Special Episode: Mid May, 1961
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
I stare at Rose, at a complete loss for words.
She was stunned into silence when I explained who I really am. But now it’s me who can’t speak, who’s reeling, overwhelmed.
It turns out that Rose is something even more unexpected than an agent. Something staggering, something that should be impossible. Something I wouldn’t believe, if I hadn’t already seen her called into action.
“Guardian,” I whisper, gazing into her stunning green eyes.
She lets them light up with that shimmering green glow.
“Spy,” she says softly, and I look back at her, my heart twisting.
All of our secrets are out in the open, now. Laid bare between us.
I can’t believe that I just told Rose everything about who and what I am. It goes against every instinct from training, every piece of protocol that’s been drilled into me, everything I know.
But when Rose put her lips to mine, she touched my soul. I know on some deep level of myself that there can only be truths between us, now.
I’ve cast aside my old allegiance. She is my allegiance now, as is Charlie. The rules no longer matter.
Rose broke her ironclad rules, too. She trusted me with her secret. A secret that is, unbelievably, far more dangerous than mine.
Guardian, I think again, dazed.
I understand it, now. How Rose was able to figure out the truth about everything happening with Charlie. A truth my own agency only figured out after months of careful, meticulous intelligence gathering. Tightly controlled rotations of handpicked experts, professionals at the top of their fields, people who make their whole careers out of this - it took them months to do what Rose was able to do in one day. In one minute, really.
She simply read Charlie’s memory.
“Can all Guardians do it?” I ask. “Read and manipulate memory, the way you can?”
Rose thinks about her answer for a moment. I watch her, tracing my fingertips along her collarbone.
We’re in my bed at the beach cottage, wrapped in each other’s arms. For all the emotional turbulence, all the great shocks to my mind, the reshuffling of my entire understanding of the world and how everything within it works - it’s not lost on me that this feels good. Rose’s body, pressed against mine.
True to her name, her skin is petal-soft. We’ve been together like this a few times, now, but still, I can’t get over the way it feels to touch her. I can’t keep my hands off of her.
Rose doesn’t appear to be bothered by that. Quite the opposite, really. Her body and breathing rise to my touch. If I lightly set my hand on her hip, she pushes herself up into it, almost imperceptibly. Like she’s very quietly telling me not to go, not to take my hand away.
“All Guardians,” she finally says, “Have the capacity to do it, yes. We all have access to the same kind of power. But most of us pick a specialty, a skill or set of skills to hone and sharpen. Memory happens to be mine. And I can’t manipulate memories, exactly. Only see them, show them, or clear them.”
Rose’s soft, gentle voice, like music against the distant rush of the waves outside. I can barely bring myself to believe that this sweet, timid person has saved so many lives - and that she’s lost so many, too. I can’t believe that this is something we have in common. Saves and losses.
I remember my first time losing someone I was supposed to keep safe. I was only recently out of training, but already developing a reputation as a capable - if a bit hotheaded - field agent. So I was assigned to be backup security for an extraction op.
The team assigned to the task had a seasoned leader, an agent with years of experience in the field. We would be working in dangerous territory, but we all expected everything to go smoothly.
The building was on a completely abandoned street. We went in the dead of night. We were inside for a long, tense half-hour while the lead agent briefed the people we were extracting.
When we stepped outside, the car that we’d arrived in - and planned to leave in - was gone. The street was empty.
I remember the chill that ran down my spine in that moment. I knew right then that we’d stepped into an ambush, but it was already too late to go back, and arrest wasn’t an option. The only option was to try and fight our way out.
“How many?” Mags asked me, hours later, in a fortified room at the embassy.
“You read the report,” I said numbly, unable to look at him. “Two confirmed.”
“How many?” he’d asked again.
I didn’t cry, but my bloody hands were trembling beneath the table. “Probably closer to six.”
The final number had been five. Everyone we were supposed to get out, and one agent.
It wasn’t my fault, not by anybody’s estimation. I received a personal thank-you from Command for rescuing another agent on the extraction team, getting him back to the embassy in time for life-saving medical attention. And the car being gone meant that the driver was either dead or dirty. Nothing I could have done.
Still, I had nightmares for weeks. A very simple nightmare, but it had me waking up in fits of trembling and cursing.
A street with no cars.
It’s not easy. But I signed up for this. I trained for it. I knew I would take losses like that, and I accepted the risk when I accepted the job.
Rose, on the other hand. She had no choice. She’s had to shoulder those losses and go forward with no one to help her, no one she can even talk to about it. She carries all of them with her, everyone she’s lost. I’m almost dizzy, trying to imagine the weight.
It should be more than enough to crush a person. Yet here she is, looking at me with those sweet, smiling eyes.
“Rose,” I breathe, pulling her in closer to me. “You’re such a strong person, I - I have no idea how you’ve managed to-”
She draws back, her green eyes wide. “Me? I’m a strong person?”
I sit up on my elbow, startled by her response. “Do you not know that, love?”
Rose shakes her head at me like I’m saying something absurd.
“You’re the strong person, Leyla! You were brave enough to choose this, I-”
“You’re brave enough to do this, even though you didn’t choose it, darling,” I interrupt.
Rose blinks at me. There’s a silence, and then we both seem to realize that we’re staring at each other with mutual admiration, with deep respect.
Rose rolls onto her back, a small smile on her face. I break into a smile, too, and curl around her. I lay my body over hers. All I want is to protect her, and this gives me that feeling, even if it does nothing in the grand scheme of things.
But if it makes her feel safe, even for a moment… and something about this, about our bodies locked together, hearts beating as one - it feels so deeply, fundamentally right.
Rose closes her arms around me. I bury my nose into her hair, take deep breaths of it.
“You should be proud, Rose,” I tell her. “The lives you’ve saved, when you have no idea what you’re walking into, no briefings, no risk assessment, no support team, no backup…”
“It’s hard to be proud.” Rose closes her eyes. “I’ve lost so many.”
“Darling - did you not just hear me say no idea what you’re walking into, no briefings, no-? You’re incredible, Rose, to come through so much and still be you, still walk forward. You should feel-”
My words are cut short as she turns her head and kisses me. I kiss her back the way I always kiss her, with all of my heart and soul.
So different from kissing anyone before her. I feel as if I’m drinking her in through my entire body, everything else in the world dissolved, her lips sweeter than the sugared top of those pastries she likes to eat from the café, sweeter than anything I’ve ever tasted.
We lapse into intimate silence after we break apart. I trail my fingers up and down Rose’s spine, enjoy the sight of the goosebumps this raises on her arms.
I have so many questions for her that I don’t know where to start, so I just pick one.
“Rose.”
“Mmm?”
“I know you wiped the memories of the agents who came here to kidnap Charlie. But how did you get them to refuse the mission? My handler said that they came back, one by one, and turned the mission down. None of them could explain why.”
Rose sits up, so she can look at me as she speaks. I sit up, too, leave a hand on her thigh as I wait for her answer.
“I know that Charlie doesn’t say much,” she begins slowly, “But he’s a very bright child. Much smarter than anyone gives him credit for. When he was almost kidnapped, he understood what was going on better than you would think. He knew how scared he should be.”
I’ve grown deeply fond of Charlie, and my heart aches at Rose’s words.
“The first time one of those agents made an attempt, it was a very near miss,” she continues. “He almost got away with Charlie. I didn’t know what was going on, at that point. I only heard a soul in trouble. So it was messy. The next time it happened, I was more prepared. I took the job as Charlie’s babysitter, I was always there, ready as I could be. But not that first time.”
I recall that Mags told me one of the agents got very close to completing the mission, and that his memory wasn’t wiped as thoroughly as the others. He knew enough to remember Rose’s unusual eyes.
I look at Rose, wait for her to go on.
“Charlie’s memory of the incident,” she says, “Is - very clear. I showed it to each agent that came for him, after the first. I let them experience it before I wiped their memories. So they didn’t remember anything, not from their own memories in Port Sitka, or from Charlie’s. Except - they do remember how Charlie felt. I can’t erase the instinctive emotional reaction a body has to something, or even to the idea of something. It remembers, even if you don’t. That’s why none of the agents could go through with it, after.”
I think about this for a long time before I answer.
“Will you show me, darling?”
Rose blinks at me, taken aback. “Charlie’s memory?”
I nod at her, and she bites her lip.
“It’s a painful memory, Leyla, it’s - not easy to… especially since you’ve grown so close to Charlie, and he’s grown so close to you. It’ll be - hard to watch.”
“I know. But the more information I have going into a mission, the better, and as far as I’m concerned, my mission is to keep you and Charlie safe. So - please, will you show me? Show me what you showed the other agents.”
Rose hesitates for a long moment. Then she reaches out, and taps my forehead with her index finger.
The last thing I remember is a flash of glowing green light in her eyes. Then I’m falling flat onto my back on the bed, sinking deeply into someone else’s memories.
~~~~
Charlie lays face-down on the cold grass, shivering violently.
He wants to scream for help again. But Jahn and Scholz, the agents who are supposed to be keeping him safe - they haven’t heard any of his other screams. They passed out drunk at their card table again.
No one else is around to hear Charlie cry out for help. This man who took him dragged him far out into the woods.
And he can’t scream through the fabric stuffed in his mouth.
The man who took him is standing close by. Charlie can see his shoes if he lifts his head, but nothing else.
Charlie has only figured out one thing about who this man is. He’s grown up around agents, been around them all his life, and something tells him that this man is one of them. But beyond that, Charlie doesn’t know anything about who he is, or what’s going on.
This man might be here to take him back to his father. This man might be here to do the opposite, too. To take Charlie hostage. Charlie can’t decide which possibility is worse.
Or maybe this agent is just here to hurt him. Maybe his father already refused to pay the price.
Charlie doesn’t know. He only knows that he’s terrified, more terrified than he’s ever been in his life.
He presses his face into the grass, trying not to sob.
Then he lifts his head sharply, hearing the flick of a lighter. This man is going to burn him, he’s going to - Charlie doesn’t know, but he desperately tries to free his hands again, crying out through the fabric in his mouth, trying to right himself -
“Ugh,” groans the agent, dropping to a crouch before him. “Can’t even light up a smoke without you panicking, can I, Frederik?”
He scoops Charlie off of the grassy forest floor, and Charlie goes limp in his arms, paralyzed with fear. The man called him by his real name. He’s only supposed to go as Charlie, while he lives in Port Sitka. But this man called him Frederik.
He definitely knows Charlie’s real identity. Knows that his father is Stasi. Not just any member of the Stasi, either.
Charlie is now too terrified to even struggle. He does nothing as the agent pops open the trunk of his car and roughly drops him into it. He blinks up at the man with wide, petrified eyes.
“Please,” he tries to say, but it comes out in German, and it doesn’t make it past the gag.
The stranger looks down at him, obviously irritated. Takes a long drag of his smoke, scowling.
“This is your own fault, kid,” he snaps, gesturing with the cigarette. “If you’d have come quietly, I wouldn’t have had to do all this. You could be sitting with me up in the front seat, hmm? But you can’t keep it shut.”
Charlie closes his eyes. He’s afraid that his heart is going to explode, fail beneath the weight of his fear.
He frantically blinks them open again as he hears the agent lean in closer to him.
“Now, why don’t you cooperate, like a good little Comrade?” he says to Charlie, then chuckles to himself, like he made a very funny joke. “I’m not gonna hurt you, kid. What good are you, hurt?”
Charlie looks up at him, begging silently, tears spilling from his eyes. The man lets out a frustrated sigh, tosses his hands up in the air.
“This looks a hell of a sight past suspicious,” he says, talking to himself. “Can’t drive to the drop site like this.” He looks at Charlie again. “Let’s just have you sleep for a while, hm? Then we can put you in the backseat, make it look all nice.”
He goes around to the front of the car. Charlie’s heart begins to pound even more violently, spiking sharply as he thinks about trying to get out of the trunk. But the man returns before he can move an inch.
He’s holding a rag, pouring some kind of liquid onto it from a small, dark bottle.
“Should’ve just done this from the beginning,” he mutters.
The panic in Charlie’s heart swells up into a full-body maelstrom. He begins to sob again, unable to stop himself. The man stops what he’s doing, looks at Charlie, and lets out a pained sigh. He slips the bottle back into his pocket and goes to take a drag of his cigarette, only to find that it’s gone out. Cursing to himself, he disappears around the side of the car again.
Charlie takes the best breath he can through the fabric, then throws all of his effort into convincing himself to move. He has to try and make a break for it, to do anything, anything -
He manages to sit up in the trunk. Then he sees someone, watching from the shadows of the forest.
He freezes as the woman puts a finger over her lips. Telling him to keep quiet.
He thinks he recognizes her. He’s seen her walking around town once or twice. She’s a grownup, a pretty lady in a nice flowery dress. She has a scar across her face.
She silently steps out from the trees, keeping low, and steals up to the trunk of the car. She lifts a hand, and Charlie almost screams again when he sees that she’s holding a knife.
But she puts it to his bound feet, and cuts him free.
He holds perfectly still as she reaches around him to get to his hands, which are bound behind his back. She cuts them free, and blood rushes back into Charlie’s numb fingers so fast that it hurts. He almost cries out, but bites it back.
She takes the gag from his mouth, closes her arms around him. Lifts him out from the trunk, sets him on his feet. Then she turns him around, aims him at the trees.
“Run,” she whispers.
Charlie sets off sprinting for the darkness of the forest.
“Hey!” he hears the agent shout. “What the fuck do you think this is, lady?”
Charlie looks back over his shoulder. He’s half-blinded with tears, but he thinks he sees the woman’s green eyes start to glow as she slowly turns to face his kidnapper.
He runs as fast as he can, gasping for breath. But his feet are still numb, and he’s not wearing shoes. When he trips over a tree root, he doesn’t try to get back up. He gathers himself up against the base of the tree and sobs into his knees, trying to muffle the sound, to stay as quiet as possible.
Eventually he’s so exhausted that he can’t cry anymore. He leaves his forehead on his knees, sniffling, dazed.
His head snaps up as he hears footsteps. His blinking eyes land on someone standing right in front of him, and he gasps, starts to scramble upright.
But it’s not the agent. It’s the woman from before. She has both hands out, empty. The knife is gone, and her green eyes aren’t glowing, anymore.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she says, very softly and kindly. “Please don’t run.”
Charlie is too tired to run, anyways. He slides back down the tree, the bark scraping at his back through his pajamas.
Very slowly, the woman takes a few steps closer. She drops down in front of Charlie and sits on her knees.
“What’s your name, little one?” she asks, in a gentle voice.
Charlie just stares at her. That man told him over and over again to be quiet, if he didn’t want to get hurt. He’s not about to say anything now.
“My name is Rose,” the woman says softly. “I’d like to bring you home, to your parents. Do you know how to get back to where you live?”
Charlie’s parents don’t live there, but he does know where the farmhouse is. He nods silently, then flinches as Rose reaches out for him.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs, leaving her arms open. “I promise I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Charlie is afraid of everyone and everything right now, but he’s so tired that he can barely think of anything but his bed. That’s all he wants, his bed.
He slumps forward into Rose’s arms, and she catches him, then stands up. He was freezing, but she’s warm. He loops his arms around her neck and drops his forehead onto her shoulder.
“You’re okay, baby.” Rose settles him against her, then begins to walk.“You’re okay, you’re okay…”
Her soft voice soothes the terror in his heart. He feels his head loll on her shoulder. She puts a hand on the back of it to keep him in place, then gently strokes her fingers through his hair.
Suddenly he can’t keep his eyes open. He feels sleep closing in. All he has to do is let go, drop into it.
You’re okay, he hears her saying, as he lets himself fall. You’re okay, I’ve got you, you’re okay…
~~~~
I snap upright on the bed next to Rose, gasping. She must have known that I would come out of it like this, because she takes my face in her hands, smooths her thumbs over my cheeks.
I stare at her as I struggle to get my breath back. Charlie’s terror is still rife in my veins, and it takes me a second to recall that I was in a memory, that I’m in the beach cottage, with her.
I let out a long exhale, put my forehead to Rose’s.
“And you say you’re not brave,” I stammer. “You say it’s hard for you to be proud of what you’ve done.”
Rose doesn’t answer. She only holds me until I can breathe again.
When I come back to myself, I climb out of the bed and go into the living room. Rose follows after me as I stop in front of the couch.
We left Charlie asleep on it. Rose tucked a pillow under his head when he passed out. He has one of his toy cars in his little hand. His face is relaxed, his hair ruffled up by the wind from the beach.
The sight makes my heart twist sharply.
“Did you-?” I begin, then stop.
I know the answer to the question I was about to ask Rose. The very first time I met Charlie, he had scrambled into hiding in the grocery store, terrified because Rose had left him alone in public for just a few minutes.
“Why don’t you?” I ask instead.
“Erase his memory of it?” Rose lets out a heavy sigh. “I want to, but I can’t. Children’s memories are different. Their minds make connections in surprising ways. If I erase that memory, I might accidentally erase a lot of things I don’t mean to. I’m afraid he has to keep it.”
I stare down at Charlie for a long, silent moment. Then I sit down next to him on the couch. He stirs in his sleep, drowsily blinks his eyes open, drags the back of his hand over them.
He looks up and sees that it’s me who sat down with him. The blossoming fear in his eyes quickly turns to warmth.
He smiles up at me, then scooches closer. He puts his head on my lap, and easily falls back asleep.
I twist my fingers into his hair, something colossal happening in my heart. It’s a few minutes before I can speak.
“He was terrified,” I murmur, “When he thought he was being taken back to his father. Just as scared as he was when he thought he was being taken by someone else.”
Rose nods, nibbling her lip. “Yes.”
“Is there no place that feels like home, for him?” My voice comes out hoarse and raspy. “Nowhere that he truly feels - loved, and safe, and special?”
Rose looks at him, where he’s curled up asleep in my lap, his little face peaceful.
She goes slowly to her knees before the two of us, then sits back on her ankles, looks up at me with those unbelievable eyes. She puts one hand on Charlie, and one hand on me.
“There’s here,” she says softly. “He’s happy, being with us. I can hear it.”
I stare at her, then look down at Charlie. A word pops into my head, unbidden.
Family.
Oh, god. What am I thinking? It’s just - I would do anything, everything to keep Rose and Charlie from falling into hands that would hurt them. But I don’t know how Rose would react to the thought. Or how Charlie would, for that matter. I can’t just decide that he’s mine, that he’s ours. It doesn’t work like that.
I’m suddenly very badly in need of air. I move to gently shift Charlie’s head off of my lap, start to get up. His eyes flutter open again. He takes a deep, waking breath, then looks up at me, blinking slowly.
“Mom?” he mumbles, sleepily knuckling his eyes. “Where’re you going?”
I drop back down on the couch, landing hard, once again at a loss for words.
Charlie wakes up a bit more as he realizes what he said.
“Not mom,” he says, clearly worried that he upset me. “I’m sorry.”
I bite down on my lip hard enough to break skin, then gently run a hand through his hair.
“It’s alright, Charlie. You call me whatever you want, sweetheart.”
He smiles up at me, relieved, then closes his eyes again.
I can feel Rose’s eyes lingering on my face, so I look up to meet them, to stare into their radiant green beauty.
That startling feeling in my heart again, impossible to ignore. That word in my head.
It’s impossible, and for countless reasons. Yet there it is, already so firmly a part of me that to remove that one brick would be to bring down the whole house.
Family, I think again, reaching for Rose’s hand. My family.
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