an. A long overdue update… apologies for the wait. Life got in the way.

Luna Your review made me smile; I enjoy chatting too. Sorry it always seems to take me so long to update this one! The episode that sparked my 'time to write fanfic' was Minefield (S3 EP5). I was already well on my way after Sasha was introduced. From the jump, she brought out a different, not previously seen side of Tom, and then his choices in that episode solidified my intrigue. It's rather telling and big that Tom would need to make a decision for personal reasons while in command after around ten days of rediscovering each other. I had to sit and dissect the psychology of that. One of these days I will need to do an outtake fic where I post all the storylines that got changed and the aftermath of Danny being dead (I wrote three scenes). I am still super excited about the CIA fic! I wish it hadn't already been like… a year since the concept came about, but I am determined that I will write it and post it no longer how long it takes. I'm glad you liked Sasha's growth in including Tom in things she would otherwise have done alone. I'm laughing at your single dad Danny comment… he is definitely in a conundrum and looking to blow everyone up as though that will solve anything. LOL. This chapter kind of answers a little of your questions about the Montano/Martinez/Tavo/Team situation! Reiss really put them in the shit and left their options limited! Also, I'm glad you liked the tying of Sasha's mother's storyline. Sasha needed some closure on that front, and objectively, Sasha has been an unreliable narrator on the subject because it was all witnessed from her 12-year-old limited perspective. I kind of also feel sad for her mother… but also maintain, she is a very twisted individual herself. I could write a mostly original fiction one day in the distant future about her mission in the US, but I will refrain until I have written all the TLS, lol.

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Tuesday, May 21st, 2019—Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Sighing, Kara flicked her pen away and stared at the blank notepad with Danny's opened letter resting beside it. This had been the routine for a week. After Burk assumed command and she retired to her cabin, she'd stare at the paper, unable to formulate a response. He'd given her what she'd asked for, at least. An open and honest account of all that plagued him, and yet, it was five years too late. Couldn't get past the knowledge that the truth she'd been seeking came only after the near shitstorm of two concurrent court-martials and not because of choice. Partnership. Loyalty.

Knowing both Admirals and Sasha had also been omitting weighed heavy, but ultimately this was about her marriage, and somewhere in the weeks that followed, Kara recognized that even if one of them came clean, she'd still face the same predicament. Still feel the depths of Danny's betrayal… and she didn't know what to do.

Thursday, May 23rd, 2019—USSOUTHCOM, Mayport, Florida

Chin steepled between forefinger and thumb, Tom observed Meylan, who stood at the head of their conference table.

"As of this morning, Tavo began moving forces south, away from the line in Mexico, toward the Panama Canal." Joseph toggled the screen, a grainy image of Martinez, Salazar, and Tavo conversing upon the porch of his compound, displayed. "Armando's men corroborated the intel from Martinez—so far, he's buying that we intend to take Panama, and Martinez believes only two of the other Generals remain loyal to Gustavo…"

Though he stayed silent, Tom squinted.

"Just like Montano planned," Mike drawled. "How are we lookin' on a contingency?"

The question was directed at Sasha, and Tom let his gaze slide right, where he watched her shift in the chair and then exhale.

"Short of double-crossing him? Which I think we all know Montano expects, and more than likely, has a bullet proof failsafe to prevent—there isn't one." Visibly, she swallowed. "I can't find a single piece of leverage that tips this in our favor."

A stony silence blanketed the room, and Slattery and Jeter exchanged looks.

"So, we don't." All eyes landed on Tom. "We let it play out. Do the opposite of what Montano expects and keep him guessing."

Sasha's brow furrowed, and Tom lowered his hand. "He doesn't know what we're talkin' about in here. We can use that to our advantage."

"What exactly are you suggesting?" Meylan clarified with evident skepticism.

Tom's facial gesture was flippant. "We use his playbook. He managed to convince everyone that Camp X was critical to winning the war when it wasn't… including Tavo. Right now, everyone believes the only way to end this thing is to take back that canal and invade."

"It's not?" Mike chimed, a hint of bemusement at play.

Turning left, Sasha's lip quirked. "I'm not following."

"I don't buy that Montano really has control of Martinez," he rasped. "I think he's underestimating him." Tom's steely gaze slid right and met Sasha's carefully guarded one. "Montano's not afraid to die… but he is."

While inhaling, Sasha's eyelids fluttered, and she once again shifted in the seat.

"We can use that," Tom said.

'I wasn't gonna kill him, Sash. I just needed to know.'

'Know what?'

'What he's afraid of.'

"We should blackmail the General?" Meylan hedged.

"I'm saying we play into his paranoia—"

"Pit them against each other," Mike muttered, interrupting.

Tom nodded. "Proceed with the operation and invasion as planned—take out what's left of the Columbian fleet—wait for Montano and Martinez to assume control from Tavo and make them turn on each other."

Eyes narrowed; Sasha tilted her head. "And then what?"

"And then we deal with whoever's left. Run a black op while everyone's distracted… clean house."

"Reiss will never go for that—" she started.

His neck quirked in a mildly arrogant way. "I never said anything about taking this to Reiss."

Once more a heavy silence fell across the table, and Tom waited, making eye contact first with Russ, then Joseph, and Mike, before landing upon Sasha again. Her jaw was set in a way that screamed contention, but when no argument forth came, it clicked that she was drawing the parallel to toppling Arias.

"Then who ends up with the army?" Mike asked.

After lingering a few seconds more, Tom switched his focus. "We split them between Mexico, Cuba, and Jamaica. Convince them to form a long-term alliance."

Meylan, who'd remained standing, unfolded both arms but did not speak, and considered the proposal. "Wouldn't exactly be the first time you've compelled me to lie to The President of the United States," he finally drawled, and Tom suppressed the smirk. "And in the absence of an alternative option we've spent weeks trying to find… I don't have a counterargument."

Through peripheral Tom saw Sasha tuck her chin and then grind her jaw. Absently, Meylan tapped the projector remote against the table before clutching it in his grip and straightening.

"So, we're agreed?" Tom murmured, once again scanning the room.

Mike's head bobbed. "Agreed."

"Yes, sir," Jeter said, low timbre rolling smoothly from his lips.

That left Sasha, who was rolling a pen between her fingers. Reluctantly, she made a facial gesture and tilted her head, conceding, and Tom faced Meylan again.

"Start skewing the intel we give to Montano—but do it slow. Just enough to plant the seed—" he peered at Jeter and Mike "—and in the meantime, I'm gonna work on putting space between us and POTUS. That is all."

Formally relieved, multiple chairs scraped, and Meylan turned off the projector before gathering some files and exiting with the others.

The second they were alone, Tom spoke. "Sasha—"

"It's a moot point, Tom." She dropped the pen. "Nothing I say is going to change the fact that we're sitting here with our backs against the wall, and a gun to our heads, doing exactly the same things that got us into this situation."

The seconds seemed to slow, and he blinked away the visual. The sound of a bullet firing loud as though beside his ear recoiling through his skull. Around the armrests, his hands fisted, chest gripped by an immediate intangible vice.

Her palm closed around his wrist.

"Hey…" then another, cool, but insistent on his cheek. "I'm sorry… I wasn't thinking." Her words were muted by tinnitus and rushing blood. "Tom." Both hands were on his face now, and she was no longer sitting, yet he couldn't perceive at what point he'd pivoted the chair, or when he'd hunched forward, nor the progression of time—"I'm right here"—but what he could do was taste the bile and feel his own demise in the emptiness of that stateroom again.

"You can't clear him."

Dr. Eugene Grantham, a man in his mid-sixties who, before the Red Flu, had been on the precipice of retirement, lowered his file and removed the simple, thin framed, round reading spectacles from his nose, to place them on the desk.

Sasha stepped further into the office and occupied the armchair opposite the psychologist. "I just had to stop him from having a full-blown panic attack because I said the words 'gun to our heads'."

Through his nose, Gene sighed. "You know I can't discuss his treatment plan without both of you signing the waiver."

Sasha pursed her lips. The waiver they'd agreed to forgo in order to mitigate their mutually controlling tendencies—and it became apparent in those seconds that she was doing the opposite of what she'd agreed—except she didn't know how to sit with this. And it was yet another example of being on the other side that ushered things into perspective.

She pinched the bridge of her nose, and then gestured, "Okay look—the point is that he knows how to fake it to pass a standard psych eval—we all do—"

"Sasha." Gene's lip quirked into a tepid smile. "I've been doing this for a long time. Trust the process—and if you need a session today, I can fit you in at three o'clock—" a timely knock interrupted "—but I have a commitment now."

Though the knot of anxiety behind her sternum had loosened a modicum, the unrelenting urge to do something still consumed like an untended itch. "I'll take the fifteen hundred."

"I'll see you at three," he confirmed, penning it in a leather-bound planner.

Somewhat embarrassed by her own outburst, Sasha rose from the chair and smoothed her blazer before opening the door. After processing who was waiting to enter, her shock became evident.

"Coop," Danny mumbled, an air of awkwardness that didn't quite fit surrounding them. He hadn't told her he was considering—let alone actively—seeing Grantham again.

"Danny," she murmured, stepping out, "I didn't—"

"I've been thinking—about some things." He broke off, conflict playing across his features while avoiding eye contact. "I'll call you later…"

Mute, she merely nodded and watched him enter Grantham's office before assuming position over the war room on the upper walkway. After some time, she stiffened before relaxing again when a voice alerted her to a presence. Mike. He settled beside her, elbows leaned on the railing, and casually tilted his bag of jerky in her direction.

"No thank you," she answered, though the sight of food reminded her she'd skipped breakfast and should probably eat lunch.

For a moment, all that followed was quiet crunching and the low hum of voices below. "So—we're back to tryna kill Martinez, huh?"

She closed both eyes and sagged, more than relieved to know someone else perceived the danger. "Apparently so."

Mike hummed. "Presented one hell of a compelling angle, though."

Despite her misgivings, Sasha smirked. "Did you expect any differently?"

Her comment surfaced a similar reaction. "Nope."

Sighing, Sasha straightened. "If there's one thing Tom knows how to do, it's get what he wants—" she turned to face him "—I guarantee you by the end of today, he has approval from Reiss to run the whole operation from Cuba and bring Montano and everyone with him."

Mike peered toward the Columbian defector's office, his expression becoming sour. "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

Sasha followed Mike's gaze, arms now folded, with her tongue wedged between her lips and teeth, and perhaps it was poetic that Montano exited, hovering when he noticed them both staring across the walkway to its opposite side.

"Son of a bitch," Mike muttered, rummaging through the unbranded bag to choose another piece of jerky.

"I can hear you thinking," Tom sighed.

Audibly, Sasha shifted in their bed, and though both blackouts were drawn, he could still picture her expression. It had been close to an hour of restless silence, and while he knew intimately the position Sasha found herself in, he still needed her to voice it.

"What's goin' on, Sash?"

For several seconds, she hesitated before confessing, "You scared me today."

Equally, he let the comment marinate before responding, rejecting his natural inclination to deflect… he'd promised to try, after all. "How?"

Sasha moved until propped upon an elbow and turned toward him. "Because I can't tell if you want Montano in Cuba to keep him away from Reiss—or because you need him to get to Martinez…"

Were the room not dark, she'd perceive his telling squint, and then he silenced the comment, 'why not both?'

"And I'm not convinced that if I asked you to look me the in the eye right now and tell me you'll walk away if it's right, that you could." Dead silence followed, then the sound of her swallow. "I know you, Tom. You made your choice the second Reiss made his."

Several seconds passed, the muted whirring noise of the fan oscillating through the room, his only distraction from the visuals haunting him. "They tried to kill you, Sasha," he murmured softly. "This was never gonna end any other way."

He could visualize the way she reacted, and Tom reached out to skim his thumb across her cheek. "But I meant what I said—I don't have to kill him to get what I want… I'm just loading the gun."

The way she breathed was communicative in its own right, despite the comment she made clashing with its meaning. "And Grantham cleared Cuba?"

His thumb skimmed again. "He cleared Cuba."

Saturday, June 1st, 2019—Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

As their C130 taxied across the Cuban airstrip, Danny perceived that the last time his stomach had reacted so tumultuously had been on the Nathan James inside Kara's cabin. More than a month prior. Outside of missions, never in their five years had they gone this long without speaking. His nerves kept him distracted from the distinct but silent battle of wills in which the Admiral and Montano were engaged, and he glanced at Sasha, who was dozing. The choice elicited a complex mixture of guilt which left him feeling wedged between two incompatible opposites. She was his confidant, and yet Kara was right, and he'd been floundering in trying to rebalance what was appropriate. How to move forward differently than he had before…

The plane stopped, and Sasha stirred, righting her head from its slumped position. Unable to stand the inactivity any longer, Danny left the bench and fussed with his pack, preparing himself to come face-to-face with Kara once the ramp lowered. A wall of humidity hit, followed by the scent of fuel, damp concrete, and salt, and then the breathlessness of seeing her stood shoulder to shoulder with Captain Aguilar, Eduardo Fuentes, Captain Utt, and the Jamaican Lieutenant General, Dixon.

A security escort immediately boarded and retrieved Montano, and the Admiral and Meylan disembarked, followed by Sasha. He hauled his pack of personal effects higher, its weight grounding and familiar, and tried to ignore the petty need for Kara to acknowledge him, despite knowing she wouldn't.

"Admiral," she said.

"Captain."

They shook hands.

He missed the sound of her voice.

And it was all he could focus on after climbing into their transport and being navigated toward the docks in a couple of open-top Humvees. She hadn't even so much as glanced at him. And he didn't know whether to be relieved or frustrated that upon reaching Nathan James, she became immediately engaged in the scheduled wardroom briefing, along with everyone else, leaving him alone to babysit a supply transfer.

He flinched when a hand landed on his shoulder and spun around.

"Chill, man," Pablo said, palms extended in surrender. "That kinda distraction will get you smoked."

"Dick," Danny grumbled, leaning in for a one-armed brief hug.

"Take it you and the old lady still aren't talking?"

"Can we not?"

A sincere type of sympathy lurked in Pablo's expression and itched up his spine before his friend dropped it. Instead, Pablo placed both hands on his hips and scanned the base, inclining his chin toward the ramp connecting the James to the docks. "Not part of the big meeting?"

"Above my paygrade, man," he said, adjusting the ball cap to better shield his eyes from the sun that had just broken through morning rainclouds.

"CNO and the Vice?" Pablo inquired, brows lifted. "In Cuba? We invading already?"

Danny shook his head. "I don't think so…"

"Coop didn't tell ya?"

"No… she said it's need to know."

Pablo squinted.

Switching gears, Danny watched from a distance as Nina Garside engaged in some type of interview with one of Utt's men—didn't know the name. Come to think of it, the base was teaming with troops at levels he hadn't witnessed since Iraq. "How's Miller been? Last I heard, he was already starting physical therapy?"

"He's good. Knows how to fight—think it helps that his girl's down here with him." Pablo stopped scanning the base and made eye contact. "Visitations open til' twenty-one hundred. Burk and I were planning to go, but he might have to reschedule with all the brass showing up…"

It occurred only then to Danny that Pablo wasn't engaged in any kind of duty. "You on liberty?"

Pablo nodded.

"Give me an hour to finish up here, and I can swing it."

Hours later, after solidifying the intel on the Columbian Fleet and discussing at length potential landing zones, Sasha was relieved and found herself watching a contentious flag football game between the Marines, Cuban, Mexican, and Jamaican armies—and some of their own—Danny, for one. Pablo, Brawler, and her flight crew… Wolf and Azima. The field was parched, lines barely detectable, and one of the field goals was collapsed and pulled away to the side, yet it still ushered a flavor of the old world. Those months and years she'd spent overseas, living on base, spending liberty with the various branches that came and went.

She sipped a beer while sitting in the stands, content to enjoy the soft breeze and golden haze of late afternoon, hoping Tom would break free from the endless list of people seeking his audience. He'd always loved football, and more than anything, the lack of moments they'd had to do something so normal as of late, left an ache in her heart.

What ifs.

The sun had turned from orange to deep pink by the time another transport arrived, this time revealing Kara, Burk, and Tom. Given their presence, she assumed Meylan had taken command of the James for the evening. What she hadn't expected, however, was for Kara to ascend the stands with not one, but two beers in hand, and then sit beside her… and while they'd been interacting all day—professionally—this was a conversation that had long been overdue.

Without comment, Kara extended the bottle, gaze still focused on the game field, and eyes hidden by a pair of aviators.

The knot in Sasha's stomach eased a fraction; reading it for what it was. An olive branch. She took it, placing her near-empty one beside her foot, and picked at the label.

Sasha had planned this conversation, role-played it ad nauseum mentally, and yet now… every explanation she'd attempted to find deserted her. What did it matter, anyway? Nothing she said would change the facts, and Kara didn't need the insult of excuses.

"I'm sorry," Sasha started quietly. "I know that doesn't—" for several moments she broke off, before trying again. "I'm sorry that I've been lying to you... and I'm sorry that I got him caught up in this…"

Almost imperceptibly, Sasha saw Kara's brow furrow.

"It was my idea," Sasha continued. "After the kid, I'd already made up my mind—and I went to Danny and told him." She swallowed. "I never should have done that—especially when I knew he wasn't in a position to say no."

For several moments, Kara remained silent, taking her own long sip and Sasha tried to mitigate her anxious tension by observing the field, only to see that Danny was watching from the sidelines.

"Would you have told the Admiral? If it hadn't been so bad when you got back?" Kara finally asked, the line of questioning catching her momentarily off guard.

Something cold curdled in Sasha's gut, and she glanced at Tom who was standing beside Burk facing the field engaged in conversation.

"No," she whispered.

Slowly, Kara turned her head left. "Why not?"

Her cheeks hollowed, heat behind her eyes that took several seconds to blink away. "Because it makes it real—and I still don't know how to deal with that."

Once more, Kara turned toward the field and sipped. "What did he do when you told him?"

Again, Sasha blinked and waited until she was sure her voice wouldn't waver. "I didn't... not right away… even after he had to break me just make me admit I wasn't fine I still tried to keep it a secret—it was days later and I—I couldn't even look at him… I was so scared that he'd leave, but the way I was… something had to give, so I came clean." Sasha paused. "He told me he loved me." Her voice tightened. "Exactly the way I am—and then he asked me to marry him."

Kara's chin lowered, the way she swallowed visible.

"I know the situation is different… especially now, but he lives for you and Frankie, Kara."

The other woman's jaw ticked. "You're right to feel betrayed—by all of us—but I hope you can hear that he didn't tell you not because he doesn't love or trust you… it's because you and Frankie are the only things he doesn't know how to live without."

Sniffing, Kara again took a sip and then studied the beer between her hands, a lull falling between them filled only by the jeers of opposing teams on the field. After several moments, Kara scoffed, the sound tinged with bitterness.

"You know what the worst part is?" she began. "If he'd told me back then, I probably would have said the same thing that the Admiral did." For a time, she paused. "But he's always been this way. I can't get a goddamn thing out of him until it all goes to shit."

Wetting her lip, Sasha tipped her head. "He needs to change," she agreed. "We all do…"

Inhaling, Kara finished the beer in a few more gulps and then stood, but before descending the stands as Sasha assumed, she paused. "For what it's worth—I can forgive you." Her body half twisted toward Sasha. "With time."

Sasha blinked.

"But I don't know about him."

Unable to speak without betraying too much emotion, Sasha merely nodded, her own bottle clutched hard in her grip. She watched Kara leave and join Burk below; the action prompting Tom to excuse himself and ascend, taking the seat Kara had occupied only moments before. The sun was almost below the horizon, light now bathing the fields in a blue tone that seemed to gleam from his eyes.

That cold feeling thawed under the shelter of his gaze, and he smiled in his trademark indiscernible way before taking her hand and kissing the back of it, lacing their fingers together, and returning attention to the game.