A.N. This was my first attempt at writing Covert Affairs. Hope you like it. The idea came into my mind while I was listening to a song called "Love me back to life."
She lost herself long before Hong Kong. Long before coming back to DC, before Helen's death. She's pretty sure she lost her soul the moment she became Jessica Matthews, ever since she got caught up in Henry Wilcox games, and decided to fake her death. And now she feared she lost a lot more than she though, including Auggie.
When her heart almost stopped that last time, she was sure half the damage was emotional: even her heart was giving up on her. She was not the same since Seth's death: that was the starting point. And since then, it was a downward spiral of deaths and torture and getting people stabbed. Thank God Arthur was going to be okay. Too bad Helen was not that lucky. Thanks to her, Auggie has lost her twice now.
Auggie… it hurts to think of him. It hurts that she's responsible for him losing so much, too much. She loves him, but she's a shell of herself, with nothing to offer him. She's broken, her heart is broken, both literally and metaphorically. She is all alone in this world. Well, that's not exactly true: she has Eyal at least. She knows she can count on him. He's as lost and damaged as she is. He tries to help her, both physically and emotionally, but he knows what she needs, who she needs, even if she denies herself even to think about it, about him.
She came to Eyal after it became clear that she needed help with her heart. She evaded the extraction team, and decided to take a little vacation. Well, it was not exactly a vacation, but it was not like the Agency was an option any longer, she believed. It was Eyal that once said that all she had to think about, when it came to him, was if she could use him to complete a mission. So, she came to him, sought his help.
He knows that something inside of her broke in Honk Kong, even before she shot Wilcox. He couldn't pinpoint the exact moment, but he was sure something has happened between them, and that she had both good and heartbreaking memories of it. She was nothing but a shell of herself since the night she spent with Auggie. Eyal had tried to get her to talk about it, but to no avail. The closer he got her to open up, after a lot, I mean a lot of Patrón. She told him how they've been together for a few weeks, how he didn't want her to go dark. She told him about the telephone call before Calder "shot" her in that hellish elevator, a phone call which should have been private, between the two of them, and instead was broadcasted throughout the agency, where she was deemed a rouge agent, a traitor. She told him how broken Auggie have sounded, how he had to lie to everybody, including her sister, how he had to mourn her, publically. It seems like a part of him really did mourn her, the old Annie Walker. May she rest in peace. A little bit of Eyal mourned her too, knowing that even though she was there with him, she would never be his.
So he kept her talking, and listened as his heart broke a little more every day. She spent the days resting, or in midst of doctor's appointments. And they spent their nights drinking, because it was the only way she knew how to cope. And under the cover of the night and too much alcohol, she told him about Helen, about her relationship with Auggie, and even she could hear the bitterness in her voice. She told him about working with her, and how she felt about the job, and the toll it took on personal lives.
The tequila numbed her senses, and it made it easier to keep talking about Auggie. About how Helen came to her, offered to help. And then, she had to tell him that Helen was dead. For real this time, not a black opp fake death he wasn't read in. And that, the look on his face, that had hurt more than seeing the rumpled sheets and knowing that they had spent the night together. Maybe Helen felt that letting Henry believe she was Jessica Matthews was a way to ask her for forgiveness, to make amends, for sleeping Auggie. Well, it wasn't.
So, when they met again in Hong Kong, she feared it would be the last time she saw him, and her heart broke all over again. It was her one moment of weakness. Her one escape.
"Tonight I need you. More than yesterday"
She didn't want to give him false hopes, she was sure that, if Henry didn't kill her, her heart would give up on her and she'd be dead anyway. She was sure that she'd never see that grin again, hear him joke around about his blindness, never have a glimpse of his special forces tattoo on his back. Oh god, she loved that tattoo. She loved everything about him.
She tried to distance herself from him, even when they went out to grab some dinner, it was as if she was not there. Even the talking was strained, and that was always the easiest part of their relationship, from day one. They walked back to the safe house, walking side by side, but it felt like there was a whole city, a whole ocean between them, driving a wedge. She though that, if they made it to the safe house and went their own separate way, well, as separate as they could be in the same safe house, if she could maintain that distance, she'd get through the night, and he would be gone in the morning. Back to DC, back to his old life, their old life, and she would remain Jessica Matthews, cold-blooded assassin, rouge agent, traitor of her own country. And dead within a week.
She was sure she was going to make it, but she was blindsided by the rush of emotion the mere touch of his hand could provoke on her. They were almost inside when he took her hand in his, and that was her undoing. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she was not able to hide the sniffle from him. It only took Auggie half a second to realize she was on the verge of tears, and against everything that he believed was better for them, he took her into his arms and held on for dear life. He could never deny her anything, even before they were together.
He could feel her fight the embrace for a couple of seconds, and he tighten his hold on her. He was going to comfort her, even if it killed him. He was tired of her damn choices, of her pushing him away.
When he felt her defenses lowering, he took advantage of it and kissed her, really kissed her, thinking it would be his last chance to do that. He expected her to fight it, to fight him, and he was prepared to use his strength and his training to keep her in place, to subdue her. Loving her was going to be the death of him, but he was going to love her until he died. She was going to be loved, and cherished, and be taken care of. Even if she didn't want it.
So he was more surprised then she was when she yielded. He felt her tremble in his arms, and pressed her into the closed door before they collapsed. He kept on kissing her, touching her everywhere, intoxicating her, overloading her senses. The kiss started soft, and light, and loving, and then it turned rough. He was on the verge of losing control, so he tried to reign in his feelings and his desire and aimed for getting them inside. He barely managed to unlock the door, the feel of her hands on him too much to allow clear thinking. He roughly pulled her closer to him, turned her around, opened the door and got them inside. The second the door was closed, he pushed her back against the door, holding her hands over her head and ravished her. That shell of a woman was burning inside, white hot fire running through her veins. She felt hot, and filled, and alive, for the first time in a long time. She was so overcome with feelings, threatening to burst out, that fresh tears started to well in her eyes again.
"Take me, touch me, hold me like you mean it, make me come alive
Hurt me, heal me, come and make me feel it, rescue me tonight
Love me back to life"
He kissed her lips, her cheeks, and went for her neck, trying to find that soft spot he knew drove her out of her mind. She didn't think twice before moving her head back and to the side, giving him better access. He wrapped one of his hands around her hair to secure her in place, pressed his body into hers, gluing them to the door, and started a sequence of his own torture, biting into the soft flesh and using his tong to sooth it. He was truly driving her mad.
He didn't know how he did it, being in an apartment that he barely knew, but he managed to guide them to one of the bedrooms. Hopefully hers. He carefully placed her in the middle of the bed, and followed her. He braced his weight in his arms, wedged one of his knees between her legs, and resumed his assault on her senses, on her every nerve.
He loved her, using his hands and his mouth and his body to show her, to make her feel alive. Annie was frantic, as frantic as he was. She caught his head in her hands, kissed him softly, and for a moment, she forgot that he was blind, that he could not see her, could not see the love she felt for him in her eyes. She felt so empty for so long that she didn't know how to convey her feelings into words. Sometimes she felt out of practice even using her voice. She never imagined that she would lose so much in her quest to take Henry down.
"These days I'd trade sight for feeling, there are days my feeling's gone
Can't figure out whose life I'm living, I don't know right from wrong"
Auggie must have sensed her shifting mood, her retreating, and so he doubled his efforts to make her forget the world, at least for the night. Their lovemaking was frantic, rough and fast, and at the same time, sweet and loving. He kept it going until the wee hours of the morning, as far as his stamina let him. Being incredibly in shape had his advantages, and he knew he could count on his training to delay his own pleasure for a while. He wanted her spent, wanted her to feel almost used. He knew it was going to be good for her body, good for her mind, and hopefully, good for her soul.
He hoped the feeling would last forever.
Little did he know that, almost 2 months after that, she was still reliving that night in her head. Eyal was sure that in those moments where Annie was really quiet, almost absent, that her mind was somewhere else, on someone else. He was trying to look out for her, for her heart. Again both literally and metaphorically. As a doctor, well, almost a doctor, having abandoned his medical career, he knew the dangers of her myocarditis. She would never be the same, even if she manage to get back on the field. He knew that. And he worried that it would, on top of everything else she was trying to deal with, put a lot of strain in an already bruised heart.
He knew she missed the field, she missed the agency, and most of all, she missed Auggie. It was a bittersweet feeling for him, almost a kind of torture. He knew he had feelings for her, her neshamá, and he avoided thinking about it as much as he could. If he didn't analyze it too much, maybe he could still lie to himself and tell himself he was just a very good friend. He was an expert liar, after all. One of the bests. So he did what he though was in her best interests and disregarded his own feelings, and his own heart. It was her heart, after all, that was on the line.