A/N: Just a little reminder that Falling Into You has been updated - the link is in my profile!

Perfection is a high benchmark by which to judge something. Is there something or somebody in existence that is incomparably complete and flawless in every single conceivable respect? Is it fair to denounce something as imperfect just because it doesn't reach this benchmark in every way?

Troy ran his fingers over the pristine wedding photograph, swallowing the lump that formed in his throat every time he caught sight of Gabriella in her wedding dress. The day HAD been perfect - how could semantics ever deny them that. She had been breathtaking; in the effortless, pure way that she always was. He wasn't ashamed to admit that he had been facing a losing battle against the tears as soon as she had begun to walk down the small isle; the simplicity of her white dress merely serving to highlight her radiance. Gabriella, Troy thought, was possibly the only bride in existence that didn't need the dress to complete the look: she had effervesced with bridal happiness and beauty. The ceremony had been simple: the focus lay where it should. The church was small and understated in its charm. The audience was restricted to their four closest friends; the only other four people that understood just how important their love for one and other was. The wedding had been perfect: from the heartfelt uttering of their vows, to the tears that glistened in every person's eyes. This union was something special: it was hope, salvation and, most importantly, love in its purest form: embodied in these two people.

She was perfect: stunningly compassionate and strong and radiant. Yet that was only his judgment. The traits of her personality that danced with overwhelming charm and captivatingly powerful over the surface of her character veiled he less than appealing truth: she was a killer; she was a liar; she was broken. She was not perfect. Troy just didn't know that yet.

It had been perfect, Troy sighed; fighting to remain composed. She thought that he was perfect, she told him time and time again - as she whispered increasingly corrosive kisses across his naked body as they made love; when he made guilt-filled offerings of flowers in a desperate attempt to palliate his contrition; sometimes when they were simply sitting together and she would look up at him in wonder. Would she hold the same opinion if she knew the truth? If he walked through the door after a day of work and replaced the tired, scalding lies ('another server failure', 'this damn system replacement is just causing more problems than we anticipated') with the terrible truth - 'I killed 3 men today.'

"Troy, man, we need to get started..."

He looked up from the photograph, a lone tear puddled on its surface, and nodded grimly.

He was no more perfect than their sham of a wedding had been.

Neither was she.


…Hereto I pledge you my faithfulness.

To have and to hold, from this day forward...

She burst through the door of their home, distraught: four members of her team were dead. She and Taylor should have been too. The only thing that had saved her life that day was chance; the simple decision to grab lunch with Taylor before they caught their plane. If they had stayed to oversee the team packing up, they too would have been caught in the blast. The constant risk of somebody actually caring about a colleague's death had finally caught up with them: revenge had been too easy - a detonator attached to the bottom of their reconnaissance vehicle. Five minutes. If they had been five minutes later they would have been dead. Gabriella would never have been able to tell Troy that she loved him, to realize her impossibly ordinary fairytale further. It was a completely terrifying realization.

It only took one look at him, completely perfect in his breathtaking normalcy, to violently shatter her composure. She collapsed, her limbs shredded by the body-wracking sobs. Like an angel, her scooped her into his arms – despairingly placing kisses against her tear weathered face and whispering soothing words against her ear. She couldn't speak, she couldn't explain; how would she ever be able to?

Troy allowed her to cry, as agonizing as it was for him. The last time that he had seen somebody so utterly distressed and broken had been when his brother had died; but he had lived that period of his life through a transparent screen, the emotions and happenings swirling around him barely perceived and not truly felt. Yet to see, to wholly experience Gabriella in such a state was mind-numbingly petrifying. He didn't know what to do.

There was no scale by which to measure the duration of her frantic sobbing but eventually her cries subsided; her body presumably too weak and dry of tears to continue as it had been. It didn't mean that she was better, though. She stared

straight ahead, and hardly responded to his touch or to his voice; it was as if she was locked within some other terrible reality - the pain it was causing patent in her eyes and burning him to the core.

"Gabi," he whispered; his voice hoarse and frightened. "Please tell me what's wrong..."

She was silent.

"Gabi, I can't...let me fix this..."

"You can't."

Had he heard her? Her reply had been so weak that Troy wondered whether he had imagined it; even if it would have been a response straight from his most horrifying nightmare.

"What? Why?" he urged gently, interlacing his fingers with her own limp ones and bringing them to his mouth, brushing wet kisses over her palm before pressing a resolute kiss over the finger holding her wedding ring.

She was quiet again; deathly pale and unfamiliar in her mental absence.

Slowly Troy saw something begin to stir in her eyes, a sense of recognition. And fear. Gabriella shifted in his arms and began to clutch at his clothing; burying herself into his body.

Minutes later she spoke; her voice soft and almost pleading. "I had a really bad day."

If he hadn't been so shaken by her previous distress, Troy might have laughed. There was, however, no humor to be found in this situation. How could such a justification even begin to explain what had made her feel like this?

"Gabi?" He uttered her name as a disbelieving question.

Their eyes met for the first time since he had taken her flaccid form into his arms. Her every emotion latent in her watery brown orbs undulated imploringly at him. As much as it broke him, he would submit to her pleas.

"Just hold me, please." Her request was simple and overpowering, impelling him to cling to her body desperately.

Their cleaving embrace almost entirely erased time and thought.

"Can you tell me?" Troy tried one last time.

"It was work, I promise." The habitual lie initiated another fit of weeping.

"Are you lying to me?" he asked; ignoring the answer that was already obvious in her face.

"No." How much longer would it continue? "I need you," she gasped. "Just hold me."

And he did.


… for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer

Gabriella cocked her head as she regarded her husband. She could tell him; how hard could it be? It would surely be easier to finally tell the truth than to carry on living with the lies. She had to roll her eyes at her own thoughts: how did she expect him to react? Would he simply look up from the newspaper that he was, admittedly, scowling at and say, "Oh, that's nice honey. Keep on doing that," before turning the football game on? Of course he wouldn't. She had found herself considering coming clean with Troy for a while now, though. The lies were beginning to eat away at and weary her. Superficially nothing had changed since that night a few months ago when she had broken down in his arms; in reality, however, they had truly started to grow distant. They both held back and Gabriella couldn't blame her husband: her lie must have been evident.

It was gradually killing her.

So much so, that she frequently found herself considering what could really go wrong if she told him. But she couldn't. No matter how much the couple seemed to dance around an unknown truth, living and loving him from opposite a gulf of unspoken realities was and always would be a million times better than not having him at all. There was no doubt that he would want nothing to do with her once he found out about the magnitude of her lies.

"Stop staring." His voice was curt and almost snarling.

Gabriella was taken aback at the venom lacing his words. "I…sorry." She mumbled. He had been quiet all evening and his mood had deteriorated throughout the night; but he had never spoken to her like that before.

He continued to fester; his eyes boring into the newspaper in his hands without taking in a word. Should she leave him be? Instinctively she knew that she should. Yet she was his wife; it was her job to make things better, wasn't it? Gabriella chewed her lip nervously as she weighed up the possibilities. Taking a deep breath she spoke; her voice tentative. "Can I get you anything?"

Troy snapped his head up from the newspaper, his eyes softening momentarily before they almost instantaneously grew harsh again. "No. Just…stop fussing," he snapped. He saw her flinch out of the corner of his eyes and his mood only darkened. He couldn't stand it anymore. The lies and the distance were killing him. He didn't want to go to work everyday and wonder whether he'd see her again. He didn't want to spend his life deceiving her. He couldn't bear the thought of how she would see him once she found out. He hated himself because he was starting to view himself through her future, knowing eyes. He felt sick to the stomach at the thought of his inevitable future without her. It was suffocating.

Troy found himself distancing himself from her as a protective mechanism: they talked; they made love, but there was always something holding them both back: she had to suspect something. She would leave him. It was inevitable.

"What's wrong with you?" Gabriella asked; her voice heavy with hurt. He had never spoken to her like that. They had their arguments, of course, but their snapped words were almost always immediately followed by apologies. The anger never reached their eyes. What had she done? Did he know about her deceit?

"Nothing," he repeated again. His insides convulsed at the word. The ever repeated 'nothing' hung between them tauntingly.


In sickness or in health… to love and to cherish…

Troy groaned as he cracked his eyes open; the stark sunlight filtering through the blinds of the strange room and assaulting his retinas. Every cell of his body droned painfully, making it impossible for him to forget even for one second the agony that he was in. He had know no idea what had happened but felt inexplicably relieved at the knowledge that the blurry form at the foot of his bed would surely resolve to show his wife. As the shapes gradually became decipherable, however, his heart sank when he realized that she wasn't there. He scoffed; why would she be? Whatever had happened to him, she was the last person that would have been there to pick up the pieces.

"Finally he wakes…"

Troy merely groaned in response.

"You got whacked in the back of the head with a freaking huge vase. Don't worry though," Zeke puffed out his chest as he spoke. "I saved the day as usual and managed to drag your sorry ass out."

Troy couldn't even find it in himself to roll his eyes at his friends' attempts to lighten the situation; he knew that they were trying to distract him from the reality of the situation. It was his fault. He had been in such a foul mood when he had been doing background research for the mission- self-loathing and intolerable guilt reacting combustively in his conscience- that he had overlooked a subtle but vital component of the target's alarm system. Setting off the alarm had alerted his five-man strong security team of their presence and rendered the mission altogether more problematic than it ever should have been.

"What time is it?"

He was supposed to be home that evening. He needed to be home that evening. After the damaging argument of two months previously, Troy and Gabriella had promised that Wednesday evenings would be their special night; the night that they were going to dedicate entirely to doing something romantic and special; the night that they could truly commit to cherishing the other.

The three men exchanged nervous glances: they all knew how important Wednesday evenings had become for Troy's sanity and conscience: not only Troy and Gabriella could feel the onerous weight attached to their lies. "You've pretty much been out all day… It's 3pm."

"Our flight was an hour ago…" His blood ran cold as the realization sank in. "No way. We need to get to the airport now. I'll phone and tell her that I'll be a couple of hours late. If we leave now then I can be home for nine…" Troy attempted to sit up, but his movement was prevented by a firm hand on his shoulder.

This time it was Chad that spoke. "You are in no fit state to get on a plane."

"I'm fine. I have to get home today."

Chad loosened his grip on the struggling Troy; steadying him when he was overwhelmed by dizziness. "You can't go home like this..."

"I have to..." His voice cracked. There was no need to hide his tears in front of his friends. "I can't miss this…" He sunk back into the pillows; utterly defeated. "I need her." He wasn't just referring to the fact that she was the only thing that could possibly have any chance of making him feel better.

"Phone her. She'll be there when you get home tomorrow."

Troy gulped, tears stinging his eyes. "What if she's not?" He was trying, he really was. He didn't want this life anymore: he just wanted her. As suffocating as the constant deceit may have been, the threatening possibility of a life without her seemed to have its fingers constantly wrapped around his throat; it was impossible to ignore and affected everything that he did.

"Hey!" His heart shattered at the spring-like quality of her voice; he could feel her smile even though they were on different continents.

"Hi," he croaked.

She gasped: his voice betrayed everything. She had been certain that things were getting better; she had increasingly taken a back-seat on missions and was determined not to let work get in the way. She knew that things had been getting better. Perhaps she had been kidding herself. Perhaps her recent optimism had been one-sided. Maybe he still felt let down by her.

"I..." How could he do this to her? How could he watch her break again? When were the lies going to stop? "I'm not going to make it home tonight. There's been a massive storm and my plane's been grounded. I'm so sorry, Gabi."

"Oh. That's okay. It's not your fault." He could hear her heart-breaking – or was that the echo of his own suffering the same fate? They exchanged a few more awkward words before the conversation plunged into silence. "Troy?" After a few moments of static she whispered his name; the fear evident in her voice. "Is it me?" She had to know.

"Is what?" He was thrown by her question.

"Do you…you still love me?" She choked back a sob.

"Of course I do, Gabriella," he rushed to answer; not even sure whether his words made sense: they were spoken so hurriedly. "I love you more than you can ever imagine. I want to be there with you."

"You mean it?"

Troy could feel the tears beginning to spill from the corners of his eyes. "So, so, much…"

As he hung up the phone, Troy knew that he couldn't do this any longer. He had to tell her.


…'til death do us part….

Troy had a deathly grip on the steering wheel; it was the only way to try and keep his shaking hands under control. He had never been a nervous person, but the prospect of what he was about to do scared him more than anything else ever had done. He couldn't live with the lies anymore; he couldn't hurt her anymore. He would tell her and then he would quit. They would find a way to circumvent his obligation; together.

He was probably not concentrating nearly as much as he should have been; he was lucky that the roads were so quiet. Troy was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't hear the sudden engine revving of the car that had been trailing him since he left the airport. He didn't find anything particular remarkable about the SUV pulling out behind him; he wasn't driving particularly quickly for the freeway. His eyes widened when he glanced to the side and noticed that the vehicle was making no attempt to overtake him; seemingly content with driving alongside him – mere inches separating the two cars.

What happened next occurred so suddenly that Troy had no chance to react. Two fleeting thoughts passed through his mind as his car was rammed off the road and began to tumble down the overgrown slope: the symmetry with the only other car crash that he had ever been in and Gabriella.

As everything faded to black, Troy could only be thankful that nobody that he loved was lying beside him this time.


Sighing, Gabriella slowly began to pack away her things; she was going to be home early so that she could be there when Troy got in. He had sounded so distraught that he wouldn't be able to be there the night earlier and it made her feel unbelievably guilty: it was her fault that they had felt it necessary to make time for their relationship; it was her fault that their relationship was breaking apart at the seams.

She froze when the computer in the corner of the room began to beep. In the time that it took her to cross the room, Gabriella's heart had forced its way through her ribcage and travelled an apprehensive path to the base of her throat. She could hardly breathe as she stared at the screen confirming her suspicions about the cause of the alarm.

She hadn't looked at the file since her conversation with Taylor on her hen night. She had almost entirely forgotten her previous obsession with her parents' killer: too caught up in the simultaneously bliss- and anguish-filled marriage. The alarm disturbing the peace of her office brought all of these attempts to move on crashing to the ground.

The system had found him.

Gabriella scrolled through the information on the screen; frowning at the absolute simplicity with which he had made himself known again. He had been caught on an airport security camera; flagged up as he had set off the metal detectors. Typing frantically, Gabriella tracked his movements; hacking into the airport's security network and traffic camera systems to follow him as he climbed into a car and set off down the freeway towards Manhattan.

His movements were unexceptional. Gabriella was baffled: after all of this time, why had he risked being found for something so..boring…? But then he made his move, forcing another vehicle off the road. The camera remained stationery as Johnson climbed out of his car to watch the Mercedes roll down the hill and come to a deathly halt at its base. Satisfied with his efforts, he turned around to look directly at the camera. Gabriella was thankful that she couldn't see the expression on his face; she was shaken enough as it was.

She gasped as he raised his arm; deliberately pointing in the camera's direction and then to the vehicle lolling at the foot of the wild slope.

He knew that she was watching.

Perplexed, Gabriella wound the footage backwards; her breath catching in her throat as she looked at the target vehicle more closely – her eyes coming to rest on the number plate as the first step of her investigation. It was Troy's car.

There was no time for any more thought.

Everything faded to black.