A/N: A new year and a new story. This one's a little different and trying out a new style. It follows my two previous stories and some background from them may only be glossed over here. Even if you haven't read those (although I know you most definitely want to!) I don't think there will be any confusion. The usual disclaimers apply- the only characters I can claim are the ones not owned by Marvel/IDW/Hasbro (leaving anyone out?). I make no money off of this nor should I. Although, if IDW wanted to hire me, I wouldn't say no. A big beginning thanks to Mossley and Bugsymutt for putting up with all my foibles, in general, and insecurities in writing this one. Please enjoy. As always, reviews - the good and the critical - are welcome and appreciated.
A Sort of Homecoming
Chapter One: I'm the narrator, and this is just the prologue
They say losing your cover is the worst thing that can happen when you're out in the field. I never believed them. I could think of so many other things that would be worse. Death, for one, would probably be at the top of the list. No use in worrying about your cover if you're not actually around to do the worrying. Losing a teammate may even top that. Although one's desire for self-preservation is strong, in certain circumstances I think I'd rather be the one to fall.
They try to drill it into you in training that you can never lose your cover. Run if you have to – there's no shame in running. Yes, you generally want to avoid just giving up, but sometimes, they say, you have to. We were told to ignore that instinctive need to complete the mission. If it was going south, it was important to recognize that and act accordingly. Don't let your pride get in the way. Any operation is bigger than your pride. Whatever the operation requires, that's what you need to be prepared to do. Sometimes that means running.
I was never good at making that call. It's not like there's any shame in making the tactical decision that immediate extraction best serves the parameters of the mission. But just saying that makes my ears hurt. How could you ever face your peers at a post-briefing with that excuse?
Besides, I always had the confidence that I could pull it out. Even when a whole mission was literally blowing up around me, I didn't let it faze me. I was in control. That was probably a big part of my refusal to buy into the company line. Giving up meant losing that control. For so long I was at the mercy of everyone else. My path was always dictated by someone else. Even still, on a day-to-day basis, I'm not in charge. I'm ok with that because I know when I am – when it counts. Out in the field, I own it. I love that surge of adrenalin when everyone has bought into the line I'm selling. It's empowering. In that moment of power, you could never think to do anything but.
There were many times, however, when I should have gotten off that power trip and listened to the nagging feeling in my gut. Iowa comes to mind. I definitely was not in control in Iowa. It was a tense situation with little intelligence to give us any solid guidance. Still, we allowed ourselves to get pushed into it. Innocent people almost died that day, including me. Yet, in the thick of it, I truly believed I could sell it. Passing that note before I took full stock of the surroundings was a foolish move. Rather than press forward, I should have taken a step back. I didn't.
Main reason? My pride. Pride goeth before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Once I was in, I couldn't fathom any scenario other than the one where I was a nice cosmetics lady able to smoke out the bad guys. How did that work out for me?
Some of it is the very nature of my work. It goes to the heart of being an undercover agent. For months, if not years, you've prepared your part. That's all you're doing, playing a part. It's no different than the theatre. You have an audience to whom you need to sell your role. You have a stage and setting. There are other players, even if they don't know it. Then you have you, the headliner. Your lines are drilled into your head until nothing is left to chance. Nothing.
Even getting to that debut will take more away from you than you're ever willing to admit. You may do simple things, like alter your appearance. It's easy to switch your hair color or add glasses. Usually though, the types of things you do cut deeper than that. You will train yourself to say things you find distasteful. You learn to automatically disavow your basic beliefs. You learn to sit passive, disguising your disgust, as terrible things take place. You do it, struggling against your nature, with the end result in mind. You are prepared to commune with monsters so that no one else ever has to again. Until the next time.
The better your performance, the more you will be called upon to do it again. It builds your confidence, enables your pride. You will find ways to be better, to do it better than before. You become the next character, intimately, to the exclusion of all else. You will know how to respond to anything that gets lobbed your way. It becomes second nature. If you are truly good, and I am, you will lose a part of yourself to the role. You can't be who you were. Anything that made you unique has to go. The risk is simply too great that something as ordinary as your appreciation for an intense pitcher's duel will seep into a person who supposedly has never left the confines of her remote village. That's a rookie mistake. So you learn to compartmentalize yourself. Always the fear is that you won't be able to get yourself back. In my case, I always fear that I may not want to get myself back.
I think that's where I parted ways with the conventional thinking. The conventional thinking espoused at training is that you will preserve yourself at all costs. When you are undercover, you will preserve yourself as your cover at all costs. There's no distinguishing between the two. So to lose your cover is to risk you. Pride be damned. Better to cut lose in that scenario. But what if all you are is just a cover? What if you are so many covers deep that you wouldn't know what to preserve? What if all the covers mean nothing to you and all you have left is your pride?
In the last act of the Crucible, Elizabeth Proctor pleads with her husband John to confess to witchcraft so that he may live and they can be as a family again. And at first he does – verbally – confess to having practiced witchcraft. To the court, this isn't enough. It must have a signed confession. This Proctor cannot do. He rips the written confession to pieces and shouts out that it is his name, it is all he has. "I have given you my soul; leave me my name." I have no name to save. All I have is my pride; I've nothing else. I'm so far afield from the shy, timid girl I started life as that I couldn't tell you who I am now. There are those who refer to me as Lady Jaye, covert operative for the G.I. Joe team. Some know me as Alison Hart-Burnett, the slightly recluse daughter of the late Elizabeth and James, heir to the controlling share of the Hart corporate empire. Still others knew me as someone else entirely. I've given up my name; leave me my pride.
It was a false thought, pride. I thought I was safe. Each part of me was carefully practiced and put through the paces. I could play the different me's in my sleep. All the world was truly my stage. I didn't have to fear not getting myself back. It was never a possibility. There was nothing to which I could return.
Or so I thought. You are never as good as you think. I wasn't that good. There is a person that is me and I have a name. I've hidden it though, even from the one person I was supposed to have let in. It's haunted me ever since. And now, I will have to let him know who I am. I can hear his footsteps scrunching across the wet grass. Soon he'll want to know. He deserves as much.
Looking back at everything that's happened, I realize now that they were right. Losing your cover is the worst thing that can happen. Not in the way they meant. They had the bottom line in mind. To them, it was all part of some cost-saving operational measure. When you're in training, they don't always have the most altruistic motives for the advice they dole out. You kind of have to look out for yourself. To them, you are an investment. If they invest a hefty chunk of time and resources into creating an identity for you, they want to maximize their return. You can become a useless commodity pretty fast in this line of work. But if you run, if you preserve your cover, there's a chance that they can salvage some of that. They can reinsert you later when things have cleared. If you get caught, they can't go back, not if they're being honest with themselves.
That's not why I believe them now. I believe them because losing your cover is the worst thing when it hides the only thing you have left. My cover hid me. So it begs the question, if I believed, why didn't I run? I don't know. It's rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves. I guess I thought I could pull it out, perpetuate the lie. My foolish pride. And now I know better. Losing my cover means that everything I've done is stripped away. I wish I could run, but there's no place to go. What happens now I dread. But he's here and he should know the truth. While I fear it won't be, I can only hold out hope that it will be enough. If it isn't, at least the worst part will be over. My cover's blown.