Special Agent | ✓

Forty

a/n: enjoy!

Forty

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Locke angled the phone down, faced Quinn. Kat sat still, shaking briefly.

"Willa. I'm so sorry, Willa." Kat mumbled quietly.

Willa, it seemed, was the poor ballerina who'd borrowed Kat's car, and in turn, had been targeted and subsequently kidnapped.

Quinn reached out, placed a reassuring hand on Kat's shoulder. It served as a bridge between the two of them, an attempt to anchor them both to something comforting as they were each swept away by a tidal wave of worry.

"This is not your fault, Kat." Quinn was the one to speak first, eyes slanted at Kat, " — I want you to know that."

Because it's my fault, Quinn thought, the truth bitter and hard to swallow. Locke eyed her, then reached for the phone again, silently replaying the footage.

Kat sat entirely still, eyes glassy, staring at nothing.

Because she was in no way, shape or form fit enough to form a complete sentence, Quinn gently guided Kat out of the kitchen chair. With soft words, Quinn maneuvered Kat out of the living room and into her bedroom. She seated Kat with her back against the massive stack of pillows, before Quinn placed herself by the foot of the bed, sitting carefully.

"I want you to take half an hour and just rest your head, Kat." Quinn reached out, grasped both of Kat's firm shoulders with her hands, admonishing her to meet her eyes.

Kat didn't look up. Quinn gently shook her friend's shoulders, and slowly Kat's wide eyes lifted to hers. They remained glassy, unseeing in the face of shock which had rattled her entire world view.

"This is not your fault, Katya. It might not feel like it, but it's not. You couldn't have known."

Kat shrugged Quinn's hands off her shoulders, eyes regaining some of their focus. Sucking in a deep breath, Kat reached up and stoically wiped a lone tear away from the corner of her eye.

"She just wanted my car."

Shaking her head, Kat scoffed.

"She wanted to borrow my car, and she got kidnapped." Kat's eyes lifted, met Quinn's, " — how fucked up is that?"

"Very, Kat, but you could not have known. None of us could have."

Kat looked away, toward the window. However, Quinn could see clear as day that the shades were drawn, and knew her friend was staring at nothing, still attempting to digest what had transpired just minutes before.

The gory nature of Agency business was something which ceased affecting its employees as time went on during one's employment, but Quinn was every once in a while tossed back into a situation where she had to face the cruel nature of the sort of business the Agency actually dealt with. In such situations, she wasn't usually the one to hold someone's hand and reassure them everything would be alright.

It was a complete lie, reassuring someone that all would solve itself in due time. Quinn's job consisted of solving most problems in advance, and she knew from experience that saying anything other than that there was always a chance for everything to go to shit was a lie.

Being an analyst wasn't exactly a profession for optimists. The more you believed people were cruel and selfish, the better you tended to predict how missions played out. Such was the world the Agency dealt in.