A/N: Thank you so much for your reviews. I finally watched the end of the final season (I'd been stuck on the Paris episode for over a year). I have to admit (and I have to some of you), that I kind of liked their end, too. For now, though, here's a little more of my version of how things might have gone. And I absolutely loved the idea of Auggie, Teo and the baby hanging out together. That should definitely happen. Auggie's a baby expert now, anyway!

Chapter 21

The family met the newlyweds for brunch before Sam and Max prepared to return to California to drop off their things before heading off on their honeymoon. The catered affair took place in the large dining room of the lake house with everyone – including the babies and the babysitters – in attendance.

It proved a loud, raucous affair with both Troy and Leah wearing red rimmed eyes and pale faces. Leah sipped on some hot tea while Troy attempted to eat an egg sandwich, stopping about two bites in.

"Too much weekend, Troy?" Max asked with a raised eye toward his younger brother.

"A little bit, yeah," he mumbled in return.

"Shhh," admonished Leah. "Too loud." She took a piece of toast and retreated into the front sitting room where it was cool and quiet.

The rest of the family stifled laughter while continuing on with their repast.

"What's on the agenda, Max? Where are you heading after this," Auggie asked once everyone had settled into chewing.

"Well, the Far East – Japan, South Korea, China, and then we'll finish up in Russia."

"Vladivostok is one of my favorite places," piped Sam. "I'm excited to show Max the region."

"It is a really interesting place. It's easy to forget that Russia is also part of the Far East," Annie chimed in.

"Have you spent a lot of time there, Annie?" Sam inquired.

"Vladivostok, no. I've been there only once. But I majored in linguistics with a concentration in Russian at Georgetown. I've spent a good bit of time in the country over the years." She fought to keep the hitch in her throat from making its way to her voice when she spoke about Russia, a completely bittersweet topic for her.

"Oh, well. We should bring you along as a tour guide," Max grinned.

Annie waved him off. "I think you're in excellent hands with Sam here. He has the look of a seasoned pro. And I also know that he's a seasoned pro."

Max and Sam laughed while Auggie forced a little closed-mouthed smile. Annie knew that even talk of returning distressed him, especially after he'd worked tirelessly to get her out of the country after she'd killed Lena and had been arrested and imprisoned in Moscow.

"Well, it sounds like a lovely trip," Annie affirmed before turning to Auggie, her hand on his arm. "I'm going to grab some more eggs Benedict. Do you want anything else from the buffet?"

He held up his coffee cup. "Just about half a cup."

She stood, kissing his temple as she took his mug and moved toward the kitchen. She added some food to her plate before she fixed his coffee. Jim joined her.

"Gwen says you've got a few more days."

She nodded. "A bit of a change of plans at work. I know Auggie wants to talk to you about that a bit later, once everyone's cleared out."

"Ah."

"He'd like to be the one to explain things," she added.

"Gwen insinuated as much." He motioned toward Auggie's cup. "I'll take that to him."

"Thanks."

"Their car is due at 12:30."

Annie nodded again. "He'd probably be up for a walk around the grounds. Maybe down to the dock."

"Yeah," Jim agreed. "Once we get the guys on the road."

Annie patted his arm before she collected her plate and headed back through into the dining room. Although Auggie's parents had known on some level for some time, the confirmation brought with it a new degree of information processing and worry.

Less than an hour later, they all stood on the front steps to see off the newlyweds. As soon as they'd driven from sight, Jim moved to Auggie's side.

"Hey, Aug."

"Dad. You have a minute?"

"Sure. Here? Or do you want to walk?"

"Let's walk."

They did, silently at first. Jim directed them to a bench near the edge of the water, shaded by a grove of trees planted for that particular reason. They sat, and Jim stared out across the ripples of the lake in front of him.

"Through everything, we've never done this, August," Jim started with a sigh.

"I know. Why's that, you think?"

"Your Mom is better at this stuff than me."

"At talking?"

"Well. Yeah."

"Dad."

"I know that's not a valid excuse."

Auggie shifted in his seat. "I'm sorry I haven't had this conversation with you before now. The details haven't been important. Actually, they've been off limits, but this assignment is a big one. We're going be gone for a while, and you'll get a plausible story as to what we're doing, but there's something to be said for the truth. At least every now and then."

"We've assumed the story was something like this, so we didn't push or pry."

"I know, and I thank you for that. And honestly, I'm not sure if knowing is better or worse. You can't ask questions. Well, you can, but we can't usually answer them. That's hard even on the inside sometimes. But the people closest to us know, and you're all close to both of us now. Annie's sister and Brendan and Dana have known for a while, and Max and Sam more recently. It didn't seem right to make all of them keep our secret, too."

"You talked to Mom this morning?"

Auggie nodded. "I did. Have the two of you discussed our conversation?"

"No."

He knew his mother would fill in the details, so he stuck to broad strokes. "We're taking a posting in Istanbul."

"Is that safe?"

"Probably less so than staying in DC. But we'll be as careful as we can be."

"That's not terribly reassuring."

"I know it isn't." He held out his palms in a gesture of submission. "But it's the best I can do."

Jim blew out a long breath. "You know, when they told us you'd been injured I felt so helpless. There was nothing I could do to make that not have happened to you, back then or sense. I sat here and watched you figure things out on your own, and I didn't know what to do to help you. I didn't want to say or do the wrong thing, so I really didn't do anything. I sometimes tell myself it's because I knew you'd find your way on your own, but really, it's because I had never felt so powerless or useless."

Auggie angled himself to face his father. "That's not fair or accurate, Dad. You've always been here – for me, for Mom, for the others. Always. That's what matters, what's always mattered." He shook his head. "I couldn't see how I could give Annie that level of support or presence, knowing there would always be things between us that we couldn't tell the other, or because of the things we've done in our professional lives. Or our personal ones."

"That just means that you've known each other long enough to know the good and bad about each other and be able to get past whatever it is you need to get past," his father reasoned.

"Yeah. You're probably right." Auggie turned back toward the water. "I don't want you to think that I've wasted my life."

"What? Auggie." Jim touched his son's arm. "What are you talking about?"

He leaned forward, head in his hands, fingers clutching at his hair. "I've been struggling with that for a while. What if I'd said no? What if I'd said no – anywhere along the road. Things would be different."

"And so would you."

Auggie sat up straight at his father's response. "Well, yeah. That's the point."

"Annie loves you. She chose you, here and now. Obviously we'd love you in any shape or form, but who you are, who you've become…I'm so proud of you, so proud to call you my son."

He sat silently for a moment before he finally managed to reply. "Thanks Dad. That covers a lot of sins."

Jim placed his hand on his youngest son's arm. "Let yourself breathe. Enjoy this life you're building with your wife. That's what life is, after all – finding the balance between work and what you need to do and what you want to do. It seems like this is a chance for the two of you to do both. I know how important your work is to you and to Annie. And obviously it's important work that you're both totally committed to right now, but will you do it forever?"

"No. We won't. This will be it for the field, if not the Agency, at least for me."

"Then take this post and give it your absolute all, and when the time comes to stop, you'll not have any regrets."

"I already have so many regrets."

"I know you've been working through those. All you can do is keep doing the work. You can't stop when things get good for a while, you know?"

"Yeah." He did know.

"You and Annie seem amazingly well-matched. There are regrets that she carries as well. Her smile doesn't always go completely to her eyes, and she gets the same faraway look that you do from time to time. She understands you better than anyone else could. You've done right by each other, but that's going to take work over time, too. Please promise me that you'll follow up on Dr. Rosen's recommendations."

The younger man nodded. "We are a good match, and I will do my best to do right by her. And by me. You know I don't like the idea of counseling, but I'll do it if Ben thinks it will help me."

Jim nodded, satisfied, and added, "You have to use the tools you have at your disposal."

Auggie smiled. "I hear you saying that in my head all the time. You've gotten my out of a few tight spots with that one. And Annie by proxy."

"I'm glad to hear it. And I'm glad we've had the time to talk."

"We really should try to do it more often. You're not half bad at it."

Jim chuckled. "Maybe I should practice more often."

"If Mom will let you get a word in."

"That is a good point." Jim stood. "You ready to go back up?"

Auggie joined him, taking his Father's arm when offered. "Yeah. Let's go."

Later that night Auggie's chest pressed against Annie's, holding her close to him. Despite the intimate proximity of their bodies, Annie sensed his mind was miles away. She kissed his shoulder in an attempt to bring him back to her. "The other night when we were on the boat you mentioned a lot of places, was that pretty everywhere they've sent you? I mean, if you can say."

He paused for a moment to compose his answer. "No. I left out Chechnya." He pushed back so that there was a little space between them. "It's not that what we did there is more classified than any of the others, but I try not to think about those missions. That was the worst of anything I had to do for them, even Iraq."

She shifted in the bed so she could see his face more clearly. "It was that bad?"

He nodded. "It was. Arthur pulled me from SAD after what turned out to be my last mission there. He put me on his team and had Helen and me teach his son how to be a spy. And if he hadn't, I'm not completely sure what would have happened to me out there." He paused before continuing. It wasn't like him to discuss the past in detail, especially because of the restrictions of their job, but he figured she could find out the information if she dug deep enough, and he wanted to share this with her.

"That last month had been brutal. We'd already lost Meuller – he just walked off into the wilderness one day – so we were already a man down going into the mission, a prisoner exchange. Things got heated during the hand-off, and then they started shooting. We had a kid with us who couldn't have been more than 25. Dale Frank – he was one of the first hit. Jim Decker had been embedded with the Chechens and had set up the protocol for the exchange with me the day before, but when things went south, it was pretty much every man for himself. Until Decker blew his cover to save my life. After that, he decided he needed to disappear for good; he was done with the Agency and everything that goes with it.

"That left me and Charlie and Tony Salgado. I'm not sure if you know Tony; he works for State now. Anyway, he was already three-fourths of the way to a drunken mess, and he spent the next six years in the bottle after we got back. But Schinderman somehow came through it all pretty much okay. He'd met this girl the year before who was in med school at the time we were in Grozny. She was busy with that and then had a to do a residency, so she needed some time, and he wasn't ready to settle down then, but by the time she finished all of that, he was ready to move on, too. I was his best man in 2010. She's a dermatologist. They have two kids and what sounds like a lovely life."

"He seemed like a good guy. "

Auggie nodded. "He's the best. He definitely helped me keep my shit together for as long as he could, but he knew I was at my breaking point back then. I don't know if he put a bug in Arthur's ear or if it was Joan or what, but he got me through some rough days there.

"Decker made contact a little while later when he was settled in South America. He got messages to me through Teo for a while when Arthur sent him back to Colombia, but that was after Helen, and by that time, keeping in touch with my Agency past wasn't really high on the list. I asked for something completely different, so they gave me that assignment that led to Natasha. Once that broke down, the only place in the world left for me to go, it seemed, was Iraq. And it didn't sound so horrible compared to what had been happening in my life in the two years leading up to the deployment."

"Yeah," Annie agreed. This glance into such particularly trying stretch of time in his past definitely painted his decision to go to Iraq in a different light.

Auggie continued. "Mikhail Khokoran was the guy we had in our custody. He was low-level, and the massacre there had nothing to do with him. I wondered for a while if there'd be retribution for his death. He had a brother in the Georgian Diplomatic Service who died of Lou Gehrig's disease a couple of years ago, but I couldn't find any other ties to anyone who'd need to avenge his death or whatever. So I think we're in the clear from that perspective. So there's one less debt to worry about having to repay someday, I guess," he mused.

They had both shifted during his story so that they were sitting beside one another, leaning back against the bed's headboard. "Do you think past missions could still cause you trouble going forward?" Annie inquired as much for herself as for him.

"Don't you?"

"I try not to think about it too much." They both knew that was a lie.

He answered a bit indirectly. "I hate Russia. I hate you going there – both Russia proper and the former republics. It's a beautiful place with some amazingly resilient people, but it's so dangerous, especially for you, especially now. And the degree of government or law or just who control what varies so widely from region to region. And then on top of it all, Russia moves its borders to encroach upon its neighbors in the middle of the night."

"I know."

"I know it's an important place for you, but I don't see how we can ever go back."

"I know. At least not now." She leaned back against his chest.

His fingers twirled in her hair. "Not ever, really."

"Not unless many things change."

"There are a lot of beautiful places in the world. I'll happily go with you to just about any of them."

"Except the largest."

"Yes."

She rested her head against his shoulder. She was finished talking about this, now. "And Joan didn't know anything about Teo?"

"Not then. I don't know if she and Arthur even knew each other at that time. Arthur had more than he could handle after the Wall fell in Berlin, and Joan had just come up from Africa specifically for Sarajevo. Their paths didn't cross until after we were in The Balkans. Or if they did, I'm not aware of it."

"And things were different before 2001?"

"Very. The world was a different place. Completely."

"It was on the outside, too." They sat in silence a bit longer before Annie spoke one final time. "Have you heard from Ben?"

"Mercer?"

"Yeah."

Auggie shook his head. "I haven't. But Arthur has. And Teo. He's okay. He's Ben."

"Yeah. I remember how it is."

"We should try to get some sleep. We need to make some plans tomorrow."

"You're tired."

"I am. It's been a long day."

She scooted down into the bed. "But everything went okay with your dad, right?"

"I just don't want him to worry about us."

"He's your dad, Baby. Or, our dad, I guess. He's going to worry."

Auggie slid down beside her. "Between Max and me, we've given them enough worry for several lifetimes."

"They worry about the others, too. You know that, right?"

"Even Troy?"

Annie laughed. "Especially Troy."

"Yeah. I think if I were them, I'd have to worry about Troy, too."

He turned toward her, and she placed her hand on his cheek. "Thanks for giving me this family. I didn't ever think I wanted to be a part of one, but I'll miss them all so much – not just Danielle and the girls and Michael."

"I'm glad that I could. Hell, you're the majority of the reason they let me come home, I think." He reached across and kissed her. "They definitely like you, too. It's going to be so weird to be gone. I haven't had to answer to anyone but Joan and Arthur for so long," he added.

"Did Arthur say he had a solution for the house?" The two men had spoken earlier in the evening, and Annie had yet to get a recap of the conversation.

"Oh, yeah. He did. He's been in contact with a former Navy protégé of his who runs a PMC firm who might be interested in either buying it or using it for off-site office space while we're gone."

"Fraternizing with the competition?"

"Not necessarily. Or maybe. He also talked about doing some consulting work for this guy, and if things go well, that could lead to permanent positions for us."

"What? That sounds crazy."

"Sort of, but this guy – Ryan McQuaid – already has his corporation set and vetted. It sounds like he'd be interested in acquiring our, or technically Arthur and Teo's, services under his corporate umbrella. Either as an acquisition or as a partnership. Apparently, there are options."

"Wow."

"Yeah. I know. Arthur wants us to meet with him when we get back in town. He holds a number of government and specifically CIA contracts, so he's read-in on us. It seems like a win-win situation."

"Right. What could possibly go wrong?"

"So we won't invite the guy on vacation with us." He laughed a breath, taking her hand in his. "On second thought, maybe we should. From the sound of it, he's the person to have around when you need an emergent evac."

Annie kissed his fingers between hers. "Absolutely," she agreed with her own laugh. "We'll bring him along if you'd like. But before we start planning our next excursion, let's get some sleep."

TBC