Sometimes, when Zach's had a few too many glasses of Scandinavian liquor, he can make himself believe that things have turned out alright.
It was a long few months, and it's hard to not stand out in North Korea when you're half-Jewish, half-Irish, but he'd figured it out well enough. He was still suspicious, but wasn't Zach always?
They hadn't taken him for months, and he was pretty sure he'd beaten some kind of record, but then they showed up for him, and he didn't have any rights, and it was bad for so long after that. So long.
So long that she had to forget him.
He'd come back with a permanent limp and more PTSD than he would ever admit, even to Cameron Ann Morgan, and he lived on the edge just because he was Zachary Goode and he'd been trying to play dangerous games safely his entire life, and he was tired—so tired.
The limp got better, but then he got his leg broken in Moscow, and ow, no amount of pins can fix this properly, Zach.
He would have made a comment about the similar state of his heart, but he was happy for her. Is happy for her. You know how it is.
So, on nights like tonight, that he's not really sure what he's doing in Finland, because seriously, the happiest place on earth is damn cold, he curls up around a dangerously tall glass of akvavit and thinks the burning will somehow warm him.
It hasn't started working yet, and he's nearly a whole bottle in.
He couldn't blame her, not really. She was Cammie, so not many people could or would.
She's waited four years, and when you're 27 and all of your friends are getting married and having babies and you haven't heard from a guy that's been MIA for four full years, that's a long time of the best decade of your life.
And the guy she found was nice. And he wasn't even named Jimmy.
There'd been that one time—the one where Zach was released from the hospital, and not even Joe had come to see him, and he'd been in a stable physical condition for three whole weeks, but he'd been in a stable mental condition for none of them.
So he got out of the hospital—it was a miracle that he was alive, really, the doctors said, but Zach had heard that too many times to be bothered. He got out of the hospital and he went to the safe house and got his key to their townhouse, and when he opened the door, there was a picture of Cammie, in the foyer, dressed in white, and the ring on her finger wasn't the one he'd given her—wasn't half as pretty, and he wasn't biased at all.
Beside her was a guy—no, Zach shakes his head just thinking about it. He was a man, and Zach wanted to kill him for it.
Zach had never, ever wanted to kill an innocent person in his entire life.
But there she was, looking radiant, and there he was, staring at her with a look that Zach knew well, because he'd had the same one some long ago, and honestly, he probably still did.
And Zach wasn't having it.
He knew he wasn't welcome there, but his key had still worked and that gave him hope, and Cammie wasn't a cheater, but their fire burned too bright, and they'd both crumble to ashes before they let one another go again.
Except for the baby. The baby changed things.
Green eyes, and not-quite-Caucasian skin, but it definitely wasn't chocolatey like the little boy's should have been and "oh, my god, Zach, what have we done, what have we done, what have I done, I've done this..."
She'd refused to see him since.
So he was in Finland, the fucking happiest place on earth, and he had a camera—a good one, a Nat-Geo's going to use this for their cover, so it better be inspired one— with its strap wrapped around his hand, and he was just sitting on that boat dock, staring up at the northern lights and knowing that he should be snapping pictures, but also knowing that if he stood up, he'd crash straight into that glassy lake below him.
It was 13 degrees outside, and Zach was too numb to feel the cold. It had seeped into his bones years ago, right after the last warmth he'd ever known had burnt out.
Joe couldn't even look him in the eye anymore. Not after the little boy.
Cammie named him after her husband's grandfather, even though Zach knew that she wanted her first son's name to be Matthew, but he guessed that she couldn't afford to not name him John. Not when he looked so much like that boy in all of the old pictures from long-ago—the one who had disappeared without a trace.
So he sits there and thinks about her—about a blonde haired girl who thought she was plain, but was actually the most extraordinary person in the entire world. About M&Ms and missions in Istanbul (not Constantinople) and that moment when they finally felt safe and that moment when he opened his front door in Pyongyang and knew that his old life would never be safe again.
And the fact that somewhere, there is a little boy with olive skin and emerald eyes, with dark brown curls and a mischievous smirk, playing on a t-ball team, with a fake dad who can't teach him to pitch for shit (because if the CIA hadn't worked out, Zach was damn good at baseball), who he would never get to teach to throw a curveball.
But, Zach thinks, swirling the last of his glass, throwing it into the lake, and picking up the whole damn bottle, everything is alright.
He picks up his camera, snaps a picture that will be sitting on Cameron Morgan-what's her new last name again's coffee table next month (as if he could ever forget that her new last name isn't Goode).
She will see it, and see who took it, because she likes these things—photos with meaning and their own soul— and she won't be able to forget him so easily. He'll always make sure of that.
The last of the akvavit. The bottle shatters back up into his hand when he cracks it on the edge of the dock.
The aurora mocks him with blue eye colors and blond hair wisps.
Perfectly alright, indeed.
Zach wraps his bloody hand around his camera lens and gets back to work.