Work Text:
AUGUST 23rd, 1982
Century House is quiet, and Park doesn’t trust it for a moment.
It isn’t really quiet in volume--there’s always work to be done, people exchanging their intel and theories and making their moves on the infinite, labyrinthine chessboard of espionage--but the air itself feels stiller, like the world is holding its breath.
The last time she’d had this feeling, it had been the day she’d gotten the Call from her superiors. Capitalized by the future impact she knew it had on her life, emphasized by the measures she’d taken in the name of victory. It had been the day, eighteen months ago, she’d gotten the call to report to Langley--Russell Adler had acquired something... unique.
A little over a year since Solovetsky, since the bloodshed went too far and then just a little further, and Park is still keeping secrets. It’s part of the job, nature of the territory, but this secret, this is one she hadn’t been ordered to keep. In fact, it’s one that could very well get her killed.
She keeps it anyway, and reminds herself that this is the price, the consequence, for her decisions.
Despite the unnatural stillness, or perhaps because of it, Park keeps herself busy--better that than sinking into the potential what ifs. She reads reports, she marks intel, she gets results. She makes her moves on a handful of chessboards, plates she keeps spinning lest they fall and shatter. She delivers her own reports, shortened for brevity, to her superiors, and as she turns to leave, she entertains the thought, no matter how remote, that perhaps her instincts had led her to an unreasonable bout of rarely-unfounded paranoia.
Alas, life is never so simple.
Park returns to her desk, gathers her things. She puts on her coat, folds her reading glasses and tucks them into one of her pockets. It’s when she reaches out to turn off her desk lamp that she spots the piece of paper, plain white, folded in threes. She knows that paper.
With a slow, careful hand, as though reaching for an active landmine rather than an innocuous note, Park picks up the paper, unfolds it. Five words hit her with all the gentleness of a punch, and there’s a rush as the stillness of the day shatters into pieces.
The church bell is tolling.
The world had been holding its breath, but this is no release of relief. This is a gasp, a harsh, grating thing, and Park grabs the last of her things before setting off from Century House at a brisk, clipped walk that demands everyone else remove themselves from her path, lest they be trampled.
Cars and buses pass her on the road as a light drizzle falls from the thunder-gray skies, casting a somber air over the city that, some days more than others, is more overt. Maybe it’s just her.
It takes about an hour of Park’s swift walking, hitching rides on a few different buses heading in opposite directions, and some spirited navigation of hidden alleys and side streets, but she eventually sees the imposing figure of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and is certain no one could have followed her movements with any degree of accuracy. Taking a footpath from the street to the gardens and then to the cathedral’s wall itself, she turns a corner, and sees a ghost.
Charlie Crowe, Bell, Aleksei Morosov--they are all the same person and yet completely different. He is dead, by all accounts and reports, but he has also already died once, by his own insistence. Park doesn’t know what that makes him. Or what it makes her.
At the moment, though, it makes him look like he’d just crawled out of hell itself. Though his hands are gloved, Park can see that one of them bulges unnaturally and knows he must’ve wrapped an injury underneath. A small, discreet bandage rests at the junction of his neck and left shoulder, one of his eyes blackened by a bruise, and his lip has a fresh scab at one corner. To anyone else, it would’ve looked like the result of a particularly rough bar brawl, but Park knows it’s never that simple with Bell.
“I don’t need to remind you how big of a risk it is to meet in person like this.” Park shuffles closer, under the overhang, and casts a look over her shoulder to ensure they have no eavesdroppers, accidental or otherwise.
“No, you don’t,” Bell retorts, “which is why I’ll skip the pleasantries. Read this.”
From under his own coat, Bell produces a file folder with printed text in Russian. Opening it, Park finds a translation, ostensibly provided by Bell himself given his fluency in the language. On first glance...it’s something Park thinks is familiar. That in itself is odd--Bell is more often known to bring her things that she doesn’t know, or things she doesn’t have details on.
Then she looks closer.
Mouth slightly agape for longer than most might consider socially acceptable, Park forces her jaw to snap shut as she turns a look on Bell, who stands, one arm covering his stomach protectively, looking at her with a grim resignation. “Where did you get this?” She hisses in a whisper, using the tone to mask the shock.
“A secondary base. A monitoring facility, from what I could tell.” Bell lifts his shoulders in a slight, painful shrug. “It was heavily fortified, which was my first indicator that something major was happening inside. I just didn’t know how major.”
“I haven’t heard anything about this in the usual channels.”
“And you expect to? The last thing your illustrious allies’ pride would let them do is appear weak in any context, but especially not when it comes to him.”
Park worries her lower lip with her teeth, then stops the motion. A nervous tic, she scolds herself, and one she normally knows better than to let anyone else see. “Why did you bring this to me?”
Bell’s glare is withering, and more than a little bitter. “You know why, Park. In fact, you ought to know why better than anyone else in the world. Particularly considering everyone else in the world has thought I’ve been dead for over a year.”
“You want to get this into Hudson’s hands?” Park clarifies, casting another look over Bell’s shoulder at the same time he glances over hers, checking the other’s shadow.
“‘Want’ is a strong word,” Bell’s grin is dry and humorless, “but it has information they need to know. More than that, I need to be there to deliver it to them.”
Park thinks she must’ve misheard. “Are you out of your bloody mind? You said it yourself--everyone in that circle has assumed you’re dead for a year. What are they to think if you arrive on their doorstep with potentially crippling intel?”
“That I could have put it in the hands of their enemies--and made a few friends, which you know I’m sorely lacking in at the moment--and I didn’t. I’m not bringing this to them as a threat. I’m bringing this to them because--” Bell cuts himself off, thinking, gaze growing distant for a beat before snapping back to the present, and for the first time he breaks Park’s gaze, just a flicker of movement as he looks at the ground beneath his boots, but she sees it, “--because no one should have to go through what I did. Not again. Not even him.”
Park is silent, but her mind is already running through the logistics of transporting a man who doesn’t exist across the Atlantic, and she knows she isn’t in a place to refuse. “It’s your choice,” Park finally says, quietly, “but I don’t think I need to remind you how Hudson is going to take it. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t have you thrown into a cell on sight, at the very least.”
“He can’t afford to.” Bell’s grin is sharper that time. “I’m the only one who knows how to help.”
Privately, Park knows that had never stopped Hudson from shooting himself in the foot anyway, but she knows that Bell’s just as aware of that fact as she is. Instead, she says, “Call my desk phone from a pay phone outside of Heathrow tomorrow afternoon, and ask for Helen, not Park. I should have flight information for you.”
Bell nods, and without another word, tugs his coat closer to his body before slipping out into the early evening rain. Park stands for a moment with eyes closed, breathing in the smell, then turns her footsteps back towards Century House.
She’s going to have to tug some strings of biblical bloody proportions to pull this off.
London isn’t Charlie’s favorite place.
He doesn’t mind the rain so much--growing up in Russia means he was accustomed to far worse than a light drizzle, even if those memories are nothing more than distant shadows now--but the people are too curious, dangerously curious, for their own good, and his. Staying out of notice is difficult at the best of times, and with the near-constant tension in the air, people are watching everyone and everything around them with a fresh filter of suspicion. Even in a city this large, where nobody could possibly know everyone, he knows he stands out as an outsider.
Still, there are some places willing to overlook that for the right money, who have enough trouble on their minds that getting involved in a stranger’s business seems more effort than it's worth.
Dark Horse Brewery is one such place.
Despite the name, the ‘brewery’ is more pub and inn than professional brewing company. Charlie hadn’t asked for the history, and the proprietor hadn’t offered an explanation. All he’d had to do was hand over a fistful of notes, throw the man a certain look, and Charlie remained unbothered by anyone else who passed through the brewery’s doors.
Their whiskey isn’t bad, but he’s had better. Fortunately, he doesn’t need it to be good. All it needed to be is a distraction. From the constant, swirling miasma of bitter, directionless doubt that his life has become, or this particular decision, walking back into the jaws of monsters who’d helped kill whatever remained of him, that was anyone’s guess.
Still, he doesn’t really have much of a choice. He doesn’t know who he is anymore, not really--Aleksei Morosov is dead, had died on that airfield in Trabzon, Turkey over a year ago, or may as well have. Charlie Crowe isn’t a real person, just a flimsy paper stick figure of a man constructed in haste and destroyed with that same brutal efficiency. ‘Bell’ is something in between, not dead, not alive, but better than nothing. In theory.
No matter his own issues with his identity--or maybe because of them--no one deserves to struggle in the same ways. Not even Russell Adler, the man who’d helped spearhead the entire plot.
A different man might have called it poetic justice, that such a man now faced the same terror that Charlie lived with every day, had lived with for over a year, but Charlie hadn’t been able to summon any emotion in response to finding that intel, buried deep in a Perseus-aligned monitoring bunker, except exhaustion. He’s tired, but not in the way that a good night’s sleep would fix, even if he was capable of sleeping soundly anymore.
He’s tired of the pain, of the constant pain--the pain he himself feels, the pain he knows he’d easily inflicted on others as Aleksei, the pain that everyone else in the world still seems so capable of causing one another. Maybe it’s hypocritical of him to try and save anyone now.
Doing anything less still feels unthinkable. It has to be better than doing nothing.
Swishing the untouched whiskey around his glass, Charlie reluctantly admits that the whiskey hasn’t even done its bare minimum job well. Distraction is beyond him at this point.
It’s still only 1 P.M., and Charlie isn’t sure when he’s supposed to call Park at her desk phone, but he’s itching to be doing something. Day drinking, as it turns out, isn’t much of a time-consuming task, or at least not a productive one. He’s already smoked half his pack of cigarettes since buying it yesterday, a new personal worst.
By 1:30, he’s summoned a cab to take him to Heathrow.
From a random pay phone there, Charlie dials Park’s desk phone, and when a man’s voice answers, Charlie says, “I’m looking for Helen,” with the phone cradled in his cheek and shoulder as he lights another cigarette, shielding his lighter from the breeze with his hand.
After a beat, Park’s voice comes on the line. “Cutting things a bit fine, are we?”
“All you said was ‘tomorrow afternoon’,” Charlie points out, looking around for anyone spending an unusual amount of time watching him. Nobody’s paying him any obvious mind. “And it is after noon. Do we have flight information or don’t we?”
“Almost, though I do have a few more things to iron out. I’ve not told Hudson I’m bringing you, for obvious reasons--he believes this is a simple exchange of particularly valuable intel, which is not strictly a lie.”
“When’s the flight?” Charlie takes a drag from his cigarette and puts his lighter back in his pocket, taking the phone from his shoulder to hold it more securely. “I’m not keen on sticking around here any longer than I have to.”
“I’ll be meeting you at Heathrow at 6 o’clock tomorrow evening, if all goes according to plan. I’ll get a message to you by the morning to confirm.” There’s a faint rustling of papers on the other end, and Park continues, “I’ll be at the third gate. We should arrive in Washington by morning.”
“Fine. I’ll see you then.” Charlie places the phone back on its hook and strides briskly away, trying to sort his thoughts back into some semblance of order. He’ll have the rest of the day today and tomorrow, and the flight overseas, to get himself back under control, but he has a sinking feeling that as soon as he sets foot in the Pentagon, all of those carefully-laid plans will fall apart.
He’s committed now, though. He’s passed the point of no return, and he’ll see this through.
By all outward appearances, the Fallen Angel bar is just another grimy dive in one of London’s more seedy neighborhoods, and it tries very, very hard to appear that way. A little too hard, in the way that any front for illegal activity would, but Park knows anyone who isn’t familiar with the place would never guess its true purpose.
There are only a handful of cars parked in the gravel lot, and Park knows none of them are the customers she’s looking for. They wouldn’t have brought anything with them that could be tracked, and so she had done the same.
She turns heads as she enters, but just as quickly as she draws the eyes of the patrons, they look away. This isn’t the type of place to pry into others’ business, a fact that both works in her favor and against her at the same time. It’s almost silent but for the faint sound of a jukebox playing in the corner, skipping every now and then with beats of static, but she walks, uncontested, to the bar.
The bartender there gives her a once-over, then asks, “Help you with something, miss?”
“I’m here for the show,” she says under her breath, sliding a well-worn coin across the table, a token she had been given on a whim and never expected to need.
The coin is plucked up and inspected by the bartender for a long moment, then his brows shoot up to his forehead for a split second before he regains his composure. “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake, miss. You’ll need an escort for a first-timer.”
Park’s brow furrows. “I’ve never heard--”
“Don’t worry about it, Leonard,” a familiar voice speaks up, and Park’s traitorous heart picks up a few beats in pace, “I can take her.”
“All yours, O’Malley,” the bartender flips the coin with one thumb, pocketing it, and goes to a customer at the end of the bar.
A hand wraps around Park’s upper arm, and she allows herself to be led through the back of the bar, through the kitchen, and into a back alley, at which point she manages to wrench her arm free, and some control over this situation back.
When she wheels around, she’s confronted with Kieran O’Malley’s face, in its typical state of disrepair; a black eye and newly-bloodied lip confirm he’s likely been up to his same tricks in the year or so interim since she’s seen him last.
Folding her arms, she nods stiffly at the visible injuries. “Who won?”
Kieran grins as he fishes a cigarette out of his pocket, lighting it. “I’m hurt you even need to ask. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I need your help.”
Kieran gestures with the cigarette as he leans against the nearby wall. “Aye, I gathered that--you don’t really strike me as the type to go huntin’ me down for old-times’ sake. You must’ve really fucked up if you’re comin’ to me for help.”
Park manages to swallow down some of the tightness in her throat. He doesn’t know how right he is. “I need a pilot. A discreet one, and one I trust.”
“This MI6 business?” Kieran taps a bit of ash off his cigarette. “Usually they have other ways of gettin’ in touch with me.”
The tightness in Park’s throat slides down into her chest, settling there like a stone. “...It’s not strictly MI6 business, no--”
“All right, then who’s footin’ the bloody bill?” Kieran’s grin turns abruptly into a scowl. “I like you, Park, but I don’t work for free. I got expenses just like everyone else, and you damn well know it.”
“It’s complicated, Kieran, but--”
“I’ve heard that fuckin’ line before.” Taking a last puff of his cigarette, Kieran puts it out and shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “This reeks of ‘personal favor’, and you know damn well I don’t--”
“I made a mistake!” It bursts out of her in a rush, louder than she means it to, and some of the tightness in Park’s chest relaxes its hold on her racing heart. “I made a mistake, all right?”
For a long moment, Kieran’s face is unreadable, then, with a brief glance around, he takes Park’s upper arm again and turns them down the alley, the opposite direction from the street. “We shouldn’t talk out here.”
As they walk, Park’s mind races. She hadn’t precisely decided how much of the current situation to tell Kieran in order to obtain his cooperation, but part of her wants to tell everything, to finally drop the mountain’s weight on her shoulders even if only for a moment. She thinks back to the aftermath of Cuba, and her aching, bleeding body that Kieran’s hands had tended to with their rough calluses from years of his own fights gone wrong.
Maybe it had been a moment of weakness, maybe something else, but she remembers the warmth in his body as he’d held her, and remembers how it had made her feel strong.
Kieran walks until they reach an old, beat-up muscle car with so many dents Park idly wonders if it won’t fall apart on the road as they drive. He opens the passenger side door for her, then goes around to the driver’s side, dropping himself into the seat with a grunt.
For a beat, they sit in silence, then Kieran sighs, reaching for a pack of cigarettes in the cupholder, and lights one as he starts the car. “All right. Talk. When I said you must’ve really fucked up to be comin’ to me for help, that was a joke, but obviously something’s goin’ on.”
Park chews her lip, jogs her knee up and down, then forces the motion to a halt, taking a breath and releasing it. “It’s a long story.”
“Not like I have anything else to fuckin’ do right now,” he points out as he changes gears and pulls onto the street. “Talk.”
So, Park talks.
Once she opens her mouth, it all comes pouring out: the mission to Trabzon airfield eighteen months ago, the recovery of a live Perseus asset, Aleksei Morosov, the MK-Ultra brainwashing that had turned him into Charlie Crowe--Bell--and made him their unwitting ally during the missions Kieran himself had helped them execute. She tells him about the truth of Solovetsky, that Russell Adler had shot Bell to tie up the last loose end from the operation, but Bell had survived, and had been working discreetly with Park ever since his recovery.
She tells him about Adler’s own recent capture by the enemy, and his own brainwashing, all too eerily similar to Bell’s own. She tells him about her meeting with Bell yesterday, and the intel he needs to deliver, as well as his insistence to be there in person for it.
“He doesn’t legally exist, Kieran, and even if he did, he would still only be known to them as an enemy,” Park finishes, looking down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I can’t fly him across the Atlantic with any conventional means.”
Kieran pulls to a halt in front of the Fallen Angel and puts his car in park, expression impossible to read again. He turns off his car’s engine, sits for a moment, then finally takes in a breath, releases it, and turns to her.
“Helen,” he says at last, “what the fuck were you thinking?”
Out of all the mistakes she’s just tipped out in front of him, she doesn’t want to ask which one he’s referring to in that moment. There are too many to choose from, and he seems to know it.
Without waiting for Park’s response, Kieran drags a hand down his face with a groan and says, “This isn’t over, but I get the feelin’ we’ll be talkin’ about it with Hudson til everyone’s blue in the face here very soon, so I won’t add to the chorus. Get me a plane to fly, and I’ll bloody fly.”
“Fine.” After a pause, Park ventures, “Can I bum a cigarette?”
Wordlessly, Kieran holds the pack out to her, and she takes one in fingers that tremble, balancing it on her lips. With a metallic click, Kieran offers her his lighter, and Park dips forward enough that the end of the cigarette is bathed in its flame before she leans back into her seat.
Something else occurs to her as they sit in silence. “Awfully convenient of you to show up just as I was poised to be thrown out of this fine establishment,” Park gestures with her cigarette at the bar behind them. “Playing the hero, Kieran?”
Kieran snorts. “‘Hero’, right. Nah, I knew you’d been pokin’ around. I might not be a spook like you, but I’m plenty street smart enough to notice someone out of place, and when I saw you goin’ into the Angel, I figured you were lookin’ for me. Unless you’ve met someone else in the past year who frequents illegal fighting pits.”
“No,” Park says quietly, taking a drag off her cigarette, “you’re a unique one.”
“Well shucks, don’t I feel bloody special.” Kieran checks his watch. “You can leave messages for me here. Leonard won’t ask questions. I’ll swing by tomorrow at noon for a plan on where to meet you.”
“If all goes according to plan, we’ll meet at Heathrow tomorrow, 18:00 hours. The third gate.”
“Fine. I’ll be there.” As Park levers herself out of Kieran’s car, he adds, “Hey, Park,” and when she turns back to him, he chews his lip, then finishes, “watch your back, aye?”
Before she can reply, Kieran turns his engine over again, and with a short roar, the car lurches back into traffic. Park lets her hands rest naturally in her pockets, and begins the long walk back to Century House.
She has affairs to get in order before her life is undoubtedly upended in the next 48 hours.