Hey guys! This is my first Quantico fic, so please let me know what you think! This is AU after 1x09, mostly because Alex and Ryan are never given an opportunity within canon to get their relationship figured out at this point. There is also the fact that, in canon, Alex had to be remanded to the custody of a prison 24 hours after she pleaded guilty (Alex and O'Conner had hatched their plan to trick the real guilty party into getting caught). So, in canon, they never would have been able to pull this off with the time that they'd had. Also: the relationship between the NATs, especially the girls, is really complex here - they were all angry, some with each other, but they all still cared about each other, which I think we didn't get enough evidence of in canon.
So here is some shameless angst, followed by much more shameless fluff! Please let me know what you think!
VERKLEMPT: completely overcome with emotion
It's one of the most bizarre things Miranda has ever seen, but she goes with it.
(Apparently, this is the time of bizarre - nothing in the last few days has made any sense at all, and Miranda briefly wonders why the sight in front of her would either.)
Alex Parish is not the kind of woman that you see with her arms folded on the round table in the conference room, face buried in the shelter that she's made for herself with her long hair and the positioning of her arms, shoulders shaking as she sobs. It is even stranger that she allows herself to break down like that in that particular conference room, when there are plenty others without the disadvantage of glass doors (which she currently has her back to). The only protection that this particular conference room lends her are the wood-paneled walls (this means people actually have to go up to the doors and stare directly through them at the woman falling apart on the other side of them; while one might imagine that this is a decent advantage for Alex, Miranda has watched four people do exactly that in the last ten minutes, before turning on their heels and straightening their backs, as if they are suddenly revolted by the sight and in a great hurry.)
Miranda pauses outside. Her hand rests on the handle of one of the doors, and she averts her eyes to her shoes, her nails, anything that isn't the crying woman on the other side of the glass.
She feels bad, doing what those people were doing - just standing there, staring at the woman sitting on the other side of those doors. Not going in there to ask what's wrong (there's a decent-sized list, considering everything she has been through in the last week or so - she's grieving for something: maybe for the dead, maybe for the man in the hospital, maybe for everything she's lost, maybe for everything that everyone still stands to lose) is bad enough, but standing there and staring, watching her grieve... That's almost worse, somehow. An invasion of privacy with no intention of helping or rendering aide is... It's bizarre, in a lot of ways, and even though Miranda can't pinpoint exactly what makes her angry about it, she doesn't like it.
So, before she can talk herself into waiting another thirty seconds, she throws her whole weight behind it (there's no going back once she pulls on that door handle) and yanks the door open so hard that she almost falls over.
But Miranda is a woman adept at making it look like she is together when she certainly is not (not that she has much choice - her position is fragile within this building, she knows, and with her ranking, she has no choice but to analyze every move, to ensure the perfection of every step - her position is too precarious to do anything else, indeed, and Miranda is too smart a woman to let herself fall), so she hides her near-stumble and slips into the room.
The door closes behind her, and Miranda has to catch herself from sighing when Alex doesn't even look up.
Even though they are inside the building, inside the safety of their office, Miranda has been an agent for a long time, and she (like most of the others that she works with) analyzes the safety of every room she walks into. The entrances, the exits, how dangerous it could be. And she can't help but realize that, if it had been anyone else walking into that room, anyone with the intention of hurting Alex further (she briefly pauses to wonder if a too-harsh word from a too-recently-former-friend could be enough to push her over the edge; the Alex that she trained was a firecracker, but there was a very real possibility, at this point, that she'd been through a bit too much, that she'd been pushed a little too far by the events of the last week - and Miranda wonders if, in Alex's position, she could've managed to come out any better), if anyone with the intention of getting something out of the woman crumbling before her eyes, had walked into that room instead of her... There's no telling what they may have gotten out of Alex.
Miranda knows this.
She makes sure that her high heels click as she goes towards the farthest end of the room, walking around the oval-shaped table to sit across from Alex. The click-click-clack of her shoes doesn't get the other woman's attention (it is actually meant to, because Miranda doesn't want to accidentally startle her), but when Miranda pulls out the chair across from her, Alex's head snaps up.
Agent Parish is good for the job, Miranda knows - as soon as she realizes that she has been caught in such a vulnerable state, she begins blinking away tears, wiping at her face with the collar of her jacket and the heel of her hand, running fingers through her dark hair in a way that says You caught me dozing off; is my hair a total wreck?
It's almost as if Miranda can hear the gears clicking in her brain, see them whirling in her skull, as she calculates a response to Miranda's sudden presence.
But Miranda is in no mood for games. She doesn't feel like going back and forth with Parish, because Parish can (and will) try to talk herself out of anything. They don't have that kind of time, though. Miranda doesn't know how to tell her this, but she needs to be at the hospital with Ryan, because they need to talk it out. (By it, Miranda means the fact that O'Conner and Haas let HIG torture Ryan to force Alex to confess to a whole host of crimes that, as it conveniently turned out, she didn't commit.) She knows that this is what Alex needs to do, because if she doesn't, she will regret it for the rest of her life, and Miranda has been there.
Miranda doesn't want that for Alex - at some point, the NATs that she taught began to feel more like her own children, and she's always made it her business to look out for them in the real world. Whenever the opportunity presented itself.
And while there wasn't more that she could've done for Alex a few days ago, beyond get her out and buy her enough time to clear her name, she knows that the opportunity has re-presented itself, and she has work to do.
So she gets straight to her point.
"You need to go see him," she says.
Parish just blinks at her for a few seconds. After this, though, the words seem to sink in, and Parish shakes her head. Tears are still streaming down her face, but she has stopped sobbing. "No, no, no..." She wipes at her face with both hands. "Miranda, I can't do that."
Miranda knows exactly how to deal with Parish when she gets like this - she's had plenty of experience doing it, somehow, and she knows exactly what to say (this is the first time she can say this since she helped Alex escape the Bureau's office a week before, and the circumstances are horrible, but she is somewhat relieved to see that her ability to navigate situations has returned). "Parish, this isn't about what you can do, this is about what you need to do. Ryan took a bullet for you, and then went through unspeakable pain - not because of you, but because of a mistake on the part of every agent that trained you and trained with you and ever doubted you - and you owe it to each other to work things out between yourselves."
It's a little risky, even for Miranda's taste, to go at it that way with Alex, especially when she's in such a fragile state. She's got to be careful not to give Alex even one more reason to believe that any of this is her fault (it isn't, but Miranda has a sinking feeling that the only person who will be able to see this is Ryan himself, because he has a sway with her that no one else does, and because he was the one who suffered through it with her), and she has to be even more careful not to push her too far. Parish can do anything she sets her mind to, but that doesn't mean that she feels like it at the moment, and Miranda has to find a way to remind her of her own inner strength.
But she can't make Alex feel like Miranda thinks that she's hiding from her problems (which she is) or that she's making a pathetic choice (it's not necessarily a pathetic one, but she's made it out of the fear that Ryan isn't going to want to see her, isn't going to want to be near her, after everything that's happened) in hiding in the conference room and crying her eyes out.
Miranda is effectively stuck between a rock and a hard place, and, having already made her play, she allows herself to sit back and breathe as Agent Parish pulls herself together again and nods. It worked, she thinks to herself. Thank God, it worked.
"Natalie said that he was stable a few hours ago."
Alex's voice bears two things that are easily identifiable to the other woman: a tremble (one of the last remaining traces of the breakdown that Parish just pulled herself from) and a question - or, maybe, more than one question (was Agent Booth still stable, or had his condition worsened? Was there definitive word on whether or not he would be alright yet?) - that she needs answered.
Luckily for Miranda, she had anticipated this line of questioning, and (before she came to speak with Alex) she went and spoke to O'Conner, who had been the person at the Bureau receiving the most frequent updates on Booth's condition. When she replies, "He is still stable, from what I've been told.", she is being completely honest.
The young woman - Miranda's heart aches for a beat, because that is what Alex is, the more that Miranda thinks about it (she is young and deserves to live and she is young and deserves better than any of this) - across from her sighs, twisting her hands together on the table in front of her. There is no sign of the tears that just vanished, the sobbing that Miranda saw as she entered the room.
Miranda chooses to let her serious facade slip for all of a moment, and a conspiratorial smile (as much of a smile as she can manage, with as many brave people who have lost their lives in the past week) slips itself onto her face. "Booth is a fighter, Alex. He'd have to be, to deal with you."
Parish chuckles weakly (she doesn't look up from her inter-joined hands, resting flat on the table in front of her. It's not much, but Miranda will take the smile. It's not very strong, but it is a laugh nonetheless. That's another point for Miranda.
"He is a fighter. He - " She seems to choke on her words, suddenly back in the throes of her grief. "They tortured him, Miranda."
Parish shakes her head, her shoulders already shaking with her silent crying once again, and looks at her lap.
On the surface, the movement doesn't seem suspicious or purposeful, but Miranda is not fooled - Parish's attempt at hiding her face doesn't go unnoticed. The way that her hair swings down to cover her face, providing a shield that doesn't allow Miranda to see as the woman across from her sobs once again, is far too obvious.
She's been trained by the FBI. Miranda knows better than to assume that anything she does is accidental or unplanned.
Look at her, Miranda snaps at herself. Stop analyzing her like she's a suspect. She's an agent, one who has had her life ripped away from her at least three times in the last seven days, and you are going to get out of your own head long enough to send her to see the one person who can talk some sense into her.
Miranda shakes her head. There's nothing good about this situation, and the part that makes it so much worse is that it shouldn't be her sitting in this chair, sitting across from Alex, trying to help. It should be Agent Wyatt or Agent Vasquez - no, Miranda thinks, shaking her head again (this movement is reckless, and she starts to wonder how much of her control she's lost in the last week - undercover, in the middle of an operation, even anywhere but the comfort of her home, she would never allow herself even that much of an expression of her thoughts), it should be Wyatt sitting here.
It should be Agent Wyatt sitting here, telling Alex to pull it together long enough to go work it out.
But it is considerably well known that the two women had a falling out after Quantico, so while Miranda has a nasty feeling that Agent Wyatt knows that Alex is up here, crying her eyes out (Miranda had been sitting, staring at a wall while a deputy agent briefed the agents working in the bull pin of the third floor office with information that she'd already heard from Parish herself, when Shelby Wyatt had asked her to go find Alex and ask her a question for a report - after the incident with the we-must-record-everyone-to-catch-anyone business before, none of them wanted to talk to Alex herself - and while Miranda's pay grade is far above minor reports and questioning, especially being sent to find people for other agents, something in her had said take the exit and go get Parish, you don't want to be in here anyway, so she'd taken the file from Shelby and headed upstairs after dropping that file off on her desk), it is her that is sitting in the chair that she's sitting in.
Better make the most of it.
Miranda leans across the table to cover Alex's hand with her own. There's nothing to say but: "I know, Alex."
Parish shakes her head furiously, and Miranda is reminded, not for the first time, of a scared but petulant child. "Miranda, they tortured him because of" - she is cut off by a sob tearing out of her throat - "because of me!"
"No. Do not say that. Do not say that for a second." Miranda orders her. "They tortured him because they are pathetic, tiny people who prefer to use violence to take what they want. They tortured him because they were wrong about you, and they were plenty wrong about plenty more."
Alex cocks her head to the side, tears still streaming down her face. She pauses for a solid ninety seconds, breathing in deeply and trying to contain her sobbing. This time, though, she does not bother wiping away her tears - every one of the tears running down her face is a testament to what she has been through, what she is going through, what she still has in front of her.
When she finally speaks, she is looking down at her hands, which are laying flat on the table. One of them is still covered by one of Miranda's hands. "He told me not to tell them." She shakes her head. Looks up to meet Miranda's eyes. "He was in so much pain, but he kept telling me not to tell them anything."
This does not surprise Miranda. Booth took a few bullets for Parish, even during their Quantico days (okay, fine, those were paintball bullets, but still, he took them for her). It is rather common knowledge by now that he'd do anything for her.
Even keep telling her not to tell them anything, because there was always a chance that she would say something just to make them let him go. Ryan seems to have known this. And told her not to - because he somehow had decided to take the suffering, as long as she didn't do something that would jeopardize the rest of her life, her career.
"None of this is your fault, Alex." Miranda brushes a stray lock of hair out of her face with her free hand. When Alex leaves for the hospital, Miranda will be going to bobby pin her hair back in the bathroom, because she hates when it gets in her eyes. "You need to go see him, though."
Parish's grip on her emotions sticks this time, and while she flinches back just a centimeter, she doesn't even become choked up again. Her free hand tightens around the edge of the table. "What if he doesn't want to see me?"
The look in her eyes is that of a broken woman, and this is somehow worse than the sobbing that Alex has just barely managed to contain (her breathing isn't even all the way back to normal). Miranda doesn't quite know what to do with the vulnerability the woman in front of her is displaying, and she curses Agent Wyatt (for just a moment, because she isn't entirely in the wrong - the two women really should work out their differences at some point, because they've both done their fair share of hurting each other) for not being the one to do this. For cowering behind anyone else (it's Miranda she's hiding behind at the moment) when her former best friend needs her.
(Miranda knows this is a bit selfish, considering that she is enabling Shelby by doing it for her, even as she curses the fact that Shelby chose not to do it herself.)
The truth is this: Miranda doesn't even know if Booth is awake yet. She doesn't know when he will be if he isn't already, and there's no way to guarantee, even if he is awake now or he was earlier, if he'll be sleeping when Parish gets there.
She really doesn't know for sure if Booth will want to see Alex. But she's pretty sure that he will - she trusts her instincts, and every one of them is telling her that the only person Booth will want to see is indeed the woman sitting across from her.
"Trust me, Alex. Trust him. He wouldn't have done any of this if he didn't care about you. So I imagine that he will want to see you." The next part is risky enough that Miranda considers closing her mouth to stifle the words, but she knows that Alex needs to hear it from her in case it is indeed the reality that Alex gets to the hospital to find. "Trust yourself, too, because even if he doesn't want to see you," - Alex flinches again at this part, and Miranda knows that this is a cruel thing to say, but the world is cruel (the past week has been nothing but proof), and she would rather Alex be prepared for what she's walking into than the alternative - "you've got some pretty important things to say to him, I would imagine. Clearing the air will be good for the both of you."
To Miranda's surprise, Alex takes all of this in with a deep breath. She wipes her face with her hands again, and then the collar of her jacket, drying away the last of the tears. The corners of her mouth tilt up. "Thank you, Miranda."
The lack of argument or debate or fiery anger shocks Miranda into silence for all of thirty seconds. She isn't used to an Alex that doesn't question, doesn't push back, doesn't find a problem with something somewhere.
Miranda shakes it off as best she can. She supposes that the normal Alex is the one that surprises everyone, that pushes back by doing what is least expected at any given time. Or maybe she is changing, growing again by the force of what she has faced within the last week.
Whatever the case, Miranda finds it within herself to return the small smile. She vaguely wonders when their smiles will become wider, more honest and real; how long it will take for all of them to shake off the tragedy of the attack, the lives lost; and how long it will take for their confidence in the Bureau (both the agents' confidence in themselves and the confidence of the American people in their agents) to return.
"I've already arranged for someone to take you to the hospital. The Bureau's agents are the ones with Booth, so they'll get you in. I've already cleared it with them and everything."
Parish nods again, stands up. Walks to the door. "Thank you, Miranda," she repeats without turning to face her.
"Nimah Amin is outside, and she will drive you and stay with you until you get back. Raina is downstairs working with Agent Haas, so it's fine for the two of you to be gone for a little while."
What Miranda hopes that Alex gets from this statement is this: I don't know how long it will be before we get this worked out for the two of you, when you'll be able to sit down and have this conversation again, so please do it now. Please don't make the same mistakes that I did.
Miranda trusts Alex to gather this double-meaning on her own, and she prays to whoever is listening that Agent Parish gets the message as the other woman swings open the door.
Alex doesn't respond. She's holding the door open with her foot, and Miranda sees Alex pull Nimah into a tight hug. Miranda hears Nimah ask, "Are you ready to get going?"
Alex pulls her foot from the door, and her response is lost to the whine of the door's hinges and the rushing-rapids-roar of quiet chatter and blaring computer alerts and footsteps in the hall.
The door shuts after a moment, and Miranda steps over in front of it to watch the Agents Parish and Amin walk down the corridor towards the back parking garage, where Miranda has been assured a vehicle and two or three armed agents are waiting to escort them to the hospital.
Miranda hates how this class of agents from Quantico has been so hurt, so mistreated by the evils in this world. But -
Nimah has an arm slung around Parish's shoulders.
They'll be alright, she tells herself. Somehow, they'll all be alright.