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The voyage is short. It takes ten minutes, tops, to travel from Alcatraz to the air base. In his profound exhaustion, Leon manages to fall asleep thirty seconds after departure; it takes a painful flick to the forehead from Claire to wake him up.
“You snore,” she says mockingly.
Jill walks past them to jump off the chopper. “Loudly,” she too says, sticking the landing perfectly.
Leon brushes the spit away from his mouth. The brow he arches Claire’s way is teasing. “You’re just jealous I got some beauty sleep and you didn’t.”
She rolls her eyes. “C’mon. Get your old man ass up.”
He’s getting old, it’s true. Still fighting bioterrorism at forty one will age a body faster than any other menial job, and the mental load of it has certainly added a few more wrinkles to the corner of his eyes than needed. But that’s okay. Leon doesn’t mind having crow’s feet. On the contrary, he’s been told he ages gracefully.
Procedure wraps the team up in a whirlwind. Leon follow its flow with the kind of passivity only experience can bring. He’s caught in a row of tests, physical and psychological, before his wounds can be treated. Most medics would agree on the impossibility of a man his age having no more than scratches, bruises and strains after a mission this dangerous, but they’d have to conclude once again that Leon is not any normal man, or any normal agent for that matter. He's fueled by the irresistible call to home.
The test results arrive in the afternoon, after his second nap of the day. He is given his old clothes, his suitcase and his cellphone back. When he turns it on, the background picture he’s chosen a few years ago lights up his face, and he smiles down to it. He is free to go.
He sleeps all the way through the five hours long flight that connects him to Washington DC.
“I was waiting for the right time to join you,” Hunnigan tells him in his bluetooth earpiece as he disembarks the plane, “but it seems like there’s never a right time.”
He stops yawning for five seconds and glares down his watch where her face looks up at him. “I’m literally off duty.”
She sounds irritated. “Don’t give me that tone, Leon, I came to check in on you.”
Time has made it so they can never truly be pissed off with each other. Any semblance of vitriol in their tone is always forgiven.
“You should be off duty too,” Leon argues. “Have you ever thought of vacation? Sick days? A parental leave?”
“No, agent Kennedy,” she says sternly, and the legal name drop makes Leon wearily sigh, “I have clearly never heard of those expressions before. You should be worried about your own parental leave. I can’t keep hiding your little family from your superiors forever, you know.”
“Says the woman who faked my death and got off scot-free,” he says jovially. “You’re the best in the biz, Hunnigan. We’re in good hands.”
“I am excellent, yes. But that’s not the point.”
“Wanna have dinner with us this weekend?”
“It would be unprofessional. But make it fast.”
“Deal. I’ll tell Helena to drop by, I believe you guys have some catching up to do.”
“Leー!”
Like middle age, happiness suits him handsomely. At nights when the moon shines to his wide open eyes, he recalls a time where he was young and sad. Life had beaten him down early on, in both work and love. In order to get up in the morning, he had to get rid of one. Love was mostly the one being left stranded; because at least work was saving lives when love only gave way to loss.
But then he’d met her, and he thought: why not?
And he’d met her again, and he thought: never again.
And then he’d met her, over and over. He met her in warzones, protecting her through desolation and destruction, being protected by her faith in him and her adoration. He met her on picnics, on a layer of cloth so thin that they could feel the grass under their thighs, and they shared a bottle of wine ‘til sunrise. He met her in hotels, away from their boss’ watchful gaze, he met her between her legs, where time ran still. She was work, and she was not shying away from it. “It’ll take time”, she’d said, “for us to ever have the chance to be something. There’s still a chance it might never happen.”
Leon took the time, and more.
And he stopped feeling sad.
He’s wide awake when his driver drops him off at the bottom of his apartment block. A full day of on-and-off naps have given his brain and his brawn enough energy to prepare him for what would happen next. He is ready.
Leon opens the front door of his home, kneels down, and catches in his arms the neck-breaking body slam that’s his daughter.
Coiling her plump little arms around his neck, she squeals out his name. He sobs out his love for her into her hair. She’s got it freed tonight instead of the improbable braids and ponytails she’s usually gotー probably because it’s past her bedtime. For a minute, Leon stays like this, breathing into her knots color ink and smelling her flower shampoo, the same as her mother’s, but younger, fresher, lighter; then he pushes her little face away to brush his fingers on her pink cheeks. She’s wet-eyed. Tears like pearls threaten to drop with the softness of a wish. When he kisses her eyelids, drinking in her euphoria, she giggles gleefully.
Then her face mutates into this characteristic severity that she’s inherited from her parents.
“‘Na said you come for dinner!” she argues, her round face red with newfound anger. “You wasn’t there for dinner!”
“I’m sorry, kid,” he says honestly. “You know what work is like.”
Her eyes darken. “Work sucks.”
“Yes it does. Oh, hi, Juliana. Thank you again.”
Juliana has appeared in the doorway, her eyes dull with fatigue but her welcome smile bright. She is his daughter’s nanny, and has been since his daughter was one. Leon believes she’s rescued him as much if not more than his fellow agents.
“It’s no problem, really,” Juliana replies. She brushes the kid’s hair with affection. “I’m sorry kiddo, I really thought your dad would be there for 7.”
His daughter looks up at Juliana with the superior air of a rule-maker. “You lie,” she says simply, before toddling off inside.
Leon whistles. “Oh, she’s big-mad.”
Juliana cringes. However, affection still transpires on her face. “She’s got an attitude sometimes, but she also quickly gets over it when she realizes that it doesn’t get her anywhere. She kept asking for you the last two days,” she says, glancing up at Leon, “but also for her mom.”
“Ah.”
He closes the apartment door and leaves his coat on the hanger before making a bee-line for the kitchen. His daughter’s gone into her room to sulk for a few minutes. He lets her be. If there’s one thing he’s learned from women over the past decades, it’s that patience is a virtue.
He pours himself a glass of water and turns to Juliana who, sat by the counter, is slowly starting to pack her bag.
“Hope you didn’t miss too many classes,” he tells her for conversation.
“Sir,” she says with surprising kindness given how she’s tired of repeating the same things over and over, “I have remote classes. I promise, she isn’t making me skip anything.”
“I expect nothing less than straight A’s, then, or else I’ll definitely fire you.”
“Sir…”
“The best nanny for the best kid, that’s how it goes.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Leon thinks himself hilarious, but Juliana has seemingly had a harder time agreeing. Oh well. At least he makes his wife and kid laugh. That’s enough for him.
Juliana slides her bag over her shoulder and sends a polite smile his way. “I guess I’ll be going then. I hope your wife is okay. You can tell her I said hi? And that I’m still cool with sending her the first draft of my thesis if she wants!”
He nods. He knows she is. “Sure will. Hey, wait a second.” He pulls out a few crumpled bills from his jeans’ pocket and hands it to the young woman. “For your troubles. Just… treat yourself with anything.”
Juliana raises a surprised brow at the bundle in her possession. Then she studies his face thoughtfully. “You’re a nice guy, Mr. Kennedy.” She pockets the bills and reaffirms her grip on the strap around her shoulder, smiling amusedly now. “I know a bribe when I see one, though. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my mouth shut!”
“Alright, pal, I’m sure you got a man at home you can make fun of,” Leon chuckles alongside her. “Scram. I’ll text you the next time I’ll need you.”
Juliana is still chuckling as she heads out. Leon too smiles into his glass of water.
He relishes in the comfort of his home. The quiet, harmonized with the hum of the fridge, the ‘clink’ of the thermostat as the floor heating turns itself on. In the parental bedroom, the TV is playing, and the distant sound of cartoons fills the air. His daughter must be watching a rerun. She is probably sitting criss-crossed on his too large a bed, looking up to the colorful screen with the widest eyes imaginable. She shouldn’t be watching TV at that time, but she’s earned some slack. Tomorrow is Saturday. Tomorrow, they sleep in.
He leaves the glass in the sink and goes to undress. The shower is warm. The soft water slips on his skin like freshly-changed sheets. He comes out of the steam all floppy and pruned-up, and changes into his pajamas. The kid is still watching her cartoonー he tells her that it’s getting late now, that she should be heading to bed like daddy is.
“No bed,” she argues. “I want mama.”
“I want mama too,” he sighs, and he takes her in his arms and tucks her into her bed.
“No! I want mama! I want mama I want bàba!”
“I’m here, honey. What’d you want?”
“I want bàba!”
“You want to sleep with me? In the big bed?”
“Yes!”
“Alright. C’me here.”
His right knee pops painfully when he bends back down to pick her up again. She giggles at that.
“Bàba, you old.”
“Geez, called out by my own offspring,” he grunts, securing her weight with a hand under her butt. “I wonder what you’ll be like when puberty hits.”
“Pooberry,” she says pensively.
“Yeah. Pooberry. Bet you’ll be a real ass-kicker.” He takes in a breath as he gently lays her down on the sheets. “Bet you’ll be a lot like your mom.”
“I want mama,” she says, but the tone is more sleep than anger now, and she snuggles up under the sheets and looks up to him impatiently. “Come.”
“Yeah, yeah,” complains Leon, wondering how in the hell he always gets stuck with the bossy ones.
In the middle of the night, the door of the apartment opens and closes once more. Both of them have been knocked out for hours by then, snoring merrily beside each other. They don’t hear the clacking of heels against the flooring, nor do they hear its sudden disappearance when the heels are removed to be neatly deposited in the rack by the entry. The long black trenchcoat finds Leon’s jacket on the hanger. In the bedroom, there’s the muffle of a quick shower, then the waste bin receives cotton wipes stained with red and black. Next is the shuffle of naked feet in the hallway, down and down to where the two sleepers lay.
Ada kisses her daughter’s forehead. Then she kisses Leon’s.
He opens a low-lidded eye. “Took you long enough,” he mumbles.
Her smile radiates with love. “I think this is a perfect time.”
She draws a hand to her daughter's head with the intention to brush away a strand of hair. Leon carefully stops her.
"Shhh," he says. "Don't wake her. You'll surprise her in the mornin'."
"She is going to be insufferable."
Leon smiles at that, because it's true. They both are never going to hear the end of it.
Ada joins her little family. Tucks her cold feet into Leon’s calf, brushes her nose against his cheek to say sorry when he groans out his complaint. He uses his free hand to bring her closer to him; the other one has been at work holding their daughter close to him. Ada lays her hand on his chest. This way, he’s defeated, surrounded by the ones who save him.
“My girls,” he says just before falling asleep.