He wakes to startling, crystal-clear blue. She is lying on her back, head turned toward him.

"I figured you'd be back," she says, and the pure Russian accent hanging from her words surprises him. "I didn't think you'd be back here."

He has only heard this sound a few times from her, usually around her mother, who spoke in a similar voice — one that seemed to mesh well with the fatigue on her face. He has always wondered which is a greater effort for her, the staccato Russian or pure American, and thinks perhaps now he has an answer. Or perhaps the time abroad has shifted things.

He wonders if the slip — if it was a slip — means she is still comfortable around him. Her statement is acknowledged with cautious blinking as he searches for a response. But he finds he has neither a response or a plan here, and eventually reaches out to drag some of the hair out of her eyes.

She mutters something in Russian he does not understand, winces slightly, and rolls away, pushing off with one hand until she is sitting on the edge of the bed.

"You realize this would have to be the mother of all fucking truces," she says, American again, wrapping her fingers around the handle of the cane, which is propped against the nightstand. Her shoulders tense before she stands, and he flips the sheets up quickly, moves around the bed. Starts to wrap an arm around her waist, but she shrugs him off.

"Is this why you came back?" She raps the cane against the nightstand. Doesn't seem to care if it dents the old oak. "Because if it is, I can take care of myself."

This, he thinks, is where having no plan is going to get him into trouble. "It's one of the reasons, yes." His hand still hovers awkwardly at her back.

"One of the reasons." She turns her head, lets him see the quiet, ironic smile. "What are the other reasons?"

He searches now. Why are you here? Two, only, but he thinks they're good enough.

"It feels good to be here. I care about you."

The smile softens at this, but she does not return the sentiment. He does not push it — knows it will be harder for her, and if it comes, it will be at her own pace.

"Just so we've got that clear," she says, stands slowly, and hobbles away from his hand. The door is a harsh click behind her, which brings the full-length mirror into view. A cheap job, K-Mart, he thinks, fake wood borders and sticky squares on the back to hold it to the white door.

A large part of a year, he remembers, in front of a mirror like this. Practicing his English, stressing the American slang that had not been part of French prep curriculum.

He was fourteen and his mother had remarried, an American lawyer and a man he hated because of the space he filled and the change in geography. He understands now, he thinks, what his mother needed. Needed until her hate exceeded his, when it came crashing to a halt with the divorce three years later.

They moved midterm, and suddenly he was a freshman at an American high school, one that caused snickers when he spoke. For much of a year, he talked only out of necessity, and even those sparse words felt out of place — wrong and so horribly different.

And so he practiced, repeated things over and over again until "zis" shifted to "this" and English class became bearable. It left slowly — excruciatingly slow, he thought at the time — until it was gone completely. He reached for it in Algiers and found it wasn't anywhere, that he sounded like a pretending American.

Chris keeps her accent closer, apparently, but he knows they share the time in front of the mirror. Kindergarten, for her, and crying on her way home the first day because she spoke like her mother.

He wonders if the kids are crueller at five or fourteen, knows that they both moved past it eventually. The hockey team sophomore year for him, and friends who quickly forgot that he had been the weird French kid previously. New languages for her — spoken, then programming — and eventually, he suspects, although she has never said specifically, her looks took over.

He stares at the doorknob, not the mirror, as he approaches the door.

———

"Coffee's almost done," she says from the couch as he exits the bathroom. He can smell it, wafting in from the kitchen beyond the living room. The sound is different, he thinks — not the ancient machine that choked and spluttered in protest through every pot. "You mind grabbing me a cup?"

Small steps, he thinks. A small step is grab me a cup of coffee, and maybe I'll let myself need you a little bit more after that.

The coffeemaker is clean, new and efficient, but not enough to break the habit of reaching into the cupboard above it and pulling out two mugs. She calls out when he's finished pouring — black for both of them. "It's theoretically possible there's some bread above the fridge that isn't green."

He smiles, because this is familiar as well. "I'm not hungry, but when you put it that way..." He does not ask if she wants anything — coffee only in the morning for her. Something about no hunger and battery acid for blood.

She stays silent as he hands her one mug. Takes a moment then to contemplate where to sit, find the correct distance. He decides on a few inches away, not touching for now.

Her lips form a soft O as she blows on her coffee to cool it. Four times makes it safe to drink, he learns, and she is halfway through the cup before she speaks again.

"Michael, we can't go back. We're different people."

"I know that."

"I mean it. Maybe we can fuck like seven years hasn't passed, but we can't live that way." Actually, Chris, last night didn't exactly go like seven years hasn't passed. "The things I've seen — the things I've done. They're a part of who I am now."

He understands this. It has dominated his thoughts this morning. "I want to know who you are now, Chris. That," he says, pointing to her abdomen. "I want to know about that."

She glances down at her stomach, reaches to her thighs to pull at the nightgown, smoothing the wrinkles.

"I swept yesterday," Explanatory, and he knows there is a small plastic box somewhere in her apartment designed to block surveillance devices, but her voice is still lower when she begins. "There's not a lot to tell. For the last two years, I was with a small cluster of agents in Moscow. We were supposed to find out what the Russians knew about Milo Rambaldi."

His attention sharpens with this, which does not go unnoticed. "Yeah, I know. For two years he's a big priority, and now fifty cents and a Rambaldi invention will get you a cup of coffee. To this day, I'm not completely sure why they had me on it. I always assumed it was because he used binary code in some of his texts. I wasn't exactly complaining — it was definitely cushier than some of my other assignments."

"So what happened?"

"I don't know, exactly. We uncovered the location of a Rambaldi manuscript, and the team was supposed to recover it, but the op was compromised. I remember going in, and then I woke up in an Agency facility in England a week later. Robertson and I are the only ones that made it out."

"Oh." The story is similar to what he has pieced together, but somehow more piercing from the source. "What about, ah, internally?"

She knows him well enough to know the meaning of the question. "Well, I'm short a spleen, and everything else got a little reconfigured in there, but I was lucky. A couple inches to the right and I'd be in a wheelchair."

Now there's something to wrap your mind around. Chris in a wheelchair. There is a certain logic to what bullets do, but he still finds he can't. "What about last night? I mean, is that going to — "

She smiles and shakes her head, grim and knowing. " — stop your fucking worrying, Michael. My physical therapist is probably going to wonder why I had a huge setback, but I'll live."

———

She waits until he delivers her third cup of coffee to drop the question.

"Were you and Sydney Bristow ever together?"

Depends on what you mean by together, Chris. He knows what she means. "No." Not much conviction behind it, and she likely catches this. "Absolutely not. Why do you ask?"

"It's what I've heard," she shrugs. "Plus it's between the lines in a lot of your case files."

Assuming you know what to look for between the lines. She does. "Were you checking up on me?"

"I was checking up on everyone," she says. "Did you know McClure was almost perfect on his SATs?"

"No, I didn't."

"Did you want to be together, you and Bristow?"

Did I want to be together? Did she want to be together? If things were different, would we be together? "It doesn't matter, Chris. There's protocol in that sort of situation."

"I haven't exactly seen protocol stop you here."

"You know that's not the same. This puts our jobs at risk. With Sydney, it's our lives."

"But would you want a relationship with her?"

"Would have, Chris. Not anymore."

"You know, before all the cuts, they would have assigned you boyfriend duty — kept you deep cover, dates as meetings. Better cover, in my opinion. Sometimes obvious works."

Her mug is empty again, but she waves a hand at him when he moves to stand. Reaches back to place it on the table behind her, then focuses fully on him, voice soft when she finally speaks. "I heard about your father, her mother. I know how much you wanted to find out what happened, but that can't be easy."

It was supposed to be easy. We were supposed to ignore it. And it was easy, right up until it got horribly twisted and complicated. "Yeah."

"At least you know."

"Knowing doesn't change anything." He pauses, because the futility of that search is still difficult. "I thought it would, but it doesn't."

She shakes her head slightly, but there is visible strength in the motion. "Knowing is everything, Michael."

A long pause, and he wonders just what she is so adamant about.

"My mom — they didn't tell me until they pulled me off my initial assignment. I didn't know for two years." Something else they share now. Something he finds easy to forget, because it was not part of their old reality.

"You never think — " She turns her head, stares across the living room now, and he knows it is because there are tears forming in her eyes. " — you never think about it. About what happens when you leave. But everything keeps moving."

He can see her control slipping, and the first tear is not a surprise when it slides over her cheek. "I was her life. Everything she did — it was a sacrifice for me. And I wasn't at her fucking funeral. I didn't even know she was dead."

He watches her jaw twitch slightly, and knows this — more so than the night before — is what he has to get right. One hand, cautious at her shoulder. Asking to turn her, and when there is no protest, shifting her body slightly and slipping his hands around to her back. No protest at all, and she leans heavy into the embrace, sobs silent but there. His evidence is her chest heaving against his. Maybe she is tired of covering things up, tired of fighting. He knows he is.

Time passes, and he likes that he does not have to care how much, that this is the only place he needs to be. He does not afford her the distance when she starts to pull away, catching the corner of her mouth with his gently. He did get it right, he thinks, because she turns to improve the angle and deepens the kiss. Slow, lingering, and everything tastes of the salt from her eyes.

He still thinks she tastes real.

[— End Part I —]