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“You knew, didn’t you?”
Rachel looks up from the temporary desk that forms part of her temporary office, and for a moment Abby is jarred by the look on her face that is just so familiar in such an unfamiliar setting. Her big sister is busy trying to put her school, their home, back together, but Abby’s never been too good at picking her moments, and this one has been weeks in coming. She’s let everything go by, she’s allowed for the aftermath of the explosion and the seniors’ graduation, but she’s done now. She needs to know.
“Abby,” her sister warns.
“You knew,” she repeats, harder, indignance making her brave. “Didn’t you?”
Because it’s been playing on repeat in her mind, the way Rachel’s eyes hadn’t widened and her voice hadn’t risen an octave when Abby had told her there was a prisoner deposited in the bowels of the building, and had then told her that Zach was also Townsend’s son.
“No,” Rachel sighs, putting down her pen. “I didn’t know. Come on in, Abs, and sit down.”
She comes properly into the transient room, but she doesn’t sit down. She’s way too fired up to sit down. “You knew something, Rach. I know you did. Don’t lie to me.”
Something in Rachel changes at that. There’s a flame in her eyes and steel in her voice when she says, “I have never lied to you. There may be times I don’t tell you things, but I have never lied to you.”
Although she’s supposed to be the angry one, the indignant one, Abby feels suddenly cowed. In a quieter, though only slightly calmer, voice, she asks, “Was this one of those times? Did you know something and didn’t think to tell me? At the very least tell him?”
Rachel holds her eyes for an impossibly long moment. “No,” she says evenly, calmly. “I didn’t know anything.”
Abby waits, holding her intense gaze with one that she hopes is equal. It’s not that she expects her big sister to crack, to spill open as easy as a too-ripe fruit as someone lesser might. Rachel is one of the best spies she knows, maybe the best spy she has ever known, but as a fellow agent, as her little sister, she knows that asking relentless questions won’t get her the answer she wants. It’ll be the silence.
Rachel sighs and Abby knows she wants her desperately to sit down. It’s unfortunate that she’s never been the best at following orders, even silent, telepathic ones.
“It was a suspicion, Abs,” she says, trying and failing to keep the sigh out of her voice. “That’s all it was. A suspicion.”
“But you weren’t surprised! Not even a bit. Even if it was just a ‘suspicion’ like you say, I thought you’d be a little more shocked.”
“You know, with all the crap that’s shocked me in the past two years, I can’t say that finding out that Zach’s father is the man that his mother had been sleeping with for years ranks high on the list,” Rachel snaps, nostrils flaring. Then she presses her fingertips to her head for a few seconds. “I’m sorry,” she says after a moment. “That was uncalled for.”
There have been so many times over the years where Rachel could’ve, and maybe should’ve, lost her composure and she so rarely has. With the ruins of the school around her, Abby thinks that this one can slide. Suddenly feeling more amenable with the reminder of all they’ve gone through, she grabs a fold-out chair and sits in front of the desk, feeling like she’s fifteen again and in front of the headmistress for conducting unauthorised crossbow practice on top of the barn and accidentally grazing the top of her P&E teacher’s head.
“It’s fine,” she says, because it really is. “I just… I just don’t get it.”
The corner of Rachel’s mouth ticks upwards. “Don’t get what? That I could see something you couldn’t?”
Abby laughs without meaning to. “Well yeah, but that’s not what I meant. I mean… God, Rach, I don’t even know what I mean. To borrow a phrase from the man himself, it’s such a bloody mess.”
Rachael laughs, the smile actually reaching her eyes. “You’ve been spending far too much time with him.”
“Maybe,” Abby concedes. As much as there’s been more, it still doesn’t feel like enough. Then again, if there were more then they’d probably kill each other. She’s actually surprised they haven’t, and she goes to smile, but then the memory of his face in the moonlight as he promised her he had no idea leads her bottom lip to wobble and she says, more shakily than she would like, “Oh Rachel, why didn’t you say?”
Her sister’s head tilts sympathetically but she doesn’t rise to it. “Abs, there was nothing for me to say. Townsend’s been hunting the circle for most of his career but I haven’t. I knew things, sure, I heard things through the grapevine but I wasn’t actively involved until Boston.”
“You knew about Catherine,” Abby challenges. “We all did.”
It was like a punch in the gut when she found out. Abby was young, just freshly graduated from the school, but she’d been involved in her big sister’s world for a while. She knew all about double agents, but the thought of someone who was her sister being involved in something so evil was hard to take. Then when she heard the chatter and saw that women with Cammie and Macey on the rooftop it had sent her into a blind rage. The audacity of it was sickening. It was the rage that sustained her, right until the end.
“Yes I did,” Rachel allows, “and I knew who she was to Townsend, and what she’d done to him. But I didn’t know she had a son.”
“He did,” Abby says quietly. “When he went back after Buenos Aries. Intelligence reported back she had a son.”
“And his age was put at around fifteen, two years older than he actually was,” her sister finishes, because of course she already knows, because of course she would’ve went back over everything to try and find out what she had missed. “He had no reason to suspect, and if he didn’t then why would anyone else? Nobody had ever met Zach, and as sad as it is to say, nobody cared about him. It was Catherine everybody wanted.”
It’s almost a contradiction with how innate covert operations is to Rachel, but truly she is a mother to her core. Abby almost knows for a fact what Rachel would have felt seeing Zach, left in a school such as that with nobody looking out for him except Joe.
“But he came to the school. You let him in!”
“I didn’t know! I didn’t know they were related, that he was already known to the MI6 taskforce. I didn’t know his true age was such a factor in it, and once I did, once everyone did, there was already so much going on that I didn’t really think about it.”
“But you did at some point,” Abby challenges, the younger sister within her resisting ever fully just letting go. “You had a ‘suspicion’.”
If looks could kill (and one say she’s sure that Dr Fibs will make it so) then her use of air quotes would have Rachel dragging out her lifeless body. “Yes,” she says coldly. “I did.”
“And you never thought to share it? You never thought to go ‘hey, maybe someone wants to have that looked at so nobody finds out from a raging psychopath under the influence’?”
“Abby, will you listen to yourself? Will you really listen? I had nothing, no proof, no tangible theory, just this feeling in my stomach that didn’t quite sit right-”
“We’re spies, Rachel. That feeling is worth a lot.”
“Think about what you’re saying. Think about what it is you think I should’ve done. Zach is Townsend’s son. His child. And you wanted me to casually bring that up, in the middle of a terrorist manhunt, with nothing backing me up except a feeling?” Rachel scoffs, patience waning thin. “I know what you’re like, Abs, but even you have to admit that it would have been wrong.”
Abby feels that rock in her stomach again, the one that shifts uncomfortably whenever she moves and reminds her that, no, she isn’t always right, and that there are always things that her sister will be forever better at. Human nature top of the list. She feels ten years old again, in the hospital with a broken arm, twenty-year old, CIA agent Rachel at the bottom of her bed lecturing her about how she can’t simply attempt to rappel of the side of the house without adequate training. Patience, Abby. It’ll save you a lot of broken bones and heartache when things don’t go your way.
She won’t admit it, not then and not now, but Rachel has a point.
She usually does.
Long seconds tick by without Abby saying anything (a first from Agent Cameron, it has to be said). She sits stewing on what her sister has said, the righteous indignation draining away from her until she feels like the worst partner, worst sister, worst spy and just general worst everything in the world.
“Look,” Rachel sighs, leaning forward, taking pity on her baby sister. “I get it. It’s easy now to think how on how the hell we could’ve missed it. We think it’s obvious, and maybe it always was. But the truth is that the only person who knew for sure was Catherine, and the responsibility for telling Townsend lay with her, too.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. It just feels too convenient to keep blaming her for everything.”
“Not words I ever thought I’d hear you say. Last I heard you were trying to communicate with her via psychic so you could ‘make sure she was burning in hell’?”
Rachel’s raised eyebrow and knowing look make Abby drop her gaze to the floor. She scuffs her shoe a little on the temporary plastic surface. “I can’t believe the squirt is a snitch. And a bad one at that.”
Rachel’s eyebrow goes even higher. “So it’s not true?”
“Not entirely. Psychics haven’t been able to find her yet.”
“Abs,” she sighs with a shake of the head, but it’s soft and friendly and feels like coming home.
“Yeah yeah. Point is, I don’t want to be messing things up by just blaming it all on her, even is she is to blame for most of it.” Rachel has a funny look on her face and Abby rolls her eyes. “What?”
“Look at you.” And Abby will swear on Matthew Morgan’s grave that there’s tear in her sister’s eye. “You’re all grown up.”
Abby scoffs. “Rach. Please.”
“No, seriously. I’m proud of you. It’s a testament to how much you care about him, to make everything right.”
“Don’t let anyone hear you say that. People might think I like the guy.”
“I’ll take it to my grave,” Rachel promises, and Abby knows that she will.
There’s nothing else she needs to add, but Abby’s always had one of those mouths that’s never quite known when to just shut up, and so she continues with a statement of total truth and vulnerability. “I just… I really want this one to work out, you know? We’re doing it so right this time and it’s so different but so good and I… I want him to be okay.”
Rachel looks so ridiculously proud that she’s more like a mom than a big sister in this moment. “It’s like that with people you love, Abs. You’ve always known it.” She leans forward. “But this isn’t on you or I to fix. It was on Catherine, and just like now it’s up to Zach and Townsend to figure out where they go from here. We can help if they ask for it, we can guide them, but we can’t force them into anything that neither of them might never be ready for.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” And Rachel doesn’t even wear her I told you so face that is more familiar to Abby than her own. “I still can’t believe it.”
“What?”
“That Townsend has a kid. And a good kid at that.”
Rachel nods her affirmation. “It is scary how alike they are considering they didn’t even know each other until last year.”
“Right!” Abby leans back in her chair. “Of course he would have some freakily strong genetics that even his love child would grow up to become his mini-me.”
“Don’t let Liz hear you say that. She’s been trying to test them both all summer.”
“For what?”
Rachel waves her hand in a practiced manner that suggests she’s been dealing with this far longer than she cares to. “Some long term thing she wants to work on. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was just blood, hair, the usual, but she’s talking about bone marrow and brain and well, you know what men can be like.”
“I also know what Liz can be like.” Her multiple oopsiedaisies flash across Abby’s mind. “Best keep them away from her for now.”
“I’ll try.” Rachel shrugs. “You know what she’s like when she’s got a project in her head.”
“Shouldn’t she be prepping for college just now?”
Rachel cuts her a look. “This is Elizabeth Sutton we’re talking about. She’s more prepped than anyone else possibly could be and she’s still fretting about not being ready. She’s probably driving her poor parents insane.”
Abby has met the Suttons only once but they were as lovely as possibly could be. They have no idea their daughter is a world-class spy, already making a name for herself at several agencies both foreign and domestic, and Abby bets they sleep easy because of it. Some days she’d give anything to have that kind of peace at night.
“And the squirt? How is she doing?”
“I think she’s good.” Rachel’s face softens. “She’s visiting her grandparents just now.”
Abby raises an eyebrow. “With Zach?”
“Abby,” Rachel admonishes but does nod her head. “Trust me, Matt’s God-fearing mother will not let anything untoward happen under her roof.”
“I’m kidding, Rach. I mean she’s eighteen, right? Squirt had to grow up sometime.”
“In all kinds of ways.” They both regard each other, both thinking of the trials the girl they both love with everything they have has endured over the past few years. They don’t need to say it. They never do.
“Anyway,” Abby throws one of her legs over the other, leaning back in her chair. “Can’t be worse than anything I did at that age, that’s for sure.”
Her big sister shakes her head in what feels like a familiar frustration. They both have their roles and they play them excellently. “I could take a guess but I somehow feel like I’d still be unpleasantly surprised.”
Abby goes to refute and then changes her mind, simply saying nothing which is an admission in and of itself. Rachel smiles that knowing smile of hers and dammit if Abby doesn’t love her big sister, knowing smiles and all. As rebellious as she has always been, and as indignant as she’d been walking in here today, there is always a small part of her that believes her sister is always right.
“I gotta go,” she says softly.
Rachel nods, resting her chin on her hands. “I know.”
Abby stands and folds her chair back down, placing it against the wall the way she knows her sister wants her to. There are places she has to be, people to see, and she feels like she can do all of it now that the feeling in the pit of her stomach has dissipated and the world has stopped spinning long enough for her to get back on.
“I’ll see you soon, Rach,” she promises, or as much as anyone like them can.
“Be safe,” her sister says softly, just a hint of warning underneath her familiar goodbye. “Be good. I love you, Abs.”
“Yeah.” Her throat seems full unexpectedly. “Love you, too.”
And she picks up the bag she threw to the side so carelessly when she stormed in and throws it over her shoulder, walking out of the door and resisting, for one of the rare times in her life, the urge to look back.