Part Six

Summary:

Haply I think on thee ...
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

(WS #39)

----

Wendy's take-no-prisoners exit line seemed to have used up all her emotional energy. She was shaking a little by the time they reached the car outside Famouse. The Middleman opened her car door for her like a prom date. Hurried around it to slide behind the wheel, back in arm's reach. She touched him tentatively. She didn't relax as he'd hoped when he slid an arm around her shoulders. "Dubbie?" At least her skin didn't feel chilled this time. He joked, "Candlelight dinner?"

"I've never been sure what those are for, honestly," Wendy said. "Unless you both like the food, or unless the guy expects to get lucky based on how much money he spends." A corner of her mouth quirked up. "You're definitely in, you know. Even if you weren't. If word ever gets around about your neck rubs, girls will buy you steaks."

"Don't always assume the worst. A lot of men --" a half-smile, "Obviously I mean sad, lonely men -- have trouble telling the women in their lives how they feel. The classic date meal is at least a general indicator in the right direction."

Wendy's you-are-insane looks had lost frequency and intensity over time. The one she used now could have come from her first day on the job. "Men. Are giving subtle and indirect hints. Hoping women spot them. What color is the sky in your world?"

The Middleman held her closer and went back to the original subject. "I was going to ask about Roxy. You realize, coming from her that was quite a vote of confidence. We've got better chances than I was hoping for. Because of you."

Far from being reassured, or flattered, Wendy looked more upset. She worked at getting her composure back. "Is that how it sounded? Maybe you're right. I know right now I'm kind of..."

Wounded, he thought.

"... freaking out over little things. But that's not how it sounded to me. More," she swallowed. "If we get ourselves killed, if the world is overrun by frog-lizard uglies, it'll be because I failed. Because I didn't love you the right way, or enough. Notice she only told you to be yourself. She's right, too. You have ..." Dubbie searched for words, found some in the Lacey section. "You have a true heart. You're naturally going to love somebody, and it's going to be true love -- it wouldn't dare not be. I'm a lot more ordinary than that. You still scare hell out of me sometimes, you know. The fact of you." She held on tighter. "I'm getting some moves, but that doesn't make me a superhero. Not deep down. It makes me a smartass with some moves. Sometimes I freeze solid. Because it comes to me out of nowhere, someday you'll figure that out."

She'd seen him at his worst, she'd seen herself at her best, and she could still think like that. "Dubbie. I can't show you the next ten or twenty years right here and now. I can't even show you what I see, looking at you." He'd tried. Words weren't up to the job, or his weren't. "Let's go home. We've done all we can for the moment, as far as the mission. Let me take care of you."

He smiled a little. "Later on, if we aren't out getting killed on short notice, we can have that dinner. Table for four, with Lacey and your mother. She's going to get a clear shot at me sooner or later. It might as well be somewhere that serves a meal. I've been trained in interrogation resistance, I'm not afraid." His tone said the opposite.

Wendy snickered. A few tears got loose. "God, I need you."

"You have me." She could hear the rest, always and forever, better than if he'd fumbled through the words. One of the thousand things that made him need her just as badly.

--------

He wasn't vain about his body. And Wendy wasn't shallow enough to focus just on that. All the same, it was part of him. The physical strength he'd always been able to rely on made him fearless. The two traits together made him gentle. The Middleman had nothing to prove, not even to her. Wendy was unspeakably grateful for that gift. Too many of the guys-not-men in her dating lifetime had promised 'sensitive' and delivered 'whiny' instead. Or 'deep' as in 'surly and self-obsessed.' Wendy never wanted to go back.

Taking care of her was apparently a literal mission brief. He turned the big bed into a nest just short of a pillow fort, curled up beside her. All that muscle mass shed heat like a furnace. They'd been together half the fall and all winter, now, and Wendy had never needed a spare blanket when she slept here.

He had a tray of finger food. Even though she felt ridiculous, Wendy gave in and let him feed her. The 'galley' downstairs didn't have chocolate-covered strawberries, but he'd found other fruit and cheese and crackers. "You could have told me you had style, on top of the nice butt," Wendy said lazily. "I'd have jumped on you the first week."

The Middleman's eyes twinkled. "I'm actually very shy."

Wendy set the tray on a bedside table. "Get over it." She started to grab. He moved faster.

----

For one moment, arching up against him with all her strength, Wendy could see it. A faint glow like heat-shimmer on a summer highway, clinging to both their skins. She moved a hand to the front of his shoulder. The light flared brighter where they touched.

He saw it too, started to say something. Then touch overwhelmed sight and they both lost track.

------

Wendy knew good operational planning when she saw it. Their two-human raid on an alien spacecraft a few months earlier, for example. But she'd never seen her Middleman turn that skill to a social occasion. She didn't have to do anything, not even arrange for Mom and Lacey to meet them at the restaurant. Which turned out, on arrival, to be something Northern Italian that she couldn't pronounce. He was incognito again in just the pants, shirt, and loosened tie of his uniform. Wendy had her uniform pants and boots disguised with a green long-sleeved blouse. The others were waiting in the foyer. "This seems very nice," Mom approved. "Is it one of your date restaurants?"

No, we stick to stakeouts in the car or investigating crime-scenes. Wendy didn't have a ready answer. The Middleman stepped in smoothly. "I've never been here, actually," he said. "But it has good reviews. And Lacey, they're known for using free-range organic dairy products; anything on the menu that doesn't specifically mention meat should be fine for you."

Lacey's grin was genuine. "You are so sweet."

The whole beginning of the 'date' had that kind of old-fashioned charm. He helped all three women with their chairs, starting with Mom. Wendy didn't know how he'd arranged it, but her menu didn't have prices. She had a sneaking suspicion only one of them did. If she'd been asked for advice, she hoped she would have done this well -- don't try to change your style, show it at its best. But apparently he hadn't needed any.

Lacey had a similar train of thought. "I had no idea you were a romantic, Mike," she remarked. "You're so low-key."

"Wendy changes people." He spoke quietly, but with a hint of the emotional openness Wendy had only seen when they were alone. Men. Expressing emotions by subtle and indirect hints. And, the thing about shy wasn't more than half kidding. He wasn't just putting The Middleman aside, temporarily, for her. He was extending that to the closest people in her life, in tribute to the fact that they were inalterably in his life too. He's having a life. I never imagined 'Mike Middler' could be a real person.

Mom didn't know details, but she couldn't miss the deep affection in his voice. "Tell me about yourself," she said warmly.

Even with that friendly an audience, Wendy knew he'd rather have faced alien battle-bots. "Well. I was born in Michigan."

Lacey didn't say a thing; playing fly on the wall was clearly exactly what she wanted. Wendy hardly said more, for fear of throwing off whatever cover story he had in mind. Except there wasn't one. He was sparse with names and dates, but every detail he did give matched what Wendy knew about his past.

They'd both learned the hard way how dangerous that could be. A few months earlier, a stray remark she'd made to Tyler Ford gave FATBOY the tools to nearly destroy them. The Middleman was shedding one more layer of armor anyway, purely to make Wendy's life easier. She worried, but she couldn't help loving him more.

"... jumping out the third-floor window and rolling out at the bottom. Then running back upstairs," he was saying. "It wasn't dangerous. We were all about twenty, so we were limber, and we'd just come off advanced parachute training. Beautiful soft lawn to land on. But the hotel manager made us stop, because the window faced the street." A well-timed pause. "They were worried about car accidents."

Mom inhaled her ice water. Wendy escaped only because she wasn't drinking anything at the time. The Middleman passed Mom an extra napkin with an innocent air.

"You guys are so lucky I got over my crush," Lacey put in when her giggles died down. "Because some people just keep getting cuter."

The waiter arrived about then. Sorting out tortellini Alfredo from pasta primavera interrupted the flow of talk. Wendy's mom let everyone get in a few bites before she tightened the conversational screws. "So, are you good to my girl?" she asked mildly.

An equally direct answer. "Yes, ma'am. I try to be."

I'm right here. But there were some battles Wendy couldn't fight for him.

"Don't think that 'valiant' remark got past me, the other morning. She talks around the subject on the telephone, but one word she's never used about her new job is safe."

"Mom, some people run into burning buildings for a living," Wendy started.

Her mother's eyes didn't move from the Middleman's. "Wendy's father used to call us, sometimes, when he was out on a deployment. He'd ask a long list of questions about absolutely nothing, even if it was two in the morning in his time zone. He didn't want to worry me but he needed to hear our voices, because something was about to happen. You never forget that tone."

He broke eye contact first, for a quick scan around the dining room. Their table was fairly isolated. "No, ma'am. I wouldn't think you could."

The trill of the communicator watches rang out, in stereo, from two sides of the table.

The Middleman hadn't come unprepared. He pulled out a cell phone, or a good fake, with a look no stronger than mild annoyance. "I'm afraid I have to get this." He stood up and stepped a token few feet from the table with his back turned. Wendy shut down her own watch, below the surface of the table, before it made any more noise.

Lacey thought the interruption was breaking the tension. "What, he's got a phone now? Usually ... you should see it, Mom, it's cool. They have these big honking watches, big for a watch but smaller than any cell I've ever seen. Does streaming video, too. Didn't you..." Both Watson women were staring at her. "What?"

Wendy could feel her mother's stare on her. She didn't dare meet it. Glanced over at the Middleman; from the tension in his back and shoulders he wasn't in a trivial conversation either. He caught the changed atmosphere, turned back to the table. "As soon as we can, Ida." Sat down, put down the cell phone without bothering to 'turn it off.'

"I'm sorry." Wendy stared fixedly at the air over the center of the table. "There's just no way." She rested her forearms on the table on either side of the plate. Pushed her sleeves back to the elbow, exposing her watch. Her mother took in air in a sharp gasp, seeing it. Ask me where I got my photographic memory.

Wendy hadn't given her beloved any warning, or any say. But he seemed as willing to back her play here as in any other combat arena. He rolled his sleeves back too. "There isn't much more to tell, at this point." His low tones were completely frank. His eyes flickered to one side, included Lacey in the family confidences. "I'm called the Middleman. Wendy and I protect people. People in general, the human species. Earth."

"Peter," Mom said numbly. "My husband."

"We're still figuring that out," Wendy said. "It looks like he was ... temping. Helping out, maybe going to take that civilian job he mentioned. The job I have now. He was fighting evil, Mom, no question. He was a hero, like we always knew he was. We just can't tell the Navy any details."

"That would be a problem, wouldn't it." Mom was coming out of shock, into ... rage, Wendy realized. Not fear, not as anything but fuel for the anger.

Lacey held up her hands. "Maybe we should all take a minute and think..."

"Thank you, dear, I've thought." Wendy's mother didn't add I think very quickly. Her voice was light, hard, higher in pitch if not -- yet -- in volume. "Not telling the Navy ... but it would be my duty, wouldn't it? As a citizen, as Peter's wife. Lying would be wrong."

"Do not, Mom," Wendy said. "I know what you're thinking...."

"I lost my husband." Her eyes were sharp, on the Middleman. "Do you know what I'd do to protect my daughter?"

He didn't flinch. "I don't think there are any limits." Got a merciless nod in return. "I admit I have the easier part... Inez. Walking into danger with her instead of waiting ... At least I can promise myself they'll go through me first. And I do."

"That's not good enough." Mom's anger was still building. "Nowhere near."

"Sitting right here," Wendy snarled, forcing her voice low. "He offered the job, yeah. But I took it."

"Then you can take it back."

"Don't go there," Wendy said just as harshly. "I'm not five years old ...."

"You had sense then. Before puberty."

"It's not sex." Wendy couldn't afford the loss of time or momentum for not just that. "I really am good, Mom. Olympic-gold-medal good. There's this martial arts teacher ... I can do things you can't imagine. I love painting, I do okay, but at this I'm the best. It's too important to let somebody else do it not as good. People, innocent people who don't even know they're in danger, die if we mess up. This matters. It's ... not what I do, not any more. It's what I am."

"Like him." Her mother's look at the Middleman was murderous. He took it.

"Like me, now." Wendy didn't look away. "I didn't want to have this conversation. I don't want to choose. But ... do not. If you start telling people about weird high-tech watches ... maybe the watch won't be there to be checked out. Maybe I won't be there much either. That's not what I want. But I will if I have to."

Her mother looked... old. Shaky, almost in tears. Wendy made herself stand up. "I'm careful, Mom. I'm always careful. I promise." She walked away. The Middleman left money on the table and followed her.