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It is fairly obvious that the two of them being left alone has been specifically engineered rather than just fate’s design.
Edward Townsend can see why such an opportunity was taken. It would be downright impossible to get them in the same place otherwise, mostly down to his impossible schedule but also because of a large helping of reluctance on both of their parts. Yes, it’s true he could have squeezed some things and made some room, and in truth he did, but when said things were squeezed and some room was available, the offer was never taken up. So then he just filled up his space until it was full completely, until there was no time to even think of anything else. He’s not proud of it, but he’s already failed in the fathering department. In the grand scheme of things, what was one more thing to add to the list?
They did talk, he and Zach. Once. In the very early hours when the shock was still a comforting blanket, numbing everything to a point of insanity. There had been a lot of mumbling, a lot of scuffing of shoes, and in the end he had scrubbed his hand down his face and called it a day, deciding that they’d try again when the time was right. That was three months ago. Everyone else has clearly had enough, and has decided that time is now.
The large house rented for the wedding is empty and silent except for the sullen eighteen-year-old looking at him with wild, wounded eyes. They’ve all gone, and Townsend doesn’t know exactly where, couldn’t make it out in the flurry of goodbyes and see-you-laters and have-fun-you-twos. Even Joe Solomon is gone, clearly trusting him alone with the boy. Though it doesn’t matter if he does or not. Zach isn’t his son.
But by Christ he should be.
“That was a ploy,” Zach says, gesturing through the open patio doors into the empty space where just seconds ago it seemed the entire Gallagher Academy inhabited. “In case you missed it.”
“I’ve established that, yes,” Townsend sighs, feeling so much older than he is. “For all of their training, you’d have thought they would’ve been a bit more subtle.”
“They were up until a point. I mean I didn’t suspect a thing until just there. Did you?”
“No,” he admits. “I did not.”
Zach regards him warily. “Cause you wouldn’t have come if you had?”
He is tired of teenagers. He wants that on the record. He is so bloody tired of teenagers.
“No,” he says slowly, as if Zach is stupid, which is even more infuriating that he has to because he knows fine well that he is not. “I was always coming for the wedding.”
“But not for me?”
“I’ve tried.” Lately not as much, but in the beginning, he had, he really had. “You didn’t want to. I’m not going to mollycoddle you and try to force you into some false reconciliation. That does neither of us a favour.”
Zach laughs, but it’s an ugly, harsh sound that disconcertingly reminds Townsend of his mother. Catherine’s dead, but at this minute he would willingly rise her from the grave just to have the pleasure of putting his hands around her throat.
“Gee thanks. You tried for what, like five minutes? Glad to know that’s what I’m worth.”
“Drop the sulky teenage boy act, would you? We both know you’re better than that.”
“No,” Zach snaps. “Actually, you don’t.”
Now he really wants to strangle Catherine, but before that he wants to scream in her face, ask her why she did this to him, why she cursed him like this when all he ever did was…
And there he stops. That’s going back too far. It’ll kill him to even think it right now.
Townsend takes a deep breath, lowering the volume of his voice into something that could generously be described as calm.
“I sent you a message three ti-”
“Whoah, a full three? That must have been so hard for-”
“What do you want from me?!” Townsend roars from behind gritted teeth, his normal mask of composure slipping completely, trodden underfoot. Without it there is no Agent, only Edward, standing here in front of his son, completely vulnerable to everything thrown his way. “What do you want me to say or do? Because I am trying here, I am bloody trying but nothing is good enough for you. So, tell me what it is that you want!”
“I shouldn’t have to!” Zach yells back. “I shouldn’t have to tell you!”
“It wasn’t me that did this to you, you know. It isn’t my fault!”
“Yeah, well it’s not mine either!”
Their final words ring around the room, bouncing off the pale wood-panelled walls and landing on each other all over again. Their chests are heaving, faces red, and Townsend knows, just knows, that if anyone were to walk in on them now there would be no doubt as to what they are to one another.
“I know,” he says softly, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I know it’s not.”
There’s only one person to blame for this entire situation, and the realisation of it settles finally onto their shoulders. Zach, spent, sinks down onto one of the overstuffed sofas whilst Townsend remains standing, leaning heavily against the wall, watching him not like he would a fellow spy, but as he would a son.
For he’s never really looked at him before, except for that night when he had tried to look at him through a haze of pain and grief and an anger so volatile it had scared him. What he sees now is what is so different to the other times he has looked at him. Right now, he sees a scared little boy, betrayed by his mother, alone for most of his life, wondering if the man who should have been his father is going to do the same thing. He’s already armoured himself for it, and damn it if that doesn’t make Townsend feel like the worst man alive. He isn’t the type to cut and run, to try and avoid responsibility, but his son doesn’t know that. Why should he? Up until a dark Autumn night in Rome, with Cameron Morgan between them, he had never met him.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admits quietly.
Townsend can stare down terrorists, zip-line off buildings, and offer himself as a human shield without a second thought. He always has a plan, a method, a way to fix it even when the proverbial hits the fan. But now he’s lost, stuck in a forest with no map and no sense of which way to go only he’s not alone. There’s someone else depending on him to get it right. He just has no bloody idea which way to go about it, and God if that doesn’t cost something of himself to admit it.
Zach looks up at him, properly looks at him, seeing him perhaps for the first time also. “Yeah,” he says, his voice softer now, too. There’s a ghost of a smile that ignites a strange flame of hope in Townsend’s chest. “Me neither.”
“Well,” Townsend replies, “at least we’re in agreement.”
Zach nods once, head bobbing up and down. He drops his eyes away from Townsend and looks at the rag rug on the floor. “Sorry I ignored your messages.”
“That’s alright,” he says, because it is in this strange new phase of their relationship that they have entered into. The white flag is up and the weapons are on the floor.
Zach nods again, eyes never leaving the rug. This boy is a spy, product of two, but his tells are obvious. There’s something he wants to say. As much as Townsend wishes he would spit it out, instinct tells him it’s better to let Zach take the lead, and answer whatever comes his way.
See, he’s learning.
“Were you and her… like were you a thing?”
His eyebrows nearly hit his hairline and he swears it’s an accident. “A thing?”
Zach rolls his eyes. “You know, like an item?”
He feels so painfully British. And old. Bloody Americans and their bloody children. He misses home.
The question, however, brings back memories, not he’d rather forget, but that have proven impossible to do so. Were they ever an item? No, not really. He was a young MI6 officer and she was a young CIA agent and the former was significantly more naïve than the latter. She knew him so well, in some ways more than he even knew himself, and once he thought he knew her the same. It was never explicit, but he thought it never had to be. A part of him thought they could continue as they were until the end. He supposes in some way, they did.
“An undistinguished thing,” he settles on at last.
“Like you and Abby?”
“No.” He doesn’t mean for it to sound so harsh, but it’s out before he can take it back, and he doesn’t elaborate.
Zach just looks at him, accepting it for what it is. “So I wasn’t a drunken honeypot situation or anything…?”
“Not in the way you’re meaning, no.”
“I guess that’s something.” Then, with a faked nonchalance, “Did you -uh- love her?”
It’s a question nobody has dared ask and he’s never dared to answer, even to himself. If there was really any choice then he’d turn and walk away but Zach is bigger and more important than any discomfort he feels at probing his painful romantic past.
“Yes,” he just says simply, forcing the three letters past the lump in his throat. “I did.”
That’s all he’d done, love her so fiercely that sometimes his heart ached with it. He’d known they could never really have a normal life, not with what they both were, but it didn’t matter. He’d thought they’d have each other. Her betrayal had cut so deeply and time has passed and he knows that in some way it will never heal.
“At least there was some love,” Zach mutters, but more to the floor than to Townsend. “When did you…?”
“She left,” Townsend states with as little emotion as he can, trying not to think too hard about the day he was called into his superior’s office and shown a slideshow of everything he’d been too loved-up to see. He’d come back to his flat with her name on his lips, ready to demand answers and accept any explanation she was willing to give, only to find her and all of her things gone, as if she’d never been there at all.
He clears his throat. “She left and then I found out what she was. I had no idea she was pregnant.”
Afterwards, he might have hated her with a burning passion that made his jaw ache as he clenched it so hard every time she entered his thoughts, and who knows maybe she even felt the same, but looking back he’d still thought… well, he supposes he thought what they’d been had meant something, that a part of it, no matter how small, had been real.
This is what he finds he hates her for most of all. She took away his choice, she made a mess, and he’s left to pick up the pieces.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done had I known,” he finds himself saying, repeating the words he said to Abby on that night. Deliberately he doesn’t look at Zach, doesn’t look anywhere in particular. He feels so tired, so drained. This baring of souls is not his forte. He wants to go back to before. Or does he? “But I would’ve done something. I wouldn’t have left things to be as they are now, I promise you that.”
“Oddly enough I believe you,” Zach says, and Abby really was right (as much as it pains him to admit it). He’s a good kid. He’d make any father proud. “What did… did you ever want kids? Before?”
It’s the same question Abby asked him then, also, but he finds he wants to give Zach a different answer. Townsend has never been one for sparing feelings, anyone who has spent any time with him can attest to that, so this development is new and not altogether unwelcome.
“No,” he says, his heart strangely heavy. This word feels too familiar in his mouth and tastes like ash.
Zach’s head bobs, once. “I see.”
“I’m sorry, I thought you’d appreciate honesty.”
“No, I do.” A wry smile. “I really really do.”
It’s odd, how much Townsend feels the need to explain himself. “I only…This isn’t a life for a child. Children should be with people who love them, sleeping in their own beds every night. Not worrying about rogue nations declaring World War Three.”
It’s why the Gallagher Academy has never sat right with him. Not because they’re girls, far from it, but because they are children.
“I’m guessing that you didn’t have a childhood like that growing up?”
In lieu of actually having to say the word, he just shakes his head.
“Yeah, you and me neither.”
There are so many things Townsend wants to ask Zach about his childhood. Where was he, for a start, but also how was he? Did Catherine come to him when he cried? Did she ever leave him alone while she was out conducting her nefarious schemes? What did she tell him of his father; was there ever a false name to a false face, or was he forever a ghost, erased entirely from the picture?
These are not questions for now, however. These are questions for a later time, of which both are now certain there will be.
“I don’t hate you,” Zach says suddenly. “I don’t think I ever did. I don’t think I even dislike you all that much.”
Townsend, for his part, understands the uncertainty and says, completely genuinely, “Well that’s good to hear.”
“You’re a good spy, maybe even one of the best.” Townsend knows this to be a fact; he doesn’t require the compliment. He finds his chest growing warm all the same at the unexpected sincerity of it all the same. “And you actually care.”
There must be an indignant look on his face because Zach laughs and it is decidedly free and easy. It is easy to imagine he hasn’t sounded like that in a long time.
“You don’t have to admit it, but it doesn’t stop it being true. You care about all of us.” A dry smirk. “You care about Abby.”
He does care about Abby, rather more than that description allows, in fact. It’s been something he’s had to begrudgingly accept as part of his life now, however to have it stated so boldly by someone so young, someone who truly knows him so very little is terrifying in a very specific way.
Kids.
“Haven’t you learned yet that in our line of work you cannot always make such generalisations,” he says stiffly, talking about such emotion in the present tense having a paralysing effect.
Zach looks at him, and it might be premature for such feelings, but if Townsend had to pick a word to describe it, it would be no exaggeration to say it was fond.
“It’s something special,” he says, like he knows what he’s talking about. Then, quite without warning, his face becomes withdrawn. He looks like a little boy again. “You shouldn’t let her ruin it.”
There’s no doubt as to who he’s referring to, and Townsend will not insult him by acting as though he has no idea what he’s talking about. He simply stays silent, as is his speciality, hoping that is enough.
The next sentence is said smaller, more quietly. “And you shouldn’t let me ruin it, either.”
His answer is immediate, full of conviction. “You couldn’t.”
“Really?” A doubtful question from a little boy who has never had any place in life.
“Never.” A confident answer from an intelligent man prepared to give him one.
The look of joy spreads over his face too fast to be concealed; in this moment he’s still a little boy rather than an operative ready to go. Townsend wonders if, from now for the rest of his life, he’ll forever see Zach in two lights; the confident operative who knows he’s one of the best, and the bewildered child looking for somewhere to call home.
This is his son. He is a father. He’s had months to get used to the words and how they suddenly refer to himself and Zach, but it still doesn’t feel quite real. Privately, he doubts it ever will. They will never be what they could have been to each other but it’s not as though either of them have lived a particularly conventional life anyway. Perhaps it wouldn’t have worked out any better if it had been different; in truth they shall never know. What matters is that now they are both here, ready and willing to make a relationship of it.
“What are you going to do now that the Circle’s gone? Heard it was kind of your full-time op?”
Although it had been his life for over thirteen years, it feels like the end of the Circle had came almost overnight. Suddenly he’s gone from having a singular focus on a singular team to being cast adrift; the pictures are down and the whiteboards are wiped clean. They don’t need to be chased anymore.
Luckily there are still plenty more less-than-upstanding individuals out there who need caught. And other operatives who need the training to do so.
Townsend smiles as much as his personality allows him to. “Oh, I’m afraid that’s classified.” Off Zach’s eyeroll, he says, “However, one of them is a liaison opportunity with the CIA. Junior operative development. If that is something that would interest you?”
His son considers it for exactly three seconds, confirming a career choice that he had already made without knowing. “Yeah it would. Very much.”
It is a handshake, a clap on the back, a drawing of a line in the sand of the past. They regard each other across the battlefield, both finally at piece.
Whether it be impeccable timing or the fact they have the place bugged (Townsend personally suspects both), there are suddenly doors being thrown open and the loud, excited voices of the entourage that left them sot-so-long ago.
Zach eagerly seeks out Cammie, though he doesn’t fly from his seat as much as he might have done before. Townsend watches as Cammie hugs him, before not-so-subtly jerking her head in Townsend’s direction. Zach nods, and smiles, and though his father can’t make out the words he either says or doesn’t say, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever just transpired was enough.
Rachel comes in with Joe on her heels. To an untrained operative the man’s face wouldn’t give anything away, but absolutely nobody in this house is that. His cheeks are flushed and there’s the remnant of a dimple in his cheek, almost as though he were… smiling, only moments before. Townsend watches as he checks for Cammie, then checks for Zach, and then looks over in his direction. Townsend nods, once, and Joe responds the same. A clap on the back, of a kind.
He's distracted by this, far more distracted than a top-of-the-game operative like himself ever should be, so he doesn’t notice the bane of his affections sidling up to him, announcing her presence with a whisper on his neck. “So, how did it go?”
He turns to her, looking down to find her looking up with that knowing, smug look on her face. “You’re a menace.”
She shrugs. “You never would’ve listened to me. This was the only way.”
He raises an eyebrow. “The only way?”
“For you two? Yeah, absolutely. You’re too alike for your own good. Honestly, it’s maddening.”
The eyebrow goes even higher, accompanied by a scoff of utter disbelief. “I’m the maddening one, Abigail? I prefer the term sane.”
“I’m not gonna be petty and bring up who exactly is the mother of your son, but…” Then she ekes out. “Too soon?”
He finds himself laughing anyway. “Perhaps.”
“So?” She pokes him. “How did it go?”
“It was fine.”
“Fine?” Abby’s nose crinkles in displeasure. “That’s really all you’re going to give me? Fine?”
“Yes.” He points to himself. “Spy.” And then, lowering his mouth so his lips ever so gently brush the outer shell of her ear, he whispers, “If you want to know more you should ask the bugs.”
She turns, batting her eyelashes with picture-perfect innocence. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
He meant it when he told Zach that Abby was different. He’s never felt this before. But he’s who he is, and so is she, and so instead of telling her what she has no desire to hear, he simply says, “Hm.”
“Seriously though.” She presses a hand against his chest and nods her head in the direction of Zach. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” He lays his hand over her own. Once he thought he would live his entire life alone and was content with it but now… now everything has changed. He’ll never admit it, but he likes it. “I believe, Abigail, that everything will be alright.”