allthatgoes | Chapultepec ain't got nothing on us. (Reply)

It's always the same, really. Always the same. This is how it goes for us; we're used to it now, we were used to it then, it doesn't take long to get used to it. But it always happens, without fail – when you're working as an international agent, tracking fraud and fugitives, you don't get much time to be comfortable.

I got to be in my home for a little under a week before I had to depart again for someplace else. My expertise (which falls under the field of computer crime, and thus just about anything involving computerized tracking) was requested by the police force of Berlin, which had recently experienced an unusual series of break-ins.

I love Berlin. Berlin wasn't the issue. The issue was really a series of issues, and the first of them happened to be the fact that my usual partner, navigations expert Spencer Carlin, wasn't invited. Berlin only needed me, and so apparently the only person our chief intended to send Berlin was me. This left me staying there by myself, for although I have German family members, they mostly all go by the name Meyer and I have no idea who any of them are.

That wasn't the problem either.

The problem came when I found out who had the hotel room next to mine, and even though I only intended to be there a couple of days, it was the kind of uncomfortable I never expected I'd have to deal with ever again. And that's why I'm writing all of this down, I guess. To get out of it. To try to figure out to myself just why this happened. Why I always let this happen.

The problem was named Haldean Harper. Most people call him Dean, but I had started calling him Ha in my early Marine years and it stuck, just like he did to me. I have been in many relationships. I have been abused. I have been an abuser. I have been a terrible, impossible girlfriend. I have been a loyal lover. I have been cheated on and I have wanted desperately to cheat back but have always been too afraid.

Haldean Harper was why I was afraid. He made me afraid of two things – affairs and committment. The fear of affairs came from the fact that he had had one while we were together and it turned me into such a mess I couldn't do my job, and that scared me into doing the same thing to someone else I cared about, even just a little, because I knew nothing could be salvaged once someone cheated.

The fear of committment came from the fact that every time in my life I have met someone I thought I could stay with and care for forever, Haldean Harper has come back into the picture. Every time. It doesn't fail. That's how it goes for us too, but this time I don't mean agents, I mean Ha and me.

And so it figures that just after I met Lindsey O'Gevany in London right before Christmas, I was staying in a hotel room next to Haldean Harper in Berlin on New Year's Day. Coincidence has always controlled me.

Coincidence and my own clumsiness, and that's how I ended up in Haldean Harper's arms before I even realized he was there. I fell on a dropped chip of ice in the hallway on the way back to my room, and spilled my own ice everywhere on the way down, including onto the man who caught me. He had come out of nowhere, and he said something under his breath that I didn't hear and then he'd caught me and I'd gotten him covered in ice.

He looked down at me and began to ask if I was all right, and then froze, and I stared up into beautiful grey eyes, took a long breath and inhaled the scent I knew as well as I knew my own, and came very close to extending my hand to touch his hair. I didn't. I didn't say anything, either, I bit my lip and nodded.

Haldean Harper let me go.

"Hello, Kay."

"You're the only person who calls me that," I told him harshly, adjusting my sunglasses.

"You're the only person who calls me Ha."

"I haven't in over a year."

"You haven't seen me in over a year," he reminded me, and that stung, because the last time we talked I had promised to try to talk to him more. The last time we talked had been when we were on a case together – he worked with Quantico, and I had been back home there too, consulting, a year and a half previous.

Our relationship had attempted to rekindle itself. He didn't protest its machinations. I did. I knew we weren't meant to be the same way he was sure he knew we were. I knew we were a disaster. We always had been. He remained in love with me, and I remained loving him, though I was never sure just how deeply I did.

He had betrayed me.

I hadn't gotten over it.

"I work a lot," I said, and it wasn't a lie. I have always worked a lot. I have always worked a lot more than a healthy person should. Then again, I'm not claiming to be a healthy person.

He laughed a little. "Are you here for work, then?"

"Yes. Why else would I be here? You know I don't have family here anymore –"

"Where is your partner?"

"Spence wasn't invited."