Traveler Fic:: At First Sight (Kim/Chambers, PG-13 ,1/2)

I.  Relief

Hate at first sight.  Born from the moment their eyes meet in the hallway, coalescing as he walks into the interrogation room, so confident, so perfectly certain in his world and his role in it. She hates him with every skin cell, every fingernail and hair follicle.  The fact that she shouldn’t has no bearing, holds no real weight.  If anything her belief that he is a good man, spurs her on, fuels the fire of her wrath.  Reminds her of another good man, her good man, who should be here right now, not running for his life. 

Her world has gone topsy-turvy, up in smoke along with the Drexler, and she feels ethereal, weightless, floating among the ash of those priceless paintings.  Chambers is real, real and solid, and anchored in a world she’d rather leave behind because in this world he’s showing her pictures of burned corpses and blown up trucks and saying that Jay killed two of his men.  And God help her, there’s a tiny little part that doubts, for just a moment, a breath, her certainty falters.

And her hate grows.

But it comes with things other than hate, more complicated things that she doesn’t name.  He becomes the lodestone for all her grief, all her emotion, the central embodiment of this disaster, of Traveler, of injustice and the faceless nameless people who are conspiring to frame Jay.  She doesn’t know why it’s him and not the female agent who challenges her on Traveler, or the male agent who tossed her apartment, but she doesn’t question.  In a life suddenly chock full of questions, she doesn’t need more.  So she simply accepts the focus it gives her, thanks it for the borrowed defiance, nurses it in the back seat of the car as he takes her home and waits for it to fade as it certainly must.

“This is what your life is going to be like until your boyfriend comes in.”

She knows he’s talking about the apartment, the ransack, the constant invasion.  She knows he says it to push her buttons, but she doesn’t care because he’s searching for information she doesn’t have, and as long as he’s looking for things from her, she’s plugged in, aware, connected to something other than TV news and worry.

“This isn’t standard practice, is it?  You giving me a ride home?”

The question is meant goad him back, put him on the defensive.  She knows she’s an attractive woman, and she hasn’t missed the way he watches her.

But it doesn’t work, because layered beneath it, beneath even the unsubtly implied--Do you plan to keep tabs on me?—is a third question, one she doesn’t even catch until the words are out of her mouth . . . Are you going to be around?

The twitch of a smile tells her he caught it, even as he accepts the perhaps not unearned rebuke.  So it doesn’t surprise her when his answer responds to only one of her questions.

“We’re going to be on the same side in this Ms. Doherty.  It’s time for you to accept that.”  Yes.

What surprises her is that she’s relieved to hear it.

II.  Slipping

When he checks out Traveler, he justifies it as a necessity—good investigative work and an effort to earn her trust, to show her he’s not an unreasonable man that he’s willing to listen, if she’s willing to explain.

When he doesn’t immediately arrest her after her stunt during the trace, he tells himself it’s restraint, because he needs her cooperation and throwing her in jail would guarantee otherwise.  Besides he couldn’t have made a case and wasting resources on pressure points that don’t produce results didn’t get him to where he is.

When he takes her home, well . . . that’s actually deliberate.  He wants to see her reaction, wants to evaluate how long it will take to push her into compliance, wants to make sure she understands this isn’t going away.  He’s not going away.

Chambers knows his strengths and, by default, his weaknesses.  He didn’t climb up the ranks of the FBI the way Marlow did.  He’s not a fact man, doesn’t build profiles off of scraps, won’t run down minutiae, or spin theories.  That’s Marlow’s strength, his job is simply to challenge her, force her to do it well.  No, he works people, builds relationships, runs down doubts, and spins the media.  Give him a witness, give him a suspect, put a body in that chair, and he’ll find the pressure point, work into their lives until they have no choice but to talk or act.  It rarely matters which.

He’s prepared to work Doherty, prepared to push.  He takes over the interview because Marlow’s looking for facts he can tell Doherty doesn’t have.  What he wants is the information she’ll have later, the help she can provide down the road—for Burchell will contact her down the road, he becomes more certain of that with each passing moment, knows Kim Doherty is not a woman men leave behind.  Securing that help takes a relationship, a connection, and he’ll manufacture it out of thin air if he has to.

It’s a fine line, a taut wire tightrope.  Slip and there’s little chance to regain your balance.

The call during the news report could be calculated, if she picks up, he gets the chance to express concern, make sure she’s okay, insinuate himself a little further into her psyche, if she doesn’t . . . the effect is still the same.  It’s exactly the kind of move he’d make deliberately.  But it’s not deliberate, not calculated, the flip of the phone, the demand for her number is instinctual, reactionary . . . a slip.

He regains his balance quickly.

“Miss Doherty should get used to her celebrity status.”

Let the papers and reporters become the enemy, draw her hate, apply the pressure.  Her willingness to cooperate will come more quickly if she’s no longer confusing her enemies and her friends.  Mentally he makes a note to check in with her later, offer to try to have the heat turned down, pencils it in for tomorrow, when he estimates things will have already built to a fever-pitch.  Everything’s progressing nicely.

But it was still a slip.  He’ll have to watch that.

III.  Challenge

“You don’t believe me.”

“I’m not saying that.”

“You don’t have to.”  She drops her eyes to desk, angered by her naiveté at thinking he’d believe her, by his obvious patronization.  At least before he’d played his disbelief openly, all cards on the table.  He challenged her, gave her something to fight against.  This new Chambers, condescension veneered by thinly painted concern, leaves her nothing, makes her weak with frustration and self-doubt.

The picture, the fucking picture!  She saw it, had it in her hands, could have proven Jay’s story, brought him back to her.  She’s a goddamned photographer, this was what she could do for him, and she’s failed at even that small task.  Suddenly overwhelmed by her uselessness, by a story which sounds ludicrous even to her own ears, she can feel the pinprick of tears at the corners of her eyes and has to turn away, because she’ll be damned if he breaks her, if she cries in front of him.

The scrape of a chair is followed by soft foot steps as he comes around the desk, she counts them—one two three four five.  He’s behind her now.  She can feel him there, an arms length away.  For a split second, she thinks he’ll touch her, waits for him to touch her, and imagines the satisfaction she’ll get from brushing off the approach.  She might even slap him.

A second ticks by.  Two.  Ten.

Another scrape, and the metal edge of a chair bumps the backs of her knees.  “You should sit down.  I’ll get you some water.”

She remains standing, and when he comes back with the water, he’s forced to step closer, reach around so that the glass travels into her field of vision.  When she doesn’t take it, he sets it down on the edge of the desk with a sigh.

“Come on, I’ll take you home.”

Now he touches her, three fingers at the crook of her elbow, guiding her to the door.  The brush of skin snaps her out of suspension, and she whirls on him, slapping away his hand.  “I don’t need your pity.”

“Good.  Because you don’t have it.”  He meets her eyes, all trace of concern or condescension gone.  “You’re involved in a very dangerous game Ms. Doherty,” he waves off her protest before she can make it, “Whether one of your own making or not, you’ve chosen to continue to put yourself in the middle of a volatile situation.  One which you could easily extricate yourself from if you so chose.  That doesn’t merit my pity.”

She almost smiles at getting him back, cards on the table and all.  Instead, she reaches past him to grab her purse off the desk.

“I can get myself home.”

He lets his eyes slide over to one of the many TVs that plays the continuous feed of news, and she follows his gaze to stare at the widescreen shot of her apartment building.

“My offer to take you stands.”

For second she considers the offer, thinks about once again trying to make her way through that throng, as they shout questions she can’t answer because to do so would be to admit their validity.  Then she snaps out of it, irritated that by her pause she’s given him even this.

“I don’t need your protection either.”

If he were someone else, she’d expect him to stop her, try to persuade her.  But not him, its not his way.  He simply stands in the doorway to his office and watches as she goes.  She’s grateful for that.

It doesn’t occur to her until she’s home and watching clips of his press conference over the shoulder of a pretty bottle-blonde reporter as she mindlessly shovels a tasteless microwave meal in her mouth, that perhaps she should not be so in tune with what is and is not the way of Agent Chambers.

IV.  Complications

The ring of his cell phone cuts through the first nap he’s had lying down since the Drexler blew up.  Blindly reaching down, he grabs it off the floor where he’d placed it next to the cot—badge, cell phone, shoe, all lined up in precision order.

He keeps his eyes closed, gathering his wits, trying to calculate how long he’s been asleep, what could have possibly happened in that space of time.  Where was Marlow?  Had she broken through with Fog and Burchell’s school papers?  He can’t have been out more than three hours.  Even Marlow’s not that good.

Actually she is exactly that good, and the knowledge irks him, clips his voice, so that his greeting becomes a cross between a snap and growl.

“Chambers.”

There’s too a long pause, and he knows he’s gotten a rookie, wet behind the ears and more than a little frightened to be the bearer of whatever horrible news has just stuck in his or her throat.  Chambers sighs, distinctly not in the mood.  Rubbing the tips of fingers along the lids of his eyes to pinch the bridge of his nose, he lets his voice become an ice-flow.

“I’m assuming there’s a reason someone thought I needed to be disturbed?”

“It’s umm . . . it’s Kim Doherty, sir.”

He’s up now, fully awake, already reaching for his badge.  What had she done now?  Surely she didn’t run, or try to meet Burchell, or anything so monumentally stupid.  I thought you were smarter than that.

“She’s been arrested.”

“On who’s authority?” He’s livid, if one of his men has gotten trigger happy, it sets everything back.

“The umm . . . the New York City Police Department’s.  She was arrested for assaulting a Post photographer outside her apartment building.”

“Oh, for the love of . . .”  He trails off, unable to help the tiny exhale of amusement, Doherty’s assertion that she can take care of herself coming to mind all too easily.  “When did this happen?”

“Twenty minutes ago.  She’s been taken down to central booking.”

He checks his watch.  One a.m.  “Get me the editor of ‘The Post.’”

Only then does he realize what he’s doing, how he’s reacting.  He’s not thinking this through, not considering the advantages.  “No.  Wait.  Lets let Ms. Doherty stew awhile.  Have the editor call me when she gets into the office, and make sure her assistant understands that I won’t be happy if I have to call her.”

She’ll be surly when she calls, unhappy at being ordered around in such a manner, but he doesn’t need her softened up.  He needs her compliant and the threat of being frozen out of every official and unofficial line of communication coming out of the FBI’s investigation into the biggest news story of the year will be enough to make any reporter tow the line.

He snaps the phone closed, not waiting to hear the ‘yes, sir’ he knows will follow, and stares down at his hands.  Two slips in less than forty eight hours.  Three if you count what he knows he’ll do when the editor calls.  Not good.

Doherty is becoming complicated.

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