Work Text:
A knock on Mary’s door startled her out of her focus. With work so busy, this was the first opportunity to read she’d had in months, what was it now?
She pulled open her door, expecting an annoyed coworker, but was instead faced with Hawkins Fuller, shaking and white as a sheet.
“Mr. Fuller! What brings you here tonight?” She and Hawk were friendly, but certainly not friends. They shared a job and a secret, but that was all.
“Can I come in?” he asked, his voice as shaky as he looked. Silently, she opened her door wider to allow him to step in and closed it after him.
He said nothing. Right, she should be a good hostess. “Can I get you anything? Tea?”
“I turned Tim in. The M unit.” It left him all at once, like a breath he needed to expel.
Mary looked at him, his hands fidgeting as if awaiting judgment, and turned to put the kettle on. She busied herself with preparing the tea, getting out the mugs, choosing the correct bags.
The silence went on until the water boiled and Mary started to fill the cups. Hawk broke it first.
“I had to. Lucy’s days away from having the baby, if that. Once he’s born I can’t have any distractions.”
Mary held the mug out to him, but he didn’t seem to notice. She set it on the counter next to him and picked up her own mug.
“Okay.” She took a sip. The tea scalded her tongue. “Okay. So he won’t get the job now.”
“They’ll just send him a denial. He won’t have to deal with any investigation, no questions. Just, he’ll have to look for another job.”
“Hawkins, he wants that job more than I’ve ever seen him want anything. You know this will bar him from government jobs forever?”
Hawk covered his face with his hands. “I know. He’s going to fucking hate me.” His breaths came faster.
Mary set her tea down and put her hands on his shoulders. “Hey. You’ve done it. You made the decision, and you can’t take it back now. You’ll never see him again. Whatever you feel about that… It's true. Trust me.”
She pulled him into a hug. He went without resistance, like all the fight had been drained out of him. She didn’t feel tears where he buried his face into her shoulder - real men didn’t cry, she supposed.
He pulled away after a long minute, rubbing at his face. “When you … When Caroline left. What was it like?”
She shook her head. “It’s impossible to describe. Like cutting a limb off, but you keep forgetting it’s gone and trying to grab things with a hand that isn’t there anymore. The day I showed them that letter, I got home after work and she was just… gone. Her things out of the apartment, and her halfway across Pennsylvania. Like no one had ever been there. But I couldn’t forget.”
She found herself choking up - missing Caroline was like an old wound that had stopped hurting until she was reminded she had it, then it hurt like the day it opened all over again. “Do you know she’s married now? She sent me a letter, with photos of her husband and son. She has her life now, and I have mine.” When Mary had gotten that letter she’d wanted nothing more than to rip it up into millions of tiny pieces, to live in a world where maybe Caroline could be hers again someday for just a bit longer. But she had so few pieces of Caroline in her life now. She’d spent hours just looking at it before tucking it away as gently as she could.
Hawk just looked at her, blue eyes sad and clear. “Would you do it again? If you had the choice?”
She picked up her tea and sipped it, contemplating. “I can’t answer that. I love my job now - working with Representative Sullivan is wonderful, and it feels like I could actually make a difference here someday. But I think I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what would’ve happened if I left DC with her.”
Hawk had torn his eyes away from her at some point while she’d been speaking. He opened his mouth, jaw working. “I love him.”
He looked back up at her then, like a lost child looking for his parents. “I love him, and I’ll never love anyone else like this ever again. And I’ll never see him again. How am I supposed to deal with that?”
“Hawk, you have a wife. You’re about to have a child. You have a great job. Your life is full of meaning - you just have to learn to live with it.”
“Right.” He laughed humorlessly. “My life is so great! I have a wife I don’t love, and I’m about to be locked into that marriage forever with a baby. What do I have to complain about?”
Mary shook her head. “Hawk, you’ve made your choices. Nothing happened here that wasn’t your decision. I understand regret - god, do I understand - but you can’t go back now. No matter how much you wish things were different.” She thought she’d spend every day of the past five years wishing things were different. Wishing she lived in a world that was kinder to her and to - God willing - her Caroline. She knew, though, that wishing was pointless. What mattered was what she did, and she was going to spend every minute working for that world she wished for.
Hawk leaned against her kitchen counter. “You’re right. That was uncalled for. Lucy’s great, and I love our child. My life is good, all things considered. I just have to give up this one thing to keep it that way.”
“But at what cost to him?” Mary often wondered how Caroline had felt, when she had gotten the news and been dismissed from work. Caroline didn’t have high ambitions like Mary did, but she made a living there. She couldn’t decide which was worse - the thought of Caroline being angry with her, or the thought of Caroline understanding her choice. “He’ll get that letter tomorrow, and he won’t know what happened, or why. He’ll be crushed.”
Hawk visibly steeled himself. “Right. That’s why I’m here. I need you to tell him.”
“Hawk, I can’t do that -”
“Yes you can. You get lunch together, right? Ask him to lunch tomorrow. Help him understand. You can understand this choice better than anyone else. And he… he deserves someone. To listen.”
Mary set her empty mug down too hard. It was loud in the silence of her apartment. “Why don’t you tell him, then? If you think he deserves to know. It’s your decision. Own up to it.” The very thought of looking Tim in the eye and telling him what had happened made her nauseous.
“I can’t -”
“Why not? Too much of a coward to face him after? You’ve done this to him, Hawkins, he deserves to hear it from you -”
Her phone rang. They both fell silent all at once. Hawk was the first to move. “Hello?”
She couldn’t hear what whoever was on the other end of the line was saying. Hawk listened for a moment. “Yes, this is he.” He was silent for a long time, then - “Thank you. I’m on my way.”
He hung up. “Lucy just went into labor. I need to go. But please, Mary - tell him. It needs to be you.”
He was out the door before she could come up with more protests. She sat down in her living room, sighing. There was nothing she wanted less than to spend her lunch break watching Tim’s heart break, getting a glimpse into what it might’ve been like for Caroline. But Hawk was right. Tim deserved to know.
She picked up her phone and dialed Tim’s number. “Hi, Tim? Do you want to get lunch at the diner tomorrow?”