London, 1946

The debriefing from that first mission had taken most of the day, and Newkirk's voice was gravelly with exhaustion and overuse well before they were through. But they did finish, eventually; he shook the cramp out of his shoulders, and stood up.

"Oh, one last thing," said Stephens.

He grimaced, but dropped obediently back into his seat. "Bloody hell, Stephens. We've been going over 'one last thing' for two and a half hours. Every time I finish with one, you think of another. Can't this wait for the morning?"

"No," said Stephens decisively. He fished a key ring from a desk drawer and tucked it in his pocket. "I'm rather afraid that it can't. But you'll like this one. Come on."

"Stephens, I'm knackered. Come on where?"

"You'll see," said Stephens.

"Wonderful. More bleeding secrets."

"Nature of the beast, dear fellow. They don't call us 'secret' agents for nothing."

Newkirk rolled his eyes to the heavens, but there was no help for it. He got to his feet, gathered up hat and jacket, and followed Stephens out of the office and down to the street.

Stephens hailed a cab, gave the driver an address, then spent the rest of the fairly short drive smiling faintly and refusing to explain why. Newkirk, thinking uncharitable thoughts about the older man's sense of humor, just watched the scenery passing by his window with profound disinterest.

He'd been undercover, and on round-the-clock high alert, for nearly nine months—three inside, which had, in retrospect, been the easy part, and six out—and now that the job was done, he had absolutely no idea what might be next on the bill. For all he knew, this mission had been a one-off, and tomorrow he'd be pounding the pavement looking for someone willing to hire him. In fact, for all he knew, the brass would decide they'd had it right the first time, tidy up a loose end, and tomorrow he'd be back walking the yard at Wandsworth. He wouldn't put it past them to do precisely that, in fact; it wasn't as though he didn't already know the usual reward for a dirty job well done. Outliving your usefulness rarely ended well. Just now he was too tired to care. Tomorrow would arrive soon enough; he'd worry about it then.

"And what's this, then?" Newkirk asked, as they arrived at what looked like a perfectly ordinary block of flats. A great deal nicer than the ones he was used to, of course, but, then, that wasn't a particularly high bar to clear.

"Home," Stephens said, looking, and sounding, like a cat with a mouthful of canary, and pulled the keys out of his pocket. "Where else? You did say you were tired, didn't you?"

Newkirk had to admit that the prospect of sleeping in Stephens' spare room until he could find a place of his own sounded a great deal more comfortable than bunking down in one of the agency's holding cells, not to mention far more affordable than finding a hotel, and those had been the only two ideas he'd been able to come up with. Going back to the digs he'd been using during the mission was not an option, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, he'd just arranged for his erstwhile flatmate, and quite a number of his flatmate's closest friends and associates, including their landlord, to spend the rest of their lives behind bars, which probably violated the lease agreement in some fashion, and certainly hadn't won him any friends. Besides, the plumbing was unreliable.

"Sounds good to me. And thanks," he said. "I'll admit I was wondering where I was going to lay my head tonight."

Stephens' smile faded a bit as he opened the door of the building. "Yes, I'm sure you were. I do wish you'd trust me to take care of that sort of thing. It is part of my job, you know." He cleared his throat. "Come. The flat is on the first floor."

They climbed the staircase in silence. Stephens stopped at one of the doors, and unlocked it, waving Newkirk to precede him.

The front door opened on a neat, if rather impersonal, sitting room. He couldn't see the rest of the flat from there, but if that first room was any indication, the place was sparsely, but adequately, furnished. No art on the walls or curtains on the windows, but all of the necessities were there. There were even a few extras, including a comfortable-looking sofa. And guests.

Mavis was sitting on that sofa, next to a man he didn't recognize. She was holding a baby.

It would be hard to say which of those things shocked him more. What was she doing here? Why had she come? He froze, staring at her, at them, then turned a quick, panicky glance on Stephens. He had to have brought her here, brought them here; logically, there was no other way she could have known where he was. But why? Why?

Stephens wouldn't have brought her here just so she could tell him off one last time. Would he? No, he couldn't have done. Nobody was that cruel. Nobody.

He stood in the doorway, his mind spinning, one hand still gripping the doorknob, white-knuckled, not sure whether he was supposed to enter. Not sure what was going to happen if he did.

He was sure that he couldn't take another scene like the last one. He just couldn't go through it again. He wasn't strong enough for that.

Nobody was.

When it became obvious that he would not—or, more accurately, could not—approach her, the mountain came to Muhammad; Mavis handed the child to her husband, got up, and walked towards Newkirk, who stood stock still, silently waiting for coup de grace. She seemed to have run out of words, too. They looked at each other for a moment, with lost years and missed opportunities and unspeakable memories filling the air around them.

"That's my daughter," she finally said, and swallowed hard. "Her name is Petra."

He blinked. Petra? The child was far too small to have been born and christened before… well, before any of it. And no one named a child after a traitor or a disgrace. Which in turn had to mean…

It was a good thing he'd kept a grip on that doorknob. An unexpected mercy can pack more of a wallop than predictable pain, and his knees nearly buckled under the weight of the overwhelming, pitiful relief that swamped him. He had stood in the dock and heard the words 'not guilty' with less emotion. It had been so long since he'd even let himself imagine something like this.

"She's even prettier than you were, Mave," he said softly, his heart pounding in his ears.

She nodded smug agreement, but her eyes were already wet, and her voice cracked. "Peter… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry about everything. I didn't mean it."

He stepped into the room, letting go of the door without a thought, and automatically pulled her close, just the way he had when she'd been small and cried over a skinned knee or a nightmare. As always, his own emotions faded from his notice; now it was only her distress he saw, only her pain he focused on soothing. It was either his best trait or his worst. "Hush now. I know. It's all right, luv. Don't even think of it anymore. It's all right."

"It's not all right," she said into the shoulder of his jacket. "I didn't know what to do. I made myself be angry, because that was just so much easier than letting myself admit that I was alone and afraid, and it was horrible of me." She lifted her head. She was crying in earnest now, but she looked straight at him with a desperate intensity, and the short, disjointed, staccato phrases tumbled out like pebbles before an avalanche. "I didn't mean it, Peter. I never meant it. I need you to know that. I love you. You're not just my brother. You're my father in every way that counts. You have to believe me—I never meant any of the terrible things I said, not really, not even before I found out what had really happened. I was just so frightened. For me and for you. Please. I'm so sorry. You have to believe me. You have to believe me."

"Of course I believe you," he said, smoothing her hair away from her tearstained face. "Shh. Don't fret yourself so, Mave darling. It's all right even if you did mean it. Don't you think I know how bad it all looked?"

"That shouldn't have mattered. You're family. I should have believed in you, even before they explained. I'm so sorry I didn't. I'll never forgive myself."

"No harm done. It's enough you believe me now, Mave. More than enough. All over and done with in any case. Just forget it and never think of it again." After a moment, wryly curious, he asked, "But who's 'they,' and what did 'they' tell you?"

"Well, first your friend Colonel Hogan tracked me down. He told me that he'd ordered you to say those things on the radio. That it was all his fault, not yours."

"That's the Guv for you," he said, with a crooked smile. "Not much he wouldn't do for his men."

"Well, he didn't tell me the whole truth. I didn't learn the rest of it until your friend Mr. Stephens knocked on my door with a wild story straight out of a film serial and enough proof to convince me that he wasn't a lunatic. Which, I admit, took a while."

He had? Newkirk looked back at Stephens, who had followed him into the room and quietly shut the door behind him. He nodded, with a faint smile.

Newkirk suddenly remembered that first interrogation-slash-negotiation. Agent What's-His-Name had offered this, offered to explain the whole sordid mess to Mavis. Newkirk had assumed that it was a lie, a trap, or both, and categorically refused. No one had mentioned it since. He'd never expected the man to actually go through with it. He'd never expected that it would matter either way. He'd never expected that she'd forgive him even if she did know. Never expected that she should.

He'd never expected to have a family again.

The man, presumably the husband, approached. "Hello," he said, somewhat uncomfortably, although that might have been partially due to the increasingly wriggly baby in his arms. "I'm Geoffrey Blake. Geoff. It's… ah… nice to meet you."

Newkirk looked him over. Young, not bad looking. Clean shaven. Plain, neat haircut. BBC Standard accent with a very faint hint of Liverpool lurking underneath. Smooth hands, clean fingernails, newish, decent quality suit—not bespoke, but it fit well enough and it hadn't belonged to three other people before he got it, either. Indoor job, then, with reasonably good pay. He'd served, during the war; there was enough of it left in his posture to be noticeable. Honest face. Kind eyes. The fellow looked more than a tad nervous, understandably enough, but it seemed to be meeting-the-relatives nervous, rather than get-this-criminal-away-from-my-wife nervous, and no one was immune to that. "Hello," he said. "Nice to meet you too. Thanks for taking such good care of Mave."

"Not that she needs much taking care of," Geoff said, with the adoring smile of the truly besotted. "If anything, she takes care of me. And now Patty, too."

"Too right," Newkirk agreed. "Welcome to the family, anyhow."

"Thank you. And… ah… welcome back to the family, Peter," Geoff said seriously. He passed the squirming baby back to her mother, (at which point she immediately stopped fussing,) and solemnly extended a hand as though they were sealing a deal.

And perhaps they were, at that. Newkirk took a breath, then extended his own hand. They shook. "Thanks. But my name's not Peter, not anymore. I'm John… no, wait. Make that Jack. Jack Selden."

The name still felt awkward on his tongue. He still wasn't sure he liked it. But there was no going back now, and he might as well get used to it first as last.

Geoff nodded understanding. "All right, Jack. I… never had a brother, growing up. I'm glad to have one now."

Either he meant it, or he was one hell of a good actor, Newkirk thought, still not quite believing that any of this was real. It was too much, too perfect. It was too much like getting everything he had tried to reconcile himself to losing, everything he had ever wanted, handed to him on a silver plate, and that just wasn't how the world worked. It was never that easy. There was always a catch, somewhere. Always a sting in the tail. He looked back at Stephens.

Stephens was still lurking by the door, silent and overlookable, careful to stand well away from a family scene in which he had no part. He handed Newkirk the key ring. "As promised," he said, with a nod. "You've finally made it back from the war, Agent Selden. Welcome home."

Newkirk took the keys—his keys, apparently— more or less automatically. "I guess I have, Stephens. Thank you."

"Oh, don't thank me," Stephens said, with a bit of mischief in his voice. "You've more than earned it, and I confidently expect that you'll continue to do so. We've a great deal of work to do, and you haven't even met the rest of our team yet. I want you in the office bright and early… the day after tomorrow. There should be suitable clothing in your bedroom, enough to get you through the first few days, anyhow."

Ah. That settled that, then. Not a one-off mission, after all. This was his life now. Newkirk nodded slowly, thinking it over, and unconsciously squared his shoulders under the burden. There were always going to be a great many things in the world that needed to be set right or, better yet, headed off at the pass. The shooting might have stopped, but the war wasn't over; that meant there was still work for an Unsung Hero. His job wasn't done yet.

All things considered, there were worse things to do with a life. Far worse.

"Yes, sir," he finally said. He smiled, and for the first time in... well, a bloody long time, it reached his eyes. "First thing in the morning."

"Splendid," said Stephens. "I'll see you then."

"Wait. Stephens… Just out of curiosity. That first day. What would you have done if I had just taken the identity papers and walked out?"

Stephens chuckled. "I would have been very, very surprised. Now go be with your family."

And he walked away, his own eyes a bit shiny, his faint smile a bit paternal, and feeling better—more hopeful—about the future than he had in more than a year. Some things couldn't be fixed.

But some could.

And would.

They—himself, his colleagues, and now the newly rechristened Selden, too—would see to it.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

And that was how it started. He did the job because someone had to. He did it because he was good at it. He did it because it was where he was needed. After a while, and it wasn't a long while, he did it because he was proud of it, proud that every morning that didn't have horrors splashed over the headlines was at least partially thanks to him. He did it because people were counting on him. He did it because heroism becomes second nature after a while. In the final analysis, he did it because he didn't have any other choice in the matter, and it had nothing to do with his legal history.

He did it because he was what he was.