Chapter 13
It was Sunday afternoon, so most everything in the area was closed, but despite the lack of people, Annie could not help but feel like they were being watched. They went behind the main building, to the back where the warehouse connected to the bar, and trucks could drive in and out to deliver supplies to the surrounding businesses. The two-story building was old, the stone face of the outer wall cracked. Annie walked cautiously as they approached the service door - the road was still slick with ice that had yet to thaw. Eyal on one side of Danielle and herself on the other, she kept her eyes trained on the rooftops.
Eyal eased up to the door, yielding to the side and glancing quickly in the dirty, frost covered window. He shook his head, indicating that as far as he could tell the building was empty.
Annie nodded, glancing back down the back street, and then further ahead to make sure they were still alone. Her partner pulled his black blazer to one side, revealing the shoulder holster he was wearing, a hand around the neck of his gun in preparation to draw it if necessary. He motioned for Danielle to stand beside him against the wall, and he took his place as sentry while Annie approached the door. Grabbing a paper clip out of her pocket, a small treasure she had found in the messenger bag, Annie began to make quick work of its mediocre lock.
Once freed, the old door swung inward, revealing the unlit, shadowy inside of the warehouse. Annie stood at the threshold, searching the darkness, her eyes jarred by the sudden change from the afternoon sunlight to almost no light at all. Eyal came to stand beside her.
"Stay here with Danielle." He nodded to where Annie's big sister stood rigid against the building wall, trying her best not to look petrified. "I'll make sure there are no surprises." Annie began to argue against him, but before she could he had already disappeared through the doorway and into the darkness.
"Is he sure that's such a good idea?" Danielle asked.
Annie hesitated, because Eyal's version of good idea and her version were two very different things. Not wanting to upset Danielle, she settled for something more encouraging. "Eyal knows what he's doing." she said as she moved and stood beside Danielle, leaning against the wall and locking her good arm with sister's, feeling the gun press into her back.
For a moment they waited silence, and Annie was surprised when Danielle pulled her closer.
"You know, after Auggie told me you were…dead, I would pretend it was a dream." Danielle looked down at her feet, biting her lip. "I would read that postcard, and pretend you were off somewhere, and that you just wouldn't ever be able to come home again." She took a breath, eyes glassy. "I guess I wasn't so far off the mark."
The only thing Annie could think of that accurately described how she felt in that moment was devastated. Listening to Danielle left her just as heartbroken and torn as she had been when she had written her that postcard in Frankfurt, before Annie Walker as the world had known her passed out of existence. She thought back to Sweden, two sisters having tea by the ocean, something so simple. But they had been on the run then too, much like they were now, and Annie could not help but feel to blame for having caused Danielle to suffer so many unnecessary tribulations. Everything Annie did, she did to protect the people she loved. Yet it seemed no matter how hard she tried, it was a pattern that inevitably ended with the people she cared for most being hurt, regardless of her good intentions.
Sana had been right. She set fire to everything she touched.
"I want to come home." Annie's reply was like a whispered prayer, her eyes tired, listless. Truer words had never been spoken. "When you become someone else, you lose pieces of yourself." She rested her head on Danielle's shoulder, just like she would have done when they were kids. "I wanted to find them."
"Did you?"
"I'm not sure."
Danielle lapsed into silence once more, contemplating what Annie had said. Annie looked back at the door to her left, her torment over the state of her relationship with her sister temporarily replaced with her previous anxiety over finding Auggie. Several minutes had passed since Eyal had left them. She would wait several more before she gave into any feelings of panic.
"The girls will be glad to see you." Danielle chimed unexpectedly, catching Annie off guard. "They still talk about you all the time."
'What?" Annie's brow furrowed, confused, not following Danielle's train of thought.
"When you come home." Danielle explained, smiling for the first time since Annie had found her. "Katia and Chloe will be glad to see you."
It dawned slowly on Annie that Danielle was talking about her nieces, and she immediately tried to remember the last time she had seen them- hugged them. Had it been that long? The certainty in Danielle's voice, the unwavering conviction and acceptance, made Annie's heart swell and warmed her soul. She could not help but smile too, and for a moment all in the world seemed right again, and Annie Walker found herself a little less lost than she had been before.
"Annie?" The sound of Eyal's voice broke the calm lull that had fallen over the two women, and they both started when his head popped out from around the corner of the door. "I don't think you're going to like what I found."
Eyal waved them inside with a grim look, and Annie and Danielle followed closely behind him as they entered the dark and musty-smelling warehouse. In front of them a chain link cage materialized out of the shadows, its door torn off the hinges, boxes and metal bins of various assortments and sizes scattered in chaotic discord. Against the far wall a desk sat, contents strewn, two printers and a computer monitor knocked to the ground and broken into various pieces, papers tossed everywhere, as if there had been a struggle. Danielle froze in terror, looking away and covering her mouth as if she were going to be sick. That is when Annie saw it: the body, slumped and lifeless against the wall beside the desk, the skin of the throat across the jugular clearly severed, blood pooling on the floor around it in a sickly black-red.
Annie's heart plummeted.
Joost was dead.
Behind them the service door creaked. Already on high alert, both Annie and Eyal spun around, guns drawn within seconds. The open door cast a stream of light that reached across the room and temporarily blinded Annie, and she instinctively moved to stand in front of Danielle, her pulse pounding in her head. Eyal was shouting an indiscernible threat of warning toward the shadow of the stranger that now stood in the doorway. The world fell into a blurry state of slow motion. She widened her stance and her finger tightened around the trigger.
But then Annie's vision cleared, and she hesitated. The white of a blind man's cane reflected against the winter sunlight, casting a halo of light around its owner.
"Auggie!"
"Annie?"
Before she even realized what she was doing, Annie was breaking away from her sister and Eyal, hastily tucking the gun back into the waistband of her jeans, freeing her hands. Her legs were involuntarily closing the distance between herself and him. Driven by a combination of relief that Auggie was here, and a desperate need to touch him and make sure she was not losing her mind, she tackled him, almost knocking him backward, arms snaking around his torso. His breath was warm against her flushed cheeks, the familiarity of the feeling surreal. She could hear his cane fall to the floor. And then his hands framing her face, had found her hair. Unable to stop herself after months of being haunted by it in her dreams, she kissed him, frantically pulling him closer, overwhelmed, relieved, elated by the realization that he was returning her feverish actions with just as much - if not more - ferocity.
She only broke away from him when her arm caused her to give a stifled cry of pain, the sound eliciting a look of distress from Auggie.
"I'm fine." she reassured him, mumbling into his shoulder through gritted teeth, reveling in the smell that was inherently Auggie; to be able to have her hands on him was a narcotic all its own. "It's just a graze."
Not missing the echo in her statement, Auggie laughed into her hair, wrapping his arms back around her, albeit more cautiously than he had been during their initial embrace.
If only for a moment, Annie could imagine sunshine. Sunshine and Colombia and the exact moment before everything became so complicated.
A/N: Ah, finally, the star-crossed lovers are reunited and for a moment all is right in the world... I just have to say that this was the most rewarding, and emotionally exhausting, scene to write. Thanks to Ashtordiffe, it turned out more perfect than I could have hoped for - I hope you guys think so too. Also I debated for a long time if I was going to kill poor Joost or not, please don't hate me! Did you know it was going to be him when you read it? ;)
The question is, how involved was he with everything to begin with? So many questions, but I suppose that is the life of a spy.
Keep reading for mindless psycho babble from my brain...
Annie has so many issues in her life to figure out in the aftermath of everything that happened, between mending her trust with her sister, and getting back to a place of understanding with Auggie... While I don't think all of Annie's skeletons and monsters can be fixed in one story, as that would take NOVELS, I at least hope to get her moving in the right direction here. The reality is that when people betray your trust, and you theirs, it is very hard to recross those bridges once they're burned. Annie is going to have to learn how to deal with everything that's happened, and move on at the same time, none of which will be easy! My opinion is that the writers on the show were so focused on the PLOT during S4 that we lost a lot of insight into the characters themselves and opportunities to do so were not taken advantage of. So, this is me trying to rectify that. Consider this Walkerson kiss a gift, dear readers. Annie and Auggie have a lot of heart to hearts to have before it's all rainbows and sunshine again!