Motorcycle

[6 months - 1 year]

Intro:

Hello my lovelies! Before anything else it is important to know that this is a series of one-shots, not chapters of a continuous story. That in mind, all of these short stories fall into the same universe that was built in the prequel to this fanfiction Timeline. You do not necessarily need to read Timeline to understand the one-shots in Time Frame, but it is strongly recommended, especially before you start reading about Auggie and Annie's kids and other life changing moments outlined in Timeline.Finally, with each one-shot title, a time frame will accompany it that directly correlates with which two chapters of Timeline that particular story would fall into so you can keep track of what point in Auggie and Annie's life you are in at the moment. (Example: this one-shot, title Motorcycle has [6 months - 1 year] next to it to tell you it takes place between the chapters "Their first six months together" and "After their first year together". You can find Timeline under my profile, and let me thank you in advance for reading. I will try to post these as quickly as I can, but since they are one shots rather than chapters, I'm posting them as I write them and they will generally be significantly longer than the chapters you read in Timeline.

-Liz

As a covert operative with the CIA, life and time in general moved very, very fast. Annie Walker was used to the speed, and at this point in her life, relished it. Days could fly by so quickly they felt like moments once she thought back at them. Moments fled by like they never existed, and everything could change or expand almost instantly.

The only instance in which time didn't seem to pass at record speeds, was when something different or out of the ordinary took her by surprise. A rare feat indeed, this didn't happen often, but when it did, her super perceptive eye and skills seemed to temporarily slow down the passing of time simply so she could take in every detail of the world around her as the events would unfold. The times when an op ran sour, time slowed down. The time when she found herself swarmed by angry foreign agents, time slowed down. That time six weeks ago when at the airport before departure Auggie decided suddenly to propose to her, time slowed down.

The day that Auggie almost died in front of her however, time stood still.

"You are so damn stubborn," she mused at the man currently glorifying her safe house with his naked upper torso, and planting soft kisses to the back of her neck. She was trying to keep a look out for her contact who was supposed to meet her in the city square in half an hour, but had missed their earlier meet. As Annie stared out the tiny window however, she was finding it increasingly difficult to focus on that one particular hat in the masses when Auggie's smooth hands and hot lips were continuously sending shivers down her spine.

"Says the woman who wouldn't stop at world's end to pursue her own agenda. Armies, remember?" It was true of course. Auggie had told her on more than one occasion that armies alone couldn't change Annie Walker's mind when she made it. She really couldn't be too angry at him for being stubborn himself. With one finger she shifted the window curtains over an inch more to peek out the window a last time before she finally turned to her very cuddly and ever more adventurous boyfriend.

Boyfriend. That term didn't even sound appropriate. Were they romantically involved? A blind man could see that, no joke intended. Were they dating? Not if actual dates were required to be considered "dating." Were they in love? She would take a bullet for him. Did she see herself spending the rest of her life with him? She couldn't see a life without him. So boyfriend just didn't seem like an appropriate term for this wonderful if still slightly annoying man currently trying to seduce her back into her bed when she was supposed to be on an op that already seemed to be going sour.

"You can be very distracting when you want to be," she turned in his arms to face her with a sexy smile. Auggie couldn't see the smile, but something in the way his fingers lightly trailed over her skin as she turned in his arms told him what smile she was giving him.

"Well just being around you is distracting, Walker," he whispered back lowly with his own seductive smile. Auggie started leaning in slightly, expecting her to meet him halfway so he could miss her, but to his surprise instead, she put an arm between them, pushing him away slightly and properly puzzling him.

"You are so not getting lucky right now, Anderson," and with that proclamation of rejection she pushed away his wandering hands and pulled the rolled up fabric of her shirt back over her exposed sides. "You are still in a lot trouble."

"You are no fun," the blind man grunted back in defeat. Despite his tone however, he was smiling, indicating that playfulness wasn't completely gone from his demeanor as he managed to find his shirt and pull it back over his head.

"I'm guessing Joan has no idea you're here, right?" Annie crossed her arms strongly in front of her chest, watching Auggie's body language as he fished out the carefully woven words he was sure to give her.

"She knows I'm not where I'm supposed to be," he said back a little sheepishly. Annie wanted to roll her eyes, but she also knew this was a lot more serious than him surprising her on a vacation or ordinary trip.

"You need to go back home, Auggie."

"I can't do that," he started back, holding his ground.

"You're not even supposed to know where my safe house is and we'll discuss exactly how you found me later when we get home to DC, but you are leaving now."

"I can't."

"You can, and you will. I'm calling someone to pick you up right now." To make her point she took three long strides to the other end of the room to fish out her phone to call for an extraction. Was there a protocol for a boyfriend extraction?

"Annie, I came here for a reason, you need…" He stopped mid sentence, his head snapping in the direction of the only exit in the room. Without even a moment to question it, Annie grabbed her only weapon from her bag, knowing very well not to second guess his more perceptive senses. Silently she stepped closer to him until her hand touched his arm and he grabbed her elbow.

"Armed, at least three of them," he whispered back so low she could barely hear him. Annie listened closely and soon enough she heard the tell-tale sound of her visitors. Time slowed down.

"Where's my cane?"

Annie glanced around and spotted the folded aid on top of the three-legged stool beside the only door in the room. There wasn't a chance she was going to let him get it now. Annie listened closely, feeling like time was slowing down around them. She heard a very low rumble of voices from down below and footsteps. Someone was gathering at the base of the steps that ended just outside that door in front of her, and by the clicks and clatter she could make out, they weren't just carrying groceries. "Auggie, there's a window directly behind you, no glass, about three-and-a-half feet tall, maybe two-and-a-half wide. Directly below is a very thin ledge, only stretching out about 18 inches. We're on the second floor, so it's about an 11-foot drop to the cobblestone floor. Immediately go right after leaving the window, about five feet around the corner is a set of stairs, but they're very old and deteriorating so be careful. Run for it, as fast as you can, and meet me in the center square. They're splitting up. I'll come find you as soon as I can."

"Annie," he started but she shoved him hard in the direction of the window.

Time sped up. It was a flurry that blurred around her. No sooner did Auggie manage to crawl out the window that the only door in the room blasted open. She didn't even see or feel it anymore, the tall, dark stranger that burst through the door. Annie didn't like to kill, it was a last resort, but since she wasn't alone anymore, and the mission was already compromised, she didn't hesitate with her weapon. Before the splinters of the old door could clear, her first shot rang through the old structure and the first man went down.

As soon as his body fell, Annie ran for it, crossing the room in a blur towards the door and shattered stool where Auggie had laid his cane. He could buy another back in the states, or in the least grab his backup currently rolling around under her bed.

Annie peaked quickly around the corner of her room's door. A man started running up the stairs oblivious to her position just beside the doorway. Just as the burly figure burst through the doorway, she caught him in the center of his neck, and in a blur that could barely register through the adrenaline pumping through her system, the man was down and Annie was down the stairs and out the door.

Auggie. She had to find Auggie.

Annie stood centered in front of the building that housed her safe house, blood pumping in her ears with a deafening roar, rushing through her veins in a surge of perception, her eyes frantic but attentive as she scanned the the hundred or so busy bodies as the walked, ran, biked, and drove around her, names and shouted profanities in different tongues catching her ears but not her interest. Annie's direction spun to the right, scanning over all the heads that walked around, looking out for that head of brown waves and dark aviators.

Auggie. She had to find Auggie.

Annie spun around again, just to the left of the building she'd just escaped, frantically scanning the other passerbyers when she spotted it, those familiar brown waves but missing glasses on a very lost looking face, and on instinct she shouted.

"Auggie!" He heard her voice immediately and turned in the general direction of the voice.

"1 o'clock!" She shouted the direction, and he took off, as fast as he could without killing himself in the process and pummeled through groups and crowds of people his blindness left him oblivious of. Annie ran towards him, watching him as he tried to pass a group of men. One of them did not take kindly to the blind man running into him, and before Auggie would ever even realize the situation, the strangers elbow collided with his right eye, and Auggie fell.

"Auggie!" Annie shouted immediately, just as she reached him. Grabbing both his arms she guided him up and examined his eye. Just below the socket, a pink swelling was already forming, but with at least one of the men from her safe house still unaccounted for, this wasn't time for first aid. "Come on, we have to go," she told him quickly, guiding him up. She scanned the area just for safe measure when she finally found that third man. Standing, just about twenty years away or so, a man in the same attire as the two who ambushed her safe house, weapons in hands was turning, looking for her in the crowd of people between them.

"Auggie, run. Hold my arm and run."

Pulling him roughly behind her, Annie took off, running towards the center square where on the other side, her only escape from this forsaken city waited for her. Stumbling on the uneven terrain and bumping into a dozen pedestrians, Annie and Auggie weaved through the crowd. They were just reaching the square, Annie about to yell at Auggie a warning of the step up he'd have to take when a shot fired out.

Time slowed down. Annie spun around as another shot split through the air, the crowd around her erupted in screams, people jumping for cover, falling to their knees and pushing through others in search of safety.

Just a few yards away, Annie finally spotted that third man approaching her. Before she had a moment to warn him, Annie shoved Auggie behind her roughly, his foot tripping as he tried to keep himself upright, catching to edge of the road and bringing his whole body to the floor.

Time stood still. In movies there is always that moment, in the middle of an action scene when suddenly the video slows and everything pans out in slow motion, a bullet sliding across the screen like it going through jello, someone falling from a building like gravity doesn't exist, something exploding like a slow catching flame. As Annie glanced back at her falling man, it happened.

She watched the maroon motorcycle crossing behind her. Annie watched Auggie, oblivious to the things around him and disoriented from the chaos around him start to pick himself up off the floor after tripping over the edge that separates the road and center square.

Wheels screeched, a high pitched horn blew, and in agonizing speed the front wheel of the small vehicle inched towards Auggie's hunched body, colliding with the left side of his torso.

Annie's ears rang out, her vision went grey, skin and limbs numb, body cold as the horrible, crunching sound barely escaped his body as it crumbled. She lunged forward, a silent scream escaping her mouth as Auggie fell forward, the front fender of the maroon vehicle curving around his left ribs, one knee collided with the floor, the other twisted up as the force of the collision spun his whole body across the floor, and with a deafening thud, the back of his head slammed into that edge that had just tripped the blind man, the motorcycle toppled forward, its driver slipping from the seat with wide eyes that wore a look of terror as the motorcycle fell directly on top of Auggie's chest. She held her breath and watched her world around her crash into the floor with the bike.

Time stood still.

Inside a white sterile room, the slight beeping and hum of medical machinery was the only sound to be heard. A doorknob turned silently, and just as quietly, a lightly bruised Annie made her way slowly into the hospital room. Her face was dirtly, old makeup stains faded, smudged, and running under her own devastation. Her once white shirt was brown and bloodied, some her own, some her attackers, most belonging to the man in front of her. She walked quietly around the body that lay still as death in the bed, a half dozen IVs sticking from the bruised skin of his arms, hands, and sides. Annie felt her breath catch in her throat like someone had just crushed her windpipe, choking her, making the air impossible to pass into her lungs as she took in the bloodied, mangled body of this man in front of her she loved so much. She wasn't expecting him to be awake, looking as fragile as he did now in that bed, but when a tiny choked breath escaped her lips just as her fingers tried to touch his, Auggie's normally warm eyes opened.

He was silent for a moment, and Annie froze in her spot, her fingers maybe an inch from his, her eyes focused on his blind stare as he tried to make sense of the space.

"Annie?" His rough voice finally croaked, his uncanny ability to identify her instantly bringing a smile to her teary face and letting her close the space between them as she held in his hand in hers.

"How are you feeling?"

He tried to smile, but as the swollen purple and red around the right side of his face stretched he just closed his eyes again. "Whatever pain killers they gave me says peachy. The fact that I feel like I can barely breathe says not so much."

She smiled again, but it was a look of double meaning. "Well you have a collapsed lung Auggie, and a few broken ribs."

"Feels more like all of them are broken," he groaned back, wincing a little as he tried to shift his position, but closing his hand still between hers. Something about feeling her hand in his made a peace settle over his very sore body, although it also could be the strong drugs running through his system that seemed to make the pain a more dulling effect than stabbing pain. "I really wish I could kiss you right now."

"You scared the hell out of me," Annie finally spoke up. Auggie opened his eyes this time, as if opening them would suddenly bring back his vision lost for years. It was moments like these that he wished more than ever he could see her face and look her in the eyes. Instead, his sightless eyes stared absently at a spot just slightly off-center from her face and he remained silent.

"You can't come find me during a mission anymore, Auggie."

Auggie breathed in roughly and slowly, but Annie knew from years of his company that he was listening and processing her words.

"I think we need to distance ourselves during missions."

Auggie's face fell, his eyes darkened and he felt like his chest tripled in weight against his injured lungs. "What?"

"I just…" She was having a hard time finding the right words, watching this speech she wanted to deliver fall apart in her mouth, the mangled words choking her as she tried to speak. "I think we need to stop communicating during ops, and if that means we separate ourselves…" She couldn't be breaking up with him, not again.

She struggled to find the well chosen words, every second of her silence increasing that weight that seemed to be suffocating Auggie as he awaited the rest of her speech. "Do you remember when you asked me to marry you?"

This time he physically cringed. He spent weeks planning out a proposal and instead it all spilled out at the airport before she left for a three-week mission. "We continue this conversation and I'm going to need another dose of meds, Annie."

"Ask me again."

Auggie was silent. Those three words were the last he ever expected to hear from her.

"I think we need to distance ourselves during missions, but I think that also means we need to enjoy our time together and make the most of it, and this 'my place this week, your place next week' thing is ridiculous. If we're going to split up during missions, then we should stop wasting time when we can be together and…" her hands found themselves waving around in the air as if they could pluck the words she wanted from thin air.

"Annie…" he wasn't sure if he understood her completely.

"I want you to ask me again, Auggie, because if next week I go on a mission and die or you get hit by a car crossing the road or my plane falls out of the sky in a month without my ever marrying you, neither of us will ever be able to forgive ourselves."

Finally, a bright, painfully wide smile stretched across Auggie's bruised face. "Really?"

A tearful laugh escaped Annie's lips. "Please just ask me again before I have to, because I never wanted to be the one to propose in our relationship, and I already ruined your last proposal," she laughed tearfully.

"Do you have my bag?" He could barely speak through the giddy smile on his face, and Annie stood up excitedly to complete his request as she fetched his small bag from the pile of his things that had been placed in her care when they'd both been admitted to the hospital yesterday. Auggie held out his arms expectedly and when Annie placed the leather pouch in his hands he didn't waste time fishing a hand inside it until he found the object he was looking for.

"If anyone asks, I kneeled for this but given the circumstances I'm going to stay in this bed where I can still breathe." Annie laughed at him, feeling those tears that now sprouted from an array of different emotions clouding her vision and the pain that had been there earlier. Finally, Auggie pulled out a small black velvet box from his possessions, flinging away the rest of his bag without even the slightest care where it landed. He extended his hand out blindly, and Annie didn't need to hear him to know he was asking for her hand. She felt her heart flutter in her chest, her body feel weightless and everything around her blur down to a haze.

Time slowed down.

"Annie Catherine Walker, will you please, before anything happens that gets one of us killed or brutally mutilated, please, please, let me call you something other than just a girlfriend?" He popped the box open and even though she'd already seen that ring once before, something about her wanting to accept this time, something about sitting here knowing her life was changing as he asked her again made the beautiful jewel in front of her appear as if this was the first time she was laying her eyes on it.

"I should have said yes the first time," she cried in excitement.

"Say yes this time, Annie." Auggie was smiling in way Annie had never seen and she felt a giddy laughter build up in her gut as she awaited his question.

"Will you marry me?"

Author's Note:

Hello my lovely readers! As per request, this is the first of multiple one-shots I'll be doing based off my other Covert Affairs' fanfiction, Timeline. This one-shot was personally requested by bettsam0731 who asked for me to expand on the "motorcycle" that Annie mentions in the last chapter on Timeline. Originally, I had a small flashback of Auggie getting hit in the 1-year chapter, but it ended up being cut because it didn't fit well with the rest of the chapter, so I forgot that no one knew what Annie meant when she mentioned the motorcycle at the end, so here it is in the first story!

I have some ideas for other additions swirling, (anyone want a wedding one-shot? I do!) but if you have any ideas or even requests for specific additions, (including said wedding) don't hesitate to review, send me a PM, or contact me via my tumblr DiggyLiz.

Lots of Love,

- Liz