Hey everyone! As you'll probably figure out from what happens in this chapter, we're getting near the end. I just wanted to take this opportunity to again thank you for reading and reviewing. I know Matt/Rachel isn't as popular as Zammie is in this fandom, and Gallagher Girls is kind of an old fandom anyway, so I wasn't sure if anyone would read this at all, but I'm super thankful that you guys have done so!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter—it's more of a Matt and Cammie story than a Matt and Rachel story, but I couldn't not include it.

"Too old for the circus." Matt scoffed as he parked his totally unremarkable sedan in the gravel parking lot.

"Dad—"

"I beg of you, where did I go wrong? Where did I go wrong in raising you that you believe that you can be too old for the circus? What's next—are you going to be too old for the zoo? Too old to eat ice cream for breakfast when your mom's out of town?"

"Dad—"

"Was it my fault? Or was it you mother? Your Aunt Abby? The kids at school? Did the kids at school convince you that you're too old for the circus? Because your mother and I have talked to you about peer pressure, and besides, none of those kids are your peers—you are peerless, sweetheart."

Matt stopped, surprised that Cammie hadn't already interrupted him. But as he pulled the key out of the ignition, he turned to see his daughter staring at him, eyebrows raised and smirking.

"Alright, I'll stop now." Matt laughed once, and pulled the two tickets from behind the sun visor. "Now, did you remember to leave your backpack in the back seat yesterday?"

"Yes, dad."

"Did your mother see you do that?"

"No."

"And it's completely empty?"

"Yes, dad. I can follow a mission briefing."

"I know you can, but as your superior officer—" Cammie scoffed and rolled her eyes. "I need to check. Now, come on, lemme see it."

Cam twisted around in her seat, pulled an empty purple backpack from under her seat, and showed it to her father. Matt looked into the two main pockets, and sighed.

"For some reason, I thought it was bigger than this. Oh well. I think, if they're selling the big bags, we can only get one bag each of the kettle corn and the cotton candy."

"That's not going to last us very long."

"No…" He sighed, but shrugged his shoulders, resigned. "Well, you better start thinking about what color of cotton candy you want. You're gonna have to be selective if our strategic cotton candy reserves are going to be smaller than expected."

"Blue." Cammie answered immediately.

"Excellent decision. Now, one last directive, Operative Morgan." Matt took a deep breath, and narrowed his eyes. "This is a chaotic place, so could you please, pretty please with cotton candy and corn dogs and kettle corn on top, please do not deliberately hide from me today."

She blinked, once. Matt could tell, as both a father and as an operative, that she was genuinely surprised by his entreaties.

"Okay." She answered, cleaning the lenses of her sunglasses so she could avoid looking at him when he was so serious. "I won't."

"Excellent. Now, let's go, my little chameleon. We've got twenty minutes until the tightrope walkers start their routine, and I think we both want a good seat for that."

Of all the things that they saw that day, the tightrope walkers were their favorite. Sure, the animals were cool, the contortionists incredible, but they both loved watching the tightrope walkers.

On the drive home to Arlington, they stopped at a small diner somewhere in central Virginia to eat a meal that was slightly more nutritious than the corn dogs and cotton candy they'd been eating all afternoon. They were tired and a little sunburnt, but they were happy.

After the waitress took their order, Matt smiled sadly at his daughter, who was quietly humming one of the old organ songs that had been playing in the background at the circus. There was a faint smile on her face, tugging at her lips and setting her eyes alight, but Matt knew that in her head, she was practicing every surveillance trick she'd ever learned from him, her mother, her aunt—there in the little greasy spoon of a diner right of the highway.

Since the moment she was born on a snowy January morning, he had known that his daughter would grow up to become a wonderful spy, but at every time Cam proved to Matt that very fact, his heart swelled. Rachel sometimes worried that Cam would feel crushed by the expectations that people would have for her, since Rachel herself had to deal with the expectations of being a legacy. But Matt knew that Cam would blow the nameless, faceless peoples expectations for the Cameron and Morgan family names out of the water.

From his pocket, he slid out a crumpled brown napkin with seven names written in blue ink. Matt had memorized the names the moment he had seen the napkin on the dusty ground at the circus, hours before.

"Cam, sweetheart." He murmured. Her head snapped back towards him. There was a questioning glimmer in her eye—she might have gotten his blue eyes but that expression was all Rachel—but she didn't say anything. He pushed the napkin across the table. She looked at it, without touching. "You cannot ask why, but you need to memorize these seven names."

He hated asking this of her. He hated asking her to do anything that she could not question. He hated that he would, potentially, be putting Cam in danger if this all goes wrong and he's not around to see the end of the Circle of Cavan. But only two years ago, when he and Rachel had been talking about sending Cam to Gallagher—it's so hard to believe she'll be leaving in only a few months, that she's old enough to ride a bike without a helmet and old enough to begin training as a spy and she's already driven the truck around the ranch but in only four year's time she'll be old enough to drive a car on the road and in six year's time she'll be eighteen—Matt had reminded Rachel that they should not underestimate their daughter. She is the best of both of them.

Matt has no plan to die any time soon, but when he's gone, Cam will have Rachel, and Rachel will have Cam. They will have Abby and Joe and a whole army of Gallagher Girls.

Cam will be fine.

She nods, just once, and narrows her eyes, the way Rachel does when she's deliberately memorizing something. Then she looks up, smiles weakly, and asks, "Okay?"

"Okay." He answers. "Thanks, kiddo."

They complete their mission nearly four hours later. They walk through the front door of their townhouse in Arlington and found it, as they expected, empty. Rachel wasn't supposed to return from Malaysia for two more days, but just to be careful, they stashed the cotton candy in Cam's old backpack in their agreed upon hiding place immediately.

Just in case.