Disclaimer: I own very little...
Is Everything that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?
~Edgar Allen Poe
London Underground, London, United Kingdom, 08:05, 16 July, 2012
The tube train trailed to a stop with quiet finality, a hydraulic gasp inevitably followed, and then silence.
For the initial moments, everyone in the crowded carriage remained relatively motionless. And eventually, as the stillness and the silence began to register, eyes flickered. Standing passengers peered worriedly through the windows into the ominous darkness of the Underground, as if seeking some explanatory vision of revelation.
They were halfway between Waterloo and Westminster, Emily Prentiss calculated. It was five past eight on a Monday morning. She is almost certainly going to be late for the first day of work, again. As the smell of other people 's damp clothes lingered around her, and soggy book bag, not her own, nudged near her lap, Emily felt a rather peculiar sense of Déjà vu.
Resting her chin on her silky navy scarf, Emily leaned back into her seat and carefully extended her legs. She should have worn her usual convenient black boots instead of these fancy heels, which she'd bought a couple of weeks earlier on the first of a series of supposedly light-hearted shopping trips since her relocation. She hadn't stayed here for any extended period of time since that fateful day nine years ago when she met her first profiling team, and now, watching the leather around the toes beginning to curl up from the soaking it received on the way to the station, she mused at how similar everything seems or seemed, despite all the people, events and emotions in between.
After seven years staying stateside while working for the Bureau, Emily admits that despite all that stayed the same, things did indeed change. Some are quite subtle, though many remain strikingly obvious. Take the clothes issue, for example. Today she has mostly adhered what may be known as the accepted look, a routine she had noticed years ago that most people seemed inevitably to fall into, which lay somewhere between sombre and invisible. Dark trouser suits, neat skirts and jackets, sensible shoes – the sort of stuff you found in Marks and Spencer or Bloomingdales.
While she never actually took this to extremes, like some of her colleagues who eventually cultivated what some people call an almost Soviet drabness which, more than a decade ago, the young Emily instinctively subverted. Although at that point her punk college years were already behind her, she nevertheless used to spend the rarely free Saturday afternoons combing the antique clothing stalls for quixotically stylish bargains which, while they infringed no Agency rules, certainly raised a few eyebrows. Even though she no longer had the heart to spend time and effort to display her individuality, Emily can't help but smile as she remembered her friend, the Oracle queen of Quantico, whose forever joyful spirit can make the team notice the hope and beauty in this world despite the disproportional amount of tragedy and atrocities they see. She felt it to be a little fey to be fighting the same wars herself at forty-one, but something inside her still silently resisted being submerged by the gravity and secrecy of work, previously at the CIA and the Bureau, now at Interpol's London Gateway Office.
Intercepting her smile, a strap-hanging commuter looked her up and down. Avoiding his complimentary gaze, Emily ran a visual check on him in return, a process which has long became a second nature to her. He was dressed smartly, but with a subtly fastidious conservative air which was not quite of the City. The upper slopes of academia, perhaps? No, the suit seemed hand-made. Medicine? The well-kept hands supported that idea, as did the benign arrogance of his appraisal. A consultant with a few years' private practice and a dozen pliant nurses behind him, Emily decided, headed for one of the large teaching hospitals.
Inclining her head in satisfaction, Emily once again touched her cheek to the silky indigo nap of her scarf, enveloping herself in a faint, pleasant scent which brought Clyde's physical presence – his eyes and his smile and his voice – rushing home to her. It may seem a little ironic, that after a decade she is one her way to see the same supervisor, although the states of affairs are so very different.
She remembered him buying her the perfume from Guerlain on the Champs Elysées while JTF-12 was in Paris. Its a wildly inappropriate act, needless to say, but considering the circumstances at the time, he offered a silky rationalization that there is nothing improper with him casually doting on his "wife". The original bottle has long been exhausted, but Emily continued to use this particular scent despite its price and rarity, for reasons she herself cannot explicitly explain. Perhaps, in the time of troubles and a job of danger, there are certain pure moments of familiarity that she, even without admitting, wanted to cling onto.
And the scarf is from the fancy Hermès store on the Avenue Montaigne. According to the delicate card that came in the signature orange box, this surrealist design is know as L'Mechanique Du Temps: The Mechanics of Time. She thought this little touch is eerily appropriate for the sense the Sigmund Freud describes as the "uncanny"- a sentiment of Déjà vu shared no doubt by the both of them, despite the passage of time.
She distinctly recalled every detail of their last night in Paris. It was their team's last assignment before the fateful Doyle mission, and after Clyde finished debriefing with the general at the Counterterrorism Alliance Base, he had returned abruptly at the flat in the Quatier Latin where they've shared for six months posing, quite convincingly, as husband and wife. She had allowed herself to sink deep into the plush pillows, half-heartedly listening to Avoir un Bon Copain and trying to make sense of a report in one of their many files. Suddenly there he was, and soft silks and cottons fell onto the polished wooden floor. The place was then filled with the delicate fragrance of L'Heure Bleu.
Afterwards they shared a light bottle of Carruades de Lafite while admiring the beauty of the Parisian night. 'Shouldn't we be tidying up the place instead of lingering in prodigality?' Emily had asked with a sense of guilt.
'Sean's people can clean up after us, like they always did,' Clyde answered gleefully, 'while we, darling, can enjoy our final official night undercover.'
'The scarf is gorgeous, but...'
'Love, it suits you.' Came his usual simple reply, and she never argued.
Despite being very close with him for years, both work and otherwise, Clyde Easter had remained an enigma to Emily. He is both meticulous and pleasure-loving, and possessed of an almost feline perceptiveness – qualities which not only made him one of the best spies and profilers the SIS has to offer, but also a superior with one of the most fluid leadership styles Emily has ever encountered. She did tell him that Hotch is the best, but it nevertheless amused her how equally effective, but drastically different, their leadership styles are. Hotch understood the weight of responsibility and would carry the whole burden on his own shoulders if he deemed that it is necessary in order to protect his team. Clyde offered his team considerably more freedom and flexibility because he recognize that it is often imperative for the team to work productively. Judging from the eventual fate of the JTF members, perhaps he was too liberal. Judging from the fact that he kept her on the need-to-know perhaps he wasn't.
And sitting there in the halted train, it occurred to her that their relationship beyond the work sphere is a concept she cannot quite grasp. Their love, or rather, love affair is so casual that it can be characterized as blithe. It was no more the the occasional night in Prague or Lyon or Edinburgh, or where ever the team happens to be stationed. Emily can't help but criticize his "bad timing", but as Clyde reasonably pointed out, on their job there is never a good time. She flinched at the idea of categorizing their relationship as "friends with benefits". They admired and respected each other too much for that. It is more that they needed to seek solace in the arms of someone that understood the job, whom they can trust with not only their lives, but also the occasional secret and insecurities.
During those rare moments when she's honest with herself, she admits that she'd missed him. No matter how much she hated the fact, due to her drifting experience with her mother during her childhood and adolescence, she is incapable of staying in the same place for any extended period of time. She had thoroughly enjoyed the relative stability with her colleagues, and family, at Quantico, but after the Doyle incident she can no longer settle down. Clyde asked her if she'd "missed it." She did, but she also missed him, perhaps more so than she's willing to acknowledge.
'Salut ma cherie,' Clyde had called the night before and she can't help but roll her eyes at his casually honeyed words, 'Its so great to have you back again. Tomorrow we can meet at my office in Vauxhall, go through with all the red tape and then introduce you to your team at the SOCA headquatres at Victoria, as well as the other five thousand people working in that building. Is there any social activity in particular you would prefer? A five course brunch perhaps?'
'You're really the paradigm of style, Clyde Easter,' She laughed.
'Just a suggestion,' he answered cheerfully, and she can imagine precisely how his lips curved into the characteristic smirk. "But in all seriousness, Em, I am really glad to have you back.
'I'll see you in the morning,' Emily replied with a smile, 'Au revoir, à bientôt!"
With a gasp and a long, exaggerated shiver, the tube train restarted. Emily snapped back to the present and realized that she was definitely going to be late.
Notes: SOCA: Serious Organized Crime Agency, the UK agency where Interpol's London Gateway Office, which Clyde asked Emily to run, would be hosted. It is headquartered in Victoria but has a office in Vauxhall, very close to the SIS building. I assumed that it would make sense for Clyde to head that liaison office because of his MI6 background.
P.S. What do you think of this? Its my first story, so all advice are desperately desired! Please review to let me know!
