Who: Max and her baby!daddy NPC What: A rescue Where: Bangladesh When: A month ago Warnings/Rating: None. Thomas belongs to Chi, and I thank her for lending him/writing him to/for me for this doc. :)
Max felt old. She felt too old for this job, and she'd felt that way since she boarded her connector flight to Bangladesh. She was dressed in a shalwar kameez and a sharee, the loose pants and sari worn by local women, with a swatch of gold fabric over her braided brown hair and tanning-bed bronzed skin. She was used to this game, because every agent was, but she missed the days of the Army. She missed clean battles and the smell of gunpowder in a field. She felt old, and she wondered why just-30 felt more like almost-40. She missed home too, her kid and the feeling that she would be able to actually live a life someday. All that had gone by the wayside after New York, and these days she was faced with the reality of having made an impulse decision when she'd joined up with the division. She was making a difference, and she knew that - but at what cost?
But then her flight landed, and there wasn't time for being tired or being worried. She had work to do, and that work meant she had to be alert, not distracted by her own mind or her own problems. And Max was good at that. She was good at shutting everything out, shutting everything down. She was good at forgetting that crap was complicated with Corvus, with Cerise. She was good at forgetting her failed relationship with Brandon and the little girl she barely got to see. She was good at focus. It was the rest of it she had trouble with.
It all went to shit three days in. Another agent's slip up at one of the computer terminals in the lockdown facility that Max had been planted in as a receptionist resulted in the lead hacker (on loan from the FBI) dead, and Max's cover with it. She found herself in a cell, locked away as a governmental bargaining chip, bleeding from a badly patched up shattered hip that would leave her in traction for weeks if she ever managed to get ransomed out. Her body was covered in shades of yellow and black, and she knew walking wasn't going to happen anytime soon. It would be the end of her field career; she knew it, and she didn't care.
And feverish and drugged up, she wasn't really counting on that ransoming bit either, despite her father being a high ranking U.S. government official, and despite Brandon's pull absolutely everywhere. She was in and out of consciousness for days, her world limited to cream-stone walls and iron bars. She started thinking it was hysterical, that it would end like this. But she wasn't surprised. It reminded her of being a POW when she was just a snot-nosed kid. Sanity ebbed and flowed, hallucinations kissed her skin and made her laugh and cry in spurts. Her guards thought she was cursed, and that saved her from any torture or abuse, but it meant she didn't get much to eat or any medical care either. And by the time a week passed, wounds sweet-sick, she'd resigned herself to whatever would come, and she was only marginally pissed off at how badly she'd wasted her fucking life.
No, he wasn’t supposed to be doing any ransoming. Neither was Max’s father, or the army, or the government. All the papers and all the big men had said flat out that there wouldn’t be any rescue because there wasn’t any agent, because there couldn’t be an agent in that region, and so there wasn’t. Thomas had not been surprised, and neither had the general, but both had been pretty pissed. Pissed enough to actually stay in one another’s presence long enough to fix a common goal and join in common means. That in itself was a small miracle, but it had helped that the general’s granddaughter and Thomas’ daughter was playing in the lobby of Thomas’ office during said meetings, and the occasional chime of her laughter through the heavy door tended to smooth things over.
The combination of the general’s military expertise and Thomas’ money (and a considerable number of off-the-books contacts) had put an American in the blue suit down on desert rock in a place he really wasn’t meant to be. There was some negotiating and some threatening once he arrived, on both sides, and a lot of concerning accusations since Thomas wasn’t actually representing the US government and it wasn’t exactly difficult to discern his identity these days. However, he made it fairly clear that a live Max was not much of a bargaining chip with the US and a big one with Thomas. He also made it clear that a dead Max was going to cause these people operational problems they couldn’t handle.
All of this was a lot of ridiculous posturing, and it served the same function as a vigilante’s scary mask did. All he had to do was get in to see her, and the rest of it was just to get him to that position alive. It took an absurd amount of time and Thomas found his patience wearing thin by the time he managed to move down the hallway and stand in front of the bars. There were people watching, but the time would come when the general would distract them; by tearing the place down around their ears, probably. Thomas leaned on his cane, which stood parallel to his bad leg, and went still, allowing his eyes to adjust to the light. He addressed her like a polite stranger for the sake of the guard who had a few minutes left to stand there and listen. “Are you injured?”
Max laughed.
It wasn't insanity, or fever, or hallucination. No, it was life and how hysterical it could be.
She'd barely seen Brandon since New York, and the last time they'd been in a room together for any significant amount of time had involved her screaming until she was red in the face about Luke killing a warehouse full of people. But that had been over four years earlier, and she'd walked away without looking back, knowing she needed to get over the man that was currently standing in front of her. She'd left the state, left Amanda, left him; she'd believed he bought her story about teaching digital forensics at universities around the world. She'd believed he had no idea she was in this life. But here he was, looking unflappable, and she wondered how long he'd known.
Most of their contact over the years had been he said and she said, nannies and Amanda's increasingly verbal communication, and polite emails about visitation. She'd spent a lot of time out of the country in those early years, because it was easier not to go home when home was an international flight away. All to keep him in the dark, because she knew that he'd disapprove, and she'd always been able to read disappointment in the lines on his face and the tenseness in his shoulders; he'd reminded her of the general that way. The Army was one thing, and she was suited for that, but this was different; even she knew she wasn't cut out to be a spook.
So, yeah, she laughed. Because he was there, after all that pointless rigmarole, and because only Thomas Brandon could walk into this particular hell and ask such a calm, polite question. "Of course not. I'm just resting," she replied, because she knew he wasn't really asking. Her brown gaze didn't stray from his face, despite the fact that she knew the guard was there and listening. She wanted to ask if the general had run into some brick wall that Thomas had needed to throw his money at, but she didn't. "Were you in the neighborhood?" she asked instead.
Thomas did not laugh. He didn’t smile either. But he did respond, and that was to move very intentionally a few inches around in a circle as if drawing atomic circles around a nucleus driven by the point of his cane into the earth. It put his face fully into the light, so she could see his face without effort from her position in the cell. Thomas aged well as he traveled a little deeper into middle-age. A great many fine lines, a jaw more roughened by time than sagging with it. His steel-gray eyes were visible even in the odd light and the dusty air. His hair was combed back from his face and he had slivers through the dark brown the same color as his eyes. In the blue suit he looked distinguished. The cane only made it worse. As he closed his eyes, however, a hint of a smile moved ever so subtly under the curve of his eyes and over his cheekbones. No one else would have recognized it.
He was really asking, though, as soon enough he was going to have to deal with whatever injuries she had. They could save it for when the guard was not there, though. Thomas seemed relaxed as he stood there and waited. He all but ignored the guard’s presence, which the man didn’t seem to like. One soft businessman from America with a cane, and he wished to be more intimidating, it was clear. He kept scowling from one of them to another. Blissfully calm, Thomas said, “No, I wasn’t. But I have airlines for things like that.” Another scratch of his heel in the dirt. “Do you have anything these people want?” He lifted his cane slightly a few degrees to indicate the guard without looking at him.
She followed his progress without turning her head, just tracking him with her brown eyes and then glancing down at the circles into the hard-cold earth. She knew it was intentional, the way he positioned himself so she didn't have to tip her head, and she was thankful of that, even if she didn't say as much. Once upon a time, she might have stubbornly insisted on tipping her head back in defiance, but she was older now. She knew now that she was more emotional than she'd realized years earlier, but she was less stubborn too; there was nothing to be gained from it, and that had been a lesson that was learned hard.
She hadn't been this close to him in at least a year, maybe more. The lines were new, but she'd seen the silver in his hair in the picture Amanda always placed on the nightstand whenever she came to visit. But he was smiling in that particular photo, and any lines looked like smile lines. Now, close like this, it was obvious they weren't that at all. Just age, and he'd always been a decade older than her, and he'd always worn it well. But that hidden smile, that she did recognize right off. She thought she'd forgotten it until just then. Time took the good memories and made them fade before the hurtful ones ever did, but she remembered.
"I always knew I should have made you marry me. I could have made off with a jet or two in the divorce," she teased back, her gaze dropping to her hip, where the bandage made the loose fabric of the pants she wore thick and bulky. It was an answer to his previous question, and it came with an almost imperceptible shake of her head that made her skin sheen; walking probably wasn't going to be an easy option, if that was what he had in mind. "I was just answering the phones," she added harmlessly calm; she had intel, but none that mattered anymore, not now that she'd been fingered.
“I’m attached to my jets,” Thomas said, blackly calm. That habit he had of becoming even more physically serious when he thought he was being funny had not faded, not in the least. It was a more conscious habit, but it was still a habit. “And you’re not blonde,” he added, for the benefit of the guard, who no doubt spoke perfect English. This time he did the hidden smile again. One got the distinct impression he was waiting for something. He took on that same cadence of tone when he was killing time at a cocktail party and paying absolutely no attention to what anyone around him was doing.
Another few specks of dirt crossed the floor toward the guard’s left shoe, gently shoved that direction from another little flick of the cane. “These people say you stole money from their corporation,” he said, smoothly. “And that you confessed.” It was a shoddy pretense and also a handy way to ask for ransom money without actually asking for ransom money. “Is that true?” Thomas knew about torture and generally knew the tactics to avoid divulging information, but in the end everybody said something. He raised both eyebrows, as if asking her how much these people knew. How she was able to tell him by hiding it in oblique conversation was now her problem. Thomas appeared to be enjoying himself. He was keeping time without looking at his watch.
"I'm sure you could afford a good dye job, if blonde is a requirement to get you to the altar," she teased back, and even with the strained pain in her voice, the joking there was evident. But she noticed, while she was talking, that bearing that he carried of waiting. Alright, she could do this, whatever this was. She spent the next few seconds looking for her center of focus, for that thing that all agents had to be able to find in order to stay alive in the field. Part of her was glad this would be the last time, but there wasn't time for dwelling on that now. "Though you never minded the brown before, if memory serves," she added a second later, that same teasing tone and no indication of what was going on beneath the surface. "I'm sure we could make sure you didn't mind it again."
There. Distance, and she watched the cane flick dirt before slowly looking up to see the supreme annoyance on the guard's face. The man was having a hard time controlling himself, and Max almost smiled. "Of course it's not true," she said, intentionally turning her attention to the man this time, so he knew that she knew he was listening. It was work and pain, that turn of the head, but worth it; no one liked to be looked at when they were lying. "But if it gets me out of here and to a spa quicker, alright. I stole money from their corporation." Her gaze swiveled right back to Thomas. "Mind paying the debt for me so that we can get out of here? I know how much you hate the dust." In other words, she hadn't said a damn thing, despite the bruising torture and the pain and the gnawing hunger from not eating for days.
Thomas only barely paid attention to Max’s initial response about blondes in churches. Thomas had never felt particularly safe in churches, and they generally reminded him of funerals and not weddings or christenings. He was that kind of person. With his eyes focused intently on the middle distance, he was busy listening for incoming aircraft, and he was also watching the guard and wondering how many people would come running when he called. Thomas’ steady stare would make anyone uncomfortable. His eyes became ghostly in the dim light and he didn’t need to blink as much as normal people.
“That’s essentially what I’ve done,” Thomas agreed, readily. And it was true enough, he had agreed, and there had been some money changing hands, but he would have the digital dollars back within the hour. Nothing would make Thomas fund terrorism, not even in a heroic cause. Thomas lifted his cane and tapped on Max’s bars like an old man annoyed at something in his mailbox. “Let her out,” he told the guard, somewhat imperiously. It didn’t matter much if the man obeyed. He just wanted him to come closer.
She was paying attention to his tells without any visible indication that she was doing it. She knew, too, that her guard had discounted her as any real threat the second her fever had gotten high enough, assuming her too injured and too ill to matter anymore. She hadn't done much to counter that opinion, in truth, spending more time crying out and being nonsensical than was absolutely necessary, because she wanted to die in peace, if it came to that. That wasn't to say she didn't feel like dying, because she did, but she'd had worse; if she didn't die there from infection, she'd survive it. "Don't try to intimidate the guard. It isn't nice," she said, knowing the guard would look away and straighten his shoulders in a reflexive reaction to prove he wasn't intimidated.
It gave her a second, just long enough to quirk a brow at Thomas. If he'd paid, that meant he was counting on getting his money back, which meant... She rolled her eyes upward toward the ceiling of the cell, and then she closed them and listened. Huh, there it was. She opened her eyes and gave Thomas a smile that only reached her eyes. Not her lips, no dimples, nothing but her eyes. "And I thought you didn't like my father," she said, even as the cane tap drew the guard's attention. The man, big and brainless, did exactly what Thomas expected him to do; he moved closer. It didn't seem he was inclined to agree about opening the cell, though, not if the way his hand reached for the noisy cane was any indication.
“I don’t like your father,” he replied, resettling his feet in a manner that would probably broadcast his intent to someone as well-trained as she was like a spotlight on a red carpet. He winked at her. By rights the earth probably should have shattered, because Thomas was just not the kind of man to wink... but then again, his daughter seemed to do it quite a lot, and just in that way: a fringe of brown lash in a quick, sly flutter. The guard was too busy watching the cane, his mouth slightly open in an angry snarl, and Thomas dropped the cane with a bland expression so he’d have two fists to neatly pop the man in one ear, feint, and unhinge his jaw with a second blow. It happened in the space of a breath: in, pop, out, done. “He’s overbearing and he tries to take over everything,” Thomas continued, dropping his chin to watch the guard attempt to get up and gauging his distance. “It gets on my nerves. He also likes to shout at people who are right next to him.” Thomas dropped his heel as the man rolled over and shattered the guard’s loosened jaw so that all he could do was gurgle.
Then he rolled up a thousand dollar gray wool sleeve and looked at the back of his wrist. The whine of the plane suddenly became overwhelming and a second later the compound shook with an explosion that must have destroyed most of the neighboring building. Plaster rained down on them both. “Punctual though.” His voice sobered. “Now tell me if you’re injured, because I need to know how difficult transporting you is going to be.” He bent to pick up his cane and inspected the lock to the cell.
She knew precisely what he was going to do when his feet resettled. She thought it was unfair, really, that cane. It gave the impression of helplessness, as did the silver that laced through his hair at the temples; he was the last thing that anyone should consider harmless. She knew how much tight muscle had lived beneath his clothing all those years ago, and she didn't make the mistake of thinking he'd let it all go soft in the half decade since she'd touched him. Yes, the cane was unfair, and the wink still made her grin like the twenty-four-year-old she'd been when she'd met him. Except, now, it reminded her of her daughter too, the little girl that took after him in so many more ways than she took after her mother.
She waited for the cane to fall, and while he was expertly taking the guard out, she managed to shift toward the cell bars and reach through for it. The goal was to use it to stand, but she watched him fight first; he'd always been good at that, and Max had always been the kind of a woman that appreciated a good cross more than prowess on the dance floor. "And my mother said he'd mellowed with age," she said of the father that had caused her more insecurities than even Freud could list.
By the time he was rolling up that sleeve that reeked of money, she was pulling herself up with a swallowed back groan of pain, one hand on the bars and the other on the head of the cane. No whimper, nothing dainty like crying. No, the fucking shit just hurt, and that deserved a groan, even if she bit it off. She leaned heavily on the bars once she was standing, keeping that padded side away as she dropped the cane she'd intended to hold back out to him. But he was picking it up by then, and she just took a deep breath in an attempt to find her center as the explosions sounded in the distance. "Shattered hip. Right side. Fever for the past five days. Not a clean break. Infected to the bone, I think. Past the throbbing and into numb, so I might get lucky if I have something to lean on." The rest of it didn't matter. She paused, watching him as he inspected the cell. "How long have you known the university job was a cover?"
Thomas gave her the support with the cane he didn’t necessarily need himself, but he didn’t really approve her effort. He was going to get in there and pick her up, and he wanted her to be conscious as long as possible. He refused to consider what five days of fever meant, things like brain damage and more long-term problems than anybody wanted to list. He was in the moment.
It would be easier if he had a way to open the gate, but he didn’t. This guard had come down with him, and he wasn’t holding a set of keys like a county officer. They probably opened the cell from some kind of control, and those people were probably in the process of running for cover right now. He inspected the bars. Not in the best condition. Some rust. Moving to a likely spot, he took some things out of his jacket pocket. A bottle of what looked like eyedrops, a set of keys with a flashlight on it, and an eyeglass case.
He lifted his chin and gave her a look. “You? In a school?” he said, with supreme sarcasm. Then he looked back down at the bars. “Stand back.” Whatever was in the eyedrop bottle probably would have burned a hole in somebody’s skull. It certainly ate through the bars at the base in short order. Thomas wound a thin, blade-like wire extracted from the eyeglasses around the top of the pole, higher, and started pulling on each side with the support of the key ring, sawing through the metal. Metal shavings fell at his feet. “We probably would have been here quicker if they’d told us where you’d gone to begin with,” he said, somewhat conversationally for someone sawing through cell bars.
Max expected helping her out would be a challenge, even if she could marginally walk, and that wasn't actually a given just then. But maybe she bought into the myth behind the cane to a certain extent, just like the guard had done. It wasn't a thinking thing, and she didn't focus on it. Like him, she was living in right then. An hour earlier, she was waiting to die in the cell. Now it looked like that wasn't happen, and while she might be a better soldier than a spy, even she knew to only plan for what you knew. And here, there wasn't much to plan for. Walking, carrying, dragging - none of that was even a given until he managed to do something about the bars.
A smile tipped her lips when he pulled the items out of his jacket pocket. "Airport security obviously still isn't up to par," she deadpanned; definitely no brain damage. Complications? Sure, but she'd already known her career was over from the moment the pain blossomed in her hip. And without field work, she could concentrate on complications, couldn't she? After all, she was pretty sure the general would ensure she got an impressive severance package after this was all said and done, one with good insurance, and wasn't that something new to think about after the certainty that she wouldn't need it? But that thought was blanked out a moment later, as he began sawing through the metal. She was still holding onto one of the bars to remain upright, her good hip against the far end of the metal that he was working with.
The sarcasm was so him, and so reassuring. Other women might have wanted wringing hands, poetry, or tears of worry. She had always liked the fact that he was capable best. She had a thing for powerful men; no doubt about it. "I'm good with kids. Just ask ours," she said, her own entertained brown quirk of brow as she considered his statement. "They like their secrets," she added of the CIA, which didn't account for why she hadn't told them anything before leaving. "You could have asked the kid. He knew." Sore subject. Target hit.
“My plane, my people. A friend with a military base. It makes airport security a little difficult. As in non-existent.” Thomas yanked on the bar at a downward angle but he had to cut it all the way through before it gave. It would have been easier to pull it where it rusted into the ceiling, but he didn’t have a bulldozer handy, so this would have to work. It worked only because there was a distraction several explosions long, and because Thomas was very strong and very patient. The seams of the expensive coat held, but the angles of the neat stitching stretched to their limits and the muscles in his back worked hard against the strain.
The harsh rhythm of the sawing stopped. “I didn’t need to ask. I knew.” He looked at her through the bars, assessing the fever glaze in her eyes and trying to decide if it was worth saying anything out loud. By his expression, it wasn’t a good thing, but he wasn’t angry about it. He did not consider Luke to be Max’s child. His, but not Max’s. Amanda was unquestionably theirs, but she was kid and not kids. He looked away without voicing it, and the cord broke through. He finished the bar with a kick of his heel to knock it loose, making a thin space just wide enough for her. He put one arm through to support her and drag her the rest of the way so she wouldn’t jar her hip.
"And here I thought you were harmless," she teased, knowing perfectly well he wasn't, and knowing perfectly well that he had considerable and endless resources at his disposal. She watched him work for awhile, but she gave that up a few minutes in. She closed her eyes, and she leaned against the wall at her back, the visual of his jacket straining over his shoulders fresh in her mind's eye, even behind her closed lids.
Her eyes opened again when the hard lull of the saw stopped. "I meant you could have asked him where my assignment was," she clarified, even though she knew that wasn't what he'd meant. Years ago, she would have stamped her feet and insisted he listen to her. But she'd grown up somewhat in the past half decade, and she just watched him for the long silence, waiting to see if he said anything else before she continued. Then, she would have lectured or pleaded. She would have felt in the way, or like she didn't belong in whatever nonfunctional parental relationship he had with Luke. But she had enough experience of her own with parenting now that she knew it wasn't an art or a science, and she just waited for him to kick the bar lose. "He's doing good. It doesn't erase the past, but he's trying, and he's grown up a lot."
That was all, and she let him help get her through with a grit of teeth and a long, drawn-out groan pain that she couldn't swallow down. It took her a second to be able to breathe normally, and she bent over at the stomach, trying to heave up an empty stomach at the pain and dizziness the exertion caused. But she wasn't as stubborn as she'd been once either, and instead of pushing herself, she waited for it to pass before straightening. "Alright. Let's see what you can do, hero."
“You didn’t want me to know where you were,” Thomas replied pragmatically. He was pleased she wasn’t irritated that he was there to save her; it was the kind of response that he might expect from someone fevered. One day he might have been irritated if she put herself in danger for him. Those days were gone, but he could still remember how they felt. “I wouldn’t put Luke in that position anyway,” he added. As if he and Luke could have a conversation in an expensive restaurant over Niçoise anytime Thomas liked.
Thomas put an arm around her ribs and shoulderblades to hold her up, waiting instead of attempting to drag her off before she was ready. While he waited he felt her pulse, counted, and watched the door. The compound continued to be rocked by the occasional explosion and unpredictable spatter of gunfire. He couldn’t pick her up easily, and finding a way to hold her up without putting pressure on her hip was almost impossible, but they managed it. “There’s a team outside the door. We’re going to airlift and if anybody asks, you passed out in there and don’t remember what happened,” he said, sounding grave but giving her another subtle smile as they moved cautiously out into dust-filled starlight.