Chapter Text
Cruz had first clocked the SUV about 7 blocks back— armored black Chevy, blackened tints, otherwise almost suspiciously unremarkable.
She made a detour up 15th and it had followed, at a distance, definitely tailing her.
The thing is, she’s out — completely — , has been for four hundred and seventy-eight days now; she had requested it, was honorably discharged —with almost laughable glowing commendations from the CMC himself and the medals to prove it— exactly thirty days after disembarking that fucking yacht.
She’s fucking done.
Joe and Meade had made offers and then assurances and when those didn’t work, some thinly-veiled threats too and she had kindly —it could have been worse— told them to fuck right off and never contact her again.
She lost contact with the rest of the Lioness QRF after that too — that was regrettable but necessary — and she’s okay now, at least.
Well, not okay, okay —the fallout from Mallorca had been swift and global (she still can’t browse a news headline without feeling heavy from the roots of guilt sown, watered and sheltered deep within her); the personal fallout was worse, is longstanding, is the reason she can map the markings on her bedroom ceiling with her eyes closed, though she doesn’t close them often, can’t take the siege of recollection or contemplation; she can’t forgive herself, she won’t forgive herself; so maybe, she’s not okay , but she is settled. She working Brink’s truck security during the days with two guys who respect her boundaries enough to never ask about the dark circles under her eyes and never take her long, contemplative silences personally; she’s taking college classes at the community college at night too, keeping busy; making do.
And yet, she knew this day would come; knows right through to her bones that this semblance of peace she has settled into is not deserved; her guilt is not atonement, her self-hatred not retribution. She deceived, she used, she ruined one of the kindest, bravest people she has ever met; she killed two very powerful, very rich men — her time has been borrowed ever since knife etched against throat.
The SUV slows in the distance; she watches it closely, tracks it keenly through the side-view mirrors of passing cars.
It’s approaching.
It’s approaching and the thing is, she could have lost it 3 blocks ago. She could have ducked into Mr. Lee’s bodega as it was closing, could have waited them out there or crept out the back into an alley and Mr. Lee would have let her —has had a soft spot for her ever since she stopped a would-be armed robber with a can of expired peas — but that was a casualty she couldn’t risk, a tragedy she couldn’t bear to inherit atop the ones already weighing her down.
Instead, she kept moving, not closer to home, but further into the city where a woman getting dragged into a SUV might ring less alarm bells than it should; where, if whoever it is does the job quick, she’ll just become the chalk outline she sometimes already feels like, where her untimely death will be glossed over —a drug deal gone bad, maybe, or gang violence— or painted as ordinary, as yet another Vet with PTSD coping and then not coping.
She stops, pulls up right in the middle of the sidewalk.
Maybe she’s curious. Maybe she’s just tired. Maybe, above all, she’s just ready .
Whatever it is, she tucks her hands into her pockets, as defenseless as she can be, and waits.
The SUV rolls to a stop beside her and she inhales, holds it — ready for a hood and zip ties, ready for a gunshot, ready for anything.
The passenger side window starts to roll it's way down, slow and then seemingly slower until—
Fuck!
Ready for anything except maybe this.
“Get in!”
Joe hasn't changed a fucking bit, still as brazen as the day she made her strip bare for inspection or perhaps worse now even, based alone on the fact that she would even show her face here when the last time they spoke, Cruz made it crystal fucking clear that if she ever saw her face again, she’d break it.
Cruz leans into the car, gets a glimpse of Bobby and Two Cups in the backseat —and that hurts a little that they would go along with whatever the fuck this is— but she keeps focused on Joe in the driver's seat, looks her right in the eye because she really wants her to understand her words this time.
“Stay. The. Fuck. Away. From. Me!”
"Cruz, come on," Bobby tries — tries a gentler approach; tries to assuage, but Cruz’s full attention is on Joe, is on calculating the quickest way for fist and face to meet.
"Get in or we do it the hard way," Joe asserts and Cruz’s fists clench, blood boiling.
“It’s important and time-sensitive,” Bobby presses, a transparent attempt to abate the mounting tension.
Maybe curiosity will be her downfall, or maybe her brain decides that inside the SUV really is the quickest route for her fist to meet Joe’s face, she isn’t really sure, but Cruz finds herself tugging on the door handle.
As soon as she's in the passenger seat, Joe tosses a manilla folder into her lap, puts her foot on the gas at the same time; and here it goes again.
"The fuck is this?" Cruz asks, reluctant. She was settled, she was settled ; whatever this is, wherever they’re going, she doesn’t want any of it.
“Open it,” Joe insists anyway.
The smooth paper feels prickly beneath her fingertips, but she pushes down her hesitance, pulls open the paper and stares down, almost unseeingly, at a briefing, at the words and pictures in front of her.
“Fahid Tahir,” Joe explains, “leader of—”
“I know who he is,” Cruz interrupts, because how could she not? He’s theirs ; their reckoning; their Frankenstein’s monster. The fallout from Mallorca had been swift and global! Indignation stirred, enmity boiled and from the ashes they had scattered rose an infernal phoenix —Fahid Tahir, leader of a lesser known extremist militant group now thriving because of them. Three attacks on US embassies, 22 dead; Cruz feels the weight of them like rocks in her stomach, feels as responsible for them as if she had done it with her own two hands. Because in a way, she did; she did that; she took out the grand merchant of terrorism and in the process created the terrorist they were all so terrified of!
“Turn the page,” Joe urges and Cruz, as numb as she is, does. She blinks down at the new page, but the words are blurring, nothing has meaning; nothing is making sense to her except the way her heart seems to feel like it’s going to jump out of her throat. “After months of surveillance, CIA can conclude that this is his compound in a secluded area of Syria,” Joe continues even though the words are melding too, even though Cruz can barely hear them over the sounds of her heartbeat pounding against her eardrums. “Tomorrow night, JSOC will conduct Operation Firebird, a kill-or-capture raid on his compound whic—”
"This has to be highly classified,” Cruz finds her voice, closes the folder in front of her and looks ahead —tries to figure out where the fuck they are going and where the fuck Joe is going with this. “Why are you telling me this?"
“I know the Commander in charge of Task Force Green who will be boots on the ground for this mission. They are aware of and have planned ahead for non-militants and children at the compound and aim to keep the casualties as low as possible but with an operation of this magnitude, there are so many moving pieces, so many things can happen, thin—,”
“Why are you telling me this?” Cruz repeats, more forcefully this time, because words are just words, recited, regurgitated (she's heard enough mission briefs in her time to know that most of it is superficial) but there’s an impending sense of dread that the things Joe isn’t saying are the things she needs to understand the most and she just wishes Joe would get on with it already and let her loose.
Joe reaches out, flips open the folder in her lap and lands on a page Cruz hadn't bothered to browse.
She glances down, is almost sure she swallowed that drumming in her throat right back down to her stomach because she feels heavy and yet somehow like she could suddenly float away; she feels numb and somehow oversensitive; she feels cold and like she might just be sweating.
There’s a hand on her shoulder that she recognizes to be Bobby’s, recognizes it to be an attempt at comfort, but she violently lurches anyway, shrugs off the touch like it had burned.
She stares down at the picture until her eyes burn, until her vision blurs, but the picture, no matter how much she wills it, does not change.
It’s blurry, clearly taken with a long range camera from a distance, but it’s Aaliyah —unmistakably Aaliyah.
There’s a man with her, middle aged, his hands gripping her wrists tight like she’s being dragged by force — violently , against her will.
Cruz seethes, feels the picture shaking in her trembling hands, sees the splatter of water drop onto the picture before she even realizes that she’s crying.
This is her fault.
She did this.
"This picture was taken yesterday at the compound," Joe discloses, flat, —no comfort in her voice, no compassion, just facts. "The man in the picture is her uncle, successor to her father. Of course, we don’t have details, but this is the first sighting of her at the compound during month’s long surveillance and well, surveillance images show him bringing her there and leaving without her so we can only assume that her uncle has found a way to rid the family of his wayward niece by promising her to Tahir as his third… maybe fourth wife.”
“Pull over,” Cruz doesn’t even recognize her own voice, doesn’t realize it’s coming from her until the words reach her ears and yes, that’s exactly what she needs — she needs the car to stop; she needs to get out; she needs air; she needs to be anywhere but here. “Joe, pull over,” she demands again, and when Joe doesn’t listen, she yanks the steering wheel hard enough from Joe’s grip that the SUV almost careens right into a fire hydrant before Joe course corrects. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” Cruz admits; feels the bile rising in her throat, sour and bitter and salty, though that part might just be her tears.
Joe slams on the brake hard enough that a car behind them has to swerve around them, horn still sounding even as it fades into a distance.
“No, you won't,” Joe insists, unimpressed by the outburst. “What you need to do is listen to me and listen very carefully,” she demands, her tone sharp, both commanding and somehow soothing all at once. “Turn the page.”
Cruz takes a steadying breath, spares one last glance at the photograph before flipping the page and finding a map of the compound, highlighted and marked, a path clearly drawn.
“I called in every favor I'm owed for this, including the only one that could get us out of treason charges if this whole thing goes south,” Joe reveals, the car lurching as she accelerates again.
Cruz peers down at the page again, sees it clearly for what it is this time — an extraction plan.
“I don’t understand,” she admits, breathes deep to steady herself because she suddenly feels like pinball, just bouncing in so many directions, unable to settle. “I — Why?” she challenges, feeling like she’s grasping for a motive because this; this doesn’t feel like the same Joe who once demanded she put aside her emotions for the good of the country.
Joe shrugs.
“The thing is, you said a lot of things to me when you insisted you wanted out and while you weren’t completely right; you weren’t completely wrong either. I guess, I spent a very long time balancing equations, weighing up lives lost and lives saved and trying to make sure that scale always tipped in a favorable direction and it took me maybe too long to realize that lives aren’t just numbers, that some lives hold more significance for us than others and now I’m just trying to re-balance that scale based on a this new formula.”
Two Cups murmur something about philosophy that makes Bobby snicker but Cruz is too busy interpreting Joe’s words, trying to make sense of them and all of this.
“I still— I don’t understand; why this mission then? Why would you risk everything to save her?” Cruz questions.
Another shrug, nonchalant as ever.
“I wouldn’t and I’m not,” Joe admits, completely earnest. “I honestly don’t give a fuck if you’re in love with her, in lust with her, whatever. I don't fucking care if you're star-crossed lovers of Shakespearian proportions; I really fucking don't. What I do care about is you not reading a headline tomorrow about a slain oil billionaire’s heiress daughter killed in a US led raid on a terrorist’s compound, blaming yourself over it and then eating a bullet. The best way to guarantee her safety is if she isn’t there at all.”
Cruz nods, understanding now — guilt and recompense, she gets.
“I do need you to understand how delicate this situation is though,” Joe reasons. “This is a stealth extraction only —a catch and snatch! We have to work parallel to Operation Firebird unbeknownst to all but one of the SEALS raiding the compound and for his plausible deniability, we need to jam their equipment signal for long enough for you and Bobby to get into the compound’s tunnels without the President of the United States and any of his Cabinet watching from the Situation Room realizing that we’re there. While you are in the tunnels, Operation Firebird will commence by cutting off the compound’s power; what little light you have down there will be gone and you’ll need to continue with flashlights only. Once in the compound, you’ll have to be quick and quiet and alert no one else of your presence. You’ll have no more than 10 minutes to complete the extraction and get back into the tunnels. You can extract exactly one person meaning that if you run into a six year old begging for help, you pick between the child and your girl and you hope the SEALS do right by whoever you left behind. We scramble the signal again as you exit the tunnels mid-operation which means you need to re-join us as quickly as possible without being seen. We fuck this up and best case scenario is federal jail time for all of us; worst case scenario, we initiate the start of World War III. Do you understand?”
Cruz can’t help but notice some glaring omissions from Joe’s well-crafted extraction plan, because, well, stealth? She’s trained for. Extractions? She can pull off in her sleep. Navigating tunnels blind? That was a light day in black operations training! But where can she pick up the manual on how to look into the eyes of a woman she’s destroyed without crumbling under the shame of her betrayal? Where can she take courses in mending gaping fissures already stuffed with the heft of lies? Who can teach her how to be both flame and extinguisher without annihilating herself in the process?
It’s too much.
She can’t do this.
She doesn’t know how to do this.
“Cruz!”
It’s the fingers snapping in her face that brings her out of her quiet contemplation, only to be met with the face of Joe’s simmering disappointment.
“Look, this mission is a no-go without you but if your head’s not in this, or if you’ve gone soft on me then it’s useless to try,” she challenges. “Because Tucker, Randy and Tex are meeting us at the FBO; from there, it’s a 12 hour flight to Amman during which you have to memorize the compound’s tunnels like a kindergartner memorizing their ABCs. The moment we land at the FBO in Jordan, the mission is a go; there is no rest, no turning back and no fucking this up! I need to know if there’s still a Marine in there somewhere, huh? Or if we should just end this before we start it? Your call.”
Her call.
Her decision.
She flips the page back to the photograph, already etched into her mind but still haunting.
Perhaps she can never repair the damage she caused, but what kind of coward would she be not to try?
“We’re doing it,” She decides.