Now...
Nicky feigns indifference at seeing Bourne though her pulse kicks, and her breath hitches. It's her only give. The momentary confusion on his face is his only acknowledgement that he's received a tell.
Outwardly he appears calm, even placid. He holds her gaze in the mirror, neither of them moving or speaking. But she was once his handler; she knows everything about him, far more than even he knows about him. Everything about Jason Bourne is not about what's visible, but what's under the surface.
Funnily enough, that was true before, when he knew who he was. In Paris, he talked easily, his eyes crinkling in amusement when he smiled, he was engaging. But she came to learn he had a poker face that Phil Hellmuth would envy. For all that openness, he never gave away a single thing. Every thought, every feeling, every emotion was so difficult to extract that when he finally opened up to her, it was Christmas morning, all wrapped up with a bow.
She considers his reflected expression, and looks underneath the mild exterior, searching for the subtle cues: the tight coil of his shoulders; the taut set to his square jaw, the deceptively pacific and blank blue eyes.
Yep. Bourne is livid.
"Who were they?" he asks without preamble.
"Fugitives from the next gen black ops," she answers. "What came after Treadstone and Blackbriar. When Pamela went public with what you gave her, the programs they were part of were burned. They made it out. They're on the run."
No hesitation, no prevarication. Never between them. They don't do small talk. They don't lie to each other. It's always been like that.
Then...
"This is not a coincidence."
Nicky sets down her tea cup, half-glaring at the lean, handsome man who enters the upstairs tea room of Mariages Frères and comes to her table.
"No," he agrees, pulling out the other wicker chair, seating himself. This table is nestled against in the corner of the room and Nicky sits with her back against the wall. He glances at the window next to her. There is no corresponding frame on his side of the table.
"It's a table for one," she informs him. He glances down at his wicker chair. Nicky can't stop the smile that begins to pull at the corners of her mouth. "It's for show. It's not meant to be occupied.'
"Hmm," he grunts noncommittally.
Jason Bourne is one of Paris base's most enigmatic assets. She knows all about him – on paper, anyway. He joined Treadstone after his father, a CIA analyst, was murdered in Beirut. He's the primary Treadstone operator. In the twelve years since his first mission, he's developed a reputation that is at once fearsome and possibly hyperbolic.
They've exchanged maybe a handful of conversations unrelated to a work since she arrived in Paris a year ago, but they've been keenly, actively aware of each other. Half-glances across conference tables. The quiet rooms where she briefs and debriefs him, both holding onto quiet professionalism while something other underscores their interactions. The way they both exhale and inhale in rhythm with each other when speaking about an op. The inconspicuous brush of his hand against the small of her back when he opens the door for her. The time she leaned into him when their elevator was crowded, feeling the heat of his body like an electric current through her arm.
She's younger by eight years, but the disparity of their experiences makes that gulf seem so much wider. She was recruited by the CIA three years ago, straight out of UVa. Her Psychology senior thesis, which focused on higher order conditioning, got into the hands of a senior analyst at Langley and they came knocking. A series of fortuitous – or deliberate? – lateral moves put her at Treadstone, and now she manages logistics, though sometimes she feels like little more than a glorified admin to Deputy Director Conklin.
"What are you doing here?" she asks as he signals the waiter, who immediately comes over.
Part of her cover is as a graduate student at the Sorbonne. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, after her classes, she makes her way to this tea house in the sixth arondissement before heading home. The flagship tea house isn't far from her flat in the Marais; that's normally where she meets classmates and people to preserve her disguise. But this location on Rue des Augustin is the one she goes to just be Nicky Parsons. It's cozier, romantic; the smartly dressed waiters in white are unobtrusive, and this corner seat with its sole window gives her a chance to just breathe.
He holds up a hand to her. Wait. He turns to the man, orders in a flawless Parisian accent, "Bonjour. Je voudrais un pot du thé Tsar Alexandre et l'un des plats Nostalgie de Pondichéry."
"Oui, monsieur." The linen clad waiter bows and turns.
Jason turns back to her. He's clean cut and good looking: thick brown hair, brushed away from his angular face, blue eyes. "I overheard you talking to Starling yesterday," he says.
Nicky feels her face warming. There was only one conversation with Starling yesterday and it wasn't about work. Starling is one of the new assets. He hasn't hidden his interest in her; and yesterday, made a play. Nicky's among the few women in the Treadstone operations; and easily the youngest. The active operators aren't much older than she; other people their age go out, drink, have fun. Not they. Their world is intense, forcibly intimate; and as a result of working in such close, almost claustrophobic quarters, they sometimes forget that their closeness is make believe.
"What you said to him? I just want you to know that 'We work together. This isn't happening,' doesn't fly for us."
Her brows shoot up. "What 'us'?"
His eyes are so blue. He reaches across the table, takes the suddenly trembling hand at rest next to her tea cup. He presses his palm against hers, then laces his fingers through hers, focused intently on the task. Nicky does not pull her hand back but she cannot look at him. She stirs her tea with her free hand, the pretense at indifference contradicted by her racing heart. She keeps her gaze fixed on their intertwined hands until she feels the waiting pull of his eyes and she glances up. He is in deadly earnest, those blue eyes so intense, so intent.
"This 'us,'" he says softly, implacably.
Now...
Those eyes are still intense, intent. Just focused elsewhere.
If Bourne was furious before she told him everything Cross and Marta Shearing shared with her about Outcome and Larx, he is now beside himself with rage.
She finishes flatly: "They burned Outcome and everyone connected to the project. Cross is the only one left alive. She was administering their meds."
"What do they want?"
"They want to come back in." She laughs, the sound short, clipped, hollow. "They think exposing Outcome and Larx – which is operational apparently – is their leverage."
She fixes him with a bleak look. "I said no. You exposed Treadstone and Blackbriar and it didn't make a difference." She thinks about Landy, currently in jail as she's waiting for her appeal, the destruction left in the path of Jason's amnesia and the unraveling at the top from Conklin to Vosen. She continues, almost cruelly: "Except for the dead bodies we left in our wake."
Bourne flinches. It hurts him to have a conscience now. She thinks about everything he endured, knows this is the worst thing she could say to him. More dead people on his hands. He doesn't understand that she's not attacking. She's confessing. Because that blood?
It's on her hands, too.
She can see him weighing her words. Can see him trying to figure out whether or not to get involved. She's almost certain he's going to get up from the bed and walk out the way he came in, disappear without a word, continue ghosting her. In fact, she's ready to bet on that when she sees the shift in the way he holds his body, a momentary tension.
"Call him," Bourne says. "Set up a meet."
She's unaware she was holding her breath until it leaves her in a whoosh.