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Tallinn awoke in her bed, in her small but tasteful apartment, two days after her dinner with Renee and her friends, wondering why anyone at all would be knocking on her door. Her reflexive response was to tense up, make a quick mental inventory of all the weapons stashed around the place, and then call out as benignly as possible, “Just a moment!”
Scratching her head, she shielded her eyes from the sunlight slanting in the windows, slid into a dressing gown, and walked to the door, prepared to grab her phaser from the hutch beside it if necessary. No-one ever came knocking on Tallinn’s door, ever. Her life was arranged such that there was never a need.
She peered out of the little peephole in the door. It was just Wesley, standing there in a black denim jacket and looking like his hair and beard had been freshly trimmed. She felt some (but not all) of the tension drain out of her body. “You could have called ahead,” she grumbled, opening the door.
He smiled, his face open and pleasant as it was. Wesley was not like Tallinn; he was not a soul with a dark past trying to wipe the stain of his sins from time. He had found his gifts when he was a young man, and had been Watching for longer than his youthful demeanor would suggest. He glanced at the mezuzah screwed into the doorframe.
“So you’re a child of Abraham now, huh?” He seemed terribly amused.
She looked at him grumpily. “Come in.”
“Tallinn Carlebach,” he went on as he entered the place and the door clicked shut behind him. “It’s got a nice ring, actually. It’s really not bad.” He looked around at the mahogany and leather and frosted glass of her place. “Nice place. Much nicer than the one you had in Paris.”
Tallinn grunted. “Yeah. Thanks. Coffee?”
“No, I’m good, thanks.” He made himself comfortable in one of her wooden chairs. Tallinn shuffled into the kitchen and began grinding the coffee beans. In more than twenty years on Earth, she had developed a weakness for the accursed drink. The scent of the freshly ground beans had become one of her greatest, most embarrassing pleasures.
Well, it was somewhere behind second place, now.
“So, you didn’t really convert, then?”
“No, it’s part of my cover.”
He nodded, looking around for a few moments while Tallinn set the coffee brewing. Finally, while the machine gurgled away, he spoke. “So, we got your contact report, thanks for that.”
She held her breath for a moment. How much did he know? Is that why he was here? “Did you have any questions?” She leaned back against the countertop, trying to seem nonchalant.
“Well, I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
Her brow furrowed a little, but she tried to keep her cool. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shifted in the chair, looking at her with a gaze that, while friendly, was wiser than she felt like dealing with now. “It’s just really normal for a Watcher to go through some challenging feelings after they meet their charge face to face, especially after watching them for a decade or two.”
Tallinn didn’t count the time she had given Renee that little gift at Martha’s Vineyard when she was eight or so.
“Oh… I see…” She hedged. “Why’s that?”
“Well, sometimes you realize that you kind of don’t like them much, and it can be really disillusioning that you’ve spent a lot of years protecting someone who you wouldn’t even want to have a drink with.”
Tallinn smiled faintly. “I see.”
Wesley took a breath and continued, his calm, friendly gaze steady on her. “Or, it can go the other way. You find them to be really great and wish you could be closer to them. Which, obviously, you can’t. So, that can be hard too. It’s not an easy job. So, we just like to make sure folks are okay after they file their contact reports.”
She looks back at him without saying anything. It’s a spycraft technique; stay silent, let the other person keep talking to fill the uncomfortable silence, hoping they give something away.
Wesley doesn’t bite. “If you need to talk about it, I’m here.”
“Thanks.”
That was six months ago now. She hadn’t gotten any pings from him since. She had continued to worry this entire time that he, as empathetic as he was, had been able to read her.
But it was too late now. She had become lovers with her charge, had confessed her feelings, had revealed her sacred name. It had turned into bad money after bad quite a while ago.
She materializes into her apartment in a swirling cloud of purple smoke.
He’s sitting on her sofa. He looks up, smiling. “Hey, Tallinn Carlebach. Sorry, I hope you don’t mind, I let myself in.”
She shrugs and tosses her satchel onto the floor by the door.
“Where are you coming from?”
She sighs. She’s been waiting for this moment. “You know, or you wouldn’t be here, right?”
He nods, and gestures to the other seat across from him. She trudges over and slumps down into it across from him. “We need to talk about what’s happening,” he says. He doesn’t look angry, nor even disappointed. He looks a little sorry for her, is all.
“Yeah, I guess we do.”
“Would you like to start?”
She tips her head back and rests it against the back of the seat. “Not really, but I guess I should.” She sighs, and looking at the ceiling, begins. “I need you to understand, first of all, that this isn’t just … something childish.” She picks her head up and looks at him. “Do you believe that?”
“Sure. How long have you loved her?”
“Six years, at least. I tried to convince myself it was anything else, for a long time. And then at some point, I broke, admitted it to myself. But I could manage as long as I didn’t have to look her in the eyes.” She dropped her head back again and sighed, “She really does have beautiful eyes.”
“Yeah, she really does,” Wesley agrees.
“She has a beautiful spirit, too. I don’t… this doesn’t happen to me, all right? I… she’s too brilliant, too kind, too beautiful, too good.”
Wesley sighs. He looks at her sympathetically. “Tal, I get it. You wouldn’t be the first Watcher to fall in love with their charge. But it sounds like you didn’t melt into the walls like you should have after you filed that contact report.”
She shook her head. “We became lovers two months after that.”
Wesley looks at a little clear plastic grocery store box of cookies on the coffee table. “Do you mind?”
Tallinn waves a hand. “Go for it.”
He pops it open and takes one. “Ohhh, are these hamentashen?”
“Yeah,” Tallinn grumbles, “it’s Purim apparently, so she bought me some.”
Wesley chuckles. “Okay, we’re going to need to talk about why she thinks you’re Jewish. But, later.” He pops the cookie in his mouth and munches on it. “These are really good. Moist. You should eat them before they dry out.” He looks at her. “So, Tal, this is important. How much does she know?”
Tallinn wants to crush her own head between her hands. “Not a lot. She knows I’m a scientist. She’s divined that I used to be a spy. She assumed I was Mossad. I didn’t dissuade her.” She sees Wesley’s mind working as the pieces come together. “And she, um… well, last night I… told her my sacred fourth name.”
Wesley whistled. “Wow, you really are in love with her. That’s huge. I know what that means for your people. It’s rare to love someone enough to give them that.” He considers her for a moment, but his smile has faded a little. “I’m glad for you, that you’ve experienced loving someone that much.”
Tallinn closes her eyes. She knows that’s not the end of the sentence. “But?”
“But? You know. You have to pull the plug on this. If you’ve told her your sacred name, what else are you going to tell her? This has the potential to basically pour gasoline on the timeline and light it on fire, you know? I… I hate to be the one to say this, but you know this was really bad, right? Like, believe me, I completely understand how it happened, I’ve looked at her files, and she is amazing, and she is special. I see how she got to you, and I can completely understand how someone like you, who hasn’t really had or wanted this kind of connection with someone, could get so blindsided by it. I really do understand.” He leans forward, his warm eyes full of concern. “You never had this feeling before, so you never saw it coming, and by the time it got you, it was way too late.”
“So, I imagine you’ll have to replace me?” Tallinn asks warily.
Wesley sighs. “Well, I can offer you a choice. You’re not going to like either option, honestly.” He shakes his head. “I really do get it, Tallinn, but I wish we weren’t sitting here right now.”
“Okay, what are the choices?”
“You have to end it with her. That’s not up for discussion, unfortunately, much as I wish I could say differently. And that’s not up to me. So… I can pull you, find another case for you. Get you away from here, away from her, and all that thorny stuff you’re feeling. Or, I can leave you here. Her mission is in what, a week? I can let you finish your job. But that option is not for the faint of heart, and if you think you can’t hold out, you can’t stay away from her, I completely understand. I say all of this without judgment. You’ve been a good Watcher. But my job is to keep both you and the mission intact.”
Tallinn does her best to tamp down her feelings about it and try to think clearly about it. “I’ve never not completed a mission,” she says.
“I understand.”
“I need to see her get safely onto that shuttle.”
“As her Watcher? Or as yourself?”
Tallinn waves a hand. “I think I’ve spent too much time pretending to be Jewish, I’ve gotten far too good at tsuris.”
“What’s that?”
“Trouble and woe.”
Wesley chuckles at her dark humor. “Yeah but you know what else? You’re good at doing mitzvahs, right? Good works? I think that’s what they’re called.”
Tallinn has read about that. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“So? What’s it going to be?”
Heavily, Tallinn gazes into space. “I’m going to stay.”
“Tal, you gotta look me in the eye and swear to me you’re gonna stay away from her. If you don’t, I can’t promise to be able to shield you from consequences.”
She looks at him, steadily. “It will be hard to stay. It will be harder to go, and not see her fulfill her destiny. I love her, Wesley.”
“I know,” he says softly.
“I won’t go near her. I promise that. But I can’t leave.”
After a moment, he accepts this. “Okay. But I need you to call her now, and end it.”
“Can’t I just disappear?” An equally awful choice.
“And have her worrying about you when she’s prepping for her launch?”
Tallinn groans. “I don’t know what to tell her.”
“It doesn’t matter what you tell her, in a way. Nothing is going to make it hurt less. Tell her your family needs you.”
Tallinn sighs. Wesley and the others are the only thing she has that resembles family; this much is true, in its way.
She picks up her phone. Her stomach in terrible knots, she calls Renee’s number. Renee’s voice answers, sweet and sleepy. “Regretting hurrying out this morning?”
This will take every ounce of strength Tallinn has to hold herself together. “I always regret leaving you.”
Renee can hear in her voice that something’s wrong. “Are you all right? You don’t sound like you.”
“I’m… uh, I’m not, actually.”
“What is it?”
“Well…” Tallinn swallows hard. “I… My family… is calling me home. Urgently.”
“Home…” Renee sounds confused. “You mean Tel Aviv?”
“I’m getting on the next flight out. I’m… afraid I can’t stop by to say goodbye.” Tallinn bites her lip hard enough that it bleeds.
“Well, when are you coming back? Will you be here for the launch?” Renee sounds anxious now. She’s not stupid. She can tell this is a real goodbye.
“I don’t think so. I’m sorry. I wish I could. I really, really wish I could.”
Renee’s voice wavers a little. “Why do I feel like I’m never going to see you again?”
Tallin places a hand over her eyes. A sob wants to escape, which she keeps tight in her throat. She can’t speak.
“Tal, do you really have to go, or are you just running away from me? If you scared yourself last night with sharing your secret name, I understand. But… please, don’t just… just, run away to Israel.”
A deep breath. “Renee. I’m not running away to Israel.” That much, at least, was true.
“So you just don’t want to end this face to face? After… everything?”
Grief weighs Tallinn to her seat. Her limbs feel cold, suddenly. “I don’t. I don’t want to end it. I told you, I…”
“Yes, your family. I hear it in your voice, Tal, I’m not stupid. You’re ending it. You’re running away. And you never let me understand why.”
“Please, you have to trust…”
“No, no I don’t. But it’s too late. I let you have my heart, Ssaedhe. And now you’re just going to run away.”
“Renee…”
“I have to go.”
The line goes dead.
Tallinn drops the phone, and places her face in her hands, sobbing silently where she sits. She barely acknowledges Wesley beside her. A moment later, she feels him draping a blanket around her shoulders. A few minutes after that, she hears him puttering in the kitchen, fixing the cup of coffee that she never got around to having. He sets it on the table in front of her.
“I’ll stay if you want me to stay,” he says gently. “Or, I’ll leave you to grieve this on your own. Whatever is comfortable for you.”
“Oh, stay for a bit.” She gestures at the table. “Have some more hamentashen.”
She draws her knees up to her chest and pulls the blanket around her. She knows that she’s going to have to pull herself together in a little while and go Watch Renee, from a distance, like before. Only now, she will do her job with the knowledge of what her hands feel like when they stroke your cheek, what sounds she makes in bed, what her laugh sounds like when you’ve made a really good joke. What she looks like first thing in the morning, and when she dreams, and what her French omelets taste like. The two little dimples at the small of her back. How warm it is to bask in the light of her smile.
She will go forth, aching to be near her, with the awful knowledge of how wonderful it is.