So last time I dropped the hint that we would be meeting 'the architect' of the group ... and now we will! Although a lot of you may have already guessed who that is! But I'm sure you know this won't be a joyful, happy reunion ... instead, you get angst and awkwardness galore! Once again, thank you for reading, following, and reviewing!

Chapter Four – A Reunion of Strangers

Matthew Crawley's choice of career hadn't always been architecture. His father had been a doctor, and his grandfather a solicitor, and for a long time he had considered those his two options by which he could make a living. He wasn't looking to do anything extraordinary or unusual, and with both of those careers he at least knew what to expect. They were typical jobs, ones that guaranteed a good income, and so for a while he believed that was what he was destined to do.

However, in his penultimate year of secondary school, one of his professors suggested looking into schools of architecture rather than law school. This came as a bit of a surprise to Matthew – he didn't see himself as particularly creative, and he didn't really have a hand for drawing – but this suggestion piqued an interest in an area he might not have otherwise considered. And once he started to explore this field of study, his interest suddenly increased to fascination. Law and medicine had never held his fascination quite like architecture did. It was the chance to create something – homes, buildings, monuments – that enticed him. Somehow he realized that this was what he was meant to do.

Still, he didn't suppose he was going to do anything terribly extraordinary with architecture – he'd design homes, office buildings, sketch floor plans and layouts he'd seen a thousand times over. Which is why, when a woman he had never met before (but who oddly enough shared his last name) approached him with a rather vague offer, he hadn't initially thought very much of it. The strangest thing about it had been that she had come to him while he was still in school, studying at the École d'Architecture in Paris.

What she actually showed him, however, was beyond anything he could have imagined.

Within the world of the dream, he had the chance to build impossible structures – cathedrals, skyscrapers, entire cities, places that could never exist in the real world. Each dream was a labyrinth that only he knew how to solve, and once inside the dream he could manipulate his own designs into impossible shapes. Traditionally, architects didn't actually go into dreams – they simply designed them and taught them to the dreamers – but once Matthew experienced his first shared dream he wasn't going to give up the chance of seeing the end result of his creations. As surreal – and terrifying – as dreams could get, particularly in extractions, he never wanted to miss out on something that few others would ever experience.

But at some point everyone has to come back to reality. For Matthew it wasn't a choice, but he had to accept that those days of building castles in the air were gone. So it was back to the École d'Architecture, serving as a teaching assistant while he got used to designing the ordinary again.

Friday afternoon he lingered behind in the lecture hall long after the professor and students had filed out. He sat off to the side in one of the rows, a stack of papers in front of him. He figured he might as well get a head start on grading them so he wasn't loosing sleep over the weekend. It wasn't something he was eager to do, but having been a teaching assistant for the past two years, he knew it was simply a part of the deal.

At the back of the room he heard the door swing open slowly – most likely a student who had forgotten a bag or phone. He turned around, blinking as he tore his eyes away from the words on the paper that were beginning to blur together. "Can I help y—?"

It wasn't a student standing by the doors, looking over at where he sat. It was someone he recognized, someone who he hadn't expected to ever see again. And he wasn't sure if he was glad or not to see her.

"Hello," Mary said simply, with just a hint of her trademark frostiness.

Matthew's mouth hung upon a little, at a loss for words. He looked up at Mary for a moment, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him – was this a side-effect of grading papers he hadn't experienced before?

"Hello," he replied finally. His own tone sounded nearly as stiff as Mary's had.

Mary stepped down the empty rows at the top of the room, looking around the lecture hall. "Do you not have your own office?"

"I share one," Matthew shrugged. "But I prefer the space here. It's not quite so cramped."

Mary nodded. Matthew tried to search her face for the reason why she might be here, but she was perfectly expressionless. Just like the first time they had met. Nothing behind her exterior to suggest that she was, in fact, a very complex woman.

She stood at the end of the row he was sitting at. There was still a few feet of space between them. "How have you been?" she asked, sounding more like she was asking just to fill the silence.

"Alright," Matthew murmured. His situation was … dull, but it was better than other outcomes that could have been. "You?"

Mary sighed. "It's not … it hasn't been ideal."

"Where have you been?"

"Everywhere, it feels like. Except for England, obviously."

They fell into silence again. Matthew wasn't surprised at her answer. He himself hadn't been back home for two years either, and he hadn't tried to figure out a way to legally return. He knew he might inadvertently reveal too much about what he had done, what the entire team had committed, and that wasn't worth the risk.

"Have you seen your mother lately?" Mary asked.

"She last visited about two months ago," Matthew answered. "She's visited about … four times, I think, since I came back here."

"That's nice."

Mary started pacing, turning her back to Matthew. He knew better than to ask if she had seen her parents recently; he suspected that they still hadn't forgiven her for her massive blunder, even though it had been two years. She wouldn't want to say anything on that matter, and Matthew didn't blame her. But he did want to ask her why she had come to find him after two years of separation. Small talk wasn't going to get them anywhere, and yet that seemed to be all that was happening between them right now.

"Mary, why—" he asked after another full moment of silence.

"Are you busy right now?" Mary cut in. She was looking at the papers in front of him. "Because I can go if—"

"No … well, I was just …" Matthew glanced down at the papers in front of him, the tiny print beginning to swim on the white paper. "I can do all this later," he stammered. He stood up and put his bag on the desk, hurriedly shoving the papers into it. "Would you like to … um … go somewhere else?"

"Go somewhere else?" she repeated.

Matthew frowned. "So we can talk? I assumed that's why you're here – unless you just popped in to say hello."

He knew he sounded a bit curt, and Mary didn't deserve it. But before he could mutter an apology, Mary replied, "Oh, right. I suppose that's alright."

She still looked uncertain, as if unsure of the reason why she was here at all, and she didn't look at Matthew as he stepped past her. She trailed behind Matthew as he walked up to the door, slinging his bag across his shoulders.

"There's a café two blocks away from here that I go often," he said. "Unless there's somewhere else …"

"No, that sounds fine," Mary replied shortly.

They walked in silence down the wide, airy corridor, passing by framed designs on the wall and a few students milling about on their way to the entrance. It was like walking with a stranger, even though they had worked together for a long time, both inside and outside dreams. Matthew didn't expect just two years apart would be enough to take them back to being little better than complete strangers. When he sometimes imagined her coming back to him – knocking on his door late at night, or seeing her on the other side of the street – he hoped there would be just a hint of a smile, some small emotion. But there was none of that now. He couldn't read in her face what she might be thinking.

Why had she come here, finding him where she evidently knew he'd be, if just to act like a completely stranger to him? Did their history together matter to her? Had she even missed him during the past two years?

Matthew had certainly missed her – she was all he could think about for the first few weeks after the team separated. He was worried about her, but he had no way of contacting her, no way to know where she was or if she was alright. All he could do eventually was let her slowly slip out of his mind. Now she was back, and he had no idea how to act.

In a few short minutes they were sitting at a table in front of the café Matthew had suggested. He frequented the place, going at least twice a week, and the waiter who served them knew him by name.

"The usual cappuccino, Monsieur Crawley?" the tall waiter asked in heavily–accented English. "Or perhaps something more special to share with the mademoiselle? We have a lovely pinot—"

"No – no, thank you," Matthew stammered. "A cappuccino will be fine."

The waiter jotted that down, looking slightly disappointed that he wouldn't be bringing out any wine for the 'couple.' "And for you, mademoiselle?"

"Just a cup of tea, thank you," Mary muttered. The way she looked down at her menu, eyebrows arched, told Matthew that she understood well what the waiter had implied. As if this reunion wasn't awkward enough, he thought.

The waiter hadn't yet realized that there was an uncomfortable cloud over the two he was seeing as a 'couple.' "Something to eat as well, perhaps? Éclair, profiterole? Anything?"

Mary didn't look at either the waiter or Matthew, but the impatient tapping of her fingers on the table made Matthew more nervous about this meeting. "I think we're alright with the beverages, thank you," he quietly told the waiter.

Glancing at the rather aloof lady, the waiter murmured a very faint, "Bonne chance," to Matthew before turning on his heel and walking back into the interior of the café.

Matthew sighed, feeling rather embarassed. "I'm sorry about that … I usually come alone and—"

"It's fine," Mary dismissed, cutting him off. Matthew knew it was a cliché, but Mary was definitely one of those women that claimed things were fine when the opposite was the case. He could sense that she was ticked off from the waiter's implication that she and Matthew were … well, that there was something going on between them.

She was turning his gaze to anything but him, as if he wasn't sitting right across the little café table from her. She didn't seem ready to engage in any real conversation with him at the moment. Why had she agreed to come with him to the café if she was only going to act as though he wasn't there? Surely she hadn't come to Paris to see him again just to force him to watch her, waiting for her to say something, keeping him in agonizing suspense. As if two years of separation hadn't been agony enough. Here she was, within arm's reach, and she was still so far away from Matthew.

His heart sank and his stomach twisted into a knot. He figured things might be awkward when he and Mary reunited, but this … to Matthew, it wasn't simply just awkward: it was painful.

The silence continued for a few minutes until the same waiter brought them their beverages. This time he didn't say anything, but Matthew did catch the sympathetic glance in his direction. Mary idly stirred her cup of tea and took a few tentative sips before finally glancing up at Matthew, and his heart inexplicably went into a flutter.

"So," Mary started, "are you a professor now?"

Matthew shook his head. "No, I'm just a teaching assistant. I grade papers, see students when they need help, that sort of thing. It's a bit dull, but it pays."

Mary nodded. "And do you still … design?"

With a shrug, Matthew answered, "Sort of. I'll do examples for the classes now and then, but I haven't designed any real buildings or anything since … well, not since I was hired."

Being a full-time teaching assistant, no one ever came to him to ask him to design something. He practiced whenever he could – drawing mazes on the back of napkins or sketching a layout in the free space of a notebook, but none of his designs ever came to life, either in the real world or a dream.

He didn't know if he should ask what Mary had been doing for the past two years, but he had a guess to that even without her saying so. If she hadn't contacted him before now, he could only suppose that she had still been working in extraction.

And now he was getting the feeling that she was about to drag him back into it too.

The crescendo of a wailing siren cut through the tranquil atmosphere of the Parisien street, and Matthew instinctively raised his head, catching sight of the police car rushing past the café. He would have thought nothing of it – the police car was out of sight in a matter of seconds, its destination further down the road – but he glimpsed Mary, who had also looked towards the source of the siren, and her eyes were wide with … alarm? She stared hard at the direction the police car had driven, as if making sure it wasn't going to make a u-turn and come racing back towards them.

"Are you alright?" Matthew asked.

Mary whipped her head back around. "What? No, I'm fine – the siren just startled me, that's all. It's nothing."

Of course it wasn't nothing, Matthew knew: people didn't react with alarm to a passing police siren – unless they were in fear of being arrested.

All of a sudden he wondered if Mary was in danger of being arrested even though she wasn't in England. Were the French police looking for her?

"Hang on – is it safe for you to be here?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes – yes, it's fine," Mary assured him, failing to conceal a nervous gulp. "It just startled me – it came out of nowhere."

Matthew wasn't entirely convinced, however. He had never been concerned about being arrested while he was living in French borders before, but Mary's jumpiness at hearing the siren made him wonder if he should be worried about that now. Could her coming to Paris result in the police coming after him too? The last thing he wanted was him going back to his flat to find the police or even RAID waiting for him.

"The police aren't coming after you, are they?" he asked Mary.

She shook her head. "If they were, they would have already gotten me," she said. Matthew could tell if that was an attempt to hide her nervousness with some poor humor. "Extradition between France and the U.K. is a political nightmare. Besides, you've been here for two years and haven't been sent back, right?"

"Yes, but …" Matthew sighed. "I'm not …"

Mary arched a brow. "Not what?"

Not the leader of the team, Matthew was thinking. Not the head of the operation. I'm expendable. Mary isn't.

"I'm not important," he answered, ducking his head as he took a sip of his coffee. He knew he had to have crossed a fine line, and he prepared himself for any harsh words Mary was ready to berate him with.

But her response surprised him. "I wouldn't have come if I thought it would put you in danger," she replied.

Matthew was struck silent by that. He went very still, his eyes still locked onto his coffee cup. How very like Mary to say something like that with such indifference. But he knew she meant it.

When he raised his eyes to her she was looking at the street, as if she suddenly decided to ignore him again – or if she was still looking out for the police car. They were getting nowhere again. Would she even raise an objection if he stood up and walked away? He wouldn't do that, of course, but neither did he want to just sit here, hardly speaking when he knew there was so much both of them wanted to say to each other.

"Why did you come here?" he asked.

"Hmm?" Mary's head jolted away from the street, and she looked at him like she hadn't quite understood the question.

"Why are you here, Mary?" Matthew repeated. "Why did you bother finding me if you aren't even going to tell me why?"

Mary's brow arched in that signature way, the way that was meant to make the other person feel like they had crossed a line. She shifted around in her seat and took another sip of tea, and her obvious attempt to stall irked Matthew even more. What could she be so hesitant to tell him?

"Mary, please just tell me what it is," he said. "I won't get angry at you, if that's what you're afraid of."

"You're not going to like it anyway," she muttered under her breath.

Matthew didn't want to let himself get angry at her, but his patience was wearing thin as Mary continually dodged him. "How can you know that when you haven't even given me a clue?"

"Because I know there is absolutely no way you'd agree to what I'm asking of you," Mary practically groaned. "Not after what happened the last time."

She seemed to wince as soon as she spoke, and her eyes were pleading for him not to react negatively. But frankly, Matthew wasn't sure how he should react. His breath caught in his throat, taken quite by surprise even though he had known that this might be her reason for finding him again.

"Oh …" he breathed. He ventured a guess at what Mary was hesitant to ask him. "Do you … you want me back on the team?"

She was looking at him with a rather pained look in her eyes. "No … I need you back on the team."

Now it was Matthew's turn to act the confused party, although this time he really was perplexed. "What do you mean? What's going on?"

"A job," Mary said. "It's a difficult one, and it's probably impossible – but if we can pull it off, then we can go back home."

For a second, Matthew wasn't sure if he had heard her right. "We can go home? Are you … are you really saying that … ?"

Mary nodded. "We really can go home – if we finish the job, which again I'm pretty sure is impossible," she added despondently. "But I feel that it's the only change we'll ever get for a long time."

"I don't understand – how did you – who gave you this job?"

Mary began to explain, in a hurried and breathless manner, what had happened just hours before in Berlin, explaining as best as she could the incredibly complex task Sir Anthony Strallan had presented them with. Much of what she said went right over Matthew's head, but he understood just enough to know that this was a job that was unlike anything else he (or probably anyone) had ever done.

He was still stunned beyond belief about her saying that this was the chance to go home. It seemed too good to be true that completing this job could somehow absolve them of the charges that would result in them being arrested and convicted if they set foot within Great Britain's borders. How could some CEO of an agricultural company possibly rescind those charges? And a more pressing matter: how could they possibly succeed in the job that, judging by Mary's explanation, didn't even resemble a traditional extraction? She was certainly justified in assuming it was impossible – it probably was.

But if she had come back to Paris to find him, with this job being the reason she had returned at all, then she must have had some small hope that it could be done.

And he wanted to go home so badly as well. It wasn't enough when his mother visited once in a while, although it was nice; but he wanted to feel like he was where he belonged again – walk down the familiar streets and live in a house that felt like a proper home. Two years in Paris and he still felt like a foreigner: the city was a beautiful place, and he didn't dislike it at all, but he was never able perceive it as home, as where he was actually supposed to live his life. He still felt like he was waiting for the call to go home, waiting to receive a plane or train ticket arriving in the mail.

Perhaps, he now thought, it was because he had never fully let go of the hope that he could return to England without being immediately thrown into a jail cell. Even though that hope had eroded away with time, maybe it hadn't disappeared completely.

"Listen, Matthew," Mary sighed, "I know I'm probably expecting too much by asking this of you." She lowered her eyes as if she was ashamed. "I'm sorry … but I – we need you back. This job is … God, I don't even fully believe it can be done, but if there's some small chance that it could be done … I don't have time to find another architect and I can't train them for this job alone. You're probably the only one who could manage it."

There were cracks in her aloofness – Matthew could see them almost as if they were visible lines in her skin. She had come to him out of desperation to get him to come back to the team, but simply as the architect. It was like she didn't want to face the rest of him – she wasn't here to deal with the rest of Matthew, the part that wasn't merely a colleague.

"Do you think I won't come back to the team?"

"Why would you? You didn't stay. And to be honest, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to, after …" She drifted off, but again Matthew knew what she was going to say. After what happened.

"I only left because I thought the team was splitting for good," he insisted. "I thought that was the end of the extraction business—"

"That's not the only reason though, is it?"

Matthew paused, wondering if he should bring up what Mary was surely thinking about – what he was thinking about right now as well. He ran his fingers through his hair, digging his fingertips into his scalp as he tried to force his mind away from the memories that he hadn't dared to remember for a long time. He could barely hide his own regret about that … incident.

The other reason that Mary was referring to wasn't the same reason that that they were not allowed to go back to England. This other reason didn't involve the rest of the team: it was solely between the two of them, and that made it harder to deal with, to even think about.

"You still came here, though," Matthew said. "Even though you're thinking I won't come back to the team. You still came here to ask me anyway."

"I thought I might at least … check," Mary muttered.

A sound that was a cross between a chuckle and a scoff came out of his throat. "You thought you would check?" Matthew repeated.

Mary gave him a very hard glare. "Like I said, you don't have any reason to return, so—"

"Yes, I do, actually."

More chinks in her visage. There was genuine confusion in her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"I really do miss working for the team," Matthew admitted. "Maybe this is hard for you to believe, and you think that after everything that happened I shouldn't think it was worth it. But I really did like it – I liked feeling like I was doing something real, that what I was creating wasn't just a concept that no one would see. It wasn't just a job for me, it was … it was exciting. And," he added a bit more cautiously, "I miss the rest of the team. I miss Tom and Sybil a lot."

Mary nodded. Matthew and Tom had gotten along well, and Sybil simply got along with everybody. "Well, Sybil's here in Paris too, so I'm sure you'll want to say hello to her. She'll be glad to see you."

"And I've missed you too," Matthew added.

He said it so sincerely that Mary's eye widened involuntarily; she hadn't been anticipating that. "Did you?"

Matthew nodded, not sure if he should get his hopes up by expecting her to say something similar. "I really did."

Mary seemed at a loss for words at this. Her mouth hung open for a few seconds, completely unmoving as if Matthew's revelation had given her a shock. Was it really that surprising for her to believe that Matthew had missed her?

Which begged the question – had she missed him at all? It was a thought that discouraged him enough to make him hesitate in agreeing to come back to the team. That thought that the few private moments they shared, when it was just the two of them, alone in a dream or in the workshop after dark, might not mean so much to her as it did to him.

But he couldn't bear to disappoint Mary; he could tell she did indeed need him, and he could deal with her treating him like a stranger again. And if things went well, perhaps this job would mean they could go back home. Matthew would not be the one to deny them that slight chance.

"To answer your question, yes, I will come back to the team," he said. "Just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it."

Despite his affirmation, Mary didn't seem convinced that he meant it. "Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? Your job is going to be much more difficult than it was in the past."

"Then I'll just have to work harder," Matthew replied simply.

"You won't abandon us if it gets too difficult?"

Matthew frowned and his face paled, staggered that Mary could think such a thing. "Do you really think I would do that?"

Mary swallowed, perhaps realizing her mistake. "I don't know. I had to be sure."

So she didn't fully trust him anymore. Two years, and she thought that in the span of that time he could change. "You know I wouldn't ever do that," Matthew said.

"Like I said, I have to be sure. I can't risk anything with this job."

She had returned to sounding so cold, so professional. If Matthew thought that getting under that cool exterior was difficult before, now he was thinking it was damn near impossible.

"Mary, I'm agreeing to come back to the team since you've asked me, and now you're acting like I can't be trusted—"

"Well, forgive me for not wanting anything to jeopardize this job!" she shot back, a bit too loudly. A few people sitting at café tables nearby glanced at them.

"What is this all about?" Matthew demanded. "Is this about what happened – I mean, between us?"

Mary's eyes widened. "It's not about that at all! I told you, I can't take any risks!"

Matthew couldn't hold back an indignant snort. "So I'm a risk now?"

"It's not something you'd understand."

"Then help me to understand."

"Good God, Matthew, just – just let it go!"

They were both talking too loudly to appear like they were still having a civil conversation. Now Matthew was wishing that he hadn't declined the waiter's offer for that wine. Mary sat still, absolutely fuming, her ivory complexion tinged with scarlet. She took a moment to calm herself down, rubbing her forehead to hide her angry tears.

"Mary, I really think we should at least talk about what—"

"There's nothing to say about it, Matthew," Mary retorted, her voice cracking. "I've put it all behind me. And I hope to God you have too."

She was lying; it still haunted her, just as much as it haunted Matthew. And since she was unwilling to confront the subject again, Matthew supposed neither of them would get closure soon, if ever. Which was going to make things awkward since Matthew would be working alongside Mary again, and working closely with her. And he would eventually be going back into the dream with her.

"Then you'll just have to trust me again," Matthew said. "I'll come back to the team for this job – if you'll have me back, that is."

To his relief, Mary nodded. "Alright then."

That was all the confirmation Matthew needed. "So am I officially on the team again?"

"Yes, you are," Mary said. Offhandedly, and without any emotion, she added, "Welcome back."

Matthew noticed how she started blinking more rapidly than normal, but he didn't say anything. "Do we need to shake on it?" he asked half-heartedly.

"I don't think there's any need to." She stood up out of her chair, Matthew doing the same thing when he thought she was going to leave. She looked at him quizzically. "I'm not going anywhere, I just need to use the loo."

Matthew sat back down, watching her push past the closely-packed café chairs and tables. He rested his arms on the table, rubbing his face and trying to decide if that had gone horribly bad or as well as it could have.

As glad as he should have felt to be a part of the team again, he knew it wouldn't be the same as when he was working with them before. It would be just him with Mary and Sybil, as Tom had left around the same time he did, and recently Edith had defected too. He hoped, at least, that Sybil would be a bit more welcoming than Mary, but even so time and misfortune had changed too much. He didn't feel like he was returning to the team as he remembered it, but to a new one that was only a skeleton of the old one.

And he and Mary had the past looming over them like a storm cloud. He didn't know how she felt about what had happened between them, and he never got the chance to ask her before he left the team . Even then, she distanced herself from him, treating him so coldly that he realized any trust she had in him was never going to be rebuilt. If they were going to be working closely together – and he knew they would from experience – he had to prepare himself to be met with even more detachment.

When that time came, would the past finally catch up to them?

He felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up to see the waiter standing next to him. "Can I get you another cappuccino, Monsieur Crawley? Or perhaps something stronger?"

"Er – no thank you – just the check, I think," Matthew stammered.

The waiter didn't immediately go back inside. "How did things go with the mademoiselle?"

Matthew groaned, which should have been enough to give the waiter the hint. "The check, please."

With a smile that could be loosely described as sympathetic, the waiter retreated back into the café, returning a minute later with the check. Matthew had just handed the waiter back the check with a couple of folded banknotes in it when Mary returned.

She opened her mouth at almost the exact same time that Matthew had begun to say something, even though he wasn sure what he wanted to say. He stopped himself, but Mary still didn't say anything.

"Is there anything you—?" Matthew decided to ask.

"I need to go now, actually." She sounded only a little apologetic, but she kept her eyes away from Matthew. "I'm meeting Sybil – we set up a place to work in. An old warehouse or something. It's got equipment, it …" She paused, biting her lip. Matthew worried that she'd walk off without so much as a goodbye, leaving him standing by himself at the café.

"Well … I suppose I'll let you go then," he said. "Should I … expect to see you again soon?"

"Yes, I think so …" she muttered.

She had turned away from him, about to walk away from Matthew as he predicted, when she spun back around. "Actually, you should come with me to see the workshop. It's not very far, we just have to take the Métro a couple stops."

Matthew was rather glad that she had offered that, even though she still seemed unlikely to open up any more. He nodded, standing up from the café chair. "Sure, that sounds – good. I can … I can go with you."

Mary immediately started walking away from the café and down the street towards the Métro station, Matthew following close behind her. All he could think about was how he was going to survive the next few weeks working alongside Mary, forcing himself not to reveal the one big reason why he wanted to return to the team.

She was that reason. Even if none of the other reasons mattered – his need to be useful, to do something interesting with his life – he would still go back on account of Mary.

Even if, after this job was done, she might not want anything to do with him ever again.