Shatter
Annie's never been the kind of person who ever felt helpless.
Even as a child her ability to overcome adversity was exceptional. While Danielle bemoaned each move from base to base, Annie embraced the army brat way of life. The prospect of change intrigued her; she welcomed it with open arms. There was no mountain too tall for her to climb. No adventure or challenge too big for her to pass by. Throughout her life an intrigue for the dangerous and daring followed her, and through a series of events, unfortunate or otherwise, she's ended up here.
The only difference is that all the times before, escape was an option. She never felt helpless, because there was always another way, another loophole, another out.
She feels helpless now.
"It was a Hail Mary."
Auggie can feel it, she knows he can, the tangible anxiety and desperation that radiates from her like a flame. Her last ditch effort to sway Harris' wife had been a long shot at best, but it hadn't stopped her from hoping that she could change the status quo in her favor. Auggie's words now are a hollow offering of comfort, and despite his best intentions they do little to ease her frantic mind. Her pulse echoes in her head, a bitter reminder that the heart beating in her chest is the very reason she sits here now.
The ultimate betrayal is her body's failing health.
"I should have been able to turn her." Annie is short, terse, her eyes distant.
"No one wants to face the truth." Auggie tries to reason with her, talk her off her ledge. "It feels easier to look the other way."
Annie, blinded by her own desperation not to fail, continues to try and fight the impossible.
"Call Joan and have Melinda brought in."
"I'm sorry Annie."
"A couple hours one on one, I can get her-"
"It's time to call it a night." Auggie's voice changes when he cuts her off this time, his previous pacified tone hardening. He achieves his desired effect; it stops Annie in her tracks.
But then she laughs.
It's a short, strangled laugh that falls flat and lifeless between them. Auggie turns in her direction, his expression a mixture of incredulity and concern.
"What? What's so funny?"
"I'm a really good driver." Annie whispers, staring straight ahead at the road from behind the wheel where they're parked. "Even when I was at the farm and I didn't know anything else, I knew that. After everything I've survived it's a freak car accident that kills my career."
"Your career's not over." Auggie argues.
But they both know that's not really what this is about.
"I want to be in the field. It's my life. It should be my choice."
Auggie is quiet, but just for a moment. What he says next is something she'll remember for the rest of her life.
"The hardest decisions in life are sometimes made for us. It's how we choose to live with them that matters."
She promises Auggie that she'll go home after she drops him off at his place, but she doesn't.
Instead she drives, sleepless and searching. She drives through DC, into Georgetown where she passes her sister's old house, but can't bring herself to stop. She drives to the National Mall, where she's spent days as student studying by the monuments, and countless other moments, some she'd rather not remember, as a spy.
Annie parks and walks down 17th Street, past the National World War II Memorial where she crosses and heads at a leisurely, lost pace toward the Washington Monument. The sunrise bleeds into the sky ahead of her, and the safety light at the top of the sprawling structure on the hill blinks baleful and red against the morning sky. She comes to a bench on the path she's following, and she sits.
She's sat here before. She remembers the man who sat beside her. She remembers what his blood looked like on an alley floor in Hong Kong.
"You turned your back on something, what are you running from?"
Annie finally makes it home, but it doesn't feel like a place she can call that. The dead flowers on her kitchen windowsill are evidence.
She's caught between insurmountable dread and exhaustion, but the latter is winning the war. Sleep and a shower are the only thing on the docket for her foreseeable future, minus losing her job once she get's the phone call that the CIA's found out about her medical records.
However, when Harris shows up and tries to kill her, sleep and a shower become less important.
The sixty second struggle through her apartment is the longest of her life. In a knife fight, in another life, Annie wouldn't blink at the prospect of going hand to hand with someone twice her size. It's the taser in Harris' hand that makes her hesitate now. She knows if he manages to touch her with it it'll be more than just an electric shock that stuns her - she has to consider the ramifications it could have on her heart.
He dives for her though, ending any contemplation of running, and Annie rises to meet him.
She manages to use his momentum against him, kneeing him in the chest and hurling him into the kitchen island. It gives her just enough time to scramble and snatch her gun off of the coffee table where she'd set it, but she's not fast enough to turn before he grabs her from behind. It doesn't help that her heart rate is already through the roof, but she continues to fight, thrashing until Harris is forced to release her. She goes crashing through the glass door of her bedroom. In the split second it takes for her to scramble backward across her bed it feels like her heart is already combusting inside her chest.
Harris lunges at her again as she pulls herself up and grabs a pillow, raising her gun and pulling the trigger. His body snaps back violently when the bullet catches him in the head. The recoil from the gun and the awkward angle throws Annie back into the bed, and his body hits the floor.
Shortly after a wave of tightness hits her chest and her head begins to spin.
The attack feels delayed, sending the entire world into slow, distorted motion. Unsteadily she reaches for her bedside drawer, fumbling for the auto-injector containing her nitrate medication. She drops the gun on the bed and administers the medication into her thigh just as a cloud of darkness obscures her vision.
She's falling on the beach in Fatu Hiva all over again.
She focuses on breathing until her pulse slows, the knife like sensation dulls, and her lungs stop screaming.
Then, shakily, she pulls her phone from her back pocket and makes a call, breathless and shaken.
"Joan. It's Harris. He's dead."
When she hangs up, she loses it.
She manages to stop crying just long enough to pull herself together and let the sweep team in.
AN: I really wish we'd see Annie lose her shit more on the show. I'm sorry, but after everything she's been through, how could she not have a meltdown? I'll definitely be writing a real meltdown at some point. Also, as my beta Primadonna pointed out, I wish the show would focus more on little things that make the characters who they are. Annie's memories, things like her sister, things like remembering watching Henry die, getting shot by Lena, Simon, Jai, EVERYTHING, all make her who she is. I guess the beauty of writing a story versus showing it on television makes that more feasible, but great TV writing wouldn't need that excuse. Hope y'all like this, lemme know. xoxo
ps: thanks Anon for your super discussions and thanks Epona3 for being you. *hugs*