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The man who lived next door would disappear for months on “business trips.” Sometimes during those trips, the woman who lived next door would drop off their son for playdates at the little girl’s house. The woman looked tired those days, and spoke with the little girl's father in hushed tones. When the girl was six, she asked what he did for a living.
“International sales,” he said, and he laughed. When she asked again at age ten, her father overheard and told her to stop being so nosey. The man laughed again, that time.
She grew up in Washington DC, surrounded by hundreds of different accents. She wanted to feel them all, their fascinating textures, the music of their cadence. Adults would laugh and call her a little mimic, until she convinced the British Ambassador’s top aide that she was someone’s cousin visiting from London one night, and let loose a few sentences in French the next. The couple next door convinced her father that language lessons were a must. Farsi came to her easily, followed by Arabic. French and Spanish and German were all required. No one explained why, only that she’d find them especially useful when she was older. Ballet was replaced with martial arts. She didn’t object. Jordan, the boy who lived next door, was sent to the same classes, and the two of them became inseparable.
She was eighteen when the man next door sat her down to have the same conversation he had with his son. Nothing was promised, but she was well aware of the implication--if she kept her head down, gained the right skills, and stayed out of the wrong kind of trouble, a job might be waiting for her when she graduated, if she wanted it. She’d read Fleming by then, and felt comfortable enough to ask--“A job in international sales?” The man laughed, once again.
They approached her and Jordan after university, and immediately sent them off for more training. At first, she took offense at being sent to nursing school, even if it was an accelerated program, even if the extracurriculars the provided her with taught her just as much about making sure people ended up in the hospital as she was learning about helping them survive their stay. But she thought about it, thought about her shorter-than-average stature, her innocent face, and realized they must have a plan for her. Once, when he was visiting her, Jordan called her “Mother Mary.” She made sure he regretted it.
Training over, they sent her to the real CIA, whatever that meant. It meant a lot of paperwork, she soon learned. A lot of regulations. A lot of losing their informants and targets and contacts and criminals as they slipped across boarders she needed permission to cross. It was frustrating, but she was willing to grind through it. She’d always been a crack-shot, so wetworks operations were an understandable next step after she’d proved herself in the field. The other agents were mostly ex-military, mostly male, and all taller than her. She made it work. Jordan helped. They were each others’s anchors, the first person they’d look for if missions went wrong, or right, and someone ended up dead. They couldn’t tell each other the whole story, but it didn’t matter. It was a strange kind of love, she often thought, but one that worked for her.
She’d heard whispers, but was still surprised when a friend of Jordan’s father asked her to go freelance. There wouldn’t be as much money in it as she’d expect, he warned them, and she’d get even less glory than she’d been getting in the CIA. She was willing to do it anyway.
When she was growing up, she’d read about the past transgressions of spies and operatives, and vowed to never kill. When she was tapped for the CIA, that transformed to not killing without an order. She would follow the rules of war, she had told herself. Nursing school taught her “primum non nocere”--do no harm. Those ideals never seemed to hold up on the field. “Do less harm than good” became her catchphrase, muttered into her pillow at night with Jordan asleep beside her. In the harsh light of day, utilitarianism and consequentialism seemed the only answers. Her newest job offer was only logical conclusion of those philosophies, she decided. She told herself her only regret was that Jordan hadn’t been asked to join her.
Self-appointed representatives of the US government hired her so did criminals. She never killed anyone who hadn’t killed or sold others, she thought. She rarely followed the rules of engagement anymore. She learned that everyone trusts a nurse, and used that “Virgin Mary” innocence to her advantage. It disgusted her. She saved hundreds if not thousands of lives by ending others. She fixed problems the CIA-proper simply couldn’t. Case in point: the bungled operation with Irene Adler. She knew Irene. The two of them had an agreement. She could have worked it out.
Sometimes, a country needs a blunt instrument. She was that instrument. Sometimes, it needs a scalpel. She was willing to be that as well. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary, and she was good at it.
Then, of course, it all went to hell. Between the efforts of the CIA and those of her even shadier benefactors, her original name was pretty much a non-person, and she thought her father was safe. She’d also thought Jordan’s father’s contacts would keep her from having to kill a true innocent. Within a few months, her father was shot, and she found herself pushed towards assassinations that seemed more political in nature. She tried to quit the easy way, and realized why Jordan hadn’t been asked to join her. She was expendable, and controllable as long as her father remained alive. So she took the obvious, rational path: she disappeared. She became an orphan.
She’d always had a good British accent, so she became British.