In Memoriam -- Jo Portman -- PG13
Title: In Memoriam
Author: Heather [info]fenna_girl
Fandom: Spooks/MI-5
Rating: PG13
Warnings: None
Prompt: 45 -- Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude. -- Aphra Behn (1640-1689), 17th-century English playwright and spy.
Summary: They don't celebrate anniversaries in Section D, but that is all that Jo has left.
Author's Notes: Spoilers through the end of Series 7. Thanks to my beta gehayi for fixing all my punctuation!fail, and to snowbunny22 who convinced me it didn't suck. Written for femgenficathon.
They didn't celebrate anniversaries in Section D.
After all, Carlton hardly made a card for ‘Congratulations on surviving another year without dying like everyone else!’ and exchanging gifts didn't seem appropriate at the end of a long day of interrogation and intrigue.
It would have bothered her when she'd first started. She'd seen the other members of her team -- the people on the grid -- as heroes, as deserving congratulation, but she’d quickly been disabused of the notion that her congratulations would be any more welcome than her awe.
It feels like an age later, sitting at her desk, with only a handful of familiar faces moving about on their business, and finally she thinks she understands. Somehow, a cake commemorating the day Adam had walked into her flat pretending to be a gas man and changed her life seems wrong after everything that happened after that.
She'd adored him, she'd been meant to she thought in her quiet moments, looked up to him the way she'd looked up to her brothers. She’d wanted to be like him.
And now she is, and she hates him for it - hardly worth celebrating.
***
“What did you tell your flat mate?” he asked. He was carrying her overnight bag and flicking the lights on.
“Had to go out of town for a few days, business trip." It was surprisingly tidy, considering; masculine furniture, not over-decorated.
“She didn’t ask about the bruises?” They were obvious; Kallis had done a number on her, split lip, bruised jaw, black eye. The marks of his fingers had blossomed in deep purples on her throat.
“I called, left her a message. She never saw me,” Jo admitted. Lying to her flat mate had gotten harder -- mainly at times like these when she couldn’t go home without arousing suspicion and answering questions.
“You should really think about moving in here permanently. I have the spare room free still, told my cousin I’d found someone already when he asked.” He tucked her hair behind her ear; a brief touch and everything seemed to slow down and hover in that moment until she shook her head.
“I can’t.” They both knew why not, but they weren’t going to talk about it. Not tonight.
“Make yourself comfortable while I get you something for your eye,” he said after a long moment of silence, heading toward the kitchen. “Want a drink?”
“Please,” she didn’t sit right away, curious she wandered around the living room, fingering books and looking at pictures.
“Your sisters?” she asked, picking up a frame as he entered, turning to show it to him. She frowned questioningly at Zaf when she saw he was carrying two glasses and a bottle of champagne. “Champagne?”
“It’s what I have, and we could both use a drink.” He tossed a packet of frozen peas to her before using a towel to ease the cork from the bottle as she moved to the couch to sit. He dropped the towel in her lap and sat next to her, pouring them each a glass. “Better than ice, keep the swelling down.”
She nodded and did as he bid, watching Zaf's minimalist movements as he smelled the sparkling wine and then sipped, eyes drifting closed as he let it wash over his palette.
“Good?” she asked, wincing, the packet cold on her jaw even through the towel.
“Nothing but the best.” He passed her the second glass. “We’re celebrating.”
She raised the glass to her lips; the champagne was very good. It had to have been expensive, had to have been purchased for a reason. No one kept champagne like this without a purpose. “What is there to celebrate?” she asked, taking another sip. She savored it the way he had.
“Being alive.”
***
She sat in the driver's seat, her long blonde hair pulled back in a French twist, strands escaping to brush the collar of her camel-coloured coat. He slid in on the passenger side as she removed her sunglasses and tucked them into the visor in one graceful motion.
Ros would be so very proud. He’s unimpressed - but then his daughter had been just as graceful.
"I just wanted to see how he was," she said without preamble. They did this regularly, on birthdays. On anniversaries like this one, the day that his father had died. Morbid perhaps, but it was an appointment she always kept.
"You know how he is," the man countered, drawing a small smile from her.
"Surveillance reports and photos don't tell me how he is; just what he’s doing." He was the star of his school football team, and addicted to video games. He was a normal year ten in almost every respect, with homework, and friends, and a lifestyle little different from his schoolmates. He hated broccoli, shirked housework, liked girls, and missed his parents. "How is he, please?"
"He likes his school. He likes his friends. He’s already thinking about his A-levels, smart a whip that one. He’s been talking about joining the RAF."
"And he misses his parents," she said softly.
“Wouldn’t you? If you were him.”
"I shouldn't be here," Jo said with a sigh, looking past him to the tree-lined street, gilt gold by the setting sun, and the silhouette of a boy who was rapidly growing more and more like his mother as he became a man. It was difficult for Jo to reconcile the boy with the pale, frightened child she’d first met and she wondered if Adam would look at her the same way now, like he didn’t recognize her.
Even if her hair was long again, like on that first day.
"It's been years. You say that each time," he said, staring straight ahead, beyond the teen in front garden, bundled in a sweater against the autumn chill. His wife was waiting for him inside; Jo knew she didn’t want to see her, didn’t want the reminder.
Wes wasn’t a child anymore, hadn’t been for far longer than he had a right to be. Every time Jo looked at him, she saw Fiona -- a woman she’d barely known. A woman Jo had always suspected thought she was in love with her husband. When she looked closer, on the rare occasions when she looked closer, she saw Adam's eyes; there was very little else of him in his son.
She felt the warmth of the man’s hand on hers, familiar even though he didn’t know her real name, almost comforting; they’d done this enough times now to be old friends.
***
She’s sitting at his kitchen table when he comes back from talking to Ros, but she doesn’t ask -- she can’t ask about Zaf right now. She has cake, and she holds out a fork, cutting it would take too much effort.
She was meant to die today, he left her to die and they both know it, but then she’d have done the same and they know that too.
“We should have champagne but my budget didn’t allow.” He took the fork and freed a sizable mouthful.
“Zaf would have a bottle.” The younger man always had one, for days like today. “We could go steal it.”
“No,” she said, chewing thoughtfully. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“You have to.” They all did, but he couldn’t tell Ros that, and convincing Jo would be as good as convincing himself. Her eyes were huge in her pale face when they met his.
“Is that what you’ll say when it’s me?” She shouldn’t have come, but her flatmate would ask questions, and with Zaf gone there is nowhere else for her to go.
“It’ll never be you.”
He has conviction she doesn’t feel. He’s lying to her, he can’t know that someday it won’t be her; the odds are none of them will live to retire. He cups her jaw, and he’s close, too close really, and for a moment they seem to breathe as one and she knows he’s going to kiss her. They’re in this together, to the end, whenever that may be.
“Are you and Ros…” She doesn’t finish, it wasn’t a question that needed asking.
“Do you care?”
She considered for a moment, and shook her head. “You know I don’t.”
“I know, I just wanted to see if you’d say that to my face.” His smile was a lopsided echo of her own earlier, and then his mouth is on hers. His lips were softer than she’d imagined - the kiss, harder, hotter. He was warm and hard and living and for a split second passion flared, her fingers tangling in his hair and his hands on her hips.
He pulled back after a moment; her face was wet and she realized one of them was crying, but she didn’t know which. He pressed his cheek to her hair, and she clung to him.
“Stay the night?” His voice was tight, hoarse. “I’ve got a spare.”
She nodded.
“Cake first.”
***
Ever since he'd gone from top field agent to boss, and she’d become his right hand, Jo brought Lucas his coffee. Polite respect had gradually blossomed into more, or less, depending on your point of view. They weren't friends but they were all that was left of something, and that tied them to each other as surely as blood.
He was always in the office ahead of her, no matter how early Jo got there; she suspected he didn’t sleep more than a few hours a night, but had never asked. She didn’t sleep much either and he’d think it was a stupid question -- one she already knew the answer to. On nights that stretched into days, she'd come by his door or glance at the wall of glass that gave glimpses of him, and there he'd be. Sometimes pressed and tidy, other times just as exhausted as she suspected she looked, more often than not his sleeves were rolled up baring his tattoos.
She wondered if he did it to remind himself that he was a survivor -- or to remind everyone else.
He always thanked her, and, after the brief hazelnut experiment, never berated her for her choices. He accused her at first of sucking up, which she denied -- claiming she was trying to seduce him with French Roast, making him laugh -- which had seemed a risky proposition at the time, but worth it for the desired result.
They had developed a routine. First thing in the mornings, they always took time to get caffeinated and to go over the events of the previous day, as summarized in the endless stream of reports that flowed past his desk, the intelligence that she received from the field, and tech support. He was always up to speed. Always questioning a critical point, or making a connection she'd missed.
This morning was no exception, except that it was her birthday. She set his black coffee on the coaster just to the right of his blotter and dropped a copy of the file in front of him. She settled into the chair opposite him, almost burning her mouth on her own coffee as she flipped open her file.
"Is this everything?" he asked, and without even looking he tossed her a packet of chocolate wagon wheels with a single birthday candle taped to the outside. She faltered for a moment, then set them aside.
"Everything we have on Soledad." And they were off, picking the team to run the op, discussing who had contacts to tap.
Lucas North lived a solitary life. She didn't even think she'd heard so much of a whisper about his having a private life outside the office for years. But he’d remembered her birthday.
***
Jo stands motionless in the shower, just stands there, letting the scalding hot water pour over her skin. Somewhere, deep in her frozen psyche, it vaguely registers that she should be feeling pain, but she stopped feeling anything days ago.
There is no pain. Just cold.
Eyes closed, she shakes. The pouring cascade of the water echoes in the starkly-white bathroom. The memory of a voice.
White fire blazes along her ribs, and she shivers.
There’s a knock, and a voice calling “Jo,” and she jerks as though struck before she recognizes it.
Not who she’d expected. Not Adam, who had lied to her when he said he’d kill her. Once, he’d left her for dead -- but not today -- not when she'd begged him. Not Ros, who would be a chilly sort of comfort. Not Zaf, he was gone -- certainly gone now -- and all that was left were his screams.
“Coming,” she switches off the water, and gropes for a towel. Harry isn’t accustomed to waiting and she’s still too shaky to make him out of a fit of pique.
She wraps herself in the terrycloth, still damp, still feeling dirty. She doesn’t recognize the face in the mirror as she wipes away the steam that has accumulated. It isn't her face, and then for a second it's Boscard's, smirking and she can smell him, feel his hands on her. Shards of mirrored glass abruptly shower over her suddenly-bleeding knuckles, and she stares in shock.
Still, no pain. Just the sound of screaming in her head.
Jo doesn’t move even as the door opens and Harry comes in without asking. Once she would have been mortified. Her hands are taken hostage, his fingers wrapping gently around her wrist as he wraps a towel around her bleeding knuckles. He is gentle and it is unexpected, but she can’t take her eyes off the blood. She is shaking, and she can’t stop. She feels like she won’t ever stop.
She meets his gaze without a word passing her lips. Her eyes are dry, but she is still shaking.
“We all break,” says Harry, evenly, unflappable. “Every single one of us.”
***
She can’t remember ever seeing him asleep, so when she comes across him at his desk, cheek pillowed against his arm like a child, she stops to look for a long moment. People are supposed to look younger in sleep, but Zaf’s face, with the animation gone from it, is surprisingly lined.
“Zaf,” the moment is over as she reaches for him, and he flinches awake, reaching for her wrist and his gun. Never wake a spy she thinks wryly. “Come on, we’re off to the pub.”
Malcolm is waiting near the pods, and Adam is already gone -- maybe to get a table, maybe to convince Ros to join them, she doesn’t know.
“The pub?” he rubs the sleep from his eyes. “Why?”
“Ruth.” She doesn’t have to explain; he gets it at once. A drink to a fallen comrade, to a lost friend. He smiles, and she’s startled by how young he looks.
“We celebrate the strangest things,” he tells her, shrugging on his coat, looping his arm with hers.
“Don’t we just.”
***
She's drinking vodka when he arrives. He's older than the photo in his file, softer around the middle and nearly all his hair has gone grey, with just a sprinkling of the dark color he once had; yet he seems younger. It comes from leaving the service, or so she assumes. She knows the same cannot be said about herself; her golden hair is graced with icy streaks of white, the spectre of crows feet crinkling at the corners of her eyes.
She doesn't question how he knows her without her having to say anything; she imagines that Lucas will have mentioned her in passing. She thinks of the things he could have said, and isn't certain any of them are flattering. She isn't a young woman anymore; she hasn't been for quite some time.
"What are you doing here?"
"Your message said you wanted to meet," and she pushes the bottle of vodka across the table, along with a glass she has waiting.
"I left that message for Lucas." It sounds a like a question, even though it isn't and he pours himself a glass. "His brand."
"His bottle, he won't care." He couldn't care about anything anymore. She'd taken it when she'd been cleaning his flat of any traces of herself before sending a team to pack it up. There hadn't been much, a toothbrush, a picture he'd snapped one morning and had tucked in a book, a pair of stockings that she couldn't remember leaving behind, a change of clothes. "You were friends."
He nods, "You weren't."
"Not appreciably, no," but they had been something, respected colleagues, lovers without being in love. Love was a complication, he'd told her the first night while they were laying in his bed, and one he would never allow into his life again after Elizabeta. She hadn't minded, but she’d appreciated the warning.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” She can see the difference in him now from the way you had to be to survive in the service to the softness that extended from his physique to his sensibilities. “That he’s gone.”
“I’m still here; I still have a job to do. He'd understand. You had intelligence for him?"
He glances to the side, and sips his vodka before sliding an envelope across to her.
“This came across my desk; I thought he’d be interested.” She flips open the flap and scans the contents.
“He would, so am I.” She drains her glass, and tucks the envelope in her purse before retrieving a card and a pen. She flips it over and writes a number on it. “You can reach me through this number, under this name. I’ll be your new contact.”
He takes the card, and refills his glass as she stands.
“He told me you were cold, but I wasn’t expecting arctic.”
“No one does, Mr. Quinn.”
***
She can tell that Ben is distressed; his adrenaline is high and she knows how it tastes, bitter on his tongue. But she doesn’t have time to try to soothe him now. She needs him to do his job; she needs him to leave the shock for later when he’s home, when he’s alone.
She can’t let his tension infect her or she knows she will crumble; her own memories threaten to take her every moment. Boscard is there wherever she looks, and she can’t help but think about what they all know Ros is doing.
She can’t help but worry that the woman is out there with no back up.
Later, she can tell that they’re all proud of Ros, without understanding what she just did, without feeling the way she knows the other woman must be feeling. As though there’s not enough water in the world.
But you couldn’t tell from looking at Ros when she arrives, and the envy burns in Jo's gut, making her ill -- because how do you envy someone this particular ability? She doesn’t remember killing Boscard, but she knows Ros wouldn’t lie to her about this. She hopes she wouldn’t. It helps, but not as much as she'd hoped.
She sneaks out for a smoke, briefly thinking about quitting. But it keeps her sane having something to do with her hands. Ros is there, looking out at nothing that Jo can see, and they ignore each other by mutually unspoken agreement. Jo sinks down onto the ground, back against the wall, and lights up, thinking about how unfair it is that she and Ros finally have something in common, and it has to be this.
“You don’t want to be like me, Jo,” she sighs, and it’s an echo of what Jo is feeling, hollow and shaky. She’s surprised; she’s always thought Ros had ice in her veins right down to her core, but now Jo sees then the frailty that is bubbling beneath the surface of the other woman. She didn’t think the ice would be that thin, but deep down the other woman has a passion that warms her from the inside.
She realizes then that Ros is just bits and pieces, broken and mended, amazingly strong yet exceedingly fragile. And if she’s going to survive, she’ll have to be stronger. She stubs out her cigarette and stands.
“You’re right.”
***
She remembers the strangest things these days, from early on, from when she believed in what she was doing. Now it’s habit more than anything else and the memories taunt her.
She can hear his voice, heavily accented. Russian fallen into the imperialist western lifestyle. ‘ End of the world, the living will envy the dead.’
She wonders if he would find the irony in it after all these years.
He’s one of the dead. She’d barely known him, but she’d liked him, and so he’s one of the voices.
One of the ghosts.
One of the lives she celebrates quietly by going to his grave to memorialize his death.
These are the only anniversaries she has left.
Author: Heather [info]fenna_girl
Fandom: Spooks/MI-5
Rating: PG13
Warnings: None
Prompt: 45 -- Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude. -- Aphra Behn (1640-1689), 17th-century English playwright and spy.
Summary: They don't celebrate anniversaries in Section D, but that is all that Jo has left.
Author's Notes: Spoilers through the end of Series 7. Thanks to my beta gehayi for fixing all my punctuation!fail, and to snowbunny22 who convinced me it didn't suck. Written for femgenficathon.
They didn't celebrate anniversaries in Section D.
After all, Carlton hardly made a card for ‘Congratulations on surviving another year without dying like everyone else!’ and exchanging gifts didn't seem appropriate at the end of a long day of interrogation and intrigue.
It would have bothered her when she'd first started. She'd seen the other members of her team -- the people on the grid -- as heroes, as deserving congratulation, but she’d quickly been disabused of the notion that her congratulations would be any more welcome than her awe.
It feels like an age later, sitting at her desk, with only a handful of familiar faces moving about on their business, and finally she thinks she understands. Somehow, a cake commemorating the day Adam had walked into her flat pretending to be a gas man and changed her life seems wrong after everything that happened after that.
She'd adored him, she'd been meant to she thought in her quiet moments, looked up to him the way she'd looked up to her brothers. She’d wanted to be like him.
And now she is, and she hates him for it - hardly worth celebrating.
***
“What did you tell your flat mate?” he asked. He was carrying her overnight bag and flicking the lights on.
“Had to go out of town for a few days, business trip." It was surprisingly tidy, considering; masculine furniture, not over-decorated.
“She didn’t ask about the bruises?” They were obvious; Kallis had done a number on her, split lip, bruised jaw, black eye. The marks of his fingers had blossomed in deep purples on her throat.
“I called, left her a message. She never saw me,” Jo admitted. Lying to her flat mate had gotten harder -- mainly at times like these when she couldn’t go home without arousing suspicion and answering questions.
“You should really think about moving in here permanently. I have the spare room free still, told my cousin I’d found someone already when he asked.” He tucked her hair behind her ear; a brief touch and everything seemed to slow down and hover in that moment until she shook her head.
“I can’t.” They both knew why not, but they weren’t going to talk about it. Not tonight.
“Make yourself comfortable while I get you something for your eye,” he said after a long moment of silence, heading toward the kitchen. “Want a drink?”
“Please,” she didn’t sit right away, curious she wandered around the living room, fingering books and looking at pictures.
“Your sisters?” she asked, picking up a frame as he entered, turning to show it to him. She frowned questioningly at Zaf when she saw he was carrying two glasses and a bottle of champagne. “Champagne?”
“It’s what I have, and we could both use a drink.” He tossed a packet of frozen peas to her before using a towel to ease the cork from the bottle as she moved to the couch to sit. He dropped the towel in her lap and sat next to her, pouring them each a glass. “Better than ice, keep the swelling down.”
She nodded and did as he bid, watching Zaf's minimalist movements as he smelled the sparkling wine and then sipped, eyes drifting closed as he let it wash over his palette.
“Good?” she asked, wincing, the packet cold on her jaw even through the towel.
“Nothing but the best.” He passed her the second glass. “We’re celebrating.”
She raised the glass to her lips; the champagne was very good. It had to have been expensive, had to have been purchased for a reason. No one kept champagne like this without a purpose. “What is there to celebrate?” she asked, taking another sip. She savored it the way he had.
“Being alive.”
***
She sat in the driver's seat, her long blonde hair pulled back in a French twist, strands escaping to brush the collar of her camel-coloured coat. He slid in on the passenger side as she removed her sunglasses and tucked them into the visor in one graceful motion.
Ros would be so very proud. He’s unimpressed - but then his daughter had been just as graceful.
"I just wanted to see how he was," she said without preamble. They did this regularly, on birthdays. On anniversaries like this one, the day that his father had died. Morbid perhaps, but it was an appointment she always kept.
"You know how he is," the man countered, drawing a small smile from her.
"Surveillance reports and photos don't tell me how he is; just what he’s doing." He was the star of his school football team, and addicted to video games. He was a normal year ten in almost every respect, with homework, and friends, and a lifestyle little different from his schoolmates. He hated broccoli, shirked housework, liked girls, and missed his parents. "How is he, please?"
"He likes his school. He likes his friends. He’s already thinking about his A-levels, smart a whip that one. He’s been talking about joining the RAF."
"And he misses his parents," she said softly.
“Wouldn’t you? If you were him.”
"I shouldn't be here," Jo said with a sigh, looking past him to the tree-lined street, gilt gold by the setting sun, and the silhouette of a boy who was rapidly growing more and more like his mother as he became a man. It was difficult for Jo to reconcile the boy with the pale, frightened child she’d first met and she wondered if Adam would look at her the same way now, like he didn’t recognize her.
Even if her hair was long again, like on that first day.
"It's been years. You say that each time," he said, staring straight ahead, beyond the teen in front garden, bundled in a sweater against the autumn chill. His wife was waiting for him inside; Jo knew she didn’t want to see her, didn’t want the reminder.
Wes wasn’t a child anymore, hadn’t been for far longer than he had a right to be. Every time Jo looked at him, she saw Fiona -- a woman she’d barely known. A woman Jo had always suspected thought she was in love with her husband. When she looked closer, on the rare occasions when she looked closer, she saw Adam's eyes; there was very little else of him in his son.
She felt the warmth of the man’s hand on hers, familiar even though he didn’t know her real name, almost comforting; they’d done this enough times now to be old friends.
***
She’s sitting at his kitchen table when he comes back from talking to Ros, but she doesn’t ask -- she can’t ask about Zaf right now. She has cake, and she holds out a fork, cutting it would take too much effort.
She was meant to die today, he left her to die and they both know it, but then she’d have done the same and they know that too.
“We should have champagne but my budget didn’t allow.” He took the fork and freed a sizable mouthful.
“Zaf would have a bottle.” The younger man always had one, for days like today. “We could go steal it.”
“No,” she said, chewing thoughtfully. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“You have to.” They all did, but he couldn’t tell Ros that, and convincing Jo would be as good as convincing himself. Her eyes were huge in her pale face when they met his.
“Is that what you’ll say when it’s me?” She shouldn’t have come, but her flatmate would ask questions, and with Zaf gone there is nowhere else for her to go.
“It’ll never be you.”
He has conviction she doesn’t feel. He’s lying to her, he can’t know that someday it won’t be her; the odds are none of them will live to retire. He cups her jaw, and he’s close, too close really, and for a moment they seem to breathe as one and she knows he’s going to kiss her. They’re in this together, to the end, whenever that may be.
“Are you and Ros…” She doesn’t finish, it wasn’t a question that needed asking.
“Do you care?”
She considered for a moment, and shook her head. “You know I don’t.”
“I know, I just wanted to see if you’d say that to my face.” His smile was a lopsided echo of her own earlier, and then his mouth is on hers. His lips were softer than she’d imagined - the kiss, harder, hotter. He was warm and hard and living and for a split second passion flared, her fingers tangling in his hair and his hands on her hips.
He pulled back after a moment; her face was wet and she realized one of them was crying, but she didn’t know which. He pressed his cheek to her hair, and she clung to him.
“Stay the night?” His voice was tight, hoarse. “I’ve got a spare.”
She nodded.
“Cake first.”
***
Ever since he'd gone from top field agent to boss, and she’d become his right hand, Jo brought Lucas his coffee. Polite respect had gradually blossomed into more, or less, depending on your point of view. They weren't friends but they were all that was left of something, and that tied them to each other as surely as blood.
He was always in the office ahead of her, no matter how early Jo got there; she suspected he didn’t sleep more than a few hours a night, but had never asked. She didn’t sleep much either and he’d think it was a stupid question -- one she already knew the answer to. On nights that stretched into days, she'd come by his door or glance at the wall of glass that gave glimpses of him, and there he'd be. Sometimes pressed and tidy, other times just as exhausted as she suspected she looked, more often than not his sleeves were rolled up baring his tattoos.
She wondered if he did it to remind himself that he was a survivor -- or to remind everyone else.
He always thanked her, and, after the brief hazelnut experiment, never berated her for her choices. He accused her at first of sucking up, which she denied -- claiming she was trying to seduce him with French Roast, making him laugh -- which had seemed a risky proposition at the time, but worth it for the desired result.
They had developed a routine. First thing in the mornings, they always took time to get caffeinated and to go over the events of the previous day, as summarized in the endless stream of reports that flowed past his desk, the intelligence that she received from the field, and tech support. He was always up to speed. Always questioning a critical point, or making a connection she'd missed.
This morning was no exception, except that it was her birthday. She set his black coffee on the coaster just to the right of his blotter and dropped a copy of the file in front of him. She settled into the chair opposite him, almost burning her mouth on her own coffee as she flipped open her file.
"Is this everything?" he asked, and without even looking he tossed her a packet of chocolate wagon wheels with a single birthday candle taped to the outside. She faltered for a moment, then set them aside.
"Everything we have on Soledad." And they were off, picking the team to run the op, discussing who had contacts to tap.
Lucas North lived a solitary life. She didn't even think she'd heard so much of a whisper about his having a private life outside the office for years. But he’d remembered her birthday.
***
Jo stands motionless in the shower, just stands there, letting the scalding hot water pour over her skin. Somewhere, deep in her frozen psyche, it vaguely registers that she should be feeling pain, but she stopped feeling anything days ago.
There is no pain. Just cold.
Eyes closed, she shakes. The pouring cascade of the water echoes in the starkly-white bathroom. The memory of a voice.
White fire blazes along her ribs, and she shivers.
There’s a knock, and a voice calling “Jo,” and she jerks as though struck before she recognizes it.
Not who she’d expected. Not Adam, who had lied to her when he said he’d kill her. Once, he’d left her for dead -- but not today -- not when she'd begged him. Not Ros, who would be a chilly sort of comfort. Not Zaf, he was gone -- certainly gone now -- and all that was left were his screams.
“Coming,” she switches off the water, and gropes for a towel. Harry isn’t accustomed to waiting and she’s still too shaky to make him out of a fit of pique.
She wraps herself in the terrycloth, still damp, still feeling dirty. She doesn’t recognize the face in the mirror as she wipes away the steam that has accumulated. It isn't her face, and then for a second it's Boscard's, smirking and she can smell him, feel his hands on her. Shards of mirrored glass abruptly shower over her suddenly-bleeding knuckles, and she stares in shock.
Still, no pain. Just the sound of screaming in her head.
Jo doesn’t move even as the door opens and Harry comes in without asking. Once she would have been mortified. Her hands are taken hostage, his fingers wrapping gently around her wrist as he wraps a towel around her bleeding knuckles. He is gentle and it is unexpected, but she can’t take her eyes off the blood. She is shaking, and she can’t stop. She feels like she won’t ever stop.
She meets his gaze without a word passing her lips. Her eyes are dry, but she is still shaking.
“We all break,” says Harry, evenly, unflappable. “Every single one of us.”
***
She can’t remember ever seeing him asleep, so when she comes across him at his desk, cheek pillowed against his arm like a child, she stops to look for a long moment. People are supposed to look younger in sleep, but Zaf’s face, with the animation gone from it, is surprisingly lined.
“Zaf,” the moment is over as she reaches for him, and he flinches awake, reaching for her wrist and his gun. Never wake a spy she thinks wryly. “Come on, we’re off to the pub.”
Malcolm is waiting near the pods, and Adam is already gone -- maybe to get a table, maybe to convince Ros to join them, she doesn’t know.
“The pub?” he rubs the sleep from his eyes. “Why?”
“Ruth.” She doesn’t have to explain; he gets it at once. A drink to a fallen comrade, to a lost friend. He smiles, and she’s startled by how young he looks.
“We celebrate the strangest things,” he tells her, shrugging on his coat, looping his arm with hers.
“Don’t we just.”
***
She's drinking vodka when he arrives. He's older than the photo in his file, softer around the middle and nearly all his hair has gone grey, with just a sprinkling of the dark color he once had; yet he seems younger. It comes from leaving the service, or so she assumes. She knows the same cannot be said about herself; her golden hair is graced with icy streaks of white, the spectre of crows feet crinkling at the corners of her eyes.
She doesn't question how he knows her without her having to say anything; she imagines that Lucas will have mentioned her in passing. She thinks of the things he could have said, and isn't certain any of them are flattering. She isn't a young woman anymore; she hasn't been for quite some time.
"What are you doing here?"
"Your message said you wanted to meet," and she pushes the bottle of vodka across the table, along with a glass she has waiting.
"I left that message for Lucas." It sounds a like a question, even though it isn't and he pours himself a glass. "His brand."
"His bottle, he won't care." He couldn't care about anything anymore. She'd taken it when she'd been cleaning his flat of any traces of herself before sending a team to pack it up. There hadn't been much, a toothbrush, a picture he'd snapped one morning and had tucked in a book, a pair of stockings that she couldn't remember leaving behind, a change of clothes. "You were friends."
He nods, "You weren't."
"Not appreciably, no," but they had been something, respected colleagues, lovers without being in love. Love was a complication, he'd told her the first night while they were laying in his bed, and one he would never allow into his life again after Elizabeta. She hadn't minded, but she’d appreciated the warning.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” She can see the difference in him now from the way you had to be to survive in the service to the softness that extended from his physique to his sensibilities. “That he’s gone.”
“I’m still here; I still have a job to do. He'd understand. You had intelligence for him?"
He glances to the side, and sips his vodka before sliding an envelope across to her.
“This came across my desk; I thought he’d be interested.” She flips open the flap and scans the contents.
“He would, so am I.” She drains her glass, and tucks the envelope in her purse before retrieving a card and a pen. She flips it over and writes a number on it. “You can reach me through this number, under this name. I’ll be your new contact.”
He takes the card, and refills his glass as she stands.
“He told me you were cold, but I wasn’t expecting arctic.”
“No one does, Mr. Quinn.”
***
She can tell that Ben is distressed; his adrenaline is high and she knows how it tastes, bitter on his tongue. But she doesn’t have time to try to soothe him now. She needs him to do his job; she needs him to leave the shock for later when he’s home, when he’s alone.
She can’t let his tension infect her or she knows she will crumble; her own memories threaten to take her every moment. Boscard is there wherever she looks, and she can’t help but think about what they all know Ros is doing.
She can’t help but worry that the woman is out there with no back up.
Later, she can tell that they’re all proud of Ros, without understanding what she just did, without feeling the way she knows the other woman must be feeling. As though there’s not enough water in the world.
But you couldn’t tell from looking at Ros when she arrives, and the envy burns in Jo's gut, making her ill -- because how do you envy someone this particular ability? She doesn’t remember killing Boscard, but she knows Ros wouldn’t lie to her about this. She hopes she wouldn’t. It helps, but not as much as she'd hoped.
She sneaks out for a smoke, briefly thinking about quitting. But it keeps her sane having something to do with her hands. Ros is there, looking out at nothing that Jo can see, and they ignore each other by mutually unspoken agreement. Jo sinks down onto the ground, back against the wall, and lights up, thinking about how unfair it is that she and Ros finally have something in common, and it has to be this.
“You don’t want to be like me, Jo,” she sighs, and it’s an echo of what Jo is feeling, hollow and shaky. She’s surprised; she’s always thought Ros had ice in her veins right down to her core, but now Jo sees then the frailty that is bubbling beneath the surface of the other woman. She didn’t think the ice would be that thin, but deep down the other woman has a passion that warms her from the inside.
She realizes then that Ros is just bits and pieces, broken and mended, amazingly strong yet exceedingly fragile. And if she’s going to survive, she’ll have to be stronger. She stubs out her cigarette and stands.
“You’re right.”
***
She remembers the strangest things these days, from early on, from when she believed in what she was doing. Now it’s habit more than anything else and the memories taunt her.
She can hear his voice, heavily accented. Russian fallen into the imperialist western lifestyle. ‘ End of the world, the living will envy the dead.’
She wonders if he would find the irony in it after all these years.
He’s one of the dead. She’d barely known him, but she’d liked him, and so he’s one of the voices.
One of the ghosts.
One of the lives she celebrates quietly by going to his grave to memorialize his death.
These are the only anniversaries she has left.