salute [h.s]

piper got herself out of a jam with a little help

the five times that Piper got herself out of a jam with a little help (and Harry worried like a mother hen)

1.

Harry had been sitting at his desk in his office but must have dozed off because he woke to a frantic voice in his ear. "Harry, are you there?"

"I'm here, Piper," he said hurriedly as he sat up, shaking his head a bit to knock the sleep right out of him. "I'm right here. What's going on?"

Piper was on her very first field mission on her own, without him there, and he was so stressed out about it that he'd been intermittently tapping the feed on her comms and listening in on the mission which, if he wasn't so high up in this organization, could probably get him fired. He had faith in Piper and her abilities but she was still new and things could go wrong at any time. There was no way he was leaving her safety in the hands of some bumbling junior agent in O branch.

"Mitchell's dead," she said, her voice catching. She was upset and for good reason. The senior agent on her mission had apparently been killed. "I can't find O'Brien and there's someone hovering outside the hotel and I know he's SVR —"

"Shh, petal, take a breath. It won't help if you get yourself worked up."

He heard her shaky inhale and then her equally wobbly exhale. He wished he was there, that he could make it all better. But he wasn't. He was here in London, sitting soundly in his office, while Piper was in Kiev pretty much on her own.

"Sorry," she said finally.

"Don't apologize," Harry corrected. It was something they'd always done. Piper often apologized for things that weren't her fault, a byproduct of her desire to please people to fit in, and Harry was the one reminding her that she had nothing to be sorry for. "Do you have an alternate extraction plan?"

"Um, yes," she said warily. "But I can't remember. I just — I don't know what's happening and everything is going wrong..."

"Okay, it's fine Piper," Harry said calmly as he leaned forward, bringing his computer back to life and opening up his own files on Kiev. "Don't worry about the mission. Let's just get you somewhere safe. Where are you?"

"I'm walking on Andriya Malyshka street," she said. "Away from the Hotel Bratislava."

Harry typed in her transmitter code (which he'd memorized before she left) and quickly tracked her down on the map. "There's a safe house in the Podil neighbourhood that you can go to. Get on the metro a block south of where you are."

He asked Piper questions while she walked to the metro just to keep her mind occupied because if he let her think about what was happening, she'd worry and overanalyze and probably panic. He asked about the mission, whether it had been successful (it had), and if she'd done the drop properly (she had also done that too). When she got to the station, he sighed. "I'm going to lose you in the metro."

"But it worked in Moscow," she said nervously.

"My transmitter is a special case. Listen to me, Piper. You'll be fine. Just make your way to Kontraktova Ploshcha station and get in touch with me again when you're there. Just, Piper — be careful."

"Okay." Her voice was timid and Harry wanted so badly to be there with her, to be able to take her hand and hold her tight. But for now, he had to do the best he could from here.

She got onto the metro and it felt like hours though it was much sooner before her voice was back in his ear, sounding a little bit more relaxed. Obviously she'd taken the train ride to sort her thoughts out. Harry was able to guide her through the residential streets toward the safe house he'd used before in Kiev. "Yuriy is the asset who runs the safe house. He's a good guy. He'll try to get you to eat his borshch. Don't. You'll hate it. But if he offers you varenyky then eat those because they're just pierogi." Piper laughed quietly and it was the most comforting sound Harry had heard all day. "He'll sort out an extraction for you and you'll be home in no time."