Part VIII

Location: Isla Santa Cruz, Ecuador

Two days since Auggie Anderson boarded a plane in Austria and landed halfway across the world in Isla Santa Cruz, one of the Galapagos Islands off the Ecuadorian coast, and the man was growing tense. The island was peaceful, slow since the island was out of tourist season, and the air was crisp and almost sweet to his sore body as he waited.

"¿Desean algo más?"* A waiter's voice interrupted his quiet sit as he listened closely to sway of tree branches and breeze over black volcanic sand just down from the restaurant he was currently enjoying a drink at.

"Sólo la cuenta, por favor."** Auggie smiled politely at the waiter as he cleared the table of his empty bottle and small plate before walking away to fetch the requested bill. He held a cold and near-empty glass in his hand, letting the cool glass turn slowly in his fingers. The waiter didn't take long to return with Auggie being the only customer at this midday afternoon, but Auggie was not in a hurry either, taking his time to sip the last of his bitter drink before finally allowing his drifting thoughts to guide him back to his hotel room.

The walk back was slow, the blind man taking his time to navigate up the small town's pathways to the hotel with only one good arm. It was difficult enough to navigate a foreign area on his own, take away one of his hands and he needed more care than he wanted to admit.

He mumbled polite pleasantries to those that passed and did the same, and greeted the staff that greeted him first as he entered the hotel. He had only been checked into his room for two days, paid with cash, yet everyone at the smaller hotel already seemed to know who Mr. Quinn was, what room he was in, and how he liked his privacy. It was almost unnerving to the man, who had spent so many years covert in these situations, but he did pick this area for a reason, and he held his doubts that anyone in the area would ever catch his old alias from a previous operation.

He climbed up the stairs with minimal effort, and continued down the hallway on autopilot. He unlocked the door with minimal problems considering his injuries, and stepped quietly inside. The room was quiet and serene, filled with the air of the large open windows, sounds of the water outside, and sunlight filtering through the room and lost to the sightless man.

He began crossing the main area's floor to the small table across the room and beside the open windows when a voice took him by surprise, despite his long wait for it to appear.

"Auggie." As soon as the voice hit his ears, his whole body changed. His movement froze immediately, eyes growing wide, heart racing in his chest, a whirl of flooding through his veins as his blood raced in his body. Auggie turned slowly in his spot, his sensitive ears picking up minute sounds around him of busybodies moving about, clattering and clamoring from down below the balcony, rustling of wind in the trees nearby, and if he listened close enough, the wonderful melody of the woman's breath so close to his, it made his pulse quicken even more. He'd felt like every day for those past six months he'd been holding his breath, waiting for something to happen, her voice to reappear, or his heart to suffocate and pull him out of this misery he'd been in. Auggie felt like every single second since that last time he'd heard her voice in his ear, he'd been holding his breath, and that moment, this moment, after hearing that voice he wasn't sure he ever would, he finally let out the air he'd much been needing.

"Annie..." The name dripped off his tongue, and before it even hit the ground, an explosion of emotions with the force of a volcano erupted inside the brunette woman, and without a second wasted, she rushed to the man she'd spent six months dreaming about and collided her body into his with such a force, they both nearly toppled over as she finally burst at the seams and let a long awaited for sob erupt from her mouth.

Auggie gasped a sharp intake of breath as she collided with his injured wrist, but he found himself so absorbed in the miraculous moment, the sweet moment he had been dreaming about for so long, he buried his gasp in a hold around her body so tight he wanted to feel her body melt into his. She was here.

"I can't believe you're here," her breath choked in her throat as she let the tears fall freely from her eyes. "I thought I wasn't going to get to see you again at least for a year, and now you're here." She tightened her hold around his back, her arms clinging to the fabric of his shirt over his bruised back like it was a live vest and she was sinking in the middle of the ocean.

Auggie wanted to be angry; he wanted to scream, and yell, and shout at her everything she'd put him through, physically, mentally, and emotionally. The horrible ache that was erupting in his chest however, ten times more powerful than all the pain from all of his injuries combined, made the air think in his lungs, his mind hazy like overworked machinery, and instead of yelling, or screaming, or even pushing her away like the logical part of his mind commanded him to do, he tightened his one good arm around her back and buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent and warmth of this woman he thought dead for six months. She was here, and she stayed there, both of them simply standing in the middle of a dark and breezy room for seemed like hours, the sun outside crawling down slightly as they inhaled the moment, neither one willing to release the other for fear they would lose the chance forever. It could have been some alcohol sewing the thoughts into his mind, but to Auggie's hypersensitive fours senses, this woman in his arms, his Annie, seemed different, but he didn't want to release his desperate hold on her, relinquish the feel of her thinner body under his hand or strangely textured hair pillowing his face, or wonderfully different but distinctive scent of Annie Walker to find out what else about her was different because she was here.

"I knew you'd understand my vacation note," her voice only surface what seemed like days later, tiny and low like it was fading with the sunlight into a warm glow that emanated from within her very core. She felt like for the past six months she had this horrible, ragging ache and soreness in her body, deep in her joints and bones of her skeleton, and being here now, having her thinner, darker, slightly bruised and battered body wrapped around him was the ultimate drug, the ultimate comfort that seeped into all those aches and pains and made them all fade away into this warm comfort that made her think of a blanket and pillows, and soft luxuries foreign to her after six months running.

Another pregnant expanse of silence filled the air around them. Neither of the pair loosed their hold on the other, both seeming to absorb the essence of each other in through their holds. The air however began to chill, at least for Annie. She didn't notice it right from the off, so long in the overwhelming flood of emotions she experienced seeing him finally for the first time in half a year, in such a miserable state that somehow matched her feelings so perfectly. As they stood there longer, unspeaking and simply matching each other's breathing, she was beginning to feel coldness in the man's body, a coldness that hinted that the silence he was presenting to her wasn't a silence brought on by lack of words to properly express his emotion, but from a struggle that was wrestling inside his head.

"Did you ever believe I was truly gone?" She didn't even contemplate the severity of the first blow until the violent words escaped her mouth. His body stilled like a statue, hand around her back freezing the faint swirls and shapes it was drawing across the covered skin of her back. A silence grew between them, and when Annie opened her eyes that had been so peacefully closed while she let her body feel, hear, smell and taste him so close to her, she saw the underlying darkness that had plagued this man she loved for the past six months of her rogue mission. She swallowed thickly as the terrible realization settled in.

"I hurt you." Annie watched a mirrored thick and pained swallow catch in his throat. She watched the subtle wince as he tried to swallow back all the dark memories, the angry tears, and the searing pain that destroyed him the past six months he'd been without her, and in turn it made her heart fall into her toes. He had.

"I understand why you did what you did, Annie." His whisper was so low and devoid of any of the sweet warmth she knew to be his voice it made the air around her feel cold and empty.

"But you didn't figure it out right away." Her words were not a question. The pain in his sightless eyes was deadly obvious. He was mourning.

"I went to your funeral, Annie," his voice finally rose, his hand separated from her skin and Annie watched him take a step back, the space between them thickening into something near impenetrable. "I went to your fucking funeral, Annie. And you're asking me if it hurt?"

"I listened to them put an empty coffin with your name on it in a ditch in front of me and tell me I was never going to get to see you again or kiss you again or even tell you how much I loved you because we never even got to go on a single, fucking, date. Do you even realize how much you mean to me? Do you even realize how much you hurt me?"

"I had to sit there, alone, and listen to your sister cry and your family, and all these fake operatives who didn't even know you pretend to be your co-workers, Annie. I had to do all of it, and you couldn't give me even the slightest clue that this was all a setup?"

"I needed you to believe I was really gone so Henry would leave you alone, Auggie."

"That's a bullshit excuse, Annie, and you know it."

Annie closed her eyes for a moment and took in a deep and steady breath. She was trying to keep her composure, but this man in front of her was making it a mission in itself. Half of Annie Walker wanted a physical manifestation of all the words in her mind to slap this insufferable man in front of her until he made sense of the words she was trying to feed him. The other half of her, however, wanted little else than to bring him back to bed with her and spend the next six months making up for the past six she'd spent dying a little inside every night she knew she was hurting him.

"The plan was to fake my death for a few days to get Henry Wilcox's nose off my trail. Once I could see what he was up to, then I'd find some way to send you a message somehow, but when I really learned everything that I did, I couldn't risk contacting you anymore.

"You still should have," he argued still as tough as stone.

"Auggie, just answer me this, please," she began evenly. "If you were in my shoes, finally had him believe you were eliminated as a threat and finally getting to his weak spot, learning all his secrets, and discovered he had people on the inside, ready to take out everyone you loved more than anything else in the world, including me, would you have done any differently?"

Auggie swallowed hard.

"Do you know how many moles he had on the inside just waiting to take you out, or Joan, or track down Danielle or anyone else I cared about if I got too close again?" Annie watched Auggie's expression closely as she continued revealing all the knowledge she had gained over the past half year and she let her voice soften as she progressed into the more tender details. "You told me more than once that you would do anything for me, and I knew, deep in my heart that you would die for me if the chance came along. Can you deny you wouldn't?"

Auggie's eyes closed slowly as his breath slowed to a deep inhale. "I would," he finally admitted and Annie finally felt her words breaking through.

"I couldn't let him hurt you Auggie. I couldn't let him hurt you, or Joan, or Danielle, or anyone else for me."

"Why did you wait so long?" His next question was almost pleading.

Her hands buried themselves in her own hair and she let her fingers dig into her scalp in frustration. She felt his stance wavering, but she also knew she was leaps and bounds away from reconciliation.

"You were there, weren't you?" His voice appeared out of the silence abruptly and her eyes snapped up to his. Those she knew well that he couldn't see anything out of them, there was an ever growing unnerving feeling from staring at his eyes that seemed to be too perfectly honed in on her. "You were there at that restaurant in Austria, and you called the rescue mission in Romania."

Her mouth opened slowly as she searched for the word, but after a moment of absence closed again without a break in silence. It was answer enough.

"Why was it so dangerous six months ago, and not anymore?"

Annie paused in her step, but again remained silent.

"You couldn't send me a single, fucking, message to tell me you were alive, that this was all a set up, that the past six, long, months, I spent broken over you weren't necessary, but then a month ago it was ok to send a blatantly obvious code in the mail?" His face was red, burning under the growing and bubbling anger filling his blood and coursing through his veins. He seething in anger and frustration alike, trying to make sense of the chaos that she'd created for him that seemed so senseless the more he interpreted it.

"I'm still blind!" An angry yell finally erupted in obvious annoyance at her silence.

"I never sent you any messages until yesterday." Another fat moment of silence filled the space between them as the words were processed in their individual minds. "As far as I knew, you could have been marrying some other woman in Bermuda and I wouldn't have known any differently."

Annie watched Auggie take multiple powerful and angry breathes, but the silence he was giving her now told her from years of knowing him that he was processing and trying to cool down.

"Exactly what kind of messages did you get?" she pressed on after a moment.

If it were in his character to do so, Auggie would have swallowed thickly then. "You didn't send me paper flyers in my mail about a lost dog?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" the words blurted out of her mouth so abruptly, there was no hesitation in his mind to question her confusion.

And then it all made sense. The metaphorical light bulb all the cartoon displayed when he was a child, and the eureka moment books and storytellers dreamed and wrote about finally happened in front of Auggie Anderson's sightless gaze. "Who else knows you're alive, Annie?"

Her lips were pursed strongly and eyebrows deadly sharp, a look lost on the blind man but somehow seemed to make itself present in her voice as she spoke. "As of now, just you, Calder, Teo, and whoever you told, which by the looks of your past two week's itinerary is Barber and Hollman." She paused, thinking the question over again.

He didn't hesitate to make his thoughts clear. "And Eyal?" he stated it as a question, but they both knew it was a statement.

Finally, the same truth already deeply engrossed in Auggie Anderson's mind planted a seed in her mind too.

"That son of a bitch," she muttered loudly enough that Auggie caught it. It was proof enough for him. "I thought he was trying to make a pass at me with all his flirting and instead he called out my boyfriend."

"I take it he never intended to retire?" Auggie asked tentatively.

Sighing with a roll of her eyes, Annie's response was the same as usual. "You would know about as well as I do."

Auggie wanted to roll his eyes at the strangeness of this entire unfolding of truth before him. For some unknown reason, he had always assumed that she had something to do with those mailed messages Barber just happened to stumble on a few days prior. Now, however, it was all making sense. Still, something caught his attention.

"Teo's alive?"

Annie didn't hesitate this time. "He was the last time he showed up in my motel room in the middle of Brazil. He's the one who told me you were looking for me." She watched his responses carefully for any falter or sign of information he was holding back from her. "Apparently you weren't being very discreet and it got the attention of some of his people in the Belgium area."

A sound finally escaped Auggie's mouth that was a cross between a strangled laugh and a frustrated sigh. The sound was uneasy and still laced in a tinge of red and frustration, but as Annie glanced up to meet the now pacing man's eyes again, she felt her skin warm and the line spreading between his lips and curving just barely upward to just barely a smile.

"I was there in the safe house when Teo's men were taking care of you," her voice came out low but it held a better strength than before. Auggie turned to her direction once more. There was an expression on his face that Annie couldn't quite place yet seemed to inherently understand. His body language was speaking a language only the two of them understood, and so, hesitantly, she muttered out the last half of her admission before she could even filter it. "I just needed to see you and know you were okay."

Without warning, Auggie finally moved, taking three long and speedy steps in her direction, his body colliding with hers in such a force she stumbled for a second. It was instantaneous. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and he found her mouth almost perfectly. Their mouths molded to one another, all of their shared and varying emotions seeming to erupt and explode and combust between them in the fiery depths of a force that was immeasurable.

They were suffocating, lost in the desire that was multiplying between them, bubbling to the top and dangerously close from over-filling. The heat was heavenly and so glorious; Annie wanted to die in his arms for the way it made her sing.

He had missed her for so long, he wanted to absorb her through his skin, kiss her and pull her closer and hold her tighter until their bodies fused together into one.

His pull on her body bumped against his injured wrist and Auggie finally broke the suffocating kiss to give out an uncomfortable wince.

Their breathing was heavy, their heart pounding deep in their chests and minds swirling in the heat of a long awaited reunion. Neither let go of the other, Annie's arms never loosening their grip around Auggie's back, and Auggie's hands never moving from her sides. They let another kiss pass, this time so slow and tender, it left a sweet taste on their lips as they parted only slightly and let their foreheads rest together.

"I missed you so much," Annie's voice finally whispered tenderly, and for the first time in months, a genuine, warm smile finally broke the surface of Auggie's face, from his mouth to his eyes. A sound halfway between a chuckle and a sigh escaped from Annie's voice.

"What are you thinking?" Auggie questioned her in a similar tone, and the softness of his voice, so unforgiving when she knew how hurt he was after everything that had transpired the past six months left an even wider smile on her face and swell in her rapid heart beat.

"I was thinking about something you told me during one of my ops involving the Chens."

Auggie smiled wider. She didn't tell him the line specifically, but somehow he knew exactly what she was talking about.

"We talked being married for years and still being so in love that words became useless. Do you realize, that we may already be at that point?"

A long, heavy breath escaped out Auggie's nose as he weighed the words, but there was also a sense of comfort in them.

"We found each other, met in the middle without ever saying a single word to each other. Our blind faith in each other did something even the best and the deadliest couldn't see, and it kills me that I hurt you. I had physical pains and nightmares every, single, day because I hurt you Auggie," she felt her eyes swelling, thick emotion that she hadn't felt in over six months all piling up at the edge of her eyes. "I will never forgive myself for the hurt I put you in, but I could also never regret it entirely because I'd never be able to live my life the same knowing my selfish love for you got you killed."

Annie heard Joan's unmistakable voice sound from the other end of the line, a tone of question in her voice as she called out his name.

"Joan," Auggie started with an empty voice completely devoid of any of the emotions running through him. "I think you were right." Joan's Reply came back much softer and slower this time. There was a subtle hint of care and worry in her skillfully chosen words. "I need some time to grieve, and I think I need that time to be spent away from the place that only reminds me of her." He let his voice almost crack for effect, but the look in his blind eyes revealed more than his manufactured words. "I want to take you up on your offer of an extended leave of absence." Joan's reply was only one last question.

"Put in my leave of absence. I think I need a year to just step away from all the memories of Annie Walker and get back on my feet so I can work under you again." Without another moment of delay, Auggie shut the old phone in his hand and released the long pent up breath he'd been holding, and before Annie couldn't even see what he was doing, he turned in his spot facing the ocean below their balcony and without a second of thought, tossed the device as far out into the ocean as possible. When he turned back to her, it took all of Annie Walker's restraint not to tackle him down in his spot for the glowing smile he had on his face.

"Before I finally came here, I mailed a gps-tracked phone that was bouncing off that line I was just on, to an island somewhere even I'm not sure about anymore. Right now, I'm somewhere in the east where I'm going to spend the next year getting over you and grieving properly. In a year, you are magically going to pop up at Langley, and when Joan calls me to tell me you are alive, I'll come back to work, we'll start dating publically, and a few months later we'll say we moved in together and pick up where everything left off and let the office rumors make themselves what they wish."

Annie smiled.

"So, where to Walker?"

Translations:

* "Can I get you anything else?"

** "Just the bill, please."

Author's Note:

And that, ladies (and probably few gents) is the ending to Six Months Dark!

Oh, just kidding. There's an epilogue. ;)

I am excited however that I got to technically finish the story before 4x11 premiered. To those of you who do not follow me on tumblr, this story was inspired by Auggie bringing up a vacation in the Galapagos to Annie in 4x10 at which I made a post on tumblr saying "Ok, someone now write me a fanfiction in which Annie goes dark, Auggie finds out she's alive and the two end up together in the Galapagos islands.

Later, I got a request to do a "going dark" fic in which Auggie didn't know Annie was alive and se was dark for 18 months before returning to Langley. Well, technically she's not planning to go back for another year, and the fic takes place 6 months in the future, so add that together and you get 18 months.

Now, to answer some questions:

Eyal was the one who sent Auggie the messages. Eyal and Auggie first referred to Annie as a "lost collie" (as in border collie, a dog breed) on a pet message board when Annie was taken in Russian prison.

Teo is alive in my fic because we never saw his body and he's such a master spy I have a hard time imagining a little leg injury got him killed. Teo has connections everywhere, and his connections set up a rescue group to get Auggie out of Romania. Annie flew in soon after to go check up on him, but its up to your interpretation to figure out whether or not her voice Auggie heard in that van that rescued him was real or a figment of his delusion.

Also, Annie was roaming around Europe and South America as a multitude of different aliases. She only used the name "Amber Truesdale" so that Auggie would know it was her, because if you don't recollect, that was Annie's fake name when she played as an escort in the pilot episode of the series (in which Auggie is her John, lol.) Mr. Quinn is from the season 3 episode in which Annie and Auggie go to Spain as Mr. and Mrs. Quinn for an op to get Red Rover.

In my mind I figured since Henry Wilcox has so many moles in the CIA and now has his own spy thing going on, Annie would want to get to his strongest connections first before going in for Wilcox himself. Also, the entire "you need to take a leave" at the beginning of the fic now you can see was obviously planned so that Auggie would have an excuse to disappear for a year.

And with that, I think I answered most questions. If you need any others answered however, do not hesitate to ask either on a review or a pm, or if you follow my tumblr, in a message on tumblr.

Please comment, review and let me know what you think.

It's been so much fun.

- Liz