AN: If you can't stand Webb/Mac, don't waste your time or mine, turn back now! There's a million fantastic Harm/Mac stories out there, go enjoy them. However, if your mind is a little warped like mine, read on. This might make a little more sense if you've read my earlier story the mega-monster "Memorial Day," But I think this one also stands on its own. Finally, if the title seems familiar, it's owed to a poem "In the Arms of the Goddess," by an Algonquin shaman.
Warnings: Character death (referred to anyway)
Do Not Look For Me in Death
By Lady Chal
He's waiting for me at a sun-drenched table for two on the roof-top terrace of the Willard. I pause for a moment in the doorway and take in the changes time has wrought upon this familiar figure from my childhood. The warm copper tones of his skin are now shadowed and seamed with wrinkles I do not remember. The jet-black hair has salted to gray and the figure once so lithe and vigorous seems diminished somehow. He is smaller and frailer than I remembered, and the thought gives me pause. When did Victor Galindez become an old man?
He spots me then, and a ready smile lights his face as he rises from the table to greet me.
"Penelope," he folds me into a warm embrace and brushes a kiss across my cheek, ever the Hispanic gentleman.
I hug him back. "Uncle Vic," I say, "it's good to see you."
He smiles. "At my age, it's good to be seen."
We take our seats and he pours me a cup of coffee from the silver carafe in the middle of the table. We sit for a moment, not quite certain of how to begin, even though neither of us bears any pretensions about this meeting. He knows why I am here in DC. Likewise, I know why he has come to see me.
I know that I should wait him out, force him to make the first move, but he's had far more experience at this waiting game than I, and he's learned his craft from the best. In the end, I crack. Still, I try to cover it with a sip of coffee and a casual air as I ask the question that burns in my mind.
"So, how is Mother?" Ok, maybe not that casual. I can't quite disguise the edge of sarcasm in my voice.
A gently arched brow is his only reaction. "Actually, I don't know. I was going to ask you."
I stare at him for a long moment as I analyze his answer. It is possible that he is telling the truth. As a rule, Uncle Victor doesn't lie –at least not to friends or family—but that doesn't necessarily mean that he reveals the entire truth either, and there was plenty of room in that statement for omission. I decide to close the gap a bit more.
"So you haven't spoken to her? She didn't call?"
He studies me calmly. "No, and no." Then he takes a careful sip of his coffee. "I take it you were expecting her to?"
"The thought did cross my mind," I say grimly. I run my finger around the rim of my coffee cup, forcing myself to remain calm. Regardless of what he says, he's not going to change my mind. "So what brings you by, Uncle Vic?"
He sets down his cup and leans back in his chair, his head tilted slightly as he studies me. "I heard you were in town. I wanted to be sure to see you before I left."
"Business trip?" I ask lightly.
Uncle Victor shakes his head, his eyes serious. "Retirement," he says.
The word gives me pause. Yes, he would have his twenty years in by now. Thirty, if you counted his ten year hitch in the Marines prior to him joining the Agency. Still, it doesn't seem possible. It is the end of an era.
I shake my head. "I hadn't realized," I murmur.
He shrugs. "Paulina retired from the diplomatic corps last fall. She and I were both getting tired of the Washington rat race. We decided to chuck it all move back to Arizona. We bought a house in Sonoma last month. She's out there now, measuring for curtains and rugs and whatever." He smiled. "I'm just here in town tidying up a few loose ends until the house sells."
He shifts slightly in his chair. "Actually, that's part of the reason I wanted to see you. I was cleaning out our safety deposit box a while back, and I found something that was meant for you."
Reaching into his pocket, he extracts a long, white envelope and sets it carefully on the table between us. He is silent a moment before he speaks, his index finger still rests on the envelope, pinning it to the table.
"I've had this for a long time," he says, "since you were a little girl. I'm not sure what's in it, or what it says; I only know that I was supposed to give it to you if…if something happened."
He spins the envelope slowly towards me, stopping when it is positioned in the exact center of the table. I look at him, and swallow hard. This was so not what I was expecting.
He tilts his head and smiles wryly. "This probably wasn't what he had in mind, the circumstances he wrote this for expired a long time ago. He made it home, lived to a ripe old age and died in his own bed…but that doesn't change the fact that the words in here were meant for you." He shrugs again. "Either way, it's still yours."
I reach out with fingers that are suddenly trembling and pull the envelope the rest of the way across the table. I can feel the slow burn of tears behind my eyelids as I turn the envelope over and stare at my name, written in a faded, bold and slanting hand.
I recognize the familiar weight of the heavy, cream-colored paper beneath my fingertips, and for just an instant, I'm ten years old again, standing in his study and liberating a sheet of his best writing paper on which to compose my letter to Santa.
Daddy. The word, the emotion, cuts through me with a visceral intensity and I draw a ragged breath. Uncle Vic gazes at me with silent understanding.
"Shall I give you a minute?" He knows the Webb traits well. We have never been the type to bare our emotions, but I don't want to be alone just now. I shake my head. If Dad trusted Uncle Vic with this task, then I can trust him, too.
"No," I murmur, "stay."
He nods and sips his coffee, letting his gaze wander out over the edge of the rooftop to take in the familiar shapes of the Washington skyline, giving me space even while keeping me company. In this instant, I suddenly understand why my father valued his friendship so much.
I run my finger under the flap of the envelope. The glue is brittle with age, and it opens easily. I extract the single, folded sheet of heavy parchment. For a moment, I think I can almost catch a whiff of his expensive cologne, though most likely it is just my imagination.
There is no date, but I am not surprised by that. Dad was never one to disseminate more information than was absolutely necessary, and somehow it only serves to make this final note all the more timeless. I study the lines scrawled across the page in his familiar, slanting hand and my heart tightens in my chest as I read them:
Penelope,
If you are reading this, then you must know that I am dead. I've left it for Victor to tell you and your mother, as I know it is very likely that no one else will. You've grown up with my absences from your life; you know the reasons why we can never discuss them. You also know that I've always come back, even when events and circumstances led everyone to believe that I wouldn't. But this time, Sweet P, if Victor tells you that I'm not coming home, you must believe him. He, better than anyone, is in a position to know the truth, and I trust him not give you this letter unless he is certain of it.
He will tell you what he can –if he can—but I beg you, Pen, do not press him for more. Try not to wonder how I died or search for where I lie. I know what it is that I ask of you, and I know how hard this will be, but I ask it anyways: Do not make the mistake I made. Do not look for me in death; you won't find me there.
I spent my life searching for your grandfather and if you are reading this, then you will know that I did indeed find him. I found him by following in his footsteps, bearing his burdens and, ultimately, repeating his mistakes. I found him by coming to the end of my life as he did his --alone and far from those I love the most. This way is a trap, Pen, and I beg you, don't make our mistakes. Do not follow our road. Make your own.
If you really want to find me, then don't look. The truth of me is not hidden behind clandestine walls or buried in dusty, long forgotten records that should never see the light of day. I'm not in old photographs or newspaper clippings or meaningless awards and achievements. Where I am, Penny --where I will always be-- is with you.
When you ride a fine horse, I ride with you. When you sit at the piano and play a sonata, I am listening; and I play a silent harmony. When you are faced with trouble, and you don't know what to do, my voice will whisper in your head with advice half-forgotten but suddenly brought to mind. You are a part of me –the best part of me—and so long as you remember that, you will always know where I am.
I am on the beach at Manderley in the first light of early dawn, or sitting on the piazza at Belgravia in the late summer evening, I am in your heart Penny, and I go wherever you take me.
I know that I have told you before, but I want to make certain that you know how much I love you. You are everything to me, Pen, you and your mother, and there is nothing I would not do or give to keep you safe –including my life. Therefore, please do not waste yours on one that is already forfeit.
Don't look for me, Penny, for I am with you…
Still, and always,
Daddy
The soft drop of dampness lands upon page, mixing with the faded ink and blurring the last word a bit, and I suddenly realize that I am crying. I brush at my cheeks with the back of my hand and carefully fold the letter. I slide it back into the envelope, and tuck the flap in, then flip it over so that my name stares back up at me in my father's almost forgotten hand. It is the little things about a person that you suddenly miss the most, an expression they used to say, a look they used to give you…the sight of their handwriting upon a page… I run the pad of my finger across my name and suddenly wonder how much more of his penmanship survives in letters or cards or check ledgers tucked away in the back of a desk somewhere…or in those dusty, long-forgotten files in the bowels of Langley.
Do not look for me in death… His words –his warning—floats softly through my head and it's almost as if I can hear him speaking. I brush away another tear. 'Too late, Dad,' I think wryly, remembering the papers I signed only this morning and the oath that I have taken.
Uncle Victor looks at me as if reading my mind, and I think he must have known what was in the letter, even though he's never read it. "It's not too late, Pen," he says quietly. "You can still do other things."
I shake my head. I am a Webb, and though we make few promises, we do not break the ones we have made. I come from five generations of diplomats and spies on one side of my family and three generations of Marines on the other. Does he really think I could do anything else?
Uncle Victor sighs and rakes a hand through his graying hair. "Look, Pen, the Company is a big place, and with your particular skill set, there are lots of things you can do: communications, crypto-analysis, we're short on analysts in almost every section—
"You're short on field operatives, too."
He shakes his head, his eyes pleading. "Anything but the field, Pen; he didn't want that for you."
"He didn't think I could do it?" Even though I know better, I cannot resist the old, irrational urge to bait him, but Uncle Victor is having none of it.
He shakes his head again, more slowly this time, and his expression is firm and serious. "No," he says quietly, "He knew you would be very good at it. That's why he never wanted you to join the Agency."
Now this, I truly don't understand. I can't think of a single thing I ever tried or wanted to do that my father did not encourage or support me in. Whether it was arguing with my mother about letting me learn to jump horses, learning to rock climb or getting my first apartment in college, he never really said 'no,' or 'don't do it.' He might get quiet for a moment –sometimes two—but eventually he would look at me and ask if I had thought it through, if I had investigated the best way to go about it. If I hadn't, then he would help me do just that.
I have thought this through. I have examined all the angles and studied all the options. I know now more than ever that this is what I was meant to do, and yet, in this moment, I can almost feel Daddy's silence. It is a great and heavy thing that does not seem to end, and I know that somehow, Uncle Victor is right. If my father were alive right now, he would be shouting
If anything, I had expected that Mom would be the one to rage, but when I told her she simply looked at me and sighed and said "you are your father's daughter. –Mind you, this is one of those times when I'm not particularly happy about that fact." Then she had hugged me, very hard, and whispered "Be careful, Pen. Be very, very careful."
She broke off abruptly and walked away from me before I could say another word.
Some of my thoughts and confusion must be showing in my face because Victor Galindez rolls his coffee cup between his palms and bows his head, searching somewhere deep inside himself for a better explanation. "This job, Penny, it's dangerous, but not for the reasons that you think. There is great physical danger, but the Agency works very hard to prepare you for that, to train you and teach you how to avoid it. There's mental danger, too. Half of this business is politics and mind games. The stress will get to you, and sooner or later, you're going to break. –Everyone does, but they employ an entire barrage of psychiatrists and psychologists to deal with that." He takes a quick sip of his coffee and then sets the cup back down, staring deeply into the dark liquid.
"The real danger is to your soul. None of our training or our best therapists have figured out how to fix that."
I wait, silently, knowing that if I say nothing then he will say more. He does, drawing a heavy breath and looking somewhere just past my shoulder, rather than directly into my eyes.
"The night your father asked me to join the Agency and come work with him full time, I asked him why –why me? He gave me this song and dance about my skills and my capabilities and the fact that we worked well together, and I told him to cut the bull. He was quiet a very long time, and then he said 'because you keep me honest, Victor. You remind me to look past the mission and see the difference between right and wrong.' It's easy to lose track of that in this world, Pen. This job, it eats at your soul, a little here, a little there, until one day you wake up and you're not even sure you have one left anymore."
He's looking directly at me now, and I can see the truth in what he's saying. It's written in the shadows that lurk behind those quiet brown eyes. I know that expression well; I saw those same shadows in my father's eyes more times than I care remember. I realize now that the man sitting across from me must be a very different person from the young Marine my mother first served with all those years ago, before I was born. Likely, he's even much changed from the hardened veteran my father recruited into the CIA a decade later. He's become one of them now: a spook, a ghost, an ever-changing chameleon, and I wonder if even he knows who the real Victor Galindez is anymore.
This, I realize, is what my father was trying to tell me. This is what he was trying to protect me from. Words from his letter echo through my thoughts.
'You are a part of me –the best part of me…'
I was his touchstone. The person that he was when he was with me was the man he considered to be the real Clayton Webb. I was his soul, or what was left of it. I feel the tears start to burn once again behind my eyelids and I reach for Uncle Victor's hand, closing my own tightly over it.
"Tell me about him, Uncle Vic," I say softly, "Tell me what you can."
His eyes crinkle with a faint smile and then he acquiesces. "He spoke seven languages, but Spanish wasn't one of them." Victor pauses to consider this. "That was probably a good thing," he adds with another small, wry grin.
I look at him curiously, "Why?"
Victor's smile broadens, "Because even though he became my best friend, he was always a royal pain in the ass..."
