Archive of Our Own ^beta

Do we get a happy ending?

No.

She hangs up the phone, more tired than she's ever been, and cries thinking of what could have, should have, could never be.

—

It's Sydney who knows she wants to leave even before she does. "It's time," he says to her in passing, one day when dead ends felt less frustrating and more like home - his face impassive, and she wonders when he got so old.

When she got so old, wrinkles not solved by Botox around her eyes and her soul weary. She doesn't answer him, just nods, because she's so exhausted that she cannot even pretend to pretend anymore.

Broots looks confused, then cottons on; within a week he has a passport for Emma Tovey of Salt Lake City, Utah, and a ticket to Helsinki passed to her in a pile of folders.

"I'll miss you," he mutters, awkwardly, and she wishes she could tell him how impossibly important he was to her. Sydney, too, but sentimentality never did her well, so she leaves it and walks away from him before she breaks.

It's a red eye flight, and she leaves without saying goodbye, watching Delaware pass by in the back of the cab to the airport, her doubts packed in a small suitcase safely ensconced in the trunk.

—

She spends weeks looking over her shoulder - she settles in Espoo because it's close to Helsinki but far enough in the suburbs that she feels comfortable. Her apartment is small, her new Emma Tovey bank account comfortable, and she begins Finnish lessons at the local community centre.

The Centre, but she never sees a Sweeper, a sign of her being discovered. She speaks a tiny prayer for the e-cleanliness of Broots and Sydney, shocked at the trust she'd built with them over the years and missing them in one fell swoop as she struggled with Missä? Mistä? Mihin? as much as answering them truthfully.

"Truthfully", because Emma was a construct - an early retired architect on contract to a Finnish company was the cover extrapolated by Broots - and for a moment she feels she may understand Jarod a little bit better.

And of course, he finds her, sitting in her apartment after her lesson like it was the most natural thing in the world - so she falls into his arms for a brief moment before shakily wandering to her bedroom without a word.

—

She doesn't ask him to leave, and he doesn't. He becomes a part of the sparse furniture, sleeping on the couch and watching her like a hawk as she attempts to go about her day. Leave the house, shopping, language lessons - he's there, speaking fluently of course, laughing with the locals and occasionally touching the small of her back in such a natural way it scares her to death.

She never flinches though, never says a word; she cooks him dinner and passes it to him silently before turning on the TV to find something in English with a whisky.

He never speaks, because she knows he knows the rules even if she doesn't. He never speaks, but he never stops looking at her like she's the last thing left - and she knows with terrfying certainty that for each other, they were.

—

Two weeks of silence, and of course it's her that cracks. "Why are you here."

He stretches his arms above his head and rises up from his sleeping position on the couch - rested, unbothered but she can still see where age was creeping up on him too. She shoves a cup of coffee at him and sits across from him with her own, a patented scowl across her face because she certainly wasn't rested and unbothered, and it pissed her off he was.

"Why are you here?" and she could have bet money he would have replied with that, so she groans.

"Fuck off, Jarod. You're a dangerous commodity I do not need right now."

He smiles, sipping his coffee and she wants to scream. "They don't know where you are."

"Sydney?"

"No. It's been over twenty years, Miss Parker, you don't think I've my own ways to avoid The Centre that aren't exclusively Sydney or Broots related?"

She closes her eyes and leans back in the armchair, a headache threatening her temples. "I'm - Emma. It's Emma."

Jarod shrugs, moving slightly to sit up more. "It suits you," and they fall back into silence again.

—

They move into a weird domesticity. Weeks turn to months, snow piling up out side, and suddenly it's a whole year since Emma Tovey came into existence.

A Western Union email lands in her account with a notice there's a deposit waiting for her, so she cabs to the building and is given a form with a strange amount that's dolled out to her in numbers she's getting better at understanding, with a strange note she notices as she signs the name she's gotten used to with flourish.

They couldn't have found her, clutches at her heart, and she swallows heavily as she thanks the staff member and moves to where Jarod is standing, the sender-less form held out in front of her.

"I...I have no idea," she says, handing it to him in a bout of desperation; it takes Jarod seconds to work out it's a number cypher he'd worked on with Sydney as a child.

"'It's over...you're free...be well'," he mutters, passing her the sheet in the middle of the Western Union, the staff watching them with interest.

It's over, because Sydney would have finally told The Centre it was over after Jarod's trail went colder than her own, and she thanks the heavens or whoever for that infuriating old man that she knew in her heart of hearts meant more to her than her own damn father in the end.

She collapses into Jarod's arms, Euros in hand, the relief and the sentient feeling of being trapped almost melting away - and lets herself be held by him, properly, for the first time.

—

It's impossible to stop looking over her shoulder, but she finds herself doing it less and less. She doesn't blink when Jarod introduces himself to people as 'Jarod Tovey' - it was all just a game for him anyway, and she finds herself leaning into him and smiling at people calling them a "beautiful couple".

"Those women. I surprised they didn't say, 'what a shame we never had children'," he says in a joking tone as he carries the groceries into the apartment - and she stops, freezes, then lets it hold, because what they were doing was nothing but a lie in the end.

But. Was it? and she keeps her back from him as two tears fall down her cheeks.

—

"Parker. Parker, wake up."

She starts from her dream - something about her father, about weaponry and impossible chases, and she instinctly reaches for the gun she used to keep on her bedside table in a different world, a different life.

Nothing's there, nothing but Jarod; she grabs him like a lifeline and cries into his shoulder as he rocks her back and forth.

"I don't know who I am anymore," is all she can manage, and he strokes her hair and hums a little.

"You're free," and she cries even harder, feeling his lips in her hair and something like home swelling in her chest. The lie comes true, and she clutches at his sweater as the snow falls down outside, pulling him down into the bed like an anchor.

—

He begins sleeping in the bed, and she begins sleeping better. Her nightmares lessen, her instincts dull into a soft lull of vivid dreams of laughter, bald heads and grey hair framing the face of a man who knew her better than she knew herself.

The first week, she stays squarely on the edge of "her" side of the bed - his body takes up a good amount of space, his warmth palpable and honest. The second week, she holds his hand as he reads by night light - something medical, and there's no surprise when he begins working as an oncologist at a hospital in Helsinki.

When did I get so weak? and it's a jarring, bright-white realisation that maybe, honestly, she was starting to become exactly who her mother wanted her to be.

She's half-asleep when she feels his lips on her forehead, and she dreams of snowfields and deer, running but not being chased.

—

At her core, she's changing but not changed, so a week into March she slams her hand on the counter and demands to know why he was still there.

"I have a job," and he returns to his cereal in the infuriatingly nonchalant way he knows gets to her.

There's a million ways she could respond - a million things she could say, do, ways she could react - but instead, she walks behind the counter with as much moxie as she can muster and grabs him, by the collar, roughly and pulls him to her closely.

"Fuck you," and she kisses him, the way she's wanted to since she was probably a horny teenager, with promise and anger and surprise from him and herself. He responds immediately, his stubble brushing her cheek as he pivots slightly to wrap his arms around her to deepen the kiss.

Hours, years could have passed; they stay that way, anonymously kissing in a kitchen in Espoo, the gravitational pull that was their dual existence leading to this moment. A kiss followed by another, a nip, an oath being made - until she breaks them apart, gasping, and smiles.

He smiles back, before pulling her to him again.

—

Third week, and they're naked in the bed, curled together as the central heating keeps their bodies warm.

"Now do we get a happy ending?" he mutters into her hair, his thumb tracing lazy circles on her hip.

Helsinki seems far, as far as The Centre, Broots, Sydney, the chase - the chase that ended as it was supposed to, she knows this, with each other captured by the other because they were as inevitable as time.

"We would have had beautiful children," and she feels slightly anxious, embarrassed to a fault after it slips out, hiding her head slightly as she feels him chuckle against her neck as he moves his lips down to her clavicles in a frighteningly arousing way.

"I like what we have," and something like a happy ending seems to roll over them as he pulls her to him again, effortlessly, finitely.