Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Author Notes: Chief Daniel and Shelly featured in the series two episode 'When You Comin' Back, Range Rider?' Dr Maggie Sullivan appeared in the episodes 'Black Day at Bad Rock' and 'Deadly Manoeuvres'.
ALL THE BEST RUMORS ARE TRUE (OR CLOSE ENOUGH)
There were rumors about Amy Amanda Allen, rumors about how she got her stories, about who she was friends with, about how she'd managed to get out of Thailand that time when the coup was happening and all the country's airports were closed.
In fact, the rumors about Amy never seemed to stop. They just seemed to mutate.
If anybody asked, Amy would smile and say that it was thanks to her instincts and experience and good contacts and sources.
And that was all true, but Amy also had a long list of other methods that had helped throughout her already considerable career. Methods that were not taught in journalism school, or any office. Life lessons, picked up from some very unusual men who lived very unusual lives.
Some of these lessons were profound and life-changing. Others were very specific to certain situations. They were all effective.
A lot of them hadn't been explicitly taught to her; they'd just become obvious the more time she'd spent with the team. Like when pretending to be somebody else, it was all about conviction. Hannibal wore elaborate disguises that were sometimes obviously fake but the conviction he put into each performance made them work every time. Face only ever changed his clothes, but he acted each part perfectly. The conviction was the key.
Amy constantly made use of that lesson. She'd talked her way past a lot of police tape and into even more embassies.
She'd learned to always wear wire in her hair ties, or her jewelry. You never knew when you might need to pick a lock, a door, a filing cabinet, a pair of handcuffs.
She always wore shoes that she could run in.
"You've got enemies, kid," Hannibal told her when they bumped into each other in Brazil, being chased by two separate but equally vindictive groups. "Congratulations."
Having enemies meant that you were doing something right. Amy kept files on the ones she knew about and hid a copy on disk in her apartment. The A-Team knew where to find it. She'd learned that you could never be too careful.
Not long after she'd stopped joining the team on missions, she'd started learning how to shoot. It was a great way to unwind after a few days of nonstop research and stonewalling from a foreign government. She carried a small pistol in her purse, and a taser. She'd also learned that knowing how to use a bow and arrow was much more useful than most people realized.
That lesson had come from Chief Daniel. It was thanks to him that Amy could successfully fish, and descale and cook whatever she caught. Shelly was growing up and was teaching Amy how to track. He'd take Daniel's place at the head of the tribe one day.
Daniel was always pleased to see Amy.
Amy regularly talked to Tawnia. Her friend had enjoyed being part of The A-Team, though she enjoyed being married even more. She and Brian now had a daughter, Chelsie, and had another baby on the way. Tawnia still wrote about the A-Team.
When Amy was in the country, they met up for drinks. Sometimes they had messages from the team to pass on, or leads that the other would be interested in. They were both always tailed by the military police and their cars searched while they talked.
"Are they still going through your mail?"
"Yeah, every month. Brian's threatening to take them to court for harassment." Tawnia's smile was wide and proud. She was glowing in the middle stages of her pregnancy and somehow still looked stylish. "And after they told him about my 'association' with the A-Team, talking about us like we were all criminals, he threatened to add a defamation of character to the case."
Amy also kept in touch with Dr Maggie Sullivan, who still lived in Bad Rock and was still in contact with Hannibal. Sometimes, he and Maggie didn't see each other for months. But some things were worth holding onto.
Amy held onto the postcards she got sent from strange locations. The messages were always breezy, talking about relatives and friends and how hot it was. Amy knew how to read between the lines. Once she got sent a letter written entirely in Chinese. It'd taken her a while to translate. There'd been a lot in there for her to use. It sounded like the team's trip to South Africa had been pretty devastating.
That was where some of Amy's enemies came from - reporting on the cruelties that the group shut down. Some even came to America to try and deal with her. She had her own enemies too, thanks to the stories she pursued without the team's help. She'd always been good at finding very interesting trouble.
"You sure know how to get people's attention," Face remarked when Amy appeared in the doorway to his cell, her face pale and one handcuff still locked around her wrist.
She was in Hong Kong to get information about a notorious triad who were just starting to get their business into America. The team was there to track down a missing engineer, a mission that had led back to the triad, unsurprisingly.
Amy hadn't ever imagined that being a reporter would involve changing her phone number so many times.
Her apartment was often bugged too – by the military police, by the last politician she'd really upset, by that rogue team of ambulance drivers who weren't saving as many people as they should. They were her current story and they knew it. That was okay. Amy knew how to deal with bugs and had already filed a story on the drivers with a promise in her closing paragraph of more to come. Whatever happened, her story was going to be heard.
A lot of politicians didn't like Amy and Tawnia. But there were some that did. Amy had friends and enemies in high places. That was familiar.
She always told Tawnia or Maggie or Murdock's answering machine the date that she was due back from assignment. Somebody would come looking if things started to snowball.
Things going wrong didn't mean a dead end; it meant having to find a new route. It was all about being prepared and being ready to adapt.
When she was up to her wrists in fish guts, that just meant that there would be a really great stew for dinner. And if things got broken, then Shelly would use the pieces for belts and jewelry. Amy often wore the wood and glass bracelet he'd made for her. At the right angle, a few of the bracelet's pieces looked like numbers and letters. She didn't know what they all meant yet, but she was working on it. Shelly knew that she liked puzzles. Daniel knew too. So did Murdock; he mailed her crossword books wrapped in dog-print paper.
She visited Murdock at the V.A whenever she had time. He passed on what he could, unless they'd medicated him, and she brought him pizza and ice cream. He got her to play his arcade games or look at his books and discuss the out-of-leftfield themes he saw in them. They told each other important stories that were sometimes true.
She had grease under her manicured fingernails from her recent trip out of state. Her car didn't get trashed nearly as much as it used to. Being able to fix a vehicle was one of the most valuable things she'd learned, as was asking the right people for a ride to the nearest auto-shop. Amy carried a notepad and a micro-recorder with her everywhere. It was amazing what you could learn from friendly conversation, if you were willing to be patient, listen, and ask the right questions.
Amy's tan wasn't from a sunbed. She was starting to get calluses on her hands. There was always something interesting in the mail:
Father Griffin requests your presence at the church charity drive to raise funds for the roof repair at St Michael's, 2pm, Friday – the team needed her and were going to be a city or two over. Hannibal would be disguised as a priest. Amy liked to write about buried local causes as well as what was happening overseas.
Hastily-transcribed phone conversations in a large manila envelope covered with brightly-colored foreign stamps. One of her sources had struck gold.
She was meeting Tawnia tomorrow and seeing Daniel at the weekend. Shelly would be visiting her next summer.
Amy was tired but she took plenty of vacations.
Her desk was covered in paper – she was currently running down three different assignments - and her computer was almost always on. There was an arrowhead in her drawer and white-tipped feathers pinned to her corkboard. They smelled of red earth and warm sun. The piece of glass attached to them was identical to a piece on her bracelet.
-the end