Work Text:
New York City is easier to disappear in than London.
That’s the first thing Alex learned.
It wasn’t because it was quieter. It wasn’t. New York was never quiet, not even when the streets thinned out and the shops locked their doors for the night. There was always traffic somewhere, always voices carrying up from the pavement, always the distant scrape and thunder of trains below ground. But the noise helped. The size helped. The city had too many people moving in too many directions at once for one more face to matter much. In London, patterns formed whether you wanted them to or not. Here, everything overlapped. It was easier to get lost in it.
He’s been in the US for three years.
He’s been in Manhattan for three weeks.
Before that, it was Boston. Before that, Chicago. A stretch in DC he left quickly when he realized how many people there liked to ask questions, and how many of them had badges or offices or friends in places Alex preferred not to think about. He had learned to move before curiosity had time to become interest.
Before that, the Pleasures.
He doesn’t stay anywhere long anymore.
He doesn’t think about that much. It hadn’t lasted. It was never going to. Once SCORPIA knew where he was, it was only a matter of time. The attack had come fast and clean—too clean. It wasn’t a message or a warning. It was a removal.
After that, everything had moved quickly. The CIA stepped in. Quiet conversations. New identities arranged for people who hadn’t asked for any of it. There had been careful voices, professional sympathy, and the kind of calm that meant decisions were already being made before anyone had bothered to explain them. Alex had seen enough of that to know where it led.
Alex had left before they could decide where to put him.
He hasn’t stopped moving since.
Central Park is one of the few places in the city where he can see more than ten feet in any direction. That makes it useful. He can pick a bench, map the exits, and track movement without looking like he’s tracking anything. He can sit with his back near enough to a tree to feel covered, but not so close that he loses sight of the path behind him. It is open enough to breathe and crowded enough to disappear.
It’s also one of the few places where no one looks twice at someone sitting alone.
He’s been there about twenty minutes when he sees her.
Not because she stands out, but because something about her is familiar.
Alex doesn’t move at first. He watches. Habit.
Mid-twenties, maybe. Dark hair, pulled back loosely. Practical clothes, worn enough to suggest regular use but clean. There’s a bag beside her, open, and a blanket spread over the grass with the casual confidence of someone who knows the park well enough to have a favorite patch of it. There’s a child with her. Small. Two, maybe three. Dark hair, same as hers. Currently trying to take apart what looks like a sandwich with a level of concentration that suggests it’s important.
No immediate threats. No one paying them particular attention. A cyclist passes them on the path behind. Two joggers go by in expensive shoes. An elderly man sits on a bench with a newspaper folded in half and a paper cup balanced beside him. Nothing unusual. Nothing that should have caught Alex’s attention.
Alex looks away.
Then back again.
The familiarity sharpens.
It isn’t the hair or the clothes. It’s the face. Different, but close enough that his brain fills in the gaps before he can stop it. The angle of the cheek. The line of the mouth. The way she tilts her head when the child says something too quiet for Alex to hear.
He’s already on his feet before he makes a decision.
It’s automatic. Closing distance, adjusting angle, making sure he isn’t approaching from a blind side. He moves carefully enough not to startle her, but not so slowly that he looks like he’s hesitating. He stops a few steps away.
Up close, the differences are clearer. The shape of the face isn’t quite the same. The expression is more guarded, less open. There’s a tension there that Jack never quite lost, but learned to hide better. Jack had been warm even when she was annoyed. She had made rooms feel lived in and had filled the silence because she hated letting it settle for too long. This woman has the same bones in her face, maybe, but the softness has been pulled tighter, held under more careful control.
Still—
“Jack?” he says.
She looks up immediately. The reaction isn’t confusion so much as alertness. Her posture shifts, subtle but real. Readiness, more than fear.
Not Jack.
Of course not.
“I’m sorry?” she says.
Alex exhales once, steadying. “Sorry,” he says. “Thought you were someone else.”
She studies him. Not casually. Not politely. She’s looking at him the way people do when they’re trying to place something that doesn’t quite fit. Alex knows that look. He’s had it from border officials, teachers, policemen, and intelligence officers pretending to be none of those things.
Alex holds still and lets her.
After a second, she nods. “Happens,” she says.
The child has noticed him. The sandwich is abandoned without hesitation, and the child pushes himself upright before walking over with the kind of uncoordinated determination Alex associates with toddlers. He stops right in front of Alex and stares.
“Hi,” Alex says.
It seems like the correct response.
The kid grins. “Percy,” he says, pointing at himself.
“Percy,” Alex repeats.
“Sally,” the woman says, a beat later. “And you are…?”
There’s a pause. Alex considers giving a false name. He usually does. It would be easy. He has used enough of them by now that one more wouldn’t matter. But there’s nothing here that requires it. No file being opened. No handler listening. No man in a suit pretending not to watch.
“Alex,” he says.
Her expression shifts. It’s small. Most people wouldn’t catch it. Recognition, not complete, not certain, but enough to register.
“You’re British,” she says.
It’s not a question.
“Yeah.”
Another pause. She looks at him again, more carefully this time. Taking in details—posture, stance, the way he’s standing like he expects something to happen even though nothing is. Her gaze moves over him once and comes back sharper.
“You knew someone named Jack?” she asks.
There’s something careful in the way she says it, like she already has an answer in mind and is waiting to see if he matches it.
Alex nods once. “Yeah.”
She watches him for a moment longer, then says, “Jack Starbright.”
This isn’t a question either.
That’s the confirmation.
Alex doesn’t react immediately, but something in his posture shifts anyway. Small. Automatic. He hadn’t realized he’d been bracing for the possibility that this was a coincidence.
“It’s her,” he says.
Sally lets out a breath she hadn’t quite finished holding. Not relief, exactly, but something close enough to it.
“Sally Jackson,” she says, like she’s completing the exchange properly now. “She’s my cousin.”
Alex nods. That fits in a way that feels almost too neat. Jack had mentioned family sometimes, usually in passing, never in detail. Enough to know they existed, not enough to ever imagine running into them in a park in Manhattan.
“She used to talk about you,” Sally continues, quieter now. “Not often. Just—here and there. A teenager she was looking after. British. Trouble seemed to follow him around.”
Alex huffs out a short breath. “That sounds about right.”
Sally studies him again, but the edge in it has changed. It’s still there—she isn’t someone who drops her guard easily—but it’s no longer directed at him in quite the same way. She glances down at Percy, who has apparently decided Alex is less interesting than lunch and returned to the blanket, then back up again.
“She never said your name,” Sally says. “I didn’t think I’d ever…run into you.”
“Neither did I.”
For a second, neither of them says anything. Percy has gone back to dismantling the sandwich with complete focus, humming under his breath, absorbed in the task of taking it apart. Sally brushes a crumb off his sleeve without looking, the movement practiced and automatic, then focuses her attention on Alex.
“When did you last hear from her?” he asks.
It’s a simple question, but it lands heavier than it should.
She doesn’t answer right away.
“A few years ago,” she finally says. “Before Percy was born. She called from London. Same as always. Complained about that takeout place near the house. Asked how I was doing.” A faint, tired smile touches her mouth and fades. “She said she’d visit when she had the time.”
Alex listens.
That fits.
It lines up cleanly with what he already knows, which makes it easier. There’s no gap to explain, no contradiction to smooth over. Just a point in time, sitting exactly where it should.
Sally watches his expression shift, and whatever she sees there makes her go still.
“You haven’t said when you saw her last,” she says.
Alex exhales slowly.
Alex exhales slowly. He could give her something vague. He could shift the conversation to a safer topic. He’s done that before, more times than he can count. It’s safer to leave people with less. Safer for them, usually. Safer for him, always.
But this isn’t a stranger asking.
“I was with her,” he says. “When it happened.”
Sally stills. The reaction is quiet, but real. Her hand settles more firmly against Percy’s back, grounding without pulling him closer.
“What happened?” she asks.
Alex meets her gaze.
“She’s dead,” he says.
He doesn’t elaborate.
The words hang there, simple and final.
Sally doesn’t interrupt. She doesn’t press for details. She just looks at him, searching his face like she’s deciding whether to believe him or not—and then, just as quickly, deciding that she does. Percy makes a small, frustrated noise at the sandwich, oblivious.
Sally exhales slowly.
“When?” she asks.
“A few years ago.” Not precise, but enough to answer the question.
Sally nods once, absorbing it. Her expression shifts, not breaking, but tightening in a way that suggests she’s holding something in place. Alex recognizes that, too. People do it in hospitals, in police stations, in rooms where bad news has arrived but there are still things that need doing.
“I thought…” She stops, then tries again. “I thought something had happened. She wouldn’t have just disappeared.”
“No,” Alex says. “She wouldn’t.”
That’s the closest he gets to explaining.
Sally accepts it. Whatever questions she has, she doesn’t ask them. Instead, she looks down at Percy for a moment, smoothing a hand over his hair before she lifts her gaze again.
“She worried about you,” she says.
Alex almost looks away.
“Yeah.”
“She said you didn’t have anyone else,” Sally continues. “That you kept ending up in situations you shouldn’t have been in.” There’s no judgment in it, just repetition. “I didn’t know how much of that was her exaggerating.”
“It wasn’t,” Alex says.
Sally nods like she expected that answer.
“She kept you,” she says, more to herself than to him. “That sounds like her.”
Alex doesn’t correct the phrasing.
Percy shifts against her side, and this time she pulls him a little closer, steady and absentminded. After a moment, she looks back at Alex.
“You were with her a long time,” she says.
“Yes.”
Sally studies him for another second, then nods once, like she’s come to a conclusion.
“That means you don’t have anyone either,” she says.
It isn’t a question.
Alex doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t need to.
Sally lets the silence sit, then gestures toward the bag. “We’ve got extra food,” she says. “If you want to stay.”
Alex hesitates.
He could leave. That would be the smart option. No attachments. No unnecessary risks. He has lived by that for three years because it works, because people are safer when he doesn’t get close enough to matter, and because he is safer when there is nothing for anyone to use against him. But Jack had talked about him. Enough that Sally recognized the outline of him from a name and an accent. Enough that this doesn’t feel like starting from nothing.
He looks at Percy, still intent on dismantling the sandwich like it’s a long-term project. At Sally, watching him—not trusting, not entirely, but not turning him away either.
“…Okay,” Alex says.
He sits.
They talk, a little. Nothing important. Sally asks where he’s been, and he gives her a version of the truth that doesn’t include anything she doesn’t need to know. Different cities. No fixed place. She doesn’t push. He asks about Manhattan, and she tells him which streets to avoid after dark, which grocery stores are overpriced, and which subway lines are unreliable. She says it like practical information, not charity, which makes it easier to accept.
It’s normal.
Strangely normal.
Percy finishes destroying the sandwich, wanders a few feet, then comes back, then wanders off again, never far enough that Sally stops tracking him. Alex notices that. He notices a lot of things. The way Sally always positions herself with a clear view of Percy and the surrounding space. The way she reacts to sudden movement—not overreacting, but not ignoring it either.
She’s not trained, but she’s not careless.
After a while, Percy drifts toward the edge of the grass, where it slopes down toward the water. Sally watches him. Alex does too. The kid crouches near the edge, peering into the lake like it might have something to say.
“Don’t go too far,” Sally calls.
“Okay,” Percy says, which probably doesn’t mean much.
Alex shifts slightly, adjusting his position so he can see both Sally and the kid without turning his head. It’s automatic, and Sally notices. Her eyes flick to him, then back to Percy.
“You always sit like that?” she asks.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re waiting for something.”
Alex considers the question. “Sometimes,” he says.
She nods, like that confirms something. “Jack said that too,” she says. “About you.”
Alex doesn’t ask what, exactly, Jack said. He’s not sure he wants to know.
Percy laughs at something only he can see and splashes a hand into the water. Nothing happens. Just a kid playing at the edge of a lake.
Alex watches for another few seconds, then looks away.
When he looks back, Sally is already watching him. Not suspicious. Curious. And something else.
Careful hope.
“You can come by again,” she says, like it’s an afterthought. “If you want.”
It isn’t.
Alex hears what she’s not saying.
If you need somewhere to go.
He’s heard offers like that before. They’ve never meant anything good. This one feels different.
That might be the problem.
He stands after a minute, brushing grass from his hands.
“I’ll think about it,” he says.
Sally nods. “Okay.”
Percy runs back over, stopping just short of colliding with him.
“Bye, Alex,” he says, like they’ve known each other longer than an hour.
“Bye, Percy.”
Alex turns and walks away without looking back. He makes it to the path before he slows, stops, and looks over his shoulder. They’re still there. Sally on the blanket, Percy back at the sandwich, both exactly where he left them.
Normal.
Or close enough.
Alex exhales.
He’s been moving for three years. Three weeks in Manhattan. No reason to stop. No reason to stay.
He watches them for another second.
Then turns back toward the path.
He comes back the next day anyway.