Sophie Oak: Once Upon a Time in Bliss

“I can’t come back, Nell.” The words sounded strangled out of his throat.

“Then I’ll wait until the next lifetime.” She would wait forever if she had to.

He kissed her forehead. “I love you. You have a good life.”

The door closed with a shudder of finality.

He was gone. She was alone again.

Nell sat down on the bed, pulling the covers around her. She’d been warm before, but now she felt the chill. The shades were closed, but she knew if she looked outside the world would be a snowy, frozen white.

Tears started to fall. Winter wouldn’t last forever. Spring would come, and she would likely still be alone and Henry would be somewhere else. She would look for pictures of him, and one day she might find he’d moved on and had a family. And Nell would be here, alone, because she couldn’t love anyone else.

She cried, ignoring the knocks on her door. Callie came first and then her mother. They stood outside and finally the knocking stopped. She cried for the longest time, letting everything out.

The morning turned to afternoon, and when long shadows fell through the room, Nell got up. She washed her face and dried her eyes and sat down at the new computer.

Nell Finn believed. She believed in so many things, but most of all she believed in the power of love and kindness and positivity. She believed that if she put good and beautiful things into the universe, perhaps whoever was at the center, whoever looked down from that Nirvana or Heaven or whatever a person called it, perhaps that being would send it all back.

She was still a child, clapping her hands so that Tinker Bell could live.

She couldn’t have Henry, but she could hope. She could believe. She started to type. She had a whole world around her that needed something good. Max and Rye. Callie. Stef.

Maybe she should start there. She couldn’t write about Henry. Not yet. But she could give her friends a happily ever after even if it was only on paper.

Nell began to write, her hopes and dreams for all of them flowing like a comforting wave.

Six months later

Bolivia, South America

Bishop took a long breath and wondered why he was fucking bothering. He followed the sergeant into what had to be the shittiest bar he’d ever seen and wondered why he hadn’t just stayed in the jungle. And why the sergeant was walking into a tiny village watering hole. “Uhm, is there a problem? We need to get back to La Paz.”

The Delta Force operative simply walked up to the bar and ordered a beer in perfect Spanish. Sergeant Mark Dawson wasn’t someone he’d worked with before, though he remembered the dude’s brother from another mission. He’d worked with Drew Dawson in Chechnya the year before.

“You’re an odd duck, Bishop.” Dawson wiped off the top of the bottle of beer and took a long drink. For the last two days he’d been almost perfectly silent, simply playing the part of escort as Bishop did his recon on a suspected arms dealer who might have ties to a certain terrorist everyone was looking for. Bishop and Dawson had spent days in the jungle setting up surveillance on the group’s jungle compound. Jihadist groups were popping up all over South America and Mexico. Everyone was worried about the Middle East, but terrorist cells were closer than most people in the States could imagine.

Nell probably knew. She kept up with the news.

“How am I odd?” Bishop asked, not really caring about the answer. He leaned against the bar. Talking to Dawson would take his mind off Nell. He’d thought about calling her a thousand times a day. There wasn’t a minute that went by that something didn’t remind him of her. And at night, he always dreamed of her.

He was becoming utterly useless.

Dawson studied him with careful eyes. He was dressed casually, no uniforms for them this time around, but Bishop knew the guy was armed to the teeth. “I’m talking about the way you work. I’ve been working with guys like you for three years now, and if there’s one thing I’ve figured out, it’s that my life doesn’t mean shit to someone like you. Or it shouldn’t. You Agency guys are all about the op. The rest of us are just pawns in your game, and you don’t mind losing a couple of chess pieces, if you know what I mean.”

Unfortunately, he did know what the sergeant was talking about. Bishop tried to make himself clear. “The operation is everything. If you know these things are more important than one soldier’s life, then you know it’s sure as fuck more important than mine. The Agency isn’t going to come in on a white horse to save me if everything goes wrong. They will leave me high and dry and expect me to take care of the situation.”

But he was questioning the status quo more and more these days. What did the operation really mean? How long was he supposed to simply follow orders? Who was he really saving?

The sergeant kept talking, his voice low. “Then why did you save that operative’s life last year? You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Chechnya. Don’t freak out. Drew didn’t tell me shit. I’m sure you were going by another name then, but I think it was you. I have another brother who’s pretty good with a computer. I read the reports on the mission. Yeah, yeah, I could get shoved into Leavenworth, but I had to know what happened. It would have been easier for you to leave him behind. It’s not the Agency’s job to save our asses. It’s pretty much your job to dump our asses at the first sign of trouble.”

Bishop sighed. He hadn’t been able to leave the young soldier behind. He’d ended up losing the man he was following because he couldn’t leave Drew Dawson to bleed out and he was still paying for his humanity. Yes, he’d gotten his ass chewed out for that. It was the exact op that had gotten him shipped to this hellhole. Saving Drew Dawson had gotten him demoted. Of course at the time he hadn’t realized Drew Dawson had a brother and liked to talk too much. “It was nothing, and we really shouldn’t talk about it.”

It was supposed to be freaking classified.

“That’s not how I heard it, Bishop. You see, that was my brother and the way I see it he’s alive and walking the earth and being a pain in my ass today because of you. So when I got word that I might be able to pay you back, that was an operation I was interested in.”

Bishop felt his eyebrows crease. “What the hell are you talking about?” What was going on?

“We guys in the service talk. Bill Hartman is real good friends with my CO.”

Suspicion crept up his spine. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

Dawson nodded shortly, an arrogant smile on his face. “Sure you don’t. Look, I know how this works. You left the force when the Agency recruited you and now you have to pretend like that time didn’t exist. The Agency can cook the books any way they like, Bishop, but a soldier never forgets. A soldier never forgets who his family is even when they walk away. Bill Hartman sent you a message, and I am here to see that you listen.”

Bill was playing fast and loose with Bishop’s identity. “What’s the message?”

“He says choose again. He says you’ll know what that means.”

Bishop hated the way his eyes misted over. He shook his head, trying to banish the emotions that welled up. Choose again . If only he could. The Agency wouldn’t give him a do-over. “I can’t do that.”

Sergeant Dawson nodded and took another long swig of his beer. “Well, I guess that’s all I can do. Let’s head back to the meet point.”

Even though it was perverse, Bishop found himself arguing. “Really? That’s all I get?”

Dawson shrugged. “I delivered the message. What you do with the message is all on you, man. The way I see it, you must really like your life. I mean, what could be better than living completely alone and never being able to talk about anything you do? Man, there’s a whole lot of freedom in that. Talking about shit is overrated. And you don’t have to worry about women. One starts to give you trouble and the Agency moves you and gives you a whole new identity. I don’t see why you would have to choose again when you chose so well the first time.”