the time had slipped away from them, neither the growling of their still empty stomachs or the calamitous cheers signalling the stroke of midnight had pulled them out of the bubble they’d formed. Edward had been too consumed by her, by skin so soft he could caress it with his eyes, laughter so light he could feel it in his lungs. He couldn’t pull himself away from her just to be bothered by something as meaningless as time.
“Oops.” By the shocked look on her face, the hours had escaped her as well. Not ideal for two intelligence operatives but Edward tried not to dwell on it. It was easy enough to distract himself by once again getting lost in her eyes, in her smile, in the casual way she shrugged her shoulders. “Happy new year?”
He murmured the greeting back at her, launching himself across the table to press a quick kiss to her lips. Prosecco clung to her lipstick. Starlight clung to her laugh.
“Guess we better head back.”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
Edward took her in. The slope of her neck. The angle of her collarbone. The way the fabric of her dress disappeared down her chest. He swallowed something thick down his throat. “Starving.”
A flush spread across her cheeks, rosy and warm in the dim light of the bar. Her fingers gave his a teasing tug as she shot him a sly wink, delighted laughter bubbling on her tongue. “No seriously, do you think there’s a kebab van or something around here?”
“We’re not in either of our home countries Abigail, I doubt you’ll be able to track down anything greasy or beige enough to satisfy your cravings.”
Pouting ever so slightly, she stood up and walked her way to his side, long bare legs pausing before his eyes. He looked up at her in challenge. In trepidation. In awe. Her head cocked to the side and a smirk lingered on his lips, the sight of it, of her making his heart thud in his chest. “Hmmm, that’s a shame. I did say you had to feed me before getting me out of this dress didn’t I?”
Determined not to lose the first battle of the year, Edward leaned back in his chair and raised his eyebrows at her casually. “Good thing there’s plenty we could do with the dress still on then” Unfortunately, he had never been much of a match for Abigail Cameron, so when she quirked an eyebrow back at him and once again spun slowly on the spot, the hem of her dress rising just enough that he could spot a freckle high up on her leg, he caved immediately. “C’mon, Sapienza isn’t far, I’m sure we can find something suited to your poorly developed palate near the student housing.”
She grinned at him, at herself, at the world, the whole way there, and Edward had never felt lighter.
Ending this saga with something relatively short (compared to recent instalments) and simple. No plot to this one, just these two being infuriatingly sickly sweet.
And that’s it! Took me about twice as long as planned, but 31 one shots mostly focussed on the adult generation of Gallagher girls characters are now done. I’m planning to keep writing, but probably slightly less often, so new fics/updates will probably be spaced a few weeks apart from here on out. I will make a list of my current plans/ideas and a rough schedule of when I plan to write them, with A Sister’s Vigil being the first thing I go back to, but as always if there’s anything in particular anyone wants to read, do let me know.Â
Set between Cammie and the girls’ graduation and Rachel and Joe’s wedding, Townsend is met by Rachel when he arrives to take Abby out for dinner on her birthday. (4,870)
After countless years of not seeing each other on either of their birthdays, of brief phone calls and delayed gifts, Abby’s layover between assignments had overlapped nicely with her 35th and so she had spent the day with her sister in the dilapidated framework of their second home. Cammie was scoping out Georgetown with her friends, Joe was holed up in the depths of Langley in the process of reverting his death certificate, and Townsend had been stuck in an MI6 debrief until that morning, so it had been just the two of them all day. Feeling like teenagers again, like little girls, they had spent the day roaming the fallen walls and collapsed classrooms of their childhood, reinfecting the limestone with their laughter, restaining the woodwork with their chatter. They had talked endlessly, Abby armed with news on Macey’s Secret Service application, on the latest Baxter drama, on the gossip leaking through the walls of Langley; Rachel countering with updates on the welfare of Matthew’s parents, on Cammie’s plans for Georgetown, on her ever imminent nuptials. A thin shining of tears had touched their day ever so briefly, the unavoidable topic of Matthew never failing to squeeze both their chests tight, but they had pushed through it with typical Cameron determination, banishing the grief from their voices and relighting the mansion with love.
Now, they had taken residence in the remaining walls of her office, one of the few rooms on the upper levels to remain somewhat upright. Rachel was curled up in a charred armchair rescued from Madame Dabney’s classroom, laughter tickling the back of her throat as her sister’s voice trailed through the walls, a mocking imitation of Joe’s reaction to Abby’s suggestion of a stag night making her heart sing.
She felt light. She felt weightless. She felt as though she could float away in her contentment.
Then she spotted a car pulling in to park beside one of the white tents decorating the school grounds and felt the joy die a little in her chest.
“Townsend’s here.”
Through the temporary plastic sheets she had installed to keep the rain away from what was left of her furniture, she eyed the man as he stepped out of the rental town car and climbed through the rubble that was once the schools grand entranceway.
Her little sister popped her head around the corner from where she had been getting ready in the bathroom. “Can you stall him for a bit? I still need to battle with my dress.”
“You just want to make a grand entrance.”
Abby shrugged coyly, whispers of a smirk dancing at her lips. “Maybe a little.”
She disappeared behind the bathroom door before Rachel could offer up any further protests, humming along to Stevie Nicks as she went.
A fond smile crept its way onto her face.
After Matthew went missing, the two sisters had seen one another sparingly, brief meetings over coffee or wine in-between Abby's seemingly never ending assignments. When they did find the time to catch up, Rachel would be struck by how much less her sister seemed. How the sparkle in her eyes had dwindled slightly, how her quippy remarks had become thick and slow, how the strings of assuredness that had held her shoulders up her entire life had been cut. Guilt and grief and loneliness had smothered something so bright in her sister, just as it had torn at Cammie’s heart and squeezed tight round Rachel’s ribcage and pressed hard on Joe’s shoulders, and some hidden part of her had been terrified that she would never see the sister she knew again. That she would become as lost to them as Matthew was.
Recently though, just as Cammie had starting smiling wholeheartedly again and the air had reentered Rachel’s lungs and the weight had fallen off of Joe’s back, the sunshine had returned to Abby’s eyes. Her laughter was once again loud and free, words light and quick, smile wide and shining. The weight of the past few years had been stripped away from her skin and left a glowing shine in its wake. Annoyingly, she looked closer to 25 than to the 35 she now was.
As much as Rachel knew this change was largely thanks to time, to the long searched for secrets of Matthew’s disappearance finally being revealed, to the ongoing dismantling of the organisation responsible for their family’s pain, she also had to acknowledge that a big part of her sister’s resurged happiness came from the man who just arrived.
With that in mind, she uncurled herself from the comforts of the armchair and made her way out of the office, aging bones creaking as she went. Though she had spent the day staunchly ignoring the ramifications that Abby’s increasing age had on her own, the ache in her muscles and the stiffness of her joints were harder to ignore. Descending the spiral staircase that had to be used in place of the collapsed grand stairs situated just past the Hall of History, the protests her knees let out were loud and outdone only by the cries of her back. Not only was her baby sister all grown up, but her daughter, her actual baby, was suddenly a legal adult in a serious relationship and preparing to go to college in the fall. Rachel had never felt older, and her body was making that known. Still, she smoothed any sign of discomfort and weariness off of her features when she saw Townsend approaching the staircase under the gleam of the evening sky, painting her face instead with steely scrutiny.
The man offered her a nod in greeting. “Rachel.”
His entire demeanour was a stark contrast to her sister, who enjoyed making an entrance, who enchanted everyone she met with a bubbly smile and a tangled web of words, who danced in and out of rooms with an aura that made the lights follow her as she moved. They were abnormal characteristics for a spy, most preferring to blend into the background than go out of their way to stand out, but Abby had long since learned how to use her attention-demanding presence to her advantage. On the other hand, Townsend appeared to materialise out of nowhere, stoic and foreboding in stature, concise and purposeful with his words. Rachel could see how their differences could work well together in the field, had experienced first hand how much easier Abby’s carefully crafted diversions made slipping between the shadows she left in her wake. More than that, she could see how their differences might compliment one another outside of espionage, his solidness taming her natural erraticism, her bounding heart livening his tempered indifference.
Loath as Rachel was to admit it, she could see how he was good for her.
“She needs a few more minutes.”
A sigh wreaked through him. “Of course.” Despite the glimmer of humour on his lips, the affection she could see lingering in the corner of his eyes, her gaze became sharp at his words, the beginnings of a glare starting to form on her face. Wisely, he chose not to say anything more.
In the resulting silence that hung between them, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, Rachel assessed the man who had come to steal her sister away for the rest of the evening.
Adorned in a well fitted suit, matching black hair well combed and styled, he almost disappeared into the gloom of the evening. Sun sitting low in the sky, half hidden behind the clouds of the day passed, it cast only the faintest of lights upon his chiseled face, most of his features hiding in the shadows. Even as he lifted his head back to gaze up at where she paused a few steps up on the staircase, bathing himself in what little was left of the daylight, it was only the deep blue of his eyes that made itself known against the dark backdrop of the fallen mansion. Abby had never had great taste in men or women personality wise, but Rachel had to admit that all the men she dated, Townsend included, were unfairly handsome. In her harshest moments she would blame it on vanity, but truthfully her sister just attracted good-looking men like naive moths to a burning flame.
His hands were empty. It would’ve been the first thing Matthew noticed, and it would’ve enraged him. Her late husband was the type to turn up to every date with a bouquet of flowers in hand, one in each if he was picking her up from her family home. Daisies for her, lilies for her mother, and he once bought Abby a cactus just to make her laugh. Joe was far less traditional in that sense, but the few excursions he’d taken her on that she supposed could’ve been called dates, he had come armed with a singular carnation, a bottle of wine, a necklace.
In Townsend’s defence, when Rachel tried to imagine him presenting Abby with a bouquet of roses or an extravagant piece of jewellery, she could only picture the twisting of her sister’s lips, a frown creasing through the lines of her forehead, a lecture on heteronormative gestures rooted in misogyny brewing on her tongue. Although they were both stubbornly independent, resolute and equal in their stances on feminism, Rachel still swooned slightly at classic romantic gestures while Abby was much more likely to go out of her way to open her own car door just so a man couldn’t do it for her. Perhaps it was a good sign that Townsend had learned that about her already.
Scrutinising his face, Rachel couldn’t quite work out what he was thinking. He didn’t appear bothered by the stretch of silence, but the tightness of his face and the tension in his shoulders and the forced stillness of his feet suggested that he wasn’t entirely comfortable either. He ground his teeth together slightly, jaw locking, and flickered his eyes around her. A nervous tick?
Good. It was only right for her sister’s boyfriend to be a little wary of her, a little intimidated. Healthy even.
Bearing that in mind, Rachel pulled back her shoulders and angled her chin towards the ground slightly, looking down on him from her elevated perch. Her narrowed eyes caught the slightest gulp of his throat, the slightest stiffening of his shoulders, and she had to fight back an amused smile. Townsend’s age and experience clearly made him less easily cowed than his son, who had quivered under a singular raised eyebrow when she had enquired about his intentions with Cammie, but they still looked remarkably similar as they cowered beneath her glare.
“Where are you two heading?”
His voice betrayed none of the intimidation she could read from his stance. “There’s a new Thai place up by the Marina.”
“Thai’s nice.” Rachel had heard only good things about about the restaurant he was referencing, and she knew it was well suited to her sister, so she gave the man a reluctantly approving nod. Still, he clearly didn’t know Abby as well as he thought he did. “Piece of advice, Abs likes Italian.”
The look Townsend gave her was long, contemplative. Some of the tension he carried melted off of him as he cocked his head ever so slightly to the side and assessed her in their shared silence. Rachel’s nose twitched. Her skin felt itchy. She didn’t like the sensation of being analysed at the best of times, but something about his particular inquisitive stare made her slightly nauseous.
“Italian makes her feel sick.”
It was blunt. It was a matter of fact. It was an unambiguous statement read off a report.
It didn’t make sense.
She could cast her mind back to her childhood home, her little sister slurping down endless bowls of pasta. She could remember the early years of her and Matthew’s relationship, of her then-boyfriend stealing Abby away from Roseville on a Saturday afternoon for authentic pizza in an attempt to butter them both up. She could still taste the seafood platters, the Carprese salads, the rosemary focaccia the sisters had shared as their lives stretched into adulthood.
At her continued silence, her unwavering doubt, Townsend’s eyes softened into something sickeningly like pity and dangerously like blame, gaze averting away from hers as the guilt began to creep up on her.
Rachel tried to picture her sister indulging in Italian cuisine anytime in the past few years and came up short. Not since Matthew disappeared. Not since Rome.
She pushed down the sickening feeling in her chest and hurriedly changed the topic before the heat in her skull moved behind her eyes. “What about tomorrow?”
Hesitantly, he gave into her probing, despite the multitude of international laws he broke in doing so. “Yerevan. The Middle East is still pretty unstable in light of recent events. We’ve been asked to consult on a mediation meeting between the Presidents of the countries involved.”
Townsend’s collected and measured nature probably made him well suited to mediation. Despite being quick tempered and cutting when it came to his own dealings, their fight last winter in front of half of her student body coming to mind, he was fair and pragmatic when it came to external disagreements. The only qualities of a good mediator which he lacked, namely charm and general likability, Abby made up for in spades.
Still, international relations wasn’t either of their specialities, so there must've been representatives available more qualified to the task. If Rachel had to guess, the two of them were being sent partly as a tactic to intimidate the world leaders into compliance, they were two of the agents responsible for bringing down the organisation that sought to destabilise the region after all, and partly for their backgrounds in protection. With the level of disarray in the Middle East at the moment, further assassination attempts were not unlikely, and should one be successful during a meeting mediated by the West, the political environment would become even more complicated. Rachel was willing to bet that Abby and Townsend had been tasked with this assignment under the assumption that if an attempt was made on any of the world leaders’ lives, both of them would jump in front of the bullet without hesitation.
The realisation made her bones feel a bit weaker, made her knees tremble in place, made her stomach tie itself in knots.
Though the explosion that ripped through The Gallagher Academy had torn her home apart, it had also pieced her heart back together. Once the shattered remains of that night had been picked up and carefully dealt with, Rachel had been left with her entire family, small as it was, safe in her arms. Her daughter was finally free of the terrorist organisation that had been hunting her for years, could finally relax again and enjoy the rest of her childhood before starting college in the fall. There was a new ring on her finger and Joe’s steady hand wrapped around hers, the feeling of warmth and love and home returning to her after so long. Abby still took assignments sure, but they were relatively short, tame, and spaced out, her sister finally trying to make time for the people that needed her, that wanted her before throwing herself back into her job.
For a few short months, Rachel could breath easy. But now Abby was going back to what she loved and Joe was legally alive and allowed to leave the vicinity of the school grounds and Cammie was going to be an agent with the CIA. She didn’t think she would ever breathe easy again once that happened.
“The ongoing tension must make that trip pretty dangerous?”
Though she tried her best to hide her anxiety behind a guise of curiosity, Townsend appeared to see see straight through her, her plastic expression and glass voice betraying her once again. He shot her his best attempt at a reassuring look, nodding solemnly at her. “We’ll be fine.”
Rachel wasn’t particularly worried about we, and they both knew it, but she supposed it was kind of Townsend to pretend that her fears weren’t so transparent.
Suddenly feeling like the upper hand in this interaction had slipped and fallen where she didn’t want it to land, Rachel squared her shoulders and gave the man another scrutinising look, glaring at him until his teeth ground together once more.
It was a nervous tick then. She wondered if he knew about it.
Towering over him still, she moved stepped down a singular curved stair, the narrowed space between them tight with suspense. A growl hid in the depths of her voice, the stern warning caged within it fraught with preemptive anger. In spite of all his training, Townsend flinched back slightly at her sudden intensity, leaning back on his heels for a moment to distance himself from the heat in her eyes before he recalled his skills and righted himself, shoulders back and torso out in a poor impersonation of confidence.
“When Cammie was little, Abby liked to play this game with her where she’d hold her upside down by one ankle and swing her around a bit. She’d even hold her over her shoulder and go around the house asking if anyone had seen the squirt. Cam loved it.” When Rachel closed her eyes and held her breath, she could still hear the ringing of her baby girl’s laughter echoing through her head, her delighted little screams and breathless giggles. “I love Abby, and I trust her completely, but she was holding the most precious thing in the world to me, so it always made me nervous.” A light of understanding started to spread across the man’s face, his muscles sagging under the weight of his realisation then immediately tensing again as she leaned further towards him. “This one time, she tried throwing her up in the air and catching her by the leg. Obviously her hand slipped, and Cammie would’ve smacked her head on the carpet if Matthew hadn’t been close enough to catch her.” Townsend winced slightly, and Rachel’s breath became somewhat shaky, both the memory and her fear making her uneasy. “I love Abby, and Cam was fine, but in that moment I still could’ve killed her.”
Her unspoken words were loud. You, I don't love, I hardly care about you beyond what you mean to my sister. If anything happens to her, if she’s ever not fine, it will be your fault, and I will kill you for it.
Townsend remained tense as he nodded, still eyeing her warily as though she was going to descend the rest of the stairs and attack him if his response didn’t suit.
Maybe she would.
“I love Abigail too, Rachel.” It took a lot of self-restraint not to blink in shock at his words. Not because she doubted them, Abby had a unique talent for making people love her much faster than they planned to, but because of the intensity and the ferocity with which he breathed them to life. “If anything happened to her, if I hurt her in any way, you couldn’t hate me any more than I would hate myself.”
He looked like he meant it, like he believed his words with every fibre of his being, but he was wrong. If what he was saying was true, it would mean he loved Abby more than Rachel did, and she knew without a doubt that that wasn’t possible.
As it were, his statement just grated on her like a sharpener, twisting her insides until her face, her words, her voice were all stretched into the fine point of a knife. “You’ve hurt her before.”
Between them, an apparition of the woman in question appeared. Pale and hurt and tearful after a long assignment, a failed operation, a heartbreaking battle of words. Abandoned in a hospital bed by the man she had slowly started to give her heart to.
A kaleidoscope of emotions swept across his face. Anger. Regret. Guilt. Pain. She watched them all rise in waves and crash into the beach of his features, dissipating into the sand of his skin as quickly as they grew. Carefully, he cleared the confliction from his expression, soothed out the marks and indents that the crashing water had left on his face. He gave her a slow nod. “We’ve hurt each other plenty, yes. Neither of us want to do that anymore.”
Once again, Rachel was struck by the realisation that her little sister was all grown up.
Warning still lodged in her throat, thickening her voice as it slipped out of its confinements, she put a piece of her heart on a plate and handed it to him. “She’s not as tough as she thinks she is.”
She spends every one of Matthew’s birthdays in tears. She takes anything negative you say to her to heart and lets it stew there forever. She would take all of her loved one’s suffering on herself and let it crush her if she could.
His eyes were warm, and his smile small but kind. For the briefest moment, he looked a little like Matthew, a little like Joe. He looked like someone she could trust with her sister. “I know Rachel. I do.”
All of a sudden, the rhythmic sound of heels clipping against the solid oak of the spiral staircase echoed along the limestone walls, and Rachel watched as she ceased to exist in the man’s eyes.
Pupils darting away from her, both widening and darkening in a single breath, his gaze latched onto the sight of Abby descending the spiral stairs. In the reflection of his eyes, she watched as the remaining beams of sunlight in the sky, the temporary bulbs installed throughout the mansion, and the first gleaming of the night’s stars all rearranged themselves to shine only on her sister, casting the rest of the world into darkness so that Townsend had no choice but to beholden her.
She chuckled slightly at his stunned expression, at the way his jaw dropped ever so slightly. He paid her no notice. She didn’t exist.
Rachel shifted to the base of the stairs, stepping to the side of Townsend and turning to watch her sister make the grand entrance she not-so-secretly desired. Forest green satin clung to the curves of her legs, elongated by the glittering silver heels which adorned her feet, and swept it’s way up her torso into a deep cowl neck. The flesh of her chest and arms and one of her legs was confidently on display, and Rachel could hear Townsend’s breath hitch slightly every time her steps revealed the long slit carving its way up her right side. Sitting prettily around her neck was a simple silver chain with what looked like constellation charm dangling from it, twinkling in the dimmed light almost as bright as Abby’s eyes.
Rachel didn’t recognise the necklace. Perhaps he had bought her jewellery after all. Perhaps she liked it more than Rachel would’ve thought.
“Wow.” She arched an eyebrow at his shaky whisper, the word that slithered out his mouth without thought. Either the man wasn’t as good at dealing with jet lag as he ought to be after a career of international travel, or he was entirely spellbound and struck stupid by the sight of her sister descending the stairs. He quickly shook himself out of it, subtly clearing his throat and feigning a glance at his watch. Less observant women would’ve missed the way he stuttered as he corrected himself. “How. -How after 35 years have you never learned what a schedule means?”
Abby just beamed at him, smile so bright it cut through the hazy gloom that hung over what used to be the entrance hall.
Rachel shifted on her toes, suddenly feeling out of place in the school and with one of the people that had always felt like home.
Once Abby reached the final step, she reached out to fiddle with Townsend’s perfectly done tie, loosening it from its knot and skewing it slightly to the side. The grin she shot him was cheeky, tempered with an edge of softness that Rachel didn’t recognise from her sister. “You don’t look too bad yourself.” Then she grabbed his tie firmly and yanked him closer to her, their height difference even with her in heels meaning his eyes met hers dead on. “Never call me 35 again.”
“Abigail I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are in fact-” Abby surged forward to press her lips to his, and Rachel awkwardly averted her eyes, shifting her feet to take her further away from the couple. A few moments later, she heard Townsend’s breathlessly croaky voice alert her that it was safe to turn back around. “Never mind.”
Her sister’s laugh rippled across what remained of the mansion, the creaks and moans of the rubble lightening up to sing in tune with her. She hopped off the final step, one of Townsend’s hands moving to take hers and the other unconsciously drifting to adjust his tie, fixing it with a few instinctual movements of his fingers.
Something uncomfortable grew in her chest when Abby moved to depart the school without looking back, her fingers tangled in Townsend’s and her head tilted towards his. It was rough and sharp against her lungs, heavy against her sternum, like the cactus Matthew had once bought her sister, she mused.
It was the first time Abby had looked to any partner before looking to her, the first time she had been an afterthought in her sister’s mind. It was unfamiliar and cold and strangely lonely. It was ridiculous. She was just grown up now, she was in love, she was happy. It was everything Rachel had ever wanted for her little sister, so it made no sense for the realisation to stifle something in her, to twist her organs and tug on her ribs and burn the backs of her eyes.
She wondered if Abby ever felt like that when Rachel met Matthew. When she fell in love with Joe.
Searching deep inside the inferno that was her throat, she managed to find her voice enough to croak a small protest. “Hey.” Immediately, Abby spun on her heel and shot her an apologetic smile, releasing Townsend’s hand and throwing both her arms around Rachel’s neck in a crushing hug. The uncomfortable growth settled into something soft, something warm. Suddenly, she was 22 years old and wishing her sister good luck at her new school. She was 28 and sending her off on her first CIA assignment. She was 42 and saying goodbye as she left the safety of Gallagher with a healing bullet wound in her shoulder. As Abby ducked her nose into the crook of Rachel’s neck, she breathed the slightest of whispers into her baby sister’s ear. “Happy birthday.”
The responding whisper was equally gentle, equally quiet, a tiny breeze of air against the hairs around her ear. “Thanks Rach.”
“Have fun. Be safe.” Feeling the smirk forming against her neck, the giggle building in her sister’s throat, the lewd innuendo dripping from her tongue, Rachel gave her another tight squeeze in warning. She wasn’t referencing tonight and they all knew it. Even though Abby was an exceptional agent, the world of espionage was one where any assignment could be your last if you weren’t careful; Rachel would never not feel afraid sending her little sister off to an unknown fate. Looking up slightly, she eyed Townsend with renewed ferocity. He gave her a stern nod in return, in agreement, in a silent vow, and the air returned to her lungs just long enough to breathe out a whisper. “See you in a couple weeks.”
Abby pulled back and morphed her face into a seriousness that didn’t suit her. “Promise.” Once the solemn nod she gave was returned in kind, a grin reformed across her features, a wink and a teasing tone accompanying her words. “How are you and Wise Guy gonna get hitched if I’m not around to officiate?”
Rachel could only roll her eyes, a small part of her regretting her and Joe’s decision. Unfortunately, it was the only way to resolve the argument of whether to make her a bridesmaid or a grooms-woman, Joe making the fair argument that he didn’t have many other friends and Rachel resolute in her standing that Abby was her sister.
Sighing through her wry smile, she pressed her forehead to her sister’s in farewell, a touch more emotional than their usual goodbyes, both of Abby’s hands held tightly in hers. “I love you Abs.”
“Love you too.”
With that final whisper through reddened lips, eyes clogging and throat thick with emotion, Abby freed herself from Rachel’s grasp and turned away, taking Townsend by the hand and leading them both towards the car. Just before he turned to follow her, Townsend caught Rachel’s eyes and gave her one final smile, one final nod, one final promise.
My longest instalment yet (Abby is my fave and her relationships with these two are so important to me), featuring a shovel talk, undeniable simpery, and the terrifying ordeal of realising you might not be your sister’s favourite person anymore.
Arguably more of Rachel&Abby and TownsendxAbby than Rachel&Townsend, but literally what else are these two going to bond over.
While on an assignment in Bahrain, 8 years before the events of LYKY, Rachel and Abby disagree on the group’s next move after one of their cover’s is blown. (3,035)
“Well that went well.” Her sister’s dry amusement greeted them as they stumbled through the safe house door, Joe unsteady on his feet and Rachel stooped by the weight of him pressing against her shoulder.
“Don’t Abigail.” A warning lingered in her voice, the adrenaline of the last couple hours still coursing through her veins and making her temper spark. Matthew swooped towards them and took Joe’s other arm over his back, the two of them supporting the staggering man towards the couch where he collapsed next to Abby. Her husband immediately started attending to the blood pouring down his friend’s face, the lump brewing on his forehead, the grimace bubbling across his mouth. In an effort to help, Rachel fetched the first aid kit from the small kitchen, dampened a cloth with water and passed Matthew a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a cloth. He took it with a grateful smile, his eyes scanning her own body for similar injuries, worry dancing across the crevices of his skin.
Meanwhile, her younger sister showed no such concern for their friend’s welfare, simply leaning towards him with a wicked grin painted on her face. Propped open on her thighs was a CIA issued laptop installed with connections to all the intelligence agencies in the western world and equipped with millions of dollars worth of surveillance technologies and coding capabilities.
She was using it to rewatch security footage of Joe falling down the stairs.
“Hey Joe, want to see this video I found of Bambi ice skating? Oh wait, that’s just you trying to make a discrete escape.”
“Rachel, I deeply dislike your sister.”
Abby cackled in his ear, replaying the video so he could watch his descent in all its glory. At the time, Rachel was sure that she hadn’t been laughing, was sure that she had armed herself with an arsenal of weapons and extraction tools the moment her and Matthew realised his cover was blown, was sure that she had been halfway across Manama when the cameras caught the unflattering view of Joe hitting his head against the bannister. However, now that the two of them had gotten away from the GDSSI splinter group and travelled safely across city, Abby beating them back and taking up an early residence on the couch, she clearly found his unfortunate slip to be the highlight of her life.
“Should I call Langley? I reckon we’re gonna have to head back and send a new team in a couple months, target them from a new angle. Joe’s cover’s blown and they might have seen you as well Rach.” Matthew’s worry leaked into his voice, accent growing stronger to reflect his building anxieties, tension bleeding into the hand applying pressure to Joe’s head and causing the man in question to wince. Abby rolled her eyes and nudged him to the side, taking over with the blood stained cloth with a much gentler hand and an incredulous look.
“Good thing we have two more people right here who can take over then.” Eyebrows climbing high up her face, she gestured slowly between herself and Matthew, voice slow as though she was talking to a child.
Matthew just shook his head. “It would take weeks for me to even build up a cover solid enough to work my way into their ranks. I would need months to get any information out of Al Bin Ali.”
“Hmmm. Give me three drinks and two hours.” She punctuated her declaration with a wink over her shoulder, standing from her crouched position and moving towards her bedroom. “I have a dress packed that’ll have him talking before Joe’s head stops bleeding.”
“No.”
After remaining largely silent since they arrived back to the safe house, thoughts preoccupied with the signs of a brain bleed and contingency plans and extraction protocols, Rachel lifted her voice and stopped her sister in her tracks. Her abrupt objection was met by a slightly agape mouth and the minuscule raise of a singular eyebrow, a tiny tilt of the head and a dangerous flicker of light in narrowing eyes. Rachel could hear her sister’s response before she even moved her mouth to verbalise it.
“No?”
A stern glare, a firm voice, a resolute stance. “No.” She looked to Matthew, directing her orders towards him as Abby continued to shoot her a challenging look and Joe frowned through the blood trickling down his skin. “Give Langley a call, we’ll drive south tomorrow morning and catch a boat across the Gulf. We can make it to Kuwait by Monday afternoon and catch a flight out from there.”
He began to move towards the phone immediately. Of the three of them, he was the best at following her orders. Not just because they were married, but also because he had the most respect for the hierarchy of CIA operatives, because he was the only one of them to consistently remember that she was the most senior agent there.
Her sister on the other hand, held no such space in her brain for that fact.
Snatching the phone before Matthew’s fingers could brush against it, she cocked her hip out and looked around the room in disbelief. “Hang on, that’s it? We’re not even going to discuss it?”
To anyone else, her tone voice gave away only shock and incredulity, the fledglings of a fight hanging onto the coattails of her words. But Rachel wasn’t just anyone else. She knew her sister like she knew the sun would rise and fall everyday, like she knew the ever-changing ground beneath their feet, like she knew the beat of her own heart. The brief tension in her jaw, the flickering of her eyes, the pitch of her voice, it all gave away the inkling of hurt that had taken root in Abby’s chest at Rachel’s protest. Not wanting to upset her sister any further, not wanting to escalate the situation to a fight, she tried to be gentle with her words.
“It’s too risky Abby.”
“How would you know?” A decade’s more experience for one. “You haven’t even heard my plan.”
“You don’t have a plan. You have an idea.” So much for being gentle. It was laughable though, the suggestion that Abby had actually decided on anything more than flirt with him until he slips up. A flush of admonished anger spread up her little sisters cheeks; clearly Rachel had her made. “Protocol dictates that we need to go back to base and regroup with our handlers and superiors before any more moves are made.”
“But I can-”
“Look, they’ll be on edge after today, they’ll be on the look out for moles within the group and suspicious of everyone-”
“They’re not going to be suspicious of me.”
“And you’re sure of that are you?”
“Yes.” Astonished laughter bubbled out of Rachel’s throat. It was just like her sister to be so cavalier, so arrogant. Enraged at her reaction, Abby spun on her heels where she had lurched forward to stand eye to eye with her advisory, towering over Joe and pinning him down with a fierce glare that had him wincing. “You. You’ve worked with me more than she has. You tell her. I can catch him in his bar tonight, loosen his tongue just enough that he gives up the name of whoever’s commissioned their group, then stick it out just long enough that he doesn’t catch on to what he’s done. He wont even remember what I look like. Right?”
Another wince, his gaze flickering between the two sisters before he settled his sights on Rachel with a regretful shrug. “She is remarkably good at that.”
She huffed. Rolled her eyes. Joe didn’t know half as much about Abby and how good she was as he thought he did. Unlike him, Rachel had seen her learn to lie, to deceive. Had seen her sister grow into her charm and her silver tongue, had watched her weaponise it against men and women, friends and foe, targets and civilians alike. She was perfectly aware of how easily Abby could bend a person to her will and twist their words into the ones she wants to hear just as they’re forming on their tongue, but that doesn't mean she’s going to let her take a stupid risk just for the sake of her pride.
Voice sharp, she admonished them both with a steely glare. “I don’t care. It’s reckless and half-assed and you’re just going to put yourself and us in danger.”
“No I’m not!”
“Will you listen to yourself? You sound like a child not getting her way-”
“No, you’re treating me like a child.”
“I’m treating you like a subordinate-”
“Subordinate?”
“-Who’s not experienced enough to take over as eyeball on an op like this. Who's too young and naive to make calls like this. Whose pride and arrogance and selfishness are going get someone hurt if she doesn’t learn to do things by the book!”
Rachel and Abby were sisters in more way than one. They were bound together by blood and guts and DNA, by their father’s absence and their mother’s nonchalance, by their school’s sisterhood and the stone walls that housed them. They were made from the same materials, the same stubbornness and strength stood where their bones should be, the same cacophony of family of honour of duty rang through their lungs in the place of oxygen. They were carved by the same hands, large but gentle soothing back their hair back as they cried, holding their fingers as they shook, weathered and firm grasping tight to the point of their chins, to the base of their necks. They were the same, even when they were so, so different. That meant her little sister was in some ways her best friend, and in others her worst enemy; they weren’t strangers to fighting.
When Abby was small, so was the lid on Rachel’s temper. A mirage of hormones and clumsy fingers and grief and the thoughtlessness of youth trimming back the fuse on their relationship so that all it took was a small spark for the fires of an argument to burn. As they grew, so did Rachel’s patience, but so did Abby’s ability to wind her up. By accident sometimes, but more often than not her teenage sister would grind her down with targeted jabs and incessant barbs fuels by the endless anger of being 15 until she couldn’t help but snap back. Something had mellowed between them once they were both settled into adulthood, arguments rarer and fights more scarce, but occasionally they still found themselves stood as they were now, nose to nose and rage to rage, screaming in a language that only the two of them could truly hear.
Throughout their lives, the story was always the same. Abby would float in and out of her periphery with a careless smirk or a teasing smile, whittling down her patience until even the deepest breaths couldn’t hold back a snide comment. She’d fall into her sister’s trap of engaging in a battle of wills and wits, the two of them entangled in one another’s biggest doubts and deepest insecurities until one of them pushed it an inch too far.
Usually Rachel.
Almost always Rachel.
Without ever meaning to, she’d nudge them both over the invisible line in sand, a line that seemed to drift and move with every passing of the tide, until Abby flinched violently away from her with a quivering look of pain in her eyes.
Unknowingly, Rachel seemed to have just crossed that line, her sister’s face creasing with pi and voice wavering with insecurity. “Selfish.” The whispered word made her soften; the step Abby took away from her made her wince. Maybe she went a bit far. “I’m trying to help.” She could feel Matthew cringe at the vulnerability creeping into Abby’s voice, her husband far too soft towards her little sister. Abby must’ve sensed it too, spinning on her heels and looking up at him with wide wet eyes, sounding remarkably similar to the little girl she once was as she pleaded up at him. “Matt? You know I can do this right?”
As quickly as it lived, Rachel’s guilt died.
She raised an eyebrow and glared at her husband, daring him to fall for such conspicuous manipulations in front of her. Out the corner of her eyes, she caught Joe grinning slightly into his lap at his friend’s predicament, clearly no longer bothered by the egg forming on his forehead.
Matthew gulped. Stuttered. Swung his eyes back and forth. Shook his head. “Nope, I’m not picking sides here. I’m Switzerland.”
“Yeah well Switzerland is married to America so you might want to rethink that position.”
“I’m sorry, are you calling me Germany in a World War 2 metaphor?”
Joe started laughing harder than she thought possible at that, Abby’s aghast tone summoning tears from the corner of his eyes. If Rachel weren’t so preoccupied stumbling through protests against her sister’s accusations, she might’ve worried about the severity of his inevitable concussion, the peels of laughter so uncharacteristic that they alluded to some kind of weird personality change. As it was, she banished all her worry and her anxieties and her disappointments to the back of her mind and simply shook her head, casting one more stern look to the source of her frustrations before turning away and making her way to the kitchen.
They had a second phone in there, she would call Langley herself.
“The mission’s over Abigail, that’s final.”
“We’ve been working on this for months Rach, I’m not turning in and giving up just because it suddenly got difficult.”
“Neither am I.” A sharp yell. A pregnant pause. A deep breath. “We’re going home because the risks now massively outweigh the rewards. The information you might get tonight isn’t worth whatever situation you’ll undoubtedly find yourself in when things go wrong.”
Unbidden, the image of her little sister at the hands of those men came to her mind. Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. Whether they uncovered her identity or not, they wouldn’t be gentle with her if given the chance, and there wouldn't be anything Rachel could do to protect her if things went that way. There was a reason Rachel very rarely took assignments with Abby. There was a reason she would never agree to send her sister into the field on this one. There was a reason it was supposed to only ever be Joe who made contact with the group.
The boys wouldn’t understand this, but there were worse fates for an operative than death.
Bracing herself against the counter as a wave of panic thudded through her heart and rattled against the walls of her chest, Rachel forced a gulp of air into her lungs. Her knees felt weak. Sweat was building at the base of her neck. Terror had twisted itself around her organs and was constricting like a python, squeezing tighter and tighter until the pain running through her bones was blinding. She felt sick.
Oblivious to her fears, her sister spoke up again, the strength and authority Rachel had lost somewhere along the way leaking from her tone.
Abby had always loved stealing her things.
“Why don’t we vote?” Rachel couldn’t help but scoff, shaking her head again where it hung between her shoulders. “Believe it or not Rachel, this isn’t a dictatorship, just because you have a few more years in the field than we do doesn’t automatically put you in charge.”
“Fine. Joe?” She spat the question out with a brief glare in her sister’s direction, spinning to face the man hunched over on the couch. Sometime during her brief breakdown, the humour had dripped off of his expression. He now eyed her with something like knowing, something like concern, something like an apology gleaming in his eye.
No. He wouldn’t be so stupid.
“I’m actually with Abby.” Clearly she had underestimated him. “She know’s what she’s doing Rach, I wouldn’t be supporting this if she didn’t.”
While the compliment filled Abby with air, a glimmer of pride blooming in her face and heels nearly lifting off the ground in glee, Rachel felt lead soaking into her shoes. Lungs solid in her chest, heart pounding mercilessly against her ribcage, blood thickening and pooling in her stomach, she suddenly felt a slow heaviness take over her.
Joe averted his eyes.
Coward.
“Matt?"
Her husband shuffled his feet in thought, took a deep breath, darted his eyes between her sister’s hopeful gaze and her own terrified glare. “Not tonight.” Somehow, his attempt at playing the middle man only disappointed them both. “Give it a couple days for the dust to settle, let us come up with a proper plan.”
Abby deflated slightly, the beginnings of a protest forming on her lips, but a stern look from Matthew halted the words forming in her throat. Instead she nodded, smiled slightly. She had gotten her way again. Meanwhile, Rachel felt the bones holding her together liquify under her skin, the pillars holding her up quaking with the force of her anger, her betrayal, her terror. She expected her voice to be weak when it tumbled out her mouth, thick with emotion and trembling with worry, but she remained stoic, hiding the depths of her reaction behind a thick wall of steel determination.
“I already told you. You’re not doing this.”
Neither Matthew nor Joe would look at her. Truthfully, it only fuelled her anger more, red hot rage coursing through her veins and igniting the hairs on her skin. If they were going to go against her plan, if they were going to stab her in the back, if they were going to go along with treating her sister like a sacrificial lamb, they could at least have the decency to look her in the eye.
Abby didn’t flinch when their eyes met.
“We voted. It’s done. I’m doing this Rachel.”
She threw the phone on the counter with trembling hands and stormed towards the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her before any of them could see the tears brewing in her eyes.
Moral of the story is don’t go on dangerous secret spy missions with risk takers who you love very much unless you’re comfortable letting them take those risks.
Love the idea of Cammie and her friends viewing Joe as this effortlessly suave guy who can never put a foot wrong on a mission, and Rachel and Abby just eyeing each other because they both remember that time he fell down the stairs and gave himself a concussion trying to get away from a target.
I have a second idea for these two arguing in a safe house, but I think it will be both harder and sadder to write, so I am saving it for when I’ve got through all of the prompts.
In the Morgan family ranch situated in rural Nebraska, there was a large window encompassing most of the sitting room wall which looked out onto various fields and enclosures found on the land. From it, you could see for miles over the grasslands on a clear day, could see the tattered swing set which stood at the bottom of the dirt track leading to the house, could see the stables and its surrounding paddocks if you looked beyond it. If you hovered by this window one particularly cold morning in December, you would see an older gentleman who smiled from his teeth and his eyes and the wrinkles in his face, who leant heavily on a sleek cane and who laughed with his whole body walking beside one of his horses in the larger paddock. You would see a young woman with stars in her eyes and electricity in her veins sat upon a an old mare as she trotted around in circles, torso twisting intermittently to remain in joyous conversation with her companions. You would see a woman with chestnut hair cropped to her shoulders and a relieved weightlessness to her bones holding her arm out to the gentleman she walked beside, a grin stitching its way up her face as she chuckled at the other woman’s theatrics.
It was there Joe stood watching his wife, his wife, and his sister-in-law help Richard Morgan attend to the horses when he caught Townsend’s reflection approaching him in the glass and felt the soft smile slip from his face.
He didn’t dislike the man per se, but he didn’t particularly enjoy his company either. Truthfully, Joe found him to be far too formal, even finding him pretty dull when Abby wasn’t around to liven him up with a petty argument or debate. He was egotistical and stubborn and controlling. All qualities which made him an admittedly adept operative, qualities which he could see in himself and his friends and his wife, but somehow they grated on his nerves more when the English agent exhibited them. Perhaps it was their history; the man had used Cammie to lure him into a trap and arrested him only a year and a half ago. Or maybe it was the knowledge that he had been involved with Catherine a lifetime ago, had fathered Zach and had never bothered to stick around and find out about him, leaving Joe to pick up the pieces. It could even be the spirit of Matthew Morgan influencing from him from the grave, his old friend never being a fan of anyone who dared date his little sister.
Rachel had gently suggested that maybe the problem wasn’t Townsend, wasn’t his accent or his mannerisms or his actions, but simply that he wasn’t Matt.
Of course, his wife was hardly ever wrong, and this wasn’t an exception. It seemed that suddenly, when Joe wasn’t kept within the confinement of The Gallagher Academy, the now former MI6 operative seemed to be the man he spent the most time in the company of. That seemingly overnight, he had somehow slipped into the space in Joe’s life previously filled by the kindest heart he ever knew. That it seemed like one day, Townsend would in a way become Joe’s brother-in-law, technically a closer relation to him than Matt ever was.
Edward Townsend could never hope to compare to the brother that Joe had already lost.
The man in question sidled up to him and hovered quietly by the window, attention briefly stolen by the view outside. When Abby threw her head back in laughter, body nearly tipping off her horse with the force of her elation, stars sparkled in the man’s eyes and a soft smile glowed on his lips. Joe sighed. He supposed he had to try make nice if the upstart was going to keep looking at his friend like that.
Shaking himself out of the brief stunned silence he had found himself in, Townsend cleared his throat and held out a bag of what looked like soft nuts to him. “Dried figs?”
Pretentious prick.
Joe rejected the offer, the bag retreating as Townsend just nodded his head in acceptance like he had expected that answer all along. They stood there in pained silence a moment longer, one of them with nothing to say and the other seemingly lacking to conviction to speak, before Townsend huffed and cleared his throat once more. “I suppose I should thank you.”
If this was the man’s attempt at a thank you, Joe dreaded to imagine what an apology from him might sound like. Suddenly he felt bad for Abby.
“For helping me with Zach’s Christmas present. Abigail’s suggestions were…” He trailed off, probably catching the sharp manner in which Joe’s eyes cut towards him, a warning lingering in his glare. His friend’s advice was probably outrageous. Probably ranged from a karaoke machine to a convertible, various gifts she would buy her niece depending on her mood and how much she wanted to annoy Rachel, gifts as unpredictable as her. He could understand why the man might need to source assistance from elsewhere, but that didn’t mean he would stand here and listen to Townsend criticise her efforts to help. Even if insults and arguments were their weird way of flirting.
Receiving only a look in response, Townsend pushed on. “He deserves something he likes, and I wanted to get him something good but… I just don’t know what he- I still don’t know him very well. So thank you.”
In fairness to Townsend, he hadn’t outright asked Joe what to buy his son. He had instead enquired through a tense jaw and gritted teeth what Zach did outside of espionage, their line of work being the only common ground the two men had found thus far. The question had angered Joe immensely either way. Townsend should already know what his son liked, what he did with his spare time. He should know his favourite colour and his favourite food, the music that he listens to and the books he liked to read. He should know what kept him up at night, the hopes and the dreams and the nightmares he had as a child, the ones that have followed him into adulthood and the ones that died out along the way.
Joe knew all of it, but he wasn’t Zach’s father.
How was that fair?
Still, Joe wanted Zach to have a good Christmas, wanted him to have a good relationship with the one parent he had left, and he supposed Townsend was a decent enough guy. So Joe had given him a few tidbits of information, had sacrificed a few of the pieces of Zach that were only his, and had let the man do what he felt was best with it.
Packaged meticulously in crisp gold paper, a stark contrast to Joe’s haphazard battle with tape and tissue, to the gifts Abby threw carelessly into gift bags, to the cheery snowman pattern adorning Rachel’s lovingly wrapped presents, Townsend had ended up buying him two sets of knives. One for throwing and one for cooking. With his mother the way she was and his father absent for his entire childhood, Zach had learned to fend for himself much younger than he should’ve had to, and that included learning to how to feed himself. He seemed to enjoy the routine of it, the structure of a recipe, the predictability of its outcome.
Discovering this was a relief to Rachel considering Cammie’s inheritance of her own skills in the kitchen.
Zach would appreciate the gift, would like it even, Joe knew. He could picture the shock igniting in his features, wide aghast eyes and mouth slightly agape at the thoughtfulness put into the gift, at the fact that Townsend actually bought something he would want, would use. His eyes would sparkle with something uncomfortably like gratitude, as if he owed his father anything resembling a thank you.
Joe just grunted in acknowledgment, the lingering silence between them becoming stifling. Townsend nodded again to himself, looking back out the towering window as he chewed contemplatively on his figs.
“You don’t like horses?” The question nearly made Joe jump. Frown creasing his face and eyebrows dipped in challenge, he turned fully to face the man beside him.
“I like horses fine.”
“You don’t trust them.”
The animals must weigh something close to half a ton and were built almost entirely out of muscle. They were unpredictable and unyielding, quick to revolt and hard to soothe. Joe could never ascertain what they were thinking or feeling, what they were going to do next. It unnerved him. “I don’t trust much.”
“Your shoulders are tense. Even before I joined you they were stiff. You flinched when Mr Morgan’s horse reared his head and you lean forward each time Abby’s trots a bit faster.”
He read off his evidence like lines from a children’s book. It was typical of an operative to systematically catalogue their observations and interpret them as one, a skill he had both utilised and taught several times throughout his career. What was atypical was listing them off to your target like you’d achieved something special. Joe’s students did it, their voices lilted in a question as they looked for reassurance from him that they were getting things right. That was fine, operatives in training were supposed to check their assumptions with their superiors. Abby still did it, her tone smug and teasing, just wanting to brag about the fact that she had navigated through his guarded expressions and unspoken words. That was fine too because she smiled charmingly when she did it, because she easily endeared herself to those around her, because Joe loved Abby. Townsend however stewed his words in arrogance and assuredness, eyes knowing and cold. It aggravated him.
“Congratulations, I don’t trust horses.”
Despite the scathing sarcasm being directed his way, Townsend just nodded thoughtfully again, his own voice taking on what Joe was sure he thought was a reassuring tone. “Abigail’s good with them. She’s annoyingly good at most things, but she’s particularly good with animals. She wont let-”
“I know.” His interruption was short and to the point, slicing through Townsend’s condescending assurance like the knives placed under the Christmas tree, anger bubbling in the pit of his stomach and in the hollow of his chest. “I’ve known her a lot longer than you have Townsend.”
Pointed heat carved deep holes into the side of his skull, deep blue eyes boring into him like a drill. He turned his own gaze away from the man beside him, choosing to focus instead on the way the frosty sun danced along his wife’s skin, how she skated weightlessly across the mud soaked earth, how she sang when she laughed and glowed when she talked. Townsend’s reflection was vaguely imprinted over the image of his family in the distance, the slow nodding of his head once again drawing Joe’s attention.
“You don’t like me, and that’s fine, I’m not a huge fan of yours either.” The words were slow and deliberate, carefully manicured to bring them to equal footing without causing offence. “But I would like for us to get along, or to be civil at least. For Abby and Zach’s sake if nothing else.” A pregnant pause hung between them, Joe refusing to give life to the reluctant agreement he could feel brewing inside him. Although Townsend must be a patient man, he couldn’t have dealt with Abby for nearly as long as he had if he wasn’t, when he didn’t get a response he continued barreling through the conversation with an frustrated huff. “Look, I’m not going to apologise for last year if that’s what you’re waiting for.”
“You’re not going to apologise for arresting me under false pretences?”
“They weren’t false.” Townsend whirled round to face him at that, eyes ablaze and muscles taut. A finger jabbed into Joe’s sternum and pressed hard; he resisted the urge to snap it in two. The voice which snarled at him was deep and growling, words on fire and breath smoking. “You were recruited by and operating within The Circle of Cavan. You were identified and exposed by the man who shot Abigail. You chose to make yourself a fugitive rather than coming in peacefully and saving us all a lot of trouble.”
Despite knowing that the man’s assessment wasn’t wrong, that truthfully Joe didn’t blame him for any of the actions he took that year, that he respected him more for them in fact, he felt his hackles rising. Shoulder’s squaring and chest protruding, he filled himself with indignant righteousness. “Do you not remember what happened when I was in custody? The Circle-”
“You were The Circle. At least to me you were. You were a danger to national security, a danger to Cameron and her family. I had to bring you in.”
The fight leaked out of him at that.
Ever since him and Matt became close, became brothers, Joe had striven to do whatever he could to protect him and his family. When Cammie was born, that meant keeping her safe over everything else. It was one of the reasons he kept his distance from the Morgan family while she was growing up, not wanting to risk infecting her life with his bad luck, his terrorist affiliations, his general bad influence. Despite his best efforts, he had failed dramatically, ruining her life and the rest of Matt’s family’s in one fell swoop. He would never directly hurt Cammie, he would rather tear through his own skin and claw his intestines out with a spoon than cause her any ounce of distress, but he was a danger to her. Townsend was just the only other person to see it.
He sighed. A reluctant huff of air which took all the tension in his body with it as it flew out of his lungs. “I suppose I should be thanking you for that.”
“For what?”
“For protecting Cammie. For helping take The Circle down.”
Townsend shrugged at that, nonchalance coating his words. “That’s my job.” It was, but plenty of people in his position wouldn’t have invested themselves like he did, so the thank you was warranted either way.
Joe could see that it wouldn’t be accepted however, so instead he looked back out to the Nebraskan grasslands, nodded towards the woman sat astride a now cantering horse. “Thank you for looking after her then.”
He was careful with his words; Abby had never needed protecting.
When Townsend followed his gaze towards the woman in question, a stupidly soft look crept over his face, no sign of the frown that had marred his forehead or the tension that chiseled his jaw. A fraction of a smile spread across his lips, his cheeks, his eyes, mirth dancing in his features as he watched her laugh. Tone as wistful as a falling leaf, his words were barely a whisper. “She doesn't need looking after.” The words but I will anyway went unsaid.
Something must have alerted the girls to the eyes watching them, because they both turned in unison to look at the window. Rachel caught his gaze immediately, a soft smile on her lips and a gentle wave on her fingertips as she tilted her head at him in question. When he shook his head in reassurance at her, they both glanced up to see Abby beaming at Townsend, a laugh trembling through her mouth when she caught them together.
She was his best friend. She was his sister.
“If you ever-”
The man he had turned to in challenge cut him off immediately. “A lot of people might say that you’re more intimidating that your wife, but I’m not one of them. Rachel’s already given me this talk Joe. I’m not going to hurt her, but if I do there’ll be a long queue of Gallagher graduates waiting to get their hands on me, you’ll have to wait in line.”
He had to chuckle at that, picturing his wife pining the man down with a firm stare and a stern word. “As long as you know.”
The bag of figs was once again held out to him as a peace offering, and this time he decided to take one. Sickly and syrupy in his mouth, he winced a little as he chewed, surprised that Townsend enjoyed a snack as sweet that.
At his questioning look, the man shrugged, something bashful taking over his expression. “Abby likes them, rubbed off on me.”
Chuckling again, Joe figured he could extend his own olive branch. “I’m going to drive up to the local Christmas tree farm tomorrow. The local church needs one for their youth group and Mrs Doddle across the road needs one as well.” A lifetime ago, Matt had taken him to that farm. They had battled with a saw and a bundle of ropes and the thoughtlessness of youth, eventually coming home with two haggard trees and scrapes and burns decorating their hands. It was at that farm that Joe first started to feel like he had found himself a family, the first one of his life, and although he would never again get to go there again with Matt, maybe going with Townsend wouldn’t be so bad. “Want to come?”
Boyfriends of the Cameron sisters forcing themselves through a civil conversation, as requested by @bryn-not-brynn
So uni is pretty busy, hence each remaining update will probably be at least a week apart. Currently hoping to get 29 up this weekend, and 30 and 31 done in the next couple weeks after that. I also have a second one shot for 29 that I will write and post after that. Next will be chapter 5 of A Sister’s Vigil, a little piece about how the girls got their codenames, then the final chapter. Think that will take me into March at the earliest. I have a few ideas of things to write from there on that I may share and get opinions on, but if anyone has anything in particular they’d be interested in reading I’d be happy to give it a go!
Welcome back! Here's Matt and Abby being really good friends. These two would not stop talking, and it was a delight to put them together again. If you're new here, you can read all of Full Circle on Ao3. Enjoy!
Chapter Three
Once Cameron starts crying, she doesn’t stop.
From noon to midnight, then midnight to noon. When she’s hungry, when she’s gassy, when she’s tired, and right when she wakes up. She cries before, during, and after every diaper change. She cries in Rachel’s arms. She cries in Matt’s. The bassinet, the bathtub, the backseat of the car—any time, any place, this kid is an equal opportunity crier.
Quiet moments are few and far between, and they’re usually spent staring distantly at the nearest wall, waiting for the next round of crying to begin. The rest of the time, Matt and Rachel operate like a two-man surveillance crew, alternating watches so the other person can eat, and shower, and maybe, maybe get some shut-eye. They haven’t said more than five consecutive words to one another since arriving home.Â
Has she eaten? Yes.Â
Did she sleep? No.Â
When was her last change? Ten minutes ago.
Did she ever stop crying? No.
Everyone from here to Timbuktu told him the newborn stage would be hard, but even so, it’s been wildly undersold. Matt does hard things for a living and before that, he spent a childhood doing hard things on the farm. This ain’t hard. This is impossible.
At least, that’s the conclusion he comes to during his third—or, maybe, fourth—wall-stare of the day. Rachel’s upstairs with the baby, using some sort of motherly magic to coax a ten-minute nap out of the afternoon. Matt tries to make the most of the moment by brushing his teeth for the first time in three days, downstairs in the kitchen, because they already learned the hard way that the bathroom pipes make too much noise in the nursery.
This is the longest break he’ll get for the next twenty-four hours, so he sinks into it. Unwinds the tension in his muscles and settles his shoulders back to the place they’re supposed to sit. The back-and-forth motion of his brush against his teeth serves as a steady rhythm after days of constant chaos.
His brief peace is immediately shattered the moment Abigail Cameron bursts through his front door.
For a woman who was born and raised into a covert lifestyle, Abby sure knows how to make an entrance. She leads with a kick, which leaves a shoe print right next to the deadbolt, then marches in with balloons, teddies, chocolates, and a gift-wrapped bag featuring the word B-A-B-Y written out in wooden blocks. She tops it all off with a delighted, excited, “The cool aunt has finally arrived.”
This, unfortunately, is met with more crying.Â
“Shit, sorry,” says Abby, dropping her voice to something that’s shaped like a whisper, but ain’t actually that much quieter than her true voice. “I forgot about baby rules. Is it nap time?”
Matt hangs his head over the sink. He gives up on brushing, which is just as well, because he’s just now realizing he forgot the toothpaste anyway. “Hi Abby.”
She lumbers into the kitchen with all her goodies in tow, dumping everything onto the kitchen table. Her stuff joins the mountain of formula, diapers, blankets, creams, and everything else in their small arsenal of baby supplies. “Sorry I’m late,” she says. “The Peruvian government really makes a stink when they catch you trying to smuggle guns across their border.”
“The trip went well, then?” Matt asks.
“As well as sting operations ever go when there’s a hundred automatic rifles involved.” She gives a casual wave of her hand as she sits, crossing one nyloned leg over the other while a tall red pump bounces with Abby’s trademark restlessness. “How’s the baby—can I see her? Hold her? Squeeze her cheeks, etcetera, etcetera?”
He turns to face her, leaning against the counter to stay upright against his own exhaustion. He’s suddenly all too aware of the scruff on his jaw, the stains on his shirt, and the smell of indeterminate baby fluids lingering on some indeterminate part of his body. “Rachel’s trying to get her down,” he explains. “You’re welcome to wait until she wakes up from her nap.”
Abby’s face twists, like it always does when she doesn’t get her way. “I’m between ops,” she says. “Langley wants me debriefed and on another plane in the next twenty-four hours, so I don’t exactly have a lot of time to spare.”
Matt has to work hard not to laugh right in her face. “You won’t need it,” he says. “The way this kid sleeps, you’ll just need an extra ten minutes.”
By some miracle, Rachel’s managed to reign in the crying a second time, old DC floorboards squeaking overhead as the nursery’s rocking chair rolls over each one, back and forth, back and forth. He eyes Abby, wondering if she knows how lucky she is to experience the quiet twice in such a short amount of time.Â
She must not, or else she wouldn’t talk right through it. “I suppose if anyone’s worth waiting for, it’s my niece,” she says. “But she better be cute.”
“Ridiculously cute.”
“Yeah?”
“Even cuter when she’s not crying.”
“Isn’t that kind of what babies do?”
Matt shrugs. “So I’m told.”
“So parenthood is everything you’ve ever dreamed of,” she concludes.
“It’s good,” he says. “Glad to have her home.”
A beat. Abby studies him, in that way only Abby can, and Matt’s too tired to figure out what it means. “That’s great,” she says. “Do you wanna say that again like you mean it, or do you wanna tell me how you actually feel?”
It’s a quick and efficient reminder that before there was Rachel, there was Abby, and those Cameron sisters have always, always been able to get a clean read on him. No sense in hiding from someone who already knows all his covers. “This is torture.”
She smiles, satisfied. “This isn’t torture. You’ve actually been tortured.”
“Not like this,” Matt insists. “This is something else.”
“Weren’t you detained by some Russian mobsters a few years back?” This is phrased like a question, but Abby ain’t looking for an answer. Instead, she says, “You’re telling me your newborn is tougher than the literal Russian mob?”
“At least the Russian mob gave me beans and rice,” he says. “My last three meals have been Wonder Bread straight out of the bag.”
It’s pity, or sympathy, or maybe disgust when she says, “Oh, Matt.”
“The one before that was peanut butter, still on the knife, because Cam started crying before I could make a full sandwich.”
In her eyes, he sees himself once mighty and now fallen. “Get it together, dude.”
“This is what I’m talking about.” He slugs toward the table one heavy footstep at a time, opting to join her rather than waste all that energy standing. “We’re not eating, we’re not sleeping. We haven’t had a normal conversation in days. I’ve been pooped on too many times to count—swear to God, it’s like this little girl’s never even heard of the Geneva Conventions.”
“Hold on,” she says, putting a hand up. “First of all, she’s six days old, of course she hasn’t heard of the Geneva Conventions. Get a grip. Second of all, are you trying to say that getting pooped on by a baby is a war crime? Is that really the claim you’re trying to make right now?”
Matt starts to recite, “Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment are and shall remain prohibited—”
“I know the Geneva Conventions,” she says. “But you seem to have forgotten you’re not currently a prisoner of war.”
“I’m a prisoner of something.”
“Matt.”
“I’ve met actual dictators less oppressive than this.”
“Matt.” She’s as playful as always, but there’s a stern undertone to this particular scolding. “Listen, I don’t have a maternal bone in my body, but even I know you’re not supposed to compare your baby to dictators.”
A lot of folks think espionage is all about gadgets, and stakeouts, and sneaking around. Those things have their place, for sure, but relationships are the real heart of it all. Matt can spot an ally before he even learns their name, and he always knows exactly how to win them over to his side. It’s all about the inflection in their tone, the ease of their laughter, the one little thing that makes them trust him over anyone else for just one fleeting moment.
After years in this business, Matt’s gotten real good at spotting when someone’s on his side. But it doesn’t take years of experience to see that he’s losing Abby quick.Â
So he breaks his gaze, backtracking with the shake of his head. “You’re right.”
“I usually am,” she replies.
“It’s the sleep thing,” Matt says, twiddling near his temple. “It’s giving me Dad Brain.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t envy you that.” He spots a tentative allowance in her eye as she slowly comes back around to him. “But it’s worth it, yeah? One look at your kid and you’re, like, the happiest you’ve ever been or whatever?”
Matt’s too tired to name the exact emotion this makes him feel, but it’s something close to shame, something close to guilt, something close to disappointment. While he knows in the deepest parts of his chest that he loves his little girl, would do absolutely anything for his little girl, Matt’s not actually sure he likes his little girl all that much. He can’t blame Abby for asking the question—after all, he’s supposed to feel happy about his own kid—but in the absence of paternal bliss, it sends up his defenses. Makes him feel short and hot. “Sure,” he says. “Yeah. All worth it.”
Abby doesn’t buy it, skepticism written in her features, but she doesn’t press. Changes the subject instead. “How’s Rachel handling everything?” she asks. “Has she cataloged the onesies, yet? Charted the baby’s sleep schedule by the minute?”
All Rachel’s managed to do since the hospital is keep the baby alive. It’s one hell of an accomplishment, but a far cry from the logistical, meticulous, cataloging version of Rachel that Abby has in her head. This ain’t their usual dog and pony show. They’re not the same people they were a week ago. For Matt, the crying has become a steady thrum that sends him into autopilot, but it’s doing something different to Rachel. It’s playing with her instincts, sending her nerves fraying until Matt’s walking on eggshells with someone who never used to crack.Â
“She’s,” he begins, searching for the words, “not doing great.”
Abby perks up at this, uncrossing her legs to lean forward. “What do you mean?”
“She seems, I dunno. Frazzled.”
“Rachel doesn’t get frazzled.”
This is true, or at least it was before the baby came. Matt worries, secretly, that it’s still true and frazzled ain't a strong enough word. The books mentioned this sort of thing could happen—discontentment, depression, even psychosis. Throughout her pregnancy, Rachel had insisted that she had too strong a will to succumb to any of it. Now, watching her with Cam, Matt ain’t too certain.
“Maybe not frazzled,” he admits. “It’s normal, I think. Turns out hormones keep messing with, well, everything. Even after the baby’s born.”
"Don't tell me we finally found the one thing Rachel's not good at."
Matt wishes he had an answer for her. “She’s just… down.”
Abby considers this, weighing his words behind a scrutinizing squint. She must come to some conclusion because she stands, that Cameron resolve settling into the set of her jaw. “Well,” she says. “Nothing a little sisterly bonding can’t fix.”
Matt knows first-hand that no one can make Rachel happier than Abby can. At the same time, no one can make Rachel angrier than Abby can. That’s a fifty-fifty chance Matt just ain’t willing to take right now, which is why he stands to reach after her. “Abby—”
She starts toward the stairs. “Matt, trust me,” she says. “There are some things only a sister can understand.”
He calls after her again, trying to keep his voice down. “Abby, don’t.”
Abby has no such regard for volume, climbing up one, two, three steps. “I don’t expect you to know—”
“Abby, either you sit back down at the table or you leave.” He doesn’t mean to raise his voice. Hopes to God it doesn’t reach the nursery. He drops back down to a hiss when he says, “Those are your options.”
She turns back, literally looking down on him with an expression she’s only worn once or twice before. Decades of specialized training assess his position, his mental state, his intensity, his words, running through her head like a checklist. Back home, he might just say she’s sizing him up. Trying to decide if she could win whatever fight they’re about to have.
Except Abby ain’t gonna fight him. Abby almost never does.
Instead, she sways back down the steps until they’re eye-to-eye. “Alright, big shot,” she says with a wicked grin. “I’ll stay down here.”
Matt’s gotten better at staring contests with Abby, but he still can’t come close to winning them. He’s the first to drop his gaze. “Thank you.”
“And instead,” she goes on, brushing past him. Her heels click against the hardwood. “You’re going to tell me what’s got you this worked up.”
Matt ain’t an angry guy, but Abby’s got one Hell of a gift for drawing it out of him. “I just told you,” he says, trailing behind her. “Wonder Bread. Geneva Conventions. Frazzled. Can’t a guy get worked up over a hard week?”
“Sure you can,” she says. “You aren’t, but you can.”
“Abby, I’m not sleeping. I’m not eating.”
“So you’ve said.”
“The baby only stops crying when she sleeps, and she only sleeps when she’s not crying.”
“Must be tough.”
“My record for consecutive hours without getting puked on is two.”
“Uh-huh.” She finds a spot on the countertop this time, popping herself next to the microwave. “And what about Joe?”
Matt stops in his tracks. “What about Joe?”
“You’ve got a long fuse, my friend,” she says, drawing an imaginary wire through the air with red-tipped fingers. “And Joe’s the only one who can cut it this short.”
Matt and Abby have been friends for nearly a decade. He’s saved her life. She’s saved his far more. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that she can reach inside his head, root around, and pluck out the one thing he’s not willing to talk about. But every time she does it, he’s still caught flat-footed. “Joe’s fine. He’s fine—he’s…”
Abby drops her chin, leveling him with a single look.
It doesn’t leave him with much wiggle room. “He’s missed a couple of call-ins.”
Abby nods, long and slow. Without the sucker she used to carry around, she bites her bold red lip in thought. “How many is a couple?”
“Two,” Matt admits.
“Joe’s missed two call-ins,” she repeats. “Has that happened before?”
“He’s missed one,” says Matt. “Never misses two. He’s too good for that.”
“So let me get this straight,” she says. “You’ve got a baby that won’t stop crying, a wife who isn’t herself, and your best friend has missed two call-ins.”
She lays each point out on a finger, landing on three total. When she lays it all out, he sees a birds-eye view of his life for the first time in days—and it ain’t pretty. As someone who’s had a lot of hard weeks in his lifetime, this one might just be the hardest.
Rather than own up to the overwhelm, he shifts the focus back to her. “Yeah, maybe, except you’re my best friend.”
“No. You’re my best friend,” she corrects. “But Joe’s your best friend. Nice try.”
This has more truth to it than he cares to admit, but she doesn’t say it with any hurt. It’s a fact, plain and simple, like she’s reciting it from a book. Matt, for his part, would rather not linger on it, so he ping pongs back to himself. He realizes too late that this is probably exactly what she was aiming for. “We got into a, I dunno—a tiff. Before I left.”
“Before you left…?”
“For DC. We were running an op and right from the start, I told him that if Rachel needed me—”
She stops him again, hand held against the center of his sentence. “You were running an op when your wife was thirty-nine weeks pregnant?”
“Rachel had one of your dad’s jets on standby in Frankfurt—”
“You were on a mission in Germany when your wife was thirty-nine weeks pregnant?”
“It was her idea. She had this whole plan to get me back once she started having contractions.” Matt now knows that plans mean nothing when it comes to delivering a baby and has a newfound appreciation for all the angels that made sure he was on time to his kid’s birth, despite the eight hours between them. “We were following up on a lead she had to drop when she went on maternity leave.”
“I will never understand your relationship.” She shakes off her bewilderment and gets back to the matter at hand. “So you and Joe had a fight?”
“A tiff,” Matt insists. “Just a little spat. But it felt—it’s just that I didn’t leave things on a good note. Left in a hurry. And now he’s missing call-ins.”
Missed call-ins are the ghost stories of the spy world. They’re one of the few things that can truly spook the international spooks of the world. Every agent has a story about a phone call they were supposed to get, then didn’t. The unlucky ones also have stories about the funeral that followed, usually kept quiet, always without a body—and that’s if there’s a funeral at all. The worst cases get caught up in the seven years it takes for MIA to become KIA, waiting to be put to rest. It’s nasty business, and it all starts with a silent phone on the hook.
Matt always suspected Joe would go out in silence, but he thought they’d be a little older when he did. Then again, maybe they’re not young men anymore. Maybe the years have finally caught up with them.
“If it helps,” says Abby, “my dad says you don’t have to worry until number three.”
“Yeah?” says Matt, looking for any reason not to worry. “Three’s the magic number?”
“I don’t know about magic,” says Abby. “But statistically, three’s the nail in the coffin. If they miss the third one, it’ll take a miracle to get them back.”
Joe’s third call is scheduled for tomorrow morning and Matt’s not sure what he’ll do if the phone doesn’t ring. Before he has a chance to figure it out, Cameron starts to cry again.
From upstairs, he hears Rachel call out, “Matthew.”
And that’s his cue. “Sounds like I’m up to bat,” he says. “What do you say, Abby? Time to meet your niece?”
Will you make one shots that explains how each girl(Cammie Bex Macey Liz) got there code name plssss
Btw I loveeee your one shots 🫶🫶🫶
That sounds really fun to write, thanks for the idea! I probably won’t get around to it until February, I’ve got a few more of the December prompts to get through and the next chapter of A Sister’s Vigil to write this month, but I’ll get to it after that. If you/anyone have and specific headcanons or ideas for any of the girls and their code names in the meantime let me know and I’ll see what I can add into the one shots.
The chill in the air bit at Joe’s fingers as he snuck out of the school one night in early November. It clung to his face and nibbled at his skin, slipping through his clothes and gnawing at his toes. It hung in the air like a noose from a branch, singing a haunting tale of pain and screaming an ominous warning as it danced in the wind. Abnormal for even this time of year, a few tendrils of snow had fallen earlier in the day, flakes of it still clinging to the ivy that climbed up the old stone walls. Joe hadn’t been there to see it fall, but Rachel had kept him updated all the same, the two of them caught in conversations about the weather of all things as they weaved and dodged around the topics that set his chest on fire to even think about. She had called it unnatural, the cold snap they had found themselves in.
Perhaps the sun was grieving too.
A gust of wind sent shivers down his spine, shrieking in agony. He turned towards it, filling his lungs with the needles of frost and cold that swirled in the air and held them there for a moment. For two. He breathed out.
He had missed this. Missed the fresh crispness of the the outdoor air. The way it stripped away the tired cells of his throat and lungs, ripping them out of his aching body in a haggard cough and leaving him refreshed and awake. Like changing the wallpaper of a tired house, or peeling away the layers of a rotting onion, or scrubbing the rust off of a classic car. He missed the shine of the stars over his head and the glare of the moonlight against the Academy’s lake. The way the sparse light trickled along the water and washed up on its shore, lapping at his feet and soaking through his shoes. Truthfully, he missed sunlight, but even he knew not to risk going outside in the daytime, not while the students were still at school.
It had been almost a month since he had woken up in the infirmary, flames still beating at the back of his eyelids and an excruciating heat still streaking across his skin, Rachel’s hand clasped tight around his and her eyes dancing with an unfamiliar light. An entire lifetime had passed since then. Despite the deep ache in his bones, he had insisted on being told everything he had missed. How Cammie, brave and selfless and stupid Cammie, Matt’s girl through and through, had run off on her own to figure out what The Circle wanted. To end them. How she had evaded their searches for months, had disappeared nearly completely before calling Rachel from a convent at the end of September. How the Circle had almost certainly found her, had tortured her, but she came home anyhow. He had never felt prouder, had never felt more ashamed. The knowledge of how he had failed, failed Cammie and Rachel and Matt had already weighed impossibly heavy on his chest when the girl in question returned from a brief trip to Rome, Zach and her friends and her aunt in tow. It was then that Rachel let go of his hand, a different shine glazing over her eyes as Abby gave them the news they had always known, had always dreaded.
An entire lifetime had started and ended in the time that passed between Joe waking up and Matthew Morgan dying, and he could feel every moment of that lifetime in the pain in his joints, the ache in his muscles, the sharpness in his chest.
Taking another deep breath of the crying wind and the vengeful cold, he tried to take his fill before returning to the hidden infirmary so that he needn’t upset Rachel with another late night excursion anytime soon. It was as he turned on his heel to go back inside that a dull light coming from the P&E barn caught his eye, soft and warm through the steamed windows.
He paused.
None of the girls should be awake, the darkness staining the sky giving away the late hour, therefore if it was a student inside then he would have to let the headmistress know so she could usher them back to their room. Something he didn’t want to do as he would inevitably be treated to another lecture on giving himself time to recover. The barn could be empty, a light left on hours ago by an absent-minded janitor or a forgetful Ms. Hancock. Unlikely, as The Gallagher Academy didn’t hire people who were absent-minded or forgetful. Of course it could be that another member of staff was still inside the building. This seemed to be the most likely explanation though it was also the most worrying; very few members of the faculty were informed that Joe was still alive, was still loyal to the CIA and the girls within these walls, and it was supposed to stay that way. If an employee not yet in-the-know was inside the barn then he was in danger of being found out, arrested, and potentially killed based on how his last arrest went.
Rachel would tell him to go and inform her, to get her to sort it out, just to be safe.
Joe decided to investigate himself; Rachel needed to rest and he had nothing better to do.
Staying out of eyeline of the lit up windows, he crept towards the door and pressed his ear up against it, hearing only the squeak of trainers against polished floor and the occasional grunt through the thick wood. Taking a chance, he nudged slightly on the ajar door, forming an opening that was just larger enough for him to peer into.
A knife lodged itself into the panel next to his head.
“Haven’t you heard of knocking?”
Abby was turned away from him, the muscles lining her back and shoulders and arms tense with adrenaline and dripping with sweat, completely visible due to her lack of a shirt, torso adorned only by a black sports bra. A pair of shorts did nothing to hide the trembling muscles in her legs either. Joe could tell she’d been at it a while by the way they twitched intermittently, looking only moments away from cramping and sending her to the ground. The glistening of her skin was testament to how long she had been brutalising the punching bag, as despite the paralysing cold that leaked into the barn and the lack of warmth provided by her clothes she still appeared burning hot.
She bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet, torso twisting with the jabs and hooks she threw at the battered punching bag. Left fist smashing against the sandbag in a particularly hard hit, she winced slightly and pivoted around the bag, revealing the focussed look on her face and the heat in her eyes as she shot him a short glare.
Joe gulped at the sight of her.
Not because she looked good, or at least, not just because of that. Bearing a considerable resemblance to her older sister, Abby had always been unfairly pretty, with dark hair and an athletic body and bright eyes that drew in even those with the strongest of wills. Annoyingly, she had always known how attractive she looked, and had never been afraid to use it to her advantage. Joe had always been aware of it as well, but her looks had never swayed him before, and they were’t what caught his attention now. He had just never thought of Abby like that, despite Rachel’s old suspicions and Matt’s attempts at matchmaking.
No, it wasn’t the shine of her hair or the smoothness of her skin or the length of her legs that caught his attention. Rather it was the pinching of her face, the fire in her eyes, the pain that radiated off her in waves.
He had known her since she a baby-faced CIA operative fresh out of school, though he had also met her briefly when she was a teenager, once at Rachel and Matt’s wedding and again shortly after Cammie’s birth, and he had seen in her in several states of emotional distress over the years. Panicked and shaken after her niece suffered a small bump on the head while in her care. Pale and unresponsive after a particularly difficult assignment, one that they never shared the details of with Rachel, had taken a turn for the worse. Enraged and sniffling after a screaming match with her sister that Matt and himself had to breakup. Terrified and trembling after Rachel subsequently ended up pretty banged up and hospitalised just a couple short weeks later. Guilt-ridden and sobbing after being unable to find the strength to get off her hotel bathroom floor and go to Matt’s funeral.
Still, he had never seen her look so much like the face he saw in the mirror in the middle of night, full of self-hatred and longing for something impossible. Had never seen her look so much like a girl he knew a lifetime ago, full of anger and desperation for something so easy for everyone but her.
He had never seen her like this.
“Haven't you heard of gloves?”
In a classic self destructive Abigail Cameron move, she had forgone the foam gloves that typically protect your knuckles, opting instead for a minimal tape-and-wrap strategy that Joe was all too familiar with. Just as it had every time he opted for the same tactic, her methods had left her hands trembling, a patchwork of bruises already blooming across her skin and blood dripping through the crevices of her hands onto the floor below. They didn’t seem to be bothering her, if the force with which she slammed her fists back into the bag was anything to go by.
“What are you doing here Joe? I thought Rach had you chained to the bed in the infirmary.” Clearly the exertion and the bad mood and the inevitable pain had done nothing to dampen her capacity to tease him, if the deepening of her voice and the wink she shot him were anything to go by.
He only sighed, not in the mood to join in with her fun but also knowing better than to object. It would only encourage her. Instead he made his way across the barn to the store cupboard, pulling out a pair of weathered boxing gloves and throwing them her way. “Seriously Abby, you’re hurting yourself.”
She let them fall to her feet with a look of disdain on her face and threw an intimidating right hook just to hammer her protest home. “You’re one to talk.” Another heavy punch and then she turned to face him, features morphing into something mocking as her voice took on first an impression of him, and then her sister. “Seriously Joe, you need to be resting.”
“I’ve done more than enough resting.” Several months unconscious in a coma was plenty. “Now put on the gloves.”
Like a child, she simply kicked them away.
“Abby look at your hands.” She refused to, continuing to attack the bag with a renewed ferocity despite his protesting winces. Suddenly he missed Matt more than ever. The man had always known what was going on with the younger Cameron sister, had understood her moods and her silent brooding and how to cheer her up even better than Rachel at times. Perhaps that was the issue. “Look I- The news hit all of us hard, we’re all grieving-”
“Don’t.”
“-but you can talk to us about it. I’m your friend Abs-”
“Are you?” Her tone and words were cold, the piercing edges of her anger cutting through his chest and slicing ribbons into his heart. “Or were we only ever friends because I was good for your cover? Did your buddies in The Circle make you put up with me, ask you to get intel from me? Or was I not even good enough for that?”
“I-” Something thick and wet in his throat stole the words from his mouth. “Rachel said you read Matt’s journal?”
She spat on the floor and scoffed, turning back to the punching bag and nearly levelling it with the force behind her jab. “Yeah Joe, I read the journal.”
“Then you know- Abby I made a mistake. A huge one, I know, when I was a kid. And I regret it more than anything I-” I wish I had been better, stronger. I wish I had been more like you, like her, like him. “I’m sorry, I am. But I turned away from The Circle long before I met you, I promise.”
Part of him had been expecting this conversation for a while now. Abby hadn’t visited much since she delivered the news of Matt’s grave, his body, being found, but when she did she avoided eye contact, fussing around the room like she didn’t know what she was doing there. While Rachel had been very direct with him, working through her anger and her frustration and her hurt as soon as they were both in a state for her to do so, Abby had always been more of an avoider of feelings. She had alternated between tense and upset whenever she was in his presence, had avoided being alone with him for too long, had dodged his probing questions with remarkable ease. He knew she would crack eventually, that her anger would build and build until it erupted in their faces and spewed hot and ugly all over their friendship. He knew this, had expected it, but he still wasn’t prepared.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice breaking tugged at the thinning tendrils of his heart. Looking solemnly at the ground, he tried to push past the guilt of hurting one of his oldest friends. They made the right choice, he was sure of it. “You and Matt? You should’ve told me from the beginning that you were trying to take them down, that you were a triple agent or whatever. I would’ve helped.”
“Matt didn’t want Rachel to get involved, he didn’t want to risk-”
“I didn’t ask why you didn’t tell Rach, I know neither of you would’ve ever risked her. But I-
“If you know why we wouldn’t want to involve Rachel then surely you understand why we didn’t want to involve you.”
Rolling her eyes at him and scoffing, she went back to beating up the poor punching bag, still sans gloves. “It’s different.”
It was. Rachel had a kid, Matt’s kid, and those two were his everything. Neither of them would’ve forgiven themselves if anything had happened to her because of their involvement with The Circle. But neither of them would’ve forgiven themselves if anything happened to Abby either, she just didn’t understand that.
“A little bit yeah.” He nodded slowly, conceding to her point sympathetically before going on to challenge it. “But we both loved you Abby, and we knew you. We knew as soon as you got involved that you’d get hurt putting us before yourself. I mean, look what happen in DC, in Buenos Aires! You nearly died trying to take on The Circle and that was before you knew how deep our involvement was.”
“How come that’s the only part of that assignment people remember? I saved the ungrateful English ass’s life and took down an entire cartel like, the day before.”
He ignored her indignant grumbling and the petulant way in which she slapped the bag, scuffing her feet against the ground like a pouting toddler. He wasn’t blind, he could see slight smile pulling at her lips at the mention of the MI6 agent. “We just didn’t want you taking any stupid risks on my behalf.” I’m not worth it.
“Matt told me you were looking into Circle members the year before he-” Voice cracking again, as unable to say the word died as she was the day she delivered the news, her watery eyes found his. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me about you?”
The pain in his chest became blinding, spreading through his legs and arms and face to the point where, if he didn’t know better, Joe would’ve thought he was having a heart attack. Knees weak beneath him, he collapsed to the ground, sitting against the wall in near agony. Abby was one of his best friends, she was probably the best friend he had left, Rachel now feeling like something else entirely. Over a decade ago now they has sat beside each other in a dive bar in Dublin, both slightly more than tipsy, and told one another some of their darkest thoughts. It was the sort of stuff that Matt and Rachel wouldn’t have understood, not at the time anyway, and so she was really the first person he opened up to about his insecurities about his career, about his fear of relationships, about the parents he never met.
Now she thought he didn’t trust her. He would trust her with anything, and now she would never trust him again.
All Joe could do was shrug, muscles heavy under the weight of her hurt. “I didn’t want you to hate me.”
A heavy sigh left her mouth.
After a long pause in which she simply looked at him, her eyes burning a hole into the side of his head while he stared dejectedly at his shoes, she began shuffling her feet towards him, kicking the gloves along as she went. She tucked her feet under herself as she sat beside him, curled up like a wet kitten. Heat from her body radiated off her, warming his skin even as the frost hung in the air outside. Still dripping with sweat, she slowly made his arm damp where she pressed up next to it, his shoulder becoming heavy with moisture and her weight as she dropped her head onto him.
He breathed deeply, clenched his teeth to hold back the burst of relief building in his chest. Maybe they would be okay after all.
Slowly, he watched out the corner of his eye as a few stray tears trickled down her face. She trembled slightly as she sniffed, from exhaustion or exertion or emotion, he couldn’t tell. It took a couple of failed attempts for her to produce the words brewing on her lips, mouth opening and closing with only small gasps of syllables creeping out, like a fish out of water screaming for help.
“I miss him.”
Matt.
It would always come back to Matt.
“Me too.”
The pain in his chest intensified as her tears did, her face tucking into his neck as sobs clawed out of her throat and along his skin. Her trembling turned to shaking turned to heaving as she fought for breath, and Joe wrapped an arm around her quaking shoulders, pulling her in close and whispering apologies against her head.
Abby had spent years convinced that she was responsible for Matt’s disappearance, that it was her that let him and Rachel down, that his death was her cross to bear alone. Maybe Joe should’ve told her the truth years ago, should’ve relinquished her of her own guilt by confessing to his own. That Matt had only ever got involved with The Circle because of him, that Matthew Morgan would still be alive if it weren’t for Joe’s mistakes. Then maybe she would’ve let herself grieve a long time ago.
Selfishly, he had kept the truth from her anyway, too desperate to hold on to one of the few friends he had left.
He wasn’t sure how long they sat there on the barn floor. Long enough for his legs to go numb with disuse, long enough for the sweat on her skin to dry and leave her freezing cold, long enough for the first glow of light to begin shining through the window. Ignoring his own tears slipping down his cheeks, he continued holding her to his chest even as her cries eventually slowed, her body stilling against his as she sniffed and swallowed.
“You really should go back to the infirmary. If Rach goes to check on you and you’re not there, she’ll lose her mind.”
Once upon a time it would’ve been a joke, just another one of her attempts to tease him. Now though, they both knew the truth of it, that Rachel had lost far too many people over the years to not legitimately panic if one of them wasn’t where she expected them to be.
Easing her off his shoulder he nodded and stood up, holding a hand out to her to help to her own feet. The hand in question was black and blue and nearly twice it’s usual size, sweat and blood crusting together across the bones of it. “You should probably come too, get your knuckles patched up.”
“They’re fine.” He shot her a look as she wrinkled her nose in dismissal, the sternness he channeled from Rachel and the pleading he channeled from Matt making her roll her eyes in concession. “I’ll use the gloves from now on, promise.”
She probably hadn’t slept all night. Had probably worked out fifty frustrations on the punching bag before he arrived and a few more since. Now she slipped the gloves over her battered hands and moved to work out a few more. Something was definitely up with her, something more that Matt and him and Cammie, Joe just didn’t know what, didn’t know how to get her to tell him.
“Are you okay? I can stay.” He couldn’t really. The students would start waking up soon and he really couldn’t risk being seen by one of them, but it didn’t feel right to leave her in whatever state she had worked herself into. Maybe he should get Rachel after all.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll just call T- I’m fine.” Ah. He heard rumours about Abby and the MI6 agent who arrested him earlier in the year, mostly from Rachel but also from eavesdropping on Cammie and Macey’s gossiping. Part of him hadn’t believed it, couldn’t really picture Little Miss Spontaneous going crossed-eyed over a man as formal and stoic as Agent Townsend. The pink flush of embarrassment spreading across Abby's cheeks and down her neck proved him wrong. Grinning at her embarrassment, he could only chuckle as she grumbled under her breath and went back to attacking the bag. “Shut up.”
As happy as he was for her, as long as she was happy that is, he figured he owed Matt enough to dish out some overprotective threats. “Just remind him that I can definitely take him in a fight if need be.”
“Hmm, as long as when you’re with Rach you remember that I can easily beat you up.”
Normally, her jokes about him and Rachel would sour him, would make him defensive and indignant on her behalf even though Abby only had the best intentions. These past few weeks though, Rachel had begun to look at him, to hold his hand, to soothe her fingers across his hair, like they weren’t ever just jokes to begin with. Like she didn’t need any defending from her sister’s teasing. Like maybe they were leaning towards something more. Besides, he was too busy gulping in something like fear at the intensely protective look that had passed over Abby’s face, at the way the punching bag split as she slammed her fist into it, sand puddling to the floor as he tried to dodge her fiery eyes.
Joe and Rachel, the mature and emotionally intelligent older sister, have a really deep, meaningful conversation about exactly how far he went with the circle, why him and Matt chose not to tell her, and what his secrets mean for them almost as soon as he woke up. Abby, in a classic younger sibling move, is more upset and angry about being left out of the whole thing, avoids these feelings as long as she can, then has a small angry breakdown that involves hitting things. Very typical I think.
Only a few weeks before the events of LYKY, Rachel makes one final attempt at convincing Joe to step out of the field and into a teaching role at Gallagher. (2,884)
Eyeing his untamed locks of shaggy brown hair with amusement, Rachel crossed the street and made her way towards the man perched outside the Parisian cafe. Gloomy shadows draped themselves around his body like silk, perfectly hiding him from locals and tourists alike as they meandered through the cobbled streets. A young couple sat on one side of his table, two people so obsessed with one another that their loved bloomed bright and blinding and distracting, and a boisterous group of beautiful young women sat on the other, their laughter and squeals of delight so loud that one’s sights couldn’t help but be drawn to them. You could only seem to see the man with the green eyes if you were searching for him, gaze purposefully carving through the cracks in the darkness and tracing the soft shine of the moonlight that reflected off of unsteady tables and onto his skin. You could only see Joe Solomon if you were really looking for him.
Or, of course, if you were Rachel Morgan. If you had been sat at a similar looking cafe across the road all afternoon waiting for him to make an appearance. If you had tracked his movements from the metro station, to the bookshop next door, to the monument stood behind her, to the corner where two streets met in the form of an overpriced coffee house. If you didn’t really need to look for him at all to know where he was.
She approached him from behind, dancing around the table of lovers and smiling politely at the giggling girls. His eyes caught hers in the reflection of the menu he was pretending to read, the forest green of them twinkling as he sent her a small smirk, her own smile softening at the acknowledgment. Rising to greet her, his cloak of invisibility suddenly fell, the besotted young woman on his right briefly looking away from her own beau with a blush, the group of friends to his left suddenly falling conspicuously silent. With the kiss he pressed to her cheek in greeting, the girl averted her gaze back to her partner and the giddy laughter resumed with only a brief pause for grumbles of disappointment.
The volume of the laughter and the complicated coffee orders before them gave the girls away as American, and Rachel assumed the couple were tourists on a romantic getaway, so she opted for French to converse in, the accent flowing from her tongue like water. “You need a haircut Mr Solomon.”
His voice was deep and husky, stained by underuse and a lack of sleep, and the French staggered out of his mouth like a wounded gazelle. A lingering American twang hung onto his words, imperceptible to even the locals but glaringly obvious to a skilled enough operative. Joe himself flinched at his rustiness when he spoke. “I’ll be sure to give your sister a call soon.”
She slid a business card into the pocket of his leather jacket and took the seat he offered her, her back blocking him from view of the Americans and her stern look deterring any more staring from the blushing blonde on their other side. Joe sat as well, leaning his elbow on the table and angling himself towards her in a way that may have seemed flirtatious or devoted to those who didn’t know better. Really, he was checking his six in the reflection of the waitress’s tray behind her, was peeking subtly into the cafe’s busy interior for any recognisable faces, was watching her own back so she could bleed the tension out of her muscles.
“I’ll think about it. Now, do you want to order something or are we going to make this quick?”
“That depends, how quickly are you planning to say yes?”
“This is your fifth attempt at swaying me Rachel, what makes you think it’ll go any different?” The way he leaned back in his chair and jutted out his chin, the way he arched his eyebrows ever so slightly and spoke with light tone as though he were humouring her was so Joe. It was the young man, the boy she met some 20 years ago who refused to cower beneath her experience and instead tried to lecture her on how she could improve her skills. It was the bemused senior agent who agreed to supervise his friend’s younger sister as she stepped into the field as an operative for the first time. It was the man she could envision in the sub levels of her school teaching her daughter and the rest of her students, teaching them to be better, stronger. It was a bet, a dare, a challenge.
Rachel loved a challenge.
“It was always going to be fruitless trying to convince you over the phone Joe, I knew that.” Each conversation they had had this summer had started and ended the same way, Rachel locking herself away in the spare bedroom of Margaret and Richard’s ranch to call Joe away from whatever assignment he was on, Joe refusing her requests and eventually hanging up the phone with the excuse that he had to get back to it. “But now you’re worn down, you’re tired of the fight, and really, you know you’re going to cave anyway. There’s no running away today, and you’re never going to say no, which really only leaves you with one option.”
“I’m never going to say no huh?”
“Not to me.”
Confidence bleached her words, nearly blinding him with the truth of them. A lifetime ago, perhaps he would’ve been able to refuse her, would’ve been able to remain stubborn and resolute and firm in the face of her cajoling. Now though, she knew the weight of her husband’s absence weighed almost as heavy on him as it did her, and it would to continue to grow in mass anytime he let her down. Anytime Abby got herself hurt. Anytime Cammie suffered even the slightest of ailments.
The weight of denying her request would crush him eventually, they both knew that.
Perhaps that made it cruel of her to ask him. To ask him for something he wouldn’t chose solely of his own volition but couldn’t ever say no to all the same.
Rachel found she didn’t care. She needed him to say to say yes. She needed him.
Reaching into her handbag, she pulled out a powder blue envelope embossed with golden text and sealed at the back with a red emblem, her school’s logo staring up at her. It was addressed on the front not to a name, but to a number, Joseph Solomon’s operative ID gleaming under the glare of the stars.
He eyed the wax-sealed envelope with disdain. “A bit frivolous isn’t it?”
She could only grin in response, a resigned shrug pulling at her shoulders as she handed it to him. “Madame Dabney designed it. She might be a bit much for your tastes, but she means well, and she’s a fantastic teacher. I imagine you’ll get along better with Dr Fibbs, and Patricia of course, and you’ll have me.”
“I haven’t accepted Rach.”
“Not yet you haven’t.”
Another heavy sigh left his quirked up lips as he fingered the corners of the envelope, turning it over and concealing the wax sealing with his hand as the waitress set their drinks and pastries down, tracing his finger along Gilly’s sword when she headed back inside.
“Maybe I’m not ready to step out of the field.”
It was a weak protest, but a reasonable one. Joe was only just entering his forties and remained in near-peak physical condition. He was single and childless and had no other commitments. He had no real reason to retire from being an active agent beside the fact that she was asking him to. And yet, as they stared one another down, moonlight that lingered in the summer night sky dancing across his face, her friend looked tired. His eyes and his shoulders and the thinning skin on his face all held a heaviness that she recognised from her own reflection. A deep weariness born from years of work and solitude and travel. From grief and pain and sacrifice. From Matthew Morgan, and the stain that losing him has left on their souls.
“You wouldn’t be out completely. Teaching leaves your summer and your Christmas break free, I’m sure the CIA would be happy to give you assignments then. And during term time you’ll run ops for the girls.” She rolled her eyes at his scoff, more than used to men, even men as good as Joe Solomon, dismissing the students of The Gallagher Academy before they knew any better. “Besides, you’re ready Joe, I know it.”
He couldn’t hold her gaze, too stubborn to nod in agreement but too honest to shake his head.
“Rachel I… Why don’t you ask Abby? She’d be just as good and I’m sure it would bring you great relief to have her out of the field for a bit.”
“Are you kidding me? She’s less likely to say yes than you are.” The idea was laughable. There was only one way her little sister was going to step back from active duty before her body quite literally demanded it, and Rachel could never do it. Could never hold the immense guilt she knew Abby felt over Matthew’s disapp-death over her head and demand that she teach her niece in retribution. It would work, but it would slowly suffocate her sister. Would strip the air from her lungs, starve the oxygen from her heart, drain the blood from her veins. It would kill her, and in turn it would kill Rachel too. “Besides, Abs would have those girls traipsing through Roseville with Molotov cocktails and chloroform rags on her first day. I’d get calls from Langley saying one group of my students had apprehended a Peruvian cartel in the morning and another had dismantled a corrupt Government in the afternoon! And there my sister would be, grinning as though all was well.”
His laughter mingled with his. Airy tones from her own mouth, girlish giggles reminiscent of those she shared with the woman in question many years ago, and a deep timbre from his, darkly musical in its own right, danced and twirled through the air together. It sounded like a song.
“That sounds like your sister.” He gave her a long look, something like apprehension spreading across his face. “The girls would love her though, she’s great with kids.”
“That’s true.” The image of Abby carrying a giggling toddler around upside down, one ankle held over her shoulder and the loud question of has anyone seen the squirt on her lips came into Rachel’s mind. The memory of the time her sister had taken her daughter to the funfair and returned her home exhausted and with a stomach ache, both of them having overindulged in cotton candy and one of them having thrown up all over Matthew’s car. The sight of the enthralled look on Cammie’s face when her aunt taught her how to paralyse a man with her birthday present rather than just how to jumprope.
Rachel shook her head. “She’d be a fantastic teacher if she wanted to Joe, but she’d be their friend. I need someone who’s going to be real with them, who’s going to be tough on them.” Laying a hand on the man’s arm, ignoring the way his muscles twitched and his hairs stood on end just from the feel of her, she held his gaze fiercely in hers. “I need someone to scare them into being excellent or being nothing at all.”
“I still don’t know Rachel. I’m not sure I’m teacher material, I have no idea what to do with kids.”
Her heart was briefly warmed by the memory of him holding her daughter back when she was no bigger than his forearm. The panic laced across his face and the tension strewed across his muscles. Matthew had dumped her directly into his arms without giving him time to protest, Rachel admonishing and Abby giggling in the background. Cammie had looked tiny in his arms, but he had looked almost as tiny holding her, pale and confused and terrified all at once, like a little boy left alone in the grocery store. He had handed her back to her mother the moment he could, stepping back with a gentle congratulations and a kind she’s beautiful before making his excuses and running away from the girl.
No. Joe Solomons wasn’t a natural with kids, but he was natural with everything else.
Besides, he would be teaching girls aged 15 and up, girls only a few years at most away from a career in intelligence services, girls raised with parents in MI6 or CIA or Interpol, girls with fathers who disappeared without a trace. These girls weren’t kids anymore.
“You taught Matthew almost everything he knew without even trying, everything that wasn’t instinct anyway. When you talk, people listen, and they respect you. That’s all that teaching is.” Squeezing her hand tight around his arm, she watched as he looked away, eyes distant. The grip he had on the envelope she had gifted him weaned slightly and she knew she that despite it all she was losing him.
Time to bring out the big guns.
“Cammie starts Cove-Ops this fall Joe. She needs a great teacher if she’s going to follow in my footsteps, in Matthew’s. She neeeds the best.” A lump of emotion grew and clogged in her chest, thick and sticky and choking. Her breath trembled, her breath catching, voicing breaking in her throat. Terrified, she suddenly forced herself to acknowledge the nightmare that had plagued her since she first held her baby girl. Cammie wanted to be an agent, a spy. The same profession that had taken away her husband and nearly killed her sister just a few months ago would come for her daughter one day, and Rachel would be damned if Cammie wasn’t the best equipped she could be when that time came. “She needs you. I need you.”
Glistening in his eyes as he looked back at her was something that might be tears or might be grief or might be love. It all seemed to look the same on this man.
“So do I need to sign anything or?”
Relief surged through her, spreading from her chest to the tips of her fingers and the ends of her toes. Filled with an excited energy that had her feeling young again, she lunged forward to wrap her arms around his neck in a grateful thank you, a warmth filling her up when he held her to his chest in kind. When she pulled back, her face hovered so close to his that she felt his breath dance across her cheek, the heat of it making her shiver for some reason. She didn’t recognise the look that glazed over his face. No, that wasn’t right. She recognised it, it was an expression he wore often in her presence, but she had never learned a name to pair it with.
Just another mystery about the man that is Joe Solomon.
Pulling away, she picked up her handbag and started to make her escape, eager to get away before he changed his mind. “You can sign your contract when you first arrive at Gallagher. I’ll take your word on your acceptance if you can trust that I’ll write you a good one.”
“I’d trust you with anything Rach, always have.” The earnestness in his eyes made her heart skip, something strange bubbling through her at his words.
“I know you’ve got a job to finish up here, but term starts in a couple weeks okay? Abe Baxter is bringing his girl over from London so you can fly out with them if it’s easier. All the details about the post are in there.” Gesturing at the envelope in his hand, she pressed a quick kiss to his cheek in goodbye while he was distracted, the funny look passing over his face once more when she moved to leave. She began walking backwards through the Parisian street towards the metro that would take her to her to Gare du Nord, to the train that would take her back to London, to the plane that would take her back to Cammie. Hand raised in a fond farewell, she raised her voice so that the man stood stationary at their little table could hear her, this time the words ringing out in her naturally accented English. “Make sure you’re not late!”
Back with more Rachel and Joe for this one thanks to @bryn-not-brynn ! These last few pretty much focus on each possible combination of the same 4 characters so hope you’re ready.
Set during DJGC but before the adults learn that Cammie is the target of The Circle, Abby keeps Macey from leaving the Academy one October morning. (3,700)
It was uncharacteristically warm for an October weekend morning when Abby slid a chair in between Joe and her sister at breakfast, a cup of coffee and a heavily loaded omelette in tow.
“Why do I have to guard the only teenage girl in existence who wakes up early on a Saturday to go for a run of all things?”
Technically she wasn’t supposed to sit at the teacher’s table. There was a separate area for non-teaching staff to eat without risk of having to deal with any of the students, but on the long list of things her big sister had to lecture her about, her choice of chair at breakfast was pretty low down. As it was, she had slid a chair into the suspiciously slim gap between the two of them, both her shoulders pressed lightly against one of theirs. When she sat down, interrupting the pair’s whispered conversation and prolonged eye contact and soft smiles, Abby had noted to herself how Rachel’s entire body lurched back as if trying to exaggerate the space previously existing between herself and Joe. How Joe’s upper body had tensed, gaze returning to his plate, breath held tightly in his lungs until she broke the silence with her complaints.
Interesting.
“Don’t tell me Miss McHenry managed to outrun you?”
“Oh please.” She shovelled some eggs into her mouth, attentive to the smirk dancing across Joe’s mouth and the way Rachel turned away from them both to focus on her own food. “I need my energy and sleep if I’m gonna keep dealing with this many kids every day as well as the Senator and his wife, Winters’ campaign team, and the morons from Secret Service. Teenage girls are a nightmare, I don’t know how you two do it.”
At that, she could feel her sister’s gaze cut towards her in a teasing glare, coffee cup in hand and tone wry. “I had plenty of practice.”
“Really? Who with?” Joe’s sarcasm made Abby’s eyes roll, ingesting more of her breakfast as her friend finally looked up from his plate to make eye contact with Rachel over her head. She could feel the amused smile the two shared the same way she could feel when a gaggle of girls approached the grand hall from outside its closed doors, the same way she could feel when Macey shifted an inch closer to the window in the corner of the room. Secret service may not have been her day-to-day job, but it was a cover she had taken up a few times before, and the instincts of knowing everyone and everything around her had been as easy to slip back into as her own clothes.
Of course, Joe and Rachel made it easy by being so obvious.
“Oh haha. Is this how it’s going to be from now on, you two ganging up on me all the time?”
“Hasn’t it always been?” He winced as soon as he said it, Rachel and Abby flinching away from him in unison because no, it hadn’t been.
There used to be four of them.
Anytime Joe and Rachel decided to gang up on her, she would have Matt in her corner backing her up. If her and her sister got in a fight then the boys would take one Cameron sister each and force them away from each other, or if they teamed up to make fun of Matt then Joe would leap to his rescue and vice versa. When the happy couple would get lost in one another, in the good, the normal, and the perfect that they shared, she and Joe would still have each other. Each a little bit wrong, a little bit damaged.
Three just didn’t work the same.
As the chatter and the giggles and the squeals of the operatives in training sounded around them, each one of them still hopeful and naive about what their futures would look like, the three of them each looked away from the others, lost in their own thoughts. The pained silence that hung over them was oppressive, and Joe and Abby probably would’ve drowned in it if it weren’t for Rachel. As usual, her sister saved the day, clearing her throat and breathing life back into them both with her words.
“Your charge is on the move.”
Abby muttered under her breath as Joe’s laughter echoed in her ear beside her. “For fucks sake.”
Rachel’s gesturing nod brought their attention to the corner of the room where Macey, Cammie, and what seemed like half of their class began to get up from their seats, already done with their breakfasts. Abby gulped back the rest of her coffee and filled her mouth with what was left of her omelette, part of her beginning to regret caving to her sister’s request and taking this job. Wishing the chuckling pair goodbye, only just resisting the urge to flip Joe the finger as he wished her a sarcastic good luck, she followed the growing group of girls out of the hall from a distance.
For once in her life, Abby had planned to stay silent, sticking to the shadows with her head down in order to avoid the starstruck faces and prying questions of the Gallagher Academy student body. Most of the time, she thrived on the attention, loving the way their faces lit up at her stories and preened under her attention. Today though, the combination of a late night call with the international operatives involved in uncovering what interest Catherine Goode had in Macey McHenry, and then said girl deciding to start her morning with a run around the grounds before the sunrise, had left Abby tired and crabby. Not particularly an inspiring mood for the students to see her in. However, as the Junior class started making their way towards the main entrance, she knew she was going to have to make her presence known.
“So where are we going?” The entire group seemed to jump as one, like a collection of jack-in-the-boxes all timed to go off at once, and swivelled round to face her. Hand on her cocked out hip, she raised an eyebrow in challenge to her protectee. “Or more specifically, where are you going?”
Macey just crossed her arms in defiance, glaring at her in challenge. “In to town.”
“No.”
“It’s the weekend. We don’t have any classes, my parents have no use for me today, and I’ve been trapped in this school for weeks.”
“All true. You’re still not going in to town.”
“Why not!” Jaw clenched and eye’s on fire, she looked like she was a moment away from stomping her foot on the floor like a child throwing a tantrum. Lips and nose and eyes trembling in frustration, the voice that came out of her mouth was half snap, half whine, and all anger.
Abby responded in kind, mimicking the girl’s accent in a move that was admittedly a bit childish, even for her. “Because I say so!” Seeing her face contort again, clearly gearing up for another petulant protest, Abby interjected again before their spat could escalate any further. “Because you need more than one agent accompanying you if you want to step outside these walls, especially on a weekend when they’ll be crowds everywhere you go.”
“Everyone else is going.”
“Everyone else isn’t my concern. No offence Squirt.” She shot her niece an apologetic shrug and a smile as she lied through her teeth, Cammie just wincing through her own smile in return, eyes flickering between the arguing pair. Trying to be more sympathetic, Abby softened her tone, “There will be other trips to town Macey. Sorry, but today you’re staying inside the grounds.”
“Make me.”
Slightly stunned at the girl’s boldness, Abby started at her, at the way she tilted her head and rose her eyebrows, popped her hands on her hips and turned her nose up in a mirror of Abby’s own posture.
She sighed. Maybe she owed Rachel and Professor Buckingham and her mother an apology for her teenage years. If Macey was this difficult to deal with, Abby must’ve been a nightmare.
“Try and take one more step towards that door Macey and I promise you I will.”
“What makes you so confident you can stop me?”
It was all she could do not to laugh in the kid’s face. “I was a student here for 6 years and you’ve been here for 1? I’ve been an active field operative for 14 years and you haven’t even had a Cove-Ops lesson yet?”
Macey just scoffed at her, swinging her arms out to gesture at the huddle of girls around her. “Yeah well there’s only one of you, good luck trying to get to me with all of these guys in the way.”
Some of the girls, Abe Baxter’s included, grinned a little, obviously ecstatic at the idea of getting to challenge a real life operative. Others looked less excited but still just as determined, squaring their shoulders and jutting their chins out at her in misguided support of their friend. Only a couple, the smaller girls and those in the research and development pathway, looked hesitant.
Abby cast her eyes back to her niece, the only one of the girls to wince and step away from the group. She wasn’t sure whether Cammie, being the only one to see first hand the danger that they were in in Boston, was the only one who understood the gravity of the situation, or if she was remembering her aunt showing her how to incapacitate an attacker with a skipping rope and was wisely choosing to remove herself from the potential fight.
Either way, Abby softened her tone again, laid a hand on the stubborn girl’s shoulder, tried to diffuse the situation without violence. She wasn’t about to spar with a group of teenagers in the middle of the school.
Rachel would kill her.
“I’m not trying to get to you, Macey, I’m trying to protect you.” The girl scoffed, rolling her eyes. “If these girls are really your friends, they’ll be on my side when they hear that two unidentified choppers were noted flying west over the river this morning. That these past few days there’s been a significant increase in searches for both Roseville and McHenry on the internet. That four new residents have moved here or into surrounding towns in the past week who haven’t yet been vetted by the Secret Service.” She watched as the fight and the support from the rest of the girls drained out of them, realisation shining in their eyes that she was being serious. “You’re not going out today Macey, end of story.”
“We can stay in with you? We’ll go to the cinema another time. Oh! We can watch Clueless in the common room instead.”
Her niece was the sweetest kid.
But Macey just shook her head and sent the girls on their way, sending Abby the stink eye as she barged past her and back into the mansion.
“Well, have fun girls. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Shooting the rest of the girls a grin and a wink, she span on her heel and trailed after her protectee, sure that the girl’s anger wasn’t yet burned out.
She kept a safe distance as she followed Macey through the mansion, nodding in greeting to Harvey as he stumbled past them through the foyer and smiling politely at Madame Dabney as they passed her on her way down the stairs. As she walked, she shot Joe a quick message asking him to head into town and keep an eye on Cam, that she’s heading to the cinema with her friends, that Abby will remove his eyes from their sockets if she doesn't return unharmed.
He sent her a smiley face in return.
They had reached the second floor when instead of continuing up the steps, or turning towards the student lounge, or even heading into the library, Macey turned into the deserted Hall of History and spun to face her with a scowl on her face.
“I believe the headmistress is out at the moment.”
“I don’t need Mrs Morgan, I just wanted a quiet place to talk to you.”
“By all means, talk away.”
Macey's eyes were piercing. A brighter blue than even Cammie and Matt’s, they gleamed as she glared at her, catching in the light and burning with rage. She swallowed, shuffled her feet, teeth grinding together as she tried to find whatever words she was looking for.
“Stop.” Abby quirked her eyebrow at her. She was very good at what she did, but she wasn’t a mind reader. “Stop following me around, and dictating where I go, and bossing me about all the time.”
“Quite literally my job Macey.”
“No. Your job is to make sure I turn up to my father’s campaign in one piece, that I get from A to B without another broken bone, that I live to see Samual Winters’ victory or concession speech.”
“Right, well unfortunately for you the keeping you alive thing also requires the monitoring your every movement thing.”
“Then let me do what I want and just keep me safe while I’m doing it!”
“You’re supposed to be a smart girl Macey, why can’t you understand that it’s not as simple as that?”
“Because you’re ruining my life!” Her scream echoed through the hallway, bouncing off the walls and slamming hard into Abby, nearly bowling her over with the force of it. “You. And my parents. And this campaign. And..and that woman on the roof! This was supposed to be a good year. I’m finally at a school I like, with people that I love, and I was going to catch up to them this year. I had a plan! But now everywhere I go the girls stare, and they whisper, and they worry. And I have to spend my evenings and my weekends trailing after The Senator instead of catching up on my course load. And now you tell me I can’t even join my friends when they spend a day in town. Everywhere I go, you’re there lecturing me about how I need to do what you say, that you need to keep me safe, but you wont even tell me why! Nobody will tell me who these people are or what they want with me or how you’re going to stop them!”
Well now she felt bad.
Briefly horrified, she spotted small hot tears building in the girl’s eyes. She was always good at making Cam laugh, but her niece was generally a happy kid. Or at least she had been. Abby didn’t have much experience in cheering up angry, scared, hormonal teenage girls, despite being one herself something like a lifetime ago, and she didn’t really know where to start.
She supposed she better start with the truth.
“We don’t know what they might want with you Macey, honestly we don’t. Probably just a ransom, or to manipulate your father.”
Or at least part of the truth.
Since the moment global intelligence agencies saw the footage from the roof, Catherine Goode and The Circle had been identified as the operatives targeting the group of teenagers, but it would do no good to tell Macey that. Truthfully, if there was any reason that particular group of people wanted her it may have more to do with her heritage, but Rachel had given her strict instruction not to tell the girl that either.
“And we’re going to stop them by letting the CIA do their job and track them down. By letting the Secret Service do their jobs by keeping you well protected wherever you go. By letting Mrs Morgan, and Mr Solomon, and me do our jobs. That’s all there is to it okay?”
It would also do no good to tell her that she might not be the target. That there was a small handful of operatives who knew that Matthew Morgan’s disappearance has been heavily linked to that woman and the rest of The Circle. That the operatives in the know suspected that another girl on the roof that day may be equally as likely to have been the person they were looking for.
The Baxters both thought it unlikely, thought that if they had any reason to go after Cam they would’ve done it much sooner after Matt went missing.
Rachel refused to discuss it with her, turning slightly pale and slightly shaky and slightly angry the one time Abby asked her sister how worried she thought they should be.
Joe was concerned. He didn’t give a reason why, just pulled Abby aside when she first arrived and told her to try keep an equally sharp eye on Cammie for now, that he would keep his ear to the ground and try find out more.
She hadn’t dared asked Townsend’s opinion. He would tell her the truth, no matter how painful, he always did. She just wasn’t ready to hear it yet.
“I hate it. I don’t want to take my bodyguards with me everywhere I go. It just makes me feel more in danger, like that woman is waiting around every corner to snatch me again.”
Macey was shaking where she stood, the tears building in her eyes breaking free from their restraints and streaking down her face as she shivered. Abby was struck suddenly, by how small this girl was. How young. How more than anything, she was just a kid scared of getting hurt again. At 16, her biggest worry should be catching up in the school work she was two years behind in, should be her admittedly poor relationship with her parents, should be dealing with Preston Winters and the blatantly obvious thing they had for each other. Not Secret Service agents crashing into her life and trying to take it over.
Unfortunately, no matter how much she agreed that it was unfair, she couldn’t change the girl’s current situation, could only offer reassurance as best she could.
Abby sighed. She was never very good at comforting people, but this was a kid who didn’t have anyone else. She was going to have to do.
“You don’t have bodyguards, you have me. And besides, I’m not your bodyguard Macey, I’m your sister.” Setting both her hand’s on the trembling girl’s shoulders, she shot her as comforting a smile as she could muster. Macey stared at her wide eyed, blinking owlishly at her from beneath damp eyelashes. “I know you’re pretty new to this whole sisterhood thing, but I’ve been a sister my entire life so let me explain how it works.” She squeezed the girls shoulders and wiped a stray tear of her face, tried to put all the intensity and honesty and care she could into her words. “We stick together yeah? You and me. And I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, not if I can help it. I’d take a bullet for you before I let them hurt you again and then I’d take another for good measure. That’s what sisters do, that’s what I’m here for.”
Thinking of her older sister, of how Abby used to trail after her as a kid, going to her for help anytime she had a fight with their mother, or with her friends, or with a boy, she faltered. Rachel had held her on her hip at their father’s funeral, had soothed her broken heart all night after her first breakup, had nursed her back to health after plenty of operations gone wrong. Then four years ago Rachel’s husband had disappeared and it was Abby’s turn to be the solid, dependable one. To comfort her sister and her niece and hold them steady when they fell apart.
But she failed. She just wasn’t built like that.
Macey was still shaking slightly beneath her hands, but her tears had stopped and her breaths had steadied. Bright eyes watched Abby attentively, studying her close. She recognised the look. The girl didn’t trust her, didn’t trust many adults Abby reckoned, so she was looking for any sign of disingenuity, of deceit.
No matter how hard she looked, she wouldn’t find any.
Macey nodded slowly, something like relief glazing over her features. All the fight seemed to drain out of her, muscles sagging under the hands holding her tight and eyelids drooping under the weight of her defeat. She tipped forward ever so slightly, forehead coming to rest on Abby’s shoulder as she took a deep breath. Slowly, Abby reached around her back and wrapped her arms lightly around the girl, giving her a quick pat as she felt Macey’s own arms encircle her waist.
The hug was brief, and hardly comfortable for either of them, but Macey looked a lot calmer when she pulled away, eyes steeled and a soft thank you on her lips.
Abby gave a single nod of acknowledgment and clapped her hands together, quickly searching for a route out of the emotional ditch they had found themselves in. “Now. You said something about wanting to catch up with the rest of your grade? Lucky for you, you have at your disposal a top quality Gallagher Academy graduate who is quite literally not allowed to leave your side.” She wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulders and started steering them towards the library, shooting her a cocky wink as they went. “So, do you wanna start with COW, a bit of computing, any languages? I’m willing to give you a few Cove-Ops pointers if you want, you’ll be better than Cam and the girls in no time. No way is Joe Solomon a better teacher than me.”
“Actually, could we work on Protection & Enforcement? I know I’m technically injured but…” Macey’s unsaid words were loud in Abby’s ears. I want to be able to protect myself. Nonchalantly shrugging, she redirected them towards the stairs, already planning out a routine and some moves to go through that wouldn’t put additional strain on Macey’s broken arm.
“Sure kid, as long as you promise not to rat me out to your Headmistress. I hear she’s scary.”
Zach: Has a snarky attitude and a bad relationship with his parent
Joe: Well shit now I have to look after you
Macey: Has a snarky attitude and a bad relationship with her parents
Abby: Well shit now I have to look after you
Happy new year everyone! Officially no longer posting these December prompts in December but oh well. The final 6 updates will probably be posted every few days this month, as I’m back at uni imminently and will go back to being pretty busy.
There was a ringing in Edward's ears. High pitched and incessant, it drowned out the sounds of rush hour in London, the chatter of tourists navigating the Christmas markets and the anger of commuters trying to get home.
The world spun around him. Unable to see the stairs below his feet, he stumbled out of the tube station and unsteadily made his way towards his flat, crashing into postboxes and barging into pedestrians as he went. All he could see was red. Red hair on his pillow, red blood boiling in his veins, red eyes from exhaustion and tears and rage.
He felt sick. The coffee and sandwich he had had for lunch bubbling in his stomach and pressing against his oesophagus, threatening to burst free from his throat and choke him.
He hoped it did. He hoped he choked and spluttered and collapsed to the ground in a fit of agony long before he reached his home. Home, where her scent would linger on the sheets, where her favourite shampoo took residence in his shower. Was it her favourite? Or was that another lie she told him? Where her lipstick had stained his Oxford University mug and her stray hairs littered the unhoovered carpets. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe she would’ve deep cleaned the flat, expunged all her DNA, erased her presence from his life completely.
He hoped she had.
He hoped she hadn’t.
A sharp bell and an enraged expletive interrupted his musings, the whip of a cool breeze alerting him to the bicycle he nearly collided with as he near collapsed into the road. Another bike followed the first, veering around his planted feet and his statued frame. A symphony of horns sounded at him as he forced his feet blindly across the road, taxi drivers screaming and bus drivers hollering. One car squealed as it hit the breaks dangerously close to his wayward path towards the opposite pavement, the man driving it slamming on his horn and pounding his fist against the dashboard. It didn’t even shake him. Nothing could shake him anymore.
He was too busy trembling.
When he reached the other side of the road, a hand wrapped itself around his bicep. Instincts nearly kicked in. He nearly grabbed his assailant’s wrist tight, bent it back until the tendons strained and the skin stretched, pulled the arm outwards and rolled their shoulder over his, slammed them on the ground and pressed his knee onto their throat. But he was sluggish. Something had poisoned his mind and his body and he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Instead he just eyed the hand in a confused daze, traced his eyeline up the arm until he found the face it was a attached to. A woman. She looked kind.
“Are you alright Sir? Do you need some help?” Eyes gentle, she smiled softly at him, her words slow and murky in his mind. Gaping at her, he tried to find a reply, tried to force a response out of his mouth, but there was something in the way. Something tangible and thick and solid was blocking the air from entering his throat and collapsing the words before they could form. He stared at her. She just kept smiling kindly, her hand tight around his arm like she thought she was holding him up. Maybe she was.
She thought he was drunk. Maybe he was.
Looking down, he saw a child clinging to her other hand. A little girl with red hair and curious eyes who hid behind her mother’s leg and stared up at Edward like he was something sad and wicked from a Disney cartoon.
He was trembling. He was going to be sick.
Gasping a breathlessly weak I’m fine, he tore himself away from the kind stranger, from the little girl with red hair who would grow into a kind woman like her mother, and kept stumbling in the direction of his flat.
The revelation he came to earlier, the words that he heard and the accusations he knew would be made echoed through his head. As he lingered silently in the corner of the briefing room, young and inexperienced enough not to be noticed when he stepped through the door with an update for Agent Baxter on the Berlin situation, he overheard two of his superiors talking. About how the identities of five MI6 operatives undercover in Moscow had been leaked. As had the surveillance data they had gathered on the Iranian President’s movements this past year and his predicted movements this coming year. As had the details of security checkpoints and military schedules and sniper positions for the upcoming NATO summit meeting in London.
They couldn’t think of how or why someone could get their hands on all three classified files. Couldn’t find a correlation between them.
Edward could. He could picture the three files of cases he consulted on stacked neatly, one on top of the other in his safe. In his flat. Hidden behind three lock combinations and the false floor of a locked wardrobe. Behind the deadbolt and the padlock on his door and the keycard for the lift and the security guard at the building’s entrance. Only he should have access to those files, to that safe. Only him.
Well, him and…
It was so sudden, the way these past few months made startlingly clear sense. Why a gorgeous, charming, perfect CIA agent took such an interest in the office new kid. Why everything he ever thought he might want from a woman, from a companion, was suddenly wrapped up in a stunning package and near enough throwing herself at him. Why he felt happy, and encouraged, and wanted for once.
Why his assignment in Kuwait had been a disaster, the bases he had identified and taken a team to infiltrate long gone by the time they arrived. Why no matter how hard he tried, every piece of evidence he had gathered against the Royal Navy Lieutenant who went rogue and slaughtered nearly his entire squadron was reputed and dismissed. Why every step towards progress he had made in his career was met with a massive exploding wall that pushed him two steps back.
He wondered if she knew that he knew. She must do. He shouldn’t have called her in such a panic, desperate to be told it wasn’t true. Shouldn’t have called again and again and again when she didn’t picked up. It would’ve only served to tip her off.
Somehow, he made it back to his flat in one piece, staggered past the security guard and fumbled with his lift pass. His keys rattled as his trembling figures tried to select the right one, tried to press it into the lock and turn it, the door giving way easily once he did. He took a deep breath and placed one foot in front of the other, letting the door swing gently shut behind him.
There was a woman with red hair sat at his kitchen table.
“Oh good, you’re back.” Catherine Goode, if that was even her real name, grinned at him. “I thought you’d be so distracted trying to call me that you’d get hit by a bus.”
Edward stormed forwards.
He threw a chair out of the way on his route towards her, her laughter ringing through the walls spurring him on. Except it wasn’t her laugh. It wasn’t light and musical and loud, but maniacal, almost hysterical, carrying something unhinged with it as it bounced along the kitchen tiles. She stood to greet him as his hand reached out, knotting the necklace he bought her around his fist and yanking her in close. Grip firm on the chain and the collar of her shirt, he twisted his arm so it encircled her neck from behind and squeezed, the other coming to wrap around her waist in an effort to restrain her like a python ensnares its prey. Unfortunately, she was better trained than him, or maybe just better, and so she swiftly drove an elbow into his gut and twisted out of his grip, effortlessly grasping the arm entrapping her body to his and flipping him over her shoulder. The chain of her necklace snapped as he flew, pendant soaring towards the door while the links of metal held tight to his skin. Crashing to the tiles beneath him, his breath got stuck in the back of his throat, pain shooting down his spine and through his chest. She placed one leg either side of his torso and had pinned him to the ground in seconds, a small knife held to his carotid artery to keep him still.
“Are you feeling okay Eddie? You don’t look well.” He spat into the glee that was her face, desperately trying to hold back the tears that burned behind his eyes.
Head lolling to the side, he caught sight of his reflection in the sheen of the fridge and found he had to agree with her, he had become a different man in a matter of hours. Hours had passed since his world collapsed around him yet he was still white with shock and clammy with sweat. Only hours had passed and yet somehow he looked more gaunt than he remembered, dark circles under his eyes deeper than they appeared this morning. He looked horrific.
No wonder that kind woman thought to stop him in the street.
Steeling his jaw, he tried to pull himself together, tried to portray himself as an espionage operative rather than a jilted boy in love. It was to no avail. His voice came out in a pathetic plea no matter what he did. “Is it true, am I right?” The tears were back, the dark eyes that he used to lose himself in triggering their release from the back of his skull. “You took the files from my safe, operations you didn’t have access to as an international consultant. You- you were just using me.”
A wicked grin danced across her face and Edward felt his heart crack in his chest.
“Well, you were very fun to use darling.” She purred the words into his ear, hand not threatening his life smoothing over the firmness of his chest, caressing the roughness of the stubble on his jaw.
He spat at her again.
Tutting at him, she wiped the spit off her face and began feeling underneath him, caressing his back and tracing the lines of his spine. Edward could barley feel it. He could only feel the burning heat of rage, the freezing chill of hatred, the empty heaviness of heartbreak. He trembled underneath her.
“Why? It wasn’t for Langley, that would be an act of war.” Sending an operative, a spy, into an allied territory only for them to steal classified files, to leak them or sell them to potential targets, potential enemies, would be a very bold act of war. “You’ve betrayed your country Catherine, that- you’ve committed treason!”
She giggled at his words, at the outrage on his face. “That’s an awfully dramatic thing to call it Eddie. But yes, I suppose I did.”
“Why did you do it Catherine? I thought we- we were…”
“Why does anyone do anything in life? Money, prestige, power-”
“Money from who? Power over who?”
“Do you think you’re in any position to be interrogating me right now Townsend?” He couldn’t hold back the flinch at her use of his last name, the movement causing the knife to slice lightly through his skin and prove her point. She never called him that. “I suppose I should’ve been more subtle, though I will admit it took you longer than I thought to catch on. You were just too obsessed with me weren’t you darling.” It wasn’t a question, it would be an insult to both their intelligences for it to be a question.
“Who do you work for Catherine? What is this?” The kiss she pressed to his cheek was cold, the following one she pressed to his bleeding neck was colder. “You’re going to kill me anyway, you might as well tell me.”
“Kill you?” Her laughter was as cold as her lips, sending shivers down the spine that she was still fondling. As she smiled at him, her eyes took on a faraway look; Edward could only dream of imagining what she was thinking. “No darling, I’m not going to kill you. You may be useful to me yet.”
“I’m never going to help you. Whatever scumbag you’ve sold yourself out to, whatever schemes and plots you have, I’m never going to- fuck. What the hell was that?” A sharp sting dug into his back, his skin burning and his body writhing beneath hers, cutting off his furious, self-righteous tirade.
After a moment or two, her hand slipped away from his spine and the knife moved away from his neck, though handcuffs were slapped around his wrists before he could even think to react. “Just a little anaesthesia, basically a strong epidural. You shouldn’t be able to move or feel pain below the waist for a few hours. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off.”
“Why did you wait here for me? You could’ve cleared off as soon as you heard that they discovered the leaks, that I suspected you, but you came back here. Why?”
“Maybe I wanted to say goodbye darling. Maybe I’m going to miss you.” They had met months ago. Had been obsessed with each other ever since. He took her out every night they were both in London and took her back to his flat in a similar fashion. She practically lived there. He had traced her entire body with his hands, his tongue, his heart. He thought he knew her, loved her. Thought she loved him. For a moment, as she soothed her hand down his cheek and pressed a gentle kiss to his frozen lips, he still thought that way, thought something of what they had was real. Then she reached into his pocket and retrieved his MI6 issued cell phone loaded with secure numbers and his MI6 badge that would get her through any security or border control that doesn't want to stop a harried looking agent so they can read the inscription. “Or maybe I needed these.”
He was pathetic. He was going to be the laughing stock of the agency when this got out. No, he was probably going to be fired or arrested when this got out. It would take a lot of begging, a lot of senior agents sticking up for him, a lot of proving himself to be more capable than these past few months have demonstrated in order for him to keep his job.
She had ruined him.
She had ruined him, and yet there was only one thing on his mind as she removed her body from his and turned to leave the flat.
“Did you love me?” Embarrassingly, his voice cracked on the words, more tears forming in his eyes, in the pit of his stomach, in the hollow in his chest. “You said you did but…did you only say it because I said it? Because it was what I wanted to hear?”
The condescending smirk she sent him turned his blood to stone, the shake of her head making his body ache. “Don’t take it personally Eddie, I don’t love anyone.” Dropping a small set of keys on the ground, she picked up her measly bag of belongings and the glistening purple pendant, slipping the latter into her pocket as she opened the door to leave. “You shouldn’t either you know, it only makes you vulnerable. Foolish.” She looked him up and down. “Weak.”
And then the ghost of the woman he loved disappeared into the night.
Lying half paralysed on his own kitchen floor, handcuffs encasing his wrists and blood leaking from his neck, he made a vow to himself. For as long as he was still with MI6, be it another hour or another lifetime, he vowed he wasn’t going to rest until he had found her again. Had taken down whatever operation she worked for and put her back into whatever hell she crawled out of.
I have no idea what an actual career path into MI6 would look like, but imagine Townsend was selected for a training programme out of uni and is now a couple years(?) into working there when Catherine sinks her teeth into him. In writing them as a similar age, but her going to Gallagher then going straight into CIA gives her about a decades more experience in espionage, so she kind of walks circles around him at this stage. Except for the fact that somethings made her desperate and sloppy, leaking too much info at once so he can easily trace it back to her.
#25 will hopefully be out on the 1st or 2nd, so in the mean time Happy New Year to you all!
“I don’t know how many times I can tell you Abigail, I’m not playing that childish game with you two.”
“Oh come on, lighten up! It’s Christmas!”
“I told you Abs, Stick-in-the-mud Bond over there will never give in, no matter how much you bat your eyelashes at him. He’s far too formal and stubborn for that.”
“Fine, Abe, truth or dare?”
“…Truth.”
“A couple of years ago you and Grace disappeared on an assignment with Rach in Casablanca. You told her you were held up by roadblocks and security checks.” Cautiously, the man nodded, an embarrassed flush already beginning to spread across his face as a wide smirk grew along hers. “Where were you really?”
“You’re evil.” Abby threw her head back in unbridled laughter as the man just shook his head and threw another shot back, grimacing as the second bottle of Russian vodka she had smuggled into the country with them trickled down his throat. “Speaking of Grace, I’m going to give her and Bex a call before you knock me out with this stuff. They should be up by now.”
“It’s just gone 19:00 back home, shouldn’t you have called them at lunch?”
“They’re not in London mate.” He shot Townsend a wink before clambering to his feet and stumbling towards the hotel room across the hall that the boys were staying in.
That just left Abby, warmed by one of her brother-in-law’s sweaters and sat cross-legged on the floor, in the company of Townsend, still adorned in his formal dress pants and shirt, perched stoically on one of the stiff kitchen chairs. Looking up at him, she let out a small laugh at the exasperated roll of his eyes, at the disapproving shake of his head, at the quiet huff of disapproval he gave as Abe tumbled out of the door.
“Don’t you two know how irresponsible it is for you to be drinking on the job?” Usually, his condescending tone would boil her blood and grate her teeth, but she was giddy with the flush of the holidays and the alcohol, could only grin at him. Besides, maybe he had a point.
Not that she’d ever tell him that.
“Save me the lecture Townsend, Abe’s your senior agent by over a decade and I started my training before you even packed your bags for university.” Another roll of his eyes and a scoff at the reminder of her school, her grin growing as his took on a slightly chastised look at the reminder of the pecking order in their little trio. “Anyway, we’re just hanging around until the banquet in a few days. We’ve already done all the recon and prep work. I’d hardly call it on the job.” She couldn’t resist the mocking English accent that slipped out, his bashful glance at the floor transforming into an irritated glare.
“We have covers to maintain, guards to keep up. If someone had come to the hotel-”
“No one is suspicious or looking for us-”
“We can’t know that for sure-”
“And if someone was, then that’s what we have you for. To save the day or whatever.”
Flattery clearly worked on him. The sharp glare on his face, the harshness of his eyes melted, leaving behind only a mildly disgruntled man. “I thought I was invited for my Arabic skills.”
Ugh. Egotistical ass.
“Your Arabic sucks. If anything blows our cover here, it’ll be you asking for a sandwich when the guards request our tickets, not Charlie Chaplin out there tumbling down the stairs after a few too many shots.”
She chuckled slightly at the mental image, trying to imagine him meekly trying to explain to Grace, no Sweetheart, the presidential guard didn’t break my arm, that was the fault of Abby trying to needle details of our personal life out of me. Honestly, Abby reckons she’d find it funny.
“Still-”
“Oh give it a rest Townsend. He just spent Christmas Day in your company rather than his wife and kid’s. He misses them and needed cheering up.” Abby prodded him with her foot, not quite sitting close enough to the man to read him with her hand, in an effort to get him to leave the topic alone. Abe had seemed miserable all day. The first time she saw him smile since the sun rose had been when he dared her to prank call Joe from their burner phone.
Of course, Abby had been missing her own family as well. Although she had spoken briefly with them a few hours ago, she still missed her niece laughing as Matt insisted on keeping up the pretence of Santa Claus despite her figuring out the truth three Christmases ago. She missed her brother-in-law’s gentle teasing when Rachel inevitably tried to help with dinner only to burn whatever she touched and injure herself in the process. She missed her sister’s stern insistence on watching It’s A Wonderful Life once Cam had gone to bed, the way she’d inevitably get upset and drag Abby in for a cuddle when George Bailey discovers his brother’s grave, not letting her go until the evening had long become the night. It was hardly the first Christmas Abby had spent without her family, nor would it be the last, but she missed them all the same.
Perhaps Townsend could see that on her face, or perhaps her words reminded him of whatever family he was apart from today, or perhaps he was just growing atypically obedient, because he did proceed to drop it. Grateful for the reprieve, Abby took a breath, tried to force the happy grin back on her face before her lamenting about working over Christmas brought the mood down.
“So, truth or dare?”
“Do you ever take no for an answer?”
The grin on her face became genuine, his incredulous tone pleasing her. “Rarely. Truth or dare?” She nudged him with her foot again, jabbing at his thigh over and over again the longer he refused to answer her question.
“You’re incorrigible.” She nodded and kept prodding his leg. “Stubborn.” Nodding again, she didn’t fail to notice the slight pulling of his cheek on his lips, a minuscule smile starting to form on his mouth. “The most annoying women I’ve ever met.”
“I’m amazing, I’m incredible, I’m like no one you’ve ever met before. Don’t worry Townsend I’ve heard it all before from men and women much dreamier than you.” Smile growing, he rolled his eyes at her again, hopefully too distracted to pick up on the way her tipsy muscles couldn’t hide the twitch in her face at the lie. She wasn’t ashamed to admit, in her head, that Edward Townsend was an unfairly attractive man. “Now, truth or dare?”
“What is it with you and this game?”
Nostalgia rippled through her bones, her body overtaken by the memory of high ceilings and stained glass windows, of limestone walls and giggling schoolgirls. A soft smile settled on her face, eyes focusing on something far away from their warm hotel room.
When she spoke, her words were whimsical, longing, carrying the kind of sentimentality an operative shouldn’t have. “My roommates and I used to play it at school all the time, from midway through seventh grade until the day we graduated. It started off as a good way to get to know one another, then a way to learn to trust one another, then a way to cheer one another up. Whenever one of us had a bad day, or if we argued, we’d play for half an hour before bed, even if we had assignments to do or finals the next day.”
She remembered playing after Emmy was told her father missed a call in, playing every night until she got the news that he was okay. She remembered playing when Felicia and Trix got in a fight over the boy who delivered the papers to the Academy gate every morning, a boy who didn’t even know they existed. They played endlessly that night, her two roommates giving one another more and more outlandish dares until the girls all fell to the floor in heaps of giggles. She remembers playing her first night back within the school’s walls after her mother died, the way she asked for a truth and fell into her best friend’s lap crying when Emmy asked her, are you okay?
Something in Townsend’s face had softened uncharacteristically at her wistful tone. It looked strange on him. He moved silently from his chair to the floor, looking unnatural as he settled himself opposite her, his knees brushing against hers. The smile on her face grew amused. His position looked outlandish for a man as formal as him, like an overgrown alien child visiting Earth for the first time. Muttering an almost fond, you and that bloody school, under his breath, he reached out for the bottle sat between her legs and took a swig, unfazed as the lukewarm liquor burnt down his throat.
Words soft now, he asked her another question, not knowing the reaction it would trigger. “Do you still play? You and your roommates?”
Heat burned behind her eyes at the memory of them, of the four girls she remembers burying some years ago. Felicia had become Mrs Truman, choosing to remove herself from the world of espionage and marry that kind paper boy from Roseville after an assignment her first year in the field left her with shaking hands and nights interrupted by screams. Abby has visited a few times, but she doesn't recognise the sister she knew. Trix had become Beatrice, moving her way up the ladder of politics to become one of the president’s youngest advisors. They talk occasionally, but there isn’t much they can share with one another, the need-to-know boundaries of their work getting in the way.
Emmy had become Emilia Young, beloved friend and daughter, whose decision to enrol in the secret service after graduation had doomed her.
She shook her head, sniffled slightly, all too aware of the single tear betraying her cool facade and trickling down her cheek. “No.” The whisper was unnecessary, but Abby had never been comfortable with silence.
Clearly uncomfortable with her sudden display of humanness, Townsend’s gaze looked away from her own, shuffling awkwardly on his spot on the floor as he took another swig from the bottle.
She collected herself. Took a deep, silent breath and cleared the haze from her eyes. Steeled her nerves and forced the happy, the fun, the careless, back onto her face. The quiver in her lips died, the heat spreading up her neck from her chest cooling to ice, the ache in her heart subsiding for now. Reaching forward, she joined him in forgoing the shot glasses, wrapping her fingers around the neck of the bottle as he pulled it from his mouth and took it from him, moving it to her own. The rim of the bottle was warm where his lips had been, and she watched him watch her as she tilted her head back.
She swallowed. Once. Twice. Smiled at him.
“Truth or dare?” He groaned, sounding one more probing attempt away from screaming. Remembering Abe’s words from earlier, she tried making her eyes wide, tilting her head, pouting her lip ever so slightly. It was a common face for her to pull when she wanted something, specifically whenever she wanted a man to do her bidding. Matt always caved, as did Joe more often than not, Abe typically giving in with a heavy sigh. “Come on, please.” Townsend just shook his head at her, sighing, a small wry grin starting to form on his face. “Please.”
“…Truth.”
Bingo.
Delighted, she threw her head back in laughter, face taken over by a broad smile. Something light and warm had built up in her chest, something that glowed as his grin grew slightly in response to hers.
Probably the vodka.
She pivoted where she sat, moving so she was perched beside Townsend on the cold floor with her knees tucked up to her chest, her arms wrapped tight around them. His eyes tracked her as she moved, causing something to flutter in her stomach. The heat from his body soothed her from her fingers to her toes, the skin where his knee brushed against her calf breaking out in goosebumps. Hazy as her mind was, she had to resist the sudden urge to drop her head on his shoulder, to collapse against his solid frame and just breathe. Instead, she angled her head towards him and caught his eyes, the light in her heart shining at the light she saw in them.
“Tell me something about yourself that I don’t already know. Anything.”
“I thought truth or dare required specific questions?”
“Fine, tell me something about your childhood. Rumour has it even you had one of those.”
“That’s still not a question. Do you know what questions are Abigail or do you always just command people?”
“Oh please, you like it when I command you.” She blinked at her own words, not quite knowing how they slipped out of her mouth. Shaking her head, she ignored the flush creeping up the man’s face and tried to move past it. “Um, I mean-” Unfortunately, the vast amount of shots she had taken with Abe earlier in the night had left her slightly tongue-tied. “-Oh just pick something and tell me!”
“Something?”
“Yup, whatever you want.”
“Well since you asked so nicely…”
“Shut up.” She drove an elbow lightly into his ribs, ignoring the skip of her heart when he let out a deep chuckle, trying to remember if she had ever heard him laugh as freely as that before.
He hummed quietly while she treated herself to another drink, eyes darting around the hotel room as he ruminated. Something outside caught his attention, teeth clenching in thought. Glancing from the window to her and back again, he took a deep breath and sighed, clearly resigning himself to whatever teasing he was about to subject himself to by sharing what was on his mind.
“When I was a kid, in secondary school I mean-”
“What the fuck is that? Like high school?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know, it’s school between the ages of 11 and 16, sometimes 18.”
“Sometimes?”
“Can I finish what I was saying now?” Waving a hand at him, the universal signal for go ahead, she grinned to herself at the flare of irritation that had built back up on his face. It overcame the brief discomfort that had settled upon him when he started opening up, the tension of his jaw and thickness of his throat being replaced by tired eyes and a disapproving stare. “When I was a teenager, I was a bit… intense in school-”
“You mean you were a nerd right? Because I’ll be honest, that’s not news to me, you kind of scream I was smarter than everyone else and I got bullied for it.”
“Are you going to interrupt me the entire time?”
“Probably.”
“Great.” Dry tone making her laugh breathily, he swiped the bottle from her hands and took a swig, the brush of his fingertips against hers sending tingles up her arm. “Yes, I was a bit of a nerd. But my answer to your non-question was that one of the things I got a bit nerdy about was astronomy.”
“…Like star signs and horoscopes? I didn’t think you were the type.”
“That’s astrology Abigail, and it’s a completely made up science designed for fraudsters to scam people out of their money.”
“Of course you would say that. God you’re such a Capricorn.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means tell me about astronomy before I start asking you your time and place of birth.”
Groaning in exhausted displeasure, he ran a hand across his face and through his hair, disrupting the neat lie of the dark waves until they scattered across his head in disarray, making him look disheveled. It looked unnatural on him. As he moved to take another gulp of the vodka, she couldn’t resist reaching out and fixing it, soothing the wayward flyaways and restyling the ebony locks.
She caught his eye. He gulped. The breath caught in her throat.
She didn’t recognise the soft look that passed over his face before he stood up, the crinkling around his eyes and the creasing of his lips. It made her heart flutter in her chest. Not nervous, Abby had never been nervous around him. In fact, she was never usually anything but aggravated in his presence. She just didn’t have another name for the feeling.
Towering over her as he rose to his feet, he held out a hand for her to take. When she did, his hand warm and firm around hers, triggering lightning to ripple down her spine, he pulled her upright, catching her with a sigh as she stumbled slightly on her feet. A giggle tumbled out of her mouth. The strange, soft look on his face intensified and he shook his head in, annoyance? Astonishment? Wonder? Abby couldn’t tell anymore.
“Come on Abigail, I’ll show you.”
He escorted her to the floor-to-ceiling windows that covered the hotel’s external wall. Perfect for surveillance, Abby had said. Perfect for counter-surveillance more like, Townsend had grumbled back. Abe had told them both to shut up, both men ignoring the childish way Abby had stuck her tongue out in victory when the senior agent had sided with her anyway. She was pulled to a stop in front of the glass, face nearly pressed up against it with his warm body hovering close to her back, hand still firm around hers. When he leaned down to whisper to her, she could feel his breath dancing across the shell of her ear and infecting her brain, making her dizzy.
“You see that star there, the brightest one?” The hand holding hers reached up towards the window, pointing her own finger in the general direction of the stars. All she could do was hum in acknowledgement, slightly distracted by the waft of a woody scent coming from him, by the scent of his cologne. “That’s the-”
She took a guess, just to annoy him. “North Star?” In the reflection of the window, she caught him grin down at her ever so slightly. Huh. Not quite the annoyance she was aiming for.
“Is that the only one you know?”
“That depends. Is there a South Star?”
“Not really. There’s technically a southern pole star called Polaris Australis, but that’s just the closest star to the southern axis. It’s not as bright as the North Star so it never had the religious, mythological, or navigational associations as-”
“You’re losing me Townsend. I’m starting to see why you got beat up in secondary school.”
“I never said anything about being beaten up.” Her head lolled backward, an incredulous look on her face as she stared up at him. Though his eyes rolled at her mocking of his accent, at the cock of her eyebrow, he shrugged slightly in resignation, her head bouncing where it had sat against his shoulder. Grumbling an embarrassed whatever, he refocused her hand and eyes on the night skyline. “It’s called Arcturus; it’s the brightest in the northern hemisphere.”
The Latin came to her in a flash. “Guardian of the Bear.”
“Hmm. One of the Greek myths states that Arcas, a hunter, was the son of Zeus and a nymph called Callisto. When he was born, Hera turned his mother into a bear out of jealousy while Zeus hid his son in Arcadia. One day when Arcas was hunting, his mother saw him and went to embrace him, momentarily forgetting about her transformation. He went to shoot her, so Zeus turned them into constellations to spare them both from that fate. Arcas was turned into Boötes, the constellation made of Arcturus and these stars here.” He moved her hand in a small sweeping motion, gesturing to the rest of the constellation that she couldn’t possibly focus on when he was talking like that, voice deep and quiet.
“So less Guardian of the Bear, more, Attempted Murderer of the Bear.”
“Maybe they thought… Arctoccisor Incassum didn’t have the same ring to it.” Abby chuckled slightly at his fabricated Latin, catching his smile in the reflection of the window and shaking her head at him.
“So what happened to his mother?”
Townsend pressed his body even closer to hers, his unoccupied hand settling lightly on her waist to re-angle her slightly. The scent of him choked her, the heat of him burning through her clothes. She felt breathless all of a sudden, like he had spiked the drink they shared or planted a napotine patch on her while she was distracted by his story.
“She was turned into the constellation Ursa Major, just there, also known as The Great Bear.” Joined hands drifting to the left, he pointed at a new collection of stars near his original target, fingers shifting slightly each time he pointed out a new aspect of the constellation. “See the bright little scoop attached to the quadrangle? That’s The Plough, or Big Dipper as you Americans would call it. It makes up part of Ursa Major. The rest of the constellation is the two trails of stars leading upwards, and the pentagon to the left formed by these stars here.”
She cocked her head at it slightly. “Is it supposed to look like a bear? Cause it really doesn’t.”
“Well it’s upside down here- Don’t do that.” He grabbed both her shoulders from behind, spinning her slightly to face him head-on as she started to tilt her body in order to get a better angle. “You don’t have the stability right now to keep yourself upright should you start throwing yourself around.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” The protest was weak, her batting hands weaker, as the excessive abnormal movement really had made her feel a bit off balance.
“So, are you satisfied?” Abby could only give him a blank look, lost on what he could mean. The movement of his thumbs up and down her arms was very distracting. “My truth?”
“Oh!” The game they were playing suddenly came rushing back to her. “I suppose it’ll do, although I think I learned more about how Zeus and Hera needed marriage counselling than I did about you.” Although she couldn’t resist the teasing, shooting him a wink as she tilted her head to the side, a mischievous smirk breaking out across her face as his own settled into exacerbation, she wasn’t being completely honest. She had learned the way he smelt, the way his hands felt around hers. The heat of his body and the way her own quivered when his voice was lost in thought. She had learnt the softness of his eyes and the silk of his smile, the pounding of his heart against her back and the unsteady thumping of her own in her chest.
It wasn’t what she had asked after, but it was a lot more than she bargained for.
“Truth or dare Abigail?” She blinked at him, suddenly very aware of how close they were, of the breaths that left his lungs only to dance along her own lips. It made her dizzy. The smirk on his face, the raise of his eyebrows, the smugness in his eyes, made her furious. “It’s my turn right? Truth or dare?”
Cocking her hip out and tilting her head to the side, she assessed him. His broad frame and towering height, the deepness of his eyes and the effortlessness of his hair. Not one to back down from a challenge, Abby raised her own eyebrows, painted a smirk onto her own face. Eyes locked on one another, she shifted backwards slightly, his hands dropping to her wrists as she moved, searching for the oxygen he was depriving her of so she could think clearly again.
All so she could say something stupid.
“Dare.”
Initially giggling at the way his face went blank, Abby had to take a deep breath when his face went from stunned to uncertain, wide eyes darkening in the gloom of the starlight. He nodded to himself, lingered in the silence, taking his own deep breath to brace himself. For a moment, she saw his gaze flicker downwards, lingering somewhere around her nose, or maybe her chin, or maybe-
Her lips. He was looking at her lips.
She almost let him.
But in spite of their bickering, the way he grated on her nerves and never listened to a word she said, the was he way stubborn and egotistical and condescending even with his superiors, they were something almost like friends. She trusted him, at the very least, and she couldn’t say the same about many people. If he kissed her, that would change. She would ruin it, them, him. She was sure of it. Unlike her sister, she wasn’t destined for a happy ending, wasn’t built for an easy love that falls in her lap and soothes her aching soul. Abby wasn’t good enough for that. If he kissed her now, it would just be another in a long line of mistakes that she made without thinking, with no thought spared towards who gets hurt in the process. He was a good man. She didn’t want to do that to him.
Muscles tense, Abby looked away from him, desperately hoping that he wouldn’t do it, that he wouldn’t ask.
She wasn’t ready.
Hands gentle on her wrists, he gave them a quick squeeze before letting go, her gaze flickering back to him just fast enough to catch the regret in his face, something like hurt flashing through his eyes before they steeled over and he stepped back.
“I dare you to get some sleep, Abigail. We need to go over the plan for the dinner tomorrow.”
They didn’t. Several days had already been spent devising their operation plan, months of research from their respective agencies and weeks of surveillance and recon on the ground going into it. Abe’s approximate position and timestamps had been plotted nearly to the minute. Abby’s profiles on the other guests in attendance, on how to keep all of them distracted while Abe bugged the various targets in the mansion were meticulous. Townsend had insisted on backup plans, on fallbacks, on backup plans for their fallbacks. Their plan was flawless. There was no need to go over it.
Still. She had toyed with him enough tonight; he more than deserved the reprieve.
Nodding, she shot him the biggest smile she could muster as he moved to make his way out of the room. It still felt weak on her cheeks. “Merry Christmas Edward.”
He blinked at her, expression a picture of surprise as she addressed him by his given name. The smile on his face was kinder, gentler, than she had ever seen from him. “Merry Christmas Abby,” and he made his way out of the room, leaving her alone with the constellations in the window.
4,500 words of Abigail Cameron having a major crush on Townsend, instalment #3, tipsy edition.
I knew nothing about astronomy going into this so a lot of research had to be done. If anyone happens to know things that goes against what I’ve written feel free to let me know.
Also, I don’t know if anyone’s read Beartown by Fredrik Backman, but there’s a quote that goes “You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then” and it kind of inspired the spiel about Abby and her roommates from Gallagher, and how she lost those dynamics when they left school. It’s a great book, very much recommended.
Vision blurred by anger and frustration and humiliation, Zach rapped his knuckles against the door of the modest Tudor house, fingers too shaken with adrenaline to use his keys. Chest tight and heart in his throat, he scuffed his feet against the slate step as he waited, still not quite believing he was here. He didn’t have to wait long before he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock, and then another key in another lock, a deadbolt being pulled open. As the door was pulled open a crack, the face he was greeted with was nearly his own. Skin slightly more tanned, face somewhat more woven by the lines of age, eyes a deep blue rather than his own dark brown, his father was not far off being a glimpse into the future for Zach. Though he wasn’t quite as tall nor as broad, didn’t quite have the same formal posture nor stoic mannerisms, the two men looked remarkably similar, sharing the same nose and jaw and cheekbones, the same solemn expression as they met one another’s gaze.
“Zach?”
“I- um- I need your help.”
Edward Townsend’s eyebrows knitted together ever so slightly in concern as he held the door further ajar for his son, gesturing for him to come in. He himself was basically barefoot, padding around the hardwood floors in just his dark socks, but Zach kept his loafers on, knowing that the other occupant of the house tended to walk around downstairs in her shoes and that it didn’t make a difference to the couple as long as he didn’t enter the carpeted sitting room. They walked through the entrance hall and into the kitchen where Zach took a seat at the island, watching as his father switched on an electric kettle and started preparing drinks. Tea for himself, coffee for Zach, the fancy kind made with expensive grounds and a French press because his father was nothing except consistently pretentious.
“I’m assuming this isn’t work related?” Back turned to him, his father gave a quick glance over his shoulder as he asked the question, tone stern. Zach fought the urge to roll his eyes. Him and Cammie had been subject to enough of the man’s lectures about bringing intelligence business home over the years, a fact they both found to be hypocritical given the amount of times Abby managed to bait him into a discussion about her most recent case without much protest from him.
“No.”
“But you’re okay, you’re not hurt or sick or anything?”
Zach swallowed hard past the lump in his throat, simultaneously touched and unnerved by the man’s concerned tone. “I’m fine.” He wasn’t okay, might never be okay again, but that wasn’t what his father meant. “Is- um- is Abby in?” As well as he got on with his father’s wife, as fond as he was of her, this conversation was probably safer had in the absence of Cammie’s aunt.
“She’s 41, 7 months pregnant with twins, and permanently exhausted. She’s always in these days.” A fond smile graced his face at the mention of her and the twins, only the bags under his eyes and the slight crease of his brow betraying his anxieties. Clapping a hand on Zach’s shoulder as he passed him a cup of coffee, made just the way he liked it, his father took the seat next to him and gave him his full attention. “She’s upstairs, hopefully getting some rest. Now what do you need help with?”
Unbidden, a heat started building behind Zach’s eyes.
He didn’t know why he was here. Why he came to Townsend when he had only been his father for 6 years while Joe had been in his life for as long as he could remember. Why he came to anyone at all when he was fairly sure he had fucked everything up, was fairly sure all the help in the world couldn’t save him now. Why he had said the things he said a couple days ago that put him in this position in the first place.
Trying to brace himself, he dug the sole of his foot into the corner of the bar stool he was perched upon, the pain it elicited distracting him from the pain in his chest. Swallowing hard again, he ground his teeth together and tensed his jaw, bunched up his shoulders and forced a breath of air into his lungs.
“I- I think Cammie and I broke up.”
His father just blinked at him.
“What do you mean you broke up?” There was no shock in his voice, no anger, only a gentle curiosity. Zach might’ve been mildly offended if he hadn’t known the man well enough to understand that he was prioritising facts over emotions right now. Besides, it was a nice reprieve for him. Suddenly, he found he was much more able to treat the conversation like an assignment debrief, cold facts spilling out of his mouth instead of the hysterical blubber he spewed at Grant earlier that morning.
“We had a big fight a couple days ago, Friday night, and we broke up”
“A moment ago you said you think you broke up, now you’re saying you did. Did you?”
“I told you, we had a big fight.”
“But did either of you use the word breakup? Or separated, or split up, or whatever terms you kids use these days?”
Huh.
Zach hadn’t thought about that.
He tried to think back to that night in their apartment, to her anger and his frustration and both of their tears. To the hurtful accusations she screamed at him and the admittedly cruel words he spat back in return. To storming out after she told him to, run away like we both know you’re so desperate to, and crashing on Grant’s sofa overnight. Maybe she hadn’t broken up with him explicitly, but surely she was going to, surely she should.
“Well, no.” Nodding like he had already solved the problem, his father leaned back in his stool, took a deep breath and a sip of his drink. He looked relieved. Zach hastily gave him some more context, needing to man to understand how dire the situation he found himself in was. “But it was a big fight, we’re not going to get past it. It’s over.”
A hint of a smile spread across his face. “A fight, even a big one, doesn't have to mean a breakup Zach, trust me.” Gaze focussed on something over Zach’s shoulder, something he was sure he wouldn’t see even if he turned to look, the smile slid from the man’s face as he contorted his features into something reassuring instead. “And even if you do break up, in my experience it doesn't have to last forever if you love each other enough. You love her.”
It wasn’t a question, had never been a question, but love wasn’t the problem here.
“Of course! But-”
“Then I’m sure you two can fix it. With or without my help.” His absolute assuredness, his conviction, would’ve been comforting had he actually had any clue what he was talking about. “Now, what was the fight about.”
Zach sighed. This was the kicker.
“Kids.” A twitch of his nose, a flex of his jaw, a blink of his eyes that lasted just a fraction longer than normal. It was admirable the way he tried to hold back his flinch, tried to disguise it from his face, but Zach knew his own features well enough to recognise the signs of discomfort in the man who passed them on to him. “Cammie asked me if I want them, I said no. She wasn’t overly pleased.”
Silence hung between them like a wet blanket.Â
“Ah.” Eventually, his father sighed, nodded in understanding.
“Yeah.” Worryingly close to tears again, Zach slurped down the rest of his coffee before running his fingers through his unruly hair and burying his face in his hands, elbows rested on the counter. “Bit harder to fix than a fight about where in Rome to buy a cappuccino.”
Another contemplative pause, “Maybe,” and a thin stretch of silence, the sound of the man beside him sipping from his teacup distracting him from the ringing in his ears. “But easier than a fight about a secret history with the woman who killed your best friend and tortured your niece. Or about leaving you drugged in bed to go rogue on a mission. Or about abandoning you half dead in hospital because you’re too afraid of your feelings to stay.”
In fairness, that did all sound pretty complicated. Zach suddenly had a better idea as to why Abby and his father waited so long before getting together despite apparently knowing one another for decades. Lifting his head slightly and angling it towards the man however, there was only one thing he could think to ask. “Please tell me she drugged you?”
A deep of sigh of bemusement. “She wasn’t the first woman to do so, nor was she the last.”
Smirking, a deep chuckle forced its way out of his constricting throat, the memory of Cammie explaining their first test of Liz’s truth serum to him coming back to him in a flurry. “Have you thought about being more careful with your food?”
“You’re as bad as as the rest of them.” Grumbling under his breath, something about bloody Americans, he got up again to make them another drink as Zach’s head returned to his hands. “So Cameron wants kids.” He nodded. Apparently. “And you don’t.”
He froze.
That wasn’t quite it.
He liked kids. Meeting Liz’s younger sisters, helping Joe out with Cove-Ops field trips at Gallagher, even going back to Blackthorn and speaking with the boys about their futures, about what it will mean to belong to something should they enlist at Langley, had opened his eyes to the fact that he was fond of children even if he didn’t always know what to do with them. Once he got over his initial anger, his instinctive jealousy, he even found himself excited to be a big brother, an extensive conversation with Mrs Morgan even helping him minimise his fears about failing them. Cammie knew all this, had witnessed him learning a convoluted hand-clapping game with young Emily Sutton, had seen his smiles as he returned from helping teach at each of their old schools, had found the copy of the twin’s sonogram in his wallet.
But none of that meant he was going to be a father. He couldn’t. He would ruin them.
“It- It doesn’t matter what I- I’m not having kids!” The volume of his words, the intensity fuelling them, made his father stop in his tracks. Zach lifted his head again, entire body tense, imploringly staring at the man in an attempt to make him see, make him understand. “I thought we were on the same page about it. I’ve told her this before, a couple times, and she doesn’t listen. She never listens to what I think about this sort of thing, always thinking she knows me better than I know myself, but she’s wrong! Not that she’d ever hear that of course, how could Cameron Morgan ever be-”
“You’re not yelling about my niece are you?”
The stern voice interrupted Zach’s vitriol, the anger spewing from his throat dissipating on his tongue. Both him and Townsend flinched, turning to face Abby as she made her way into the room, hip cocked and eyebrow raised.
Her exhaustion was painted over her face, skin pale and bags sagging under her eyes. Normally light on her feet, she moved slowly under the added weight of Zach’s brother and sister, the muscles in her shoulders and back alternating between slumped and arched as she tried to find a comfortable position. Still, there was a light in her eyes, almost a bounce in her step despite the added baggage. Pregnancy glow, Mrs Morgan called it.
Trying to look as charming as he could, he shot her an apologetic smile, shoulders slumped in regret. “Hi Abby.”
She shot him a forgiving grin and wiggled her fingers in a small wave. “Hiya Zach.”
Moving to sit beside him, she gave her husband a thankful look as he pulled out the stool for her and helped her take a seat, pressing a kiss to her cheek as he did. “Sorry Love, did we wake you?”
“No no, your other son did that when he decided to use my bladder as a soccer ball.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind, laid another kiss to her head, laughed into her hair. “Are we talking about the fight you had with Cammie?”
“Wait, you know?”
“I know everything Zach. Now, Cam didn’t tell the girls what it was about but Macey’s money is on you doing something wrong, which I don’t want to believe but know that I can still beat you up if necessary. Joe thinks that you or she proposed before the other was ready, as if either of you would dare without speaking to Rach first. Personally, I’m leaning more towards the two of you having a chat about the future and disagreeing on something, very on brand for a couple with Townsend and Cameron blood.”
Stunned, he blinked at her, his expression no doubt mirroring the astonishment on his father’s face. “It’s only been two days. How many people know about this?”
“Spies talk kid.” She shrugged at him, leaning back into her husband’s embrace. “Squirt vented to Bex who obviously blabbed to Liz and Macey. Macey told me, and I needed someone to gossip to so I told Joe. Rachel doesn't know if that makes you feel better.”
“It does a bit.” Not only because Mrs Morgan scared him, but because if Cammie hadn’t confided in her mom yet, then maybe this wasn’t a breakup like he thought.
“You told Solomon but not me?”
“I can’t badmouth your kid to your face Ed.”
Zach always figured Abby would take Cammie’s side if they fought, but he hoped she would at least wait to find out what happened before critiquing him. “Badmouth? I thought you thought it was a mutual thing?”
“No, I said I thought it was a disagreement about the future. Very different.” Eyebrow raised and eyes inquisitive, she levelled an amused yet stern glare at him. “Like recognises like kid, and you have I’m scared of being a parent written all over you.”
“How did you-”
“In the five minutes I’ve been in the room, you’ve started at my bump for at least two, and you’ve looked at the sonogram on the fridge five times. You also seem pretty interested in the picture of me, Rach, and our father over in the hallway.” His eyes cut towards the picture in question, just visible through the open plan kitchen’s arched entrance.
It depicted a teenaged Mrs Morgan looking remarkably similar to Cammie as he first met her, carrying on her hip a young child with dark hair and bright green eyes. Behind them loomed a tall, strong-looking man with his daughters’ smile. Looking back at the girl from the picture nearly 40 years later, he caught her looking back up his own father with a cheeky, teasing grin on her face. “Good thing you stepped out of the field huh, that’s a lot of tells for a seasoned operative to miss.” The man just rolled his eyes and grumbled something about being up late last night battling with a crib in response.
Something like jealousy fluttered in Zach’s stomach at his father’s words. It wasn’t his fault, it’s not like the man ever knew that Catherine was pregnant with his kid, but Zach never had a father stay up late trying to set up a crib, or a playstation, or a model plane. He can’t imagine his parents ever smiled at each like they were the only people in the room, like no one else mattered. The twins would have that, and Zach was glad for it, but he still spent a lot of time wishing that he had that too.
Looking away from them both, he thought about what she said, thought about how Cammie had accused him of being a coward, about how even Grant suggested that maybe he wasn’t letting himself even consider the idea of kids.
“I’m not scared. I just- I can’t be a dad.”
“Uh huh.” Tone dry, she looked completely unimpressed with his attempt at a dismissal. “Look kid, here’s what’s going to happen. Your dad’s going to make me peanut butter and pickle sandwich, because your siblings have an appetite that could rival Garfield’s and I’m hungry again.” She hadn’t even paused to take a breath before the man was moving towards the fridge, an affectionate smile softening the roll of his eyes. “Then I’m going back to sleep. Meanwhile, you two are going to talk about how it’s normal to be afraid of parenthood, and how you’re not going to be like your mother, and how, believe it or not, you do know things about being a father. And he’s going to let you in on the secret that no one knows what they’re doing when it comes to kids, even people with regular, functional parents. You’ve met your grandparents, they’re completely normal and you know first hand how Edward fucked up his first year or so of fatherhood.”
“Thank you Abigail, but in my defence those were pretty unique circumstances.”
“You’ll process your feelings or whatever and then you’ll apologise to Cam, the two of you will make up and this will all be water under the bridge before Rachel has to find out that you screamed at her little girl.”
Zach flinched at the quick glare she shot him, shuddered slightly as he imagined it coming from the elder of the Cameron sisters. “I don’t even know how we’d do that, Cam and I haven’t fought since we were kids, and never like this.”
Both of them started at him blankly.
“You never fight?” They spoke in unison, confusion tainting their voices, turning to glare suspiciously at one another when their thoughts lined up for once.
Zach didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. “Not everyone is like you two you know!”
Grunting, Abby climbed to her feet and took the sandwich from her husband’s outstretched hand, moving towards Zach while still addressing Townsend. “Talk to your son.” She ruffled his hair and gave him a quick one armed hug before moving to leave the room. A brief look over her shoulder, and she left them with one last piece of wisdom. “My mother and I didn’t get on Zach. I mean, she wasn’t a raging psychopath like yours, but she wasn’t a great mother to me all the same. It was one of the many reasons I was always afraid of having kids, why I went round saying I didn’t want them so no one knew I was just terrified of becoming her. It took me a long time to realise that we don’t have to become our parents, almost too long.” One of her hands drifted to her stomach, her eyes unrecognisably soft. “Try not to hold out too long, I don’t know how long Cammie will wait.”
With that, she disappeared into the hallway, the echo of her footsteps up the stairs the only sound in the townhouse.
“Is she right? You’re scared?”
“You’ve known her longer than me, isn’t she always right?”
“She always thinks she is.”
Zach smirked a little at that, knowing by his father’s warm eyes and affectionate tone that he meant the barb in jest only. The older man moved to sit beside him again, passing him a fresh coffee and nursing a new cup of tea himself. He took a deep breath, peering at Zach with little side glances. Part of him wanted to tell the man to just say it, blurt it out, but truthfully he was grateful for the moment to collect himself, brace himself for whatever input his father decided to give.
“I think you want want kids, one day.”
That wasn’t really what he was expecting.
“Oh, because you know me so well, with all the years you’ve known me?” Something biting and cruel snuck into his tone, a sliver of old resentment rearing its ugly head again.
Townsend didn’t even flinch. “I think you want kids but you lashed out at Cameron because you’re scared, just like Abby said. And I think that because you came here.” Zach scoffed, forced his gaze away, accidentally locking his eyes on the sonogram pinned to the fridge, his own copy burning a hole through the wallet in his pocket. “If you really didn’t want this with her someday, you would’ve left the second you realised that what the two of you wanted in life didn’t line up, to spare her any more hurt if nothing else. And if you didn’t want to move past your fear you would’ve gone to Joe instead of coming here, because you know Joe wouldn’t be able to change your mind like I can.”
It was infuriating, the way this man suddenly seemed to get him. For so many years after Catherine revealed their relation, any interactions between the two of them felt forced and uncomfortable, neither of them knowing how to talk to the other. Now it seemed like he knew what Zach was thinking, what he needed to hear, long before he himself did.
“I’m assuming Cameron isn’t thinking about having children any time soon?”
“No of course not, just someday.”
“Then between the two of us we’ve got some time to get you feeling ready. Less scared. Though I’ll warn you now the fear never really seems to go away completely. Do you think, if you were less scared of becoming like your mother and I, that you would want kids?”
Cammie had asked him a similar question the other day. At the time, it made him angry, defensive, but Townsend’s matter-of-fact tone, the way he acknowledged and accepted that it was partly becoming like him that Zach was afraid of, set him at ease a bit. He steeled himself, tried to channel all the courage he had.
He nodded.
His father’s lips quirked upwards ever so slightly, a tiny hint of a smile breaking through his stoic mask for a fraction of a second before he continued. “Okay, well by the time Cameron’s ready, you wont feel so afraid any more, I promise.” Zach started to ask how he was so sure, how on earth he could promise that, but the man kept talking before he had a chance to interject. “The number of kids I have is about to triple. You’re going to watch me try to raise two kids who, knowing my luck, will be as difficult as their mother, and you’re going to watch me get it wrong. Over and over again. But I’ve promised Abby, and I’ve promised them, and now I’m promising you that I’m also going to get it right.” Something that looked like tears started springing in the man’s eyes, the pair of them taking on a glassy sheen as his voice became thick. “You’re going to see everything I do right and everything I do wrong with these two. The same way I wish you got experience me getting things right and wrong with you, your entire childhood. A few years of that and I promise you, you wont feel as afraid. You’ll know what to do, and what not to do, and you’ll be better than me by a long shot. Until then, you go home to your girlfriend with a bouquet of flowers in hand and apologise. Cameron’s reasonable so it wont take much more than that for this so-called breakup to be over. Okay?”
It was a lot.
Zach’s own throat was getting clogged with tears, the emotion in his father’s voice drawing out some of his own. Heat was building behind his eyes and a headache was stating to brew, his chest hurt and his stomach was fluttering. He wasn’t used to this, to discussing his feelings with his father and hearing him vent them in return, he didn’t even do this with Joe. Still, what he said resonated with him, sending waves of reassurance through his body until he was nodding along with the man’s words.
He could do that. He could do this.
Townsend clamped a solid hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze, leant in close even as his eyes swam with tears. “Okay?”
Another firm nod and Zach threw his arms around the man in a hug, squeezing tight to his shoulders as his father’s arms settled firmly around his back. Briefly, he buried his face in the man’s neck, wiping his brewing tears on the collar of his shirt. Zach whispered a soft okay in his father’s ear sniffling as the man patted him soothingly on the back, hesitated, then pressed a quick kiss to the crown of his head.
Zach: I had a fight with my girlfriend! Our relationship and my entire life is over!
Townsend: Buddy have I got some stories for you.
Accidentally made this one very long lol, but I kind of love their potential dynamic and how it might change over the years as they learn to accept one another (with forceful encouragement by the various women in their lives).
Zach mentions in UWS that he doesn’t want kids, but the way he spoke about it definitely made it sound like a fear reaction more than anything else. Understandable given everything, but I imagine Abby and Townsend probably had similar conversations before having the twins so they’re in a good position to try talk him through his fears/concerns.
Joe was nursing a drink at the bar, watching in the reflection of the bartender’s glasses as Matt spun his laughing bride under his arm, when he sensed someone take a seat in the stool beside him.
“What’s a pretty boy like you doing all on your own?”
Without turning to look at her, he could hear the flirtatious lilt to her tone, the smile in her voice. There was no hint of nerves or hesitation, an abnormality in girls who try to chat him up, his oppressive and gloomy aura typically setting the ladies on edge according to his best friend. She sounded familiar, which wasn’t unexpected given that there weren’t many regulars in Matt and Rachel’s lives who he wasn’t at least aware of, but he couldn’t quite place the musical voice. He set down his drink, immediately alert. Despite the vigorous security measures Rachel and himself had set in place, there was always a chance that an enemy operative had slipped through the cracks and decided to gatecrash the wedding.
“Seriously, shouldn’t you be out there, wooing the ladies on the dance floor?”
His tone was cold and disinterested, “I don’t woo-”
“Clearly.”
“-and I don’t dance.”
“Bummer, there goes my plan for us to upstage the happy couple with a perfect Vietnamese Waltz.” An instinctual huff of amusement crept out his nose at the image conjured up in his mind. Matt’s reaction should Joe break out in a perfect waltz with some random girl, Rachel’s reaction if said performance managed to outshine the couple’s first dance. He could hear the smile in the girl’s voice grow at his small laugh. “No seriously, why’s the Best Man hiding away in the shadows of the bar?”
A manicured set of nails gently rested on his arm, cool fingertips barley tactile beneath his thick suit jacket, and he sensed a warm body leaning close to his, a hint of jasmine invading his senses. Joe’s muscles tensed in preparation for a standoff. Were it a male operative sent to infiltrate the occasion, he could’ve instigated a fight and passed it off as a drunken brawl, got them both swiftly escorted from the ballroom and dealt with the infiltrator out of sight of Matt’s civilian family and friends. As it were, navigating the removal of a woman from the event would have to be managed with more care lest one of those well-meaning civilians tried to step in and interject.
Though his hips and torso and neck remained rammed straight, his eyes flitted from where he had been keeping an eye on the happy couple, their guests milling harmlessly around then, to the target sat beside him.
Oh. Nevermind.
Matt always said he was too paranoid.
“Why’s the Maid of Honour interrogating me instead of lining up for the bouquet toss?”
No wonder her voice had sounded familiar, not only did it carry the same city drawl as Rachel and her mother’s, but he had heard it give a much funnier, much more charming speech than his own just a few hours ago.
The woman, girl, sat beside him was adorned in an emerald green, satin bridesmaid dress, the colour presumably picked by Rachel with her younger sister in mind with how it matched her eyes, how it complimented the darkness of hair. Head tilted slightly to the side, a curious smirk pulled at her pink-painted lips, golden eyelids flickering flirtatiously at him. He leaned back ever so slightly, the effort to increase the distance between them making her smile soften slightly, her own posture adjusting to mirror his. Removing her fingers from his arm, she wrapped her hand around his drink instead and slowly slid it towards her, gaze never leaving his.
“Bouquet toss isn’t for another hour, and you wont catch me lining up for one of those anytime soon. Besides, who said anything about an interrogation?” Shooting him a wink, she lifted the glass to her lips and took a generous sip. He chuckled, though her efforts were admirable, he could still see a flicker of a grimace creeping along her features at the bourbon’s taste. “You don’t mind do you, the bartender knows I’m not quite 21, but I fear this evening’s going to drag if I don’t get a drink or two.”
Signalling for the bartender to bring him a glass of champagne, he took his own glass back from her, her tight grip turning weak when her own drink, more to her tastes Joe assumed, started being prepared.
“Joe,” He held out a hand to her in greeting, Matt’s many hours spent trying to teach him manners finally paying off. Her grip was firm around his, the pretty smile on her face growing as she gave it a formal shake.
“Abby.”
He knew that.
“Think the bride's going to kill me for buying her underage sister a drink?”
“What Rach doesn’t know wont hurt her.” Another wink. Another huff of amusement. There wasn’t much Rachel Cameron, Rachel Morgan, didn’t know, and they were both very aware of this. “Besides, 19 is basically legal.” Her smile had turned mischievous, dangerous. “So how do you know Matt?”
The well-practiced answer slipped out of his mouth easily. “Used to be roommates back when I was a destitute student. Now-” Her words caught up with his ears, brain catching up with his mouth. Pausing, he assessed her, shook his head, “You’re not 19.”
Something like offence graced her face. If Joe didn’t know better, he would’ve felt compelled to take it back, to apologise. As it was, he was quite certain in his deduction, and instead was just mildly impressed at her acting, by her facade. “You don’t think I look 19?”
“I know you’re not 19.” If she was 19 she’d already be working with the CIA, with him and Matt and her sister, by now. “Rachel’s always talking about how you’re doing in school.”
A delicate blush spread across her cheeks. “Oh well, yeah.” Biting her lip, she dropped her gaze to her feet, tone and volume dropping as she nervously fiddled with the stem of the champagne glass set before her by the bartender. Muttering a God this is embarrassing, under her breath, she seemed to brace herself before looking back up at him and giving him a little self-deprecating shrug. “I was held back a year or two. No big deal, just family stuff.”
Was she?
Joe didn’t remember Rachel mentioning anything about that, not that he was sure she would. He knows from her complaining that Abby is a bit of a troublemaker, knows from Matt that the girl and their mother don’t get along, knows from his observations that Mr Cameron had passed away long ago. Still, he didn’t know of anything in their family lives that could warrant her being held back, especially at a school like hers.
“You go to Gallagher, no way were you held back”
“You know what school I go to?”
He knew its name. He knew its cover. He knew the type of women it could produce.
“I know a lot about your school.” It slipped out before he could think. If he were a less secure man, he would blame his loose tongue on the drink, on the festivities of the day. As it was, he knew when to admit he was beat, and it turns out Abigail Cameron had done it. She had her brother-in-law's way of making him lower his guard, had her sister's way of making him a fool, had her own way of twisting up a web of lies for him to untangle in an effort to make him slip. He was ashamed of himself, of his espionage skills, for how easily it worked.
“So that’s how you know Matt.” The smile that stretched across her face was blinding. Eyes alight with pride and excitement, teeth glinting in the muted lights of the bar, body almost dancing with the glee of outsmarting an operative. Joe just blinked at her, tried not to git his teeth. “You work together. You must do if you know a lot about my school.”
He heaved a heavy sigh. Leave it to Rachel’s little sister to make a fool out of him at a wedding. He consoled himself with a generous trip of his drink, a wry smile catching at his mouth. “Not an interrogation huh?” Laughter bubbling from her lips, she went to take a sip of her own drink before Joe snatched it from her hands, ignoring the pitiful noise of protest she made. Holding the glass out of her reach, he raised a singular eyebrow at her in preparation for his own interrogation. He wouldn’t be outdone by a teenager. “You’re not 21, and you’re not 19.”
“Not yet.” Tone reluctant, she shrugged her shoulders, still making child-like grabby hands at the drink he had confiscated.
“If you want the drink, tell me how old you actually are. If I even think you’re lying I drop the glass on the ground and tell your mother you’re scamming guests into buying you drinks.”
“I cannot tell you how much my mother wont care.”
“Rachel then.”
She blinked at that, swallowed, face losing a bit of its colour. In unison, they both turned to where the bride was still occupied with her husband on the dance floor. She looked stunning. White silk draped itself around her torso, her waist, her hips, flowing like water over her legs as she twirled around the room, her smile and laughter and joy reflected on the faces of all those who looked at her. Matt looked almost as good. His suit was perfectly fitted, clinging to the muscles Joe knew he had been working on in the gym since long before he gathered the courage to propose, the material dark and accented with a soft blue. Looking back at Abby, he saw a ghost of a smile on her face as she watched them, her sister’s laugh carrying through the air to where they secluded themselves in the corner. She shook her head, turned back to him and rolled her eyes, seemingly conceding to his own tactics.
“Fine, I’m 15.” Seeing the way he blinked, the way he still hesitated to pass the drink back, she hurriedly expanded upon her statement. “But I turn 16 in a few weeks! And mother really doesn't care if I get my hands on a drink or two, and you don’t look like a champagne man so it’ll just go to waste if you don’t give it back.”
Eyes wide and tone a bit desperate, carrying a whining twinge to it, it was suddenly so obvious to Joe that she was just a kid.
Still, he wasn’t her father, wasn’t her brother, and certainly didn’t wait until he was 21 to start drinking himself, so he just rolled his eyes and handed the glass back to her.
Joe had to admit, she was good for her age, but she was Rachel’s sister. She needed to be better if his friend was going to trust that she’d be safe when she inevitably joined Langley. “If you’re keeping information from someone, don’t ever want something more than you want to keep that information secret. If you do, don’t ever let them know what it is or they’ll use it against you.”
“Okay Gandalf.” Taking a swig from her glass, he would’ve thought her to be ignoring him based on her mocking tone and the roll of her eyes, but her body had tensed, leaning towards him again, eyes lit up with interest. He smirked, a bit smug about having her hanging onto his words.
“And if you do cave and answer their question, only answer their question. Don’t go around volunteering more information than what was specifically asked for, because they might not have known to ask about it.” Then, because he might not have been her brother but his best friend was, he gave her a bit of life advice as well. “You know if you’re 15, you shouldn’t be flirting with grown men at bars.”
“You’re barely older than me!”
“I’m 23 Abby.”
“Age is but a number, what’s 7 years difference really?”
He rolled his eyes at the fake whimsy in her voice, shook his head at her wide eyed gaze, smiled at the laughter in her eyes. Fairly certain she was kidding now, he pushed her stool back with his foot as she tried to lean further towards him, chuckling at the pout which adorned her face. “I see they don’t teach much math at that school of yours.”
“I told you, I’m basically 16.”
“You’re basically a fetus.” Confident enough now that she was only playing with him, he shot her a smirk, lowered his voice to an artificial leer. “Besides, your sister and brother-in-law would kill me.”
Laughing in delight at him playing her game, she threw her head back as he just shook his, both of them losing themselves for a moment.
Suddenly, he felt a burning heat on his back. Turning to its source, he caught both Matt and Rachel looking in their direction. Rachel was watching them discreetly in the reflection of the ballroom windows, eyes curious, while Matt was less covert with his narrowed gaze. Nodding at them, he turned his smile into something more reassuring, pleased with the way they both relaxed at the gesture, at the way they refocused on getting lost in one another.
He would’ve continued watching them, would’ve continued celebrating their union and the unparalleled joy they brought to each other, when Abby’s inquisitive tone broke through through his thoughts.
“So, which one of them are you in love with?”
What?
“What?”
“Look, I’m a pretty girl-”
“You’re a child.”
“-and I’m delightful company. Or at the very least, navigating a conversation with me tends to require a lot of attention, especially for cagey operatives trying to hold their cards close to their chests.” A near perfect imitation of his voice, his accent and its depth, left her mouth as he tried to figure out what the hell she was talking about. “But in the past 10 minutes your attention has drifted from me to the happy couple at least 8 times. Your face does this weird pinching thing whenever whenever you look at them, and just now you flinched ever so slightly when I said happy couple.”
He scoffed, shook his head, confused by the way his heart was hammering in his chest. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Joe had no idea what she was talking about.
Matt was his best friend, Matt was a guy, and Rachel was Matt’s wife. It was as simple as that.
“You don’t even know do you?” Something in his blood started boiling, something in his muscles clammed up with tension, something in him was seconds away from snapping when he recognised the look in her eyes as sympathetic. Recognised the smile on her face as something sad. Seeing his teeth grind together and his fists clench, she stripped the sympathy from her face, tone turning dismissive and defensive. “Whatever, I’m going to figure it out eventually.”
No. It wasn’t whatever. She was playing with him again. Manipulating him. She had to be.
“You’re fabricating observations to lull me into a state of insecurity, make me think you’re about to figure me out. It’s a common interrogation tactic to make subjects reveal things they wouldn’t otherwise.” Anger rippled through his body and his words, nearly growling at the girl as he began to lean up and over her, towering over where she sat. In fairness to her, she didn’t even flinch, just kept looking up at him in contemplation, her expression remarkably similar to her sister’s. “It’s a good try, but it’s not going to work because there’s no secret, nothing to reveal. Matt and Rachel are my friends, my best friends.”
“Hmmm.” Head cocked to the side, she blinked up at him innocently, nodding thoughtfully as she hummed. “When I figure out which one it is I’ll let you know, you seem like you’re in some pretty deep denial over there, wouldn’t want the realisation to come out of nowhere and shock the pretty out of you.”
Chest heaving, clenched hands shaking, he loomed over her in rage as her flirtatious tone returned. “Stop that! They’ll be no realisation, there’s nothing to realise. They’re like my family, my only family, and that’s it. I get that you’re a naive little kid who’s too young to get that yet, but-”
A suited arm wrapping around the girl’s shoulders and neck and pulling her back from him cut Joe off.
Matt’s face was unimpressed, eyebrows knitted together in confusion and eyes ablaze with protective concern. He tugged Abby into his side in a half hug, careful of her hair’s updo and the delicate fall of her dress, her head tilting back to shoot him a smile, clearly unaffected by Joe’s burst of rage. Taking a moment to scan the room, he felt relief fill him as he saw the white silk of the bride’s wedding dress on the other side of the grand hall, her back angled towards them and her ears far too far away to catch his angry tone. He needn’t have bothered looking, he was fairly sure if Rachel had caught him towering over and snarling at her little sister like that he’d have a bullet through his skull before he could gather the foresight to apologise.
“She’s not bothering you is she Joe? Careful, she’s prickly.” Though his tone was casual, his teasing words aimed towards Abby, Joe got the hint pretty quickly and moved back, took a deep breath to cool off. “First time I met her she pointed a gun in my face.”
Abby just grinned up at him, driving an elbow into his ribs. “I thought you were a burglar you asshole.”
“Ouch Abs, see what I mean man, prickly.” Another jab to his side had him laughing, loud and free and so Matt. “Think I can I steal her for spin round the dance floor Joe?”
“Oh look, two men making a woman’s decisions for her, that’s new.” Her words were mumbled under her breath, only the small smirk pulling at her lips giving away her lack of real annoyance. Looking back up at Matt, she raised her voice again. “You could just ask me you know.”
“My dearest apologies Lady Cameron, will you ever forgive me?” Bowing dramatically at her side, he reached for a manicured hand and pressed an exaggerated kiss to the back of it, grinning with pride when the girl giggled lightly at his antics. Straightening up as she swatted at him, the man shot him a wink. “Joe, the dance?”
“As long as it’s a Vietnamese Waltz.”
“A what now?”
Abby laughed at him, accepting Joe’s apologetic smile with a shrug and a smile of her own. Downing the rest of her drink, she jumped up from her stool and took Matt by the hand, dragging him towards the heavily populated dance floor. “C’mon Farm boy, time for your Culture and Assimilation lesson.”
“My what?”
“Just come. I’ll see you around Joseph Solomon, thanks for the drink.”
The grin she shot him was wide and blinding, the wink that accompanied it as cheeky as they came. He could only huff out a breath of laughter, caught off guard and disarmed from the entire interaction. Unsure where his brief burst of anger had stemmed from, why it burned through him so intensely, he tried to dispel the girl’s words from his memory.
It was all nonsense anyway.
Shaking his head to clear his mind, he finished off his drink and followed them across the room, continuing with his walk when they paused for Abby to adjust Matt’s grip on her waist, making his way towards Rachel.
Suddenly, he found he would quite like a dance with her.
Joe: Wtf are you talking about no I’m not. Stfu.
16 years later
Joe: So about that…
Maybe he had a thing for Matt as well, or even instead at the time, or maybe it was always Rachel, that’s up for your interpretation. Abby simply didn’t want to make assumptions.
“Joseph Solomon as I live and breathe.” The sound of his name almost made Joe jump. Almost. Instead, recognising the voice as one belonging to an old friend, he calmly turned to face them. “What a coincidence.”
The voice belonged to a woman he knew from a lifetime ago, a woman he knew when he was just an arrogant ill-informed boy obsessed with seeking out a purpose in this life. She was younger than him, newer to the organisation they both tried to forge a home in, but she was always smarter than him, more dedicated to their cause. Joe had drifted away from that cause now, a purpose and a home and a family being handed to him all in one by a man who still stuck around after seeing the absolute worse in him. Once upon a time he thought that this woman could offer that for him, thought that maybe he could grant it to her, but as time passed she grew colder as he grew more disillusioned, the two of them becoming versions of themselves who had to drift further away from each other in order to survive. Still, in his loneliest moments he misses the girl he once knew, the future he once imagined building with her.
“Nothing’s a coincidence with you Catherine.”
She looked different. Her face was older than it had been, more weathered by time and stress and pain. Hair darker, no longer a bright ginger but instead a fiery maroon, it still fell in tight curls around her unblemished face. Jaw tight and muscles weary, she now carried herself like a woman in peril rather than a girl on the cusp of freedom. What little innocence used to shine in her features had fizzled out, the darkness radiating from her now seeping from her eyes and tarnishing the air around her. She was as stunning as she had been nearly a decade ago, when Joe could hardly go a day seeing her without slamming her into a wall and ripping her clothes off.
Joe was older now, different, and so was she.
They walked out of the mall side by side, Joe holding tight to the bag housing the candles he had just bought Rachel for Christmas, Catherine with empty hands and an energetic bounce to her step. Shooting him a coy smile at his words, she linked one of her arms through his, tugging him away from where his bike was parked and towards the nearest bus stop.
“They look fancy,” She nodded towards the bag in his hand, a teasing grin dancing across her features as she jostled his arm, “Got yourself a new girlfriend to spoil?”
He was quick with his reply. “She’s just a friend.” Not wanting to ruminate on why the words elicited a sharp pang in his chest, not wanting to discuss Rachel with this woman, not wanting to muddle his two lives more than they already have been, he quickly changed the subject. “Gonna tell me where we’re headed?”
“Hmm denial denial denial Joey!” Her words were a song, dancing across her tongue with a wicked laugh. Still, she shook her head and uncharacteristically accepted the change in topic. “You’re just going to have to trust me today Joe, think you can do that?”
No. Probably not.
Joe didn’t trust easy. It was an essential skill to his survival in the world of espionage, knowing when to trust someone, knowing when not to, and most importantly knowing that the latter is far more common than the former. In his career as an operative, he has learned to trust very few people. Matt, whose earnest support and unparalleled good heart had generated a loyal bond between the two of them that Joe knew nothing could break. Rachel, whose refreshingly brutal honesty and unfailing reliability made her his go to agent when he needed an experienced partner on a case or a friend to vent to. Abby, maybe, who was new to the agency but certainly not the industry, who dove headfirst into assignments reluctantly supervised by him, who took care to go back for Joe after an extraction went wrong when any other new recruit would’ve high-tailed it home at the first sign of trouble. Honestly, the list ended there.
Once upon a time, maybe he could’ve trusted Catherine. Could’ve trusted that even when her words were thick and sweet with lies, that at least her intentions matched up with his. That wasn’t true anymore, although perhaps that was his fault. Perhaps he was the only one of them that changed.
It was only a moment, so brief he barley saw it, wouldn’t have recognised it for what it was if a thousand years ago he hadn’t known her like he knows his own skin, but a flicker of hurt danced across her eyes at his hesitance. He averted his gaze from her’s as a bus approached them, something like grief tugging at his gut as they both began to realise that the friendship they cultivated over a decade ago had not survived the test of time.
“I need your help with something, that’s all.”
“Very vague.”
“It’s not work related.” That was a surprise. If it wasn’t work related, then it had something to do with her personal life, and as far as Joe was aware she hadn’t kept one of those since him. “Are you coming or not?”
She had already stepped onto the bus, half turned towards him with a cocked hip. One hand was held out to him, and she wiggled her fingers invitingly, a smirk spreading across her face. For a moment, she reminded him of the adventurous girl he once knew. For a briefer moment, she reminded him of the pair of sisters he knew now, her playful flirtations reminiscent of Abby while her assured confidence bore a slight resemblance to Rachel. It reminded him that they all went to the same school, would’ve been taught by the same people, had the same introduction to the world of espionage as one another. Then an impatient flicker of impatient anger danced across her features, face contorting into a tense glare as he continued to stall, and he knew that this woman was nothing like Matt’s girls, was potentially nothing like the Catherine he once knew. He wondered what had changed in the last few years to make that true.
It was his curiosity more than anything else that led him to take her hand and follow her onto the bus, humouring her as she entangled their fingers together and lay her head on his shoulder when they took a seat. She giggled into his neck, lips pressed gently to his skin. It was a humbling moment when he realised he didn’t know if she was acting this way as part of a cover, to get on his nerves, or to genuinely flirt with him. For Rachel it would only ever be the former and Abby never truly flirted with him except to tease, but with this new version of Catherine he wasn’t sure.
Somewhere along the way, he started to understand the Cameron sisters, the family Matt found for him, far better than the family he tried to make himself in The Circle.
They stayed silent for their first bus journey, and for their second. Not a word was uttered between them as they took a taxi to the waterfront of a seemingly deserted lake. Even as she slowly rowed them out to a small island hidden behind the tree line, they did not speak.
No one knew where they were, who he was with. If she wanted to dispose of him, to kill him, she could do so easily without anyone being the wiser for it. Matt would never know what happened to him. Had the situation been reversed, Joe would’ve called Matt a simpering fool.
One hand clasped tight around the handle of the bag, the other gently resting on the grip of his concealed gun, he followed her into a small house hidden around the base of a small hill. Cold crept into his bones, the old walls carrying a chill with them that wouldn’t leave him. A dark gloom followed them as they made their way upstairs, the howling of the wind outside drowning out the wails of the old pipes. He shivered. The oppressive dark and cold reminded him of his childhood homes, the foster parents who wouldn’t spring for heating or furniture or Christmas decorations for the kids in their care. It reminded him of Blackthorn, of its stone walls and echoing halls. Of damp clinging to his clothes and loneliness sticking to his skin. It reminded him of the apartment he stayed in before moving in with Matt, bare except the essentials and stripped of any love whatsoever. His body tensed. He didn’t like it here.
Catherine escorted him through a rotting door, a sloppy Z carved into the old wood, and what he saw on the other side made his breath catch.
Curled up on a small bed was a young boy. Damp dark curls were plastered to his forehead, skin dripping in sweat. He was pale, with cheeks flushed red from a fever, and he was gaunt, eyes and cheekbones protruding from his face. Shivers wreaked through his little frame, dark eyes looking up at him helplessly. Joe hadn’t met many young children, they freaked him out if he was honest, but he had seen plenty of pictures of Matt and Rachel’s little girl, enough to know that this wasn’t what a healthy child looked like.
Still, there was a more pressing question on his mind, a more urgent concern than the welfare of the boy who looked remarkably like Catherine. “Umm. How old is he?”
“For fuck’s sake you’re fine. He’s not even six yet.” She rolled her eyes at him, moving to sit next to the boy and run a hand through his damp hair. Joe breathed a subtle sigh of relief, it had been more than eight years since he had even seen the woman, let alone anything else, the kid couldn’t be his. “Zachy, this is Mommy’s friend Joe, say hi.”
The child, Zach, he presumed, whispered a small greeting at him before his chest erupted in coughs. Catherine ran her hand down her son’s back soothingly, humming some old tune that he didn’t recognise. She was biting her lip. She looked nervous. Joe didn’t know she could look like that.
“Is he… okay?” His obsolete question was met by another round of coughing from the child and a glare from the woman perched beside him.
Catherine’s tone was sharp as she snapped at him, dark eyes piercing through him. “Clearly not, he’s sick.” Swallowing against a lump in her throat, her voice dropped to a reluctant pleading whisper, features wide in the dark bedroom. “I need you to help him.”
“I- I’m not a doctor Cat.”
“Don’t call me that!” Tone enraged now, he felt fire burning through his skull from the heat of her glare. Her breathing was heavy as he mumbled an apology, nostrils flaring as she collected herself enough to command him. “I need you to take him to one.”
“Why can’t you-”
“I can’t go to a doctor’s office or a hospital Joe, the CIA would be onto me the second I walked through the door.” Joe tried to imagine Rachel refusing to take her daughter to the doctors out of concern for her own safety, tried to imagine her ever putting herself before the little girl. He came up short. “I had him here, on the sofa downstairs with a mute Hungarian midwife helping me.” He made a note to himself not to sit on that sofa, to ask Matt to look into any Hungarian missing people for a midwife who disappeared six or so years ago. “He’s never seen a doctor, never needed any medical care that I couldn’t give him. But this- I- I’ve tried but… I can’t fix him.” Confusion and cold shock bled through his veins for a moment, the raw emotion in her eyes and the crack in her voice catching him completely off guard. Catherine had developed a fondness for him during their friendship, but he had never seen the woman look as she did now. Scared. Desperate. Pleading. The face of someone with someone to lose, someone they love.
“Can’t his father-”
“His father is a useless arrogant bastard who’s going nowhere near my boy.” Once again, Joe couldn’t tell if the wide eyed look she gave him, the slight pout, the tremble of her lips, was real or a manipulation. He could never be certain with her. “Please Joe. I need you.”
He looked away from her, thinking that it would be much easier to say no if he wasn’t staring at the shell of a woman he once thought he could love. Big mistake. Instead, he caught the eye of the small boy shivering in his bed, a carbon copy of his mother’s wide eyes looking up at him from beneath a mountain of blankets. Joe remembered being nearly this young, plagued by sickness over the Christmas period, his foster mother at the time largely unconcerned and preoccupied with the others in her care. He remembered how scared he felt, how alone. Again, his thoughts drifted to the Morgan family, imagined the reactions of his best friends if he turned away from this child now.
He sighed, sometimes he thinks he should’ve ran away from Matthew Morgan and his good heart the first chance he got. Other times he thinks maybe that good heart saved him, gave him something other than greed and ambition and selfishness to live for.
He wasn’t sure which time this was.
“Okay, I’ll take him.’
Catherine threw herself into his arms as soon as he started nodding in assent, breathed a thank you into his neck, pressed a cold kiss to the stubble on his cheek. Over her shoulder, he saw Zach give him a small, tearful smile and felt something skip in his chest.
Calling this a friendship thing rather than romantic, but I’m thinking they had a brief moment of something more when they were both young, long before any of the kids existed. If, when reading the pieces with Catherine in, she comes across very different in each, that was intentional. Both to represent how different people see her, and to show how she may have progressively deteriorated throughout her + Zach’s life.
Hope everyone has a good Christmas if you celebrate, and just a good day if you don’t, hopefully the next one will be done on Boxing Day!
Edward was nursing a glass of whiskey at the counter, one eye counting the security cameras and their blind spots in the reflection of the glasses, the other on the the hotel bar’s entrance, when he caught a glimpse of fire red hair and felt his heart stop in his chest.
It had been a stressful day already. With MI6 receiving intel from Langley earlier in the week about Joseph Solomon’s association with The Circle of Cavan, he had spent the morning on the phone with the American agency reassuring them of Abigail’s loyalties. He had been furious when he heard they were keeping her for questioning, had immediately gotten in contact to remind them of all the assignments working against The Circle that Abby had been essential in, that Abby had risked her life in. Once he had convinced the morons of her lack of involvement, he had gotten into contact with Abe Baxter to ensure he updated Cameron Morgan’s security detail. With her Mother still detained in the States, and her aunt delayed by her insistence on talking to her sister, MI6 had been left in charge of the teenager’s safety. Edward wasn’t going to let anything happen to that girl on their watch.
Not Abby’s niece.
Now that darkness had fallen over the city, Edward was casing out potential sites where Solomon could be hiding. The Baxters had been concerned that he may try make contact with Cammie while she was in London, while she was outside the confinement’s of her school, and so Edward had worked through what his plan might be, how he may intercept the traitor before he got his hands on the girl. The most direct route from DC to London would be via Heathrow airport, so if the man was half as good an operative as his former friends claimed then he would fly via a diversion into Gatwick or Stansted instead. Working against a clock, the man would want to move quickly, so Edward reckoned he would fly to the former, its direct transport links to Victoria station giving him rapid access to the centre of the city. From there his movements would be anyone’s guess. Perhaps he would follow an operative’s typical handbook, hide out in an inconspicuous motel and move under the cover of night. Or perhaps he would do the opposite, knowing that they would expect discretion from him, and disguise himself as a wealthy socialite making his way through London’s Christmas festivities. That’s why Edward had made his way to The Clermont that evening, would make his way to The Savoy shortly, to determine if Solomon had dared show his face amongst the upper class establishments of the city.
It was there that the glinting red hair caught his eye.
All his muscles seized up under his suit. Teeth grinding together behind a tense jaw, fists clenching under the bar, heart pounding in his chest, he subtly eyed the doorway where the red hair had come from. Pulse racing, he reflected on the last time he saw the woman in person, the beating of the sun overhead, the explosion that rippled through the Argentinian building, the way his throat clogged with fear as he threw himself towards a crumpled body on the ground.
He took a deep breath, filling his empty lungs with something other than dread. Head angled over his left shoulder, he scanned the room for her but came up empty.
It was late, he was tired, he was imagining things. Exhausted from the day’s, the week’s, the month’s activity, his mind was conjuring up the worst possible scenario and taunting him with it.
What if Catherine Goode had found out where Cameron Morgan was spending her Christmas break? What if she had broken through every security measure they had in place to protect the girl and managed to get within a few miles of her location? What if she was here to finish the job she started in Boston, in DC?
What if he was going to have to face her?
Edward was just beginning to relax when he heard a maniacal giggle in his right ear.
“Hello again Eddie.”
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. His blood flushed with boiling rage. Shivers wrecked through his body as he trembled with tension. He was about to slip off his stool, grab her by her fire red hair and slam her skull against the counter when he felt the unmistakable jab of the barrel of a gun poking into his spine.
“Ah ah ah.” Singsong voice dancing into his ear, she settled a hand on his shoulder, her fingers burning through his suit jacket and scalding the skin underneath. “Not so fast Townsend darling, I need to talk to you.” She pressed her body up against his back, hot breath tickling the hairs around his ear. Swallowing hard, he tried to relax his tense muscles, tried to breathe through the block of rage crushing his chest, tried to stop his hands from wrapping around her throat in this very public environment. Slowly, she pressed her lips to the side of his head, to the shell of his ear, whispered dangerously to him. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
The muzzle still firm against his back, he signalled to the bartender, slipped him a twenty in return for the two double whiskeys, told him to keep the change.
Her hand lifted from his shoulder, reaching across his body, scratching her red nails along the base of his neck, taking one glass from the counter and pouring its contents down her throat in a generous gulp. Edward took a modest sip himself. He needed to keep his wits about him.
The gun against his spine traced a picture of a heart along his back and shifted to the side, now pressing tight against his hip. Catherine perched herself on the stool beside him, hooking her ankle around his own sear and spinning him to face her. Grinning at him, she took another sip of her drink, happy to let the silence linger between them for a moment. Schooling his face into a blank stare, he took her in. Blindingly red hair fell in curled ringlets around her pale face, dark eyes sucking the light out of the room around her. Her lips were painted a deep burgundy, eyelids dusted in a silver glimmer that matched the thin chain dangling around her throat. The chain was unfamiliar, but the amethyst pendant was one that a fool he once knew had bought her a lifetime ago. Purple gems dipped past the hollow in her throat, past the bridge of her sternum, hanging deep in the cleavage of her low cut gown. She looked stunning.
God he hated her.
Pulling her lips away from the glass, she set it down on the hotel bar bench and set her elbow down, head resting on her hand as she leant in close enough to choke him with her perfume. “Where’s the girl Eddie?”
He didn’t even flinch. “Where’s Solomon?”
The smile that previously danced across her face dropped, mood switching from manic to enraged in a split second. A glare settled across her expression. “Where,” the gun in his side repositioned itself to sit in-between his ribs, “is the girl?”
“You’re a smart psychopath Catherine, surely you know that no matter how many bullets you put in me I’m never going to give you her location.”
“Hmm I suppose not.” Voice distant, breathy, she sighed in mock disappointment. Gulping down the rest of her drink, she stood from her brief perch on the barstool and removed the gun from his side. Her hips swayed as she began walking away, her words a gleeful song which she sang over her shoulder. “Maybe I’ll have to put them in your girlfriend instead.”
His blood boiled over.
Unable to force any air into his lungs, his brain was suddenly overwhelmed by the image of Abby collapsed on the ground in Buenos Aires, slashes carved into her body from a delicate dagger and a bullet lodged in her hip. By the image of her bleeding out from a gunshot wound in Washington a thousand miles away from him. By the image of Catherine standing over her with a gun, relentless in her glee as she pulled the trigger over and over and-
Storming out of his seat, he followed her purposeful strides to a dark hallway next to the bar, snatched her wrist out of the air and squeezing tight until she dropped the gun. He pulled her body towards his, looming over her as his chest heaved and his body trembled, overcome with anger.
Her eyes scanned up and down his frame, tongue teasing at her lips.“My my, that did get your attention.”
Enraged, he threw her up against the wall and pressed his arm against the hollow of her throat, squeezing tight until he could feel her pulse stagger beneath his arm. She didn’t even struggle. Didn’t put up a fight. Just painted a large grin across her face and giggled breathlessly as he growled at her. “Shut your mouth.”
“How is your precious Abigail? I heard she had a little meeting last month with my friend.” He pressed his arm tighter against her throat, enjoying the way the colour dripped from her face. Deprived of air, her words were raspy as they peeled out of her mouth. “You two are so cute together you know. If you guys ever want some company-” A pained gasp for air cut her off, Edward’s arm impossibly tight against her neck.
In that moment, he truly thought he was going to kill her.
Then he felt a cool knife press against his groin and weakened his grip ever so slightly. Oxygen rushed into her brain with a delighted giggle, the pressure of the blade on his femoral artery lessening a tad. She grinned at him, pleased with the little game she had derived.
Something in his eyes must have given away his intent. “You’re a smart boy Townsend, surely you know that you’ll bleed out long before you manage to kill me.”
He hated her.
“What are you doing here Catherine? What do you want?”
They must’ve made an interesting picture. His chest heaving, face painted in a glare, looming over her with his forearm against her neck. Her body pressed close to his, lips stretched in a wicked smile, hand poised between his hip and his thigh. She hummed, vibrations in her throat rippling along the hairs on his arm.
“You’ve been offered Joe Solomon’s position at The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women.” It was a fact, not a question. Somehow Catherine knew about the job offer he had received a mere two days ago even though he had yet to mention it to anyone. “What I want, is for you to take it.”
“Why would I take the job if that’s exactly what you want me to do?”
“Because you’re obsessed with me.” She morphed her face into something familiar from almost two decades ago. Dainty smile and fluttering eyelashes, a trustworthy face, he once thought. Unimpressed with his lack of a reaction, she rolled her eyes at him, ran her free hand up his chest. “Because we both want the same thing.” He blinked at her. “We both want Joe Solomon found.”
He blinked again. Surprised. “You don’t know where he is.”
“Him or the girl, though I imagine they’re both nearby or you wouldn’t be here.”
“What do you want with Solomon?” The man was on her side, whatever she wanted from him surely she didn’t need Edward’s help to get it.
“Just a little chat. Don’t you worry Eddie, I’ll give him back once I’m done with him”
“When I get Joe Solomon you won’t be getting anywhere near him.”
Her hand rose from his chest to caress his jaw. “You’re so cute when you’re wrong.” There was that face again, eyelids batting at him.
“What do you want with Solomon?”
“You’re going to take the job, because it’s your best shot at catching him.” She ignored his question the second time he asked it, instead bringing the topic of conversation back round to his job offer. Smirk pulling at her lips, she dropped her voice to a deep drawl, a poor imitation of his accent and the words he once spoke to her a lifetime ago. “To track a fox, you start at its den.”
“I can track a fox without resorting to teaching children how to chase their own tails.”
She laughed freely at that, no doubt delighted by his dismissal of her former school. Hand wrapping around his collar, she pulled him in close, pressed her lips against his ear in a breathy whisper. “What makes you so sure?”
“I’ve caught you haven’t I?” He leaned away from her, forearm still firm against her throat.
Another laugh, louder this time. Eyes alight with wicked glee she pulled him back again, their mouths nearly touching as she grinned in amazed amusement. “What makes you think that?”Scoffing, he looked pointedly at the restraint she found herself pinned below, her eyes following his. “Oh, that.” Gaze flickering back to his, she tilted her head to the side as she smiled knowingly at him. “You’re going to let me go.”
A bigger fool of a man would’ve laughed in her face. As it was, he was well versed in the insanity of Catherine Goode, was even more experienced in the manipulations of Gallagher graduates and how they always seemed to be at least three steps ahead of him. Instead of amusing him, her words made him uneasy. Her confidence unnerved him. Her smile set his teeth on edge.
“Why would I do that?”
“Are you sure you want to know Eddie?”
No.
“Why would I do that?”
Smile widening, thrilled that he was still playing her game, she shifted her head ever so slightly to the side, nodding at whoever had caught her eye in the hotel bar. “You see that girl over there?” His gaze flickered briefly to the side, mind just about registering the young blonde who lingered at who he assumed to be her father’s side. Hair pulled back in two braids, her head reached no higher than the man’s waist. She wore a patterned Christmas dress and carried a little black handbag on her shoulder. Edward guessed she was about eight years old. “There’s a grenade in her bag set to explode in 60 seconds.”
He looked back at her in horror.
The smile had slipped off her mouth, a serious blankness taking over the expression on her face, but a knowing glint of amusement still lingered in her eyes. She removed the knife from his groin. “To track a fox, you start at its den Townsend.” Paralysed by shock, he didn’t even react as she pulled his arm away from her neck, pushed herself onto her toes and pressed a poisoned kiss to the corner of his mouth. “30 seconds.”
Tearing himself away from her, he turned and crossed the bar in a matter of strides, lunging towards the little girl as she tugged on her father’s jacket. Ignoring the shouts of protest from around him, he ripped the bag off her shoulder and fell to his knees beside her, frantically searching through the bag for a ticking time bomb.
Lipgloss. Butterfly hair clips. A hairbrush. Mittens. A chocolate coin.
He turned the bag upside down onto the ground as a hand clamped around the back of his collar, yanking him to his feet and throwing him towards the counter.
There was nothing there.
“What the fuck man?” The girl’s father slammed his hands against Edwards chest, pushing him back into the stools where she had first appeared to ruin his day.
“Sorry.” He croaked out an apology to the man who furiously glared at him, stumbled backward as he cut his gaze to the sniffling little girl who had buried her face in her mother’s dress. “I’m sorry I-” He shook his head. Breathless, heart in his throat, he turned away.
Ignoring the enraged shouts from behind him, he staggered back to the dark hallway where he left her. 16 years ago he thought he loved her. He thought the earth spun and the sun set and the stars shone according to her will.
He worshipped her.
And then he met her. The real her.
Her betrayal, her theft of the secrets he kept locked up in his flat, her unveiling of her true loyalties, had left him a laughing stock in Six, had left him furious at and distrustful of the world around him. She ruined him.
He had been hunting her ever since. Following her across countries and continents, across different agencies and organisations, always half a step too far behind to bring her in. To make her pay for her betrayals, her crimes. Until this day, perhaps the closest he came to her was in Buenos Aires and it wasn’t even by his own design. She had already killed Matthew Morgan by that point, had nearly killed Abby when he failed to get his hands on her, and now she’s targeted young Cameron Morgan. She will stop at nothing until she gets what she wants from her. Unless Edward can stop her. Unless he can finally neutralise her.
The hallway was empty. She had slipped through his fingers again. He fell for her words, her lies, her manipulations again. Anything she did from here on out was on him.
The small voice of her son interrupted Catherine’s workout, the nervous lilt of it distracting her from her right hook, fist gliding lifelessly off the edge of the sandbag. Chest heaving and knuckles burning, she turned away from the improvised punching bag, swiftly removing the picture of Richardson she had pinned to it before her son saw and ratted her out next time her handler stopped by.
Misogynistic bastard deserved far worse.
“What is it Zach?” Flinching at her sharp tone, the boy fumbled with his words. Ever since he was a small boy, Zach had struggled to say what he was thinking without stumbling over his consonants. Catherine had tried to teach him otherwise, tried to fix him before people started thinking he was soft, but the boy was either stubborn or slow. Both traits he would’ve got from his father.“Spit it out, I’m busy!”
She watched as he collected himself, fidgeting fingers loosening their grip on his pants and clenching behind his back instead. His back straightened, feet ceasing their anxious shuffling as he filled his lungs with a deep, calming breath. Throat bobbing as he swallowed, he gritted his teeth and held his head high like she taught him.
If you want them to respect you Zach, you have to look confident, like you respect yourself.
“I was wondering if we could go into town later? To get a Christmas tree?” Were it not for the way his voice pitched in a questioning tone, he almost sounded firm. Strong. Although he was still a few years away from manhood, his voice had already started to deepen, legs stretching in newly found height, shoulders beginning to broaden into the whispers of a lean build. Still though, his nervousness betrayed him in the way his eyes flitted around the shed, in the way his voice cracked on the word Christmas.
“A Christmas tree.” It wasn’t a question. Catherine learned early on in motherhood, early on in life, that if she wanted answers she had to demand them, not ask for them.
“Yeah.” Something like light crept into the boy’s eyes, his misjudgment of his mother’s tone igniting something like hope in his chest. “Jonas said, he’s one of my roommates at school, he said that his family go out and get a new tree every year.” Excitement had clearly spread like a contagion through his body, quickening his words and stretching his face into a grin. Catherine sighed under her breath, disappointment burning in her. One day, she was going to take over operations for The Circle, was going to have control over every major clandestine service in the western world, and Zach was supposed to follow in her footsteps. If that was ever going to happen he needed to learn to control himself, to control his hopes and his disappointments and his emotions. She had expected him to make progress in that at Blackthorn, but clearly he hadn’t. “They put it in their sitting room and decorate it as a family! Jonas puts his little sister on his shoulders so she can put the star on top, and then on Christmas morning all the presents go underneath it.”
“Yes Zach, I understand the concept of a Christmas tree.” His face and shoulders and mood dropped at her uninterested tone. “Why are you bothering me about one?”
“I just thought, well,” False confidence and squashed enthusiasm leaving him, Zach looked back at his feet as he chewed on his lip. “I thought maybe it would be fun if we did that. Together?”
If Catherine were a different woman, warmer, softer, weaker, she might have melted at the wary hope brimming in her son’s eyes. She might have carted her hand through his hair, wrapped her arms around him and pulled him to her chest, pressed a kiss to his temple and agreed to his request in a heartbeat. But she was who she was. She was who her father and her life had made her.
Hardened. Cold. Tough.
You have to be made of stone to break through glass ceiling Cat. If you melt at every poor little girl and sad little boy you’ll never rise beyond the ground beneath your feet.
For a man full of life lessons about how to push your way to the top, her father died a nobody, leaving her with nothing but a place at a school that didn’t want her. Everything she’s gained since then, every drop of power and influence and credibility, she fought for with her own blood and sweat. Never tears. Her father taught her better than that.
Shaking her head, she began escorting the boy out of the shed. “I have work to do Zach, and so do you.” Months ago, Catherine had gotten a lead on the members of the Inner Circle, the agents she’d need to unseat somehow if she wanted to oversee the organisation’s entire operation. Said lead was still keeping his mouth shut in her cabin in the Alps, and she wanted to figure out a way to get him talking before the new year passed and he froze to death. “Your headmaster told me your marksmanship needs work.”
A flush spread up his neck, tinging his Adam’s apple and his cheeks and the tips of his ears red. Most parents would hope it was a flush of embarrassment, a sign of bashfulness in their child rather than the appearance of anger. Not Catherine. She was pleased to see her son’s fists clenching in rage rather than nerves, his muscles tensing in frustration rather than anxiety, eye’s flashing in fury rather than welling with tears.
Anger could become strength if it was handled the right way, could become power. She’d rather her son was angry and strong than anything else and weak. Weak like her father. Weak like his.
“I don’t want to work on my marksmanship! I hate shooting, and I hate that school, and-”
“Zachary Joseph Goode!” Just because Catherine wanted her son to have fire, doesn't mean she would tolerate it being directed at her.
Immediately, he clamped his mouth shut. Unsure if he was shaking through fear or anger with the way he was facing the floor, Catherine grasped his chin in her hand and tilted it up to face her. Teeth clenched and nostrils flared, her own eyes glared back at her with whimpering fury.
Her voice dropped to a growl. “You will work on your marksmanship if you want your present this Christmas, and-”
“Maybe I don’t want-”
“Don’t interrupt me Darling.” Unbidden, a wide smile stretched across her face as her hand tightened around his jaw, nails digging into his skin. She laughed giddily. Perhaps The Blackthorn Institute had taught her son something about fire after all. “You will work on your marksmanship because I say so. You will be returning to Blackthorn in January because I say so. You will continue to attend until you graduate and come work for me because I say so!”
Her father had been a fool, had spent Catherine’s life teaching her how to be strong, to be successful, to bend the world to her will and make it her own, but had failed to follow his own advice. He had crumbled under the weight of owning a business, had fallen into drink and women and misadventure. Had destroyed everything he tried to forge and never rose up beyond what was handed to him. Zach’s father was weak. He had succumbed to Catherine’s words and manipulations without protest, falling into her bed as willingly as she fell into his locked safes. Even when he knew who she was, what she had done, he continuously failed to bring her in. He was pathetic.
Her son wouldn’t be like either of them.
He would be like her. Intelligent, strong, uncompromising. He would inherit the kingdom she had carved out of blood and bone for herself, would wear the crown she wove out of their enemies skulls, would command their followers with an iron fist and a steel jaw.
Even if he didn’t like it.
For now, if he didn’t like it, she could at least convince him to do as she says by using a man he did want to emulate.
“Joe went to Blackthorn Darling. Don’t you want to be like Joe Zachy?”
Though he wasn’t quite the same man Catherine met when she first joined The Circle of Cavan, hard as steel and cold as flint, Joseph Solomon was still a decent role model for Zach to mould himself after as he grew. Joe was loyal, and he was tough. He followed orders well and he dished them out even better. Marksmanship unparalleled, hand-to-hand capabilities admirable, and intelligent enough to maintain his cover within the CIA several years after her own was blown, Joe was one of The Circle’s best. The man wasn’t as sympathetic as he used to be to Catherine’s cause, and she didn’t trust him with intel the way she used to, his affiliation with the man who threatened to bring their organisation down turning her blood cold, but he always had a soft spot for Zach, and Zach for him.
Contemplation rippled across his face. “I guess,” he mumbled, giving her a reluctant nod.
“Good boy.” Releasing her grip on his chin and instead stroking her hand down his cheek, she gave him a smile, trying to make something that looked like pride shine through her eyes. Children were more malleable to adults they sought approval from, were more likely to seek approval when they got some sparingly.
She walked him further away from the shed she was using as a gym, ignoring his mutterings about his roommates and how they spend their Christmases, sighing to herself when she realised they would have to have another talk.
There’s no such thing as friends in life Zach. There’s only the people below you trying to take you down, the people above you trying to keep their place in the pecking order, and the fools who don’t understand the fight they’re in.
She’d save it for another day, right now she needed to butter him up a bit. Making him strong would mean nothing if she couldn’t keep him loyal.
“Look, there’s a tree over there.” Hand clasped around the back of her son’s neck, she angled his head towards a tall tree looming over the rest on the outskirts of the little island. “Why don’t you decorate that and when the time comes you can open your present under it.”
Head held still by her hand, he darted his eyes to the ground, shuffling his feet as he nervously mumbled. “It’s not a Christmas tree.”
“It’s a tall evergreen at Christmas time, use your imagination.” Catherine didn’t understand where her son’s sudden materialism had come from. She had certainly never had a Christmas tree growing up, never even celebrated the holiday. Her father had always criticised the day, called it a lazy man’s excuse for a day off.
If we took a holiday every time a woman had a baby in a barn, or a fat man snuck into a child’s bedroom, we’d never get anywhere in life Cat.
She supposed he must get it from his father, he was a man never satisfied with what he had if ever she met one.
“Now go on, leave me alone for a bit. I’ll see you at dinner.” She ruffled his hair and gave him a light shove to the middle of his back, pushing him in the direction of their little house. He stumbled a bit as he went, turning back to face her and giving her a look that, despite all her years of training, all her years as a mother, she couldn’t quite decipher. “Love you Zach.”
Did she?
Her entire life had consisted of lies, those she told others, lies they told her, lies she told herself. Somewhere along the way she had lost track of what words and feelings were real, and what were things she made up to get others on her side. When you tell a lie often enough, sometimes even you start to believe it. Now Catherine couldn’t remember if she really loved her son, if her body filled with warmth when the midwives laid him in her arms, if her heart sang at the sound of his name, if losing him would crush her for reasons other than the loss of their future empire, or if that was all a fabrication she wove in order to tie him better to her.
So busy trying to remember, she didn’t notice when Zach didn’t say anything in return, turning away from her and walking back to the house in silence.
Is Zach a weapon or a son or both? Don’t ask Catherine, she doesn't know.
I think the question of “Does Catherine love Zach?” is so much more complicated than yes or no, because when he was young she loved how he loved her, she loves the idea of him, and she loves what he could do for her, but she doesn’t love how he became someone different than she designed in her head, something she couldn’t control anymore. Don’t know how well that’s been expressed here but that’s basically the vibe.
Shout out to @bryn-not-brynn again for the Zach+Catherine request. Back home from uni now so hoping to get back to regular updates for at least the next few days!
