Title: There but for the Current
Show: Covert Affairs
Summary: After Annie leaves the CIA, she decides to stop fighting the current. She and Eyal reflect on where it's taken them.
Spoilers: Takes place years after 3.16
Pairings: Annie/Eyal… what else…
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, I make no money off of these writing, I'm just borrowing them for my own amusement and as a way to blow off the stress of my actual job.
A/N: I've been working on this one bit by bit for a while now. These three chapters are all it's going to be. It's angsty and I finally accomplish something I've tried and failed to do twice before – killing off Eyal… and Annie… sort of. This one isn't exactly my usual style. If Next Tuesday and End Game are my Firefly and Buffy, this one will be my Dollhouse (yes, it's a Whedon metaphor).
Annie takes a deep breath and walks along the dock to slip 510. She carries only a small travel bag and a bottle of the nicest red wine she could find along her way from the airport to the marina. The Flying Lavin is moored in its slip at the end of the long dock, bow pointed outwards and being bathed in the amber hues of the early setting sun. She steps on board without announcing herself. If she's right, the boat's occupant has been well aware of her approach for some time now. No one comes to greet her, but she suspects she knows where she will find him. She carefully makes her way to the boat's bow and finds two cushions laid out there, with Eyal seated on one of then, leaning back against the front of the cabin and basking in the day's last rays of sunshine. His skin is slightly more bronze in color than she remembers and the salt and pepper speckling of his hair and five o'clock shadow is beginning to contain more salt than pepper. It's then that she notices the empty pair of wine glasses seated next to him. He turns to look up at her and smiles his trademarked sincere yet cocky smirk. She rolls her eyes back at him and takes a seat on the cushion next to him. He wordlessly extends his hand towards her and passes her a corkscrew. She opens the wine and pours them each a glass before passing the corkscrew and one of the glasses back to him. He pockets the corkscrew and shifts the wine glass to his left hand. Then he extends his right hand, palm up into the space between them. Annie smiles at the gesture, holds her glass in her right hand, and places her left hand in his, intertwining their fingers. For now they sit silently, sipping their wine, enjoying the beautiful sunset over the sea before them, and think of nothing at all.
It had been seven years since he had quit Mossad and said goodbye to her in that Amsterdam train station. At first she had feared that it really was going to be a true goodbye for them, though she soon found that he was never that far out of reach. Just over six years ago, when a file of tainted intel from Henry Wilcox imploded her relationship with Auggie and left her stranded in Jordan, he had appeared amidst a storm of flash bangs and gunfire to once again save the day. She had seriously considered his renewed offer to join him on his boat at that point, but she still opted to return to Langley and deal with the fallout of following the path that Wilcox had steered her down. The peril she had been unnecessarily placed in sealed Henry's fate at the CIA and she eventually regained her place as the Campbells' favorite. It had taken time, but she and Auggie did reconcile their friendship and working relationship. However, such a breach of trust may be forgiven, but is never entirely forgotten. There was no salvaging their romantic relationship.
Eyal intermittently reappeared in her professional life over the next five and a half years to drop cryptic warnings, help her out of tight spots, and point her in the direction of situations she could impact for a greater good. It wasn't unlike the first three years of their encounters, except that now they intentionally sought each other out when the necessity arose. While it strengthened their trust over the years, Annie had to admit that there were times when she missed that feeling she got when she stepped into a crowded room searching for an unknown potential threat, only to find Eyal sitting at the bar. Kismet, he had called it. There was something comforting about the way that the universe, or his beloved current, seemed to enjoy randomly thrusting them together. For the past few years she had realized that the only time she had felt the fateful pull of the current was as she swam against it each time she told him goodbye.
Then four months ago an op in Berlin went completely sideways. Assets died, deep cover operatives had their covers blown and went scattering to ground, and Annie nearly didn't make it out alive. It hadn't been her fault, but it had been a wake-up call. Her time at the CIA had come to an end. As she completed her exit paperwork, she couldn't help but feel the gentle tug and nudge of the current directing her once again after so many years.
Darkness creeps cross the horizon and a slight chill blows in the air as the stars begin to appear overhead. He turns to her with a sober look and breaks the silence. "I heard about Berlin. You could have called."
"Then odds are that one of us would be sitting here alone. It was a cluster. There was no logic or reason as to who made it out of there, just pure luck."
"And that was enough to make you quit?" He asks earnestly.
"You see, there was this guy I used to know. He's always been kind of like a mentor to me since I started with the CIA. I learned a lot from him about spycraft, but more so it seemed like every time I would need advice, encouragement, or someone to relate to the difficulties I was having dealing with a life of espionage, he would magically appear and do or say something that made it all make sense again."
"This friend of yours sounds like a very wise man." He smiles at her.
"And then after years of thinking that he was the perfect operative, the archetype of the company man, he taught me what was probably the single most important thing I would learn as a spy. It was the thing that no one else ever even talked about - knowing when it was time to walk away. I got back from Berlin and realized that it was time."
"So you decided it was also time to take up sailing?" He asks knowingly.
"Growing up, my dad was in the military, so I always ended up moving around when he'd get reassigned. I hated not having a say in it. As soon as I could, I wanted to call the shots. Turns out that the harder I tried to control my life, the more I kept putting it into the hands of other people. This time I decided to stop trying to force things. I just let the river take me where it would."
"And where has this river taken you?"
"The same place it always has."
"Funny how that happens." He squeezes her hand gently.
"A wise man once told me that the current may know something you don't. I'm starting to think he may have been right." She looks softly into his eyes.
That is all he needs from her tonight. It has been a long road between them. A lot of things have gone unsaid at different times over the past decade, but now is not the time to say them. Time is the one thing they now have. And they have each other, of course. He marvels at how far they've come since the current first thrust them together all those years ago, and how many minuscule things had to go right or wrong, exactly as they had, for them to have met the way they did and end up where they are now. There but for the grace of the current, he thinks and smiles back at her.
He pulls on her hand and she joins him on the same cushion. She stretches out next to him and puts her head on his chest. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and they both fall asleep to the sounds of the water gently lapping against the Flying Lavin's hull and the feel of a soft sea breeze on their skin.
