an. Aaaand just like that it's somehow already March? I miss the holidays when I had nothing to do but write.

Guest Review Response: There is going to be some more actual honesty between Darien and Tom in the next chapter which was fun to write. It's always liberating when you've already decided that it's over to air the laundry or be candid with your thoughts without the fear of it ending in a break up. I totally agree with you. Tom isn't trying to bring his drama to Sasha's door even though she's inadvertently wrapped up in this. Thank you as always for your review!

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Chapter 8

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Sasha paused outside the doorway, her security badge hovering inches from the scanner. The weight of the plastic seemed disproportionate to its size, as if the small rectangle somehow contained all her misgivings about what waited on the other side. She took a steadying breath, the kind she used to take before walking into hostile territory when fieldwork was still her primary function.

The light flashed green and the lock disengaged.

Tom stood exactly as she'd expected; feet planted shoulder-width apart, arms crossed, eyes locked on the screen where Green's team was preparing to deploy, and exuding an energy that seemed to fill every space he occupied.

The atmosphere shifted — subtle but unmistakable, and whether Tom sensed her presence or heard the door, she couldn't tell, but something in his stance changed, a fractional tightening visible only to someone who knew his body as well as she did.

"Director," he said without turning, the word carrying more weight than its two syllables should allow.

"Captain," she replied, taking her place beside him.

Her title on his lips sounded like an endearment rather than a rank, and she wondered if her response had betrayed the same. A technician adjusted something on a console in the corner, but otherwise, they were effectively alone in the dimly lit space with perhaps two-feet-and-change separating them. The last time they'd shared a room had been twenty-four-hours before Jacob's article was published. A crisis meeting that had lasted eighteen minutes before President Michener had dismissed everyone but Tom and his Chief of Staff.

Their interactions since then had been safe. Lines typed on a screen, words signed Director Reznik, and CPT T. Chandler, USN, no possibility of eye contact, no hints of cologne, and no way to watch that blend of guilt and grief and desperate hope transform his features.

"The intel's solid," Tom said, his voice low. "Your source came through."

She fought the urge to look at him. "We've been tracking the signal for weeks."

On screen, the RHIB was lowered over the side of the Hayward into the inky waters of the Gulf.

Tom shifted his weight, and she caught his reflection in one of the darkened screens. His eyes weren't on the mission but on her. A quick, assessing glance that felt like a physical touch before returning to the monitors. In that brief look, she saw something that made her chest tighten, the same expression he'd worn after the trials.

Did he still see her that way? As something broken that he'd failed to protect?

Under the otherworldly quality of night vision, Green's team boarded the RHIB and set off into the black horizon.

"You didn't have to come in person," Tom said, quietly enough that only she could hear. "The report would have been on your desk by morning."

"As if I wouldn't want a front row seat? You know me better than that."

Tom's lips curled into a smirk causing a familiar stir in her gut.

What she hadn't disclosed was that she'd been looking for an excuse. That after two months of dodging cross-department briefings deferring instead to her assistant and reports, she'd grown tired of orchestrating their separation. That perhaps she needed to prove to herself that she could stand beside him without revealing everything she still felt. That they could put aside their 'thing' and achieve an equilibrium. A silence built between them as the mission unfolded. With every second that passed, Sasha felt increasingly aware of him.

The way he breathed.

The micro-adjustments in his posture.

The scent that felt like stepping into a childhood memory.

She wondered then if Tom had ever told his wife about them. If she'd known before Jacob's article, or if those black-and-white columns of text been been the first she'd learned of it.

Darien's face surfaced. Throughout the president's speech, Sasha had felt his wife's eyes on her — curious, searching, evaluating. There had been no overt hostility, but after Danny so unceremoniously hollered her name across a room, the look on Tom's face hadn't suggested long-term disclosure. It had been raw panic. Like watching someone's private nightmare unfold in public.

What had he said?

Had he confessed how he'd looked at her that first night aboard Nathan James, shocked, confused, and then with such naked longing that she'd realized immediately that nothing had changed? Or had Tom explained only what was needed to weather the scandal, omitting how they'd danced around each other for months, how despite his best intentions, he'd still gravitated toward her while everyone else slept?

Probably not.

Tom Chandler was many things, but he wasn't cruel. Whatever version of events reached Darien's ears, they would have been sanitized. Constructed to protect her while still holding the ingredients of truth.

Danny had been the one to drop the bombshell about the Chandlers' living arrangements. He'd been complaining about the commute, having been pulled from security detail — an assignment that kept him in the general vicinity of Kara — to coordinate and drill the team in Little Creek ahead of this mission.

"At least Chandler gets to fly down."

Despite the White House setting aside housing for all senior staff from Nathan James, the Chandlers remained in Virginia. Not that it made any difference. Whatever was happening between Tom and Darien was between them. She had her own problems — namely the peripheral neuropathy that came and went unpredictably. She'd grown expert at concealing the moments when sensation abandoned her but it only served to drive home a reality she found difficult to accept.

In no capacity could she return to the field.

On the monitor, a structure loomed against the night sky. Thermal imaging failed to detect any heat signatures.

"You think Valkyrie knows we're comin'?" Tom asked.

Something in his tone pulled her gaze from the screen to his face. Their eyes met, and the rest of the room fell away. The blue of his eyes hadn't changed, nor had the way they seemed to see straight through her.

This was exactly why it couldn't work.

What had been unspoken between them aboard Nathan James — carefully banked and controlled — had grown unmanageable in the months since. Those vague, fever-tinged memories she had of his presence during the trials. His hand gripping hers when the pain had been unbearable. The crack in his voice when he'd begged her to fight.

"Valkyrie assumes everyone's coming. That's how they've survived this long. They just don't know when or how."

That debt — that bond — was too overwhelming to navigate now, layered with too much unsaid.

Sasha broke first. Green's team had reached the platform.

This was their reality now.

Standing side by side in darkened rooms, united by duty in a world collapsed, pretending that being unable to cross those two feet of space didn't matter.