The Soldier and The Spy: Tess Danvers- Episode 3

Chapter 4

Eleven Years Ago

Things had gone from bad, to worse, to absolute shit.

Tess had thought it would take about a week to deal with Krowiak, maybe a little more, hopefully a little less but she'd figured they'd come up with a plan, have it go sideways then make up another that would save all their asses. And in essence that was what had happened.

It had just been an even bigger cluster fuck than any of them could have imagined.

Because none of them had expected that Krowiak intended not only on double crossing his old supplier but also the new one and none of them, not her team, not Oleksiy when he found out and sure as hell not Krowiak had expected that said new supplier would actually turn out to be the Berkut. Also known as the Ukrainian Special Police.

Cue the cluster fuck.

Krowiak and Oleksiy had both died in the ensuing firefights, crippling the latter's organization and allowing for most of the remaining members to be taken into custody but unfortunately in the fallout her team had been suspected of being a part of said organization and had been chased not just out of the city but right out of the country. All the way into Belarus where they'd spent a week trekking through the woods until they'd made it to the city of Homel; from there they'd been able to catch a bus to Minsk and then a flight to London and then finally onto New York. It had killed her to be so close to Chicago, so close to Jay, and though everything in her had screamed at her to go to him she still hadn't been able to. The agency had wanted answers as to how things had gone so sideways, like it was somehow their fault their target was such a conniving slime ball. Michael and even Coulson had tried to intervene on her behalf by saying there was a family emergency but their superiors had held firm- she had been there at the start of the mission and she would see it through to the end, which was when they said it was.

Assholes.

But it didn't matter anymore. Because now she was done, here, basically bolting out of the taxi and into Jay's apartment building, bypassing the elevator in favour of the stairs which she took two at a time until at last she was in front of his door. She allowed herself only as long as it took to grab the spare key they left out for her to get her breathing under control and then she was slipping inside, all her manic energy coming to a screeching halt when she found Mouse leaning against the doorway into the kitchen, the amused quirk on his lips doing little to hide the far too grave look in his eyes.

"You know for someone who's half-spy you sure make a lot of noise."

"I'm off duty."

"He's not here."

She froze again as she went to slip past him, her chest tightening almost to the point of pain. Of course he wasn't. It was midnight on a Saturday and Jay had all but been forced into taking furlough, of course he would-

"He's not at the bar either."

She was getting dizzy she was turning so fast so Tess made herself stop and give all attention to Mouse, to that rare and solemn look that told her things were so much worse than she thought.

"He's gone. Not gone, gone he- he's at his family's cabin in Wisconsin. He left the same day his furlough started. About thirty minutes later. He left his phone behind."

The words 'on purpose' weren't said aloud but they didn't need to be and that tightness slowly turned to heaviness, a weight that threatened to crush her.

"He doesn't blame you."

Shouldn't he?

"No, he fucking shouldn't."