It's something sickening and guilty deep inside her chest that leads Annie to his doorstep. "I shouldn't be doing this," she thinks, knowing that this isn't a burden he deserves, that she's done enough to hurt him already. That he already hates her.
Still she knocks, hating herself for it every second. Of course he's home, still looking beat up and like he hasn't slept in a week, like he's a second away from flinching at her presence. "What do you want now?" he asks the last person in the world he'd like to see right now.
Suddenly she's not entirely sure why she's here, what she could possibly tell him that would change things, what right she has to stand before him. She drops her gaze, no longer able to meet his eyes. And then Vincent gets it, maybe a little, maybe more than Annie herself understands her motivations here. He opens the door a little wider, gestures for her to step in.
She follows him to the kitchen, silently watches as he pours her a glass of water from the fridge. "Sit," he says, putting the glass down on his table and pointing at a chair. He takes his own seat across from her, watches her as she takes a single sip from the glass and then looks anywhere but at him.
"It happened," he says. "You did it. You have to live with it, Annie."
She looks at him then, wondering if he might be misreading her. "It was him or me. But I never meant for you to get dragged into this. This isn't how I wanted it to end. I'm sorry," she says, like that can make up for the theft of his integrity.
"You don't have to tell me what you did or why you did it. You shouldn't. I don't need to know. I do need to know what you want from me, Annie," he says, his voice raising just a little at her name. "You can't make this up to me. You can't go back. So what is it you need from me, right now?"
"I don't have anyone left to protect. I'm not the patriot that I was when I joined the agency. I don't know where I'm going or what I'm going to do but I know that it's time to leave," Annie says, finally confessing the thought to even herself. "I'm going to kill the person I've become, no matter how long that takes or how far I have to run. I need you to know that. I will obliterate the person who hurt you."
Vincent stares at her, seeing the authenticity of her words, wanting to believe it isn't just some act. He thinks back to the rituals of his childhood; confess, repent, and be forgiven. He thinks that someone or something must have broken Annie long before he or even the CIA met her, that they were able to use that vulnerability against her. "If you want my forgiveness," he says, "you don't run. You aren't going to find whoever it is you're meant to be somewhere out there, Annie, no matter what the problems you're trying to run away from might be."
This isn't what Annie expected. Anger, dismissal, denial. Him to throw things, him to throw her out, to slam the door in her face. Anything but this. "And how will I find her?"
He breathes slowly, watches the clock tick from the corner of his eye as he tells himself that this is a really bad idea and he shouldn't get any further involved with the mess that is Annie Walker, CIA. He's sacrificed enough for her, and it wasn't willingly. He doesn't owe her anything. It doesn't work. "You wont. We will."
