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“I know someone in Moscow,” Deckard says, and Hattie’s heart stops.
You’ll come back, she’d said - asked, ordered, begged, demanded; or maybe all of that, all at once - two years ago, eyes clear and bright.
Hattie had replied yes, and then gone home to go deep undercover for a black-ops mission that lasted fourteen months and landed her in hospital for another two, and she hadn’t.
How could she?
She could, of course she could; she might be MI6, loyal and lawful, but she was also a Shaw, always would be, always carrying that in her blood, always -
She’s a professional, so she doesn’t betray a hint of familiarity when they pull up to the entrance of the massive mansion and Deckard knocks on the door. Doesn’t turn a hair when it opens and a familiar face looks out.
M’s gaze slides smooth as silk over Luke, then Hattie - she’s a professional too, and Hattie doesn’t move an inch when M looks right at Deckard with that small, dangerous smile of hers, steps close, closer.
“Shaw,” she says, and kisses him, and if Hattie didn’t know anything about her she’d think she meant it.
The kiss goes on for a very long time. Luke pulls a face, glances at Hattie like he thinks she’ll empathise, and she doesn't even give him a single look, because she’s a goddamn professional, and she’ll act like one, even in the face of world’s end, or this.
They are in the face of world’s end, maybe - if they don’t manage to get this virus out of her system and she can’t distract Deckard and Luke long enough to sacrifice herself - but Hattie thinks maybe this feels so much worse than that.
Deckard tells M the truth - the whole truth - and she jumps into action with that ruthless, single-minded efficiency Hattie knows so well, that she recognises, that she fell -
She pushes that train of thought away as firmly as she can. There’s no time for that - only time to watch M lay out the map of Eteon’s headquarters and pull out an arsenal of gear and talk through the plan, together.
“The Mick Jagger,” Hattie says, and explains it for Luke’s benefit. “I can do it. You know that.”
“It’s dangerous,” Luke says, and Deckard makes an irritated noise befitting a big brother forever worrying about his baby sister, and from across the table Hattie sees M’s face twitch, just the slightest. It’s probably the deadly virus, rattling her brain, but Hattie wants, suddenly and desperately, to go over and rest a hand against her cheek, to press a kiss right where her jaw pulls tight. God, she wants.
She keeps still and nods to Deckard instead. “It’s our only option and you know it.”
Lie. It’s not. The simpler option has been staring all of them right in the face the whole damn time. An option Hattie can live with; one the boys can’t. She tries not to be frustrated about it. She understands there are limits to what one can sacrifice. She understands all too well.
M sets the rendezvous with Brixton for 3AM, directs all three of them to luxurious guest rooms where they can prepare for the operation that’s about to come. Hattie sneaks out of hers within the hour and scales her way into M’s room via the skylight.
“You know that thing’s a security risk,” she says, dropping down onto lush carpet.
M doesn’t turn a hair, not that Hattie was expecting her to. “I am hosting three security risks in my guest rooms at the moment, so I’m not sure where you got the impression that I am in any way concerned about my personal safety.”
Her voice is cool and measured, giving nothing away. Hattie takes a step forward and is immediately met with M’s pistol aimed right at her head. “Not an inch closer, Shaw.”
Hattie’s chest hurts, brief and sudden and intense, thinking about M and her brother, hours ago, what she saw standing within that doorway. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what, Shaw?” M repeats, standing. The gun remains trained on her, grip steady as M walks out from behind her desk. “Don’t shoot you? Don’t threaten you with imminent death? Don’t act like the woman who I worked together with and slept with and lo - and spent all that time with before she disappeared for two years didn’t just invade my office through my skylight?”
“Don’t call me that,” Hattie rasps, and M’s face twists, expression bitter and ugly and hateful, and it’s something so - wrong, so unfamiliar. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware you had the right to make any demands of me, after you - “
“After I left,” Hattie interrupts. “I know.”
M’s finger tightens on the trigger, minutely. “Well, if you know,” she says, quiet and poisonous. “And yet, here you are.” She’s starting to shake, the motion almost imperceptible, but Hattie knows her - still knows her, even after all this time. Still loves her, if she dared to use the word love - and with M, maybe she does, maybe she always has, maybe.
“What excuse could you possibly give me?” M whispers. “You promised me. I asked you, Hattie, I gave you an out, and you told me yes, and then I waited, waited, and then you turn up at my doorstep two years later with your idiot brother and his idiot boyfriend and tell me you’re going to die in less than forty-eight hours if I don’t help the three of you break into goddamn Eteon. What excuse do you have? How could you - how dare you?”
“I,” Hattie begins, and then falters, because there is nothing she can say, nothing that will make up for two whole years of absence, for asking more from M than she rightfully deserves. She knows there are reasons, beyond the usual excuses (lies) about MI6 and her duty to queen and country - there are reasons less logical than that like my brother was framed for crimes beyond forgiveness and I got scared, so scared, and I wanted to run so fast and so far away my name would never touch me again and I loved you so much the thought of losing you almost killed me, and I’m not ready to die -
She settles on - “Luke isn’t Deckard’s boyfriend.”
“Yet,” M retorts crisply, which, okay, fair enough, once they both get their heads out of their asses, Hattie can certainly see it. “Don’t change the subject.”
“M,” Hattie says softly. She wants so many things, in this moment - to go back a couple hours ago and save her fellow MI6 agents; to kill Brixton; to take Eteon down; to apologise to Deckard; to talk to Owen; to see her mother - and more than anything she wants to close the distance between them and knock that gun out of M’s hand and kiss her again, like she’s wanted to for two whole years. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.” It’s not good enough, and they both know it. Hattie raises a hand to her, stops short when M’s grip on the gun tightens. “I’m MI6, M. I was scared.” Scared because you’re on the other side of the law people see as absolute truth. Scared that one day I’d find you on the other end of my gun. Scared that I’d have to pull the trigger and live with that for the rest of my life. “I fucked up.”
“And what’s changed?” M says, trying for sneering and not quite managing it. In response, Hattie turns her hand palm up so M can see the wounds from the virus’ delivery mechanism. “If we don’t do this right, I’m not going to see tomorrow,” she says. “That changes a lot of things. I’m still scared, M. I’m scared I’m going to die. I’m scared that if I don’t, I’ll be the cause of thousands upon thousands of more deaths.” She swallows, and it feels like knives in her throat, acid burning all the way down. “I’m scared I’ll die and never get to tell you I loved you enough to leave you for two years, and that I loved you enough to regret that decision every single day.”
Please, she doesn’t say, but she thinks M hears, because the silence stretches, deafening, seconds bleeding into minutes, and then finally, just when Hattie thinks she’s going to break, M carefully places the gun back on her desk and closes the space between them and kisses her, and Hattie thinks she’s been missing this forever, wonders how she ever lived so long without it, knows she’ll move heaven and earth to stay alive and keep kissing M for the rest of her days.
“I asked you to stay, then,” M says softly. “I won’t make the same mistake again. No requests, this time.” The pad of her thumb traces the line of Hattie’s cheekbones and she presses another kiss to the edge of her mouth, this one softer, sweeter. “Don’t die. That’s an order.”
She doesn’t say come back to me either, but Hattie hears that too.
At three in the morning, M dresses her in black and takes her out to the courtyard to Brixton, and they go to war.
It’s war, bloody and brutal and not without its casualties.
It’s war, desperate, violent, fighting to keep a world alive - it’s more than just one person, she knows, they all know, but sometimes that’s also what you need -
It’s war, and they win.
They win.
After, with the CT-17 in safe hands and Luke and Deckard still fighting - or flirting, or fucking, whatever, she doesn’t want to know - and breaking her mother out of prison -
After, she makes good on a promise. Dinkley, whoever the hell that is, gets her a flight to Moscow, again, and this time she knocks on the door.
“No more entrance by skylight, I see,” says M. “Getting soft, Shaw?”
“Don’t call me that,” says Hattie, and M laughs, pulls her close. “You have a lot of nerve asking me for things, still.”
Hattie kisses her, revels in the way it feels real, feels like she returned from the dead to something larger than life. “Your heart, maybe?”
“You’re way too fucking romantic for my taste,” M sighs, but she’s smiling. “I’m not going to give anything to someone who runs off on me, darling. You going to run off on me?”
“No,” says Hattie. “I think I’m going to stick around for a long, long time.”
“You better mean it,” says M, and oh, Hattie thinks, she does.