Nicky walked, still limping slightly, into her office Monday morning and hung her coat on the back of her door. She logged on to her computer and settled down to check on her agents and restraining her innate desire to check on Jason first as always, she began in chronological order with the last one she'd had an update from being the first she checked on. She currently had three agents in the field and two that were on break.
Everything was in order with the first two in the field, both had used their individual access codes to enter and exit the safe houses she'd prepared for them and when she called them, they each verified their status with the appropriate code indicating that they were not under duress. These calls were brief, no real information needed to be exchanged; she was simply checking on them.
But she frowned when she checked on Jason and realized that the safe house he was supposed to be using in Singapore hadn't been accessed. It was possible that he'd chosen somewhere else to stay for a variety of reasons, but if that was the case, the proper procedure required him to notify his handler, and he hadn't. Time slowed down for Nicky as she watched herself, as if from outside her body, pick up the phone she used to contact Jason and hit send. She heard it ring, distantly and when he didn't answer; she knew what it meant.
She numbly entered the information in the required fields on her computer.
Time entered: N/A
Time exited: N/A
Agent response to code in: N/A
Her responses triggered an additional field: Reason for discrepancy _.
She stared at the blinking cursor, at the blank space waiting for her response, and realized that she had no idea what to write. The only other time she'd encountered this field before had been when one of the agents had been too severely injured to leave the safe house or to answer the phone. But it was highly unlikely that Jason had been hurt. The plan she'd carefully crafted had put him in Singapore nine days before his target was scheduled to arrive. He should have been settling into his role as a businessman in town for an important conference, doing a bit of 'sightseeing' while setting up the recording equipment they'd need, and getting acclimated to a city he'd never been to before; nothing dangerous.
There was nothing that could account for the fact that he hadn't checked in; that he was simply... missing.
Nothing, except the heart-stopping realization that he had lied to her and run from Treadstone, run from her.
She didn't know how long she sat there as the waves of realization washed over her repeatedly. He had lied to her. He had broken his promise. He had left her.
She jumped noticeably when Conklin opened her door even though he opened it quietly. She had just enough time to register the displeasure displayed clearly on his face before her desk phone rang. She looked from it to him and he said "Don't answer that, he wouldn't call you on your office phone." He spoke clearly but his voice was unusually quiet and restrained considering how upset he obviously was. She made no move to pick up the phone but his statement made absolutely no sense to her. She waited, expecting him to explain.
"We already have Desh." Whatever Nicky had expected Conklin to say, this wasn't it.
She blinked at him. "Sir?"
He didn't answer her and continued. "We expect that Bourne will make contact soon and when he does, it'll most likely be with you. I want you to be ready when he does. It is absolutely imperative that you bring him in but we don't think that it's... advisable... at this time... to tell him he's being sent for retraining."
"What?" her whispered question was so quiet that she didn't think he even heard her he certainly didn't react like he had.
"You're going to need to meet him in a neutral location... we'll hit him with a tranquilizer. I want you to bring in the Professor on this one." He stopped, obviously expecting her to jump to action and when she just sat there, his previous calm demeanor evaporated. "NOW, Parsons. Get me a location and call him in. Bourne could make contact at any time and we need to be READY, god dammit."
The phone on her desk had finally stopped ringing. She noted the silence in the back of her mind as she tried desperately to process what Conklin was saying. One nightmare had been replaced with another, which was somehow even worse. Somewhere, in her mind, she realized that he was expecting her to do something but she couldn't for the life of her seem to understand what he was asking and she certainly wasn't capable of action.
It finally seemed to click with Conklin that Nicky wasn't tracking. "What the hell's wrong with you? Didn't anybody tell you what happened?" He exhaled in exasperation as he realized that she had no clue what he was talking about and finally explained. "Bourne's gone off the deep end. He attacked Desh last night... damn near killed him. And then he called his psychiatrist and started babbling some nonsense about Desh being an FBI agent and told the shrink to come and get him. Then he disappeared."
Nicky nodded. She understood.
Jason wasn't leaving her. He had intentionally created a situation that would result in both him and Desh being sent for retraining. When they came back to her in six months, neither would have any memory of her at all. They'd be the cold, killing-machines that she'd first encountered when she began working for Treadstone two years ago.
And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
"He won't contact me." She knew he wasn't going to let her see him again until it was over. He'd already said goodbye and he wasn't going to give her another chance to block him. She knew that she needed a plausible reason for saying this to Conklin, though so she added "He must think I'm compromised or that I can't be trusted for some reason. Otherwise, he'd have contacted me in the first place instead of his psychiatrist."
Conklin's cell phone rang as she finished her explanation and, although it wasn't unexpected, her heart crumbled at the relieved expression on his face when he hung up and told her "We've got him. He went straight to the facility and turned himself in."
Before he left Conklin demanded that Nicky prepare a full report of both agents' files. He was convinced that there had been some sort of indication that Bourne was headed toward a psychotic break and evidently wanted to find someone to blame for missing it. It didn't seem to be her, though. He treated her just as he always did, and ignored her except to demand that she handle whatever problem he threw her way. Anyone else would have noticed the grief that was etched into her face but he didn't bother to even look at her.
She had six long months to go over everything that had happened, to prepare herself to see him again, to wonder what it would be like when she did. She eventually recognized that he hadn't been lying to her when he said he couldn't stay away from her and that she'd failed to realize that he had been too determined to leave her to let that stop him. She'd missed the obvious answer. He had out-thought her, as usual.
And his plan had worked perfectly. He had removed all threats to her. He had removed the physical threat that he himself represented by wiping his own memory of them. He had removed the ever-present threat of discovery by ending their relationship. He had even removed the threat that he believed Desh represented to her as well as the too-close-for-comfort relationship that Desh had developed with Nicky when he'd dragged him into things by attacking him. He'd left her completely alone but he hadn't gone any where.
She was safe. She'd never have to run from Treadstone, never have to worry about him accidentally attacking her, never have to worry about Desh using his information against her.
She was safe but her world had been destroyed. Now she worried about how Jason was dealing with the training, what they were doing to him in that terrible place. She ached for him. She grieved for them. She hated herself for failing to protect him. That was her job, protecting him, and she'd failed. She was angry at him; even hated him at times. She hated herself for not following through on her threat of suicide. And she hated him for knowing, even when she hadn't, that she would never be able to do it.
She went to work every day for those six months and she still did her job, was still as efficient as ever, but she held herself back from the agents now, kept her distance. They noticed. She no longer smiled at them. She no longer talked to them as she used to, as if they were actual people. Birthday's went unremarked. She didn't touch them anymore.
They worried about her, as they waited for the smile that never came, as their birthdays slipped quietly past, as they left her office without her light touch to escort them out. They worried about her, but none of them ever broached the subject with her and slowly, they all adjusted to the new, darker, world in which they lived without the small things that Nicky did to bring a little light to their dark lives.
She never adjusted to her life without Jason.
Alright, that's the end. Thank you for reading the longest (by far) story I ever wrote and I sincerely hope you liked it (even though it has such a sad ending). I considered adding a chapter about when Jason comes back- without remembering her- and eventually gets sent on to the Wombosi mission and totally loses everything- a side effect of the 'retraining' he'd gone through but when I typed that last sentence, I felt like it was the end of the story.
Side note: I titled this story "small things" and I incorporated that phrase into every chapter at least once. Did you notice? Did it feel forced? Reviews would be lovely.
