Jason and Cecile, 2956 words
Title: Jumping Point
RP Universe: Nothing Better Universe (a DC AU)
Characters: Jason Todd coffeebased and Cecilia Bergman slpwlkngdreamer
Timeline Notes: Occurs roughly five years after Bruce Wayne's death, three years after Damian and Mariel's arrival and a little bit before Tim gives up being part-time Batman to be Oracle/Seer. see timeline/masterpost.
Jason showed in front of Wayne Industries at around 730 in the evening, the time she usually left the building. He'd kept his bike running, revving it every so often to wake it. It was getting miserably cold, and he enjoyed feeling the warm metal under him.
Cecilia saw him before she had even stepped out of the building, and from where she stood just inside, wrapping her scarf as close as she could around her neck without suffocating herself, he really was hard to miss.
After assuring herself that she was ready for the cold, she stepped out, and smiled as she approached him. "Waiting long?
"Not really." He gave her a smile, just enough to show everything was fine. "Tim thinks it's time." Jason held a helmet out for her, "You ready, slick?"
Was she? If she were completely honest with herself, she wasn't so sure. What had started out as a simple job playing secretary to one of the head honchos of Wayne Industries had metamorphosed into something much larger, and much more dangerous.
But like Grandpa David always said when he told her about what he had done to get out of Germany during the height of the fascism: "Just close your eyes, and jump."
So she did.
"Yeah," she replied, accepting the helmet and fitting it over her head, glad that she'd chosen to wear slacks and boots to work today. "I'm ready."
Jason shifted forward, making space on the bike. He'd brought one of the pretty bikes and it didn't have as much space as his Redwing did. She'd see it when they got to the 'cave. Tim had let her into the secret ages ago, shown her the bare bones of the Misson. But this was different. This was personal; it was like giving her a part of Bruce.
But they needed her smarts, they needed someone to take the pressure of Tim's giant brain.
"Up you get." He held out his hand for her.
Cecilia slid her hand into his, and a voice in the back of her head that sounded eerily like the sixteen-year-old girl she'd never been started squealing like a Twilight fan catching a glimpse of Robert Pattinson's bare ass in that Spanish movie he did. The comparison was not meant to be favorable.
So she did her best to lock that voice up, and made her grip as firm as she could, because she didn't want to come off as a flirt by pretending to make her grip weaker than it really was. She was a former cop, for heaven's sake. Now wasn't the time to think about how cute Jason Wayne was, or how good he smelled, or-
Aw hell Cecilia, just shut up already.
And with that, she settled herself on the seat behind him, and wrapped her arms around his waist, knowing no other place to hang on. She nodded then, indicating that she was ready.
They sped off the main street of Gotham, hooking lefts and rights as fast as Jason could turn them. "Daredevil antics for show, okay?" He yelled back at Cecile over the rush of wind and the roar of the traffic they were dodging.
It had to seem like that cad Jason Wayne taking his older brother's lovely secretary out for a night on the town. "Won't delay us!"
And he didn't lie; they made it the manor in what felt like no time at all. He rode slower as he took the driveway, braking the bike in front of the main doors of the house. Jason took his helmet off, smoothing his hair down as subtly as possible. "Home."
Cecilia slid off the back of the bike, doing so very, very carefully, so that she didn't make a complete and utter fool of herself by collapsing right at his feet.
Jesus freaking Christ, the man was INSANE.
With very deliberate gestures, so as not to show how hard her hands were shaking, she took of her helmet, shook out her ponytail of dark, honey-colored hair, and gave him a droll stare. "Good thing I'm not on the force anymore," she said, "or I'd've had to arrest you."
"You could still do a citizen's arrest." Jay kicked the bike stand into place with the back of his boot. "Are you going to need a minute, Cecile?" He'd known that they'd been breaking speed limits, but he hadn't thought they were going that fast.
He held his arm out as congenially as he could, "Kitchens first then." Jay smiled, "Favorite room first and then the 'cave."
She could catch her breath there, maybe he could even make them some dinner first. Jason's stomach had been growling even before he left the manor to pick her up; now it was just snarling and trying to claw out.
Cecilia inhaled deeply, and exhaled long and soft. Steady girl. No need to show him that your nerves are still shaken up.
After she had made sure she could take his arm without her shivers showing through, she slipped her arm through the crook of his elbow. "Kitchen sounds like a very good idea."
Jason pushed the front door open, "I'm feeling like a sandwich, how about you? I think Mariel might have left us some pasta from lunch if she's feeling generous, but D probably scarfed it down before he left for patrol."
The house was empty the way it ought to be. He guided her down the large hallways and corridors, cutting through the dining room instead of taking the long way. Tim was playing Nightwing to Damian's Batman tonight. Mariel was with Dick, patrolling the East End since Selina was still in Metropolis. "It's just going to be you and me tonight, no pressure. We're just sort of formalizing your entry into the fold."
"I...see." Cecilia could not help but look around, the fabled Wayne Mansion opening up before her. As a little girl she had always wondered about this place, what it must look like on the inside, but never once, not even when she had become an adult old enough to leave behind fairytales of dashing princes mounted on swift white chargers, had she ever dreamed she would set foot in it.
But she could look at the place later. She inclined her head in Jason's direction. "And who might these kind folks be, whom you just mentioned to me?"
"Sorry, you probably know Mariel better as Huntress. The second one anyway. D's Damian, the littlest Wayne, a.k.a. the smallest Batman ever to Bat." He stopped in front of the double doors of the kitchen. "But forget that first. You're about to see the most amazing thing ever."
Jason braced his hands on the door, "Pretend there's drumroll, okay?" and threw them open. The kitchen lights automatically turned on, showing off its concave ceiling and the gleaming steel of the sub-zero refrigerator and the convection oven and stove. He walked in and pulled a stool out for her at the marble island in the middle of the room. "You like?"
Like? If the kitchen were a man she would have married him on the spot. "I think you know me a little too well," she remarked, smiling as she took the seat he offered her, and rubbed her hand absently on the marble under her hands.
"So if I move in with you guys, I get to use this kitchen to my heart's content?"
He laughed, "I'm glad you like it because this beauty is the secret behind our success. Imagine hungry teenage boys growing up and fighting crime most of the night." Jason leaned on the counter in front of her, "Alfred, our butler, would keep huge pans of meatloaf and ham and different cheeses in the freezer for when we got hungry at awkward hours." He felt a small twinge in his chest, Alfred was another thing that Cecile'd never get to really understand.
"He died about two years after Bruce did. Heart attack." It had nearly killed them all, to lose Alfred so soon after Bruce. "And Mariel took over when that happened. So you'll have to fight her for cooking time during the day."
There was no mistaking the pain in his eyes, the slightly haunted look. Whoever Alfred was, he had been a beloved part of a family.
And she knew, all too well, what it was like to lose someone so important. She'd seen the exact same look in his eyes in a photograph of herself that had been taken at her mother's funeral.
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "He must have been a good man. They must have been good men."
What was it like now for them, she wondered. What was it like, now that Batman - Bruce - was gone?
For some reason, it didn't bear thinking. It reminded her too much of what it had been like, losing her parents, and while that was a world away in the past, there were times - like now, Jason's presence - that the pain came rushing back in, and she was unsure when the tide would recede.
"They were the best." Jason turned away, digging up a couple of plates. "We're going to be playing catch-up for the rest of our lives." Bruce was dead but they had Batman for as long as they could keep him.
He cleared his throat and pulled the door of the fridge open, "And because I was Alfred's most loving supporter, I still make the meatloaf and stock the cold cuts." He pulled a large plastic container out of the meat shelf.
Jason turned the inner door to her, "You'll have to pick your own condiments though. I'm a mustard and ketchup man myself."
They had a truly epic condiment collection because none of them ever liked the same stuff on their food. Mariel often despaired on grocery days refilling odd requests for specific kinds of mayonnaise, pickled ginger and in Tim's case, chili puree' with olives in them.
Cecilia raised one eyebrow as she approached the fridge. "The contents of your fridge are nothing short of epic." She slid in under the arm he was holding up to keep the door open, and took a look inside. "I could cook every single one of Julia Child's recipes from the stuff in here - and then some."
In the end, though, she managed to find a plastic container of prosciutto and another one containing slices of melon. "I'll have these, if you don't mind." She glanced at him, and grinned. "I always liked ham and melons."
"No problems here. Other than the confusion about eating fruit with meat." Jason put his haul on the counter, gave her a plate and three forks, and began assembling his sandwich. "I'm kind of glad we didn't go straight to the cave." He popped the cover off the meatloaf and sliced a thick hunk out of it.
"It's a bit overwhelming. And we're really not used to bringing new people there." He popped the meat between two slices of fresh bread slathered with mustard and ketchup. "And no offense or anything Cecile, but we need you really bad."
Cecilia tilted her head inquiringly as she carefully wrapped a thin slice of prosciutto around a melon piece, and bit in, the sweetness of the melon mixing with the saltiness of the ham and filling her mouth with heavenly flavor.
She savored it briefly, and then swallowed, before asking, "Can you explain to me exactly what it is I'm going to be doing? Mr. Way- Tim wasn't exactly forthcoming about it."
That was Tim for you. Moving pieces around and forgetting the important bit about explanations. "We used to have a huge communications network solely devoted to intelligence. The person in charge of this network left Gotham around three years ago due to what Tim calls 'differences in opinion' and I call Tim and Dick being assholes."
He took a bite of his sandwich, "Oh my god, I am the best chef ever," he moaned embarrassingly. "Where was I? Anyway, Tim's been trying to build a newer and better one. We've spent the past years gathering intel and he's been trying to compile it into an intuitive database."
Jason frowned around his amazing sandwich, "Unfortunately it's come to the point that even Tim's giant brain can't hack running Wayne Industries, directing the movements of our team and spending every waking moment he's got left writing code and fighting with computers." He wiped his mouth with an absent-minded thumb, "You've got the chops to do it."
Well, that made perfect sense. The way Tim explained it to her, she thought she'd have to act like some sort of supercomputer. "So essentially," she paused as she bit, chewed, and swallowed another bite of melon and prosciutto, "I'm to handle intel and logistics for you, and maybe communications. And I was chosen because, what? I could handle the arcane intricacies of Tim's filing system? Is that what his intuitive database is going to be like, except, well, maybe writ large?"
"Kind of?" Jason took another bite, then stood up to get them both a glass of water. "More like you're going to be his second, Tim handles communications, but you'll be his go to gal for the code writing and beta testing."
"Job involves reading a lot of entries, linking and cross-linking them and updating them as soon as new information comes out. After a while, Tim says his code will learn to do it for the two of you." He shrugged as he slid the glass to her. "It sounds like voodoo to me."
Cecilia shook her head. "I think I understand what he's trying to get at, but I do agree that at this stage, it sounds like a bit like voodoo." She murmured a thank you to the glass of water he handed to her, and she took a sip, cleansing her palate of the taste of melon and ham.
She waited for a beat, then asked the question that was really bothering her: "I'm not going to have to go out there at night with the rest of you, right?"
"Do you want to?" Jason knew she could hack it, but with her day job and the Tim Drake project. "You had to have left the force for a reason."
"Yeah, actually, I did." She looked down at her glass, swirled the water around in it. "It was hard enough, being a woman in the force, but when I got shunted to Narcotics, I... Well. I know I'm strong, and I can handle myself in a pinch, but I'd much rather stay someplace safe."
Someplace where you can run and hide and the crazy bastard with the sawed-off can't shoot you like he shot your partner, who lost his face, by the way, and they had to do a closed-casket service for him because no one could do anything about his face.
She shivered, forcing the memories down. Don't go there, Ceci, she told herself. Don't go there where the shadows are.
"No shame in wanting safety." Jason put his hand on hers, "Now, you know our secret. You're local, you know what that means." He was afraid that they'd put another civilian in the line of fire, but Tim has assured him that Ceci had gone into this with her eyes as wide open as possible.
"I've been doing this since before I was a kid. I've seen almost everything. I've died young and I came back crazy." He looked at her intently, "I know the hazards, and I want you to know you can back out. Go back to being simply Tim's secretary. But we'll need you to keep our secret for the rest of your life." Jason smiled, "Melodramatic, but the Mission needs it."
Cecilia nodded, trying to keep her heart rate under control. "Yeah, I know what that means. But Tim explained the Mission to me, and I know what that means, too. I could go back, I know, I was offered that way out." She looked up at him, straight in the eye, and was unaware how her voice had dropped a notch in volume and tone, how she'd licked her lip slightly with the tip of her tongue before she spoke. "But I don't think I could really let myself do that. Not now. Not when I'm standing here, on the edge."
For a second she heard her grandfather's voice again, telling her to jump, Ceci, jump - and just let everything fall away.
Watch me, Grandpa, she thought, as I make the biggest jump of my life.
She turned her hand up under his, her fingers curling around his wrist. "I'm staying. I won't go back."
Jason leaned across the scant distance between them and kissed her as gently as he could, twining his fingers into hers. The clock in the kitchen chimed the half hour, but he ignored it.
There'd been something about Cecilia Bergman that had made him like her when they first met over a year ago. Probably some part of like recognizing like. He pulled away, "I just needed to do that."
Oh holy hell... Did that just happen? She stared at Jason, unable to believe- Had she been that transparent?
Maybe she had been. And really, did it matter now? Especially now that she'd committed to what he - they, his family - was offering her?
Licking her lips - deliberately, this time, as an invitation and a promise of things to come, if he wanted it - Cecilia slid off her chair, and tilted her head slightly. "You were going to show me the cave?"
RP Universe: Nothing Better Universe (a DC AU)
Characters: Jason Todd coffeebased and Cecilia Bergman slpwlkngdreamer
Timeline Notes: Occurs roughly five years after Bruce Wayne's death, three years after Damian and Mariel's arrival and a little bit before Tim gives up being part-time Batman to be Oracle/Seer. see timeline/masterpost.
Jason showed in front of Wayne Industries at around 730 in the evening, the time she usually left the building. He'd kept his bike running, revving it every so often to wake it. It was getting miserably cold, and he enjoyed feeling the warm metal under him.
Cecilia saw him before she had even stepped out of the building, and from where she stood just inside, wrapping her scarf as close as she could around her neck without suffocating herself, he really was hard to miss.
After assuring herself that she was ready for the cold, she stepped out, and smiled as she approached him. "Waiting long?
"Not really." He gave her a smile, just enough to show everything was fine. "Tim thinks it's time." Jason held a helmet out for her, "You ready, slick?"
Was she? If she were completely honest with herself, she wasn't so sure. What had started out as a simple job playing secretary to one of the head honchos of Wayne Industries had metamorphosed into something much larger, and much more dangerous.
But like Grandpa David always said when he told her about what he had done to get out of Germany during the height of the fascism: "Just close your eyes, and jump."
So she did.
"Yeah," she replied, accepting the helmet and fitting it over her head, glad that she'd chosen to wear slacks and boots to work today. "I'm ready."
Jason shifted forward, making space on the bike. He'd brought one of the pretty bikes and it didn't have as much space as his Redwing did. She'd see it when they got to the 'cave. Tim had let her into the secret ages ago, shown her the bare bones of the Misson. But this was different. This was personal; it was like giving her a part of Bruce.
But they needed her smarts, they needed someone to take the pressure of Tim's giant brain.
"Up you get." He held out his hand for her.
Cecilia slid her hand into his, and a voice in the back of her head that sounded eerily like the sixteen-year-old girl she'd never been started squealing like a Twilight fan catching a glimpse of Robert Pattinson's bare ass in that Spanish movie he did. The comparison was not meant to be favorable.
So she did her best to lock that voice up, and made her grip as firm as she could, because she didn't want to come off as a flirt by pretending to make her grip weaker than it really was. She was a former cop, for heaven's sake. Now wasn't the time to think about how cute Jason Wayne was, or how good he smelled, or-
Aw hell Cecilia, just shut up already.
And with that, she settled herself on the seat behind him, and wrapped her arms around his waist, knowing no other place to hang on. She nodded then, indicating that she was ready.
They sped off the main street of Gotham, hooking lefts and rights as fast as Jason could turn them. "Daredevil antics for show, okay?" He yelled back at Cecile over the rush of wind and the roar of the traffic they were dodging.
It had to seem like that cad Jason Wayne taking his older brother's lovely secretary out for a night on the town. "Won't delay us!"
And he didn't lie; they made it the manor in what felt like no time at all. He rode slower as he took the driveway, braking the bike in front of the main doors of the house. Jason took his helmet off, smoothing his hair down as subtly as possible. "Home."
Cecilia slid off the back of the bike, doing so very, very carefully, so that she didn't make a complete and utter fool of herself by collapsing right at his feet.
Jesus freaking Christ, the man was INSANE.
With very deliberate gestures, so as not to show how hard her hands were shaking, she took of her helmet, shook out her ponytail of dark, honey-colored hair, and gave him a droll stare. "Good thing I'm not on the force anymore," she said, "or I'd've had to arrest you."
"You could still do a citizen's arrest." Jay kicked the bike stand into place with the back of his boot. "Are you going to need a minute, Cecile?" He'd known that they'd been breaking speed limits, but he hadn't thought they were going that fast.
He held his arm out as congenially as he could, "Kitchens first then." Jay smiled, "Favorite room first and then the 'cave."
She could catch her breath there, maybe he could even make them some dinner first. Jason's stomach had been growling even before he left the manor to pick her up; now it was just snarling and trying to claw out.
Cecilia inhaled deeply, and exhaled long and soft. Steady girl. No need to show him that your nerves are still shaken up.
After she had made sure she could take his arm without her shivers showing through, she slipped her arm through the crook of his elbow. "Kitchen sounds like a very good idea."
Jason pushed the front door open, "I'm feeling like a sandwich, how about you? I think Mariel might have left us some pasta from lunch if she's feeling generous, but D probably scarfed it down before he left for patrol."
The house was empty the way it ought to be. He guided her down the large hallways and corridors, cutting through the dining room instead of taking the long way. Tim was playing Nightwing to Damian's Batman tonight. Mariel was with Dick, patrolling the East End since Selina was still in Metropolis. "It's just going to be you and me tonight, no pressure. We're just sort of formalizing your entry into the fold."
"I...see." Cecilia could not help but look around, the fabled Wayne Mansion opening up before her. As a little girl she had always wondered about this place, what it must look like on the inside, but never once, not even when she had become an adult old enough to leave behind fairytales of dashing princes mounted on swift white chargers, had she ever dreamed she would set foot in it.
But she could look at the place later. She inclined her head in Jason's direction. "And who might these kind folks be, whom you just mentioned to me?"
"Sorry, you probably know Mariel better as Huntress. The second one anyway. D's Damian, the littlest Wayne, a.k.a. the smallest Batman ever to Bat." He stopped in front of the double doors of the kitchen. "But forget that first. You're about to see the most amazing thing ever."
Jason braced his hands on the door, "Pretend there's drumroll, okay?" and threw them open. The kitchen lights automatically turned on, showing off its concave ceiling and the gleaming steel of the sub-zero refrigerator and the convection oven and stove. He walked in and pulled a stool out for her at the marble island in the middle of the room. "You like?"
Like? If the kitchen were a man she would have married him on the spot. "I think you know me a little too well," she remarked, smiling as she took the seat he offered her, and rubbed her hand absently on the marble under her hands.
"So if I move in with you guys, I get to use this kitchen to my heart's content?"
He laughed, "I'm glad you like it because this beauty is the secret behind our success. Imagine hungry teenage boys growing up and fighting crime most of the night." Jason leaned on the counter in front of her, "Alfred, our butler, would keep huge pans of meatloaf and ham and different cheeses in the freezer for when we got hungry at awkward hours." He felt a small twinge in his chest, Alfred was another thing that Cecile'd never get to really understand.
"He died about two years after Bruce did. Heart attack." It had nearly killed them all, to lose Alfred so soon after Bruce. "And Mariel took over when that happened. So you'll have to fight her for cooking time during the day."
There was no mistaking the pain in his eyes, the slightly haunted look. Whoever Alfred was, he had been a beloved part of a family.
And she knew, all too well, what it was like to lose someone so important. She'd seen the exact same look in his eyes in a photograph of herself that had been taken at her mother's funeral.
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "He must have been a good man. They must have been good men."
What was it like now for them, she wondered. What was it like, now that Batman - Bruce - was gone?
For some reason, it didn't bear thinking. It reminded her too much of what it had been like, losing her parents, and while that was a world away in the past, there were times - like now, Jason's presence - that the pain came rushing back in, and she was unsure when the tide would recede.
"They were the best." Jason turned away, digging up a couple of plates. "We're going to be playing catch-up for the rest of our lives." Bruce was dead but they had Batman for as long as they could keep him.
He cleared his throat and pulled the door of the fridge open, "And because I was Alfred's most loving supporter, I still make the meatloaf and stock the cold cuts." He pulled a large plastic container out of the meat shelf.
Jason turned the inner door to her, "You'll have to pick your own condiments though. I'm a mustard and ketchup man myself."
They had a truly epic condiment collection because none of them ever liked the same stuff on their food. Mariel often despaired on grocery days refilling odd requests for specific kinds of mayonnaise, pickled ginger and in Tim's case, chili puree' with olives in them.
Cecilia raised one eyebrow as she approached the fridge. "The contents of your fridge are nothing short of epic." She slid in under the arm he was holding up to keep the door open, and took a look inside. "I could cook every single one of Julia Child's recipes from the stuff in here - and then some."
In the end, though, she managed to find a plastic container of prosciutto and another one containing slices of melon. "I'll have these, if you don't mind." She glanced at him, and grinned. "I always liked ham and melons."
"No problems here. Other than the confusion about eating fruit with meat." Jason put his haul on the counter, gave her a plate and three forks, and began assembling his sandwich. "I'm kind of glad we didn't go straight to the cave." He popped the cover off the meatloaf and sliced a thick hunk out of it.
"It's a bit overwhelming. And we're really not used to bringing new people there." He popped the meat between two slices of fresh bread slathered with mustard and ketchup. "And no offense or anything Cecile, but we need you really bad."
Cecilia tilted her head inquiringly as she carefully wrapped a thin slice of prosciutto around a melon piece, and bit in, the sweetness of the melon mixing with the saltiness of the ham and filling her mouth with heavenly flavor.
She savored it briefly, and then swallowed, before asking, "Can you explain to me exactly what it is I'm going to be doing? Mr. Way- Tim wasn't exactly forthcoming about it."
That was Tim for you. Moving pieces around and forgetting the important bit about explanations. "We used to have a huge communications network solely devoted to intelligence. The person in charge of this network left Gotham around three years ago due to what Tim calls 'differences in opinion' and I call Tim and Dick being assholes."
He took a bite of his sandwich, "Oh my god, I am the best chef ever," he moaned embarrassingly. "Where was I? Anyway, Tim's been trying to build a newer and better one. We've spent the past years gathering intel and he's been trying to compile it into an intuitive database."
Jason frowned around his amazing sandwich, "Unfortunately it's come to the point that even Tim's giant brain can't hack running Wayne Industries, directing the movements of our team and spending every waking moment he's got left writing code and fighting with computers." He wiped his mouth with an absent-minded thumb, "You've got the chops to do it."
Well, that made perfect sense. The way Tim explained it to her, she thought she'd have to act like some sort of supercomputer. "So essentially," she paused as she bit, chewed, and swallowed another bite of melon and prosciutto, "I'm to handle intel and logistics for you, and maybe communications. And I was chosen because, what? I could handle the arcane intricacies of Tim's filing system? Is that what his intuitive database is going to be like, except, well, maybe writ large?"
"Kind of?" Jason took another bite, then stood up to get them both a glass of water. "More like you're going to be his second, Tim handles communications, but you'll be his go to gal for the code writing and beta testing."
"Job involves reading a lot of entries, linking and cross-linking them and updating them as soon as new information comes out. After a while, Tim says his code will learn to do it for the two of you." He shrugged as he slid the glass to her. "It sounds like voodoo to me."
Cecilia shook her head. "I think I understand what he's trying to get at, but I do agree that at this stage, it sounds like a bit like voodoo." She murmured a thank you to the glass of water he handed to her, and she took a sip, cleansing her palate of the taste of melon and ham.
She waited for a beat, then asked the question that was really bothering her: "I'm not going to have to go out there at night with the rest of you, right?"
"Do you want to?" Jason knew she could hack it, but with her day job and the Tim Drake project. "You had to have left the force for a reason."
"Yeah, actually, I did." She looked down at her glass, swirled the water around in it. "It was hard enough, being a woman in the force, but when I got shunted to Narcotics, I... Well. I know I'm strong, and I can handle myself in a pinch, but I'd much rather stay someplace safe."
Someplace where you can run and hide and the crazy bastard with the sawed-off can't shoot you like he shot your partner, who lost his face, by the way, and they had to do a closed-casket service for him because no one could do anything about his face.
She shivered, forcing the memories down. Don't go there, Ceci, she told herself. Don't go there where the shadows are.
"No shame in wanting safety." Jason put his hand on hers, "Now, you know our secret. You're local, you know what that means." He was afraid that they'd put another civilian in the line of fire, but Tim has assured him that Ceci had gone into this with her eyes as wide open as possible.
"I've been doing this since before I was a kid. I've seen almost everything. I've died young and I came back crazy." He looked at her intently, "I know the hazards, and I want you to know you can back out. Go back to being simply Tim's secretary. But we'll need you to keep our secret for the rest of your life." Jason smiled, "Melodramatic, but the Mission needs it."
Cecilia nodded, trying to keep her heart rate under control. "Yeah, I know what that means. But Tim explained the Mission to me, and I know what that means, too. I could go back, I know, I was offered that way out." She looked up at him, straight in the eye, and was unaware how her voice had dropped a notch in volume and tone, how she'd licked her lip slightly with the tip of her tongue before she spoke. "But I don't think I could really let myself do that. Not now. Not when I'm standing here, on the edge."
For a second she heard her grandfather's voice again, telling her to jump, Ceci, jump - and just let everything fall away.
Watch me, Grandpa, she thought, as I make the biggest jump of my life.
She turned her hand up under his, her fingers curling around his wrist. "I'm staying. I won't go back."
Jason leaned across the scant distance between them and kissed her as gently as he could, twining his fingers into hers. The clock in the kitchen chimed the half hour, but he ignored it.
There'd been something about Cecilia Bergman that had made him like her when they first met over a year ago. Probably some part of like recognizing like. He pulled away, "I just needed to do that."
Oh holy hell... Did that just happen? She stared at Jason, unable to believe- Had she been that transparent?
Maybe she had been. And really, did it matter now? Especially now that she'd committed to what he - they, his family - was offering her?
Licking her lips - deliberately, this time, as an invitation and a promise of things to come, if he wanted it - Cecilia slid off her chair, and tilted her head slightly. "You were going to show me the cave?"