Summary: They're all spies. Spooks (MI-5) crossover, Diana/Tom, pre-MI-5.

Title: Risk and Recovery

Author: MC

Feedback to: dagnylilytable@yahoo.com

Disclaimer: Diana belongs to Chris Carter, Tom belongs to the BBC
and all others affiliated with Spooks/MI-5

Note: MI-5, X-Files Crossover, Diana/Tom pairing

Spoilers: Set before the sixth season of TXF, pre-series for MI-5

Summary: They're all spies



She'd known in the hospital that she wanted to go to Europe. A
choice, this time, with no personal losses involved.

"Ms. Fowley, take some time," Adamson had said in his British voice,
always declarative, never friendly. Then he'd exchanged a look with
Spender. Definitely not paternalism, but misogynistic enough to
raise her hackles. Women were best left to themselves after these
things happened. The Project could not survive with them licking
their wounds.

Fuck licking the wounds. Letting them bleed, letting them scar,
letting them make the necessary alterations, had always suited her
better. But at least the rest would give her time to set up the
apartment at the Watergate the way she wanted it. This one would be
her cover residence, and it was permitted to give it her personal
flair. Or her best guess of what that was.

She knew other people hated Heathrow, the fuss and the bother. The
bureaucracy of the Consortium was no less irritating, but the
routine of it made her handle delays differently than her fellow
passengers. They would sigh heavily and curse loudly, or quietly,
depending on their sense of decorum. She'd let it out hours later,
after unpacking, usually t'ai chi or dance. Better to make something
out of frustrations.

Fox had sent flowers. That rankled more than the airport hassles.
The right kind, as always, but the choice of arrangement was
probably Dana Scully's, and both of them had signed the card. It was
quite plausible that she'd been sent on this short vacation because
of the nature of the Dallas operation, the whisperings that
Strughold was as strategically concerned about Dana Scully as all
the rest of them should have been. Diana had always been able to
recognize other people's irritating unwillingness to die--her own
abilities in that line had made her a number of enemies.

Scully would be gone. And whether or not she could persuade Fox to
join her again, the rest of the world would meet the future. She'd
miss him more than she already did, if he wouldn't help her. But
there would be much more to worry about than Lancelot, more than
noble men with heartbreaking eyes, once the Project was more than a
shadowy presence.

She'd brought Thucydides for the plane ride. Contemporary game
theory was all well and good, but nothing substituted for things
that had once been real.

---



She kept up on British intelligence. It had drawn Adamson's notice
from the first, and his sources of information were useful to those
just starting out. It wouldn't hurt to be a familiar face to someone
in MI-5 again--the time away may have been mandated, but she was
expected to use it well.

Tom Quinn was beautiful, and good at his job, and he thought he was
the only one with security clearance here tonight. It would be more
straightforward to begin with the information about one of their
front companies involved in his current cases, but she wanted to
wait. She had three weeks.

Her next impression was how young he seemed. It wasn't just her gray
hairs, styled and hidden away. He knew nothing of age, the ability
to look back on the past and yearn for who he'd been then. He was
still waiting for where he would be: it was obvious from the way he
smiled at the bartender, the way women eyed him and he missed it
entirely.

"Lisa Cormier," she offered smoothly, taking his hand for the less-
professional squeeze. She wondered which alias he'd choose tonight.

"Paul Miles. And may I say, you look lovely tonight?"

She found herself smilng back with that combination of social
instinct and strategy that so few men engendered anymore.

"You can say it if you're buying my drink."

It was an old line, and she laughed before he did, to let him know
that she didn't take it too seriously. She also moved into his
space: it let him know that she took him seriously, and let her know
he wasn't carrying anything important. That confirmed her inside
information that Quinn would likely be told the senior officers
could handle the rest of the details tonight.

He went to the bathroom when his cell phone rang, kissed her hand,
said, "Everything's fine, and I'm so sorry to have kept you
waiting."

He pulled out the chair for her, and they argued over who would
select the wine. His work was done, and hers could begin.

---

He kissed her forehead when he saw the scars: the nature of the
wounds probably suggested something to him about what she really did
for a living, because he'd stopped murmuring the name she'd given
him, after that.

He kissed her so that it almost mattered what he believed.

End