Author's Note: Let me know what y'all think. This show kind of took over my life for a few days, and after this particular episode, I felt there was something I needed to write. I don't write a lot of one shots, nor do I often write fanfic for a show I'm not crazy invested in, but this one just kind of popped up. Hope any readers enjoy it.
It's their sixth day in Paris when she finds herself retracing her steps – their steps.
It's been six days of gloriously free vacation. No missions, no General Beckman, no life threatening danger, no Buy More, no awkward encounters with friends, no cover stories. Well, one cover story: young couple, still in that honeymoon stage of the relationship, taking a well-earned vacation in Paris – the city of love. Six days of relaxation and sleeping in and waking up wrapped in the arms of another person, a person you would trust with your life, have trusted.
They'd gone to the Eiffel Tower of course: stared up at it's fascinating metal spirals and curves from below, climbed the stairs to the top, ridden the elevator down. And kissed. Yes, they'd kissed. At the base. Halfway up the steps, somewhere between 1100 and 1250. At the top, clinging to one another as though afraid if one let go, the other would be picked up by the wind and tossed away, never to be seen again.
Six days of handholding and morning coffees and quick glances over the dinner table – just to check, to make sure, that the other was still there. Six days of fearing that the other might disappear suddenly, float away; be torn from the tight grasp of the other by work or events simply out of their control. Six days of bated breath and relieved sighs each time one rolled over in bed to find the other still tucked tightly alongside.
They'd spent an entire afternoon dipping in and out of the little shops along the riverbank, looking for nothing in particular, aiming for no place specifically. They'd spent more than one afternoon in bed, watching the sun pass across the blue Paris sky, watching darkness rise as the light fell. Happy to just simply be with one another. Happy. Six days of happiness.
But on the sixth day, he'd fallen asleep, spread-eagled across the mattress, his brown curls messy on his forehead, face soft and peaceful in the late afternoon light that managed to sneak in through the curtained window panes. And she'd tried to sleep, too, but her body had been restless and her mind wouldn't stop turning, and so she'd slipped out of bed and into her flats, grabbing her bag and remembering, at the last moment, to scribble a quick note on the hotel stationary.
Gone for a walk. Be back soon. – S
Her mind had gone blank as soon as she'd hit the cobblestone streets, her feet leading her aimlessly up this block and down the next, until she was standing there, where it all began really, or maybe where it all ended - that street corner - unsure of how she'd gotten there. Five years ago. But it felt lifetimes away. And she stood in the spot where she'd fallen – Eve – her mouth open in surprise, her hand coming up empty out of her purse. Maybe she should have gone to check; taken the ten seconds it would have required just to make sure there had been a weapon there, tucked inside that handbag. Maybe if she only would have taken the time, some of this could have been avoided. Some of this guilt. This exhaustion. This agony of emotion that spies aren't meant to feel. But – no. No. It would have happened either way. And if she'd checked, if she'd hesitated, well…
Five years ago, all she wanted was to be a spy. To fight crime. To make the world a better place. She would have fired. No matter what, she would have fired. Or at least, that's what she tells herself, standing here now, five years later, in the gathering dusk on an empty Paris street.
Events from that night – the night not yet years ago - are foggy after the street corner, after the director arrived and she realized that Chuck had been right. After she realized, too late, that Chuck had been right all along.
But her body remembers, even if her mind does not, and so she allows her feet to guide her. Down the alley, across the way, to the café, small and unassuming and bustling at this time of day, even though that night it was empty. Just the tables outside, with the chairs around them, the candle flames flickering in the soft breeze on checkered tablecloths, meager light for invisible patrons. Enough light for the ghosts though. But today, this afternoon, there aren't any tables available, and so she only looks on from across the street: an observer, nothing more.
That's where she'd sat, unable to move, hardly able to breathe, but still able to form tears. The hot, salty solution still able to leak from her eyes and drip heavily down her cheeks. That's where she'd sat and heard her coming death proclaimed by a man she'd sat across from only nights before – happy and healthy and whole. That chair, leaning back against the wood exterior of the café as the director of The Ring explained how he'd managed to recruit his newest agent, how that particular agent planned to end her life – but not before showing her the river.
The river. Always so beautiful at that time of night.
That's what he'd said. She shivers, wrapping her arms tightly around her middle, despite the fact that it's hardly chilly out today. Today. Still daylight.
Her feet turn towards the bridge. Towards the river in all its beauty.
And that's where he finds her, not too many minutes later. He would have woken to find her gone. He must have panicked a bit, but it doesn't show on his face when he arrives. Coming up beside her to stand silently just behind her left shoulder, as though he's a sentry, resuming guard at a post he'd only momentarily vacated.
They stare down at the dark depths of a river that really is quite lovely, especially now. More lovely now, with the trailing light of afternoon highlighting its shifting currents than it is at night, city lights barely reflecting off its constantly moving surface.
After a minute, or maybe twenty, he slides his hand over hers where it's resting on the stone railing. His hand is soft, not calloused yet from years of weapons handling. But it is warm and strong and not at all demanding, and she would not move away for all the world.
She didn't love him. Shaw. But she might have someday, if Chuck had stayed in Burbank and they had gone to Washington. Someday, she might have loved him. And yet, still, six days later, she feels as though he's there, hovering. He and Eve both. As though their deaths were so sudden, so quick and harsh and loud, that their souls or their spirits or whatever it is that makes a person a person and not simply a body, got left behind, while their containers fell, lifeless and still to the ground, into the cold depths of the river Seine. As though she shot Eve and Chuck shot Daniel and now they were still there, the pair of them, waiting, haunting a street corner and a bridge and the entire city of Paris.
She hadn't loved him. But she might have. She didn't kill him. But she did, indirectly at least, when she killed the woman he loved. And now she had to pay the price. She and Chuck both. Because that was the thing about being a spy, about holding someone else's life in your hands and yanking it away without ample warning, it made you responsible for them, for their ghosts and their pasts and everything they'd ever done to reach that intersection with you. Such … power. Such weakness. You cannot walk away unchanged.
His hand atop her own gives a gentle squeeze. He entwines their fingers together, but neither one of them looks away from the water.
Six days. For six days they'd been afraid and on edge and happy. Blissfully so.
She hadn't loved him.
But she might love this man, this tall, awkward, confounding man beside her. Especially here, haunted by the ghosts of years gone past, of days gone by.
Six days. But –
"Let's go home," her voice is hoarse from disuse, laden with the weight of the two people they'll be leaving behind, together at last. Forever and always in this city of lovers. This city of ghosts. "Let's go home."
He wraps his arms around her from behind and for one more, easy moment, she knows what it is to be safe, to be at ease, to share the burden of the dead with another.
"Let's go home."
And maybe, just maybe, she'll know what it is to share that weight for many more days to come.