TITLE: A Voice in the Dark
AUTHOR: Lexie aka lillianschild
FANDOM: Spooks/MI5
RATING: PG13/R
PAIRING: Lucas/OC
SUMMARY: Section D has a traitor in its midst and a mysterious man arrives with what appears to be the key to rid MI5 of the mole. This fic is my own version of Series 7.
Disclaimer: all recognisable characters belong to BBC and Kudos Productions; I'm just playing with them for a little while without making a profit. No infringement's intended.
CHAPTER XIII
ANNABELLE'S FLAT- LONDON- EARLY MORNING
Annabelle got up the next morning to find London covered in snow and with no prospect of seeing the weather improve any time soon.
Stubbornly, refusing to accept the incontestable evidence in front of her eyes, she contacted Heathrow only to have her slim hopes crushed. All London airports had shut down because of the storm and no planes were either landing or taking off; a situation that would continue for at least another forty-eight hours, according to the weather forecast.
As unsavoury as the idea of being stuck in the capital was, hitting the motorway home in such a heavy snowstorm with nil visibility would be suicide, and she still loved life too much to risk it on a rushed decision prompted by heartache.
Sitting down on her comfortable sofa with a glass of white wine and a tray of crackers, cheese, seasoned olives and cured ham she'd bought at her favourite charcuterie, she grabbed the remote and began surfing the channels in search of something to distract her.
In two days' time she'd be on her way back home, away from London. As devastated as she felt, she told herself that this would pass. She needed to put a long distance between herself and these last painful months; she needed a refuge where to lick her wounds and find her emotional equilibrium.
The phone rang all of a sudden, taking her out of her reveries. She fumbled with the remote to mute the old Christmas classic which had been playing largely unwatched and picked up the receiver. The caller was probably Jo, inviting her over to have a drink.
“Hello?” she said, trying to keep her voice light.
“Annabelle?”
It wasn't her former colleague from The Grid but a deep chocolatey voice that oozed masculinity and one whose every nuance she'd have recognised anywhere. Not even the metallic distortion of the phone had managed to disguise the identity of its owner or diminish the allure of its enveloping nature.
“Annabelle,” he repeated.
“Yes,” she whispered shakily, fleetingly trying to put a finger on why hearing his voice over phone had made something flutter at the back of her mind.
“I wasn't sure you'd still be around.”
“All flights in and out of town have been cancelled because of the snowstorm.”
“This is one of those rare times when I'm actually grateful for London's weather... I'd like to see you, Annabelle. There are things I need to say. I...”
“I don't think there's anything left to say between us,” she cut him off. “And even if I were to hear you out, I don't see how that would change anything. I'd never be able to believe a word that came out of your mouth. You did nothing but lie to me. Every time you touched me, every whispered word in the dark was a lie. Your body, your voice and hands said you cared about me when all the time you were lying.I should have known better... I was a fool. After all, wasn't you who told me that everyone lies?”
Annabelle hated how vulnerable he made her feel and how little control she had over her emotions when her rational side told her she should let matters rest if she hoped to retain her dignity as intact as the current circumstances allowed.
“This might sound hard to believe... but I never meant to hurt you.”
“What do you want from me, Lucas? Absolution for taking me to your bed? If that's what this is about, then you've got it. It takes two to tango as the saying goes. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish packing.”
“Wait. Please...don't hang up yet. Don't you want to know about your asset?”
“I thought we'd been over this. He died a painful death. Why can't you just let him rest in peace?”
“Because... You're owed the truth. I owe you the truth about what really happened that night at the Hall. I'll be waiting for you at the guesthouse at the back of Tom's property. “
“Lucas, I don't … “ she started to answer, but he was no longer listening.
Her hands trembled with the receiver still in their grip as her body reacted to the thought of being in the same room with him again.
* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~*
LONDON OUTSKIRTS- LATER THAT EVENING
As promised, Lucas was expecting her. Not only did the gate open as soon as she buzzed, the front door was already unlocked. She stepped inside and took a minute to admire the workmanship of the wooden interior before noticing a door ajar.
The guesthouse was silent except for the crackling of the logs in the fireplace, whose light she saw reflected on the polished laminate wood floor; a beckoning beam leading her to the man she was finding so hard to forget.
She walked towards the room and stopped in front of the door, wondering if she should knock or simply enter unannounced. The decision was taken off her hands when his voice invited her to step inside.
Lucas was sitting in a wing armchair, wearing a pair of tight-fitting jeans and a navy blue shirt with a few buttons undone. A bottle of Smirnoff and an empty tumbler stood on the floor next to his seat while his long fingers held a half-full glass of vodka. Annabelle wondered how many of those he had poured himself that evening; judging by how much liquid was missing from the bottle, quite a few.
“I'm glad you came,” he said with no hint of a slur in his voice as he raised his piercing blue-grey eyes to meet hers.
She cursed her treacherous body for reacting so viscerally to him. It wasn't fair. Why did he have to look so devastatingly handsome and composed while she was tongue-tied and burning, drowning in the bottomless pool of his eyes?
Annabelle wondered what it was about this man that broke every mould. Casual clothes weren't supposed to look that way; they were supposed to make him less dreamy not to bring out the colour of his eyes and do odd things to her stomach.
All of a sudden she wished she had taken more care with her appearance, retouched her make-up... changed out of her comfy clothes. She hadn't wanted to dress up, give him the idea she'd really taken pains to look attractive for him, but now she felt she was at a disadvantage and in dire need of an armour to prevent him from seeing too much.
“You look adorable,” he told her huskily as his gaze caressed her and she struggled to fight off the memories his voice and subtle perfume evoked, bittersweet recollections of the ways he'd touched her when they loved each other in the dark. “Please, take a seat, Golubushka.”
“Would you mind not calling me that again?”
“Sit down, Annabelle,” he repeated after a brief pause during which his impossibly long eyelashes had lowered to hide the pools of blue, where she imagined to have seen reflected a fleeting stab of pain. “Please,” he added softly.
She walked further into the room and stopped a few paces away from him to take a seat in the armchair across from his.
Lucas' attention was suddenly caught by a movement behind Annabelle, which caused the linguist to turn her head and feel a shiver run up her spine.
“Aren't you going to introduce us, Lucas?” asked the small woman in the doorway, holding a gun in her hand. “Miss Reed, right?” she continued softly. “I'm Elizaveta Starkova. I used to be the handler of a late colleague of yours, John Bateman.”
The petite brunette had a very marked Russian accent that Annabelle experienced like a knife plunged into her already bleeding heart.
“This is what you lured me here for?” she asked Lucas, her eyes filling up with unshed tears. “You're handing me over to the bloody FSB?”
“No, Golubushka,” he denied in a quivery voice without moving from his seat. “Vyeta,” he said raspily, now glancing at the foreign woman.
“Bateman was really good and the fact that he died and you survived convinced me you'd been the key all along, Miss Reed,” Vyeta butted in. “I knew I only had to be patient and you'd lead me straight to where I wanted to go.”
You'd lead me straight to where I wanted to go. The words rang in Annabelle's ears and the veil suddenly lifted, making all the pieces fall into place. The woman believed she'd lead her to the asset. Lucas. Oh, God, Lucas! What a fool she'd been, bringing the FSB to the asset's doorstep!
Everything had come full circle. Annabelle remembered that fateful night and the dying man she'd never forgotten. Now she understood why she'd trusted Lucas implicitly from the beginning, why she'd believed him when he'd denied being responsible for the deaths of her three colleagues. His real identity explained Harry's decision not to arrest him. Lucas was the mystery man from the castle.
Annabelle's heart felt lighter despite the immediate threat of having a gun aimed at her. She fought not to look at Lucas and focused on Vyeta's face instead. Her mind was working at full speed; there had to be a way to protect him. She had to convince Bateman's handler that Lucas had no connection whatsoever with the man Vyeta was looking for.
“And where do you want to go?” she asked the Russian woman in a steady voice.
“You know very well what- or should I say who?- I'm looking for, Miss Reed. The man who was blessed with a prodigious photographic memory, a gift he used against my people. The man who gave Harry Pearce the information about Tiresias.”
“Lucas and you are looking for the same person then... I'm afraid I can't help you with that. Lucas can tell you I'm not lying. He had some pretty nasty drugs used on me to no effect. I couldn't give him any names because I honestly don't have that information. So, you see, you're wasting your time.”
“You're lying. I'm no longer the naïve girl I used to be. I still can't believe how gullible I was, how easily I deceived myself because the role was completely out of character for the sweet and shy man I'd married,” said Elizaveta shifting her gaze to focus on Lucas.”But all the clues were right in front of my eyes- the long and frequent trips, the cuts and bruises... I suppose I was too much in love to ever put it together. Whatever made you decide to become a spook?”
The man I'd married. The words echoed in Annabelle's ears.
“When I finished my gap year in Dakar, where I met Bateman working at the casino, I returned to the UK. I had no job, no prospects, so I sought out my university thesis tutor, hoping he might help me get a teaching position. He told me I'd be wasting my special gifts and arranged a meeting with an old army comrade of his, Harry Pearce. Tom Quinn had also been invited. We had dinner at Harry's club; that evening we were recruited by Section D. I was MI-5 when we married, MI-5 all those years in prison and I'm MI-5 now,” he explained to his former wife.”I'm sorry about your brother, Vyeta...”
“He was the only family I had left. And he's dead because of you.”
“He knew what he was doing. Just as I did when I took that flight to Moscow eight years ago. I knew I might not come back. but I'd made a choice when I joined MI-5.”
"Why didn't you tell me what you were?" Vyeta asked.
“I was a British agent married to a Russian national whose brother was an FSB agent. What would you have done in my shoes?”
“I almost lost everything because of you,” she replied with glassy eyes.”Nicolai is only three. I never thought I'd have a child... and then you came back and I thought the nightmare was over. Kachimov had promised to help you if I did some work for the FSB, so when you were released I presented my resignation, but he wouldn't accept it. He refused to grant me my freedom as soon as they realised you'd given Tiresias to Harry. They... almost killed my baby, an innocent child, just to get to you, ” she added in a strangled voice, tightening her shaky hold on the gun.
“I'm sorry, Vyeta. I had asked Harry to protect you and your family, but you'd vanished without a trace by then.”
“Sorry's not enough. It took me months, but when the Embassy told me they'd intercepted a call to Miss Reed's phone where a male voice promised to tell her all about the man in the castle, I knew my patience would finally pay.”
Annabelle saw the petite woman aim her gun at her ex-husband once again and wished she hadn't given her weapon back when her resignation was processed.
“You won't do it,” Lucas stated calmy, inexplicably making no move to either protect himself or subdue Vyeta with his superior height and bulk.
Annabelle measured the distance to the door, wondering if she could make a run for it to stop the unstable woman. There had to be something she could do. And yet, she knew that if she did the wrong thing , Vyeta might end up wounding or killing Lucas.
“You aren't a murderer, Vyeta,” he continued impassively.
His former wife's judgement wasn't so clouded not to realise the linguist was the key to making Lucas pay.
“I might not be able to kill you, Lucas. But her? She means nothing to me, but something tells me it's not the same for you.”
Annabelle prayed for some kind of opportunity to get closer and subdue the aggressor before things got out of hand. She simply couldn't resign herself to the thought that God might be so cruel as to let the man she loved die now that she finally knew who and what he was.
Her prayer was eventually answered the moment Elizaveta advanced further into the room and stopped in front of the fireplace. Although the Russian lady had worked for the FSB, it was evident she lacked experience handling guns since her move had brought her too close to be able to adequately cover them both.
The gun was now aimed at Annabelle, who represented the greatest threat as she was standing, and shifted slightly to focus on her shoulder. The former MI-5 agent was the greatest leverage to use against Lucas, and Starkova seemed determined to exploit this for the trajectory needed only a little adjustment to target Annabelle's heart and produce permanent damage.
The ball was in Lucas' court now because, unlike Annabelle, he wasn't in the line of fire. He would have to make the move as soon as the opportunity presented itself; she only had to be patient and ready to make hers.
When the moment arrived Annabelle prayed her face didn't betray the gripping emotion that seized her on seeing him stretch out an arm to fetch the walking stick he'd kept hidden from her. She had known of the asset's extensive injuries and now she understood Lucas' determination to keep his identity a secret; he hadn't wanted her or anyone to feel pity for him.
Everything happened so fast then that it was hard to believe the man who disarmed Vyeta with a masterful strike of his cane on her wrist was the same person who had lain agonising in the castle, so swift and precise were his moves.
The gun discharged and a bullet embedded itself in the wall behind Annabelle before the weapon fell onto the carpet out of Vyeta's reach. Fuelled by adrenaline, the linguist launched herself at the petite woman. They went down together, landing hard on the polished laminate wood floor just as the locked door was crashed open.
Making sure Elizaveta was no longer a threat, she glanced towards the fireplace and saw Lucas, sitting on the floor, the gun he'd knocked out of his ex-wife's hand trained on the doorway until a look of recognition flashed in his eyes.
Seeing it was Tom Quinn and not another FSB agent coming to finish off what Vyeta had failed to accomplish, Annabelle let out the breath she'd been holding and then crawled towards Lucas.
“I'm all right. Not even a scratch,” he assured her. “And you?” he added, cupping her cheek and holding her gaze for a long moment.
Now that the adrenaline rush was dwindling, she found she couldn't stop shaking nor was she able to clear the big lump in her throat to reply with anything other than a simple nod.
“You'd better call Harry, then.”
“Let me help you first,” she told him quietly, darting a quick glance around the room for his walking stick, which seemed to have vanished as if by magic.
“Call Harry, Annabelle. You can use the phone on the desk. It's clean.”
“I... ,” she started hesitantly.
“I appreciate your offer, Golubushka, but I can take it from here,” he interrupted her in a tone of voice devoid of emotion she recognised as a strategy to deflect any overture of assistance.
* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~* ~*
CO19 arrived at the scene with Sir Harry Pearce in tow. Annabelle saw him enter the library in an impeccable dinner jacket and overcoat and make a quick survey of the room.
“Harry,” his former Chief of Section greeted him in the doorway.
“Tom,” nodded Pearce, glancing across the room at the man who had given eight years of his youth and almost his life to serve and protect Queen and Country.
Lucas was still sitting on the floor with his eyes closed and his body propped against the armchair he'd been sitting in before the confrontation. Annabelle itched to be close to him, but she wasn't sure she was equipped to deal with that particular minefield, especially when he appeared to be determined to show he needed no crutches of any sort to stand on his own and face whatever demons were still haunting him.
Harry seemed not to have her qualms or, if he did, he was too guilt-ridden over his failure to help Lucas in the past to dodge the bullet now. He walked over to his younger protegé and squatting down with his back to Annabelle, he spoke to Lucas in a voice too soft for anyone else to hear.
Meanwhile, the linguist turned around to see CO19 handcuff Vyeta and take her away in custody.
“Come on,” said Tom softly, placing a comforting hand on Annabelle's shoulder. “Let's get some fresh air.”