Going Up
Early to mid series 7.
A Yuletide fic for Vintagememories who wanted rain, a hostage situation, and/or people stuck in elevators. I went two for three.
Lucas can't quite get the measure of Jo. Malcolm is the same as ever, his features bearing the same soft, wizened look. Harry is guilt-ridden, and carrying some additional unknown worries, but essentially the same. His eyes meet Lucas' steadily, but occasionally he will look away, wary. A small part of Lucas, one he does not like to acknowledge or spend much time dwelling upon, relishes the guilt he knows Harry is feeling on his behalf.
Ros is cold, but funny. Good at her job and hard as nails; he finds her competence reassuring, her eyes frightening.
Jo is a different breed altogether. She shows up on the day of his return, a young woman with a heart-shaped face and light hair and a slow smile. She's polite and warm, offering him a hand and a 'welcome home,' before turning away to step into Harry's office. Lucas hardly speaks to her after that.
She seems a competent, quiet sort. Lucas, struggling to find ballast for his own turbulent emotions, finds her presence comforting. It's not until he's built up a bit of a life again, furnished a flat with Blake prints, seen Elizabeta, whole and well, that Lucas becomes aware that Jo is not the quiet type. She's stewing.
It becomes increasingly apparent that Jo is not fine, nor is she calm. She seems distracted, often. She has a ready smile and a willing attitude, but he can see the tiny fissures starting to appear. He wonders if people can see them in him, as well.
He understands why after he reads case notes and personnel files from the last eight years of Section D. Tom's resignation comes as a surprise; he can barely remember Helen, but reading of Colin's death stings. There are files for others, men and women he never met, though some names echo in his head, clamoring for attention. A note on the file of a young man with dark hair and a cocksure expression lets him know he shared a flat with Jo in Kentish Town. A further note informs him that the end of this officer's life came in Pakistan, his body missing teeth and fingernails and the bottom of his foot carved.
Lucas finds himself speechless at what happened to Jo. His unhappiness is of a different sort, but he realizes now that they are both intimately acquainted with the sort of gut-churning fear that only comes from being truly vulnerable.
Hefeels like he should speak to her, offer tea and sympathy or maybe stiff words, encouraging her to pull herself together, or simply a keen ear, letting her do the speaking. He hasn't quite worked out what he should say to her - just that he is sure that he should find some way of letting her know that he knows. But he can't. She is never free, whether she's eating lunch with one of the administrative assistants, taking a tea break with Connie, or working at her desk, typing away furiously at her computer before heading off to the pub with Ben or going home. She can spirit herself away from the Grid, a light bob moving through the pods before Lucas has a chance to catch her. She's good at being inconspicuous, fading away quietly.
xXx
It has been raining for five days, and Jo trots through the heavy doors of Thames House, grasping a dripping umbrella. She greets the two security officers by name, pausing to admire Veronica's engagement ring, hearing the proposal story for a second time. Jo did not mind, loving each detail as Veronicatold it, the images forming clearly in her head, a perfect distraction from her restless night and the long work-week stretching ahead of her.
The weather seems to be conspiring against Lucas, playing on his nerves like a hammer on a piano string. The persistent drizzle on the exposed skin of his face and neck left him feeling chilled as he walks from the Tube station to Thames House. The rain, coupled with the fog, leave him feeling pressed down, as if his form was being smudged out into the earth.
He makes it to Thames House, literally colliding with Jo at the security checkpoint. A collapsed umbrella hurtles from her arms, leaving splotches of damp as it skitters across the floor. She gasps, lithely moving away from him, before giving him a grin and stooping to pick up her umbrella.
"Jo, sorry."
"Don't worry about it. Wet morning, eh?"
They moved together towards the elevator, Jo enthusiastically greeting a man she addresses as Jed as he exits the elevator.
Jo scans her pass once they're inside the elevator, and presses the button for the fourth floor. They are alone. Lucas decides that now is as good a time as any for that chat. He is wrong.
"Jo, how are you?"
She smiles warmly. "I'm well, Lucas, and yourself?"
He ignores her question, and asks "How are you, really?" He makes his face appear open and receptive, the expression he uses when he wants information.
Immediately, he regrets the clumsy approach, as her eyes harden at him, and her mouth stretches into a shape that is not quite a sneer, and certainly not a smile.
"I'm fine, Lucas, really." She practically spits the last word. "And you? How are you?" Jo resents the patronizing tone of the question, the implication that he is somehow as close to her as Adam, as close to her as Zaf, the implication that he has the right to pry. She looks him up and down coolly, finally resting on his face, and his eyes, the twitch of skin at the corner of the left eyelid. "Sleeping well?" Her voice is as sharp as her eyes, warning him off.
"I just..." he cuts himself off, pausing for the right words, trying to salvage something from the mess he's just made. "If there's something I can..."
It is the lurching of the elevator that cuts him off this time. There is a grinding noise before the elevator stops moving completely.
Jo sighs. "Excellent. I didn't want to go to the morning briefing, anyway." Even as she's saying this, she's opening the phone box and dialing the internal security office, reporting the stopped elevator. Each movement and word is precise, and Lucas is reminded that she is a professional spook, too.
Call completed, she turns back to Lucas, her expression daring him to say anything related to their earlier conversation.
"They said they'd get right to it." The words have hardly left her mouth before the elevator groans again, shudders, moves up half a floor, and then grounds to a halt again, the doors opening hopefully to reveal the brick shaft.
Lucas moans internally, and checks his watch. Not even 8 AM. A stalled lift, an angry colleague - what a propitious start to the day.
xXx
Jo and Lucas do make it to the briefing eventually, arriving a half hour after the start. The maintenance staff had been all apologies, citing low hydraulic fluid, and Jo and Lucas had scrambled to get to the Grid.
"Lift issues?" Harry raises an eyebrow as they take their seats.
"I need to lay off the buns." Lucas smoothly distracts from the cool reserve of Jo's face. "What's going on, then?"
Harry speaks, shifting in his chair to indicate a frozen image on the flat panel TV. "As you know, Section B usually handles all dignitary security, but given the additional pressures of Britain hosting an event the size of this Sino-European trade conference, they need extra bodies on the ground. Your bodies, to be precise. Jo, Lucas, you'll be guarding this man." He nodded towards the image on the television.
Ros takes over the briefing then. "Feng Bin. Forty-seven, Han Chinese from the Xinjiang region. Works for the agricultural ministry. You need only escort him from meeting to meeting, and back to his hotel at the end of the day, where you'll be relieved." Ros paused, casually glancing at her watch. "CO19 have secured the premises of the Queen Elizabeth II Convention Center, but with all the dissident activity in Xinjiang over the past year, one can't be too careful."
Jo looks from the television screen to Ros, then Harry. "We're just minders, then?"
Harry nods. "Yes, Jo. Needs must and all that." He rises, signaling an end to the meeting.
"He doesn't speak any English, so at least you won't have to deal with the whining," Ros says as she leaves the room. "I've got the bloody French."
xXx
Feng Bin is smartly dressed in a gray suit and black wingtips, waiting with his Section B minders in the foyer of the convention center.
Jo recognizes one of minders as John, but cannot place the other man. John smiles at her as they approach, and makes introductions. A translator is on hand to tell Feng that Jo and Lucas are from the Home Office, before rushing off to deal with another diplomat. Feng eyes them, appearing unimpressed and quite indifferent, before pointing towards the elevators.
Jo feels herself shifting into work mode, eyes soft to catch movement on her periphery, as they move towards the vast bank of elevators. She steps first into the elevator, checking the blind spots and glancing up at the ceiling, before entering and pressing the button for the fifth floor.
Feng Bin is engrossed in his BlackBerry by the time the elevator doors close. Lucas shifts his weight back against the wall, and steals a glance at Jo. She was been professional and polite towards Lucas since they left Thames House, as if the earlier unpleasantness never occurred. She's put it in a box and walked away.
The elevator shudders and stops suddenly, throwing Feng into Jo, the phone clattering from his hands. All is quiet for a moment as the elevator gives one last feeble attempt at rising, before halting with a disheartening finality. Feng brusquely speaks to Jo, then Lucas, before retreating into a corner, furiously dialing a number on his phone.
Jo turns to Lucas. "We should have taken the stairs."
xXx
Two hours later they are still sitting in the elevator. Jo has called Malcolm to see if anything was going down at the convention center. Malcolm, already viewing CCTV feeds from the center, informs them that they are not the victims of al-Qaida, the IRA, Xinjiang separatists, or anyone similar. Indeed, they are, in fact, victims of a faulty piston in the lift shaft.
Lucas used the emergency call button to contact the center's security staff, who informed him that maintenance was working on it. Jo, meanwhile, had conveyed to Feng through a series of elaborate hand gestures that they were stuck for a while. With nothing else to do, she sank down to the floor across from Lucas.
Two hours on, and Jo has managed to explain the first four series of "Lost" and the inexplicable awarding of a Booker for Life of Pi. She has been studiously even-tempered, and it takes him far longer than he is willing to admit that she is finessing each topic, finessing him, carefully steering him away from anything personal.
She was quiet now, and he saw his chance.
"Who was Helen?" Start with questions you know the answer to, Interrogation 101.
"Before my time."
"Oh." He seems to consider this for a moment. "How did Colin die?"
"He was out on obs. Got captured by the Sisters and strung up from a tree in Surrey."
"MI-6 killed Colin?"
A single nod from Jo. "They were MI-6, but on a rogue op. A would-be coup d'état. They were being manipulated." Jo adds in her head like all of us.
Lucas takes this in quietly, then "And Zafar? Who was he?"
"Zaf." Jo smiles. "He came over from Six with Adam. He went undercover, stopped a bomb from going off. He was so good at it. Was Muslim, you know, and spoke Urdu." She goes quiet then, but Lucas can tell there is more to come.
Jo starts to speak once more, her tone measured. "So good at it, in fact, that they sent him undercover again, to Iran. He didn't speak a word of Persian, but Adam was convinced he'd be perfect. He did well in Iran, Adam said he made a mistake, compromised the operation, but he hadn't." There is more resolute certainty in her voice then Lucas has ever heard. "Once he was back in London he was captured by the same people who caught Adam and me later." Her voice never loses its level tone, even as the words came slower. "He was sold on. They found his body in Pakistan." She comes to a full-stop then, studiously picking at a bit of lint on her blue sweater.
"He had been tortured?"
Jo makes an affirmative noise. "It was a waste. Such an utter waste." She stops herself then, the forceful words cut off. She is angry, but thoughtful as she looks at him. Lucas wonders if she thinks of her life as a waste since her own encounter with the Redbacks. Waste is how he views those eight years in Russia.
Feng is speaking into his phone, ignoring them.
"You were flatmates, weren't you?" Lucas knew, from the files, that they shared a flat, but does not know if it was as roommates or lovers.
Jo looks slightly taken aback. "Who told you that?"
"Malcolm," he lies smoothly.
Jo's keen eyes let him know that she's about to call his bluff, but instead she crosses her arms and turns away. "I've never known him to be so indiscreet."
Lucas feels a loosening within his chest. Her voice is a blend of wistfulness and resignment, but no longer anger.
"A few nights before he left, we went out. We..." but Jo's voice trails off then, and she gives him a regretful smile. "He was a good friend."
Lucas nods. He doesn't need to know anything else.
An abrasive noise comes from above them, and they are moving upwards, finally.
Fin