It's no big surprise to me I have a problem exchanging softness with another person. I haven't had anyone treat me with anything other than cold indifference or violence most of my life. Even with Dan, our interactions were fuelled by a desperation to hold onto something that belonged to us and not them. Our touches weren't gentle; they were grasping and frantic and painful in their own way. There was never enough of it, in any case. Neither of us knew how to treat a person we cared about, especially with any semblance of kindness. Kindness was weakness, and weakness was one thing we could not afford to display too openly or too often.
I can't even say for sure if I loved my brother how you're supposed to love someone. I don't know if I'll ever understand how to love anyone else in a different way. It seems impossible to me that such a strong and wild emotion could be born from anything other than shared pain and horror for something like me.
Leo doesn't say anything although the question his eyes are asking is astonishingly clear:Are you alright?
It takes quite a lot of will on my part not to outright laugh in his face in response.
I don't answer out loud, giving a non-verbal one instead by flipping him off and then pointedly turning away to look through my nearest window, committed to appearing extremely interested in the whole lot of nothing speeding by outside.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the look of disappointment on Leo's face before he twists back around. A hot, sickly feeling twists in my stomach, my throat burning like I want to gag on words unspoken. It feels like another failure to add to the list, yet more proof I don't know how to treat a person who cares about me, a person whomatters. I should be used to disappointing people; I let my brother down enough times both before and after his death.
No one speaks for the entire rest of the journey to the safe house, a sombre air of tension filling the car.
North takes us to a modest-sized house that sits alone at the end of a long dirt path. It looks to be mostly constructed from thick shoots of bamboo. It stands on even thicker posts of timber. The building is as nondescript as every other FISA safe house I've stayed in over the last month.
North parks outside the house, and we all get out. Leo comes round to grab his bag from the back seat, and both of us follow North up to the front door, which he unlocks with a set of large brass keys.
Once we're inside, North tells us to go take showers and whatever else whilst he makes us something quick to eat in the safe house's small kitchen. When I ask North about the security and camera set-up, he admits begrudgingly this safe house was set upverylast minute and contains neither. Having left all our surveillance equipment in Ireland, there's nothing we can use to set anything up. We're quite out of the way here, but Leo and I will need to be hyper vigilant about any potential incoming threats.
The house has only one floor, with the bedrooms and bathroom set at the back of the building, an open-plan entryway, living room, and kitchen making up the front end.
Leo takes his bag along to one of the minimalistic bedrooms and drops it on the simple double bed. It’s nowhere near big enough for him. A man of Leo’s height and broadness needs a queen-sized bed, at least, to fit comfortably.
I go to the room opposite Leo’s and drop my bag off, contemplating the idea of taking a shower like North suggested.
Leo beats me to the shower by a handful of seconds, and I spend the time waiting for him to come out sorting through the weapons I brought with me. I gave my guns and knives a thorough cleaning yesterday, when I knew there was no chance of me falling asleep after what happened between me and Leo, so they should be ready to go. Still, it never hurts to check your weapons before a mission. I'm not quite as obsessed with them as my brother was, but a dirty weapon could get you killed, and I'm very much against that outcome, especially if it means leaving Leo behind to take on whatever Bullet is going to throw at us.
When we're both suitably showered, changed, and armoured up, Leo and I join North in the kitchen, where he sets down two bowls of steaming pasta in front of us. We eat at the kitchen island, North sitting across from us, typing away at his tiny black laptop.
There's a moderately sized metal suitcase, which likely contains Bullet's bribe, sitting in the far corner of the room. The bullshit one he'll pretend to accept until the last minute, when he'll suddenly need some other kind of “incentive” to give us the information we've already paid for. I almost hope he betrays us, just so I have an excuse to blow his head off or cut him up with glass if I'm really lucky, and torture gets put on the cards.
I don't think FISA allows torture. They're British and old school; they’ve got to pretend to have respect for the Geneva Convention and all that poser shit. Another complaint for the bi-annual performance review with my supervisor.
Leo and I both eat fast and eagerly although Leo stops halfway through to scrape the rest of his meal into my bowl. I'm too hungry to protest his unsubtle attempt to feed me. We had a flyby breakfast this morning, a thing we only did because Leo insisted I eat something before we leave. He's like a particularly persistent and food-focused nanny, making sure I eat as much as I can whenever possible.
I've told him a thousand times I don't need him to flap around about it. OI taught me how to deal with near starvation as part of my training. A few hunger pains won't kill me.
But Leo just gets more het up when I say that type of crap about my past, so I mostly let him get away with it now. Refusing his attempts to be my keeper isn't worth the sad doe eyes he gives me; conversely, itisworth the warmth-infused smile he has a habit of blindsiding me with whenever I do something like taking his food without complaint. As if I've done him some huge favour by eating half his meals.
I'm still very much of the opinion that Leo Snow is one of the strangest men alive, which is a hell of a thing for me to think considering the number of fucking-wackadoodle people I've met through working with OI.
Once we're done and the bowls have been deposited in the sink, we come back to the table to go through a hack-job briefing with North.
“What’s the plan for extraction?” I ask. Nothing much else matters with this mission. If we need a way out, which we are almost certainly going to, I need to know how much of that I’m going to have to depend on myself for.
“Right,” North says in response to our expectant stares across the kitchen island. “Bullet has insisted you and Agent Snow arrive alone, without backup.”
Everything, then. That certainly makes me harken back to all the missions with OI that I went on solo, without even my brother there to help stem the tide of bullets and general bullshittery that always goes on during a mission that’s this calibre of stupid and reckless.
North doesn't look happy about us going in without backup. After that last mission a month ago, when North sent Leo and me out to inspect the van we found Ryan dead in, I thought maybe North would be the type to throw agents out into the cold with no promise of aid or the necessary information.
However, since observing the way he behaves whilst leading a mission from behind the lines, I've learnt two things. First, he's more than happy to cross that line and throw himself into the fray if required when one of his agents is in danger. Two, for all his countenance is giving me nothing but bland determination, it's been made clear on numerous occasions how opposed North is to sending agents into lethal situations with no way of assisting them back out again.
He isn't one to put agents at risk lightly, which only makes his exemplary record of successful missions more impressive. Aaron North didn't need to kill his own people to rise to the top; the bloodshed was reserved exclusively for his agency's enemies, a feat no OI agent, or many of his fellow FISA agents, I'd wager, could claim as true.
Leo asks North for confirmation of exactly how fucked we are. "So we're on our own once we cross the border of his property?"
North gives a short nod, his displeasure easy to see in the slant of his brows and the clench of his jaw.
