02.04.08

The tap in the bathroom sink shut off, and Arthur appeared at the door of the bedroom. He stopped short, crossing his arms and leaning against the door frame in a soft grey cotton shirt and flannel pajama pants. Joan could feel his eyes on her as she paced back and forth on the soft rug in her stocking feet.

"What's going on, Joan?" Arthur inquired quietly.

Joan stopped where she was at the foot of the bed and sat down, pulling one leg up under her and tugging her silk robe closer around her body. He could see she'd lost weight in the past few stressful months, not exactly a healthy turn of events considering her already lithe frame. She looked earnestly up at her husband and pleaded, "Was it my fault?"

"Are we talking about what I think we're talking about?" replied Arthur as he walked to the bed himself and sat down beside her.

"I just keep wondering what I could have done differently," she remarked softly.

Arthur leaned close and placed a kiss on his wife's shoulder. They had not been married so long that the idea that she was finally his, finally his wife, was commonplace to him. It had been a long, hard slog to get here, with more collateral damage than he liked to think about. But they had made it, despite odds stacked heavily against them. They were making it.

They had also not become so familiar that he wasn't still sometimes surprised to see her like this. This was the legendary Ice Queen, after all. He couldn't help but smile faintly at the nickname. Even he, the great and powerful Arthur Campbell, who himself had been accused more than once of being remote and imperious, had been intimidated by her when they'd first met many years before. She had been so hard to read.

Now, of course, he read her just fine. He knew that the frosty exterior was a sort of protective shield. What was that old expression? "Cold hands, warm heart"? Yes, that was a fine description for Joan. Sometimes he was bothered by the mythology that had developed around her, which he considered unnecessarily harsh. But mostly he liked that he was one of the very few people on earth who ever saw her like this-shield down, soft, vulnerable. Feminine. He knew he wasn't supposed to think that; it was so terribly antiquated. But there it was.

"I think Auggie is a big boy and he made his own choices," Arthur finally answered.

"So then what are we doing? As managers? If our leadership affects nothing, why bother?" Joan prodded.

"I did not say that what we do is irrelevant," corrected Arthur. "But at the end of the day, you can't control every variable. You can't make other people's choices for them."

"We made plenty of choices for Auggie," Joan rebutted pointedly. "We put him in situations where he got hurt. Maybe not always physically, but - my word, Arthur, when I think about what he's been through with the Agency in only 3 short years..." she trailed off.

Arthur understood that she was referencing Helen. That stung. Joan knew only the sketchiest details of what Auggie and Helen had been doing in the Czech Republic and then Rome - she certainly didn't know that they'd been there to train Arthur's illegitimate son - but she did know that it had been off-book, at Arthur's behest, and that Helen's death had shattered Auggie emotionally. Joan had thought that Auggie had bounced back remarkably well, but now a pattern was emerging that made Joan question everything she knew about her favorite (okay, I said it, she thought) operative.

It was all so obvious to her now that she was ashamed she hadn't seen it sooner: Auggie was never more enthusiastically on-point than when he was deeply hurting. It was all over his file, if you knew what to look for. Nothing mobilized him to take crazy risks quite like a broken heart.

Joan knew he'd been sleeping with Natasha, but she'd assumed he was keeping his head in the game. Male operatives were supposed to be able to do that, weren't they? Weren't men in general supposed to? But there was always something sweet about Auggie, under his soldier-spy-frat-boy facade. Maybe it was his well-mannered Midwestern upbringing; or, perhaps it had more to do with being the baby of his family; likely his early tragic losses played some role in it. In any event, this softness, this goodness, was what made him so likable. And, frankly, so damn irresistible to women. But it was also a liability.

Joan realized guiltily that he'd been hurt (again) by the way the situation with Natasha had panned out. By the way that I handled the situation with Natasha, she reminded herself punishingly. As a result he'd made a reckless, but in hindsight totally predictable, leap into the most dangerous circumstances he could find. The difference was, this time it had landed him in even more pain. Pain that he couldn't outrun.

"I feel so helpless," Joan uttered, staring at the floor. "I want to reach out to him, but...I'm not sure what to say. 'I'm sorry for your loss?' 'We're going to miss you?' I keep trying to put myself in his shoes, to understand what he'd want me to say or do, but clearly that's something I've been terrible at doing."

"I know you're hurting, too," Arthur observed as he wrapped his arms around her and drew her head to his chest.

Tears pricked Joan's eyes and she turned into his warm chest. She felt guilty for this, too. She was hurting for Auggie's sake, yes, but she was also hurting for herself. She really was going to miss Auggie. Obviously, it was a tremendous loss for the NCS as a whole. And a real blow to the DPD in particular. But Joan felt she'd lost not just an operative, but an ally and friend.

"Have you considered reaching out?" Arthur asked.

"Of course," Joan replied wearily. "But aside from the big question of what I would say to him, there is the question of how I would discreetly contact him. An email, letter, encrypted voicemail? I'm not at all sure what he can...access...right now."

Arthur was surprised she'd skipped an option. "What about a visit?"