Best of a Bad Situation
My Own Worst Enemy
by Ecri
DISCLAIMER: I do not own My Own Worst Enemy and I am not making any money.
Best of a Bad Situation
Mavis let out a long sigh as she crossed her living room and poured herself a large portion of whiskey. She sat, feet up, eyes closed as she considered her position.
Tony Nazari was going to ruin everything. She'd known he was brilliant, but she'd never imagined he'd work out how to fix Edward's switch. Of course, he'd only been able to work that out with Edward's input. The man was unstoppable. Give him a problem and he would find a solution. Even if it did mean he had to send massive amounts of electricity coursing through his own body.
She hadn't wanted to kill Tony. He was bright without being too inquisitive. He spent a lot of time playing his games, but that never interfered with his job. He wrote the lives of the operatives' alternates impeccably. There had never been a problem with inconsistencies.
The trouble now was that he would be replaced. That made the replacement a wild card. If it was someone too ambitious, too inquisitive, the secret behind Janus might be uncovered. She couldn't allow that to happen.
Henry was distraught enough at having found Tony. She kept forgetting he wasn't Edward. Finding Tony dead was different than having people shoot at him and finding enemy agents dead. Tony was someone Henry would have considered a friend. Right or wrong and despite whatever Tony thought, Henry had work friends, not just colleagues.
It was unfortunate it had been him rather than Edward who had found Tony. Of course, Edward was more of a loose cannon. Who knows what he might have done. He might even have guessed that she'd done it. Then nothing on earth could have protected her.
It was an unsettling thought. Edward, if he realized who was behind this could very well turn on her before she could explain anything. Not for the first time, Mavis Heller wondered just how she would explain it.
The years had taken their toll on her, and she was well aware that she'd become hard and cold and sometimes a bit more calculating than her younger self would ever have believed possible. That, of course, had nothing to do with her current plan. She took pride in her work. It was necessary and she was good at it. She believed that in order to keep the United States safe, certain things—difficult things, immoral things—would need to be done, and she was willing to do them.
The series of events that had led to Tony's death were unexpected, to say the least, but she hadn't gotten as far as she had in the organization without learning how to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity. Edward's switch should not have broken. It was unprecedented, and, though mechanical failure was certainly never impossible, the fact that it was Edward's chip that had failed had given her pause.
Edward Albright had been recruited directly by Trumbull. He had been Trumbull's pride—though she'd never have credited the man with joy—over the last 19 years. He had succeeded at every mission in record time and often with better results than imagined. He had also managed to think on his feet, keep other agencies guessing as far as who had been behind Janus's achievements, and significantly improve their chances of getting the funding they requested over the requests of other agencies.
Since she could do nothing about determining either how the switch had broken or how best to fix it, Mavis had instead turned to keeping it from Trumbull. Edward was too valuable an agent to allow him to be terminated, though it would have been a much more pleasant existence for Henry.
Killing Tony, while not ideal, had been necessary for one reason. Edward had never been easy to control, and Henry, though less experienced, had a need to trust and to believe in her. She could use that and use him. Anything that she knew that Trumbull didn't was an ace in her hand. She needed to keep her control over Edward/Henry. Henry seemed to have developed an odd loyalty to them all, but it was familiarity, she was sure, rather than a belief in what they were doing. He was a drowning man swept away by the ocean of things he didn't understand. Janus was the only thing that could help him, protect him, or, if necessary, kill him and he had begun to understand that.
Tony knew too much about how Edward/Henry were broken, and if he could determine how it had happened, he might have been able to give Edward/Henry the power to control their movements, their assignments. It wouldn't do for them to have that kind of power over Janus, over her.
They best thing she could do was to make sure she was the one he would turn to if he needed answers.
A small smile played around the corners of her mouth. "Mission accomplished," she said, raising her glass to toast herself before downing the liquid in one long swig.