Note to readers: This is set after and around Mission: Impossible 3, and the wonderful Irish agent named Declan introduced in that movie. There wasn't much said about him, but I thought he and the Asian miss Zhen (Maggie Q.) were wonderfully charismatic on screen, and thought I'd write a story centered around the pair, since the movie never really explained if they ever got together in the end. So those of you who haven't seen the 3rd Mission before, you might have trouble following along in the beginning. For the rest, I hope you enjoy. This should be the start of an awesome journey.

Enough explanations. Go ahead and read.

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Declan's POV.

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There are a few things an agent can never have the liberty to do.

The first is to share confidential information concerning anything regarding his occupation.

The second is to deliberately jeopardize a mission, fellow agent, or the agency for any reason.

The third is to make the job personal.

Falling for a fellow agent falls under obstruction of all of these categories.

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I was always the kind of man who was independent. I was a bachelor and I loved it. I liked being in the field, and it was my only love. Never would I let a girl get in the way of my job. No girl was worth it. Not to me.

Even pre-IMF, I had always felt romance wasn't for me. Sure, I'd tried it for a while, but I wasn't really into it. It was another recreation to me, and I knew it was wrong to treat women like that. So I gave up using them, which was perfect, because that was just around the time I got accepted into the fieldwork of this job, and it suited me perfectly.

Then there was that goddamn field mission we did in Shanghai, where we were infiltrating a building to save Ethan's wife. After the business where we shot baseballs to the next skyscrapers roof, Agent Zhen and I went down to wait in the getaway car.

I hadn't been able to get the image of her in that one red dress she wore at the Vatican when we kidnapped Davian, and it had stuck with me even in that very moment. I caught myself imagining her in it again.

I remember watching her pray silently to herself, her lips forming words with a hushed sound escaping. I couldn't understand it, she was so quiet, but I figured I knew what she was doing. I assumed it was some sort of mantra, good luck chant, or some cultural thing like that, but couldn't tell which.

"What is that?"

"When I was little I had a cat…" she explained as if embarrassed. "And he used to run away all the time. It's just a prayer I used to say to bring him home."

It was no cultural thing at all, just a childish made up prayer. As if her asking some made-up higher power would bring a silly cat back to her. But, it must have worked, because here she was a grown woman and still recited it with full belief it could still work it's magic.

She looked so pretty under the Shanghai neons. It was a place she seemed to fit right into, yet stood out to me like a bright light in a dark place. I was feeling slightly overwhelmed by this new sensation in me and I didn't want it to end. So beside myself, I humored her.

"Teach it t' me," I commanded with words that weren't my own. She looked at me as if I had just changed into someone else, which was truer than I realized. Ethan interrupted us before we could say anything else and we went on with the mission.

But that was just the beginning.

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Oh yes, people, this is only the beginning. Believe it or not, this was meant to be a one-shot, but there's too much to be said. Another chapter coming soon.
Signed,
--RedRogue