Here's the next chapter! Oh and Disclaimer? I don't know why I'm even bothering. My message is always the same: I DO NOT OWN GALLAGHER GIRLS.
Thank you.
[Eleven years later – the kid is ten years old, but Cammie was pregnant for nine months so…]
Cammie's POV
"Is it done?" Catherine asked coldly.
"Yes," I replied smoothly. "Reiner is dead."
"Good," Catherine said emotionlessly. Then she stared at the two guards who accompanied me into the office. "You may leave."
The two guards left promptly, stumbling over their feet to get out of the room hastily. New Circle members were always like that. Having Catherine Goode speak to you was an honour, a privilege that rarely ever happened. It happened to me. Every day, she would call me into her office and we'd talk. We could talk about anything easily, because talking to one another came easily for us two. We never had any awkward moments when we talked, unless we came across the subject of… of Zach.
After Zach cheated on me with Tina, I went insane. For the next month, I shut myself up in my room, back at Gallagher. I closed all the windows and kept all the blinds down. I spent all my time in the dark, hugging and rocking myself backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards all day long, with glassy eyes and messed up hair. I only wore black unflattering clothes, as though I was mourning someone's death, and I was. I was mourning my own death, because Zach had killed me inside. I had loved him more than anything, more than my friends, more than Mom, more than Dad, and even more than life. But he had thrown it all away.
Everyone thought I had gone crazy. I wasn't. If I was crazy, I would have shot myself a long time ago. But if I had shot myself, then who would have got revenge on Zach? That was the reason I was still sane. That was the reason I was still alive. I still had something to do.
At first, my three best friends came round to check up on me every few days. They would sit on a bed and watch me. They would try and open the blinds, but I would scream until they shut it. The worst thing, though, was they would try and talk to me slowly, as though I was in a coma, as though I was a child or as though I was exceptionally stupid.
Macey was the first to stop seeing me, after only a week. Her dad was the Vice President after finally winning the election and she was now a busy businesswoman, too busy to visit a mentally disordered friend of high school. She said that right now, her business was the most important thing to her. Liz stopped visiting after two weeks. She and Jonas were having a baby (I know, we all thought Zach and I would be the first parents) and she thought that maybe I would stress out the baby with my mad rocking. Bex stopped after three weeks, because she had missions to go to and everything. She said if she visited me, she'd have to stay up until twelve, doing paperwork, and she needed her 'beauty sleep'.
The Director phoned up, once, demanding why I wasn't at work. He left dozens of messages, but I never picked up. In the end, Mom had to tell him I was sick, mentally. The word spread through the CIA until it reached Zach. He even had the nerve to come and visit me. But I just ignored him, knowing he would soon go away like everyone else. There was no point in me acting al nice, because he wasn't going to stay with me, no matter how long I played a cover. He stayed for a full three hours but then decided I wasn't worth his time anymore. He left and never came back.
Mom even called a mental hospital to come and pick me up. That was when I realised there was no one left for me, not even Mom. I told the mental hospital to go away, only with worse language than that. I pulled out a gun I had always kept hidden under the bed and told them if they stepped one foot into the room, I'd kill myself. It was an empty threat, but they couldn't trust a 'mentally traumatic' woman.
Over the next few nights, I started puking into the toilets. I searched up on the computer the various differences I had noticed about myself, but they all led back to one thing. I took out the pregnancy tests that Macey had left in the room for the next generation of Gallagher girls as a joke/surprise.
I was pregnant.
It must have been at least one month and a half. One month, I had been lying in my room and for half a month, I'd been on my mission in Cuba. This left me with two reasons to live. Knowing Mom was going to find some sort of way to take the gun away from me so they could drag me to the mental institution, I had to work quickly. The idea came to me one day, when I was doing my usual rocking back and forth, which no longer was a cover to get everyone to think I was mad. It calmed me down and it helped me think clearly.
I would join the Circle.
I knew it was a crazy idea, but I knew it was one of the two options left. It was either that or starves myself on the streets. Or become a prostitute, which would never happen. Besides, I knew Catherine would probably be happy to strike a deal with me.
Switching on my laptop for the first time in ages, I began searching for the Circle on the net. I soon found a guy who had been paid by the Circle to tell them some secrets. He had posted this whole record on his blog. Presumably he was now dead, but was still there. Once something was on the internet, it was impossible to get rid of.
Part of that record included the Circle's email address – or more specifically, Catherine's. She replied to my email at once, giving me a chance to become a Circle member. She explained the good things about being an assassin: you learn how to be cold and emotionless, which I needed right then.
Back in the present, I asked lightly, "So how's Morgan?"
"Oh, she's been the most delightful ten year old girl ever!" Catherine sighs happily, a part of her that only I am allowed to see. "No one could ask for a better granddaughter."
"Well, I hope she grows to be as brilliant as her grandmother," I remark fondly, and Catherine gives a modest chuckle.
It's hard to believe that I was once her arch enemy, that we were fighting each other and risking our lives for a stupid alumni disc. If the same thing had happened now, I would have given it to Catherine in a heartbeat. Catherine was there for me when everyone else wasn't, and she didn't kill me like I thought she would. She waited for me to tell my story first, which I did. When she found out that I was pregnant, she jumped up. I had presumed it was in anger, but it wasn't; it was out of happiness that she was going to be a grandmother. Through Morgan, my ten year old daughter, Catherine and I have formed a bond, much stronger than the one I had with Mom. Mom hadn't told me her whole lifeline, but Catherine had trusted me with every secret, and I had done the same. She could empathise with me, because she's pretty much been through the same thing as I have.
When Catherine was about eighteen or so, she became pregnant with Zach. She got kicked out of Gallagher and was disowned by her rich parents. Sooner or later she had turn to the other side of the law – it was the only way Zach would survive. She became an assassin, and she very soon rose to the top of the chain. She did have feelings, she did feel guilty about killing people, but she did it because there was no other way forward. Then when Zach was turning from a little boy into a teen, he abandoned his mother, just like he abandoned me.
"Did you take her to school?" I asked Catherine, remembering my beautiful daughter all dressed up in her school uniform.
Catherine rolled her eyes and looked at me, the word 'seriously?' etched on her facial expression. "Of course I did, silly! Did you seriously think I'd forget to take my granddaughter to school?"
"Alright, alright," I laughed, holding my hands up in surrender.
Catherine's smile vanished as she seemed to remember something. She said quietly, "Morgan is ten now. She's clever enough to notice that her friends don't live in an underground base. It's only a matter of time before she'll blab it to her friends, who'll tell their parents, who'll tell the CIA. Perhaps you should take a break. Have some fresh air, Cammie. Live outside for a while as a… sort of holiday, if you like…"
At that moment, I burst out laughing, "A holiday! Like that will ever happen!"
Catherine remained perfectly serious. "I mean it, Cammie. You need a holiday. You've been working non-stop for ten years. You're out doing jobs more often than not and your daughter misses you. She hasn't spent any quality time with you and she's starting not to trust you anymore."
My smile and laughing demeanour dissolved instantly. I blinked, still trying to wrap my head around what she just said. "You're giving me a… a holiday?"
"Yes, why shouldn't I?" Catherine replies, shrugging nonchalantly.
"Catherine," I start carefully, "we both know that I don't really take holidays, right?"
"I know that well enough, my daughter," she nods, referring to her pet name for me. She likes to think of me as her actual daughter. "But you really must stop being such a workaholic."
"Why?" I demanded, my voice turning slightly hysterical. "Why should I start taking holidays? You do realise that work is one of the main reasons why I'm still sane, don't you?"
"I know that, but one day you're going to be too old to get out of your bed every morning to fight and to kill," Catherine stared at me sadly. "What are you going to do then? Let go of your sanity? No! You have to stop moping around and start living life to its fullest. I was just like you until you came along with your unborn baby. It was because of you and her that I decided to start opening up a bit more, and you should do the same."
"You always said work comes first," I pointed out.
Catherine retorted, "That's only because I'm bitter and old. You've got your whole life to live!"
"But-"
"No buts," Catherine said, in her business-like tone. "You will have a holiday for a full month and you will spend your time bonding with your daughter! Understood, Agent Morgan?"
"Yes, boss," I sighed miserably.
She leant forward and put a hand over mine in a motherly gesture, saying softly as she looked into my eyes, "Trust me on this one, ok, my daughter?"
"Fine," I mumbled, standing up and getting ready for my entrance back into the rest of the world. I may be nice and emotional to Catherine, but to everyone else, I still had to be the hard-core, strict woman everyone else knew me to be. Before I left the room, I turned back and asked, "Catherine, can you promise one last thing?"
"Yes?" she raised her eyebrow expectantly.
"If I get the chance, I can kill Goode."
"That," she cracked into a smile, "we can arrange for."
Zach's POV
As Bex and Grant walked down the steps of the plane towards us (Liz, Jonas, Macey and me) Macey shouted, "Welcome to New York, Bex and Grant!"
She was referring to the fact that during their six month mission, the CIA headquarters had moved to the Big Apple.
Grant called, "Did you get any luck?"
"Nah," Nick called back over the roaring engine of some other aeroplanes. "We still can't find her."
"We'll get there someday," Bex reassured all of us, when she saw our disheartened faces. "Don't worry. I've got a feeling Cammie's still alive at least, if that helps."
"Yeah, she could be alive, but that doesn't mean she's safe," Macey said with a pessimistic attitude. "It's been eleven years, Bex. She would be thirty in three weeks from now. She probably looks totally different from the nineteen year old girl we knew."
"She could be doing anything," Jonas added, equally as miserable.
"She could be married and living in a house with four kids in Australia," I sighed. "Or she could be camping with some secret unknown tribe of the Amazon."
"Cheer up!" Bex said brightly, before muttering to herself, "That girl is worse than dead when we find her." Then she slapped her happy smile onto her face again and said optimistically, "Come on! We've had some good times without Cammie, haven't we?"
There's a round of 'yeah's and 'I suppose so's and some nodding.
"There was that time in Cape Town," Bex prompted, which earned her a few giggles and chuckles. "And that time in Mexico City?"
"It would be more fun if Cammie was there with us," I said, which earned me louder 'yeah's and 'I suppose so's than Bex's point.
"Guys," Bex said seriously, "you can either cry about Cammie or you can act energetic and actually get somewhere. Now who's with me?"
