Theme: Enigma
When she leaves (and she always leaves), his hand grips hers a little too tightly, and his voice is thin when he says, "Don't go."
Sometimes she hates him for the anchor of her reflection in his eyes. Sometimes, in her frustration and pain, she lets herself think about what happens next, about moving on, always moving, always moving.
She always leaves. She never says goodbye.
Variation I: Elegy
She's awake.
Somebody says, "This isn't possible," in a low, pleased voice, and, "I never imagined," and, "She should only be a fragment. She's more."
I'm more, she thinks, and drifts.
She's awake.
A man is staring at her over his glasses. There's the beginning of gray at his temples, a dusting that makes her feel strange and unsettled. He's looking at her like she's the end of the world.
Another man at his side—the Counselor, her brain supplies—ducks in front of him, smiling apologetically. His voice is quiet, soothing and careful. "Hello. How are you feeling?"
She looks down. She has a hand, encased in black armor. She has two hands. She clenches them into fists. "Confused," she says, because she has a voice, too.
"That's all right. Things are different, now. There's a lot to be confused about. Do you know your name?"
The confusion is starting to give way to something harsher, something that quickens her breathing and starts her heart thrumming in her ears. "I'm not," she starts, and stops to think. She opens her hands once, experimentally, holds them palm-up in a shrug.
Now the first man shoulders past the Counselor, cutting him off before he can speak. "You're Agent Texas," he says, breathlessly. "Allison." The Counselor frowns at his back, but the expression shifts seamlessly to a beatific smile when he catches her watching.
"Allison," she says, but it's the other name that swamps her with vague memories, hot days and warm nights, blurry and sharp-edged by turns. "Tex," she says, and the word grounds her at last, two hands and a voice and a will. "You're the Director. And the Counselor. I remember."
They both flinch away from her; the Counselor recovers first. "What do you remember, Agent Texas?"
She grins, clenches one hand into a fist, slams it against her other palm, rolls her shoulders. "Fighting. I remember fighting."
He smiles back, guarded. "I think we may have a job for you, Agent Texas."
And yes, that's right, that's what she wants, something fast and dangerous and so, so difficult. Something only she can do. The Counselor launches into a description of an oil platform that could benefit from a well-placed set of explosives, the weak points, the operatives whose tracks she'll be covering, twin Agents North and South Dakota, rising star Agent Carolina.
She looks away from the briefing exactly once, sees the bombed-out look on the Director's face, and smiles beneath her helmet, because this is right, this is good.