The Spy Who Loved Me
Title: The Spy Who Loved Me
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Ohno Satoshi/Toda Erika
Summary: Most enter the agency with dreams of being in the field - the one being monitored rather than the one doing the monitoring. But Ohno's never been the most ambitious of spies. Because if he was out in the field, risking his life day in and day out, then he wouldn't get to monitor her.
Notes/Warnings: A spy/secret agent AU with romance for this year's je_holiday.
In the grand scheme of things, Ohno's place in the command room isn't all that significant. Sho-kun's the head of the unit. He calls all the shots, his eyes drifting from screen to screen as the agents in the field report back. Nino and Aiba are the tech guys - they're the ones who do all the hacking, ensure that the agents' gadgets will work in the field. Jun-kun's usually got the building schematics up on his screen, giving clear concise orders. "Turn left there." "Next door on your right."
Ohno sits in the back of the room and simply ensures that the comm-links stay open. It's a pretty thankless job, really. Nino and Aiba are so good at their gadget-making that an agent completely underwater or in the middle of a fight on a moving train car won't lose a signal. So Ohno spends every mission staring at the transmission readouts on his screen, waiting for them to drop below 20%. Because then he'll have to patch them into a back-up system. But in the eight years he's sat here in the command room, it's never even gone below 30%. No matter how dangerous the mission at hand, agents are more likely to die before their comms ever will. Not that it's easy to lose an agent.
When a mission succeeds, praise goes to the tech guys, to the agents, to Sho-kun for getting everyone home safely. Nobody pats Ohno on the back and congratulates him on his ability to (mostly) stay awake staring at the same thing hour after hour. He's never been singled out for a job well done.
The spy game seems glamorous in the movies, but to Ohno Satoshi, it's not much more than hour after hour of eye strain. Most enter the agency with dreams of being in the field - the one being monitored rather than the one doing the monitoring. But Ohno's never been the most ambitious of spies. He tells his parents and potential girlfriends that he "works with computers" and nobody cares to ask anything further. He's content with the salary and the benefits, with the knowledge that in his own small, insignificant way he's contributing to the security of Japan.
Because if he was out in the field, risking his life day in and day out, then he wouldn't get to monitor her.
There are about twenty-five operatives in the field at any given time, and Ohno wonders if anyone's figured him out yet. He always manages to be in the command room when she's on an assignment, hearing her voice over the comms, hearing the excitement in her words when a mission's done and gone well.
He's heard her voice coming all the way from Monaco, from Rio, from Kolkata. He's watched scenes play out from her point of view, a camera hidden in a pair of glasses or a bikini top filming whatever she's seeing somewhere else on the planet. Thousands of miles, a hemisphere away, Ohno makes sure he's there, seeing what she sees.
Agent Toda Erika's been in the field for over two years now, and he's never missed a mission. He's looked at his shoes, fists clenched, when Sho-kun's given her the go-ahead to flirt with an enemy in hopes of gaining some intel. He's gotten to his feet and cheered when she's taken out a mark at 500 yards with a sniper rifle. He's watched her from across the room at the agency Christmas party, joking with Nino and teaming up with him to plant truth serum in Aiba's cake.
He's pretty sure it's not love - if anything, he feels like a bit of a stalker, and with the exciting life she leads, she'd probably never give him a second glance.
But that all changes on the day she's a little too cocky, ignoring Sho's order to get out and abort the mission. Toda's always been confident, but today it gets her in trouble. Ohno can only watch his screen, heart racing, when they hear the gunshot, see Toda fall.
"Shots fired, agent down!" Toda's partner Sebumi is shouting. "Repeat, agent down!"
The control room is eerily quiet save for Sho-kun's voice calmly directing Sebumi to get Toda to the nearest hospital before she bleeds out.
Nobody seems to notice Ohno plugging in his headphones, listening to the sound of sirens, Sebumi and Sho talking back and forth. Nobody seems to notice when he alters the frequency so all he can hear is the sound of Toda's pained breathing.
"It'll be okay," he whispers, knowing full well she can't hear him. "You'll be okay."
--
Thanks to Toda's athleticism, the bullet meant for her heart went clean through her shoulder instead. She's due to be released in a few days, and Sho's had agents watching her around the clock. The enemy knows her face now.
Sho comes to Ohno's workstation, sliding over the envelope and the card. "Get well soon!" it reads along with a cute picture of a teddy bear holding balloons. It's odd how they function like almost any other workplace sometimes.
"Satoshi-kun," Sho says as the others monitor progress at their own positions in the command room. Inoo's meeting with a potential asset in Moscow's Tsaritsyno Park in the next 20 minutes, one of their first major field operations in the few weeks since what happened with Toda.
"Done with final checks," he reports diligently, fumbling around on his desk for a pen so he can sign the card.
"Actually, I was hoping you could take care of something," Sho said. "Agent Toda's injuries mean it'll take a while for her to be field rated again. And we're thinking of setting her up at the spare workstation back here, let her back us up until she's good to go."
"She'll be sitting in here?" Ohno exclaims, a little too noisily. He can already see Nino and Aiba giggling to themselves - Ohno apparently hasn't been as subtle about his crush as he thought he'd been.
Sho is kind enough not to pass judgment. "So since we'll all be mentoring her and she'll be back here, maybe you should get to know each other." Sho taps his finger on the Get Well Soon card. "Why don't you go drop that off for her?"
"Me? Right now?"
"I'll monitor comms for you," Sho volunteers, not like it's a hardship. "Go ahead, it's fine."
Ohno scribbles a very pathetic "Feel better!" on the card, and he's on his way, not missing the smirks of everyone in the room. When he arrives at the hospital, Agent Sebumi is personally watching her door like a guard dog. Ohno has to flash his badge before Sebumi even believes Ohno works for the same agency they do.
Sebumi is everything Ohno is not - brave, courageous...tall. He looks down at Ohno holding the card everyone signed and the small bouquet of flowers he'd picked up in the hospital gift shop, probably wishing he had the authority to interrogate him. Instead he just frowns and slides open Toda's door.
She's out of bed like she definitely shouldn't be, some exercise program blaring on the TV while she tries to stretch with a pained expression. Her right arm (her shooting arm, Ohno knows) hangs limply at her side, and even through the hospital gown he can see that she's still bandaged pretty heavily. She turns around when he enters, stopping her stretches.
She looks different like this. In the field she wears glamorous outfits to observe the enemy at parties or she dresses down in black to crawl through ducts in search of intel. This Toda Ohno barely recognizes. Her straight black hair is tied back in a simple ponytail, her face devoid of makeup. Her eyes are still as clear and sharp as he knows them to be, although they're more confused than anything right now.
Of course, Ohno knows why. She has no idea who he is.
"Ah, sorry," he mumbles, holding out the bouquet in one hand and the card in the other. "I'm Ohno Satoshi, analyst level three. I, um, work on Director Sakurai's team," he says by way of introduction.
She takes the flowers, smelling them briefly before setting them on the bed. She forcibly yanks some out of a vase on her bedside table and tosses them in the trash, replacing them with the ones Ohno's brought. She's clumsy doing this, still in obvious pain and still not used to trying to function left-handed. "Director Sakurai's team, huh? What do you do?"
Nothing fun like Nino and Aiba and their tracker pens or lipstick cameras. Nothing useful like Jun, watching and guiding them. "I monitor communication frequencies. Sho-kun, um, Director Sakurai says you'll be sitting with us once you're released. To work in the command room until you're ready to go back out."
She nods at that, even as it seems to irritate her. "Well don't trouble yourself on my account, Ohno-san. I won't be bothering you for that long. I'll be back out in the field if they have to tape my sidearm to my palm." She tries to flex the fingers of her right hand, wincing in pain.
"Are you okay?" he asks, even though she's clearly not.
"I will be," she says. "As soon as humanly possible."
Without much else to say or any sort of common ground, Ohno leaves. She says a brief "thanks" for the card and the flowers, but doesn't really acknowledge him otherwise, her focus already back on the exercise program.
As he takes the train back to work, he wonders what to think of his first conversation with Agent Toda, if it even counted as much of a conversation. In the field, Ohno's seen her take down bad guys twice her size, jump out of airplanes, kick guns out of an enemy's hand. Seeing her the way she is now, so obviously upset and not in top shape, saddens him.
He wonders if there's anything he can do to help, then sighs. What could he ever have to offer someone like her?
--
Toda's out of the hospital a week later, and she reports for duty in the command room with a weak smile on her face. It's pretty obvious that she finds working in the command room to be a boring assignment. But, Ohno figures, anything would seem boring given what her job usually entails.
Ohno fidgets a bit in his seat when Toda is installed in the workstation beside him, her eyes already glazing over at the readouts in front of them except when Sho's looking their way. Because comms are good, because comms are almost always good, he watches her out of the corner of his eye while they monitor Agent Ishihara's infiltration of a warehouse in Cape Town. This probably would have been Toda's op since she has more contacts in the region, and Ohno can tell that she's jealous and upset.
It's in the way she slowly opens and closes her right hand, already trying to strengthen it again. It's in the way Ishihara cheerfully chatters over the airwaves with Nino, who is patching her in to the on-site security system. Everybody's having a grand old time, and Toda's miserable.
When things finish, Toda stays at her place, staring at the screen while the others leave the room, Nino and Aiba gossiping about the new field agent Sho has an obvious crush on, Keiko-san. Ohno shuts his own terminal down and gets to his feet.
It takes all his courage to say anything. "Agent Toda?"
She blinks at the screen, finally turning her head to stare at him coldly. "What?"
"Good work today. See you tomorrow."
Her face softens the slightest bit. "See you."
This slowly becomes Ohno's routine. There are ops and briefings, and Toda clearly suffers through all of them. It's affecting morale in the command room a bit, and Ohno notices the others whispering sometimes. They seem insulted by the way Toda's dismissing their work, the important tasks they have in the command room. Ohno understands it though. After all, he knows her better than anyone else - or at least in this, he gets her.
So he tells her she's doing good work while the others start a secret betting pool for when Toda will finally get her wish - to get back into the field and out of their hair. Then maybe they'll like her again. Ohno, however, hasn't stopped liking her.
There's an on-site training facility and gym at headquarters, and he knows Toda's doing physical therapy. Even after the long hours in the command room, Ohno knows that she stays late stretching, training her body, trying to learn to do some tasks with her left hand just as well as her right. The ones making the betting pool probably don't know this.
He decides to jog on the gym track one of these nights. The night before, Sebumi had been in the office for a briefing, and Ohno had watched the two of them run together - he'd given up and gone home. But today Ohno knows that Sebumi is on his way to Bolivia for a mission, and now he can be brave.
She's speed walking tonight, trying to loosely swing her arm while she moves. He enters, stretches. He's totally not a runner at all. This is at least somewhat closer to his pace.
"Ohno-san," she says when he approaches.
"Mind if I join you?" would be the right thing to say. Ohno and his nerves, however, settle for "Hey."
So she takes off again, and he keeps pace with her. He can see her straining, tears pricking her eyes after they round the track the third time, the fourth. He finally stops them halfway through.
"You don't have to push yourself so hard," he tells her.
She blushes in embarrassment, so far from the confident woman he watches in the field that it surprises him. "Yes, I do," she says, her eyes flashing with anger. "You don't get it."
They walk slowly toward the locker rooms, and he shakes his head.
"You want to be out there, I know you do."
"And I won't get there any faster if you all keep coddling me!" she protests.
He stops walking. "You'll get hurt again. If you rush this." She seems confused by his concern, and he wonders if he's overstepped his bounds. He's usually the last person to interfere in other people's business.
She stops too, looking down at her sneakers. "I feel alive out there," she admits to him. "So damn alive. Sitting in that room, sitting at a desk and staring at a computer, it's awful."
You got shot out there, he wants to tell her. He holds his tongue. He's been a year's worth of opinionated this evening, and he's already itching to flee, settle back into his comfort zone where he likes Agent Toda Erika behind the safety of his screen. Having her so close, so real might actually flip that switch from "kind of a stalker" to "guy in love." He's not sure how to deal with those feelings, not yet.
"I'm alive," he says to her quietly. "We all are, in that command room. We're all a team, no matter who we are or what we do."
He doesn't give her a chance to reply, heading through the locker room door.
--
Things are quieter between him and Toda over the next week, but he does notice a change in her. She starts to care. The command room stops being a place where she's stuck temporarily. She takes point on some missions at Sho's side, the two of them working together to help agents in the field. She speaks up during briefings, using her expertise to help fine-tune mission plans. The others stop grumbling behind her back. The betting pool is forgotten.
And every night when Ohno's heading out the door he passes by the gym glass and watches Toda take on the track with the same enthusiasm. But at a reasonable pace. He finds himself smiling at her, wondering if his lame excuse for a pep talk (if that was even what it was) had anything to do with her rejuvenation.
--
Toda finds him in the cafeteria a few days later, setting down her tray without even asking if the seat is taken. "Alright, we need to fix you," she announces.
"Fix me?" he mumbles.
"That day when you tried to run with me," she reminds him, smirking. "That wasn't your best was it?"
"I don't run."
She pulls the disposable cafeteria chopsticks apart and shakes her head at him. "Speak up."
"I don't run, Agent Toda."
"You do now."
--
After Agent Kitagawa (or "Keiko-chaaaan" whenever Aiba and Nino talk behind Sho's back) safely completes her dead drop in Kuala Lumpur, Toda drags Ohno back to the track. It's a struggle to keep up with her, even though she's not pushing herself beyond her limits.
He's wheezing after their second mile, and she allows them to stop mostly so she can laugh at him. "You are the worst person to train with," she tells him. "You really suck at this."
Toda's blunt way of speaking, on comms out in the field and during those holiday parties, it was part of what drew Ohno to her. Toda doesn't hide her opinions, and Ohno likes that straightforward feeling, that honesty. Unfortunately it's coming back to bite him in the ass.
"I'm not aiming for field service," he reminds her. "I'm fine with the job I have."
She rolls her eyes and laughs. Maybe she doesn't need the exotic dress with the gun holster strapped to her thigh. Maybe she doesn't need to be squeezing through an air duct, leaping over laser beams. Maybe he just needs her here, laughing at him with her hair pulled back and her eyes shining bright.
"You like me," she says, blunt again.
He nods. There's no point lying about it.
She leans forward, small beads of sweat glistening on her nose. "Beat my mile time, and maybe I'll go out with you sometime."
Ohno runs, faster than he knew he could.
--
Agent Sebumi is killed a week later in the line of duty, helping to rescue children from traffickers. It's the first man down in at least five years, and the mood is heavy at the agency.
Toda takes it the hardest. They'd been partners, Ohno knows. With her out of the field for so long, without Toda at his back, maybe Sebumi thought he could play it alone. He receives a hero's funeral, and Ohno wears the only suit he owns. The incense swirls and seeps into his skin. The portrait of Sebumi is unsmiling, serious and hardworking to a fault. Brave, courageous...tall.
Ohno lingers behind as Toda speaks with Sebumi's family, his mother who had apparently brought her food in the hospital. Toda's as much a member of their family as anyone. The command room crew goes to a bar to drink in Sebumi's honor, Toda's hand staying firm on a bottle of bourbon the bartender brings for them.
He walks her home, arms linked to stay upright. She unlocks her door, pulls him in and they sit down in her entryway, surrounded by shoes and slippers. Ohno remembers Toda...no, he remembers Erika telling him that being in the field made her feel alive. Did Sebumi feel that way too? Even as the bullets were fired?
He's so drunk he's asked her this out loud. She responds by kissing him only once, her mouth warm and slick.
"He had my back," she says, the pair of them lying on the floor in their funeral clothes. "Now nobody does."
"I've got it," he tells her. "If you want."
She curls up next to him as best she can, resting her head against him. "Okay."
--
He loves her.
--
After three months of rehabilitation and training, Erika (because she can only be Erika now - "Agent Toda" was a blip on the screen on the other side of the world) is cleared to begin field work again.
She spends each day in the command room, each session in the briefing room waiting for Sho to call her name, for Sho to say "get your passport, I need you in Copenhagen in 48 hours ready to go." He doesn't seem eager to send her out just yet.
It only makes her run harder, run faster in the gym, Ohno keeping pace as best he can. He hasn't beaten her time yet, but she doesn't hold it against him. Especially when he, in fact, holds her against him, relishing the softness of her skin, the taste of her lips, this woman that lives to save the world.
He's not sure he wants her to go anyway. It was easier when she was that blip on the screen. Beautiful and gorgeous and distant. Now she means so much more, and he thinks of her twin scars from that bullet - front and back, the ones he's traced with his fingers and his mouth. He doesn't want her coming home with any more scars. He doesn't want her coming home in a box like Sebumi either.
"I need this," she says. "I need to be out there."
"But I can't follow you."
"You can," she says. "On the screen. You've got my back, remember? As long as I've got your eyes on me, your ears listening, I know it'll all work out."
He shrugs. "But Sho-kun gives the orders, and Jun says..."
"Oh-chan."
"What?"
She gives him a smack on the back of his head. "As long as you're watching, I'll make it through. And I'll come home."
--
Erika's on the other side of the world, chasing down diamond thieves in Nigeria. There's a tracker on her boot, a Nino-and-Aiba special, that'll help the extraction team pull her out once she gets the photos of the compound. Sho's watching all the screens, eyes darting this way and that. Jun's barking directions - cut through that brush, two guards at 4 o'clock, go now now now.
Ohno's at his own workstation, monitoring comms. They're functioning at 100% efficiency, and he smiles.
She gets the photos they need, and the helicopter's overhead. The noise is overwhelming, but he's got his headphones plugged in, tuned to the secret frequency that only he'll be able to hear.
"Nice work," he whispers as the rope dangles out of the helicopter and Erika makes a leap for it, grabbing hold with zero trouble.
She's eight thousand miles away, climbing up a rope, but her voice comes through crisp and clear. He can just imagine her smile.
"I know."
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Ohno Satoshi/Toda Erika
Summary: Most enter the agency with dreams of being in the field - the one being monitored rather than the one doing the monitoring. But Ohno's never been the most ambitious of spies. Because if he was out in the field, risking his life day in and day out, then he wouldn't get to monitor her.
Notes/Warnings: A spy/secret agent AU with romance for this year's je_holiday.
In the grand scheme of things, Ohno's place in the command room isn't all that significant. Sho-kun's the head of the unit. He calls all the shots, his eyes drifting from screen to screen as the agents in the field report back. Nino and Aiba are the tech guys - they're the ones who do all the hacking, ensure that the agents' gadgets will work in the field. Jun-kun's usually got the building schematics up on his screen, giving clear concise orders. "Turn left there." "Next door on your right."
Ohno sits in the back of the room and simply ensures that the comm-links stay open. It's a pretty thankless job, really. Nino and Aiba are so good at their gadget-making that an agent completely underwater or in the middle of a fight on a moving train car won't lose a signal. So Ohno spends every mission staring at the transmission readouts on his screen, waiting for them to drop below 20%. Because then he'll have to patch them into a back-up system. But in the eight years he's sat here in the command room, it's never even gone below 30%. No matter how dangerous the mission at hand, agents are more likely to die before their comms ever will. Not that it's easy to lose an agent.
When a mission succeeds, praise goes to the tech guys, to the agents, to Sho-kun for getting everyone home safely. Nobody pats Ohno on the back and congratulates him on his ability to (mostly) stay awake staring at the same thing hour after hour. He's never been singled out for a job well done.
The spy game seems glamorous in the movies, but to Ohno Satoshi, it's not much more than hour after hour of eye strain. Most enter the agency with dreams of being in the field - the one being monitored rather than the one doing the monitoring. But Ohno's never been the most ambitious of spies. He tells his parents and potential girlfriends that he "works with computers" and nobody cares to ask anything further. He's content with the salary and the benefits, with the knowledge that in his own small, insignificant way he's contributing to the security of Japan.
Because if he was out in the field, risking his life day in and day out, then he wouldn't get to monitor her.
There are about twenty-five operatives in the field at any given time, and Ohno wonders if anyone's figured him out yet. He always manages to be in the command room when she's on an assignment, hearing her voice over the comms, hearing the excitement in her words when a mission's done and gone well.
He's heard her voice coming all the way from Monaco, from Rio, from Kolkata. He's watched scenes play out from her point of view, a camera hidden in a pair of glasses or a bikini top filming whatever she's seeing somewhere else on the planet. Thousands of miles, a hemisphere away, Ohno makes sure he's there, seeing what she sees.
Agent Toda Erika's been in the field for over two years now, and he's never missed a mission. He's looked at his shoes, fists clenched, when Sho-kun's given her the go-ahead to flirt with an enemy in hopes of gaining some intel. He's gotten to his feet and cheered when she's taken out a mark at 500 yards with a sniper rifle. He's watched her from across the room at the agency Christmas party, joking with Nino and teaming up with him to plant truth serum in Aiba's cake.
He's pretty sure it's not love - if anything, he feels like a bit of a stalker, and with the exciting life she leads, she'd probably never give him a second glance.
But that all changes on the day she's a little too cocky, ignoring Sho's order to get out and abort the mission. Toda's always been confident, but today it gets her in trouble. Ohno can only watch his screen, heart racing, when they hear the gunshot, see Toda fall.
"Shots fired, agent down!" Toda's partner Sebumi is shouting. "Repeat, agent down!"
The control room is eerily quiet save for Sho-kun's voice calmly directing Sebumi to get Toda to the nearest hospital before she bleeds out.
Nobody seems to notice Ohno plugging in his headphones, listening to the sound of sirens, Sebumi and Sho talking back and forth. Nobody seems to notice when he alters the frequency so all he can hear is the sound of Toda's pained breathing.
"It'll be okay," he whispers, knowing full well she can't hear him. "You'll be okay."
--
Thanks to Toda's athleticism, the bullet meant for her heart went clean through her shoulder instead. She's due to be released in a few days, and Sho's had agents watching her around the clock. The enemy knows her face now.
Sho comes to Ohno's workstation, sliding over the envelope and the card. "Get well soon!" it reads along with a cute picture of a teddy bear holding balloons. It's odd how they function like almost any other workplace sometimes.
"Satoshi-kun," Sho says as the others monitor progress at their own positions in the command room. Inoo's meeting with a potential asset in Moscow's Tsaritsyno Park in the next 20 minutes, one of their first major field operations in the few weeks since what happened with Toda.
"Done with final checks," he reports diligently, fumbling around on his desk for a pen so he can sign the card.
"Actually, I was hoping you could take care of something," Sho said. "Agent Toda's injuries mean it'll take a while for her to be field rated again. And we're thinking of setting her up at the spare workstation back here, let her back us up until she's good to go."
"She'll be sitting in here?" Ohno exclaims, a little too noisily. He can already see Nino and Aiba giggling to themselves - Ohno apparently hasn't been as subtle about his crush as he thought he'd been.
Sho is kind enough not to pass judgment. "So since we'll all be mentoring her and she'll be back here, maybe you should get to know each other." Sho taps his finger on the Get Well Soon card. "Why don't you go drop that off for her?"
"Me? Right now?"
"I'll monitor comms for you," Sho volunteers, not like it's a hardship. "Go ahead, it's fine."
Ohno scribbles a very pathetic "Feel better!" on the card, and he's on his way, not missing the smirks of everyone in the room. When he arrives at the hospital, Agent Sebumi is personally watching her door like a guard dog. Ohno has to flash his badge before Sebumi even believes Ohno works for the same agency they do.
Sebumi is everything Ohno is not - brave, courageous...tall. He looks down at Ohno holding the card everyone signed and the small bouquet of flowers he'd picked up in the hospital gift shop, probably wishing he had the authority to interrogate him. Instead he just frowns and slides open Toda's door.
She's out of bed like she definitely shouldn't be, some exercise program blaring on the TV while she tries to stretch with a pained expression. Her right arm (her shooting arm, Ohno knows) hangs limply at her side, and even through the hospital gown he can see that she's still bandaged pretty heavily. She turns around when he enters, stopping her stretches.
She looks different like this. In the field she wears glamorous outfits to observe the enemy at parties or she dresses down in black to crawl through ducts in search of intel. This Toda Ohno barely recognizes. Her straight black hair is tied back in a simple ponytail, her face devoid of makeup. Her eyes are still as clear and sharp as he knows them to be, although they're more confused than anything right now.
Of course, Ohno knows why. She has no idea who he is.
"Ah, sorry," he mumbles, holding out the bouquet in one hand and the card in the other. "I'm Ohno Satoshi, analyst level three. I, um, work on Director Sakurai's team," he says by way of introduction.
She takes the flowers, smelling them briefly before setting them on the bed. She forcibly yanks some out of a vase on her bedside table and tosses them in the trash, replacing them with the ones Ohno's brought. She's clumsy doing this, still in obvious pain and still not used to trying to function left-handed. "Director Sakurai's team, huh? What do you do?"
Nothing fun like Nino and Aiba and their tracker pens or lipstick cameras. Nothing useful like Jun, watching and guiding them. "I monitor communication frequencies. Sho-kun, um, Director Sakurai says you'll be sitting with us once you're released. To work in the command room until you're ready to go back out."
She nods at that, even as it seems to irritate her. "Well don't trouble yourself on my account, Ohno-san. I won't be bothering you for that long. I'll be back out in the field if they have to tape my sidearm to my palm." She tries to flex the fingers of her right hand, wincing in pain.
"Are you okay?" he asks, even though she's clearly not.
"I will be," she says. "As soon as humanly possible."
Without much else to say or any sort of common ground, Ohno leaves. She says a brief "thanks" for the card and the flowers, but doesn't really acknowledge him otherwise, her focus already back on the exercise program.
As he takes the train back to work, he wonders what to think of his first conversation with Agent Toda, if it even counted as much of a conversation. In the field, Ohno's seen her take down bad guys twice her size, jump out of airplanes, kick guns out of an enemy's hand. Seeing her the way she is now, so obviously upset and not in top shape, saddens him.
He wonders if there's anything he can do to help, then sighs. What could he ever have to offer someone like her?
--
Toda's out of the hospital a week later, and she reports for duty in the command room with a weak smile on her face. It's pretty obvious that she finds working in the command room to be a boring assignment. But, Ohno figures, anything would seem boring given what her job usually entails.
Ohno fidgets a bit in his seat when Toda is installed in the workstation beside him, her eyes already glazing over at the readouts in front of them except when Sho's looking their way. Because comms are good, because comms are almost always good, he watches her out of the corner of his eye while they monitor Agent Ishihara's infiltration of a warehouse in Cape Town. This probably would have been Toda's op since she has more contacts in the region, and Ohno can tell that she's jealous and upset.
It's in the way she slowly opens and closes her right hand, already trying to strengthen it again. It's in the way Ishihara cheerfully chatters over the airwaves with Nino, who is patching her in to the on-site security system. Everybody's having a grand old time, and Toda's miserable.
When things finish, Toda stays at her place, staring at the screen while the others leave the room, Nino and Aiba gossiping about the new field agent Sho has an obvious crush on, Keiko-san. Ohno shuts his own terminal down and gets to his feet.
It takes all his courage to say anything. "Agent Toda?"
She blinks at the screen, finally turning her head to stare at him coldly. "What?"
"Good work today. See you tomorrow."
Her face softens the slightest bit. "See you."
This slowly becomes Ohno's routine. There are ops and briefings, and Toda clearly suffers through all of them. It's affecting morale in the command room a bit, and Ohno notices the others whispering sometimes. They seem insulted by the way Toda's dismissing their work, the important tasks they have in the command room. Ohno understands it though. After all, he knows her better than anyone else - or at least in this, he gets her.
So he tells her she's doing good work while the others start a secret betting pool for when Toda will finally get her wish - to get back into the field and out of their hair. Then maybe they'll like her again. Ohno, however, hasn't stopped liking her.
There's an on-site training facility and gym at headquarters, and he knows Toda's doing physical therapy. Even after the long hours in the command room, Ohno knows that she stays late stretching, training her body, trying to learn to do some tasks with her left hand just as well as her right. The ones making the betting pool probably don't know this.
He decides to jog on the gym track one of these nights. The night before, Sebumi had been in the office for a briefing, and Ohno had watched the two of them run together - he'd given up and gone home. But today Ohno knows that Sebumi is on his way to Bolivia for a mission, and now he can be brave.
She's speed walking tonight, trying to loosely swing her arm while she moves. He enters, stretches. He's totally not a runner at all. This is at least somewhat closer to his pace.
"Ohno-san," she says when he approaches.
"Mind if I join you?" would be the right thing to say. Ohno and his nerves, however, settle for "Hey."
So she takes off again, and he keeps pace with her. He can see her straining, tears pricking her eyes after they round the track the third time, the fourth. He finally stops them halfway through.
"You don't have to push yourself so hard," he tells her.
She blushes in embarrassment, so far from the confident woman he watches in the field that it surprises him. "Yes, I do," she says, her eyes flashing with anger. "You don't get it."
They walk slowly toward the locker rooms, and he shakes his head.
"You want to be out there, I know you do."
"And I won't get there any faster if you all keep coddling me!" she protests.
He stops walking. "You'll get hurt again. If you rush this." She seems confused by his concern, and he wonders if he's overstepped his bounds. He's usually the last person to interfere in other people's business.
She stops too, looking down at her sneakers. "I feel alive out there," she admits to him. "So damn alive. Sitting in that room, sitting at a desk and staring at a computer, it's awful."
You got shot out there, he wants to tell her. He holds his tongue. He's been a year's worth of opinionated this evening, and he's already itching to flee, settle back into his comfort zone where he likes Agent Toda Erika behind the safety of his screen. Having her so close, so real might actually flip that switch from "kind of a stalker" to "guy in love." He's not sure how to deal with those feelings, not yet.
"I'm alive," he says to her quietly. "We all are, in that command room. We're all a team, no matter who we are or what we do."
He doesn't give her a chance to reply, heading through the locker room door.
--
Things are quieter between him and Toda over the next week, but he does notice a change in her. She starts to care. The command room stops being a place where she's stuck temporarily. She takes point on some missions at Sho's side, the two of them working together to help agents in the field. She speaks up during briefings, using her expertise to help fine-tune mission plans. The others stop grumbling behind her back. The betting pool is forgotten.
And every night when Ohno's heading out the door he passes by the gym glass and watches Toda take on the track with the same enthusiasm. But at a reasonable pace. He finds himself smiling at her, wondering if his lame excuse for a pep talk (if that was even what it was) had anything to do with her rejuvenation.
--
Toda finds him in the cafeteria a few days later, setting down her tray without even asking if the seat is taken. "Alright, we need to fix you," she announces.
"Fix me?" he mumbles.
"That day when you tried to run with me," she reminds him, smirking. "That wasn't your best was it?"
"I don't run."
She pulls the disposable cafeteria chopsticks apart and shakes her head at him. "Speak up."
"I don't run, Agent Toda."
"You do now."
--
After Agent Kitagawa (or "Keiko-chaaaan" whenever Aiba and Nino talk behind Sho's back) safely completes her dead drop in Kuala Lumpur, Toda drags Ohno back to the track. It's a struggle to keep up with her, even though she's not pushing herself beyond her limits.
He's wheezing after their second mile, and she allows them to stop mostly so she can laugh at him. "You are the worst person to train with," she tells him. "You really suck at this."
Toda's blunt way of speaking, on comms out in the field and during those holiday parties, it was part of what drew Ohno to her. Toda doesn't hide her opinions, and Ohno likes that straightforward feeling, that honesty. Unfortunately it's coming back to bite him in the ass.
"I'm not aiming for field service," he reminds her. "I'm fine with the job I have."
She rolls her eyes and laughs. Maybe she doesn't need the exotic dress with the gun holster strapped to her thigh. Maybe she doesn't need to be squeezing through an air duct, leaping over laser beams. Maybe he just needs her here, laughing at him with her hair pulled back and her eyes shining bright.
"You like me," she says, blunt again.
He nods. There's no point lying about it.
She leans forward, small beads of sweat glistening on her nose. "Beat my mile time, and maybe I'll go out with you sometime."
Ohno runs, faster than he knew he could.
--
Agent Sebumi is killed a week later in the line of duty, helping to rescue children from traffickers. It's the first man down in at least five years, and the mood is heavy at the agency.
Toda takes it the hardest. They'd been partners, Ohno knows. With her out of the field for so long, without Toda at his back, maybe Sebumi thought he could play it alone. He receives a hero's funeral, and Ohno wears the only suit he owns. The incense swirls and seeps into his skin. The portrait of Sebumi is unsmiling, serious and hardworking to a fault. Brave, courageous...tall.
Ohno lingers behind as Toda speaks with Sebumi's family, his mother who had apparently brought her food in the hospital. Toda's as much a member of their family as anyone. The command room crew goes to a bar to drink in Sebumi's honor, Toda's hand staying firm on a bottle of bourbon the bartender brings for them.
He walks her home, arms linked to stay upright. She unlocks her door, pulls him in and they sit down in her entryway, surrounded by shoes and slippers. Ohno remembers Toda...no, he remembers Erika telling him that being in the field made her feel alive. Did Sebumi feel that way too? Even as the bullets were fired?
He's so drunk he's asked her this out loud. She responds by kissing him only once, her mouth warm and slick.
"He had my back," she says, the pair of them lying on the floor in their funeral clothes. "Now nobody does."
"I've got it," he tells her. "If you want."
She curls up next to him as best she can, resting her head against him. "Okay."
--
He loves her.
--
After three months of rehabilitation and training, Erika (because she can only be Erika now - "Agent Toda" was a blip on the screen on the other side of the world) is cleared to begin field work again.
She spends each day in the command room, each session in the briefing room waiting for Sho to call her name, for Sho to say "get your passport, I need you in Copenhagen in 48 hours ready to go." He doesn't seem eager to send her out just yet.
It only makes her run harder, run faster in the gym, Ohno keeping pace as best he can. He hasn't beaten her time yet, but she doesn't hold it against him. Especially when he, in fact, holds her against him, relishing the softness of her skin, the taste of her lips, this woman that lives to save the world.
He's not sure he wants her to go anyway. It was easier when she was that blip on the screen. Beautiful and gorgeous and distant. Now she means so much more, and he thinks of her twin scars from that bullet - front and back, the ones he's traced with his fingers and his mouth. He doesn't want her coming home with any more scars. He doesn't want her coming home in a box like Sebumi either.
"I need this," she says. "I need to be out there."
"But I can't follow you."
"You can," she says. "On the screen. You've got my back, remember? As long as I've got your eyes on me, your ears listening, I know it'll all work out."
He shrugs. "But Sho-kun gives the orders, and Jun says..."
"Oh-chan."
"What?"
She gives him a smack on the back of his head. "As long as you're watching, I'll make it through. And I'll come home."
--
Erika's on the other side of the world, chasing down diamond thieves in Nigeria. There's a tracker on her boot, a Nino-and-Aiba special, that'll help the extraction team pull her out once she gets the photos of the compound. Sho's watching all the screens, eyes darting this way and that. Jun's barking directions - cut through that brush, two guards at 4 o'clock, go now now now.
Ohno's at his own workstation, monitoring comms. They're functioning at 100% efficiency, and he smiles.
She gets the photos they need, and the helicopter's overhead. The noise is overwhelming, but he's got his headphones plugged in, tuned to the secret frequency that only he'll be able to hear.
"Nice work," he whispers as the rope dangles out of the helicopter and Erika makes a leap for it, grabbing hold with zero trouble.
She's eight thousand miles away, climbing up a rope, but her voice comes through crisp and clear. He can just imagine her smile.
"I know."