A/N: We inch forward.


CHAPTER SEVEN


Ladder


Bartowski took a step toward her.

She edged closer to the end of the porch. She wasn't planning to run — she knew from Burbank she could not outrun him, and she had no idea where they were — but she wanted to keep distance between them.

Distance. It dawned on her: he let her touch him, Bartowski had let her — a moment before when she got up from the rocker — he had let her touch his chin, push him away. — Why wasn't he afraid of her? She was dangerous; he knew that.

Bartowski took a second step toward her, stopped. He caught her eyes with his.

"Reno's neither here nor there," he said, his eyes slipping to the side for a second before recapturing hers, "we need to talk about what you are doing for me." He motioned to the rocker with the gun and she obeyed.

He turned as she passed and faced her as she sat. He kept the gun pointed at her, holding it near his waist. As in Seattle, his gunhand did not waver.

She waited for him to speak.

Recalling Reno had exhausted her. She had not let herself remember any of that before, not really, not let herself go all the way back, not experientially, not as it had happened. She knew what she had done, sure, but as she might know it if answering True/False questions, and not as she would know it as the woman, the woman who had overbalanced the man on the stairs, or executed the two men in her dad's room.

Until now, her access to Reno had been in sentential black-and-white, not in existential technicolor. Despite the fierceness of what she just said, the memory of Reno had chased all her anger from her, leaving her feeling adrift and sad. Strange. It showed on her face; she could feel it showing there.

Unexpectedly, Bartowski doffed his navy watch cap, almost a gesture of respect.

Watch cap gone, the scar on his temple showed completely, thickest, angriest on his temple, but tied to a scarlet thread that ran from it up above his temple, into his close-cropped hair, another couple of inches toward the top of his head.

As she stared at it, he gave her a self-conscious glance, and then he cleared his throat.

Despite the recent welter of her emotions, she wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him, to ask about the scar.

It was his scar but it hurt her.

His self-consciousness increased. "That hat gets itchy after a while, especially when it warms up."

She blinked at his words; they sounded so much like his Burbank conversation. The morning had warmed since she first walked outside. Bartowski stuffed the watch cap into the rear pocket of his pants and started talking.

"That man you were going to terminate in Seattle. I need that man alive. He is a double-agent, a Fulcrum agent who is also a North Korean mole. I need to discover who he is dealing with, I need to trace the filiation that runs from him to Pyongyang. I likely can't do any of that if he is dead. Making those discoveries will move me up the Fulcrum ladder. I'm quite a few rungs up already, but I intend to climb to the top."

His tone was matter-of-fact, cool. On the heels of his Burbank comment, his words were bizarre: he'd gone from self-conscious Burbank boy to ambitious Fulcrum agent in one turn of a sentence.

It seemed too incredible. "Why would you want to be part of Fulcrum at all? After all they did to you, tried to do to you in Burbank? Your father killed Roark. Fulcrum was in disarray. Your father removed the Intersect. You were free — free to have the life you wanted…"

She paused and they looked at each other, the moment stretched tight between them like a rubber band. She had been quoting him, they both knew it; the next words were "...with the woman you wanted..." They both heard the words although neither spoke them.

He frowned again, that same extravagant frown as before, shook his head.

"That's not important now. The time for that conversation is gone. — The man, the North Korean mole, is to meet me here tomorrow, midday. I need you to pretend to be...well, my lover. He doesn't know you. He doesn't know you were tasked to terminate him."

He looked at her, not exactly asking a question but she nodded. As far as she knew, the man had no idea.

Bartowski nodded. "But he knows of you. It will throw him to find you here, with me. I'll tell him that I've recently turned you, that you are now a double-agent working for Fulcrum."

She shook her head sharply. "I don't understand. Why go to all this trouble? Why bring me into it? What the hell, Bartowski?"

He stared at her for a moment, his eyes darkening. "I don't owe you any explanations, Walker. Do it. I'll tell you more details tomorrow morning. Let's just get through today."

She huffed, mystified. "What happens when he leaves?"

"I leave. I call and release Jack. I let you go. — But you have to wait here twenty-four hours after I leave. I won't make the call to release Jack until then. He will call you here when he is free. I guarantee he will be fine. You can leave here, take that vacation."

"Just like that, with me knowing what I know? Knowing that you are Fulcrum? You'll let me leave?"

He nodded. She watched his face and could see no trace of a lie, although she now doubted her ability to read him.

None of it, none of it, made any goddamn sense. She needed time to think. "I want a shower. May I?"

He shrugged, nodded toward the inside of the cabin.

She went back inside, across the large room, toward the room she had slept in. As she went entered it, she noticed a stray sock back beneath the bed, pink. It was not hers. She heard Bartowski behind her so she did not react to what she saw.

He stopped. "I'll make some pancakes, — if you're hungry," he said, his tone neutral.

"I could eat," she answered and shut the door.