Chuck fic: Mary Bartowski/Stephen Bartowski/Hartley
Fandom: Chuck
SPOILERS: YES!! SPOILERS TO THE END OF SEASON 4 OF CHUCK
Pairings: M/M/F. Explained in description. The pairing itself is a spoiler.
Rating: hard R
Written for: Kinkbingo, for "Mind control"
Contains: Three-person long-term committed relationship. Many kinks, as well as some angst. Kinks include light bdsm, teasing, orgasm denial, many others. Also warnings for dubcon in that a spy has sex with someone for the sake of a mission.
Summary: Frost (Mary Bartowski) and her thoughts on her relationship with Volkoff, and her past relationship of Stephen/Hartley/Mary.
Title: Five Ways that Scientists Are Like Spies: Or, Five Times Mary Bartowski Found Herself in Someone Else
Volkoff pinned her hips to the wall, fingers gripping bruises into her flesh. He kissed her, half bite, and pressed a leg between her knees as she gripped his shirt to pull him closer. She was enclosed between the heat of his body in front of her and the cold stone wall pushing into her back, enclosed in a circle of the man and the building that bore his name. And as she threw her head back to expose her throat to his lips, she tried to tell herself that he was not an overwhelming force, that he was not a battalion surrounding her. He was only a man.
And she was the one who made him.
1. Scientists, like spies, prefer a controlled environment.
When the Agency sent Mary to assist Stephen and Hartley, they were holed up in some ludicrously charming house in the English countryside. There was no one for miles around to hear or see them, and so they had converted an old barn into a testing facility and built a number of supercomputers in the expanded cellar. Not one. A number.
Mary was amused to find that the future of high-tech espionage was going to come from some bucolic retreat, crafted amid roaming sheep and grassy hills and the occasional ancient-looking tree. It was a paradox that fit her husband’s sensibilities perfectly, she knew.
It fit Hartley’s too, she would learn soon. She was sent to help them develop an “Intersect,” a tool to turn anyone into the perfect spy. They had been working from manuals and debriefing documents to determine how top spies would respond in various situations, but Langley (and its ally, MI-6) had decided that nothing on paper could equal the personal input of a high-level operative. It wasn’t Stephen’s or Mary’s many requests to be given more time together on the job that made them decide to send her; it was because there weren’t all that many spies working at Mary’s level, and they weren’t sure anyone else would be able to tolerate the notoriously quirky scientists’ work habits. Mary and Stephen were looking forward to it, despite the ambitious demands for results. Ellie and Chuck were at science camp for two months, so except for a trip home for "Parents' Weekend," they were going to have more time together without the kids since Ellie had been born 11 years ago.
About Hartley, she had known only what her husband had told her on the phone; he was a brilliant scientist, a kind-hearted man, and, more and more, a close friend. Mary had gently joked that perhaps she should be jealous of Hartley, but the truth was, she wasn’t the jealous type.
When she met him, finally, she understood why it was that Stephen had always sounded so enamored when speaking of him. Even she couldn’t help but become fond of him as she watched the two of them work together - thinking, imagining, creating, bursting with ideas and brilliance and integrity, but also laughing together, their camaraderie bleeding into deep affection. It was obvious to Mary that this was the first time Stephen had finally found someone just like himself - a scientist at his level of inquiry, but kind and funny and earthy and passionate and motivated by a desire to make breakthroughs in knowledge and to change the world for the better. As she worked with Hartley and her husband, as she lived with them in the same house, she observed them doing what they loved best. It became clear to her: their beauty came from the same place.
Mary was a good observer of people and soon she felt she knew Hartley well. The more she found out, the more she let her guard down. Maybe it was because he reminded her of Stephen. Maybe it was because they were in the middle of nowhere and it was easy to forget who they were, and why they were sent here. Maybe it was just because of the kind of man Hartley was.
Maybe she just liked his smile. The warmth of it, the way it seemed to emerge without his intent, lips spreading and opening to a gleam of teeth and laughter.
He wasn’t much like her. Hartley was a bit on the shy side, gentler even than Stephen, who was the gregarious friend to Hartley's more bashful one. But sometimes Hartley had a razor wit, one that jumped out at the least expected moments, after which Stephen and Mary would burst out laughing, half from the cleverness of his comment and half from how unexpected the sarcasm was, how jarring it was to see such cutting drollness from Hartley's innocent face.
Hartley was also one of their few friends who truly kept up with both of them in conversation, those half-silly overly earnest rapid-fire riffs that they started having on their first date and never wanted to stop. Everybody had always thought Stephen and Mary were a strange couple; people always asked them what they talked about, as if a scientist and an agent could have no common ground. The truth was that Mary and Stephen talked about everything and anything (that wasn't high clearance), and it was rare to find someone who didn’t find their vehemence or the sheer breadth of their topics overwhelming, much less add something exciting to the discussion. But Hartley bickered with Stephen about the state of contemporary science fiction, claiming all the great works were in the past and Stephen defending the recent authors; argued fiercely and delightedly as Mary listed all the reasons he was so very wrong about the relative merits of Puccini versus Verdi; he bellowed with laughter when Mary and Stephen debated which shape of pasta was most pleasing to the mouth; and he took the middle road, allowing that both sides had a point, when Stephen championed science as the bearer of vaccines and indoor plumbing and (someday) Star Trek-esque transporters while Mary pointed out the Manhattan Project, deforestation, and (someday) Frankenstein's monster and/or Hal.
They worked - hard - on the Intersect project, but sometimes they drove into town to go to the pub, where they drank warm ale and sang songs that only Stephen remembered all the lyrics to. They got home late and giggled their way through the cool fog into the warmth of the old stone house.
On some mornings, they all ate breakfast in their pajamas, sleepy and cozy. Mary always kept a fire extinguisher at the breakfast table, since Stephen and Hartley had invented a contraption to cook breakfast without any human assistance, but she hadn't had to use it so far (she always distrusted technology for some reason).
Dinners and tea, walks around the property, and, of course, their work: it was the three of them, getting along, feeling, somehow, perfectly at home. Mary didn’t feel the odd one out, the spy who came to the scientists’ party, but they never thought of Hartley as a third wheel either. Maybe it was because it had been a long time since there was anyone who knew what Stephen and Mary did who wasn't the boss or adversary of a least one of them. (They both had their detractors, even - or especially -- within the agency.) But it was more than that; Hartley was like them, fit with them, in some way that was more than just circumstance or similarity. Together, they enjoyed their work more than they ever had; they had warmth, laughter, imagination, and intellectual stimulation -- and, most importantly, they had a man who understood them, whom they trusted enough to be close to. Whom they wanted to get close to.
It was Mary who clued Stephen in that his crush on Hartley was obviously returned, a couple of weeks after her arrival. She was good at observing people, and she liked to cut to the chase. Stephen responded that it was just as clear that Hartley looked at Mary with much more than friendly affection.
They talked about it, just the two of them, for several days, before one very late night when Stephen put his arms around Mary, and they both smiled at Hartley, and asked.
He looked startled, at first, and then embarrassed, as if his secret desire had just been found out. But he nodded, faintly blushing. And then he walked into their bedroom, with Stephen's hand on his shoulder, with Mary's hand in his hand, leading him in.
.
2. Once they are in a controlled environment, scientists, like spies, like to try new things.
The Intersect experiments come along swimmingly. So does their relationship, and soon the three are much closer than caution would demand, closer than they should be in such a short amount of time together. They are free with one other in ways that surprise even themselves. They share one another without fear and with few rules.
Mary and Stephen walk in on Hartley rubbing himself; he is embarrassed, but they are not, and they make love in front of him, for him.
Another day, there are in bed, all three of them, and Mary tells them that she loves to watch them when they’re together, that she loves their closeness. Then she tells Stephen to tie Hartley to the bed and tease him until he loses himself utterly. She presses her fingers into herself as she watches them, Stephen’s light, sweet tortures turning Hartley into a quiver of a man, exploring his body with a hundred permutations of lips and hands, pain and comfort, until Hartley can barely contain himself. Stephen works him into a frenzy, and soon he is begging and desperate and babbling like a fool. And then he looks over at Mary, he sees her staring at him (she can't help but stare at him like this, so rapturously undone). Somehow, she decides to wink at him - a wink, of all things - and it’s the wink that sends him over the edge, the blasted wink that makes him come before Stephen has even touched his cock, and she knows that he loves and hates that she can do that to him.
Sometimes Mary is in the middle, the two men on either side, moving in tandem inside of her. Stephen, behind her, sets the rhythm slowly until her body has adapted to his, then moves faster, with Hartley in front of her matching his pace, driving her to orgasm after orgasm with the intensity of it, the unison of it. After, they lay there in a tired, sated heap, as Mary runs her fingers through the hair of two men, one at each side. They fall asleep like that, Stephen’s limbs sprawled awkwardly, adorably, over his partners’ bodies, and Hartley curled up by her side, his head resting on her breast, as if he is her child, as if he is her son.
Sometimes it is less gentle. Hartley loves it when she pins him to a wall, when her fingers dig deep and strong into his narrow hips, bruising them with her force. He jokes that he loves that she could kill him with her bare hands, but she knows it isn’t really a joke; she knows it as she bites into his collarbone while she presses his back into the brick of the garden wall. She knows it as he exposes his throat to her as she palms his breastbone, as submissive a posture as she’s ever seen. He delights in it, in his own nervousness, as she steps her leg forward, between his knees, leaning in so that he feels that she is encircling him, enclosing him. She wonders sometimes if it’s not his hippie tendencies showing through - she wouldn’t be surprised if he had a fondness for earth mothers, if he were one of those scientists who still thinks Nature is a woman.
They are happy together, the three of them. Sexually, intellectually, and emotionally, they find that rare combination that makes them feel both utterly stimulated and exhilarated and also safe. There is no jealousy, and this is a bit of a surprise, but nobody feels threatened, nobody worries that anyone wants to take someone from someone else. They know one another. They feel like a family.
It's not wise to feel this way in so short a time, but they do.
Sometimes, Mary catches Hartley staring at her. At the way she moves when she is close to an orgasm, the way it starts always with her legs. She sees him wonder at the way she looks up at the sky when the sun is out, feeling the yellow light, closing her eyes to savor the breeze. He even seems to treasure the way she leans forward when she laughs, the way her laughs are grand and obnoxious and unapologetically loud. Sometimes he realizes that she has caught him staring at her, and even after all they have done together, he still looks away, his ears still turn red. But he doesn’t stop looking at her, or sometimes at her and Stephen both, with some endearing mixture of desire and delight.
Even when they work, Hartley looks at them this way. Like he thinks both of them are brilliant and beautiful, like he wants nothing more than to work with them (be with them) forever.
Their work is good. When the two months are up, the research looks promising enough that the Agency orders them all back to California to begin Agent X's preparation and testing.
3. Scientists, like spies, need to know how the world works. Once they forget that, they’re lost.
When they get to California, they take Hartley to the beach. They know that as soon as the project begins in earnest, Hartley will not be permitted to leave the training compound for security reasons. They predict a fully functional Agent X in about a year.
They walk on the beach for a long time, Stephen running in and out of the shallow waves in surfer shorts that have never seen a board, Hartley sticking to dry sand as he walks barefoot, holding his shoes in his hand, loose like they're about to fall. His khakis are rolled up and his blue striped shirt is half unbuttoned, and he looks serene for a man about to be sequestered.
"Is it like the beaches in England?" she asks him.
He looks up and around and then smiles. "Less rain."
She laughs and grabs a loose swath of cotton shirt to pull him closer. They are alone, now, them and Stephen, walking through a private beach that only the most local of locals knows when to visit. They kiss and his lips are warm, warmer than usual, she imagines. Stephen walks up to them, hugs them both, kisses them one after another, and then gently pulls Hartley down on to the sand and kisses him again as they lay there. They look up at her, smiles and lust-dark eyes and sandy cheeks, and she falls to meet them, to join them. It is slow and awkward but sweet and they are so focused on one another that they miss the sunset but don't regret it.
After, they tell stories about the night sky, about what ancient cultures thought as they stared up at the pictures of light, bright flashes of meaning in a vast fabric of space.
Somehow, it is no time at all before they watch the dawn, rising over the city, gleaming purple light over the water. They know that in a few hours, Hartley will report for preliminary tests.
Stephen goes to get the car so they can lay there, the two of them, for a few extra moments.
Mary takes Hartley's hand, laces her fingers among his.
"Are you in love with me, Hartley?" She is pretty sure she knows the answer. But she always liked her intel confirmed at the source, in her professional life and everywhere else.
He swallows and nods. He looks scared of her, somehow, in that moment.
"And Stephen?" she asks.
"Him, too," he says. "Both of you.... Very much."
His eyelashes flutter, then, from fear maybe, or from being so swept away by something he probably didn't even want to feel. She knows it's hard for him, knows that their reassurances couldn't change the fact that she and Stephen were a family with or without him, no matter how much they all wanted it to be with him. He looks so small, so fragile, at that moment, she feels like she could see straight into his heart.
More than anything she wants to tell him to run. She wants to tell him that a man like him should never become a spy.
Instead, she says, "We love you, too. That's why you don't need to worry. Whatever happens with the project, we'll be right there by your side."
He smiles, leans in to her, as if the word of a spy could be trusted implicitly.
--------------
Hartley begins an extensive series of tests as well as physical, psychological, and mental training for the task of being 'Intersected.' They don't yet know how to include combat training, so Hartley will be trained in that as well. He and Stephen both work on making the Intersect the ideal undercover agent. A breakthrough comes when they decide that the Intersect should simply program the agent to become a bad guy, instead of just being good at imitating one.
Mary thinks this is a terrible idea and she says so. But when they ask her if she would feel differently if it were someone other than Hartley, she knows that they are right. Most spies get caught when they are off their guards for just a second, when they revert to their 'real' selves at the wrong time in front of the wrong person. Hartley would be safer if he had no idea who he was.
She points out that the personality the Intersect imbues will have to be real enough to fool the groups he was supposed to infiltrate, even in close long-term contact. So they set out to design a personality that will pass as a brilliant, world-class, power-hungry sociopath.
Mary wishes she could help them more. But she is needed elsewhere in the world and is now only their occasional consultant, her reverie with her two men turned into the sporadic visitation that a spy should be used to. But they are together sometimes, and she is with them enough that their closeness continues to grow.
She continues to worry.
Still, she helps the project when she can. She, more than either of them, has experience with crimelords, dictators, traitorous spies, and arms dealers.
She gives them everything they need to know to make Agent X the perfect bad guy, the perfect amalgam of the most successful horrifying men she’s known. She tells them that Agent X should a megalomaniac, inclined to slap his name and face everywhere, preferring fear to any other means of persuasion. She also tells them that this man will be smart, manipulative, and charismatic; men like this were prone to emotionality, sentimentality even, sudden fits of mercy or benevolence that were far outweighed by their many acts of cruelty, but were part of them nonetheless. She makes sure they develop a personality that seems real enough that it would fool others, and more importantly fool an intelligent man like Hartley himself - they couldn’t have him figuring out his own personality was made up, after all.
She also emphasizes one thing, again and again, because without it, Agent X won't fool anybody: A man like this doesn’t know how to love; he only knows how to own.
She tells them these things, and they program them in. They don’t ask how she knows, or from whom she got this knowledge.
Sometimes, they take the facts that they give her as mere data, as a boost in available input that they are quite happy to get. She thinks, those times, that their intelligence has made them silly somehow; the Intersect technology is evolving rapidly, and they are almost giddy with the prospect of forever unlacing the boundary between mind and machine. She wonders if they are perhaps, despite their brilliance, a bit like teenagers shooting at enemies in a videogame, unknowing of the real shooters and targets out there. She knows this is unfair; they are good men, they want to make a difference. And she isn’t sure if her overprotectiveness is warranted; they have never demanded her to be less than she is, and she want to do the same for them. But she is not used to having to silence her worries about them, and she especially is not used to work and personal life getting so entangled and messy; she knows that any strong objection she makes would put them in the position of choosing her above duty and country (and explicit orders from Langley as well). They believe in the project, and the project will help their countries and their world, and she doesn’t want to ask them to give up on their finest invention, their self-confidence in their work, their source of employment, and their service to their country, all because the spy in her is screaming to be careful. So she tells herself not to worry.
Sometimes, however, they are a little gleeful over their latest technique for breaking the mind’s resistance to their programming. Then, Mary is reminded of that old saying, that men build elaborate toys, that they have to use technology to conquer, because they can't create for real, because they can't give birth. But then Mary remembers Lise Meitner and Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace, and she knows that this human grasp for knowledge can't be blamed on one particular chromosome. (Sometimes she also remembers that women who get their way with guns might not get to throw stones at the patriarchal nature of circuitboards.)
And their passion isn’t misplaced, she knows. Enemies can only be beaten with an advantage. And a successful Intersect would be an enormous advantage against the enemies that would destroy their countries, that wanted to destroy families just like theirs. So she reminds herself that this is important work, that all will be fine, that backup will be there. She reminds herself that Stephen and Hartley know what they are doing, that they will do nothing to hurt their family, and that backup will make sure Agent X doesn’t do anything Hartley wouldn’t want to live with. She reminds herself that these traits they are programming in are just a script, just language and gestures designed to make an op succeed, no different really than the lies she has learned to tell in her own training. She especially reminds herself that two of the most brilliant scientists in the world are looking out for the project, for each other, and that they happen to be the two people she trusts most in the world.
She believes deeply in their brilliance even as she starts to fear this man that they are making, this man sewn together from scraps of the worst men she has known.
4. Scientists, like spies, would do almost anything for knowledge.
They avoid talking about the one thing they should talk about until Hartley brings it up. They’re compiling the rest of the interpersonal traits that Agent X will need to have, and Mary, as usual, is making sure everything is “authentic.”
"It's strange, knowing that in a few months, I'll be a sociopath," Hartley says.
There's not fear in his voice, for some reason, Mary notices, there's no plea to back out. He simply is noting the anomalousness of the situation.
"For a very brief couple of months," Stephen reminds him. "Then we remove the Intersect, and you're good as new."
"And the Agency will have people on you at all times, making sure you don't cross any lines that can't be uncrossed," she tells him, not mentioning that they had recently decided Mary was too close to Agent X to be one of those line watchers.
"Besides, according to Mary, all scientists are basically sociopaths anyway," Stephen jokes to lighten the mood.
"I never said that," she says, then adds, with a wink, "But now that you mention it, what else would you call someone who invents a bomb or a bioweapon all for the sake of 'furthering knowledge'?"
"What would you call someone who uses or buys or sells weapons, all for the sake of 'acquiring intel'?" Hartley asks, smiling at the idea of giving it back to Mary, until they all decide that it’s not that funny and change the subject. They have to get back to working up the rest of the Intersect’s personality profile, anyway.
When it came time to program the part of Agent X's personality that dealt with sex and romance, they awkwardly asked Frost to start from scratch since there were no textbooks on the subject of the sexual proclivities of power-mad criminal masterminds. The men were silent and clinical as she told them what a brilliantly inventive sociopath would come up with in bed -- that he would probably be selfish, but if not, it would be because his ego demanded a highly technical virtuosity. There might on occasion be a childlike dependency on the lover, but certainly no real intimacy, nothing that would last beyond the moment. They dutifully took notes on her comments, never asking her how she knew this, how many men she knew this from, or how many of these men were assets she cultivated during her and Stephen's marriage. When she was done, they were all quiet.
Until Hartley said, "Well, I say, bullocks to all that."
"What?"
"I'll accept being an amoral, violent thug. But you're not programming me to be bad in bed," he said with a grin, and they knew he was only half joking.
"I guess there isn't that much harm in making him a little better in bed than the average megalomaniac," she said with a smile.
"How about making me fabulous in bed?" Hartley said, and they laughed, the tension gone.
But Stephen thought that was a good idea - a good lover could only be stronger as a spy, after all. And soon they were all throwing their ideas into the effort, each of them listing the sexual qualities they wanted this persona to have. They listed broad categories - "generous with his partner but also knows what he himself likes" - and also specific preferences - "that thing that Mary does with her fingers on your hips, when she wants you against a wall." Soon it becomes a review of their greatest hits in bed, and they decide that it's not just a laugh, that it's an idea; this will be their signature on the man they will create, the thing that comes from all three of them that is genuinely, irrefutably them.
---------------------
They continue to make good progress on the other aspects of the project as well. Hartley is surprisingly good with both weapons and hand-to-hand, and Stephen makes stunning advancements in the technology. Mary is frequently assigned to places around the globe, but she keeps abreast of the project, and when she is home, even with spending as much time as she can with her children, she finds a way to see Hartley, to stay close. Sometimes Stephen is home with the kids when she goes to him; Stephen knows they need to make an effort for the three of them to keep feeling like they belong together, and he knows that it is Hartley and Mary who have the hardest task finding time to be together.
When Mary and Hartley make love, she rides him in his single bunk in his cell-like room at the training center, an old shirt over the surveillance camera, and she tries to make every time gorgeous, every time a memory, she scratches into his back and presses him down into the thin mattress as if she can leave her imprint on him, as if her body can make him remember who he is, even when he is someone else. He comes inside of her every time, and every time he pulls her into an embrace, his eyes grateful and blissful and sweet. She manages never to tell him this, that his eyes are sweet. Much, much too sweet.
She doesn't knowt he exact date when he will become a different man; it's classified, even to her.
She isn’t even on the same continent he is when it happens.
5. Scientists, like spies, have trouble believing any door is really and truly closed.
When Stephen and Mary got together, people thought it was strange -- especially the people who knew what they both did for a living. People thought that the couple was too different, that one was soft and one was hard, or that one was ideas and one was action. The truth was, they were both all of these things, and it worked for them.
For fourteen years, their differences didn’t matter. For fourteen years, their opposite natures were a source of discovery and sparks and delight, a reason to stay up all night bickering in the kitchen as they nibble on the stale cookies they find at the back of the cupboard, a reason to believe that there would always be some fire in relationship no matter how many decades they spent side by side.
When Hartley doesn’t come back, when he becomes their worst nightmare, Orion begins his lifelong mission to save him and Frost begins her lifelong mission to destroy him. They don’t have as much to talk about after that.
Hartley - now Volkoff - is brilliant. An intelligence untempered by fear or love or even a philosophical sense of moderation. He sees his CIA watchers, all that they send, and kills them. He disappears and six months later is the leading arms dealer on the Eastern bloc. Which is hardly an uncompetitive field.
Hartley Winterbottom is erased from the records. Officially, Volkoff is a wanted man, dead or alive, nothing more to the story.
Stephen -- Orion -- can't believe the Agency would do this to Hartley. He loses trust in them. He can't live with being the tool of an organization that betrayed his best friend.
Mary is not surprised that they would do this. She can't live with knowing that she put a lethal man out there, a man who was growing in power and violence by the day.
Nothing is more important to her than righting that wrong.
Nothing would be worse than to release a weapon like Volkoff into the world and sit by while people were killed, while nations were felled. She didn't care that the Agency wanted to pretend that it wasn't their fault. She couldn't live in denial.
The fifth time she fails to kill him, he is less charmed by it than for her previous efforts. She spends six months in a hole of a cell and thinks about how stupid it was to program Agent X to know all the moves a spy like her would try. She wanted to keep Hartley safe from would-be assassins, but it worked too well.
The only reason she's not dead is because he has an odd fondness for her. She isn't sure if it's some inherent chemistry, something physical.
She manages to escape, barely, after grueling months. She gets back to the Agency and they tell her that nobody could expect more from her than what she's given. They tell her that it might not even be possible to take down Volkoff.
She insists on going back. She does this enough times that eventually the people in charge are new enough to genuinely not know who made Alexei Volkoff, instead of just pretending they didn't.
She is smarter, these later times. She uses what she has - her spy abilities, her ability to play on people's emotions and needs. He likes her, loves her, for no good reason, and she can’t help but think that somewhere in there he is Hartley still, the bashful scientist with a terrifying crush on his best friend and his best friend’s wife.
She sees him laugh giddily after shooting four civilians and then she knows that Hartley's not in there. Not even a little piece.
She encourages his love for him. A few times she gets him to trust her enough that she might be able to kill him, even if it would be a suicide mission, even if his soldiers will kill her at soon as she did it. But now Volkoff Industries is everywhere, now the Agency needs more than just Volkoff dead, it needs him captured, it needs his contacts and allies and his whole network. They tell her that taking Volkoff out would cause his weapons cache to be without a fearsome owner, and soon the worst weapons would be going to anyone who happened upon them instead of a few - albeit terrifying - groups that at least the Agency knew about. They tell her that anything short of a clean, live, well-prepared takedown will put millions of lives in danger, and she can't be responsible for that.
And so she stays. She feels like she is Dr. Frankenstein, living with his monster, pretending to love him while she ignores the seams she used to stitch him together.
Somewhere out there is Orion, she knows, a rogue spy, a scientist whom everyone thinks has gone mad. But she knows that this is just Orion’s way, that he really believes he can fix the things they broke and will do anything to do it. It isn’t in him to give up on someone he loves; in Stephen's imagination, Frost knows, he would save Hartley and then Mary would be able to come home to him. To them.
In reality, Frost knows with the certainty of a spy who has seen the way of the world, that the Agency would keep making impossible demands until one day she would have to kill Volkoff, and then Orion would never forgive her.
Or, just as likely, Volkoff would kill her, and Stephen would lose hope entirely. She tries not to think about what Stephen will be without his characteristic optimism. She tries not to wonder if this man will even be her Stephen at all.
She misses her husband, almost as much as she misses her kids. She misses Stephen most of all when she is in bed with Volkoff, when he does the exact same move that Stephen used to, the one they programmed in at her suggestion.
But it’s not nearly as bad as when Volkoff uses one of Hartley’s moves in bed, especially one they programmed at her suggestion. Whenever he kisses a line up her thigh, gazing up at her the whole time, she hates him with a fierceness she can barely hide. She hates herself and she hates Stephen and most of all she hates Hartley for agreeing to do this, to becom this. It's Hartley's face and Hartley's body and Hartley's mouth and Volkoff's cold, cold eyes on her, and she hates it, hates them, she never wants to forgive any of them, least of all herself.
Of the three of them, though, Mary was roughest in bed, most forceful. She was careful, of course; she was a spy, they were just scientists, and she didn't want to harm them. But she knew how to wield her power, knew the right amount of force and fear to get the exact shade of gentle and amused dominance she wanted. And it worked; Hartley and Stephen had listed these among their favorite “Mary” moves when they programmed Agent X.
It was these moves, these gestures, that she hated most from Volkoff's body. To her, they were aggressive and knowing and far too cocky, and she’s sure she wasn’t like this, she’s sure that Volkoff has twisted her moves into something hard and forceful and sharp. These moves sought to enclose her, to bind her, to imprint her with his love until she would never be able to forget it.
Worst of all, they reminded her of who she used to be. That stupid girl who thought a decade as a spy could prepare her for anything, could prepare her for years, for decades, of this. It reminded her of how happy she was, how she briefly thought that maybe their invention, the game they made up in a country cottage, could win the war for them, could make it so she someday wouldn't have to fight any more at all. It reminded her of warmth and laughter and bickering about painters over tea. It reminded her of sand in the hair of the men that she loved, of them whispering stories about the night sky that they didn't really believe were true.
It reminded her that there was a time when she could be within arm's length of the people she loved, could hold them and enclose them, could press into them tightly with her hands and with her body, never wanting to let go.
Every time Volkoff uses her own moves on her, it reminds her that she could have been a very different woman than she is now. She comes every time, and she hates him for it.
(end)
SPOILERS: YES!! SPOILERS TO THE END OF SEASON 4 OF CHUCK
Pairings: M/M/F. Explained in description. The pairing itself is a spoiler.
Rating: hard R
Written for: Kinkbingo, for "Mind control"
Contains: Three-person long-term committed relationship. Many kinks, as well as some angst. Kinks include light bdsm, teasing, orgasm denial, many others. Also warnings for dubcon in that a spy has sex with someone for the sake of a mission.
Summary: Frost (Mary Bartowski) and her thoughts on her relationship with Volkoff, and her past relationship of Stephen/Hartley/Mary.
Title: Five Ways that Scientists Are Like Spies: Or, Five Times Mary Bartowski Found Herself in Someone Else
Volkoff pinned her hips to the wall, fingers gripping bruises into her flesh. He kissed her, half bite, and pressed a leg between her knees as she gripped his shirt to pull him closer. She was enclosed between the heat of his body in front of her and the cold stone wall pushing into her back, enclosed in a circle of the man and the building that bore his name. And as she threw her head back to expose her throat to his lips, she tried to tell herself that he was not an overwhelming force, that he was not a battalion surrounding her. He was only a man.
And she was the one who made him.
1. Scientists, like spies, prefer a controlled environment.
When the Agency sent Mary to assist Stephen and Hartley, they were holed up in some ludicrously charming house in the English countryside. There was no one for miles around to hear or see them, and so they had converted an old barn into a testing facility and built a number of supercomputers in the expanded cellar. Not one. A number.
Mary was amused to find that the future of high-tech espionage was going to come from some bucolic retreat, crafted amid roaming sheep and grassy hills and the occasional ancient-looking tree. It was a paradox that fit her husband’s sensibilities perfectly, she knew.
It fit Hartley’s too, she would learn soon. She was sent to help them develop an “Intersect,” a tool to turn anyone into the perfect spy. They had been working from manuals and debriefing documents to determine how top spies would respond in various situations, but Langley (and its ally, MI-6) had decided that nothing on paper could equal the personal input of a high-level operative. It wasn’t Stephen’s or Mary’s many requests to be given more time together on the job that made them decide to send her; it was because there weren’t all that many spies working at Mary’s level, and they weren’t sure anyone else would be able to tolerate the notoriously quirky scientists’ work habits. Mary and Stephen were looking forward to it, despite the ambitious demands for results. Ellie and Chuck were at science camp for two months, so except for a trip home for "Parents' Weekend," they were going to have more time together without the kids since Ellie had been born 11 years ago.
About Hartley, she had known only what her husband had told her on the phone; he was a brilliant scientist, a kind-hearted man, and, more and more, a close friend. Mary had gently joked that perhaps she should be jealous of Hartley, but the truth was, she wasn’t the jealous type.
When she met him, finally, she understood why it was that Stephen had always sounded so enamored when speaking of him. Even she couldn’t help but become fond of him as she watched the two of them work together - thinking, imagining, creating, bursting with ideas and brilliance and integrity, but also laughing together, their camaraderie bleeding into deep affection. It was obvious to Mary that this was the first time Stephen had finally found someone just like himself - a scientist at his level of inquiry, but kind and funny and earthy and passionate and motivated by a desire to make breakthroughs in knowledge and to change the world for the better. As she worked with Hartley and her husband, as she lived with them in the same house, she observed them doing what they loved best. It became clear to her: their beauty came from the same place.
Mary was a good observer of people and soon she felt she knew Hartley well. The more she found out, the more she let her guard down. Maybe it was because he reminded her of Stephen. Maybe it was because they were in the middle of nowhere and it was easy to forget who they were, and why they were sent here. Maybe it was just because of the kind of man Hartley was.
Maybe she just liked his smile. The warmth of it, the way it seemed to emerge without his intent, lips spreading and opening to a gleam of teeth and laughter.
He wasn’t much like her. Hartley was a bit on the shy side, gentler even than Stephen, who was the gregarious friend to Hartley's more bashful one. But sometimes Hartley had a razor wit, one that jumped out at the least expected moments, after which Stephen and Mary would burst out laughing, half from the cleverness of his comment and half from how unexpected the sarcasm was, how jarring it was to see such cutting drollness from Hartley's innocent face.
Hartley was also one of their few friends who truly kept up with both of them in conversation, those half-silly overly earnest rapid-fire riffs that they started having on their first date and never wanted to stop. Everybody had always thought Stephen and Mary were a strange couple; people always asked them what they talked about, as if a scientist and an agent could have no common ground. The truth was that Mary and Stephen talked about everything and anything (that wasn't high clearance), and it was rare to find someone who didn’t find their vehemence or the sheer breadth of their topics overwhelming, much less add something exciting to the discussion. But Hartley bickered with Stephen about the state of contemporary science fiction, claiming all the great works were in the past and Stephen defending the recent authors; argued fiercely and delightedly as Mary listed all the reasons he was so very wrong about the relative merits of Puccini versus Verdi; he bellowed with laughter when Mary and Stephen debated which shape of pasta was most pleasing to the mouth; and he took the middle road, allowing that both sides had a point, when Stephen championed science as the bearer of vaccines and indoor plumbing and (someday) Star Trek-esque transporters while Mary pointed out the Manhattan Project, deforestation, and (someday) Frankenstein's monster and/or Hal.
They worked - hard - on the Intersect project, but sometimes they drove into town to go to the pub, where they drank warm ale and sang songs that only Stephen remembered all the lyrics to. They got home late and giggled their way through the cool fog into the warmth of the old stone house.
On some mornings, they all ate breakfast in their pajamas, sleepy and cozy. Mary always kept a fire extinguisher at the breakfast table, since Stephen and Hartley had invented a contraption to cook breakfast without any human assistance, but she hadn't had to use it so far (she always distrusted technology for some reason).
Dinners and tea, walks around the property, and, of course, their work: it was the three of them, getting along, feeling, somehow, perfectly at home. Mary didn’t feel the odd one out, the spy who came to the scientists’ party, but they never thought of Hartley as a third wheel either. Maybe it was because it had been a long time since there was anyone who knew what Stephen and Mary did who wasn't the boss or adversary of a least one of them. (They both had their detractors, even - or especially -- within the agency.) But it was more than that; Hartley was like them, fit with them, in some way that was more than just circumstance or similarity. Together, they enjoyed their work more than they ever had; they had warmth, laughter, imagination, and intellectual stimulation -- and, most importantly, they had a man who understood them, whom they trusted enough to be close to. Whom they wanted to get close to.
It was Mary who clued Stephen in that his crush on Hartley was obviously returned, a couple of weeks after her arrival. She was good at observing people, and she liked to cut to the chase. Stephen responded that it was just as clear that Hartley looked at Mary with much more than friendly affection.
They talked about it, just the two of them, for several days, before one very late night when Stephen put his arms around Mary, and they both smiled at Hartley, and asked.
He looked startled, at first, and then embarrassed, as if his secret desire had just been found out. But he nodded, faintly blushing. And then he walked into their bedroom, with Stephen's hand on his shoulder, with Mary's hand in his hand, leading him in.
.
2. Once they are in a controlled environment, scientists, like spies, like to try new things.
The Intersect experiments come along swimmingly. So does their relationship, and soon the three are much closer than caution would demand, closer than they should be in such a short amount of time together. They are free with one other in ways that surprise even themselves. They share one another without fear and with few rules.
Mary and Stephen walk in on Hartley rubbing himself; he is embarrassed, but they are not, and they make love in front of him, for him.
Another day, there are in bed, all three of them, and Mary tells them that she loves to watch them when they’re together, that she loves their closeness. Then she tells Stephen to tie Hartley to the bed and tease him until he loses himself utterly. She presses her fingers into herself as she watches them, Stephen’s light, sweet tortures turning Hartley into a quiver of a man, exploring his body with a hundred permutations of lips and hands, pain and comfort, until Hartley can barely contain himself. Stephen works him into a frenzy, and soon he is begging and desperate and babbling like a fool. And then he looks over at Mary, he sees her staring at him (she can't help but stare at him like this, so rapturously undone). Somehow, she decides to wink at him - a wink, of all things - and it’s the wink that sends him over the edge, the blasted wink that makes him come before Stephen has even touched his cock, and she knows that he loves and hates that she can do that to him.
Sometimes Mary is in the middle, the two men on either side, moving in tandem inside of her. Stephen, behind her, sets the rhythm slowly until her body has adapted to his, then moves faster, with Hartley in front of her matching his pace, driving her to orgasm after orgasm with the intensity of it, the unison of it. After, they lay there in a tired, sated heap, as Mary runs her fingers through the hair of two men, one at each side. They fall asleep like that, Stephen’s limbs sprawled awkwardly, adorably, over his partners’ bodies, and Hartley curled up by her side, his head resting on her breast, as if he is her child, as if he is her son.
Sometimes it is less gentle. Hartley loves it when she pins him to a wall, when her fingers dig deep and strong into his narrow hips, bruising them with her force. He jokes that he loves that she could kill him with her bare hands, but she knows it isn’t really a joke; she knows it as she bites into his collarbone while she presses his back into the brick of the garden wall. She knows it as he exposes his throat to her as she palms his breastbone, as submissive a posture as she’s ever seen. He delights in it, in his own nervousness, as she steps her leg forward, between his knees, leaning in so that he feels that she is encircling him, enclosing him. She wonders sometimes if it’s not his hippie tendencies showing through - she wouldn’t be surprised if he had a fondness for earth mothers, if he were one of those scientists who still thinks Nature is a woman.
They are happy together, the three of them. Sexually, intellectually, and emotionally, they find that rare combination that makes them feel both utterly stimulated and exhilarated and also safe. There is no jealousy, and this is a bit of a surprise, but nobody feels threatened, nobody worries that anyone wants to take someone from someone else. They know one another. They feel like a family.
It's not wise to feel this way in so short a time, but they do.
Sometimes, Mary catches Hartley staring at her. At the way she moves when she is close to an orgasm, the way it starts always with her legs. She sees him wonder at the way she looks up at the sky when the sun is out, feeling the yellow light, closing her eyes to savor the breeze. He even seems to treasure the way she leans forward when she laughs, the way her laughs are grand and obnoxious and unapologetically loud. Sometimes he realizes that she has caught him staring at her, and even after all they have done together, he still looks away, his ears still turn red. But he doesn’t stop looking at her, or sometimes at her and Stephen both, with some endearing mixture of desire and delight.
Even when they work, Hartley looks at them this way. Like he thinks both of them are brilliant and beautiful, like he wants nothing more than to work with them (be with them) forever.
Their work is good. When the two months are up, the research looks promising enough that the Agency orders them all back to California to begin Agent X's preparation and testing.
3. Scientists, like spies, need to know how the world works. Once they forget that, they’re lost.
When they get to California, they take Hartley to the beach. They know that as soon as the project begins in earnest, Hartley will not be permitted to leave the training compound for security reasons. They predict a fully functional Agent X in about a year.
They walk on the beach for a long time, Stephen running in and out of the shallow waves in surfer shorts that have never seen a board, Hartley sticking to dry sand as he walks barefoot, holding his shoes in his hand, loose like they're about to fall. His khakis are rolled up and his blue striped shirt is half unbuttoned, and he looks serene for a man about to be sequestered.
"Is it like the beaches in England?" she asks him.
He looks up and around and then smiles. "Less rain."
She laughs and grabs a loose swath of cotton shirt to pull him closer. They are alone, now, them and Stephen, walking through a private beach that only the most local of locals knows when to visit. They kiss and his lips are warm, warmer than usual, she imagines. Stephen walks up to them, hugs them both, kisses them one after another, and then gently pulls Hartley down on to the sand and kisses him again as they lay there. They look up at her, smiles and lust-dark eyes and sandy cheeks, and she falls to meet them, to join them. It is slow and awkward but sweet and they are so focused on one another that they miss the sunset but don't regret it.
After, they tell stories about the night sky, about what ancient cultures thought as they stared up at the pictures of light, bright flashes of meaning in a vast fabric of space.
Somehow, it is no time at all before they watch the dawn, rising over the city, gleaming purple light over the water. They know that in a few hours, Hartley will report for preliminary tests.
Stephen goes to get the car so they can lay there, the two of them, for a few extra moments.
Mary takes Hartley's hand, laces her fingers among his.
"Are you in love with me, Hartley?" She is pretty sure she knows the answer. But she always liked her intel confirmed at the source, in her professional life and everywhere else.
He swallows and nods. He looks scared of her, somehow, in that moment.
"And Stephen?" she asks.
"Him, too," he says. "Both of you.... Very much."
His eyelashes flutter, then, from fear maybe, or from being so swept away by something he probably didn't even want to feel. She knows it's hard for him, knows that their reassurances couldn't change the fact that she and Stephen were a family with or without him, no matter how much they all wanted it to be with him. He looks so small, so fragile, at that moment, she feels like she could see straight into his heart.
More than anything she wants to tell him to run. She wants to tell him that a man like him should never become a spy.
Instead, she says, "We love you, too. That's why you don't need to worry. Whatever happens with the project, we'll be right there by your side."
He smiles, leans in to her, as if the word of a spy could be trusted implicitly.
--------------
Hartley begins an extensive series of tests as well as physical, psychological, and mental training for the task of being 'Intersected.' They don't yet know how to include combat training, so Hartley will be trained in that as well. He and Stephen both work on making the Intersect the ideal undercover agent. A breakthrough comes when they decide that the Intersect should simply program the agent to become a bad guy, instead of just being good at imitating one.
Mary thinks this is a terrible idea and she says so. But when they ask her if she would feel differently if it were someone other than Hartley, she knows that they are right. Most spies get caught when they are off their guards for just a second, when they revert to their 'real' selves at the wrong time in front of the wrong person. Hartley would be safer if he had no idea who he was.
She points out that the personality the Intersect imbues will have to be real enough to fool the groups he was supposed to infiltrate, even in close long-term contact. So they set out to design a personality that will pass as a brilliant, world-class, power-hungry sociopath.
Mary wishes she could help them more. But she is needed elsewhere in the world and is now only their occasional consultant, her reverie with her two men turned into the sporadic visitation that a spy should be used to. But they are together sometimes, and she is with them enough that their closeness continues to grow.
She continues to worry.
Still, she helps the project when she can. She, more than either of them, has experience with crimelords, dictators, traitorous spies, and arms dealers.
She gives them everything they need to know to make Agent X the perfect bad guy, the perfect amalgam of the most successful horrifying men she’s known. She tells them that Agent X should a megalomaniac, inclined to slap his name and face everywhere, preferring fear to any other means of persuasion. She also tells them that this man will be smart, manipulative, and charismatic; men like this were prone to emotionality, sentimentality even, sudden fits of mercy or benevolence that were far outweighed by their many acts of cruelty, but were part of them nonetheless. She makes sure they develop a personality that seems real enough that it would fool others, and more importantly fool an intelligent man like Hartley himself - they couldn’t have him figuring out his own personality was made up, after all.
She also emphasizes one thing, again and again, because without it, Agent X won't fool anybody: A man like this doesn’t know how to love; he only knows how to own.
She tells them these things, and they program them in. They don’t ask how she knows, or from whom she got this knowledge.
Sometimes, they take the facts that they give her as mere data, as a boost in available input that they are quite happy to get. She thinks, those times, that their intelligence has made them silly somehow; the Intersect technology is evolving rapidly, and they are almost giddy with the prospect of forever unlacing the boundary between mind and machine. She wonders if they are perhaps, despite their brilliance, a bit like teenagers shooting at enemies in a videogame, unknowing of the real shooters and targets out there. She knows this is unfair; they are good men, they want to make a difference. And she isn’t sure if her overprotectiveness is warranted; they have never demanded her to be less than she is, and she want to do the same for them. But she is not used to having to silence her worries about them, and she especially is not used to work and personal life getting so entangled and messy; she knows that any strong objection she makes would put them in the position of choosing her above duty and country (and explicit orders from Langley as well). They believe in the project, and the project will help their countries and their world, and she doesn’t want to ask them to give up on their finest invention, their self-confidence in their work, their source of employment, and their service to their country, all because the spy in her is screaming to be careful. So she tells herself not to worry.
Sometimes, however, they are a little gleeful over their latest technique for breaking the mind’s resistance to their programming. Then, Mary is reminded of that old saying, that men build elaborate toys, that they have to use technology to conquer, because they can't create for real, because they can't give birth. But then Mary remembers Lise Meitner and Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace, and she knows that this human grasp for knowledge can't be blamed on one particular chromosome. (Sometimes she also remembers that women who get their way with guns might not get to throw stones at the patriarchal nature of circuitboards.)
And their passion isn’t misplaced, she knows. Enemies can only be beaten with an advantage. And a successful Intersect would be an enormous advantage against the enemies that would destroy their countries, that wanted to destroy families just like theirs. So she reminds herself that this is important work, that all will be fine, that backup will be there. She reminds herself that Stephen and Hartley know what they are doing, that they will do nothing to hurt their family, and that backup will make sure Agent X doesn’t do anything Hartley wouldn’t want to live with. She reminds herself that these traits they are programming in are just a script, just language and gestures designed to make an op succeed, no different really than the lies she has learned to tell in her own training. She especially reminds herself that two of the most brilliant scientists in the world are looking out for the project, for each other, and that they happen to be the two people she trusts most in the world.
She believes deeply in their brilliance even as she starts to fear this man that they are making, this man sewn together from scraps of the worst men she has known.
4. Scientists, like spies, would do almost anything for knowledge.
They avoid talking about the one thing they should talk about until Hartley brings it up. They’re compiling the rest of the interpersonal traits that Agent X will need to have, and Mary, as usual, is making sure everything is “authentic.”
"It's strange, knowing that in a few months, I'll be a sociopath," Hartley says.
There's not fear in his voice, for some reason, Mary notices, there's no plea to back out. He simply is noting the anomalousness of the situation.
"For a very brief couple of months," Stephen reminds him. "Then we remove the Intersect, and you're good as new."
"And the Agency will have people on you at all times, making sure you don't cross any lines that can't be uncrossed," she tells him, not mentioning that they had recently decided Mary was too close to Agent X to be one of those line watchers.
"Besides, according to Mary, all scientists are basically sociopaths anyway," Stephen jokes to lighten the mood.
"I never said that," she says, then adds, with a wink, "But now that you mention it, what else would you call someone who invents a bomb or a bioweapon all for the sake of 'furthering knowledge'?"
"What would you call someone who uses or buys or sells weapons, all for the sake of 'acquiring intel'?" Hartley asks, smiling at the idea of giving it back to Mary, until they all decide that it’s not that funny and change the subject. They have to get back to working up the rest of the Intersect’s personality profile, anyway.
When it came time to program the part of Agent X's personality that dealt with sex and romance, they awkwardly asked Frost to start from scratch since there were no textbooks on the subject of the sexual proclivities of power-mad criminal masterminds. The men were silent and clinical as she told them what a brilliantly inventive sociopath would come up with in bed -- that he would probably be selfish, but if not, it would be because his ego demanded a highly technical virtuosity. There might on occasion be a childlike dependency on the lover, but certainly no real intimacy, nothing that would last beyond the moment. They dutifully took notes on her comments, never asking her how she knew this, how many men she knew this from, or how many of these men were assets she cultivated during her and Stephen's marriage. When she was done, they were all quiet.
Until Hartley said, "Well, I say, bullocks to all that."
"What?"
"I'll accept being an amoral, violent thug. But you're not programming me to be bad in bed," he said with a grin, and they knew he was only half joking.
"I guess there isn't that much harm in making him a little better in bed than the average megalomaniac," she said with a smile.
"How about making me fabulous in bed?" Hartley said, and they laughed, the tension gone.
But Stephen thought that was a good idea - a good lover could only be stronger as a spy, after all. And soon they were all throwing their ideas into the effort, each of them listing the sexual qualities they wanted this persona to have. They listed broad categories - "generous with his partner but also knows what he himself likes" - and also specific preferences - "that thing that Mary does with her fingers on your hips, when she wants you against a wall." Soon it becomes a review of their greatest hits in bed, and they decide that it's not just a laugh, that it's an idea; this will be their signature on the man they will create, the thing that comes from all three of them that is genuinely, irrefutably them.
---------------------
They continue to make good progress on the other aspects of the project as well. Hartley is surprisingly good with both weapons and hand-to-hand, and Stephen makes stunning advancements in the technology. Mary is frequently assigned to places around the globe, but she keeps abreast of the project, and when she is home, even with spending as much time as she can with her children, she finds a way to see Hartley, to stay close. Sometimes Stephen is home with the kids when she goes to him; Stephen knows they need to make an effort for the three of them to keep feeling like they belong together, and he knows that it is Hartley and Mary who have the hardest task finding time to be together.
When Mary and Hartley make love, she rides him in his single bunk in his cell-like room at the training center, an old shirt over the surveillance camera, and she tries to make every time gorgeous, every time a memory, she scratches into his back and presses him down into the thin mattress as if she can leave her imprint on him, as if her body can make him remember who he is, even when he is someone else. He comes inside of her every time, and every time he pulls her into an embrace, his eyes grateful and blissful and sweet. She manages never to tell him this, that his eyes are sweet. Much, much too sweet.
She doesn't knowt he exact date when he will become a different man; it's classified, even to her.
She isn’t even on the same continent he is when it happens.
5. Scientists, like spies, have trouble believing any door is really and truly closed.
When Stephen and Mary got together, people thought it was strange -- especially the people who knew what they both did for a living. People thought that the couple was too different, that one was soft and one was hard, or that one was ideas and one was action. The truth was, they were both all of these things, and it worked for them.
For fourteen years, their differences didn’t matter. For fourteen years, their opposite natures were a source of discovery and sparks and delight, a reason to stay up all night bickering in the kitchen as they nibble on the stale cookies they find at the back of the cupboard, a reason to believe that there would always be some fire in relationship no matter how many decades they spent side by side.
When Hartley doesn’t come back, when he becomes their worst nightmare, Orion begins his lifelong mission to save him and Frost begins her lifelong mission to destroy him. They don’t have as much to talk about after that.
Hartley - now Volkoff - is brilliant. An intelligence untempered by fear or love or even a philosophical sense of moderation. He sees his CIA watchers, all that they send, and kills them. He disappears and six months later is the leading arms dealer on the Eastern bloc. Which is hardly an uncompetitive field.
Hartley Winterbottom is erased from the records. Officially, Volkoff is a wanted man, dead or alive, nothing more to the story.
Stephen -- Orion -- can't believe the Agency would do this to Hartley. He loses trust in them. He can't live with being the tool of an organization that betrayed his best friend.
Mary is not surprised that they would do this. She can't live with knowing that she put a lethal man out there, a man who was growing in power and violence by the day.
Nothing is more important to her than righting that wrong.
Nothing would be worse than to release a weapon like Volkoff into the world and sit by while people were killed, while nations were felled. She didn't care that the Agency wanted to pretend that it wasn't their fault. She couldn't live in denial.
The fifth time she fails to kill him, he is less charmed by it than for her previous efforts. She spends six months in a hole of a cell and thinks about how stupid it was to program Agent X to know all the moves a spy like her would try. She wanted to keep Hartley safe from would-be assassins, but it worked too well.
The only reason she's not dead is because he has an odd fondness for her. She isn't sure if it's some inherent chemistry, something physical.
She manages to escape, barely, after grueling months. She gets back to the Agency and they tell her that nobody could expect more from her than what she's given. They tell her that it might not even be possible to take down Volkoff.
She insists on going back. She does this enough times that eventually the people in charge are new enough to genuinely not know who made Alexei Volkoff, instead of just pretending they didn't.
She is smarter, these later times. She uses what she has - her spy abilities, her ability to play on people's emotions and needs. He likes her, loves her, for no good reason, and she can’t help but think that somewhere in there he is Hartley still, the bashful scientist with a terrifying crush on his best friend and his best friend’s wife.
She sees him laugh giddily after shooting four civilians and then she knows that Hartley's not in there. Not even a little piece.
She encourages his love for him. A few times she gets him to trust her enough that she might be able to kill him, even if it would be a suicide mission, even if his soldiers will kill her at soon as she did it. But now Volkoff Industries is everywhere, now the Agency needs more than just Volkoff dead, it needs him captured, it needs his contacts and allies and his whole network. They tell her that taking Volkoff out would cause his weapons cache to be without a fearsome owner, and soon the worst weapons would be going to anyone who happened upon them instead of a few - albeit terrifying - groups that at least the Agency knew about. They tell her that anything short of a clean, live, well-prepared takedown will put millions of lives in danger, and she can't be responsible for that.
And so she stays. She feels like she is Dr. Frankenstein, living with his monster, pretending to love him while she ignores the seams she used to stitch him together.
Somewhere out there is Orion, she knows, a rogue spy, a scientist whom everyone thinks has gone mad. But she knows that this is just Orion’s way, that he really believes he can fix the things they broke and will do anything to do it. It isn’t in him to give up on someone he loves; in Stephen's imagination, Frost knows, he would save Hartley and then Mary would be able to come home to him. To them.
In reality, Frost knows with the certainty of a spy who has seen the way of the world, that the Agency would keep making impossible demands until one day she would have to kill Volkoff, and then Orion would never forgive her.
Or, just as likely, Volkoff would kill her, and Stephen would lose hope entirely. She tries not to think about what Stephen will be without his characteristic optimism. She tries not to wonder if this man will even be her Stephen at all.
She misses her husband, almost as much as she misses her kids. She misses Stephen most of all when she is in bed with Volkoff, when he does the exact same move that Stephen used to, the one they programmed in at her suggestion.
But it’s not nearly as bad as when Volkoff uses one of Hartley’s moves in bed, especially one they programmed at her suggestion. Whenever he kisses a line up her thigh, gazing up at her the whole time, she hates him with a fierceness she can barely hide. She hates herself and she hates Stephen and most of all she hates Hartley for agreeing to do this, to becom this. It's Hartley's face and Hartley's body and Hartley's mouth and Volkoff's cold, cold eyes on her, and she hates it, hates them, she never wants to forgive any of them, least of all herself.
Of the three of them, though, Mary was roughest in bed, most forceful. She was careful, of course; she was a spy, they were just scientists, and she didn't want to harm them. But she knew how to wield her power, knew the right amount of force and fear to get the exact shade of gentle and amused dominance she wanted. And it worked; Hartley and Stephen had listed these among their favorite “Mary” moves when they programmed Agent X.
It was these moves, these gestures, that she hated most from Volkoff's body. To her, they were aggressive and knowing and far too cocky, and she’s sure she wasn’t like this, she’s sure that Volkoff has twisted her moves into something hard and forceful and sharp. These moves sought to enclose her, to bind her, to imprint her with his love until she would never be able to forget it.
Worst of all, they reminded her of who she used to be. That stupid girl who thought a decade as a spy could prepare her for anything, could prepare her for years, for decades, of this. It reminded her of how happy she was, how she briefly thought that maybe their invention, the game they made up in a country cottage, could win the war for them, could make it so she someday wouldn't have to fight any more at all. It reminded her of warmth and laughter and bickering about painters over tea. It reminded her of sand in the hair of the men that she loved, of them whispering stories about the night sky that they didn't really believe were true.
It reminded her that there was a time when she could be within arm's length of the people she loved, could hold them and enclose them, could press into them tightly with her hands and with her body, never wanting to let go.
Every time Volkoff uses her own moves on her, it reminds her that she could have been a very different woman than she is now. She comes every time, and she hates him for it.
(end)