A/N: Considering this fandom is new, I'm okay with the idea that I'm talking mostly to myself right now. I'm writing this for just one person —myself, but hopefully more than that soon—but that's fine too. Hopefully someone else is here, and enjoys what I'm posting.

I watched the movie for the first time this past weekend and I enjoyed it — I thought Dylan did a great job. But I loved Shiva as Annika as well and I thought her death was unnecessary. So this fic is just me writing a "What If?" she'd survived. I thought there was a chance to write an interesting dynamic between the two characters, one that could have been built upon. So I'm doing it

Many moments in Mitch Rapp's life had always felt very, normal. He tried not to think about that life, especially now, heading back to the states after finishing his task in Dubai. He shook off the tension that had built in the last two years, coughed inconspicuously and let it go.

A young woman greeted him as he got off the plane, a barely there nod of acknowledgement was all she got; accompanied by a stony forward glare.

Mitch was quiet on the way to Langley. The last time he'd been there, he couldn't remember fondly. Much to his own chagrin at the time, his life was changed. He'd hardened himself to the time he'd spent honing his skills. Irene and Stan would take the credit in front of the big wigs but they all knew Mitch was in his position based on his determination and inability to let the past go. It's a terrible trait, but a trait he's molded for his own benefit nonetheless.

He remembered Ghost — Ronnie— well. He thought the face would disappear, he'd hoped that knowing Stan had trained the man would fade from memory. But he couldn't let it go. There was something in the Ghost's life that turned the marine's moral code sour and stole his honor. Mitch tried his best to see him like all the other terrorists, without lives, without any justifiable reason for what they do. But he internally acknowledged that his own ignorance had led him to believe no terrorist had been home grown. That was his mistake.

The ride up to the Deputy Director's office was quiet and tense, Mitch kept his mouth shut the moment a large agent entered the lift. He supposed he was being escorted and the minute he'd need to use his voice he'd find it.

Sitting in the solid chair in front of Irene's desk, he looked around. He noted that there are no personal effects, the space was cold and dark at the same time. From what he knew of her, the older woman was smart and calm. He assumed that she's had to work harder than her male counterparts and her seriousness was a reflection of the need for her to be taken with all seriousness and respect. He still held a bitter feeling with how willing she was to let Ghost do what he pleased with Hurley. He did his best to keep the feeling at bay, considering nuclear weapons were at play — which, by all accounts, were still missing.

"Comfy?" Her voice entered the room before she did. He didn't stand like he was supposed to. She's said it herself, he's not military or an academy graduate.

"I am." Mitch nodded, hunched forward as she sat across from him.

"Dubai went well?" She asked, a quirk to her lips.

"I was on vacation." He shrugged back. While that had been true, coincidentally, the Iranian faction candidate that had been running for the presidential election wound up dead. The weapons weren't in their hands, but they certainly weren't acquired. Mitch made a judgment call, they weren't going to give him the information he'd needed. One threat eliminated.

Irene folded her hands beneath her chin, hand stretching in exasperation for a quick second before all she did was look at him. With a sigh, seeing that he was going to force her hand, she relented. "Fine." He wanted the argument, clearly. "You were reckless, and you could have gotten yourself killed."

"We talking about Istanbul, Rome, or Dubai?." Mitch asked. "I made all the calls I was supposed to make. I did my job." They both knew he was right. "You cleaned up just fine." The point still stood that she didn't want clean up to be necessary.

"Your job?" Irene Kennedy prided herself on being a composed woman, so it didn't take much for her to school her expression and tone, but he was going to push her into a tirade if he kept up his blasé attitude. "You work for me. If it weren't for me, you be sitting in a su-"

"Supermax prison. I know. You've said it before. When we met, I think."

"Look…" she sighed, pressing her fingers into her temples. "I know you've been through a lot. But guess what? We all have our shit. And the only way you're staying out of prison is if you play by my rules. So fix your attitude and shut up."

Mitch gritted his teeth. He was tired of the same conversation he'd seemed stuck hearing. He knew he didn't follow all the rules, according to said regulations and procedures, he should have just let Ghost kill Stan for revenge but the young, vengeful man couldn't and so he didn't. And he'd finished the job in Dubai. He'd done what needed to be done. He wasn't even CIA officially.

A chuckle escaped Irene's plum painted lips. She was reminded why she'd chosen him to be her newest asset. He was unrelenting and unafraid. But he needed to learn how to be a team player — or at least respect the laws of the organization. She couldn't have a black ops operative running off half cocked whenever he heard someone was doing something that reminded him of that fateful day on the beach — and could wait for direction. Stan was recovering, just recently cleared for indirect instruction of the next class of Orion candidates. The team was still a person shy of complete since Victor was killed. Mitch had been sent off to Istanbul with the team when stakes had been high and they couldn't focus on his glaring propensity to make his own rules as he went.

"You really made a mess of things." She commented, folding her arms across her chest.

"You fixed it right up." Mitch lifted and dropped a shoulder, running a hand over his growing stubble.

"I did. You can make up for the extra work you made me do by explaining to me why you thought it was appropriate to drive a car into two mossad agents —" she paused, glaring at him the moment he looked to be formulating a premature response, "Not only did you do that, you took the woman in transfer, to help with your rescue mission."

"They killed her handler." Her uncle followed in his head. "She was close to it and I couldn't do it on my own— why are we talking about this? It's all in my report."

"I want to hear it in your words." She explained. They needed to talk about everything that had happened. She wasn't one to let the past be the past until she was satisfied with the reasoning. Orion was her task force and when he'd made a mess, she had been the one to explain it. "You could have gotten her killed and that may be of no consequence to you, but you wouldn't have had to explain to Iranian officials how their asset was killed when she should have been on the way home..."

Mitch kept his expression flat, but he knew regret flickered in his eyes. When the director saw it, she sat back slightly. "It was a risk… I know that." He swallowed, seeing the situation unfold in his head, Ghost holding her at gunpoint. What she said just before he put a bullet into the ex-naval SEAL and Orion operative's thigh and she wrestled the gun from his hand. "We handled it."

"And Dubai, you just happened to be vacationing there the same time as the next Iranian President had been?" Irene asked.

"Ya-huh." Mitch nodded, exhaling as he nodded his head. It was a lie, he'd been there for work, Annika extending the information to him when she'd heard where the man was headed. He was in cahoots with the group intending to end the JCPOA, which would have undoubtedly ended up in a war they didn't need. "Good thing too… that could have ended in disaster."

"Was that a joke?" She quirked her brow, staring at him. She held up her hand, halting him before he could speak. She pressed her palms to her face in exasperation.

"I know you didn't call me here just to go over this." Mitch was far from stupid and he knew good and well that the conversation was not her endgame. There was more to it than a rehashing of his reckless but effective tactics. "So what's the deal… is it Hurley? He's okay, right? Recovering okay?"

"He's fine. It's not about him." Irene cut in before he could continue. She hadn't realized that Mitch had grown accustomed to knowing Stan would be around until Rome. And it struck her again in that moment. "I have a job for you that will require some leg work. But you're ready for it. Nothing you wouldn't wind up involved in anyway."

"What is it?"

There was a knock on the glass of her office. A man in a dark suit stuck his head in. "They're ready for you Deputy Director."

Irene nodded and stood from the desk chair. She looked at Mitch, "Head to Hurley's, he'll explain and I'll be over when I'm done here."

Mitch's nod was minute and he stuck the tip of his thumb into his mouth pensively.

Stan Hurley was a man easily understood to Mitch. He was steady and never worked off the cuff. He was a military man through and through, someone who worked for the greater good and all that crap. He didn't look back when a job was finished and he never let anyone know when something touched him emotionally. So when Mitch walked through the front door of his home in Roanoke Valley, the young man was shocked to see the former SEAL standing in the center of the hallway waiting on him, smile etched on his aged face. The hug was quick, but the ruffling Stan did to his hair brought a small smile from Mitch.

"Kennedy told me you'd be back this morning." Stan offered, teetering his way to the familiar wooden dining table. He plopped into the single chair along the lengthy side.

"That was my fault, Sir. Wanted to make sure I was thorough." Mitch replied. They'd all known what could happen if something wasn't finished properly. Stan had drilled that into all recruits that day in the simulation. The target you know isn't always the only one.

"Good. That's good." Stan nodded proudly, his lips quirking. He rubbed his knuckles under the table, something he'd taken to doing after the cast was removed from his arm. It went unsaid, but Hurley was proud of Mitch. Irene had said it from day one, the young man was the best they'd ever seen — made by his own stubbornness and refusal to let go of that day on the beach. "Tell me about Dubai."

"It was quick." Mitch responded smoothly, "I knew where they'd be and ended it there. Should we be talking about this?" He chuckled, crossing his arms.

"No." Stan shrugged. "You failed." He laughed outright. Mitch was certain that was the first time he'd heard the sound. But he couldn't say it was unwelcome. He hadn't always appreciated how hard it was to make the man smile. He wasn't even sure when he'd started wanting approval, much less from the old man who'd hated him from the beginning.

Mitch snorted, brushing his hair from his eyes. He'd cut it to blend in as an American tourist, shaved for the same reason. But he hadn't attempted to style it or remove his stubble since, and he was starting to look like himself again.

Irene came through the door first, and then Annika. A few analysts behind them.

"What is she doing here?" Stan asked, and it was the first time Mitch had seen so much contempt on his face. The older man always managed to keep his argumentative ways under wraps when anyone but Irene would be seeing it.

"She's a part of Orion permanently." Irene kept her response short and the look on her face hard. Annika took up the wall just off to the side behind Mitch. She was itching to press her hand to Rapp's shoulder but kept her hands glued to her sides.

Annika Ogden had been a useful addition to the team in Istanbul. She had experience and she knew how to get in and get out of a situation without being seen. Going home for her had been difficult. And after tiring mental assessments, she was cleared for work. Her transfer to CIA was quick where Irene was concerned. Getting people to trust her again, that's what would take double the work.

The Iranian knew how people would look at her. But she couldn't let that concern her. She helped save the world. And if someone wanted to let her little deceptions — one's that every spy ever had told — get in the way, she didn't care. The radicals in her home country had taken everything from her. She refused to let some staring distract from the fact that she was still standing — even when Ghost had her in his vice grip in that dark tunnel she hadn't given up.

"Let's get this over with." Mitch muttered, resting his elbows on the table. Irene slapped 3 folders on the center. Stan was the first to survey one of the files, flipping through pictures, stopping on the familiar face of the man who'd tortured him.

"What is this?"

"Ghost isn't gone." Irene said, he tone eerie.

"What? I killed him." Mitch stared at her in disbelief. The bullet he'd put between the terrorist's eyes has been very real and Ronnie had been very dead.

"And he is dead. But he had help." Irene nodded, keeping her face relaxed. She was used to this, the questions. She liked to let it get out at the beginning. "We have reason to believe he has a contact here in the US."

Stan flipped through the pictures. He stopped on the grainy photo of a young woman. Her blonde hair peeked through the bottom of the hat she was wearing. The sleeves of her woven sweater covering her fingers. He'd never seen her before. She looked far too young to be a hardened killer but he knew that looks were nothing if not deceiving. "Michelle Howard."

"Georgetown School of Medicine." Mitch read aloud. He read in the file that the woman had spent most of her life in foster care. But she was incredibly bright and had proven so while in school but she disappeared a few years ago. She'd popped up again when she transferred to one of the top universities in the country. How that was done with no other conceivable information on her, they had no clue. But it clearly, could be done.

Nothing in here directly points to him." Stan said. He flicked a weary glare at Annika as she took a seat at the end of the table, but he looked back at the file he had in front of him.

"That didn't bother you before Istanbul." Irene commented without looking directly at him. There had been no concrete evidence that Ronnie had been the middle man between the Russians and the Iranians, but he was. "He managed to be completely under the radar for years. Him taking the time to manipulate a young woman is not far out of reach."

"We think she doesn't know anything? Or that she does?" Annika asked, her brows quirked as she posed mid turn of the page.

"Right now, we're unsure. I'd like to find out before she goes underground or ends up dead." Irene wasn't too keen on the admittance but it was all they had to go on. Part of intelligence was having a starting point and expanding. They needed to start somewhere. Her team was the only one the President was willing to extend at the moment.

"So what's the plan?" Mitch didn't want to delay if there was a chance that something could go wrong.

"You're going to find out what she knows, who she knows…if she's caught up in this mess, or if there's more to Ghost's plan that we didn't know about. This case is need to know only. As far as we're concerned, the only people who know are in this house. I will be your only contact here."

Technically, what they were doing could be considered illegal — spying on an American citizen — but it was a matter of national security. And if they weren't careful, the case would be handed over to FBI sooner than they could blink. At the moment, it appeared that Michelle had ties to a national terrorist, and that was keeping the case in the CIA's hands — even if Irene was the only one with the knowledge of what Orion was up to.

Someone like Ghost, with a vendetta against their team, and the government's military parties, thinking that he would focus an attack on the naval fleet alone was almost grossly irresponsible. Anyone worth their salt would consider all the possibilities. Mitch himself wasn't at all concerned with the civil rights arguments. Istanbul was obviously connected to Rome, and then the aftermath connected to Dubai. There was a domino affect, and comically, it was Ronnie's ghost seemingly haunting the following events. For all intents and purposes, his goal had been met. They would have to think of him going forward.

Annika slipped into the seat beside Mitch on the couch as Irene and Stan debated the smaller details of the mission. She kept her eyes forward as she tried to pick up any hints that Mitch didn't want her around. It felt similar to that night in the hotel room. He didn't say anything for a long while, not until he looked at her.

"Why are you back?" He asked, his hands supporting the weight of his chin, his thumbs pressing into the soft spot and his fingers extending up to his nose.

So she was right to assume that he wouldn't be overjoyed to see her. From what she'd known of him, he was never overjoyed or even happy — not at this point in his life.

"My life in Turkey was a mission — it wasn't real — and there's nothing for me in Iran." She admitted it easily, no tears came to her eyes and she didn't feel like a lump had formed in her throat. She'd accepted the truth a while back. She'd spent five years in Turkey working, collecting all the intel she'd needed on the people involved in the shady goings-on no one outright addressed in everyday life.

He took the time to process and sat back. He didn't say anything.

"I know you don't trust me." Annika admitted so much to herself as she was being walked out of the safe house in Rome. But seeing the same indifference he looked at her then, now, after everything that had transpired, she felt hollow. He'd saved her life, she'd relayed information to him. Those things felt important and suddenly she couldn't understand why she'd allowed that. But since they'd met, she'd only ever shared with him — not that it was all that much, but still —not the other way around. She didn't know anything about him personally.

"You're a liar." Mitch said clearly. She clinched her jaw and didn't say anything to the contrary. He watched her for any sort of reaction to his callousness but she was resigned to the fact that he was angry. "Why does it matter what I think anyway? You were doing what you were doing long before I was around."

And that struck her harder than it should have. She had no idea why. Maybe because he was more human than anyone she'd encountered in recent years. She felt the emotions radiating off of him. Instead of hiding from them, he let those emotions show. He didn't put them in a box. He was angry. And that anger fueled his motivations to rid the world of terrorists and people who killed innocents for no reason at all. He was clear headed when he needed to be but when that was over, he was broken and he didn't pretend that he wasn't.

"I was doing my job."

"Everyone's always just doing their job Annika." Mitch shrugged. He looked over at her, biting his bottom lip as he thought of what else to say. "I appreciate the help you gave me back in Rome. You didn't have to. And I killed Ghost."

"You saved my life."

"You would have done the same." He replied without missing a beat. He had no reason to believe that and she knew that deep down, because of that, he had to know how much those words would affect her. "If he was holding the gun to my head, you would have done the same thing I did."

They worked those operations for Orion together with Hurley, it was the whole reason he couldn't let Ronnie torture Stan and get away. And why he couldn't let Annika be taken away, never to be seen again. That didn't mean the lies weren't going to affect how close he'd let her get. He'd let his guard down — and it had been easy — and he can't understand why. That didn't mean he'd find out.

"And the tip in Dubai, I don't know how you knew and I don't want to know." He went on, looking at a spot on the wall and not on her. "Thank you. But…" he shrugged. "I don't know what else I'm supposed to say."

"Then you aren't supposed to say anything else at all." Annika sighed, folding her hands in her lap. "I just want us to be able to work together." Her accent laced her voice — still soothing, and smooth.

He chewed the inside of his cheek. "Fine."