Log: Marie/Garrison

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Backdated. Marie finally chases down Garrison and is not happy how she finds him.



It had been several days since returning from Moscow, and Garrison had barely been seen. He'd been very quiet when seen in public, withdrawn and unhappy. He'd even taken to leaving to get meals, avoiding all but his required tasks.

Marie had tried to give Garrison some space at first, to let him sort out his own mind. He'd had two rough missions and nothing she could've said would change that. But finally, she decided enough was enough and was waiting outside his door when he returned from one of his meals away.

"Your room is down the hall, Marie." He said, tucking the fastfood bag under his arm and fishing out his keys. He had even taken to locking his room now, something that was remarkably out of character for the normally trusting and easy going Canadian.

"It is," she replied, not moving from where she stood. "We can go there if you'd prefer." She crossed her arms over her chest. "But Ah'm not gonna sit back and watch you stew anymore."

"No one asked you to watch, Marie." He actually shouldered her aside, which was unexpected. Garrison was almost as strong as Marie, but he rarely used it. Kane had the key in the lock as she recovered.

He'd only managed to move her by catching her by surprise and she couldn't keep a hurt look from flashing across her face. She waited to move until he'd turn the key, pushing him into the room and quickly following, closing the door behind her. "Ok, seriously, what the hell? This isn't healthy."

"Why did you--" Kane turned around, actually angry. It was exceedingly rare for him, and the sudden outburst was almost as surprising as what she found in his room. The desk was covered in stacks of paper, all writings started on a pad and then torn off. Hundreds of pages, and the only clean spot of the desk was filled with a convention badge.

"Oh Gar..." she said, her gaze traveling over the Canadian's usually neat room. "Ah shouldn't of waited so long before Ah came by. Ah'm sorry." Some friend you are Marie. Reaching out to squeeze his shoulder, his anger caused her to hesitate, leaving her hand hovering in the air. "What have you been doing?" Marie asked, her voice quiet and gentle.

"It's none of your business." Kane threw the bag on the top of the bureau. She was in. He couldn't make her unsee it. "And I don't need a mother either."

All of the pages were the start of a letter. Each one had a name written neatly at the top and a few lines before being discarded.

"Ah'm not trying to be your mother. Ah'm your friend." Walking over to the desk, she glanced down at the badge, her eyes drifting to the letter lying half crumpled next to it. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath before walking back to where Garrison was still standing. "It wasn't your fault." As she said the words, she hugged Garrison, knowing full well that he would probably reject both her words and the action.

Predictably, he stiffened and pushed her away. He didn't want comfort right now. He didn't know what he wanted right now, but nothing made sense. Garrison walked over to the desk and picked up a letter, turning it over. "It doesn't matter who's fault it really is, does it?"

"Yes and no," Marie said, watching him. "But you sure seem to be blaming yourself."

"I can't ever get past the beginning." Garrison's voice went soft. "I mean, it's easy enough to start. Dear Johann Laars. I'm writing to you and your two daughters, Annika and Sieke with great sadness. And then it just... stops. I mean, how do you do it?"

Garrison paused, the paper crumpling under his hands. "How do you tell someone that you got their wife killed, or that Mom isn't coming home? How--" His voice broke. "So we gave the Russians a man they intended to kill in the first place. That was what her life was worth."

Marie came over to stand by him, not reaching out, just standing near him. "You didn't get her killed sugah. You didn't do anything wrong. You tried your best and you did what you could - and that's all you can do, especially when working with people who weren't helping you like they shoulda been."

"I should have let them go in earlier. I was so convinced that I could talk them out, and took so long that someone got killed. It didn't matter what the Russians did or didn't do." Kane put the letter down slowly. "I delayed, and he was better than me. Toyed with me until he got his spotlight and killed her to keep it."

"You don't know that things woulda been any different if they'd gone in earlier," she said. "You were getting somewhere at first. They let the pregnant woman out." Marie tried to keep the concern off her face, but didn't know how successful she was being. She'd rarely seen the Canadian in this dark of a place.

Kane sat down in his chair; slumped more appropriately. "Or maybe that woman would be alive. And for what, Marie? We didn't go there for justice. We stopped a terrorist and handed him over to a government with a long history of executing terrorists like him. What did her death matter to anyone but her family?"

He shook his head. "Not a damn thing, and we're supposed to say it's a successful mission."

Sad brown eyes watched him. "The longer you do this, the more you realize there are varying degrees of success. That we rarely do anything that goes off without a single hitch. Stopping a terrorist – that is a success. He won't be able to hurt anyone else."

Wrapping her arms around herself, Marie shivered slightly. "And the thing is…it matters more than you think. It didn't just matter to her family, it mattered to you too."

"It's not right, Marie. It's not how things should be." He stared sightlessly past her. "We're supposed to do right, not trade lives for official praise. I just--I don't know if this is where I should be anymore."

"Ah'm not gonna tell you that it is right," Marie said after thinking for a moment. "We try and do right. We don't just trade lives. You've read the mission reports."

"I don't know if I believe that now. We didn't do justice in Russia, Marie. We could have killed all of the terrorists going in and gotten the same result. It shouldn't be like that." He sat there, looking blank. "It just shouldn't."

She stared at him helplessly, one gloved hand moving to pull at the material of the other. "You don't know that it would've been the same if we'd just busted in from the beginning. You don't know that it would've been different. We can all always look back and think how we woulda done something different...but once a choice is made, you have to live with it. Learn from it."

"Yeah, learn from it." Kane turned away, picking up a pen. "As you can see, I've got a letter to write, so if you wouldn't mind..."

"Yeah," she said, her energy obviously drained. Sometimes people did just need to be left alone. Marie walked to the door slowly, pausing with her hand on the knob. "You know where Ah am. When you're ready." And if that doesn't happen soon, Ah'll be back.