A/N: THANK YOU to my amazing beta reader, AViewerLikeMe, who has been tireless in reviewing, commenting and pointing out errors in the first drafts. I am so grateful for your endless patience, for cheering me on, and for letting me rant about weird things like bad dialogue in AOTC and my equally lunatic response to it by re-writing the entire screenplay. Thank you thank you thank you!
"How're you holding up, Parsons?"
It's the third time Cross has asked her this question in the last hour. Nicky would be irritated except for the fact that he's probably right to ask.
Her head hurts, and the words on the screen are blurry. The fatigue, the stress, the emotional turbulence of the past 48 hours, between seeing her family and having her lost love in their apartment again, are wreaking havoc with her senses. Also:
Shouldn't have swigged that much Bourbon.
"I'm fine," she lies.
"You sure?"
She glares at him. He holds up his hands defensively.
"Why are you doing this?" he queries, gesturing at the two open laptops on the campaign desk.
After Bourne left, she'd gone to the built-in safe hidden in the custom closet where a stack of decommissioned laptops – all reported to have been destroyed years ago – are nestled.
Nicky doesn't pretend to misunderstand. "Marta told me she's dying."
Cross's face spasms briefly with pain, sorrow. He nods. "Yeah."
But why are you going out on a limb for a stranger?
He doesn't say it aloud but she can read between the lines. He's right about that. It's not all altruistic.
"Why'd you join?" she asks .
"When they got me, I was broken. Blown up, TBI, fucked up. Shoulda' died out there, really. They made it really…attractive, the idea of belonging to something bigger, more meaningful than just me."
Nicky's jaw hurts from grinding her teeth together. "That sounds familiar." They'd gotten her after her father's death, given her a chance to redeem what he'd done. And Bourne. They'd gotten him in the wake of his father's death.
"Marta told me about her mom." Nicky leans back against the fauteuil, looks up at the ceiling. "About her mom being sick and dying from the time she was three until she was thirteen. I think it screws you up when the people you need aren't there when you're a kid. My dad sucked as a human being and a father, but I had my mother. She is the strongest person I know."
"You're pretty solid," Cross concurs.
"I'm a good operative," Nicky agrees. "I've had the training to do this and the temperament to see things through. I know this life. I chose it. I can survive it." She pauses. "But having a mom like mine makes a world of difference in how you approach life. Not only can I survive, I could actually thrive. Marta's different though. Frankly I think she would rather you chuck this whole thing and settle somewhere quiet and be together for what's left."
He drops his head momentarily, meditatively. "I know. She told me."
"So why are you doing this?"
He glances at the kitchen, where Marta disappeared to a couple of hours ago. From the noises and the scents, she's been busily cooking.
"I've been in love with her for a long time now. I'm not even sure how or why I fell in love other than that I thought –in the beginning – that she was beautiful and smart. Whip smart. A little lost at life and not so great on the social skills sometimes – but…there was always this innocence. I think that's what did it eventually. She was completely different than me…us. Every time I went out, I'd be doing something shitty, something you don't write home about. You just do it and move on. Then I'd come into the lab and see her. And for all her science goofiness, there's this innate sweetness about her. It was the way she'd look me in the eye, explain what was going on, what they were trying to measure. The way she'd blush and put up with my teasing. I needed –need – that gentleness, that softness; this kindness that isn't even remotely connected to the world of shit that you and I live in. We learn to bury everything, compartmentalize it. She actually feels. It made all the crap I was doling out, dealing with, living with, less…crappy. She's brave, strong in her own way. Different than you – "
"—But I was trained to do this," Nicky interjects. "In a lab, Marta would probably run circles around me."
"She's still figuring things out, how to be on the run, how to think like someone who's hunted rather than someone who's trusted the system her whole life." He shrugs. "It's why I've kept her at an arms length for most of this time. Whatever she feels for me, I needed her to come to it on her own terms. Being dependent on someone for survival kinda fucks up normal courtship rules."
Nicky's brows rise fractionally. "Noble of you."
He gives her the stink eye. "You're right about how fucked up a childhood can get when you don't have what you need from people. Marta and I share that in common. I don't have family, not the kind you're describing. Marta is my family. We're loose ends that Byer needs to cut. We can go somewhere, sure. But he'll catch up to us eventually."
Nicky takes a deep breath. It's the same reason she cut ties with Mummy and Alex. Because someone's going to catch her eventually, too.
"You ever love someone so much you'd risk everything just to make sure they're safe?" he asks quietly.
Fuck. Why yes, I have. Nicky thinks.
Cross is looking at her keenly. She knows he's thinking of Bourne. She doesn't want to go there.
"Be careful you're not risking her too," Nicky warns.
"We can call this, Parsons," Cross offers, leaning back against the fauteuil's padded back. "You don't have to do this."
Nicky eyes him. "I'm not doing this for you or her, Cross. I'm doing this because I'm not okay being kept from my mother."
Cross' half-smile is a little skeptical, like he knows there's more to her than she portrays.
They turn back to the laptops. For hours, she's walked Cross through the protocols first at Treadstone and later at Blackbriar – everything from physical to electronic access; badges, logons, challenges. Marta gave her a primer on Sterisyn-Morlanta. Nicky and Cross codified the similarities and differences. Then Nicky dug into who had access to what and when.
Cross explains how his hacker got into NRAG's system: first, they launched a directed phishing campaign that resulted in their being able to install malware and steal legitimate credentials. Using valid logins and passwords, they gained access to NRAG, then found a vulnerability they were able to exploit which permitted them to upload a PHP file. PHP files run scripts in web applications; theirs was a web shell, a backdoor that allowed them to upload a malicious script with a disguised file name to make it look like a valid PHP component.
"Now we're in their system, hiding in plain view and camouflaged," Cross explains. "For the last three months we've been doing recon. We have some capability to run operating systems commands but before we can do anything else, we need serious intelligence about how NRAG's internal network works."
"You'll need to find the servers that hold the black ops files," Nicky agrees. "The Active Directory holds the data for everything in the domain – users, computers, services. If you can query the AD using standard LDAP protocol, we can identify the files based on the server on which they're kept."
Cross nods. "We have domain admin privileges right now."
"And the admin hasn't changed passwords yet?"
Cross shakes his head. "That's why we have to move fast. We've got several domain admin tokens, but they're good only until someone updates his or her password. We've tried to access Remote Desktop but that requires an actual password."
"Can you set up a new Domain Admin account and add it to the DA group?"
"We can."
"Okay, if we can do that, it'll let us monitor the network, query it on the down low and figure out the structure."
He grimaces. "It's going to raise red flags all over the place once we start moving data to a central location to exfiltrate."
They've talked about the network failsafes: if NRAG is anything like Treadstone and Blackbriar, there'll be software that will monitor the network and note everything from unusual behavior to large amounts of data moving in the network. Correlative engines will raise an alarm if it determines that the network might be breached based on network activity.
"We're going to need a diversion to keep their eyes off their network," Nicky concurs. "Something that's going to cause them to miss critical warnings."
"What's big enough to do that?" Cross mutters.
For the next forty-five minutes, they strategize. Finally:
"We'll head to Berlin tomorrow," Cross says. "I've got a meet set up with the guy. This—" he nods at the laptops, "is helpful."
Nicky nods. "Okay. I need a few days here to…clean up some stuff. We'll need a secure place in Berlin if we're going to do this."
"We've got it," he assures her.
"Nicky, Aaron; dinner?" comes Marta's soft voice. She's bringing a Le Creuset casserole dish to the small oval white painted dining table. The most delicious smells waft from the Dutch oven, and Nicky's stomach rumbles.
"Beef stew," Marta offers.
It smells like more than beef stew, Nicky thinks as she follows Cross to the table. It smells like…home. It smells like Heidi's bœuf Bourgignon.
Yeah, Nicky thinks. I'll do this with Cross.
I want my Mummy.
By the time they slip out, it's past 1 am. She doesn't ask where they're going, where they're going to stay. Cross gave her the rendezvous point in Berlin, four days from now. Before they left, Marta reached out, squeezed Nicky's shoulder, whispered, "Be safe, Nicky."
At first, Nicky debates leaving the flat and finding accommodations elsewhere; but it's late and she's just too drained to figure it out. Slipping on David's Delta Force t-shirt, the one she'd earlier soaked with tears, Nicky climbs in between the cool sheets, determinedly blocking everything from her mind about this bed and the last time she lay here. She needs to sleep off the exhaustion and the booze and then she's leaving tomorrow.
How hard can it be, sleeping here for one night?
Really fucking hard.
After tossing and turning on the bed for several hours, she finally gives up. Padding out of the room, she makes her way to the kitchen. She's crossing through the living room when a figure sits up on the sofa.
"Nicky."
Nicky freezes. Her lungs expand, a scream bursting to emerge; she contains it, clamps down furiously on her shock.
Fuck fuck FUCK! She must be more exhausted than she thought to have been completely unaware of him here. How long has he been here, in her living room?
She doesn't even bother to ask him how he got in. She's not surprised he's in the apartment; she's surprised he's back.
"What are you doing here?" She can't stop the harshness from infusing her tone.
God, what part of 'Please leave' do you not understand, Jason?
In the darkness, she can see him watching her.
He doesn't answer her question. "I was waiting to see you…I didn't want to wake you."
"I couldn't sleep," she remarks.
"I couldn't either," he says, his voice low and measured.
Of course not. David could never sleep on that sofa. The antique padding wasn't made for his solid, lean body. He's too big, too much.
"Do you want some water?" she asks.
"Yes, please."
She forces her leaden limbs to move to the kitchen, where in the privacy of that space, she allows herself to let go of a shuddering breath, wrap her arms tightly around her waist, trying to get her wrecked senses under control.
By the time she drinks a glass of water and refills it with more for him, she's less hysterical. There's something surreal about bringing him a glass, the way she used to; he was so parched at night, the meds and his metabolism working at full speed all the time. She hands him the glass, finds herself lingering, waiting.
He drinks and goes to put the glass on the table next to the sofa, but she takes it from him, their fingers brushing. Nicky hesitates, uncertain. She wants to tell him to leave. She wants to physically remove him from this room, actually, shove him out the door or the window, whichever is most expedient. In the end, she just doesn't have that much willpower. Chalk it up to the night, to this place, to this man, who draws her to him, the antipodean magnet that attracts her no matter what she does.
"Why are you here?"
He doesn't answer. He doesn't know the answer.
"Why couldn't you sleep?" he asks.
She shrugs. "I don't sleep very well. I haven't in a long time," she confesses.
Being on the run is a constant, ever gnawing fear. There's no safe place.
"You could've chosen not to help me," he observes.
Nicky shakes her head. "That wasn't an option."
"What you've given up…," he starts.
She interrupts. "Was nothing compared to what I'd already lost."
He thinks he knows the cost. He doesn't. He can't. But even so, it's clear he feels for her. "I've never said so, but thank you for helping me."
It's not a balm. If anything it's more grit over her senses.
For a moment they are quiet together. Nicky pauses, ready to leave; but then finds herself taking the seat next to him. He scoots over, making more room; or rather, avoiding her. Nicky sets the empty glass on the coffee table, looking at the framed photo of her in close up.
"Did…I take that picture?" His voice is whisper soft in the darkness.
"David did, yes." I can't think of you as him. "At Closérie des Lilas. The next day."
"The next day?"
"The first night we met there, they closed half an hour later. So we went for a walk." A really long one. She closes her eyes, willing herself to be in that time again, if just for a fleeting moment.
They had been loath to part from one another though neither had said so aloud; instead they found themselves wandering all over Montparnasse together in the Parisian night, passing bistros, bars, quiet and dark storefronts. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they were silent, the city smells of cigarette and wine and beer eventually giving way to the scent of fresh baked bread when the bakers had started working on their baguettes and yeast breads and leavened breads and patisseries in the early early hours. They'd finally found themselves at Sacre Coeur. "He read me the last chapter of The Sun Also Rises on the steps at Sacre Coeur."
She can sense him listening as one would hear the recollections of someone else's adventure, someone else's love story. She knows he can't recall how she'd stretched herself out, laid her head on his lap, eyes closed, half asleep while he'd stroked her hair and read the heartbreaking finale of the novel as the sun pinkened the sky over the sleepy city.
How that languid voice had infused all the regrets and yearning into Lady Bretty Ashley's and Jake Barnes' final conversation:
"Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"
"We never went to sleep," she remembers with a soft smile. "We went back to the restaurant when they opened and had lunch. We were so…tired. That's why I didn't want David to take my picture."
"You think of me as two different people."
She tries to be nonchalant when she shrugs. "Even before, you were two different people." She looks around the room. "David lived here. Bourne was in the compound. We were never confused about who we were where."
"And they never found out?"
She snorts. "They didn't suspect and we took what we could, but we knew they would find out eventually."
"Why do you still have this place?"
Because I wasn't ready to acknowledge it was over and done, even when you disappeared with Marie. As long as I had the past, I still had something of you. "I own it."
"What was I…what was David like?"
David was everything.
She wants to answer; but she can't. Talking about the man she loved, still loves, to the man who bears every aspect of him but his memory is asking too much. So she ignores his question.
"I'm waiting for it to get better," she tells him, recalling his words at the bus depot.
There is such intense guilt in his expression, visible even in the blue moonlight. "Nicky, I'm sorry for everything. And I'm sorry…that I don't know you."
Oh God why would he say that? Why couldn't he just be aloof? Why is he showing her the heart that was David Webb?
"Maybe…maybe at the end of the world, you will again," she muses thoughtfully.
"The end of the world?"
"Yes. Because then there would be nothing left but conflagration and redemption," she says in an aching voice. "The streets would be burning and the city in anarchy, and people will be screaming and crying and fighting…and you'll find me in all that chaos, and you'll say, 'I know who I am. I remember everything.'"
Nicky drops her face into her hands, the pain finally too much. She doesn't care that she's weeping in front of the one man who could give her succor; but who is also the root of her pain.
Bourne freezes next to her; she can feel the tension in his body. But then an arm snakes around her shoulders, and though she resists initially, he pulls her against his body. For long, long moments, she cries and he does nothing but hold her.
When at last her sobbing stops and she quiets, she keeps her hands to her face, but he pulls them away, looks down at her tearstained face. He gently brushes away the wet tracks with the backs of his fingers, his thumb moving slowly over her soft mouth. She looks up at him, at how familiar he is, and how much of a stranger.
Those blue, blue eyes that she knows even in the darkness.
The universe takes a breath, and pauses with them.
Jason lowers his head and Nicky doesn't turn away.
Jason Bourne doesn't kiss like David Webb.
David savored his kisses with her, took his time. It's so different, this kiss. It's passionate and deadly and heartbreaking all at once. Jason Bourne is feral, precise, urgent, his mouth slanted across hers with purpose, with intent. His hands are tangled in her hair, and when he falls back on the sofa, she is pulled down with him.
He kisses like a man for whom nothing is left, for whom all is new. And it is: he has no recollection of his first kiss, of other women he's kissed; only Marie Kreutz. Nicky knows that in all the ways that matter, she's the second woman whose lips have touched his, whose body is sprawled over his, whose face is cradled by his hands.
He stops abruptly; his hands are hard as he pushes her upright. Nicky gasps, disoriented by his sudden refusal. In the scarce light, she can make out his features; he is staring up at her, utterly bemused, his body trusting her in a way his brain and his heart don't; because those parts of him don't remember her, but the strong chest, the ridged plain of his stomach, the hard thighs, and the span across his hips recall the familiarity of her body, its lushness, its heat, its scent.
Even in the half light she can see he is disturbed. He shoves at her, gets out from underneath her, stalks to the windows. His breathing is harsh. So is hers.
"I can't," he says bleakly. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything, Nicky. I don't know if I keep coming to you because of the conditioning or if it's something I naturally feel – I think it is, I think it must be if I – if I loved – if David loved you as much as you love him – but I'm not David. I'm not even the Bourne you knew. You love someone that I'm…not."
They are shadows in the dark, two disparate silhouettes bent with sorrow.
"Who are you?" she whispers.
"I don't know. I knew who I was with…" His voice trails off, as desolate as how she feels, and he ends with the one word that is barbed wire to Nicky's senses. "…Marie."
"I know how you feel." Nicky's voice breaks and she doesn't care. "I lost someone, too. I'm not over him, either."
She gets up and walks to the bedroom, praying with every step that she does not collapse.