Response #1 to Strange Bedfellows
Knowledge of all seasons assumed, no spoilers, speculation. Characters - you'll see. :)
He’d never expected his life to come to this. Sleeping next to a baby girl, not his own, somewhere deep in hiding in South America.
He’d meant to marry someday and have kids and maybe quit the whole spy thing altogether, before he got shot again. They’d have a big white house with shutters and a swing set in the backyard, near his parents’, and they’d carve pumpkins for the porch on Halloween and string Christmas lights around the roofline for Christmas.
Now he’s lying on the bed, as still as possible, because she’s just fallen asleep (thank god) after hours of crying and he’s utterly exhausted. The paint is peeling and the only thing in the room is the bed itself, creaking and ratty. They’re safe, for now, but he keeps one eye on the downy top of her head, just in case.
It’s been three months. He’s been with her every step of the way, finding ways to heat up formula in the Bolivian mountains and keeping the mosquitoes away in Brazil. She hasn’t had the malaria shot, after all---or any shots, really.
He was standing there, excited and happy, when the newborn bundle was thrust into his arms and her mother screamed down the hall.
“Run,” he was told. “Keep her safe.”
There was a postcard in Buenos Aires, waiting in the only safe house that anyone else knew about. It simply said “Not yet.”
He wonders if he would have-could have-refused, handed the blotchy, slippery baby back to her family, or what there was of it, and simply gone back to his job the next day. He’s sure he’s fired by now, or possibly declared dead, or possibly declared a traitor-half of the people following them could very well be CIA, he knows, but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter.
Eric turns over, one hand on the gun underneath his pillow, the other resting gently on Isabelle’s stomach, and closes his eyes.
He’d never expected his life to come to this. Sleeping next to a baby girl, not his own, somewhere deep in hiding in South America.
He’d meant to marry someday and have kids and maybe quit the whole spy thing altogether, before he got shot again. They’d have a big white house with shutters and a swing set in the backyard, near his parents’, and they’d carve pumpkins for the porch on Halloween and string Christmas lights around the roofline for Christmas.
Now he’s lying on the bed, as still as possible, because she’s just fallen asleep (thank god) after hours of crying and he’s utterly exhausted. The paint is peeling and the only thing in the room is the bed itself, creaking and ratty. They’re safe, for now, but he keeps one eye on the downy top of her head, just in case.
It’s been three months. He’s been with her every step of the way, finding ways to heat up formula in the Bolivian mountains and keeping the mosquitoes away in Brazil. She hasn’t had the malaria shot, after all---or any shots, really.
He was standing there, excited and happy, when the newborn bundle was thrust into his arms and her mother screamed down the hall.
“Run,” he was told. “Keep her safe.”
There was a postcard in Buenos Aires, waiting in the only safe house that anyone else knew about. It simply said “Not yet.”
He wonders if he would have-could have-refused, handed the blotchy, slippery baby back to her family, or what there was of it, and simply gone back to his job the next day. He’s sure he’s fired by now, or possibly declared dead, or possibly declared a traitor-half of the people following them could very well be CIA, he knows, but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter.
Eric turns over, one hand on the gun underneath his pillow, the other resting gently on Isabelle’s stomach, and closes his eyes.