"Do you think we made a mistake?" Auggie asks, tentative in his tone but insistent his tight facial expression.
"Made a mistake how?" Annie knows full well what he means, but she still tries for feigned gentle ignorance.
The truth is, she has thought about it extensively, in fact. Were they wrong to walk away without at least trying to fix their relationship first? She still doesn't have an answer.
"Come on, Walker." Auggie rolls his eyes and tries to add a playful smile, but it's far from what it used to be.
Annie doesn't correct him when he uses her maiden name. She can't fully explain why, really, she decided to take Ryan's last name. Ryan had said it her choice, that he supported her either way, since it is her identity.
She thinks that might have influenced her decision to sign off her old last name. Ryan was right. Her name is her identity, and she wanted a new start. Anne Catherine Walker is her past, every dark and dirty and evil piece of it. Anne Catherine McQuaid is her clean slate. Well, it had started as her clean slate.
"We did what we did, and we fucked up where we fucked up. We can't change it now," Annie deflects smoothly.
Auggie nods as if he has his answer. "Sometimes I think we made a mistake, you know," Auggie offers and waits for Annie to agree or disagree. She says nothing instead. "We had a hell of a lot going for us, Annie. We were hand picked to be together—"
"As operative and handler," Annie cuts in. Auggie simply quirks his lips up.
"—by the best of the best matchmakers in the Agency. For a long time, I wanted to believe that was enough."
"But too much had changed," Annie fills in the rest of Auggie's thought despite their years apart, their minds would always be on the same wavelength.
"Too much had changed," Auggie says and nods in agreement.
They sit in silence for awhile, both content to just absorb the other's company. They had nothing but time anyway.
"If we're going to die here, Auggie, you have to know that I never meant to hurt you, throughout everything," Annie whispers, a sudden frantic pace overpowering her words in an attempt to make up for the lost time.
"I know that now. I've known that for a long time, probably even when it was all happening, deep down inside at least. I forgave you for that ages ago," Auggie breezes out a laugh that is entirely inappropriate for the situation at hand. "Annie, we are trapped in an airtight shipping container filled to the brim with explosives, no weapons, no phones, no fucking clue where we are even if we could call for help. Either we run out of air or we blow up—"
"Or we get rescued," Annie interjects with a bit too much false hope creeping in. She has had to face the very real possibility that she won't make it out alive of countless missions all over the world, but she knows this time is different. This time, it not just her life.
Auggie chuckles and continues unfazed, "—but either way, I know you never meant to hurt me. And you know that I never stopped loving you. Maybe not the way that McQuaid loves you, but I do love you as my best friend, even this many years later."
"You're my best friend too, Auggie," Annie murmurs.
Sitting shoulder to shoulder, there's no need for loud voices. There's no need for words anymore. No, they said everything they needed to say. There's nothing but calm acceptance now.
They're both shivering, either from the cold or from the fear, not that it matters. Auggie reaches for Annie's hand and squeezes.
"I've got you, Walker. If this is how it all ends, I've got you."
Bodies pressed tight and hands linked, they stay together until the world goes black.
Author's Note: Title from I Got You by Leona Lewis. Thank you for reading and reviewing.