Author's Note: Thanks for making it all the way to the last chapter! Saving the best for last we have Matty, whom I absolutely adore. She was easier to write than I thought she would be - hopefully that means I don't struggle within the mindset of a boss-ass lady? Matty kicks serious ass and we need more female role models like her. So, here's her chapter, and as always, comments and reviews are super appreciated!

Disclaimer: disclaimed

MATTY

"You, I want access to all the security cameras in the area," Matty said, pointing at one agent. "You, get my comms back online, I need ears on that conversation," she continued, pointing at another agent. "You, get me the Director on the phone now," she said, shooing off the third agent in her general vicinity.

Matty stood at the conference table that stood in the middle of the room she ran her ops from and watched her agents scurry to get her eyes and ears back online.

"Ma'am, I have the Director on the phone for you," one agent said, returning, a phone clutched in one hand while the other hand covered the speaker.

"Thank you," Matty said, accepting the phone and pressing it to her ear. "Director."

"Matilda. This better be important, since this is my personal line."

"My op in Belize is going sideways, and that need-to-know information you've been withholding from me just became needed," she said in her no-nonsense voice. "Sir."

She heard the Director sigh through the phone. "Matilda, you know I can't –"

"Like hell you can't," she snapped. "I have one of our top agents in the field with no backup, and I've lost comms with him. Now what did you have me send him after that was so top-secret I couldn't know about it, and is now endangering his life." Matty was so sick of politics, especially when they interfered with her ops and put her agents' lives at risk.

"The child that is assigned to be rescued from the compound," the Director began.

"Yes?" Matty prompted.

"He's not the son of a rival cartel," the Director admitted. "He's the son of the President's son, who had…an affair…while vacationing there last year."

Matty really, really hated politics. She rubbed her forehead. "Thank you for letting me know, Sir. Does this mean that I can call the State Department for backup on this, or is this op off the books entirely?"

"It's off the books entirely," the Director replied. To his credit, his voice sounded heavy with the ridiculousness of it all, same as Matty felt. "The President did not want this child's existence to get out, but allowing him to be out of protective custody –"

"Meant that the President's son was vulnerable to blackmail," Matty finished for him. "Yeah, I know the routine."

"I'm sorry, Matty, but your agent is just going to have to make it work on this one."

"Yeah, well, for all our sakes, let's hope he can," Matty replied. "Thank you, Director. Good day."

Matty handed the phone to the next agent that walked past and refocused on the screen at the front of the room, which had come back online while she talked with the Director on the phone.

"Do I have audio to go with this satellite feed? You," she said, addressing the nearest tech.

"No, Ma'am, not yet, we're still working on audio, visual only just came back online a second –"

"…Matty, can you hear me? This op majorly sucks, over." The audio cut back in.

"I copy, over," she replied.

"Hey, Matty, good to have you back in my ear," the agent replied. "Never thought I'd say that. So, is the cavalry comin' or what, cuz this ain't no little drug cartel compound we got here and I am all but stuck."

"Sorry, this op was only just revealed to me to be top secret and off the books, so I can't send reinforcements or change the exfil coordinates." Sometimes, Matty hated her job.

"Damn it, Matty," the agent sighed. "Alright, give us a sec, I think I can get in this way." Matty watched the screen as her agent found a hole in the fence towards the back of the compound and slipped by the guards who were patrolling the grounds.

A few tense minutes later, the agent emerged from the compound once more, a small child, not even a toddler yet, in his arms, and leading a scared-looking young woman behind him.

"Change of plans, Matty," the agent updated her now that he was outside and could talk without worrying about being overheard by guards. "Mamasita here refused to stay behind. Can exfil accommodate one more or do I have to find my own way back home, too?"

"You can lose the attitude. Exfil will be notified they have one more passenger, rendezvous is at the same time and location. Do you copy?"

"Yeah, I copy. Over."

Matty watched from her command room at the CIA as her agent led the young woman to a location outside the fence before losing them to the cover of the trees.

"You, get me thermal, I want eyes on the package until exfil confirms," Matty said, addressing the nearest tech support agent to her at the moment.

"Yes, Ma'am, right away," the woman replied, her fingers flying over her keyboard.

The satellite image in front of her switched to the blues and oranges of thermal imaging as Matilda kept watch over her agent in the field while he waited for exfil. She watched as he competently got his charges to the small, private airstrip two klicks away from the compound. She watched as the plane arrived, topped up its fuel tank, and took off, her agent and the two refugees safely on board.

Only then did Matilda Webber sit down and take a breath. This was her job – to coordinate behind the scenes so that her agents in the field could operate as safely as possible to do their jobs, and occasionally to remind the higher-ups that they weren't gods, and that their decisions had real impacts in the world, on lives. Usually, Matty felt a deep sense of honor, performing this necessary central position between operatives, tech support, and command. Without team leaders like her, ops were doomed before they were underway. But sometimes, it just felt like a whole lot of expectation – expectation to pull off the impossible, to work with nothing and make things happen. Matty understood that groups required leaders and followers, but damn, sometimes being the one in charge of making the hard calls, or passing on the impossible info to operatives, made her position in the group really - as her field agent put it - suck.

Matty turned and saw Bozer – in a vest and tie, no less – at the War Room door.

"What are you doing here?"

"I…work here?" it sounded like a question. "Remember?"

"Yes, Bozer," Matty said tiredly. "I mean what are you doing here, in the War Room. Again. Your evaluation isn't until this afternoon."

"I know," Bozer said solemnly. He began to ramble. "And it's probably going to go badly, and I probably won't have a job here afterwards, but – I had to come talk to you, cuz," he seemed to find his confidence once more and his words picked up speed, "this thing happened at my old job where an assistant manager was forging time cards but the dude still got a promotion, because he covered his tracks so well and everybody –"

"Okay, Bozer," Matty said, cutting off his seemingly pointless story-telling. "I would love for this story to contain 100% less burger-related info and some hint of a point?"

Bozer nodded. "I was looking through Agent Brooks' file – the guy you say is guilty? And…well…you got it wrong."

Matty stared her lab tech down. "I got it wrong," she repeated, face impassive.

Bozer seemed to realize he may have overstepped his bounds, just a little. "Respectfully," he said, "yes. According to his FBI file, Brooks is in his 40s with 20 years of experience at the Bureau."

"Okay, you're not telling me anything that I don't already know."

"My point is," Bozer cut in quickly, "Brooks is still running around on street detail. If he had been dirty all this time, using Bishop to plant evidence and frame people, don't you think he'd be higher up the ladder by now?"

Matty studied Bozer carefully.

"Look, I know I don't have much experience when it comes to this kind of work –"

"You have no experience when it comes to this kind of work."

"Yeah, but I've had tons of bosses. And Brooks, he's no boss."

It was enough to get Matty to make some calls. When she checked in with Dalton and Mac about the FBI agent they were handing Bishop over to, and she realized it was not the agent she had sent, she got to work doing what she did best – running the op with the view of the big-picture, trusting her field operatives to get her orders done with as much guidance as she could give them in real time.

They managed to salvage the op, in the end, but it got Matty thinking. Bozer was the least-experienced, least-trained part of this team she had just inherited. She, on the other hand, had nearly two decades of experience as not only a field agent, but a team leader as well. And yet this lowly lab tech had not only stood up to her authority, he had called her out on her misjudgment – and it was only due to his interference that she'd been able to correct the mistake in time.

Matty was new to the Phoenix, and how it ran its missions, there was no denying. There was also no denying that learning to trust her new team not only to do their jobs, but to know a different piece of the big picture and could help her with it, was also going to take some adjustment. For years, at the Agency, the weight of leading teams of operatives in the field had fallen to her alone. But she found, though it was not a natural instinct for her to do so, she liked that she could rely on her new team to have a different perspective of the situation from her, and could provide valuable input during ops.

She think she could get used to this way of running a team - in time, anyway.

A/N 2: It's done! This piece was a lot of fun to write. I feel most comfortable taking small bits from the show and breaking them down, but having to step inside the minds of 5 different people in such a short space was a challenge. I hope I did them justice! Likes, comments, reviews are loved and appreciated. Thanks for reading!