finally see what it means to be living (2,827 words)
Read here on AO3
Summary:
“She’s seventeen, Abby. She’s a child, and she’s out there all alone and god, she’s brilliant and all the best parts of Matthew, but she’s my child. I can’t—I can’t lose her. Or him. Or them, not after Matthew, Abby. I don’t think I can live if something happens to either of them,” Six weeks into Cammie Morgan's disappearance, desperation is hitting Rachel as more dead ends begin to appear. Abby comes in with some sisterly love and words of wisdom. Canon compliant. Emotional hurt/comfort.
The two Cameron sisters had chosen a small, run-down cabin in Zizers, Switzerland, to meet for their check-in. It was a small, discreet little town nestled in the mountains of eastern Switzerland, just big enough for a Starbucks, but small enough that the hordes of summer tourists hadn’t discovered it yet.
When Abby walked in, the scent of Folgers’ instant coffee and burnt chicken hit her nose almost instantly, and she had to actively stop herself from cringing at the woman hunched over the stove, various pots and pans on the burners, and an old radio playing 90s songs quietly beside her.
“Rachel?”
What had once been Rachel Morgan turned to her, and Abby really got to take in the toll the last few months had taken on her sister. There were dark circles under her eyes, gaunt hollowing around the sockets, and she had lost at least 15 pounds. The signature shiny dark brown Cameron hair the two shared, looked dull and unkempt, tied up in a loose ponytail.
“Abby,” breathed Rachel, and for a second, the two of them were little girls again — Rachel running to hug her after a semester at the Gallagher Academy while Abby stayed home with their parents. Abby’s arms went around her sister’s, and she squeezed tightly, her chin resting on Rachel’s shoulder.
She could feel Rachel’s shoulder blades through her thin cotton sweater—one that looked suspiciously like her daughter’s. She pulled back, looking into her sister’s eyes, trying to read anything in her expression beyond the despair and pain she’d been hearing over phone lines and dead drops as the two sisters split across the planet looking for Cameron Morgan.
“Please let me take over cooking, Rach. I kind of want something edible after the last 24 hours I’ve had.” Abby tried to tease, but the joke didn’t land as well as it should have. Abby moved around Rachel into the small kitchen, taking stock.
The cabinets were mostly bare (typical for a safe house, though), but they included the usual stuff Rachel could cook—two boxes of pasta, a can of soup, some crackers, and tuna (ew). Abby searched until she found a pot that wasn’t disgustingly burnt and filled it with water, winced a little as she took a step that hurt, and clicked the burner to life.
Rachel may have been a shell of a grieving woman, but she was still one of the best spies in the world, and someone who knew Abigail Cameron very, very well. Her eyes moved sharply to Abby, then to her left foot, as Abby took a seat across from her on the small wooden table.
“What happened?”
“A fire escape, a rogue policeman, Casablanca,” she waved a hand, hiding her wince as best she could. “I’m fine.”
“Abby. It’s purple.”
“It’s fine.” She pulled her foot back down before Rachel could look any longer. “Talk to me. What did Grace and Abe say about the Budapest lead?”
Her sister’s face fell almost immediately, and guilt wracked through Abby’s stomach as she forced herself to look at Rachel as she said flatly, “Dead end. As of this morning.”
“And Vienna?”
“Dead end.”
“What about the asset in—”
“All of them, Abby.” Rachel’s hands slapped onto the table, and her voice was raised as she said, “Every lead for the last six weeks has been a dead end. I’ve burned through every favor I had, and then some. I’ve had Elizabeth Sutton and some of the best minds at the NSA look through what feels like every database and camera on Earth, and I have nothing. I have nothing to show for any of it!”
She paused, sucking in a breath, and Abby didn’t dare say a word as the radio shifted from Alanis Morissette into Pearl Jam. She met Abby’s eyes again, and the gauntness Abby had seen when she first walked into the house was magnified tenfold. “I don’t know where my daughter is,” her voice was a whisper then.
Abigail Cameron was fluent in nineteen different languages (including all three spoken in Switzerland), but she was struggling to find any words to comfort her sister. She didn’t rush to fill the silence between them, the heaviness of missing Cammie, of knowing that the Circle was out there looking for her, too. That was the benefit of being Rachel’s sister—the two of them had spent a very long time becoming comfortable with each other’s silences.
“I know.”
Abby stood again, leaning over the stove as she stirred in the pasta, then peered into the pan where Rachel had been “cooking” chicken. The chicken had gone past the realm of burnt and into the realm of charcoal, and Abby couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose. She started scraping the burnt off into the trash can, the only sounds in the room were the wooden spoon scraping on the pan and Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car on the radio.
The silence stretched a little longer as Abby stirred the pasta thoughtfully, until she heard Rachel’s chair scrape slightly across the floor, as her sister made to get up and started pacing the room in the way she had since they were children.
“Townsend said he has a contact in Lyon that may have ties to one of the people in Catherine’s splinter group. A-a brother or something.” Her voice was even and controlled again, and Abby was impressed at how quickly Rachel had 0pulled herself together while Abby had had her back turned. “But the contact hasn’t responded in four days, and Townsend thinks he’s in the wind or spooked, or…or dead. It feels like she kills everything she touches, Abby.”
Her voice had taken on that gaunt whisper again, and Abby could feel the fear in her voice. If Catherine had gotten her hands on Cammie, what were the odds her daughter would come back alive?
“I talked to Townsend this morning. He mentioned he’s heading up to Lyon with Patricia. I think he’s optimistic.”
That got her attention. “Townsend talked to you about this? That’s a new development.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Abby replied innocently, draining the pasta water and opening a jar of alfredo sauce after giving it a sniff. She poured the jar into the steaming pot and stirred, then served two generous helpings into bowls, and brought them back over to the table, sliding one across the wood to Rachel, who had sat back down.
“I don’t remember the last time you and I sat down and ate fettuccine alfredo together,” mused Rachel, twirling her fork until she had a generous helping of pasta.
“Well, do you remember that one time we staked out the Times Square drug dealer in the Olive Garden by there? That was awesome.”
“Yeah,” Rachel looked out the small window over the sink, the massive green mountains towering across the landscape, further than the eye could see, “That was a fun mission.”
“How’s Joe?”
At that, her sister’s face fell again, and that was when Abby noticed just how old Rachel looked. She was still young—mid-40s, excellent skin and a killer physique made her sister look radiant, but the stress, pain, and agony of the past five years had aged her sister more than Abby had realized. Joe Solomon was a pain point for both women who loved him so dearly, but Abby saw it reflected in Rachel’s expression more.
“The same,” she replied glumly, pushing away her half-finished bowl of pasta. “His brain activity looks good, and the doctors think that when he wakes, Fibs’ muscle atrophying device can prevent most of the physical strength loss.”
Then she added, even more quietly, “If he wakes up.”
Abby snorted. “It’s Joe, Rachel. He’ll come back to us, even if it kills him.”
“What if they both die, Abby?” Rachel’s voice was back to that exasperated panic from earlier, raised slightly. She had made progress with her sister, putting food in her stomach and coaxing her into conversation that made her smile, but her sister wouldn’t be out of the woods until Joe and Cammie were, and Abby worried it would kill her if neither of them came back.
“Cam’s good, Rachel. Really, really good.”
“She’s seventeen, Abby. She’s a child, and she’s out there all alone, and god, she’s brilliant and all the best parts of Matthew, but she’s my child. I can’t—I can’t lose her. Or him. Or them, not after Matthew, Abby. I don’t think I can live if something happens to either of them,” Rachel’s voice was thick with despair, her hands desperately fiddling with Cammie’s sweater, her leg bouncing uncharacteristically.
Rachel was crying. Abby could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen her sister crying as an adult—when Cammie was born, when Matthew died, and the night of the election, almost a year before. Even in the last few weeks since Cammie’s disappearance, Rachel had been headstrong, directing people and commanding orders even as she fell apart—but she did it with no tears.
Abby rushed over to her, ignoring the throbbing in her ankle, then threw her arms around her while Rachel sat in the chair. Abby smoothed her hair, like Rachel had done to her so many times since they were children, and then pressed her cheek to the top of Rachel’s head. “I know, Rach. I know.”
The moment stretched on for a while, the silence stretching as the two sisters held each other. trying to convey the pain, hurt, and grief they were both feeling without words. Eventually, Rachel pulled away. Maybe it was a big sister thing, or a mom thing, or something she had picked up throughout the years, but it had always felt like when she pulled away first, she decided she was done falling apart.
She pressed the back of her wrist to her eyes in a gesture so quick, only a spy wouldn’t miss it, then straightened back in her chair, took a deep breath, and pulled the bowl of pasta towards her. “I’m okay.”
The radio was back on Tracy Chapman, and if the two sisters had been thirty years younger, this could’ve been a snapshot moment of their childhood with the music playing and the scenery just beyond the window.
“I’ve been poring over Joe’s journal again,” she said quietly. “The one Cammie and Zach grabbed from Blackthorne, and I just — I have so many questions, Abby. I wish I could talk to Joe. I wish I could talk to Matt. I miss Matt.”
“Me too.”
“And school starts back up in three weeks, so I’ll be heading back to Virginia soon, and then I just have to run a school and pretend things are okay! I have to look my daughter’s friends in the eye when they ask me if we’ve learned anything!” She gave a hollow laugh then. “And pissed as I am at Zach for giving her the idea to run away, that poor boy has nowhere to go, and the trustees are giving me a hard time about letting him in to the school permanently, at least to finish out his senior year. She really does just burn everything in her path, doesn’t she? Her son, Joe, Cammie, Blackthorne. Everything. I hate her. I hate Catherine Goode so much.”
Again, nineteen languages, but all Abby could say was “Me too” again. It wasn’t enough, but it was true, and between the two of them, the truth had always been preferable to empty words and promises.
"For what it's worth," Abby started carefully, "Zach didn't give her the idea. You know that, Rachel."
Rachel’s features tightened. "He might have given her the nerve," Abby allowed. "But Cam's been carrying whatever this is for a long time. Since before she met Zach—probably since Matt died." She tilted her head. "She gets that from you, too, by the way."
"Don't."
"I'm serious. You've been carrying Matthew’s death for—"
"Abby."
"Okay." Abby raised a hand. "Okay."
"Zach can stay," Rachel said eventually. "The trustees will come around. I'll make them come around." Another pause. "He's a good kid. He didn't choose his mother any more than Cam chose — " She stopped again, swallowing another bite of pasta. "He deserves better than what he's been handed, and if Gillian Gallagher built that school for any reason, it was for kids like him." She pushed the bowl away again, fully done with it this time.
“I’m sure that will be a very popular decision, oh headmistress,” Abby replied, a tiny smile playing on her lips, and her chest expanded with love when she saw a similar smile appear on Rachel’s face.
“My first in a long, long string of unpopular ones. Do you want tea?”
“I sleep with a British man one time, and now you think I want tea all the time?”
“So you are sleeping with him?”
“That’s classified.” Her voice had taken on the edge of a little sister trying to hide a secret, and Rachel was overcome with the love and emotion that came from being seen by someone who had known and loved you your entire life, without hesitation. Maybe the grief and pain of Joe and Cammie’s fates would kill her, but she had her sister, and that could be enough to spy another day.
Rachel set the kettle on and stood at the sink for a moment, back to the room and arms resting on the farmhouse basin, the mountains showing their jagged peaks more fiercely in the setting light of the sun. The slope of her shoulders was different from what it had been an hour ago—she was still tired, exhausted, and carrying the weight of the world, but she felt like she could take on another day. She could keep fighting to bring her daughter home.
“Milk, no sugar?” Rachel called, seeing that Abby had walked over to the small, lumpy couch that Rachel had taken over with soft blankets and pillows.
“When has it ever been anything else, sister of mine?”
“I live in hope that you’ll develop adult taste buds, Abs.”
“Adult taste buds—I put milk in my tea, what is so wrong with that. Billions of people before me and billions of people after me will do the same, you know,” called Abby indignantly, becoming one with the couch as she wrapped a few blankets around herself. It was a childish fight, but Abby would always be her little sister, even at their age.
Rachel brought the two cups of tea to the couch and placed them gently on the coffee table, then went back for an ice pack from the freezer, and sat down on the floor in front of Abby and started wrapping her ankle with the precise, unhurried focus of a woman who had a reputation for being very good at medical care in the field (a story from the 90s of a thing of bubble wrap, an old pair of mittens, and a Spanish flamenco dancer came to mind). Her hands didn’t shake as hard as they had earlier, the precise and steady movements of an operative who was focused on the task in front of her.
"You should have had this looked at in Morocco," she said.
“I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah, you told me it was fine. I know. Let me do this, at least.”
“Rachel—”
“Abigail.” She threw a look at her that had been perfected over three and a half decades of being a big sister (and one that, honestly, despite her specialized education and over 20 years in the clandestine services, still scared the lights out of her).
Rachel taped the end of the wrap and sat back on her heels, and for a moment, she just looked at Abby's ankle, lost in thought, then she looked up.
"When we find her," Rachel said, "I'm going to ground her until she's thirty."
“Personally, I think it should be forty.”
Rachel slipped back onto the couch with her sister, leaning her head on Abby’s shoulder. “Forty-five.”
“We’ll find her, Rach. Joe will wake up, and we’ll find her, and we’ll end this. I don’t care how we do it or what we need to do, but we will end this. I’ll get back out there tomorrow morning and try to rendezvous with Townsend, and we will put an end to this.” Abby’s voice was strong and brave, and Rachel knew she meant every word she uttered. The flutters of hope in her heart got stronger, and she knew she could survive this.
“Tomorrow, though.”
“What?”
“Yes to everything you said, but we’ll do that tomorrow. Tonight, I just want you here. With me. On this lumpy couch.”
Abby’s eyes were already growing heavy, the painkillers and wrappings easing her out of her discomfort as the stress of the day caught up to her. “Tomorrow.”
