Confrontation

-

After a year living in Paris, Nicky began to write to the people she had known before, letters that she imagined she could send.

Mom, I miss you. Yesterday I sat on the steps of the Sacre Coeur and looked out over all of Paris, just as the sun was setting. I wished you were there. I thought, as the city’s cold beauty faded into dusk, that Paris is the loneliest place I’ve ever been.

She had addressed this letter to her childhood home and soaked it in the sink until it was nothing but pulp.

Her father had been dead for ten years--testicular cancer, very tragic--but she wrote to him anyway.

Daddy, you wouldn’t like what I’ve grown up to be. You, always the radical, would hate that I’m working for the government you railed against. Sometimes I wonder how I got here.

That one had ended up torn into bits, flushed down the toilet.

To her old boyfriend in med school, a man-boy who’d loved her fiercely even though she’d never really been very kind to him:

Would you even recognize me, now? I could have married you. You could have been an ER doctor; I could have been a stay at home mother with three children. I would never have been satisfied, but it would have been different, much different, than my life now.

Shredded, sliced into ribbons as she gulped down half a bottle of wine and stared at the wall in her flat. Silence, save for the hum of the machine.

She confessed most of her secrets, her deepest fears and longings, to her once best friend. They’d met in their freshman year of high school and had been inseparable ever since, through college and after. Until she disappeared, of course.

Laurie, I think I might need you most of all. I feel like I’m in some black pit, clawing at the sides even though escape is hardly possible. I feel like I’d give anything for the sound of another human voice at ground level, you know? I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life. There’s never anyone else. We aren’t allowed relationships, no friends, not even close acquaintances. There’s always that risk that someone will get to close, someone will know something they shouldn’t and that someone else will find them and tear that information out of them as violently as rape. I am a ghost, my trail seems to disappear behind me. I speak to no one besides the man at the grocery store.

Well, except for the operatives, and they’re not very good company, anyway. Sure they’re all smart, educated, sharp people, but they’re also empty vessels, hollow and unfeeling. They don’t scare me, per se, but I always feel a little jumpy around them. And why shouldn’t I? They kill people for a living. I never thought I would be associating with people like that. They don’t even feel human. You know that warmth you get from people, even if they barely like you, after knowing them for a year? Yeah, well, these guys don’t give any of it away. They are all as cold as the day I met them. Robots, perfectly trained but lacking humanity. I’m starting to hate them.

That last paragraph was mostly a lie. I’m sorry, Laurie, for lying to you. God knows the agency has done enough of that (How did I die, by the way?). It was a lie because there is a man, one of the operatives. He’s not so cold. The others are threatening because I get the impression that they enjoy their work. For him, it’s more that he does it because it’s programmed into him, not because he feels one way or the other. He’s the best of them, in more ways than one.

Sometimes I feel like my evaluations with him are the only thing that keeps me from falling deeper into that pit, because it’s almost like talking to real, human person. He’s gotten better at talking in the past year. Granted, he still says less than the vast majority of people I’ve ever met, but he still makes for an interesting conversationalist. He’s started to relax around me, and that allows me to relax around him. Sometimes we even talk about things besides Treadstone.

I will never know his real name.

I’m having dreams about him.

This letter, longer by far than any of the rest, she stared at for a long time after she had written the last word. She was frightened by her thoughts, how they looked on paper. Everything seemed exaggerated once it was expelled from her mind, spit out through her uncharacteristically sloppy handwriting.

This letter she burned.

-

Conklin had done his part after the destruction of the previous headquarters. He’d set her up in similar accommodations, more centrally located but otherwise identical. Same equipment, same files, same apartment above. Nicky found she hardly remembered that her old home had been quite publicly blown up. She lived in a daze, interspersed with evaluations and assassins and typing, recording, notating. Even sleeping, sometimes.

She felt peace, sometimes, when the sunlight cast beams of gold through her window and into her eyes, drawing her from her dreams. She would sit up in bed and stare out the window at the tiny stretch of the Seine, all that she could see between the quaint Parisian buildings. Once in a while she enjoyed a cappuccino at her favorite café and read whatever book she felt like. Madame Bovary, first, in the spirit of France, and then books she remembered from school, a long time ago: The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Heart of Darkness, Jane Eyre, Brave New World, Pride and Prejudice. She was reminded of the simplicity of reading a good book.

But most of the time, as she stared into the computer screen or at the blank face of an operative, it occurred to her that she was entirely alone.

-

One day Nicky dropped a tube of lipstick and it rolled underneath the bed. Sighing, she dropped to her knees and groped in the clutter, freezing when she encountered the once familiar edge of her violin case.

Nicky remembered very distinctly the first time she had ever held a violin. She had been ten, and her fifth grade music teacher had placed this odd wooden thing in her hands, showed her how to hold it under her chin and how to draw the bow—unsteadily, cringingly—across the strings. It had seemed incredibly long as she crossed her eyes, trying to focus on the fingerboard of the instrument. It was twice too long for her, heavy and awkward, but she fell in love.

Her mother, ecstatic, had never needed to remind her to practice. Nicky was a fanatic, soaking up information and skills as if preparing for a lifetime of expertise. She had played all through high school, college, and graduate school, through Mozart, Dvorak, Bach, and Beethoven (oh, Beethoven…). She had loved her violin—a $12,000 investment that Nicky had begged her mother to contribute to, because she had not been able to afford it even though it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen—more than any man she had ever slept with, more than her childhood home, more than chocolate.

She had not touched her violin in over a year.

Nicky’s hands began to shake as she unzipped the case. Tears wobbled at the sides of her vision. She smoothed her finger over the strings, the gleaming maple (so tragically cold), the looping f-holes. She nearly keened when she plucked across all four strings and heard the jarring inadequacy of an instrument neglected and out-of-tune.

This was a remnant of her old life. Of who she had been before. Of who she would like to have been were it not for all this.

She glanced furtively at the clock, like she was doing something wrong. She had two hours until Bourne arrived for his evaluation. With a tingling in her fingertips like they were remembering sensations that she thought were forgotten (the press of calluses against metal, the cut of seventh position), she tuned the instrument and began to play.

And the music that soared from the strings was Ave Maria, a melody so beautiful and sad that she could have drowned in it, could have ended it forever.

She played for half an hour before she realized that tears, bitter and cooling against her cheeks, were falling steadily from her eyes. She realized, now, that she had missed this most of all. This light and heart and beauty and music that passion brought into her existence.

She had not known passion for sucha very long time.

Nicky played through her entire repertoire, mastering some pieces with ease and perfection, failing so completely with other, long-forgotten sheet music that she almost gave up. She played until the fingertips on her left hand were raw, red and tender. She played until her back ached and her shoulder throbbed and her heels spiked with pain.

She played until, through the haze of music, she heard the floorboards creak behind her.

All sound stopped with a discordant scratch. Nicky whirled around, her hair flying into her eyes, sticking to her tears, but through the cloud of blond she saw him.

Breath stopped. He had been watching her, listening to her, but upon seeing her face—a glaze of tears, an orb of sadness and regret—he blinked (once, twice), drew a breath, dropped his intruding eyes to the floor.

“I’ll come back later.” His voice was an unpleasant grate against the echoing strains of the violin that she still held like a shield before her. He made to turn, his shoulders as tense as she’d ever seen them.

Before she could warn herself (be quiet), she spoke, shakily. “H-How did you get up here?” In her apartment. In her space. In her life.

He faced her again, his lips pressed tight together. He didn’t even need to answer her question—it had been a stupid one anyway. He could go anywhere if he really wanted. “It’s three o’clock.” He offered the normal time of his evaluation as an inadequate explanation. “I was waiting below and I… I heard…” He trailed off, his eyes flicking to the violin poised in her grip and then to the open window that she knew had been her downfall, from which she knew the sound of her soul had leaked. “I didn’t know… I’m sorry. Sorry.” He was flustered now, and had Nicky been in her right mind she would have found it endearing. Her tears had stopped, nearly, but they remained like traitorous diamonds on her cheeks. He seemed unable to take his eyes from them, his entire body on edge. Nervous, jumpy, unnerved for the first time. “I’ll,”—his voice cracked, ground like wood against his throat—“Uh, I’ll just go.”

“Don’t,” she began, frantically and irrationally angry all at once. He froze, halfway out the door and down the stairs. “Don’t ever come up here again, Bourne.”

His shoulders hunched, the corded muscles in his neck tensed, his step slowed, but he continued down the stairs and out, out, out.

-

He returned an hour later and she had been sitting at her desk for nearly all of that time, staring blankly at the steady clock on her computer screen. She buzzed him up, finally daring to move from her seat, to rise and make the long trek to the other side of the room.

She spared a glance at herself in the mirror and saw her face pale, set in limestone. No tears, now. Her violin had been pushed harshly under her bed—where it belonged now, she told herself—nearly an hour before.

She was back behind her desk when he came through the door she had unlocked for him, safe. She thought he might come bearing another apology, awkward and carefully prepared, but he said nothing as he sat across from her. She was relieved. He looked the same as always and so did she.

“Good afternoon, Jason,” she said, her voice friendly. She usually said this. It was good, normal.

He nodded in acknowledgement. He usually did this.

“Everything okay? Headaches the same?”

“Yes.” They always were.

Nicky picked up her pen and glanced at the clock on her computer again. She could not look at him. He had seen a part of her that she hated, a weakness that she had only vaguely suspected festered within her. It was like she had cracked herself open and accidentally allowed him to see the very core of her.

Maybe he would forget all of it, someday.

She felt him watching her and doubted it.

She inhaled, steeled herself, and raised her eyes. His expression was unfathomable, unknowable. She despised his eyes, then, as they searched her face with such indiscretion.

To keep herself from yelling at him (How dare he look at her like that? How dare he see her at her worst? How dare he be here, in her life, at this moment, making her think like a crazy person?), she dropped her gaze to the clean sheet of paper before her. “Let’s get started, okay?” She could have screamed at the quietness of her voice. “Can you report any change in your mental or physical health since our last meeting? Any excess fatigue, soreness, or other symptoms?”

“No.” It was so short she only really heard the sound, not the word. She jerked her head up, gaped at him. He was always stoic, monotone, and completely solid during his evaluations. Now, his lips were pressed tight, the set of his jaw betraying his irritation. She frowned slightly, studying him, tapping her pen against the desktop. He stared her down, and she nearly cringed at the intensity of it.

Despite the robust thump of her heart against her ribcage, she continued. “Um…”—looking at her notes, collecting her thoughts under his annoyed scrutiny—“Do you find yourself having recurring or particularly disturbing dreams?”

His fist landed hard on the desk, causing her pen to fall from her fingers and her computer screen to wobble. The muscles tense, shaking with rage.

“I’m sick of these fucking questions.”

It was so aggressively said that she scooted back in her chair, sat up straight, gawked at him, her mouth almost open. A whirl of kinetic motion, he stood up like he could not sit still any longer, his customarily controlled movements filled with jerky aggravation. He paced across the room and she watched him, listened, every muscle on edge.

“What right do they have to ask me these things? Am I just some damn lab rat with no right to privacy? A year we’ve been in this room, going through these useless questions, all this shit, but none of it ever does any good. It’s always the same. Nothing they do ever does any good, does it? I still have the exhaustion, the stress, the fucking headaches that make my skull feel like it’s on fire. They’re driving me insane—a constant pain in my head, Nicky! Every agent in this program feels the same way, has the same symptoms.”

She watched him silently, noting with distant fascination that all of the grace and efficiency his training had instilled within him had been transformed into an electric energy that seemed to pour off him in waves in his anger. He wasn’t looking at her, just staring at the floor as he ranted. The words gushed from him, a catharsis after a year of silence. His voice, normally so steady, wavered and increased in pitch as he spoke. “I do things and I don’t understand why I do them! None of it makes any sense. Can you imagine what that’s like, to not understand how you learned the things you know?” He gestured wildly as he spoke, his eyes finally catching hers like he was pleading with her, like he thought she knew what to say.

Nicky felt a sharp pain, distinctive, underneath her left breast. She realized vaguely that it was sympathy, but her alarm in response to this person she had never seen before took over before it could really register. “Jason,” she said soothingly, watching him move with wide eyes. “Calm down. All this doesn’t help.”

“No! No. I won’t calm the fuck down! I’ve been told to be calm for the past year, but it still doesn’t help the jackhammer in my head.”

She’d never seen him like this, and it frightened her. He was so carefully composed, so tightly put together, and to see him unraveled and hurting and raw was so different that she felt the entire world could have turned upside down along with him. As he glared at her, something fiery besides blankness in his eyes, she was suddenly thankful for the gun she kept hidden in her desk drawer, even if he probably knew about it.

She knew that all the operatives had issues with excess aggression. Their training had wound them up so tight and molded their brains so tremulously—like a picket fence holding back an avalanche—that every once in a while, for no clear reason, they released that tension so fast and so violently that people noticed. Jarda, an agent stationed in Munich, had once told her—his accent cultured, unconcerned—that he slaughtered his cat out of rage. Castel, who she intensely disliked, had hit a woman he’d brought back to his apartment for the night.

Bourne was still moving, still struggling against his anger, fists clenched, shoulders bunched.

“Jason.” She said his name again firmly, like it would help ground both of them. “If you have questions about your training or Treadstone, you should ask Conklin. I’m not permitted to release classified information—“

“Why are you defending them? Nothing you’ve done in the past year for them has made you happy. You’re miserable. I saw it.” His voice softened slightly, lost its hostile frustration, and he stopped pacing. Still looking at her.

And there it was. She had a feeling that the earlier events of the day would come up, even before he had become angry enough to startle her. She drew her shoulders together, looked past his eyes and over his head, lifted her chin. She felt fury like a black haze. He shouldn’t—can’t—talk about that. “I hardly think that has anything to do with your complaints.”

He came towards her in a flash, bracing his hands on the desk and leaning far into her personal space. “You have everything to do with my complaints. You’re the only person I ever see who I don’t have to kill.”

She stared at him and he stared right back, hard, his gaze flicking back and forth between her eyes as if he was searching for something vital. She watched the pain and frustration in his face, oddly relishing the image of any sort of emotion there at all, amazed and worried at this sudden revolution.

And then his expression changed. Everything in his face seemed to tighten minutely, only for a second, and she saw his jaw clench through the skin of his cheeks. Eyes darkened, became hooded and veiled. The muscles in his arms went lax. He let out a breath, and Nicky felt the hot whoosh of it over her face and neck. She watched his pupils enlarge, watched his eyes flicker downwards to what could have been her lips so fast she might have imagined it.

Nicky felt a powerful answering pull in her belly and below, primitive and uncontrollable. She felt herself leaning forward, seeking. The look of him was unmistakable—need, want—and her body responded accordingly. Warmth flooded through her.

And he knew it. His eyes darkened further and grew hot.

“Maybe…” Her voice sounded low and shuddering, and she had to stop for a moment, regain her bearings.

Wrong. Bad. Stupid.

Think of what those hands have done.

She remembered his last words to her, even as she dropped her gaze and looked at his hands gripping the table and imagined not what they had done but what they could do.

You’re the only person I ever see who I don’t have to kill.

She shivered again, and only half from desire.

“Maybe you should come back another day, Jason,” she finally succeeded in saying, her voice clearer. “When you’re thinking clearly.”

It was firm, resolute, and she saw him accept it. He blinked and the heat was pushed back from his eyes into some other part of him. He stood up straight, pushed back from the desk, his carefully blank expression in its place. “That’s probably a good idea.” He revealed nothing in his tone, no indication of what had just occurred (what had just occurred?).

He was almost out the door, she had almost collapsed against the back of her chair, when he stopped. “I apologize for losing my temper.”

It was cold. Colder than she had expected, clipped and tightly controlled. She thought back to that day, more than a year ago, when she had first met him and he had sounded the same. She hadn’t liked it then, either.

“It’s all right,” said Nicky, a rush of syllables from her lips because she was completely overwhelmed by him.

He watched her for a moment, calculating as always, before turning his back and leaving her sight.

-

That night Nicky sat at her computer, typing up her notes from the last evaluations with the operatives. She paused when she reached the part she dreaded, watched the cursor blink after the word “subject.”

She knew what she should write.

Subject displays irrational aggression and resentment towards the operation, its training methods, and its protocol. This evaluator recommends that the subject be removed forthwith from the program.

The cursor blinked.

The cursor blinked.

The cursor blinked.

Finally, typing slowly, anxiety a burn in her stomach, she continued.

Subject displays no discernible change.

-

A/N: Hello, everybody, after my short break! I hope this chapter suits you. I find the first part of it to be very, very sad, and the second part to be very, very hot.

Just wanted to let you all know that chapters will be coming more slowly now, just because I’m in school and working hard. So don’t worry if I don’t update in 4, 5, 6, or even 7 days. It doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned the story, only that I have other things like reading and writing and other college-y things to do that trump fanfic.

One other thing:

(AND IF YOU REALLY DON’T WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BOURNE AND NICKY’S RELATIONSHIP IN THE FUTURE, DON’T READ THE FOLLOWING. HOWEVER, I DO NEED SOME PEOPLE TO READ IT, IF THAT MAKES SENSE)

By this time (especially after that last chapter), I hope it has become clear that Jason and Nicky are going to “do it,” as it were. Sorry if I spoiled it for anyone, but fact is fact. The reason I say this is because we have two (maybe three) options. I could keep the fic at a “T” rating, which means that we will know when and where they have sex but not any details. Another option is for me to change the rating to “M,” which would give me more freedom to include details about the actual sex and the subsequent hotness. In the words of Padfoots-Pirate, who seems to be a proponent of the second option, it would be “quite porny.”

The third and less likely option (in other words, I don’t really want to do it) is for me to post a mild version online but people could e-mail me if they feel like they have to have the more intense version. I can only really see this scenario if I see some people insist that they really don’t want to read the hardcore stuff online and I see other people who really want the “porny” version.

I just wanted to give you guys the choice because I don’t know the ages of my readers or the relative tolerance for graphic stuff. I didn’t want to write a graphic version and post it and have some people not be able to read it. Thanks for reading, and let me know about this!