A/N: A short story.

This popped into my head on New Year's Eve. Five chapters, each posted about a week apart. A gritty little spy tale containing a few bits of experimentation.

Maintenance

Chapter One

La Rambla

She tried to remember where she was last year.

She couldn't, despite her trained memory, obedient, agile, quick to the helm, like everything about her, the myriad skills in her vast skillset.

But not just now, this moment, not in this seedy bar, barely lit, on this New Year's Eve, feeling flat. Someone had swept the floor, but only swept the dirt and glass and used napkins in meaningless patterns or in small hills against the wall.

She had been on a mission last year — and that was part of the reason she couldn't remember.

She flushed mission memories like she flushed tampons.

Yeah, yeah.

That was a no-no, flushing tampons, but, on a mission, in deep cover, you do what you have to do, you leave no trail, if possible. Even your blood type might give you away, possibly be used against you, weaken or ruin a cover. She was a freak for control, always, a freak. She had survived this long, climbed to the top in a profession built out of liars, cheats, and corpses, climbed by controlling herself, her thoughts, her feelings, her habits, even her biology.

She rubbed her forearm, the barely noticeable scar on her arm where the CIA contraceptive was implanted. If she pushed hard with her fingers, she could vaguely trace its shape. The implant was overkill, really. She used sex on missions, but only empty promises of sex, not the actual deed. Not that the marks she made promises to knew the promises were empty. They never did. Lying about her feelings, pretending to be aroused, these were so familiar to her that she no longer knew if she could tell the truth about such things.

It had been a long, long time since she had been with a man. At a certain point, desire itself seemed like another item to be controlled. She saw to herself between missions, routinely buying new batteries at the airport when she got back to DC.

AC/DC, all electronics — I might as well be an appliance. Maybe I am. Maybe that's what I've become.

She had no idea if she could even…you know…get there with a man anymore, whether a man could arouse her enough to make that happen. She had felt nothing real around a man forever, no stirrings. Not that eligible men had not tried, partners sometimes, or men she met during her rare, brief downtimes. None affected her. A stone would have been more reactive. She had become numb, uncomfortably numb, so numb that sometimes, even in her bedroom in DC, in the quiet electric hum of seeing to herself, she had wondered if she was faking it for her own benefit. The release was inconsequential, an itch scratched, nothing more; the activity seemed a waste of batteries, another empty promise. She kept at it out of disciplined self-maintenance, like she kept at running and flossing and sleeping. She did not want suddenly to lose control of herself because she had not…maintained herself. Her life was a long, dull sulk of inappetence.

She sipped her watered-down drink. She was at the bar on the off-chance that an informant would show, give her information. She was in deep-cover, working a mark in Barcelona. He was a rich, obnoxious man, self-satisfied, narcissistic, fussy. Javier Coosur. He would not be caught dead in a place like this, and that was why she was there, waiting. If her informant did not show, no problem. Javier was supposed to be busy all weekend; she could try again tomorrow.

Luckily, her cover had her working as an interpreter for Javier; she had not been inserted as a love interest and was under no orders to become such, although she had felt his oily eyes slide across her often enough. It helped that she would be forty this new year; on January 1st, tomorrow, not that anyone cared, including her. Her age itself made her less attractive, despite the fact that she had retained her good looks, kept her figure. Men like Javier weren't seriously interested unless a woman was in her twenties. Not that he wouldn't be willing to sleep with her, but he wouldn't invest time or effort in doing so. That energy he would save to spend on younger women, still in bloom, not in maintenance. Conquests. A woman like her would be less conquest than a pleasant interlude.

Hell, Javier would probably regard me as part of his self-maintenance.

The brief flash of a mental picture, Javier's manicured hands on her flesh, made it crawl.

"Can I refresh that for you?" the bartender asked in decent English.

He seemed bored, despite the bar seeming crowded. Of course, the crowd was not festive, not interactive. Most of the people there were, like her, keeping to themselves or to the small group with which they entered. The hubbub of chatter was discernible but no particular conversations. The only sign of the holiday was the crowd, there, then, not the crowd's behavior.

The door opened. She looked up but hid her motion by sipping her drink, looking toward the door by looking into the mirror on the other side of the bar.

A man walked in, tall, curly-headed. His curly hair was dark brown but streaked with gray. Unlike virtually anyone else in the bar, the man smiled as he came inside. He was wearing a beaten, brown leather jacket over a black sweater, jeans, boots the same color as his jacket. If he had on the hat, he would have been a taller, non-scowling Indiana Jones. She was not much for movies — frivolities — hardly ever taking the time to watch them, but, like everyone, she knew that character. The man had a piece of paper in his hands. He looked at it, making sure he had it, not reading it, then scanned the bar.

He did not attempt to hide what he was doing.

Amateur.

His eyes stopped on her. He had been looking for her. Another sip of her drink allowed her to look at him more closely. If he was a Spanish native, he affected American clothing. If he was a tourist, there was little touristy about him. He puzzled her but she did not react to him.

He walked across the grimy bar. She could hear the dirt beneath his boots grind as he reached her. "Hi, I was told you speak English?"

She nodded but did not speak. She'd keep her accent, real or contrived, to herself until she understood who this man was. He held out the piece of paper. Under the table, she pulled her small pistol from her bag, aimed it at his crotch. But she did it all inside the motion of her reaction to him.

Using her other hand, she took the paper. He went on. "A man stopped me outside, down the street, and asked me to give you this. I refused…" she raised her eyebrows, "but he kept at me, and then he told me that if I delivered it, the woman I delivered it to would make my effort worth it." A grin served to finish his explanation. She stayed silent. "I'm Chuck."

She slipped her gun back in her back and answered him in her natural voice. "Hello, Chuck. I'm Rita." It was her cover name, the name her informant used. The piece of paper in her hand was folded, and Chuck glanced down at it. "The guy who gave that to me — he seemed to think it was important. He was right about you, so…"

"Right about me?' Rita asked, too many things on her mind at once to follow the comment.

"That you made the delivery worth it."

Rita had no doubt that the informant had said that. It sounded like him. He was a dandy and it was obvious he liked looking at her. Unlike Javier, he didn't seem to think her age dulled her beauty. But more than being cheap or liking to leer, her informant was a coward. If he sent Chuck in his place, then something was up, had changed.

At any rate, this Chuck was just an innocent courier, a drone. A nice drone. "Thanks." She opened the piece of paper, holding it so that Chuck could not read it, although he might have unfolded it outside.

Javier's timetable moved back. No delivery until Monday night. One of his men has been following me. Don't worry, I will lose him then find someone to carry this to you (as a precaution). H.

Rita looked up. Chuck was not trying to read the piece of paper, but he was watching her read it.

Rita shook her head internally. Her informant, Henri, was the only person she knew who would use parentheses in such a note. But, parentheses or not, she was not meeting him tonight, and the delivery that Javier was waiting for — the cache of weapons — was not going to arrive on Sunday, as she had expected. She refolded the paper and started to get up when she remembered Chuck standing there. He was still watching her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I was just wondering what you were going to do. I didn't read the note, I didn't, but that guy, the guy with the killer halitosis, he said it was important."

Rita frowned. "It was, but it was just about something I needed to know, not something I needed to do."

"Oh."

Rita felt a surprising spark of response. "Why do you say that?"

"Um, because you give off this action vibe."

She decided to swat him. "Is that a come-on?" Her voice was chilly.

He looked horrified. "No, no. Not that kind of action. I meant more like, I don't know, action-hero action, like…like…"

"It's okay," she said, warming her voice and smiling. She chuckled low and took a sip of her drink. "I was just screwing with you."

He looked relieved and thankful for a moment, then he sat down. "That was cruel, you know?"

His smile mitigated the charge but Rita nodded. "I suppose it was. Uncalled for. So, you're from the States, Chuck?"

"Yeah, California kid, although I live in Milwaukee these days. I'm here on business; I come two or three times a year. Love Barcelona but never really get a chance to enjoy it. I do what I have to do and then head home. Long flights for short stays."

Rita surprised herself again when she responded with a fellow sufferer's sigh. "Tell me about it. That's pretty much been my life since — well since the end of high school, I guess."

"Really, you've been traveling overseas for that long?"

"Mostly overseas. Sometimes in the States. I am good at languages, a child of the Tower of Babel, and it's been both a blessing and curse. I've been to lots of places but hardly ever seen them. I see little bits and pieces, but never wholes, you know."

He gestured to the bartender, holding up two fingers then pointing one at Rita's drink. The bartender nodded in response and grabbed two glasses.

"I hope you don't mind. I bought you another but don't feel compelled to drink it. If you need to leave, go ahead, or if you don't want my company, I can move to another table, leave you alone."

She did not want to be left alone, for him to leave her alone. "No, stay, and thanks. The drinks are weakish, but they taste okay. It turns out I don't have anything pressing to do right now. So, business brought you here at the New Year?"

"Not normally. I'm usually here in Spring, Summer, and Fall. But this year I have to be here now. I design educational software, mainly for use for college study abroad companies, and one of my most important is in Barcelona, hosts study abroad in the city, and I'm here helping them with a rather massive software update. Or, rather, I'm done with it, done early. I was just out walking around the city. The architecture's amazing — and not just the Gaudi."

The bartender came with two drinks and put one down in front of Rita, the other in front of Chuck. She finished the one she had been drinking and handed the empty glass to the bartender.

"My name is Rita, by the way," she lied.

Chuck raised his glass. "Hi, Rita. Good to meet you."

"You too," she raised hers. "Mud in your eye." She took a long swallow.

He sipped his drink, looking at her again. She found that she liked him looking at her, although she could not quite decide how he was looking at her. No modifier seemed to capture the specific quality of the look, the thoughtful sensitivity of his hazel eyes.

Thoughtful sensitivity. So the woman who carries out occasional termination orders and flushes tampons waxes poetic. Weird.

She was never one for poetry, for sentiment. Poetry was just poor prose, sentiment a failure of self-discipline.

But she did like him looking at her. He was interested in her — that was obvious — but, oddly, she was interested in him, and the way he looked at her affected her. She couldn't sort or name the look, and didn't care to at the moment. But it was interesting.

They sat for a minute and Chuck grew reflective.

"What?" Rita asked.

"Mud in your eye? I was just thinking I've never heard that in real life, just the movies."

Rita glanced away for a moment, then back. "It's something my dad used to say."

"Oh. Yeah, my dad was full of dad phrases. Aces — he used to tell me I was aces. It was a silly, old-fashioned word, but I liked it. I miss him."

Rita looked down and then took another gulp from her glass. Careful, Sarah — Careful Rita. Just because you ended up with a night off don't get sloppy. You're still Rita, still Javier's interpreter, still undercover.

"I don't miss mine, sorry to say. The older I've gotten, the clearer I've gotten on what a bad influence he was. Sucks when your father's a negative role model." Her tone was sad and softly fierce.

Chuck nodded, sympathy, genuine sympathy, for her in his eyes. Under the table, she clenched her hand, touched by his response.

"That the worst — when you love someone you know is bad, or bad for you, or a bad example. Parents can put their kids in terrible double-binds, hating what they love, loving what they hate."

Trying to recover from his response, regain her inner balance, she gave him a smirk. "Thanks, Dr. Freud."

He blushed, blushed enough that it was visible even in the dim lights. "Sorry, I didn't mean…"

She shook her head, her smirk quickening to a smile. "Just screwing with you again. You're right. About the double-binds. Life's full of Catch 22s, of one sort or another. Or mine's been, anyway."

Rita pushed her drink farther from her. She felt closer to this man than she should. She was in deep cover, in constant danger, and she had just met this man.

He did not seem to notice the changed placement of her glass or, if he did, take it to be significant. He was staring just past her, into space, his face still red but the red fading.

"My mom walked out on us when my sister and I were young. She was twelve, I was nine. My mom and I were close, really close. When she walked out of our house, it was like my heart walked out of my chest."

Rita felt her chest tighten, her eyes sting. Shit, no one talks to me like this. Like I'm a person, capable of human interaction. "Did she ever come back? Get in touch?"

"No. Never. My dad kinda went off the deep end hunting for her. My sister and I had to commit him a couple of years ago. I guess what I said earlier made it sound like he was dead; he's not. But he's...gone. He'd always been imbalanced, I guess you'd say, too smart for his own good. Mom's abandoning us made it worse — my sister and I took over the household, for all practical purposes. He managed to keep his job — he had a research position at UCLA, and in the lab, his crazy didn't stand out that much — but when he was home he was always at a computer, searching. At least for the first years after she left."

"For your mom?"

"Yeah, but the weird thing is that he never hired a PI, never reported her missing. My sister and I didn't realize it at the time, but later we did. We suggested it to him but he told us: 'They can't help.' Eventually, he seemed to give up; the last time I asked him about her all he said was that she must be dead by now. But he's not, so I don't know why he'd say that."

Rita knew she should stand up, say goodbye, and leave. People didn't tell her stories like this, almost never, and on the few occasions when people did, neither the stories nor the storytellers touched her. They weren't really talking to her, they were talking to her cover, and she heard them as whoever she was pretending to be. A genuine, involuntary emotional response was always a bad idea.

No feelings but the ones you choose, Rita. Better yet, none but those you pretend. Stand up and say goodbye to the handsome man.

She reached all the way to her drink and, as she brought it to her lips, commiserated. "Not knowing, that must be hard. Do you have any idea why she left?" I should leave. Leave, Rita.

"No, we thought she was happy, at least my sister, Ellie, and I both did. Dad never suggested that she wasn't. She never said she wasn't." He was silent for a moment, staring at his glass as he swirled the remaining drink in it. He looked up. "She was like you. She traveled a lot. All over."

Rita nodded. She was unsure what to say next. She had small practice at small talk, at meeting real people, non-marks, non-informants, non-agents. Virtually everyone who figured in her life figured into it as part of the spy life. Her life was the spy life. She had no other life. She was nothing but a spy. When she was in DC, during her downtime, she wasn't really Sarah Walker — there was no Sarah Walker. No, during her downtimes, she was nobody, no one. She was only a real person when she was a fake person.

Now, that's fucked up.

Rita still had not gotten up, said goodbye, left. She held her drink in her hand and put it down, close to her again, in easy reach. She reached up and brushed her hair back from her face. "What work did your mom do, what took her globetrotting?"

"She worked for insurance firms. As an investigator. I never actually knew that much about the details. She worked in some sort of freelance capacity, although Dad said she most often worked for Berkshire Hathaway."

"Oh, big, big company. I know the name but not much about them."

"Same with me. I did once try to find my Mom through them but they gave me the run-around, and when Dad found out, he went ballistic, told me that he'd tried them and that they would tell no one anything."

Chuck did not seem to attach any special importance to that, just another sad fact in a sad story, but it struck Rita as unusual. Such a company might be secretive but they could usually be moved to share certain information, some information. The thought passed.

"So, you're an interpreter, is that right? I assume, given where we are, you speak Spanish?"

"And Catalan."

"What else?"

"German, French, Russian, Chinese, Korean..."

Chuck laughed, shaking his head. "Tower of Babel, no joke. I assume that list goes on for a long while, probably to languages I wouldn't even recognize as languages?"

"It does go on for a while," she smiled, feeling slightly embarrassed but also pleased by his assumption, his compliment to her, her intelligence. Most of the men she knew, not just the marks but her partners and other agents, were always unnerved by her mind. They wanted to pretend she did not have one, or that her gift with languages was just some parlor trick, not an expression of a wide and deep and quick intellect.

Not that her mind did her much good in general. It had kept her alive, a weapon, sharper than the knives even now holstered around her ankle. But otherwise, it was a mazeway, a labyrinth of paths to pain and regret she chose not to explore.

"Languages aren't your thing?"

"Not natural languages. Now, artificial languages, computer languages, the predicate calculus, that kind of thing, I'm a whiz. But, unfortunately, coming to know those languages is not really cultural enrichment, and no one speaks them. Well, there was this one guy, a cognitive scientist at Stanford. I think maybe his native language was an artificial language."

Rita laughed. She took another sip of her drink, emptying it. She put it down and spoke without thinking. "It gets dark so late here. Would you like to go out and walk around? It's still light enough; it's not dark yet. As you know, I'm not waiting for anyone anymore, and this place," she looked around them, waved her hand dismissively, "is not the nicest Barcelona has to offer."

Chuck looked almost as surprised to receive the offer as Rita was to have made it. "Sure, that'd be nice."

He stood. Rita buttoned her jacket and put her bag around her shoulder. "Let's start by walking to the water. Take La Rambla. I've not done that yet."

He nodded. She suppressed an urge to offer him her hand.

They left the bar.

Barcelona slopes to the Mediterranean Sea. In her four weeks in the city, Rita had yet to do any aimless walking around, any aimless anything. She didn't do aimless. But she liked the water, and she had been told that La Rambla, a street and walkway, was beautiful, and that near the water the sidewalk was designed so as to create the illusion of waves beneath the walker's feet. Though she had ignored it at the time, the comment piqued her interest, although it was unlikely, if she had not met Chuck, that she would ever have yielded to her interest and visited La Rambla. She would have seen it only if the mission required it. For four weeks, she spent all her evenings in Rita's apartment, working out, reading magazine articles she didn't care to remember, watching TV with the volume off.

The other thing she had done was study maps of the city. Not as a tourist would but as if it were a maze and she had to know the ways into and out of it. Knowing the terrain was both a weapon and a shield in her work. She'd been forced to run through foreign streets enough — chasing, being chased — to know the value of memorizing maps.

Chuck zipped his leather jacket when they got out on the street. After an awkward moment of looking at each other, Rita pointed. "That way. That street crosses La Rambla. It's likely to be crowded, a little crazy. You might want to make sure your wallet, anything valuable, is in your jacket."

Chuck nodded and fished out his wallet from his pants. He unzipped his jacket, put it into an interior pocket, then zipped the jacket again. The sight of him unzipping the jacket made Rita feel slightly warm. She shifted her attention to the sidewalk and led them away from the bar's entrance.

The Barcelona sky was blue-gray around them, lit not by any obvious sun but by some ubiquitous glow that seemed unoriginate. They walked a block or two in silence, although Chuck was craning his head, looking at the buildings. It took Rita a moment to relax and allow herself to join in. For a few steps, she had fought back a desire to cut and run, to leave Chuck alone on the sidewalk, to go back to her lonely apartment where her numbness seemed fated, and not an unnatural obstruction, as it now did.

But she did not run. Instead, she followed his pointing finger, coming quickly to appreciate his eye for detail, things that would have escaped her notice even if she had ever walked along, trying to notice interesting things. She did notice things — sightlines, distances, doorways, sudden movements, long glances, hands in pockets or bags. Chuck noticed the buildings, the trees, the interesting, remarkable people. As she walked along with him, she slowly came to feel like she was in Barcelona. Up until then, she had been outside it, above it, a spectator, unaffected and unaffecting. Somehow, Chuck had immersed her in the city that she had refused to notice except as a scene for strategy or tactics, a network of streets and alleys.

They slowed as they approached the Placa de Catalunya, the city center. La Rambla was accessible on the other side but they went into the heart of the Placa, looking at the sculptures, lingering and looking at the Monument to Franco Masia. It was a massive, squared piece, looking like someone rested a stairway, face-down, on an odd pyramid. A bust of Masia stood next to the pyramid, beneath the resting stairs.

Chuck stared at it for a minute. "I'm not sure I know enough about Catalonia, or Masia, or the sculptor, to get that."

Rita laughed, shrugging. "Don't ask me. It's, ah, heavy-looking. I worry the stairs will crush the guy." Rita empathized with the figure, somehow.

"Now that you mention it, it worries me too," Chuck said, a flicker of concern for Masia on his face. That flicker made Rita smile.

They walked toward La Rambla. Rita felt like they were floating in the blue-gray light.

People crowded the Placa, locals, and tourists. The atmosphere was festive. Rita continued to relax. She began to brush against Chuck as they walked along, as they moved out of the way of groups, as they passed folks who were standing, talking. If he noticed, he did not show it. He continued to point things out, little things, and they each added to his effect on her. The blue-gray light, Chuck's generous smile, meant for her, the accumulation of details, lovingly noted, Rita — Sarah — experienced Barcelona as Chuck was experiencing it; he made her feel enspelled.

She was reaching out for Chuck's hand when he came to an abrupt stop but for no reason Rita could discern. His face grew pale, his mouth fell open, his jaw slackened. Rita's instincts took over. Automatically, she shielded Chuck on his most vulnerable side, scanned the park for threats, one arm around him, her other hand jammed into her bag, wrapped around her gun's handle. "What is it, Chuck?"

He pointed to an attractive older woman walking along on a path at a ninety-degree angle to theirs. She was not looking at them, had not seen them. She seemed lost in thought.

"My God," Chuck finally said, "that woman. That's my mother!"

A/N: Chapter Two sometime in the next week or so.