Title: Agent Cortez
Author: melvncholymvmi aka Desi (the writer formerly known as SunflowersandHoney)
Rating: T+ (for language)
Summary: The one where Cipher knows Dom and Letty's secret. Prompt fulfillment for [ anna42hmr ]. Fast 8 with a twist.
A/N: I can't tell you what the prompt is, otherwise it'll be ruined midway through, but I hope you guys enjoy my twist on Fast 8.
Also, slowly but surely, I'm trying to clear out my cache of F&F fanfiction to post because I feel like this fandom is slowly dying out. I've got a few more stories left in me if you guys want them, but I may be headed over to AO3 with the Swan Queen fandom.
A honeymoon. Finally. Dom and Letty had come so far and they were free now. Free to come and go as they pleased without looking over their shoulder every minute of every hour of every goddamned day. They were older, too. And if the crackling of their knees when they stretched in the morning and aching in their backs when they finally went to bed at night were any indication of what old age was like, the Universe could just fuck right off.
But, that's why they'd come here.
To Havana.
It was a colorful dichotomy of old and new; a mirror image of what Letty and Dom's relationship was. They knew so much about one another's pasts but in their time apart, they'd missed a lot. There was so much to see in Cuba. So many sights, sounds and scents. No such thing as a dull moment in Havana. Especially when Dom and Letty were involved.
They spent their mornings making love, their afternoons enjoying the beach and the arts, and in the evenings, they talked for hours.
One morning, about a month into their extended honeymoon, Letty wanted to sleep in a little longer, so Dom headed off to the town market. He purchased fresh juice, warm bread and eggs for breakfast. And just before he left, he spotted a small bodega with fresh flowers for sale. He picked a single red rose, paid and started back towards their villa. A few more steps and he could see his bride again.
But there was trouble brewing. A tall, thin blonde with hair halfway down her back stood over her car, huffing and puffing. Her small frame was moving side to side as she worked to try and get the engine to turn over.
"Necesito ayuda?" He inquired.
She turned to him, red wayfarers framing her face. "What?" She questioned, making it clear that she wasn't from Cuba and didn't speak Spanish.
"Need a hand?" He clarified in English.
She pushed her frames further onto her face and replied, "Yeah. I think I do."
Dom walked over to her, explaining, "Sounds like you're not getting any fuel."
"Yeah?"
He put the bag of groceries down.
"Let's see if we can get some power it." Dom leaned over the car, careful of the raised hood. The blonde took in his face through her dark-framed glasses.
"What brings you to Cuba?" She asked him.
"Same thing that brings everyone to Cuba," he replied laughingly, "Culture. People. Beauty." He gave her another look before turning back to the car. "What brings you to Cuba?"
"Work." She says.
"Must be casual Friday."
She leaned against the car's frame and pulled off her glasses. "How's that honeymoon going, Dom?"
His brows furrowed and he pulled his arm from inside of her car. They stared one another down for a few heartbeats and Dom began to get that gut feeling he always got when shit was about to go down.
He took another look into the engine cover and noted, "Your fuel relay is missing."
She held up the small piece and replied, darkly, "I know."
Dom began to gather his groceries while she rounded the car to replace the missing piece. "I love to play games, even the best of 'em, but I'm kinda in a rush so if you got something to say to me—."
"Oh, this is a very different game, that I can assure you." She interrupted. "This is something much greater at work here." Rounding the car again, she stood before him. "This is fate."
"I choose to make my own fate."
"Not today. Is this the road you take to your apartment everyday? What else is different, Dom? Is Santiago's closed?" She jutted her chin behind him. He turned quickly, noticing that she was correct. "Did you have to cross two blocks to go get your Cuban coffees? What is is black, no sugar? Yeah," she said, "I put a lot of work into getting you here today."
Something about her dark confidence was off-putting.
"You know I live over here, what do you want?"
"I want you to work for me."
"Work for you? Oh, I could've saved you a lot of time, then. See, I don't work for anyone." He pivoted to head home to the safety of his apartment and his wife, but he was stopped dead in his tracks.
"You can't walk away from this, Dom. We're going to have this conversation one way or the other. See, that's the funny thing about fate. It's cunning. It can bring you beautiful things and it can also bring you moments like this." The blonde pulled a smartphone from the back pocket of her jean shorts and held it out for him to take.
Reluctantly, he took a few steps closer and retrieved the phone from her hand. As he looked at the screen, his hardened expression fell to reveal the very terrified look just underneath.
Like a devil, taunting him from his left shoulder, she told him, "Oh, you're gonna want to work for me. You're gonna betray your brothers, abandon your code and shatter your family. See, your team is about to go up against the one thing they can't handle."
Still staring at the phone, Dom wondered aloud, "And what's that?"
Moving from his left shoulder to the right, the blonde replied, "You. Oh, and Dom?" She headed for her car, opening the door and getting into the driver's seat. "I wouldn't mention this to anyone." The door shut and mere milliseconds later, she pulled off.
Dom, still holding the phone.
Fuck.
Who was she? And how did she know? And more importantly, why had she gone to such extreme lengths if she'd known exactly where he lived?
It broke his heart to keep this from Letty. This affected her as well. They'd already been through so much. The last time he left her in a foreign country, he'd lost her. And when he did, she had forgotten who he because of the injuries she sustained trying to get back to him. No, he couldn't leave her again. So, he did what he knew how to do best.
He called his team.
Letty wasn't pleased at the break in their vacation, but Dom had explained that they shouldn't miss the beauty that was Cuba.
"Fine." She'd said and then made her way to the beach as he called them. Tej and Roman were excited, hoping it was game time. It had been a quiet few months since they'd seen any action, but Dom told them it was for vacation. He was going to wait until the blonde made the first move.
As luck would have it, she basically manipulated Hobbs into making one first.
Already assembled in Cuba, Dom wasn't completely surprised to hear from Luke. He was sure his mystery woman had something to do with it.
"Hey Dom."
"Hey Hobbs."
"We got a job in Berlin, and I need a favor, brother."
"No problem." Dom said into the phone.
In a series of complex, yet perfectly executed synchronized car racing, Dom became the new owner of a weapon of mass destruction. As soon as he had control of it, he left his family feeling betrayed and totally shocked by his actions.
The only person who never gave up on him?
Letty Ortiz.
And while she worked tirelessly in pursuit of the truth and keeping the team together, Letty prayed that it wasn't all for naught. But she knew in her heart that Dom never did anything without a reason. He had a code designed specifically around the idea of family.
"If a man ain't got a code, he ain't much of a man now is he?" He'd once said in a letter to her from his cell in Lompoc.
Summoned by Cipher and escorted by one of her henchmen, Dom was brought into a secret chamber. A hydraulic hiss sounded and the black wall slid away revealing the reason he'd done all of this. A familiar woman lie in a bed under dim sconce lights and a bodyguard mere steps away. She jumped to her feet when she noticed Dom.
"Daddy." She breathed, shakily. Her brown eyes were brimming with tears and she pressed her hand along the bulletproof glass between herself and Dom.
"Aria." Dom bit back his tears and placed a hand against hers. "I'm sorry."
"You shouldn't have come."
"Nothing could have kept me away."
"I was headed back to the States to start my new job with the NSA. I stumbled onto an armory of WMDs, but then she took me before I had a chance to warn anyone."
Here she was, in the flesh. And she looked so much like her mother that it was terrifying.
It hadn't been intentional, her birth. He and Letty hadn't planned to have a family so soon. They were still kids themselves when Letty skipped two periods. Their entire lives were going to change, and Letty was not about to go through with an abortion. She was pro-choice, but the baby that had been growing inside of her was made of purest, most intense kind of love. So, they had weighed their options and decided on an open adoption. Eventually, they decided on a sweet couple from their church had been trying to get pregnant for two years. They didn't live far apart so Dom and Letty could visit whenever they wanted.
Aria knew who Dom and Letty were; there was never any secrecy about who she was to them. But, the team never knew about her. And she never knew about them. It was for her own protection.
When she was five, Dom fucked up. Got sent to Lompoc and spent two years away from her. When he was finally out, she had started first grade and the family decided that Dom wasn't the "kind of people" they wanted around "their daughter". Letty was still "allowed" to see her, but Dom had to live vicariously through Letty. There were pictures and videos, but it was never really the same. When she was eleven, however, Aria was curious. She'd followed Letty to work on her bike. She watched as her biological mother placed a kiss on the cheek of a man who was so familiar to her. Defiant and determined, Aria walked into the shop and announced her presence.
"Aria, you can't be here. Where are your parents?" Dom had asked. And that voice. It was unmistakable. No other man in her entire life had a voice like tires on gravel.
"Daddy?" She'd asked, running into his arms, eyes filled with tears.
From then on, they snuck around her adoptive parents' backs to see him. Eventually, when she was sixteen, she confronted them.
"It's complicated. He's not a very good man."
"I know what he's done, but he and Letty chose you two to be my parents because you were good, Christian people! What happened to forgiveness?"
And that had been that. Dom was allowed to see her again. For two years, he got to take her to games and the shop.
And then college came. She wanted to see the world. Her first stop was King's College London. Through an accelerated course, she graduated a year early and then went on a backpacking adventure through Europe. Somehow, she made her way to Asia, sending Dom and Letty postcards and pictures from Laos, Cambodia and eventually Thailand.
Now, here she was. Standing before him, with a nose piercing and tattoos decorating her body. Her dark hair, fell in natural waves down her shoulders and her brown orbs that had seen so much of the world looked up at him as if he was it. What he didn't see, however, was fear. She was just as fearless as her mother and despite the circumstances, he gave a small smile.
"I'm sorry you were dragged into this, Dad."
"There's nothing to be sorry for." He replied, shaking his head.
"Whatever happens," Aria told him, "just don't let her get to those weapons." She looked him dead in his eyes and he knew what she was telling him. Even if she was a casualty, there was a bigger picture to focus on. The safety of an entire country rested on his shoulders. A tear rolled down his left cheek.
Somewhere behind him to the left, Cipher sat at a computer, one foot tucked under her bum, arm dangling casually over her knee. She was watching his every move, as she always did, calculating exactly what he was bound to do next. Dom stilled his expression when he heard her move. An electronic door openers behind him and the henchmen returned.
Clocking the glock holstered onto his waist, Dom tried to imagine how this scenario would play out.
"Good visit?" Cipher's mockingly soft voice rang from behind him. Whirling around, Dom faced his newest foe. One hand on the wall to Aria's cell and her head tilted to the side, Cipher told him, "I know. I know what you're thinking. I just let the guards go, so there's only two opponents in the room. Rhodes has the gun, so you'll take him out first."
Dom's jaw clenched. Aria looked back and forth between the two Alpha personalities.
"I know you. And then you're thinking 'Aria's my kid, I taught her every self-defense move she knows'. Maybe the two of you can fight your way out of here. So much to think about." Cipher closed her eyes, seeing the imagining come to fruition. She inhaled deeply and exhaled.
What was scary about Cipher compared to anyone they've faced before, was just how centered she truly was. And if Dom knew anything about women, it was that when they were quiet and truly calm, was when he should be the most afraid.
After all, no one ever planned murder out loud.
Taking a couple steps towards him, Cipher opened her eyes again. Rhodes removed his gun from its holster and handed it to Cipher.
"Let me make it easier for you," Cipher contracted and then released the chamber, removing the safety and held the gun out to Dom. "Do with it as you wish."
He took the gun and looked back to Aria. Turning to Cipher. Dom pointed it square between her eyes. For a millisecond, Cipher's expression actually looked surprised. She thought he'd be smarter than that.
"Have you heard of choice theory, Dom? There's a bunch of axioms, but only two you really need to concern yourself with. One, the only person's behavior we can control is our own, and two the only thing we can truly give another person is information, so let me give you some."
Dom readjusted his hand along the hand of the gun, his resolve slowly fading.
"You see these cameras in here? The moment you make a move, highly paid men with weapons will make their way into this room with one very specific instruction. And it's not to save me. It's to kill your daughter. Now, that's a lot of bullets and it only takes one for you to lose everything."
Aria shifted on her feet and her heart began pounding in her ears.
"So I have to ask you, because I know family is so important to you. Is there really a choice you wanna make? Because I'm ready when you are."
Dom's pointer finger stroked the trigger of the gun as he tried to decide what was going to happen. But then it dawned on him that there really was no decision. For once, he was completely out of control with his destiny. With his fate. Something that he had worked so incredibly hard to change since Lompoc.
And that infuriated him to no end!
"If I pull this trigger, and God knows I wanna, if I killed everyone on this planet, I still couldn't get in there 'cause of your two-man fail safe system. Since I'm alone, I got no choice!" He shouted. Cipher's green eyes fluttered once but they maintained contact with his brown orbs. He lowered the gun. He and Cipher stared one another down before he took one last look at his daughter.
"Para siempre." Dom told her.
It hadn't taken Aria very long to discover that Rhodes was second-in-command. It was clearly his fingerprint, along with Cipher's, that would open any of the two-man fail-safe systems they had in place. No matter how evil he was, he was still a man. Aria had fallen into his good graces somehow. He snuck her extra food, slipped her small bits of information about her parents' well-being. A few flutters of her eyelashes here, and a small, dimpled smile there and he was putty in her hands.
So, it was on a plane to some unknown destination, that she decided she had to make her move. Just before Rhodes was due to make his next round to check on her, she heard a small commotion and moments later, the door to the room she was locked in swing open.
"Who the hell are you?" Aria asked.
"Uncle Deckard." The muscled Englishman answered. "Your dad sent me."
She rolled her eyes. "No offense, but I don't need a man to save me. Thanks."
He smiled. "He said you'd say that."
Aria grinned.
"He also said that if you didn't believe me to remind you of the birthmark on your ass."
"Right or left cheek?" She asked, crossing her arms.
"Right. Though I could've gone my whole bloody life not knowing that and been just fine."
She laughed as she held her hand out, and he shook it.
Deckard pulled out a smartphone and hit a button. "Dom, package is secure." He turned the phone to Aria and she came face to face with her father on the other end.
"Was Mom not available to come get me from this evil babysitter?" She sassed.
Dom chuckled. "He's good people. Don't give him any trouble. I'll see you soon, kid."
She hung up and tossed the phone back to Deckard.
"Ready to get the hell out of here?" He asked her.
"God yes."
He pulled a spare glock from the back waistband of his pants and held it out to her.
"You pull the little crescent moon there to fire." He teased.
"Oh, thanks. My girlish brain would have never figured that out on its own." Aria shot back.
They left the small room in search of Cipher, battling henchmen the entire way. Deckard realized that this was not Aria's first rodeo. She had a few secrets of her own, but that revelation was for another day.
"It's okay. Don't worry." Letty kissed her husband's shoulder and rubbed his back. "She'll be here soon."
On the other side of the roof, Tej and Roman continued their fight over Ramsey.
"I get it. Y'all got a lot in common." Roman said, gesturing wildly with his hands. "Computer hacks. God's Eye. Geeks. Nerds. You know. But we have a lot in common too, right?"
"Like what?" Tej asked.
"We walk in the room, and we're oozing sex appeal. We steal the show. Me and you, hip to hip, is a problem. That's us. I'm asking the real question right now. Is it gonna be Revenge of the Nerds or The Dark Knight? Huh?"
Ramsey tilted her head. "To be honest, I like both of you."
Time and Tej gave themselves props, bumping fists and grinning.
"But, just before we get into all of that," she finished, "let me ask you one question."
"You can ask anything." Tej responded.
"Anything." Roman emphasized.
"What's my last name?" Ramsey questioned, knowingly.
Silence. Crickets. From both of them.
"When you figure it out, then, I guess you can let me know."
"It's gonna be Parker." Tej said to her retreating back. "That's all that really matters."
Roman started to guess as she walked away. "Jones?"
"Mrs. Parker!" Tej called.
"Right?"
When all was said and done, Uncle Deckard drove Aria home, complaining about her choice of music the entire time. They parked in the underground garage or a sky rise condominium building and made their way up to the rooftop. When he opened the door for her, relief flooded her body and she ran into her biological dad's arms.
They didn't speak. They didn't have to. This was all they needed. Each other.
"Aria?" A familiar voice forced Aria's eyes open and she pushed away from her father's arms and into her mother's.
"Mom!"
"Agent Cortez."
Aria turned her head and saw Luke Hobbs standing next to Mr. Nobody.
What the hell?
"Agent Cortez?" Letty and Dom asked in unison.
"Good work." Mr. Nobody said, stepping forward and shaking her hand.
"Thank you, sir."
"Can't say I'm surprised when you have these two as parents."
"You knew?" Aria asked.
"I know everything, Cortez. You should know that by now." He turned to Hobbs, holding out a wrapped gift.
"This can't be good." Luke teased, accepting it and opening it. His badge and service weapon, shined and tucked neatly into the small white box. "Your record's been cleared. Full reinstatement. You got your job back. What do you say, Hobbs?"
A young girl made her presence known from her hiding position behind Luke. Looking down at her, Luke smiled. Aria deduced that she was his daughter.
"You know, after sixteen years, I figure it's time for a break." Luke looked at his daughter. "Daddy's staying home."
Sam Hobbs smiled brilliantly, hugging her dad.
"Cipher's still on the loose. Got word she may be in Athens. Only a matter of time before we catch her, thanks to you guys." Mr. Nobody announced to the crowd. "You all ready for your next adventure?"
"We are." Dom spoke for the group. "As long as we're in it together."
"What the hell," Letty agreed, shrugging. "It'll be my last one for awhile." She said, placing her hand on her stomach. Dom's brows went up.
"Letty, are you—?" Ramsey started to ask. Letty nodded before she could finish.
"I'm pregnant."
"Congratulations!"
Drinks were handed out and they stood in a circle of the people they loved the most.
"Salúd, mi família."
Their next adventure had already begun.
TBC
