Love's Letter Lost
Dear Alicia,
The flashing cursor of the Word document had been there for the last fifteen minutes. An hour if one included taking Spot for a walk and feeding Louis. And since doing all that, since starting the email, all Wesley had been able to do was sit at his desk and wondering how a spur of the moment email was taking him longer than a full debrief that he'd given to the VSSE head two weeks ago.
Dear Alicia,
Scowling, Wesley hit the backspace, leaving nothing but the white of the Word doc staring at him. There was no reason to start the letter off so informally, he reflected. It would be "Miss Winston." Or "insert rank here" Winston, said rank being one he had no idea of. Somehow during the entire debacle on Astigos it had never come up.
And should it?
Rubbing his eyes and lying back in his chair, Wesley supposed that the answer was "no," that at the end of the day, it didn't matter. It was VSSE standard operating procedure – agents watched each other's back, each had equal standing in the field, and they only took orders from the VSSE Head or intermediaries. All things considered, it was amazing that Alicia had integrated herself into the dynamic that he and Alan had shared. No-one had tried to take the lead, they'd just…worked.
Worked better than all this is going.
Wesley sat up straight. Maybe it was time to give this another shot. Maybe something along the lines of…
From: Wesley Lambert, VSSE
To: Alicia Winston, Lukano Liberation Army
It was formal, it was cold, but maybe that was the way to go. It was what came after that hindered him.
I saw you on Euro Flash. Seems like the war's winding down. It
And he stopped again. He'd done his job. Take out the tactical missiles that had the entire Mediterranean on edge. That was his mission. Not necessarily his mandate, but the job was done, and the entire world was ready to let Zagorias and Lukano finish the whole messy business by themselves. He didn't have a cause. Alicia did, but his work seemed to involve little more than "here's the target, now shoot it."
I'm sorry I couldn't stay. It must have been hard. And
And again, "and nothing." He and Alan had left. Their job done. If he couldn't stay around, or wouldn't stay around, then why was he even bothering to write?
And why'd we even bother at all?
It hadn't always been like this. Sherudo, Diaz, Kantaris, Wild Dog…all people whose motivations were based on their own benefit. All people a VSSE agent (or agents) had put a bullet into. Astigos had been different. This entire war was different. Wesley wasn't blind, and for all his jokes, he doubted Alan was either.
Maybe that was what made Alicia so…different, he reflected. She was in that war for a cause. For family. In a war that was…well, a war. Not a kidnapping, not a bid at world domination, just…human brutality. And at the end of the day, she'd managed to rise above all that.
Sighing, Wesley leant back in his chair again.
If only he could just put this into words…