Quiet Tension

Safe

After a completely silent flight, we make it back to base. The plane couldn't land fast enough.

Flora meets us at the unit while we all arrive back. Seeing me, she pulls me into a tight hug. Surprised, I'm frozen for a moment before I hug her back.

"Are you okay?" she asks, pulling back and looking at me. "That must have been a lot."

"It was," I say. "Simon was there, though."

"Yes, he was," she says, a smile in her eyes as she looks behind me up to him.

Simon leads us to the conference room, where I sit, vest still on, while they debrief. Flora goes over the intelligence side of things.

"They have no knowledge of any of our safeguarded equipment or buildings," she says. "More likely than not, the men who attacked Simon and Ivy stumbled across the house. I'll do more research this week."

Price nods, turning to me. "Again, Ivy, we didn't see this coming. I apologize for your involvement."

"It's fine," I say, feeling awkward at their concern. I mean, they deal with this every day.

"It's not," Simon says, voice angry. "We should have seen this coming."

"But we couldn't have," Soap says.

"But we should have," Simon continues. "We endangered someone that wasn't even supposed to be there tonight."

Flora, next to Simon, places a hand on his arm. "Simon," she says, voice low.

Angry, he gets up from the table, walking away.

Price dismisses everyone. Flora checks on me one more time while everyone gets out of their gear.

"Let me help," she says, unbuckling my vest and lifting it over my head. I immediately feel the relief.

"Thank you," I say, and König emerges from the locker room, then, and she gives me one more hug before walking out with him.

I decide to wait on Simon, him being the only one left after another five minutes. Nervous, I go up to him in the locker room, where he sits on the bench.

"Simon," I say, standing in front of him. "Are you okay?"

Suddenly, he stands up over me, my back knocking into the lockers behind us.

"You could have been killed tonight," he says.

"But I wasn't. Plus, you were there." I choose to not get too emotionally invested in his words - I know he cares, but he shouldn't care this much.

"If they had touched you..." he says, trailing off, walking away to the other side of the room. "I would have tortured them for weeks before letting them die. Slowly."

"Okay," I say.

"There is nothing I wouldn't do for you to keep you safe," he says, coming back up to me, leaning close. "I would do anything for you."

Reddening, I look away. I feel his gaze heavy on my face.

"You shouldn't want to do that," I say, finally. "I can't... be what you want."

"What I want is what you are," he says, his voice softer now. "I know that it's hard to let people in."

What he doesn't know is that all of my words of denial are completely empty.

Broken, I admit it to him, tears growing in my eyes. "I already let you in," I say. The tears fall, embarrassingly. "I just don't want to be hurt."

"You know I would never do that," Simon says, his eyes alight with hope, taking off his gloves and brushing away my tears. "I destroyed that man because he got too close to you. I would destroy myself before I could ever cause you pain."

I shiver with the memory of Simon pumping his body full of bullets.

"How are you feeling with all of... that?" Simon asks, concerned now.

I swallow, all of the past twenty-four hours catching up with me. I fight back even more tears. "I'm okay," I say, though it's obvious I'm not.

He pulls me into his chest, then, and holds me for a good several minutes. Finally, I push him away.

"I should get back and shower," I say, feeling gross from all the travel.

"Okay," he says, and follows me out, handing me my backpack and helping me into my car. "Will you be okay?" he asks.

I nod. "I just want to go to bed," I say.

"Alright. I'll make sure you get a few extra days off with the rest of us."

I nod again, too tired to argue.

I drive back to my house, dumping my clothes into the washer and getting into the shower, scrubbing my skin over and over to rid myself of the day's memories.

I come out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, to see Simon on my bed.

Startled, I stumble back into the wall.

"Sorry," he says, sitting up. His face is bare and his hair is wet. I see a bag on the floor next to him.

"Simon!" I say. "What are you doing here?"

"I didn't want to leave you by yourself," he admits.

"Okay," I say, grabbing some pajamas and heading back into the bathroom, closing the door and finishing getting ready to sleep.

I crawl into bed, Simon's weight heavy on top of the covers. I tug at them. "Get up."

He laughs, standing and tugging off his shirt, to my dismay. Seeing my gaze, he asks, "Is that okay? I didn't think..."

"It's fine," I say, gently patting the sheets next to me. "Come on."

I lay my head on the pillow, facing him as he faces me. My eyes grow heavy. Though I slept a while today, I'm still tired.

"I know it's silly for me to be so exhausted," I say, realizing that I did a bunch of nothing while Simon killed seven men.

"It's not," he says, brushing his fingers lightly along my cheek. "You do a lot of different work than us. I might say it's even harder."

Laughing at his blatant exaggeration, I close my eyes. I feel him trace my eyebrows, and down my nose.

"You're safe," he whispers, and that's the last thing I hear before I pass out.