The Reality of Fantasy
Disclaimer: Own not, wish I did, etc etc etc.
She wondered what he would feel like.
The sinewy strength and iron-like muscles were a given, of course. A basic requirement for all the agents. But she wanted to know the rest. What his face would feel like, if he allowed stubble to gather along his jaw line or chased it away each morning with a razor. Whether or not his lips were soft and smooth, or rough and chapped, and if he kissed her would he do so gently and tenderly or hard and insistently. And each time she thought this she touched her own lips absently, wondering what they would feel like to him.
It was frowned upon, what she was doing. Becoming attached to anyone involved with Treadstone was simply not viable. Nicky had no choice, however. Conklin couldn't just lock her in an apartment with nothing but pictures and monitors and expect her to feel nothing, want nothing. But she had somehow convinced Conklin and Abbott that she was not unlike them, that she too could remain detached and emotionless. And she was good at her job, adept at keeping tabs on the agents scattered over the globe. She knew of their backgrounds, their training. She was aware of the number of women they had slept with and the number of people each had killed. She knew as much of their lives as they themselves did.
Jason wasn't any different. She knew what he ate, who he spoke to, where he breathed. It had been implicitly understood, however, that he would remain under careful surveillance. He was the prize, the culmination of years of hard work from both Abbott and Conklin. Every mission which Jason undertook was of the utmost importance.
Nicky would sometimes spend hours staring at his photographs, memorizing the planes of his face, the curve of his chin, the shape of his eyes. His face was broad, unthreatening. Not like Castel's. Castel, who had fucked her roughly up against the wall that night in Prague, who had buried his face in the crook of her neck, his teeth sharp and pointed, his fingers leaving murky bruises oh her hips and arms. When he had finished he spat on the ground as he hitched up his pants. Castel's face was wary and menacing. Nicky had never seen him smile.
Jason would be slow. He would caress her softly and murmur her name. And when he was done he would hold her.
When the report came through that he had gone to the bank in Zurich, no one knew what to think. His failure to assassinate Wombosi had sent shock waves through Treadstone. Jason never failed, and more importantly, Jason never strayed. It was known what had to be done, however. The program was to be protected at all costs.
Castel had been Conklin's choice to send to Paris. Hand to hand combat was his specialty. She was to clean up the aftermath, Conklin had informed her briskly on the phone. She folded her pallid hands beneath herself and waited, the silence of the apartment overpowering her. And when she discovered that Castel's body was lying in the middle of the street, that Jason and the woman he was with had fled, she was both horrified and sickly exhilarated.
She wondered if Conklin could hear the tremulous relief in her tone when she phoned him with the news, or if he was too caught up with the fact that he had fucked up, fucked up bad, and eventually, he would have to pay the ultimate price.
It wasn't as if she was happy that Castel was dead. She had loved him, for that brief time. Until she remembered that he didn't love her. He couldn't. It's what they were taught, after all. Love nothing but the program. So when she had found out she was pregnant, she didn't cry. She simply made an appointment with her doctor and took a day off work. And then she returned to her empty apartment and cried, wondering if she would ever live a normal life. Knowing that she probably wouldn't.
That night in Paris had been a mess. Nicky was methodical and thorough, traits she supposed she inherited from her father. She certainly hadn't gotten them from her mother, the strung-out junkie. The rushed clean up of the safe house that Conklin had ordered left her feeling out of sorts and disoriented.
She needed more time; she had to make sure everything was completely innocuous. After all, it was her job. It had always been her job to be perfect. Then Jason had shown up and shot everything to hell.
She knew he didn't recognize her. She had made so little an impression on him through two years that he merely pointed the gun at her for a few moments before dragging Conklin from the room.
Later, while she was being debriefed, Abbott had let it slip that she was the last living person who had seen Jason before he had disappeared again. Hearing this had produced a strange twinge in Nicky's chest, a slight flush to her cheeks. And she was overcome once more. Slipped once again into the elaborate fantasy world she had constructed.
A world where she had chosen to major in Art History in college. A world where her father hadn't died when she was so young, taking away her mother's sanity and much of Nicky's childhood along with him. Where she could look back upon her life and feel something beyond the hollow emptiness that she felt now.
A world where she wouldn't have to wonder how Jason would feel, wouldn't have to imagine his hands in her hair and his breath on her neck.
But reality always draws her back. Taunted her with her lonely apartment, her unfriendly cat. Tossing her empty nights in her face.
She simply wants peace.
She wants Jason.
Two things which would always remain farbeyond her grasp.
-end-