Chapter 7 : The Past Is Never Far Behind

Feel like this is rambling, tried to capture the thoughts that go through one's mind after an attraction is consummated for a person who may still be hurt by another person who is still in the picture. Next may work on an Annie/Auggie confrontation.

Episode 5.09 happens.

Annie and Auggie meet and pour over the information they have gathered. Annie doesn't completely buy the dog walker's story and this is confirmed when Auggie finds footage of him at the Brunswick Train Station. They learn the dog walker's name. Allen Langer was at the scene of Roger Bennett's death, so McQuaid was caught in some lies.

Annie comes up with a plan to resign and work for McQuaid to get closer to him, they learn about Flint and Borz' involvement with the group. McQuaid comes clean to Annie about Flint, she wants to believe him, but Auggie puts doubt in her when she shares that McQuaid came clean about Flint and knowing Borz for longer. Annie heeds Auggie's words and is distrustful of McQuaid and continues investigating based on Arthur's intel. Annie finds the bunker, teams up with Caitlyn to get out of a bind at the bunker, then reports everything to Langley where Caitlyn basically throws McQuaid under the bus. McQuaid is tipped off that multiple agencies are after him and goes to Annie's apartment for an ally, but is hurt and shocked to find a gun pointed at him. The manhunt for McQuaid begins.

McQuaid has little, but a "go bag" with a small stash of cash and no usable IDs. He has nowhere to turn and isn't sure who he can trust though his network of contacts is large. He tries to find a way out of the country, but then decides to stay and fight. Annie let him go the night before, she had to have believed he would not kill fellow Americans. After he left Annie's apartment, he spent the night at his safe house regrouping and planning his next move. He didn't want to believe it, but the only person capable of setting him up was Caitlyn Cook, his trusted friend and second in command. She was the only other person with access to all of his employee and mission files. He thinks back to how loyal Caitlyn has been to him over the years and doesn't want to accept her hand in setting him up. She reached out to him to meet, but he knows he can't go on his own. He has no choice, but to engage Annie again. His gut tells him that she will be willing to help him and like Annie's, his gut is hardly ever wrong.

All the above was from CA writers.

Episode 5.10 happens

Annie is back at her apartment after visiting Ryan in the hospital. She was still in the same clothes she wore since finding out the motorcade was the intended target. She smelled the smoke from the blast, but also lingering was Ryan's scent, clean, light, probably just aftershave, not cologne or maybe his hair product. She is thinking about Ryan and what was next for them as she prepared and took her first long bath in many weeks. She needed it to relax and she had to admit that she needed to take are of her aching body after the scuffle with the men Caitlyn sent and with Caitlyn herself.

While in the bath, Annie thinks back to the days before when she was helping McQuaid. She had finally admitted to herself that he had succeeded in worming his way into her heart. It was her gut AND her heart that trusted him. At first she thought his flirtation was all part of his game. She thought he was playing with her, trying to get in her head when they were after Borz. She sensed he was hiding something back then and he was. She had him pegged, a cocky trigger happy PMC, throwing around his money. He was completely ignorant about spy craft as evidenced by his inability to blend in.

After a couple of interactions, Annie found him growing on her. At first he was a distraction she didn't take seriously. Annie had to admit to herself that she couldn't address her feelings for McQuaid without adding Auggie to the equation. Auggie had clearly moved on. Annie wanted them to go back to having a professional relationship, but she wasn't over him completely. He didn't see her face and her eyes when she found Hayley at his apartment or when she learned that he still had feelings for Tash. It was still so easy for her to hide her true feelings from him, his blindness was a huge disadvantage on many levels. But even if Auggie weren't blind, he probably wouldn't have noticed her hurt feelings. He was too busy screwing and juggling two other women. She thought she had gotten over learning that he slept with Helen while she was pursuing Henry Wilcox, but it stung knowing that he moved past her so easily. If she were honest, she loved him as a friend and their relationship was unexpected, but she thought their relationship would be lasting when it started.

Annie and Auggie didn't start as a lie. They were good friends first. She always had him pegged as the consummate bachelor. He enjoyed serial monogamy. None of his relationships lasted very long. Was she having real feelings for McQuaid or did the circumstances cause her to fall into a pattern? Was McQuaid a convenient way to get over Auggie or did she really care for him? Annie had to admit she didn't know herself sometimes. She wasn't sure what she was feeling or doing, but she did care about McQuaid, she felt sick to her stomach when she learned he had been shot and she went straight to the hospital to be by Ryan's side. It was hard to see him hooked up to all the machines. She prayed that he would live.

For Auggie's part, he did enjoy his escapades with multiple women. He was never a cheater. He usually could only handle one girlfriend at a time until the recent developments with Hayley and Tash. He did enjoy the initial parts of exploring a relationship with a new woman. It was always fun and exciting at first before things got serious. On the surface, an observer might say he got bored easily and wasn't ready to settle down. None of the women were right and usually he'd end it before the stage where they were spending more than one night a week at each other's apartments. He often used work as an excuse to be home alone listening to jazz.

Finding an unfamiliar toothbrush in his bathroom was usually the signal to break up. The back-to-back relationships were his coping mechanism for being blind, he was never sure if the women were really into him or if they felt sorry for him. Frankly, sometimes he just needed a ride home from the bar. He used his disability to his advantage in wooing women, but he also knew it was a huge disadvantage if he were honest with himself. He tried to settle down once with Parker. She was his first serious relationship since he lost his sight, since Helen.

Auggie and Parker connected over mutual grief and loss, but he wasn't being true to himself then. In his heart he had come to care for Annie, but he wanted to keep their professional relationship and he didn't want to jeopardize their friendship. She was probably the first female friendship he cultivated. There was no reason to ruin their bond and he wasn't going to date an operative. He knew the life all too well. He was hurt when Parker ultimately refused his proposal and left him, he felt rejected and he blamed his blindness, but when he was honest with himself, he couldn't use that excuse. It wasn't his blindness that doomed their relationship. It was his job and his lies. She couldn't be with him because he had lied to her and because being the wife of a CIA operative wasn't in her plans for her life. After Parker, Auggie had continued to lie in his relationships though he didn't want to lie to Tash. He was in an angry place. Underneath his witty and friendly exterior, Auggie had a lot of deep seeded anger. It was a trait that many Special Ops soldiers had, they had trained to harness that anger and use it positively in their missions. They were good at managed risk, but sometimes the aggressions bubbled to the surface.

Helen was the last person he had a true and honest relationship with, he couldn't even say that of his brief time with Annie, he had kept things from her. Helen was the love of his life eight years ago and it took him a long time to get over her death. After their last mission, they planned on getting married and returning to DC. They talked in bed about getting a loft together, running along the Potomac, and maybe one of them would go to work for DOD, NSA or the DIA so they would have some distance with work. He had spent years blaming Teo for her death and blaming himself for being unable to save her until he found out she was the one who had agreed to go dark. She was the one who lied to him. He was so angry and hurt when he found out.

Auggie asked himself, how could Helen give up what they had? Why didn't she read him in? If he had known, he would have found ways to see her and maintain their relationship. They were both seasoned operatives, they knew how to avoid detection. Why did she need to stay dead for so long? Once the mission was over, she could have returned. He had so many questions that never got answered because then she was killed for real by Henry Wilcox. He found it hard to wrap his head and heart around what had happened to Helen. He went back to run a Special Ops team in Iraq after she died. He was serving his country, but also wanted something different more action packed than pretending and watching and being an operative reminded him too much of her. And then he happened upon the IED. Once he recovered and relearned how to see and maneuver the world around him without his sight, he returned to the Agency to become a Tech Op. He eventually got his groove back within a year. Joan and Arthur had taken him under their wings.

When Annie came back from being in the Russian prison and was pulled to work the missions with Eyal, Auggie was far from her heart. Annie felt gratitude, she owed him for standing by her while she declared a rogue operative and for masterminding her break-out from the Russian prison but she didn't have any romantic feelings left for Auggie. She had moved past him and had no room in her heart for anything or anyone. Auggie never knew she had developed feelings for him in the past anyway, it was easy to hide them from him. After Russia, Annie was still recovering from being shot, Lena's betrayal, the trauma of being in a Russian prison, and the loss of Simon. She realized that she loved Simon and part of her wished they had run off together, but theirs was a doomed affair from the beginning because it was built on deception.

Annie was pulled from her debrief post-imprisonment to work with Eyal, but was terribly used and betrayed by him. Things had gotten back to a relative "normal" with Eyal after they teamed up again to get Khalid Ansari. They never started as friends, that wasn't their baseline. They had an understanding, they used each other to complete their missions, they had each other's back fully when needed and now Eyal had proven himself to be loyal to her multiple times and she owed him so much. Eyal felt he owed Annie for the times she saved him, but he also felt guilt for using her and vowed to make up for what Rivka ordered him to do. He was never one to blindly take orders and he regretted doing some at Annie's expense. Over time, Annie and Eyal began to view each other as friends and she had earned Eyal's respect as a fellow operative, albeit for different agencies. She hoped she could help him in return and she did with hunting down Khalid and manipulating him. When that mission was finally over, the unexpected happened. Auggie came to her and while she was still mourning Simon, she needed someone and she trusted Auggie. There was no courtship or flirting, they had been friends for so long. So they went from 0 to 180 in no time at all. Maybe that was what doomed them.

When Annie returned from being gone after going dark and finally ending Henry Wilcox plans, she was in a dark and lonely place. Annie wanted to work as an escape from herself, her life, her medical condition, her losses, her pain. . . She didn't want to reunite with Auggie, she couldn't go back to where they were before she faked her death. Partially it was to protect him, but more than anything it was to protect herself. First, she was still hurt by him and he fell in love with the old Annie Walker. That Annie was dead. Who had she become? She wasn't even sure herself.

When Annie returned, she couldn't tell Auggie about her condition and if she were honest, she was still a little crushed that he slept with Helen while she went dark. She wanted to focus on her job and with the need to manage her medical issues, she had no time to be in a relationship. Eventually, she let her guard down after all the times Ryan showed her understanding, support, and admiration. She had developed feelings for Ryan. Then she felt burned when she saw the dog walker at his home and learned he was implicated in Chicago. Annie questioned all her instincts again when that happened, but something inside her couldn't believe McQuaid was guilty.

The bath water was getting cold, but Annie couldn't move. She drained down some of the water and added more hot water. Her body was sore and she was so tired. Her thoughts turned to Ryan again.

When she pulled her gun on him, he asked her to think about all the moments they shared since meeting. After she talked to McQuaid and let him leave her apartment her gut did tell her he was innocent not just because she wanted to believe it, but because she knew it. Why would he come to her if he were guilty? He really needed someone he could trust to help him and seeking her out meant he trusted her. She did what Ryan asked of her, she re-visited all the moments they shared in her head dozens of times before concluding that he really was being set up. Despite the short time they knew each other, they shared very intense experiences and he had saved her life. She knew he was a man of honor with a deep love of country, and a sense that he could accomplish so much through his company to keep Americans secure. Sure he was arrogant and secretive, but there was integrity there. He had many opportunities to hurt or derail her, but all he did was help her, there was no way he would be behind any of it. Annie began to think back to how she and the CIA came to conclude that McQuaid was a terrorist. She reviewed the evidence and the source of that evidence. In hindsight, it was all orchestrated. McQuaid knew there was a mole in his agency, he was right all along, he was just a few steps behind the mole.

Annie made a critical decision to join forces with McQuaid and that meant keeping Auggie in the dark. She spent little time feeling bad about it, she needed to do it and she didn't have time for a heart-to-heart with him, besides he still harbored resentment over what she had done to him in Paris, there was no way he would keep her choice quiet. Annie was what McQuaid needed to soldier on, she gave him the focus and strength he needed to move forward. They shared a very intimate moment in what was a very stressful time for both of them.

Annie smiled in the bath as she replayed making love to Ryan at his safe house. It was time to get out of the bath and go to bed. She planned on visiting McQuaid first thing in the morning before going into work.