Chapter Text
It’s a stark division: the American and Afghan government officials in the front in their crisp suits and dress shoes, the commoners at the back in their everyday clothes and worn out footwear.
Maggie’s eyes idly drift over the nameless faces in the crowd. Men with impassive faces, darkened by endless manual labour under a ruthless sun. Curious children gawking at the foreigners with unabashed interests. A lone group of women standing close together in a corner, their lips moving with hushed whispers. The grownup onlookers squint their eyes, taking in the brand new building towering over a chaotic background of dusty bushes, messy electrical wires and haphazard houses. The fresh blue paint on the sign gleams in the bright sunlight, its white letters glowing: Parwan Women and Children’s Hospital .
None of them pay attention to her. Except one. Maggie’s eyes zoom back immediately the moment she catches sight of a familiar face, short hair and high cheekbones and pale skin, half hidden in a pair of dark sunglasses and a gray hijab. She looks into the black shades, trying to make eye contact for a brief second before moving on to the next face.
On her left, the ambassador steps up, takes the microphone offered by the local governor and clears his throat. Maggie listens to the words she wrote echoed in the open space in the man’s voice. The Dari translation follows, sentence by sentence. Maggie tries to pick out a few words she knows among the jumble of foreign sounds— women, children, reproductive health, education, accessible . (She has purposely omitted sexual health in the script.)
Maggie tries to find the gray hijab again in the crowd. The woman has moved to the middle of the yard, in the back. She’s looking for someone, head scanning the space subtly. Then her gaze locks on some invisible target in the middle of the mass. She moves smoothly toward it, threading her way through the throng of people.
The governor initiates a polite clap when the interpreter finishes the last sentence. Measured applause rings out and dies away when the ambassador holds up a finger, halting it. Maggie tries not to show her surprise at his decision to go off script.
“I want to thank Miss Maggie Sawyer, First Secretary, for the work she put into this hospital, from proposing, advocating and finding funding for it. It wouldn’t have been possible without her initiative and effort.”
Maggie dips her head slightly as he extends his arm in her direction. When she looks up, a flash of movement in her peripheral vision draws her eyes to the back of the crowd, just in time to catch sight of a raised arm with a pistol at the end of it, pointing at her. Behind the dark, round spot of the barrel, hatred burns intensely in the eyes of the man holding it.
Time slows down for her brain to register everything before its moment of death: the man's eyes locking on his target, a tall woman figure moving on his left, gray hijab and sunglasses, a gun raised just as quickly at his head, a squeeze of her finger, a sharp crack.
Eerie silence fills the space in the second following the gunshot sound. Chaos immediately follows. Panic rips through the previously stoic crowd, sending people scrambling and running in all directions, screaming and shrieking.
A security guy pulls Maggie behind him and moves both of them down the platform, gun raised and pointed at the crowd. She catches a glimpse of the body lying motionless on the ground. A local policeman kicks the pistol from the hand holding it. It skids away unresisted with a clack.
She doesn’t need to look for the familiar figure in the gray hijab. She has seen her swiftly and conspicuously getting away in that still moment when the crowd was still in shock.
*****
She sits unmoving in the car on the ride back to Kabul, staring at the roadside scenery. Asal, the interpreter, puts her hand on Maggie’s shoulder, trying to catch her eyes. Maggie looks back at her and smiles weakly, trying to ground herself in the warm concern in Asal’s deep eyes.
*****
The psychologist at the American embassy orders Maggie to go home after her assessment. She responds with a smile and a nod, already getting up to walk back to her office, ignoring the way the guy throws his hands up in exasperation.
Brett Anderson, the CIA station chief, is on his phone when she knocks on his door. He holds his hand up, looking at her through the blinds while speaking into the receiver. Maggie steps back and leans on the railing in front of his office.
She can wait. She wants answers.
He doesn’t have any. Maggie cuts right into his usual CIA tactics of security clearance and confidentiality.
“We both know that’s bullshit, Brett. You don’t know a thing about it, do you?”
“There are things I can't tell you, Maggie,” Anderson protests, not at all convincing.
“Who the fuck shot the guy, do you at least know that?” Maggie demands, leaning over his desk into his personal space.
“I’m working on it!” Anderson says to Maggie’s back as she stomps out of his office.
*****
The apartment door closes behind her, its lock engages with a click. Maggie lets out a long breath, leaning her back against the wood panel and letting it take some of the weight of her body. She shuts her eyelids, seeking a break from the world.
The sound of the fridge door slamming shut in the kitchen immediately yanks her back to reality.
“Stay right where you are! Don’t move or I’ll shoot.” Maggie announces the moment she gets the gun out of her handbag. Pointing it in the direction of the kitchen, she walks slowly toward it, calculating her next move.
“You're out of ice,” a voice calls out.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Maggie puts the gun down and marches into the kitchen. Alex, high cheekbones and short red hair no longer half hidden in a hijab and sunglasses, puts down an empty glass on the counter, wiping the water dripping down her chin with the back of her hand.
“You scared the fuck out of me, Danvers!” Maggie grumbles as she pulls Alex into her.
Alex opens her mouth to answer, only to have her words swallowed in Maggie’s kiss.
*****
Her body is still strung tight with stress. Every sound is a source of alarm, every sight of movement a cause for her muscles to tense up. She presses herself further into Alex’s embrace, trying to feel more of her soft skin and strong arms and tune out all the other exaggerated sensory details.
“You ok?” Alex asks, rubbing comforting circles onto her back.
“I will be,” Maggie tells her. She pushes herself away from Alex slightly to look her in the eyes. “Thanks for saving my life today.”
A fierce look flashes in Alex’s eyes before she smiles. “Any time.”
Maggie stops thinking about the barrel of the gun she stared down today, and remembers the unsettling feelings in her stomach, on the other end of a pistol after the trigger is pulled. The two fatal shots in her life as a cop, a life far removed from her current one.
She looks at Alex, measuring her words and settling on the same question. “How about you, you ok?”
“I don't regret it,” Alex says plainly, the fierce look back in her eyes. “I’ll kill anyone who makes an attempt at your life.”
The gun that’s still tucked in Alex’s waistband brushes against Maggie’s hand when she drops it from its place on her back. She cups Alex’s face in her palm and brushes her thumb over the soft skin on her cheek. Alex leans in and sighs softly, her shoulders drop as she relaxes into Maggie’s touch.
*****
“So, you gonna tell me why you were in Parwan this morning, just in time to save me?” Leaning back against the fridge, Maggie looks across the kitchen to where Alex sits at her small dining table.
“I heard about the opening ceremony. I wanted to see you,” Alex shrugs.
“Come on, Danvers. You wouldn't just show up in a public place like that,” Maggie says, crossing her arms over her chest.
Alex stares at her for a long moment, seemingly weighing her options. She finally throws her hands up, “Fine! I had some intel about an extremist group in Parwan. A hunch, really.” Her tone softens, ”I know those types okay? I knew they'd try something. A hospital that gives women easy access to contraception and advocates for body autonomy ought to trigger them.”
Maggie clenches her jaws in defiance. Alex's eyes shine a bit brighter, “It’s amazing that you got that built, Maggie. I'm so proud of you. And I, I just… I couldn't not be there when I knew you could be in danger.”
Maggie thinks of the disguise, of Alex swiftly getting away from the scene. She wonders what kind of danger it was for Alex simply by being there.
“You could've just passed on the intel to Anderson. He’d do something,” Maggie argues, not willing to let it go.
“Anderson,” Alex scoffs. “That guy. I'm sure he'd trigger security protocols based on my hunch. Plus, I’m not even supposed to be in Afghanistan.”
Maggie remembers their first meeting in Washington, when a young, cocky CIA analyst Alex Danvers butted heads with the Kabul CIA station chief, right in front of the ambassador and herself. She fell back when the meeting was over to give her compliments, then flirted a little, not being able to resist the urge. With just a wink, Maggie saw the arrogant analyst transformed into a stammering, blushing mess. She almost felt bad as she casually walked away.
That blushing CIA analyst is now sitting in her kitchen, with a gun in front of her on the table. The same gun that she used to shoot a man dead this morning.
“They’re probably looking for you now,” Maggie says, sitting down at the table across from Alex.
“Not yet,” Alex shakes her head. “Tomorrow morning, earliest. All the cameras were focusing on you. It’ll take them some time to stitch together the CCTV footage.”
In the lull of their conversation, Alex props her elbows on the table and leans on them, a glint sparkling in her eyes. “First Secretary, huh? Last time I saw you, you were Second Secretary.”
“Last time you saw me was four months ago,” Maggie replies pointedly.
Alex ignores her tone. “I thought it was good that Carter finally gave you some credits. Way overdue if you ask me. Though,” she pauses in contemplation, “he practically painted a target on your face with this one.”
*****
In the night, Maggie fends off darkness with lust, ablaze in her veins and under her skin. She strips Alex down to an equal footing of bare existence and primal needs, until there’s nothing separating them but a sheen of sweat between their heated bodies.
Maggie fucks her slowly. She pins Alex's wrists above her head and spreads her open with her own knees between Alex's legs. She fucks her thorough and cruel, until Alex’s sanity teeters on the edge. Alex bites her lip in desperation and submits, doesn’t fight her, doesn’t come until Maggie allows it. Maggie says “Good girl,” says “Now” and revels, in awe with the way Alex gushes around her fingers, clenching and pulsing. The rush of power surges through her, displacing that helpless, uneasy feeling that has been swirling in her chest all day.
Maggie lets go of Alex’s wrists to stroke her face gently as she comes down. Alex murmurs “I’m your good girl” with wet, glassy eyes like she needs Maggie to believe it. Maggie traces kisses along her jawline, committing to memory how it trembles under her lips and replacing the image of the same jaws setting harshly before Alex pulled the trigger.
In post-coital bliss, Alex curls up into Maggie's body, seeking the security of her arms, like she hasn't been chasing danger across the continent with only the protection of a gun and her wit.
******
A soft, minty kiss on her cheek wakes Maggie up. Eyes still closed, she catches Alex’s whispered words in the darkened bedroom.
“I gotta go.”
Maggie doesn't get up. Saying goodbye isn't what they do. The next time is as unknown as the next place Alex’s running off to.
She stays under the covers and listens to the sound of Alex's footsteps on the marble floor, then the brief thudding of her boots by the entryway. The door opens and closes quietly. The apartment falls back into stillness.
Outside, the first lights of dawn cast a pink hue over Kabul’s jagged skyline.