Chapter Text
Leon is almost never worried for Ada; he would rather be scared of her than scared for her. These days, he doesn’t know the places she goes to or what she ends up facing, and he thinks about that a lot, while he goes to places she doesn’t know about and deals with mutations she may not know about—neither really hides more than the other. Their separation always takes days to months but they always come home. And when they set a time and a place, and he sees her back, sitting on a bench under the shade of a tree, or idle at a cafe table, or lounging in a sunlit room with him, he remembers who he married. There is always some form of blind faith in that.
And yet, Leon doesn’t like the feeling when they are about to part in Stuttgart.
Ada messages him first: Go ahead. I’ll watch you go.
Leon replies: No, I’ll watch you go.
Then you wait.
I will.
Leon leans on a metal railing behind him, as if making himself comfortable, then nods at her from the other side. Across him, Ada watches him, too.
Then there’s a soft rattle on the platform; an S-Bahn train is incoming. They can’t delay this anymore. Leon sees his wife glance at the clock and sighs. Then his phone buzzes with a final message from her: Fine. I have no time to waste, and; Get moving or I’ll report you for loitering.
Ada gets in on the train, and Leon watches it leave. He keeps looking.
Ada missed their planned meeting in Ankara after six days.
Leon stands alone at a bus stop overlooking the bleak night traffic in Kizilay. His phone has not buzzed in the past hour.
missing days are fine
reasonably expected
should be expected
These things happen all the time to everyone in their line of work. Except it never happened to them. But all the time, all the time, it happens.
Yes, it does.
Waiting is useless. So Leon decides to act but not overreact. He has decided to treat this the same way he responds to crises, procedural and with a lot of federal rule-breaking.
…
Leon tracks Ada in a remote, slightly elevated village in Kathmandu.
Ada always looks a little out of place, like an abstract against photorealism; Leon will know her anywhere.
It’s a little after dawn when he decides to finally see her. She’s staying in a modest house up on one of the hills. It’s another of her safehouses that he’s not supposed to know; this isn’t a shared one between them. He finds her sitting at the back of the house, tinkering with a crossbow.
“You’re not ditching me, are you?”
Ada looks up at him, and Leon notices the way her shoulders draw up. She’s wearing a red qipao while he comes in severe black.
“If I do, you would know, so don’t worry,” Ada says after a while, with terrible simplicity. “That I can promise you.”
Leon eyes her, and makes a show of being offended but not actually offended. Ada, after all, is still wearing her ring. “Good to know.” Then he crouches down, so he could clearly see her. He braces himself, “You okay?”
She’s not. He has spotted the bandages while approaching her. There are two wrapped around her legs and one around her shoulder. They look well-managed and she is ambulatory with no overt signs of other injuries, but these were critical hits.
But Ada. He wouldn’t get a straight answer from her. His wife dislikes feeling helpless, and anything that suggests that will just make it worse for her.
Leon knows she will dismiss his concern, and will tell him that it comes with her job and that it’s nothing she can’t handle and that he should know how it is—and he will simply let her.
“It’s fine. It comes with the job, nothing I can’t handle. You know how it is, Leon.”
And he will accept that and say alright, “Alright.” But: “But if I see you having trouble, I’ll carry you myself.”
It’s a fair trade, Leon thinks, she gets to maintain appearances while he gets to be there for her—
“Are you already inviting yourself here? I don’t remember telling you about this place.”
“And I don’t remember you showing up to our meeting place five days ago, Ada.”
Ada pauses, there it is. “Oh Leon, I really should have called you first.”
“Yeah, that would have helped a lot.” He tells her, but there’s no real heat.
Leon doesn’t ask, “where the hell were you?” Her injuries and a call that never came, it’s already telling; she doesn’t want him to see her in such a state.
Ada doesn’t respond, but as she looks at her husband’s reaction, she knows how this broke his heart a little. She may not have words, but she reaches out to touch his face, “Leon…”
“That bad, huh?” Leon’s tone shifts. He asks gently, then brushes a few strands off her face.
“It was a badly-timed ambush, and I lost one team—” Ada starts quietly, then stops abruptly. It’s a slip.
“It’s alright.” Leon understands; he wonders how their professional boundary could be more broken today. “You don’t have to tell me.”
Ada doesn’t reveal anything anymore. Instead, she leans more to her husband, and settles with a dry laugh. “My age is showing.”
Leon recognizes how delicate this is for her, a very rare display of openness from Ada—it’s his job to protect it. So he pulls himself beside her and holds her closer, and says, “Well, you are not the only one. My back hurts a lot these days.”
Just as easily, they settle into a familiar silence.
“How are you here, Leon?”
He measures his response carefully; their marriage is supposed to survive secrets and distance despite all its fundamental wrongs. “Do you really want to know?”
Ahh, Ada catches on immediately and understands. “So you can find me after all?”
“I can.” He admits.
Leon doesn’t have to tell her about the vast DSO resources he misused and all the deliberate bullshit he spat out as a cover to get to her—the kind that gets a massive red flag during federal audits. Leon isn’t sorry, it’s a personal choice he’s making. Professional cost notwithstanding.
“What’s done is done,” Ada says, accepting. She is neither angry nor disappointed, but matter-of-factly. “Will you do that again?”
“For you. But generally no,” Leon says seriously. “Just give me a heads up next time. I’ll probably get my pension revoked the next time I do that.”
“Already thinking about that now, are you?”
“I guess.” Leon shrugs, good-naturedly.
Ada thinks there is something else she should probably tell him, “Leon, I’ve always been able to find you, too. I thought you should know that, but I never—”
“Yeah,” Leon laughs, “Yeah, I knew you could. Does this mean I can now talk to you about how my day went? Some of my coworkers really suck.”
Leon calls Sherry to apologize and to tell her he will be off-the-grid for five days. He will not be able to answer through their work line, but assures her that it’s not anything dangerous, and she shouldn’t be worried. She can always reach him in private if something happens. He needs to be back home for a while, he tells her. Then he calls the DSO next: Time off. Fuck off. Don’t call. Or arrest me. Try it.
…
Leon and Ada rent a townhouse along West Street in Valletta. The sunlight is good and they both like the wide balcony and the soft, thick carpet that comes with it. They can play house for at least 48 hours.
They already spent a fraction of the day inside, cooped up near the large windows or huddled over the kitchen counter island, endlessly figuring out pantry ingredients to make lunch and dinner. For lunch, they gave up and went out to buy cheese boards, oranges, and pastizzi instead. Leon said he will make pasta for dinner.
They don’t have anything planned for the rest of the day, and they’re both fine with nothing to do—it’s vacation enough.
…
In the afternoon, Ada is lounging on a cream-colored sofa by the window with her feet up—no book, no phone, or any dossier to read, she simply likes it under the sun.
Leon prefers to stay back and clean his guns by the table. He occasionally looks up to see her flit in and out of her little nap. It’s good to see her so relaxed and—he glances to the side table—feel safe enough to be unguarded. The thigh holster that she normally wears is on the side table, as well as the two knives and a handgun she carries.
“Stop staring at me, old man. And you should sit straight. I see that bad posture is starting to get a hold of you. You sure your back doesn’t hurt?”
“Who are you calling old man?” Leon looks up from where he’s disassembling a magnum. He straightens his back nonetheless. “Aren’t you older than me?”
Ada is wearing a red strap sundress strewn across the fabric of the sofa, which is probably bad for his eyes because of how bright she gets with all the sunlight. She wears her hair longer these days. She turns in his direction and he catches the patterns the shadows make on her face and skin.
So Leon looks at her, keeps looking, and can’t quite look away—he supposes his wife is the farthest from looking her age.
Ada is amused. “You’re right, but you do know I could still put you through that wall, don’t you?” She asks softly, gesturing to the wall to the kitchen beside him.
Leon doesn’t doubt that.
Or alternatively, he will put himself through that wall if she asks him to.
Leon grins anyway, in good nature but still expecting to get a rise out of her. “Only if I’m not looking, or if I tripped. Then you get lucky, Ada.”
After that, Ada is clearly spoiling for a fight. “Why don’t you keep your eyes on me, Leon, and find out if I’m lucky?”
They have not done something like this, like a friendly spar, in a long time.
“Well, you asked for it. How’s the leg?” Leon empties all the shells from his magnum and handgun, and immediately makes a mental note of all the corners and all potential weapons that she could use against him before pulling his knife from its leather case.
“Functional.”
Ada elegantly gets up from the sofa chair, and takes out a small knife from her holster. Her dress is very willowy and certainly a liability to her but it will distract her husband nonetheless. She is also barefoot—the carpet instantly swallows her toes; she wouldn’t be able to do much with her legs, but no matter.
“We have neighbors, be quiet, and don’t damage the place, Leon.”
“Right, don’t break a single vase.”
Leon grips his knife, looks at Ada, and shakes his head a bit.
Ada is even more beautiful in this light. She is fully aware of her effect on him, by the way she eyes him with such mischief. She is not above such tactics and will use them—often needlessly because she can crack ribs and deal hard blows quite well—and they will work on him every time as if he’s a rookie.
Leon points his knife to his wife’s neck, and says, “I already feel sorry for that dress.”
But then they both end up falling on the sofa less than 10 minutes later, kissing.
…
The next morning, the need to still show off and posture to each other has never been more apparent:
Leon raced her out of the bed to get the last rolled towel off the highest rack in the bathroom and then handed it to her smugly before she could reach for it. After that, he made a whole show of unnecessarily lifting a wooden bed frame with a very heavy mattress one-handed when she was just reaching for her slipper that got slightly pushed under the bed—just because he can.
“Need help with that?” He asked and Ada just looked up at him in dumb disbelief, or concern.
So, a little before breakfast, Ada hijacked the kitchen from Leon and ordered him to back down, and then handed him two perfectly cooked sunny-side up eggs five minutes later, and gloated, “That’s all you get because that’s all I managed to perfect.” and then they spent a good 20 minutes arguing over the efficiency of washing dishes by hand or dishwasher as easily as they take to arguing over the range of a Classic 70.
These were fine, they rarely get to wake up together and play husband and wife anyway.
In Lyon, Leon and Ada have a list of things to do.
In a bouchon, Leon struggles to pronounce the menu; Ada speaks the language elegantly. She communicates well enough for both of them.
In a riverboat tour, Ada stays close to Leon and lightly dozes against his shoulder as the boat drifts along the river; Leon holds her hand steadily while she naps.
In the museum, Leon prefers to look at Ada more than the paintings.
In a wine-tasting room, Ada says something to the sommelier, and he lets her take a wine bottle for free; Leon opts not to participate at all and chooses to wait for her outside instead.
In a tree-lined park, Leon suggests they find a tree and carve their initials like they do in the old movies, L + A inside a heart: “That’s vandalism, Leon. You should know, you were a cop.” He shrugs. “For a day, 23 years ago.”
In an old network of secret underground passageways—no, they didn’t go there.
In the lobby of the hotel they’re staying at: “Well, today felt like a chore,” Ada says as they enter the elevator, and Leon agrees, “Yeah, let’s not do that again.”
Then comes nighttime.
All the lights in their suite are turned off. Leon and Ada both take to the bathroom after the day’s activities. Ada sits idly at the edge of the bathtub, waiting for the water to fill. Behind her is a large open window overlooking the city at night—the Saône River is quiet and reflective under the moonlight.
Leon stands in front of the mirror, removing a gun and knives from a concealed holster around his waist and legs. He glances at her from the mirror, and half-snorts. Likewise, she is reminded to untie her own thigh gun holster. Neither of them believes they need such things during an innocent day trip; it’s more of a deeply-embedded habit.
Ada begins to remove her high-heeled shoes but Leon steps in to help her. He kneels in front of her and unfastens the straps of both shoes while she grips his shoulder for support. “My thanks, pretty boy,” Ada teases him, and something about that lingers in him; she is very pretty even under the moonlight.
“No problem.” Leon takes their shoes and puts them aside.
It’s a routine—this thing that they do.
“Come here,” Ada beckons Leon, and he comes close. She unbuckles his belt and tugs at his pants while he removes his jacket and shirt. She notices another scar around his hips, and one wound that freshly healed on his chest, maybe not more than two weeks ago. She makes no mention of it. It comes with the job.
It’s not like she doesn’t have similar things of her own. “Unzip me?” she asks, and turns her back on him.
Leon unzips her dress and slides it off her, and gently massages her bare shoulders and arms. “Yeah?” His palm briefly passes a shallow puncture wound on her left shoulder. His thumb hovers there for a second before moving down her arms. Leon chooses to plant on the back of her neck instead.
The water fills and Ada checks the temperature. It should be good.
Leon gets in the tub. Although it isn’t needed, he still holds his hand out to his wife. “Come here.”
“Make room for me, you’re too big,” Ada tells him, takes his hand, and steps into the tub with him. It’s not entirely true, the tub is spacious enough for her to move and lean against Leon, be at rest like a cat. Leon immediately embraces her.
“Aren’t you very clingy? You’re lucky I like you.”
“Like me? Ma’am, you married me.” He whispers against her hair.
Then they quickly settle into a quiet sort of ease.
A few minutes pass, and Leon notices the droopiness in her eyes, and thinks she must be so tired or bored or both. So he asks, amused, “You really can’t handle… certain civilian recreational activities that well, huh?”
“Oh please.” She touches his arms. She doesn’t dislike their day, and it’s also not out of disinterest, it’s just her unfamiliarity with the ordinary. “And you? You seem to enjoy them a lot. Want to go do it all again tomorrow?”
“No, and it was bad, but you were with me...” Leon amends, and lets it trail.
In the quiet lull of a fizzing bath bomb, gently sloshing water, and the low hum of jazz music from the street below, Ada says—“We don’t really belong here doing this, do we?”
It’s almost dusk in Cairo when Leon comes up to the rooftop of the boutique hotel they’re staying at. He is alone. The lanterns are already lit, and the sky is purple-blue. He locks the doors behind him.
Ada is somewhere in the city, and has told him—by simply letting him know—that something came up and she needs to see it. Leon doesn’t ask anything else, and doesn’t have to let her go; she will go anyway.
Leon knows Ada is quietly planning her return to the field. He accepts this with full understanding. It’s who they are, incompatible with normalcy. They only have less than 10 hours left, it’s almost time.
Leon finds a corner table. He checks his watch and notes the timezone, about six hours difference. He is on time. The call from the capital should come anytime now. He takes his phone out, sets it in front of him, and waits for Sherry to brief him.
Leon and Ada unexpectedly cross paths in Dublin in early March.
It’s fleeting. But Leon would never miss his wife in a crowd; he would know her anywhere. So he stops walking along the stone path and looks over at the row of metal benches. There, on the far end, is Ada, gorgeous in a red peacoat, seated elegantly under the shade of a tree, phone against her ear, talking to someone.
Leon lingers, unsure, and hand in his pocket. He looks boyish. He debates whether to approach her.
Not long after, Ada notices him, and she looks right at him, visibly surprised. He is reminded of the way the sunlight plays on her face that one afternoon in Valletta or the way the moonlight lands on her body that one night in Lyon.
Leon had some business at the embassy, which required him to wear something more formal for the diplomats. The only other time Ada had seen him in a suit was on their wedding day.
He looks good in a suit, Ada thinks simply and honestly of her husband. It’s a nice accident, don’t you think? She sneaks him a small smile. As if saying a little hi—
But she makes no move.
Leon relaxes, and sighs. It’s clear what he should do. They have already set a time and a place; this is how they make their marriage work. He turns to her and nods a little, hello—
And it stops at that.
Ada looks away, back to her client. Osaka in five days.
Leon walks away, back to his path. Osaka in five days.