She returns, but she never quite returns. How easily it could have gone a different way.

They clear her, of course. She passes all of her psych evals with flying colors. She shows remorse, just enough of it. She shows strength, just enough of it. She shows sanity, maybe too much of it, because who could really truly come back from something like that?

But they still clear her because she's the best they have to offer. She comes back, cleared and all, to thunderous applause. She smiles shyly, makes her rounds, says her delicate thank you's. She's gracious but not haughty. Honest but not revealing. Similar but not the same.

She thinks she's lost her mind. She thinks she's insane.

The other operatives don't need to know that. Her bosses don't need to know that. Auggie definitely doesn't need to know that.

They throw her an official celebration. She receives a medal. She fawns appropriately over the attention, seemingly grateful to be alive and back and accepted. How easily it could have gone a different way.

The medal is shiny. The food is delicious. Auggie is beaming. She excuses herself to the bathroom to vomit. He finds her there, of course.

"Bad shellfish?"

"Something like that." She tries to remember when she last had her period. She can't. She should have just gotten the damn hysterectomy before she went dark. She'll make an appointment to take care of this in the morning.

She almost laughs, because she always wanted kids, maybe, but not this way. Not when she doesn't know the father because she fucked for the secrets to take down Henry.

She doesn't laugh, because then Auggie would know that she's insane and that wouldn't do for anything.

"Sorry, Auggie, I guess I'm just not used to eating such rich food." He believes her, she knows he would, because she can convincingly lie and lie and lie for months on end. Because that's what she does. Lies.

She has proof.

They try to get back into their own pre-Henry, post-Simon/Parker/Lena/Jai groove. She knows they never really had a pre-Henry groove, but she still toasts to keeping yourself alive and handlers who care and dedicated operatives because he wants to drink beer with her.

The first night, she excuses herself to the bathroom and orders four shots of tequila at the bar and downs them all one after another, then slams back a beer to cover the smell of tequila.

He notices anyway. They don't go out to Allen's again.

He tries to go slow because he loves her and he wants to show her that love. She pushes him on his back and rides him. Hard. When he moves to flip them, she growls. Actually growls.

"Either fuck me like you mean it or let me do the work."

He acquiesces because maybe this is what she needs right now. He skims his hands gently down her back. She grabs his wrists and forces them next to his head instead.

He knows what she's doing. He lets her use his body anyway, because he's always been helpless against her.

She finishes first, partially because she's been on edge all day and partially because Auggie is sort of scared to come before her. But he finishes soon after with a declaration of love and she just snorts and climbs off of him.

She goes to the bathroom and he can hear the water running. He wonders briefly if he should have put on a condom. He almost asks when she walks out of the bathroom, except she heads straight for the stairs and tosses out, "Thanks," before his mind can even process anything.

She doesn't come back that night. Or that week. Or that month. She gets a mission instead. Then another.

Because she's that good.

Some would say she is reckless on her missions, the missions that get approved. Which are all of them. She gets a choice on what she wants to do now. And she takes the dangerous, top secret missions, the ones that even the more experienced operatives would shy away from.

Because she's that good.

He tries to talk to her through the comms on one mission that he was read in on. She requests a different handler. Or no handler at all. Joan argues. The higher-ups override Joan just because she tells them to.

Who are they again? There is John or Jacob or Paul. Maybe. Names don't matter.

Does it matter? It always matters, he tells her, cackling and dead and dead and dead.

Some drab suits on 7 that she fucked in their office chairs one time each. She tilted her head back and moaned and bit her lip and theirs, all at the right moments. She pouted and giggled and let them thank her for her service.

She has them wrapped around her finger. They all hate Henry, just not as much as she does.

All of her missions have a common theme.

They're assassinations. No point in sugarcoating it. They're government-sanctioned murders. And she commits all of them with an insane smile on her face.

She's that good, but maybe not that good. There's always a flaw in the system. She knows this. She takes the mission anyway.

He tells her not to go, rushed and breathless and forcing clothes out of the way, crammed into a storage closet. She promises she won't, just let her have this. He knows she's lying. Because that's what she does. Lies.

He gives her everything anyway, because he's always been helpless against her.

It's the first time they've spoken in weeks. He almost doesn't recognize her.

Joan watches her on the screen in her office and knows she doesn't plan to return from this one. She intended for this to be a one-way mission from the start, Joan realizes. Joan opens her drawer and drafts the bereavement request papers for Auggie, easily forges his signature, then signs it herself as approved.

The security feed is blurry and staticky, but Joan has no doubt that the face of her beloved operative Anne Catherine Walker would be blank at that moment. Her eyes would reflect nothing but death and her mouth would be set in a neutral line.

But the moment the bullet tears through her body, Annie would smile something insane.

How easily it could have gone a different way.

Author's Note: Title from Florence and the Machine's Seven Devils. I'm having a lot of dark!Annie thoughts. Thank you for reading and reviewing!