Chapter Text
Agent Zari was hardly the type to make hospital visits, even when they came with the convenience of the ACME medical wing. She’d do it when tasked to, of course, but her partner was the one who had more experience with such things, and was much better suited to it too; he was infinitely quieter, which served more than one purpose depending on the nature of the visit. There was a reason Chief had learned to default to him, between the two of them, for that kind of assignment.
Then again, this wasn’t an assignment.
“Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused?” Zari asks.
Julia doesn’t reply.
Zari shakes her head. Huffing to herself, she crosses her arms and looks around. She does not quite know what to do with herself, so unused to the situation; when her gaze catches on the chairs set near the bed, she hesitates.
She eventually picks the one closer to the wall, farther away from Argent, and studies her from there. The injured agent looks awful— Zari wasn’t there for the sternotomy, but she had been present for the frenzy before that, when the paramedics arrived. Collapsed lung, they’d said; they’d punctured her chest to let the air out, and the sound of Julia’s gasping had made Zari grit her teeth. IVs and painkillers, Julia being pulled onto a stretcher, and then they were ushered away into different directions. And now Julia was still unconscious in front of her, face ashen and form fragile, a breathing tube down her throat.
The satisfaction of eventually having caught the operative had been dampened by the initial rush for control, the determined flurry of activity that had descended on ACME lacking the usual thrill that came with it. Julia had been careless, and because of that they had had to scramble to pick up the pieces.
(But Julia’s hand looks so small and pale on the bed, and Zari has to quash down the urge to do something stupid like hold it.)
The door clatters. Zari immediately tenses, hand at the ready to grab her gas gun from where it rested in her inner pocket, but when a figure enters it's just Agent Devineaux blinking at her. He looks as if he’s not slept for a minute since he left a week ago for his assignment halfway across the world.
“Agent Zari,” he greets her politely, if not a little confusedly. Despite Zari’s initial expectations, he looks to be in his right mind, if not anxious to finally be here. She had half feared that she would need to attempt talking to him the way nurses often do to distraught relatives, and as much as she wouldn’t really care whether he started sobbing or not, she definitely does not want to have to deal with a situation like that in the slightest.
He’s breathing hard, and Zari wonders if he ran, or maybe if he’s a bit more affected than he’s trying to appear.
She is suddenly very aware of how strange it must be for her to be here. No business, no questioning, no ACME pens. Just Agent Zari sitting there, alone. She nods back to Chase, watching him; after a moment’s hesitation he steps up to Julia’s bedside. The beeping of the health equipment is loud in the silence.
Zari eventually takes pity on him and his stupidly morose face. “Chief updated you?”
“She did,” Chase responds. He sighs and folds himself into the other seat, eyes fixed on Julia. “She will be fine. It is just…”
“Just the job,” Zari finishes for him, firm and deliberate. She doesn’t know if Devineaux is saying platitudes more for himself, but there’s no use in commiserating now, so she does the only thing she knows to do: affirm the reason why they do what they do and move on.
Chase still looks miserable.
“Stop moping, you look like a kicked puppy. She’ll be fine,” Zari bites out after a short silence, more out of irritation than anything else. “And here I thought you had more faith in her as your partner.”
An absurd amount of faith sometimes, she pointedly thinks, but does not say.
“I should have been there,” Chase mutters, with the mania of a man who believes he’s at fault. “I could have–”
“You weren’t,” Zari cuts him off again shortly. “God, Devineaux, it’s not like she’s died.” (Yet. Because surely, even if Argent survived this, it wouldn’t be the last time— what exactly did they think ACME was?) “Don’t forget you were under orders for your designation, it’s not as if you could have done anything. Just be glad we had medics on site.”
Chase is quiet for a moment, head bowed, and Zari is not inclined to break the silence again for him. She’s being short with him, she knows. She wonders if he blames her, because his words implicate her, after all. She’d been there; she could have done something.
In the midst of her thoughts, his next words are wholly unexpected.
“You care for her, do you not?”
The question makes Zari stiffen, nearly makes her turn on Devineaux and start throttling him, to wrench everything he’s trying to say with that question out of him. The urge to do so is nearly blinding for a moment, and as she clenches her jaw she has to wonder why the rush of blood is so urgent, so raw in her veins. But either way, who was he to ask her such a question, to stick his nose into her business and implicate such a thing?
She restrains herself and answers evenly, eyes trained on Julia’s unconscious form.
“She's a good agent. Decent partner, though it’s clear she works best with you.”
“That is not what I meant.”
Zari raises an eyebrow. Now she really wants to just throttle him.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing,” Devineaux shrugs, his mouth still quirked in question. He does not, however, seem inclined to challenge her on this, and so Zari has a few moments to reign in the irrational temptation to strangle her coworker. To her credit, she’s not succumbed to the urge yet in all her years at ACME, but it isn’t exactly the best of impulses to begin with. She can pour that restlessness elsewhere— it was a perk of the fieldwork.
At the edge of her vision, she sees him turn his head towards her.
“I am glad you were there at least.” He gives her a wan smile.
“That’s why we partner up,” Zari responds, tone nothing but apathy. Her hand clenches and unclenches at her side, tense and impatient.
Chase does not reply after that, seemingly caught in his thoughts again as he stands by the bed. Zari sits and watches and feels that she is somehow intruding. Two friends from Interpol, and the ACME agent who got put up with both of them when they didn’t have each other.
Not that it mattered. A job’s a job.
Before long it is Chase who gets up and steps away, heaving an exhausted sigh.
“Chief will be expecting me,” he says, and suddenly he’s all jittery impatience, foot tapping on the floor and tired eyes darting to the door. He doesn’t want to leave, Zari realizes, and knows he has to do it sooner than later to avoid allowing himself to delay. “Our mission was left unfinished because of my quick departure. I will take my leave for now.”
Zari turns to him before he can leave, an urgent thought forcing its way to the front of her mind, oiled like clockwork. “Devineaux, the paperwork– reports—”
“They are already done,” Chase waves it off. “I have handed them off. I finished them on the plane.”
“... All of them?” Zari can’t help but ask, because in this case and for one plane ride there were a lot — even in her eyes, and even for someone like Chase whose life was his work.
“Yes. Was there anything else?” Chase blinks at her with bruised eyes, and she feels incredulousness bubble up as he hovers, waiting to go.
... But of course. It was often easier to throw oneself into work than to agonize over something, wasn’t it?
“No. I’ll see you at work, Agent Devineaux.”
“... Yes. Goodbye, Agent Zari.”
It was laughable, really.
Whether Devineaux had known or not, his questions had hit a spot that made Zari want to squirm. But she doesn’t, because hell if she wants to dwell on this.
It had plagued her before, the idiocy, the pure pitiful patheticness of it all. But somehow it just kept going, even when she tamped it down and pretended to all hell that she didn’t see it, didn’t give a damn. How could she have let something like this even happen?
It’s been almost two years.
And maybe a part of her had given up and deigned to leave it be in hopes it would go away, but now it was just a bit too loud.
… It feels stupidly banal to be distressed over this when Julia has been shot and nearly killed. It feels stupid to be distressed at all, really. But the mind was nothing if not difficult to wrangle.
So for the next couple of days Zari follows Devineaux’s lead, spending late nights at headquarters and soldiering through her work. She monopolizes the coffee machine and stares at footage until her eyes burn behind her eyewear, and does her damndest not to think about Agent Argent’s absence amidst it all.
Zari is very careful not to visit again until Julia awakens.
She does, however, make the mistake of visiting when that happens. Very soon after Julia wakes up, in fact; she doubts the agent has even seen anyone who wasn’t a doctor or a nurse since gaining consciousness. She doesn’t even know if Devineaux has been informed yet. The matter is chalked up to Zari being conveniently close to the medical wing when she hears about the development. As always, ACME wastes little time going right in for damage control when it’s probably too late anyway.
It’s all business, of course. ( Of course.) She coolly informs Argent of the current situation and makes a snide comment on her carelessness, no other words on the circumstances in which she had come to be so badly hurt, and if Julia sees right through it she doesn’t say anything, watching her with wary eyes.
Argent’s been put on leave to recover, naturally. The recommended stay was to be a week, with the appropriate bedrest after, but that was assuming there would be no complications. Her stay’s been considered indefinite so far— her injury hadn’t been pretty. Chief makes a remote appearance to inform her that she can rest for as long as necessary, but that ACME would be waiting to welcome her back. The intricacies of what happened on the field pass through Zari's ears like molasses, thick and viscous, but what sticks are the sickeningly sharp details of what has since happened between then and now.
(GSW. Needle thoracostomy. Sternotomy. Zari’s no doctor, but a collapsed lung with a bullet buried in it was no joke. Julia had always seemed more delicate than the average agent, but she had just seemed too fragile lying there motionless in the still quiet.)
Julia’s words to her boss are few and far in between, clear and concise but obviously exhausted. Her voice is strained and ragged as a result of the breathing tube’s recent removal. Zari listens with a carefully blank expression and avoids looking at the chest tube draining fluid from Julia’s side, and thinks that Agent Argent is luckier than Devineaux, when they had just started at ACME. She crosses her arms and stays silent even when the hologram flickers out and Julia eyes Zari warily.
Eventually she steps closer to the bedside table and puts down a new ACME pen, her steps deliberate and her stride carefully even, heels clicking against the cold floor.
“Try not to lose it. Again.” She says this even more snidely than usual, vehement and entirely inappropriate and the farthest cry from an acceptable bedside manner. Julia frowns at her in a manner that’s more searching than displeased, and Zari inexplicably wants to break something, feels that flash of white-hot fire that’s too complicated to chalk up to one emotion.
She hates how calm and composed Argent is. It’s harder to get a rise out of her nowadays. The part of Zari’s brain that gets a kick out of little verbal spats, the part that is responsible for all of her barely-restrained anger simmering under the surface, for her strange brand of recklessness, responsible for her bluntness and her pride and her spite , that part of her wants to reach out, do something, get Julia to react somehow.
(She’s not sure what it is she wants to do. Grab her, shake her, lean in and pull and see how she reacts—)
Her hand twitches at her side. She clenches it into a fist, and neither of them say anything.
This is exhausting, Zari thinks. This was always far too much trouble than what it was worth, if it was ever worth anything in the goddamn world.
“Get better soon,” Zari says instead, in a tone that’s far too venomous for such a statement. She hasn’t moved from the bedside table, so she can see Julia’s eyes flick up, studying her expression. She can see the tiredness that clings to Julia’s features, pale skin and worn eyes, and has to ignore the thing that squirms inside her.
“Of course.”
And so Zari turns and leaves.
She is so consumed by tunnel vision, the sudden and overwhelming need to get out of the room, that once she’s through the doorframe she very narrowly avoids a head-on collision with another familiar agent. She can smell coffee, cutting through the sterile air of the medical wing that had invaded her lungs, and remembers her first visit.
“... Devineaux.”
“How is she?” Chase wastes no time, eyes wide in anticipation. Bags under his eyes, jaw tight as he chews on a mint and clutches a cup of cold coffee; this man has not slept well, if at all, and that’s saying something for someone like him. He’s looked that way every time Zari has seen him this week.
(And compared to him, she looks the same as always. Isn’t that enough of a testimony? She doesn’t care for Argent any more than she does Devineaux, or any of the other agents she works with.)
(... It doesn’t work. She knows she’s past the point of justification. Who is she trying to convince at this point?)
“Ask her, not me,” Zari says flatly. “Isn’t that what you came here for?”
“Thank you,” Chase says, relief clear, and thank you, what for? Zari narrows her eyes at that, fist clenched again as he continues. “I am grateful you came so quickly.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Zari counters, almost petulant as she sidesteps and lets him pass. “Chief sent me.”
“Of course,” Chase says absentmindedly, “Good day then, Agent Zari.”
Zari hears Julia’s quiet, cracked voice in greeting just before he closes the door, and immediately continues on her way to get somewhere, anywhere far enough away from here.
It’s often so much easier to be angry, to run hot on it or to be cold. Agent Zari is used to holding everything close to her chest, so close that she can’t see it anymore.
Despite herself, Zari returns within a couple days.
“From Devineaux,” she snaps as Julia’s questioning gaze lands on the care package in her hands, an unassuming paper bag with a hastily scrawled note on it. She’d been half hoping that Julia was asleep so she could just leave the package, but it’s easier to get a grasp on her condition when she’s awake. There’s an assortment of other items on the nightstand, instant coffee and scented candles (which you can’t even light in the medical wing), and then some of those mints he was so fond of. “You think he’d have eased up on bringing you all this crap by now.”
Julia smiles gently as she takes it from Zari, seemingly paying no mind to the other agent’s foul mood– almost a constant, now. On the other hand, there’s a bit more color to Julia today, her voice a little closer to what it was supposed to sound like. “He’s simply being thoughtful. And I believe that perhaps he may feel guilty, despite not being at fault.” Shaking her head slightly, she starts looking through the bag’s contents with a fond look of exasperation.
Zari ignores the scowl that pulls at her face. Crossing her arms instead, she looks down her nose at Julia. “He should learn not to get hung up on cases like this. We aren’t working at a daycare.”
Julia’s expression turns cool as she levels Zari a look, to which Zari narrows her eyes back challengingly.
Despite her current state, Julia’s sharp turn of thought is apparently still present. She matches Zari’s dryness in kind, only a little stiffness evident in her otherwise nonchalant bearing. “Agent Zari, I’m under the impression that you don’t conduct hospital visits very often, much less without orders to.”
“You’re right,” Zari says derisively, privately just a little satisfied that she has gotten a reaction out of Julia. She can do passive aggressive if Argent is being testy, no problem. “I’ve never had to bother. Most agents don’t mess up that badly.” (Obviously a lie. Mostly they’re just lucky VILE has never quite put effort into killing their agents.)
“And yet you’re here today, even if you seem quite unhappy about it,” Julia observes, tone calm despite her keen stare. “Agent Devineaux could have taken those himself– he’s visiting tomorrow, you may well know. There was no need to forego your work for this, I assure you.”
“I’m not just shirking my work. Chief was asking after you— Devineaux’s closer to you and I’m clearly more likely to be objective.”
(Oh, if she knew. If Chief knew.)
Julia raises an eyebrow, seemingly contemplating whether she would keep pushing back.
(Do it, I dare you, Zari thinks. She’s almost disappointed when Julia doesn’t.)
“Then, did Chief need anything else?”
“No.”
“In that case, thank you for the delivery, Agent Zari.”
Despite Julia’s flagging voice, it’s as clear a dismissal as any, irritating in that usually Zari gets the final say. Still, she turns without another word, more vitriol on the tip of her tongue. She can feel the weight of Julia’s gaze at the back of her head as she leaves the room.
Her mood is soured for the rest of the day, biting out snappy retorts and barrelling through work with barely concealed frustration. She refuses to dwell on how that was not how the conversation was supposed to go, or to dwell on the fact that there was a way she wanted it to go in the first place.
This time, she waits a couple more days before returning, when the week is nearly out and her white-hot anger has tempered somewhat into the baseline coolness she is used to showing. Julia has not yet been cleared to leave.
“Oh, Agent Zari,” Julia greets her curiously, if not a bit cautiously. She’s looking just a bit livelier, but not by much. “Are those… flowers?”
“They’re from ACME,” Zari says. She is very, very careful to keep her expression neutral.
“I didn’t think ACME was the type to send flowers.” Julia’s tone is mildly tongue-in-cheek, prompting a slight narrowing of the eyes, though inwardly Zari can’t help but agree. “And a bit later than I’d have expected any, but I appreciate them all the same.”
Well, it wasn’t exactly a surprise that no one else who was there wanted to bring them. Devineaux had finally gone home at a reasonable time, shooed by Chief with orders to get some proper rest for once, no exceptions, and then the flowers had arrived somewhat late– an afterthought in the initial scramble to reorient and restrategize.
ACME’s halls were always lit the same, but the medical wing was less stifling and actually had windows. By the time Zari had wound her way here, it was dark out.
So Zari sets the floral display down on the table (now much neater, thankfully; seems Julia’s been able to tidy up a bit now, at least). “Chief probably wants to be on your good side. You got injured on the job.” And she values you too much for you to call it quits again.
Julia lets out a vague noise of agreement, eyes coming to rest on the other agent. Zari quirks her mouth as she avoids Julia’s gaze and looks at the flowers for a few moments.
“Irises?”
“They look like orchids, I believe.”
Zari nods, and then turns to Julia awkwardly. They’re both tiptoeing around, something Zari hates doing. But before she can say anything, Julia beats her to it.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Julia asks, and this time it’s hard for Zari to tell if she’s being genuine with her question or simply waiting, maybe even prompting Zari to wrap up and leave. Julia could be sharp or even audacious on occasion, this Zari knows well, but she has never quite been all the way to impolite despite the shit she has to deal with.
Zari plays defensively, this time. She decides to put up walls.
“Not at the moment.” Her eyes flick to the door. “I’ll leave you to rest, then.”
“Oh,” Julia straightens up. “Of course. Perhaps next time you can bring me some updates on our current high-priority cases?”
‘Next time’? She’d hardly promised any such thing. Zari looks down at Julia and can't help but think, is she getting lonely?
She can’t put much scorn into the thought, somehow. Taking only a moment to decide, Zari sighs, pulls up a chair, and sits. “I assume you haven’t been kept updated on the other ongoings at ACME this past week. Chief told Devineaux not to disclose too much about it while you’re recovering.” She huffs. “Only a matter of time before he does, though right now he seems to agree that you need some peace.” Hypocrite, Zari thinks dispassionately. “In the meantime I’m all you’ve got— not like she’s told me to keep quiet, anyway.”
Julia appears mildly startled, her wide eyes darting over to the dark window for a moment. “Now? I would appreciate it, but it can wait, Agent Zari. Your apartment—“
“I’ve slept here at headquarters more times than there,” Zari flatly cuts her off. “And I live alone, obviously. It’s not an issue. It’s not that late anyway.”
“... If you say so,” Julia says to that, flashing a somewhat dubious but grateful smile.
Zari crosses her arms and pulls up her phone with a ruminative frown on her face, trying not to think too hard about how she doesn’t have to, and in fact probably isn’t even supposed to be doing this, and yet is doing so anyway. Best not to read too much into it. “For all her pomp, Chief was bemoaning not having your opinion on this case,” she begrudgingly starts. “When we followed up on the bank statements...”
So much for walls— they didn’t even last the length of the conversation, which had ended not too long after Zari noticed Julia fighting to keep her eyes open. She’d been talking so much like her usual self, it had almost seemed like she was already recovered; it was only when she nearly nodded off that Zari noted the late hour and Julia finally admitted some rest was in order.
The cautious balance they had struck up persists. Zari finds herself privately resigned to keeping Julia posted on any significant developments while the woman has nothing to do but recover, and in doing so inadvertently traps herself to more visits than she had initially anticipated.
The elephant in the room can wait indefinitely, for all she cares.
“Devineaux, you left this in the medical wing. Try not to leave your things lying around, we aren’t running a lost and found in there.”
“Oh, indeed. I must have yesterday, in Julia’s… room… Er. What were you—”
“I’m leaving. Don’t forget to send me the logs.”
“... Ah, of course. Can I ask if you will also be there tomorrow, Agent Zari?”
“No, you can’t. Goodbye.”
“Weren’t you supposed to be out after a week?” Zari asks when a short pause descends. Her update today had been brief, with not much new to update Julia with during the weekend.
“They’re worried about complications,” Julia says. Heaving a labored breath, she lets her eyes wander to the coffee in Zari’s hands. “They’ll be monitoring for infection. And while I might have been discharged after a week, I was told I may not be allowed to return to the field until after at least a couple of months— perhaps they don’t trust me not to do anything strenuous. Not that I’m particularly eager to, really, but I suppose it makes sense with ACME agents being… well… ACME agents.”
“With a partner like Devineaux, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Zari says offhandedly. “You don’t seem much at first but there’s a reason why you’ve been able to keep up with him.”
Julia raises an eyebrow at the zigzagging maybe-compliment but doesn’t respond, and this allows the words to bring to Zari’s mind her conversation with Chase from when they’d first visited.
“You care for her, do you not?”
“She's a good agent. Decent partner, though it’s clear she works best with you.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“Argent,” Zari mutters then. Her glare is fixed on the wall, glacial and impassive. “I know I’m not easy to be around. If you don’t want me here…”
In the short pause that follows, she knows they’re both thinking of the visit before last. After that, things had cooled off, but in the same way as when they had first been partnered together; more of a tense agreement to move on, an acquiescence to continue doing their work rather than a genuine resolution.
“I didn’t join ACME for easy,” Julia says eventually, unphased by Zari’s sudden and uncharacteristic show of sincerity.
A scoff. “So I’m just a challenge to you then?”
Despite the peevish words, Zari’s tone is flat and stony, the way it often is when she’s being somewhat passive. Julia studies Zari for a moment, the way her jaw is set tight and her eyes are fixed on the wall, and sighs, like she’s dealing with a particularly stubborn student.
“I’m just surprised you’ve kept coming back,” Julia responds, honesty in the way she speaks, always so easy to pick up on. “You didn’t really give off the impression that you’d be someone who would visit often.”
“I’m not,” Zari agrees.
“Well, perhaps I appreciate it,” Julia says back after a moment. “Despite your testiness.”
“I’m visiting you for ACME purposes.”
“All the same. Company is company.”
Zari sips at her coffee and scowls, still not looking at Julia. "Really. Don't get the wrong idea, Argent, I'm only here to keep tabs on you and keep you up to speed. Besides, you get Devineaux in here often, so I doubt you want my company that much."
Julia considers Zari again, with that irritating scrutiny, and Zari finally stares back with the stubbornness of a brick wall. The other agent’s patiently kind words have been getting on her nerves, the torturous cautiousness making her bridle with impatience.
She doesn’t even know what exactly she’s trying to prove, but hell if she wasn’t going to win. When Julia drops the matter, Zari feels something akin to relief.
“I really did not anticipate staying here so long, but the medical experts would know best,” Julia remarks. “I’ll keep in mind how inconvenient getting shot is in the future.”
Her tone is lighthearted, a humorous edge to her words, but it doesn’t seem to work. Zari merely grunts in response, a different kind of uncomfortable making her cross her arms against the unintended slight. And this time, Zari wonders for a second if Julia blames her, too.
As the conversation dies down again, there's yet another moment of silence between them. Julia breaks it by clearing her throat.
"If you're not too busy, I wouldn’t be opposed to you staying longer,” she says, her voice tentative. “I assumed that was the extent of your update today, but you’re welcome to stay.”
Zari hesitates for a moment. She has no reason to remain. In fact, she wants to be out that door, and has wanted to be out that door since Julia said she appreciated her being there.
"Well, since you appreciate it so much. I guess I can stick around for a bit. But don't get used to it, Argent. I've got work to do."
Julia’s small smile makes Zari regret it near-instantaneously. But she sits down anyway and ignores the part of her that tells her she’s fighting a losing battle.