Machinations by Betty Bokor
Mary/Marshall. Marshall surprises everyone with his new plans and Mary has to learn to live with his decisions.
Spoilers: All episodes, including Second Season Finale.
Disclaimer: The In Plain Sight original characters belong to USA Network and Universal Media Studios (UMS). This was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt at copyright infringement has been made.

Machinations

Chapter 3

Tuesday was pure torture. It did not start well and it ended worse. Mary walked into the office as tired as she had left the day before, or perhaps more. Thinking about her own life had not helped her sleep and her mind had relentlessly gone back to imagining Marshall and his bride. Norah crying around four in the morning had not helped. Around then, she had begun wondering if her engagement to Raph had ever left Marshall sleepless. After careful consideration, she had concluded he had probably not lost one minute of sleep thinking of her and her former fiancé.

Marshall again came to work in a cheerful mood and suggested they had breakfast together before they started a series of visits to check on their witnesses. Mary reluctantly agreed, just because she had left the house running late and she had not had breakfast yet.

After ordering their food, she broke the uncomfortable silence at the table by asking Marshall the question that had haunted her the most the night before, the same one he had asked a long time before.

"So, are you happy?"

His response was immediate and enthusiastic. "Yep… Now I understand why you thought about marrying Raph," he added with a pleased smile. "Since we made the decision, everything has started to fall into place. I'm looking forward to coming home everyday and having someone waiting for me. I've spent too many years of my life on my own and it feels great to have Leslie to come home to."

"You haven't mentioned love, stud," she said almost condescendingly.

He looked perplexed. "Of course we love each other."

"You've never talked about Leslie before. I don't understand this kind of sudden love," she said with an expressive gesture.

"I've known her for more than three years, but there were many things keeping us apart. However, we've been in touch all this time and, as soon as we saw each other last week, the chemistry came back immediately."

"In other words, you're not crazily in love, you have chemistry," Mary pointed out.

"Were you crazily in love with Raph?" he continued without waiting for her answer. "I don't think that's a requisite for a successful marriage. Furthermore," he said looking away as if he were organizing his memories, "I've witnessed in more than one occasion a marriage that started in passionate love and ended in bitter divorce."

She had no time to think of an appropriate comeback, because Marshall pointed out the need to start their visits. Nevertheless, she could not stop thinking that he seemed to be settling for Leslie because he had not found a woman he could fall crazily in love with. The idea worried her. That was what she had been doing with Raph.

In any case, the day was spent checking up on witnesses and doing paperwork and it would not have been such a bad day if Marshall had not called Leslie before leaving the office.

"I'll be there in a jiffy," he was saying.

Mary could not stop a mocking gesture.

"No, unless we get someone new, I'll make it on time tomorrow, too."

Mary paid attention and after a few seconds she realized Leslie had been informed about what Marshall's job was. She felt furious. There was clearly a double standard there.

"So," she confronted him as soon as he hung up the phone, "it was so wrong for me to tell Raph about what we do, but you tell your precious Leslie the first chance you get."

Marshall stared at her for a second before calmly answering. "I didn't need to tell her anything, she already knew what I do for a living."

"You told her before you were even engaged? It just came up as a heated utterance while in the throes of passion?"

He looked at her with something akin to pity and she felt incensed.

"She already knew because until a month ago, she worked in WitSec, too. I've worked with her before. I'm not betraying any secrets with her and we never talk about my witnesses or the ones she used to have."

Mary could not stop herself. "She must have betrayed something if they kicked her out of WitSec."

Marshall was starting to get mad. "She wasn't kicked out of anywhere. She didn't leave the Marshal's Service; she just left WitSec because she's a widow and she has a kid entering college and with the kind of pay we get here she couldn't make it. She was an outstanding inspector. Nobody wanted her to leave, but she needed a better position."

Mary was feeling somewhat ashamed, but she could not show that kind of weakness, so she changed the topic toward something else she could criticize. "She has a teenager? How old is she?" she asked with exaggerated surprise.

"She's thirty-nine. She just married right out of high school, that's all," he answered with more annoyance. "Besides, Thomas is a great kid and I'll be proud to be his stepfather."

"So, you're not only getting married, you're getting an instant family. I thought you were the kind of guy who liked to start his own," she said without even thinking if her statement made any sense.

Marshall's voice was louder when he replied. "You know what? We talked about that and Leslie is completely ready to have another child, and that is more to say than what you probably were willing to do for Raph," he spat before adding, "and, in spite of how edifying this conversation has been, I need to cut it short because the woman I love is waiting for me."

His last words hurt her in unexpected ways and she could not articulate a response before he left the office with a slam of the door.

Mary sat at her desk overwhelmed by all the conflicting ideas in her mind. Anything she thought of as a fault of Leslie, Marshall saw as a virtue and, when considered from his perspective, they became Mary's faults.

Late in the evening she made her way home, surprised by the feeling that now that her family was finally out of her house, she wished there would be someone there to talk about Marshall.