Title: The Offer She Couldn't Refuse
Author: M.
Rating: pg

"The Offer She Couldn't Refuse"
by m.
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"Let me guess," she smiled at him, all dimples and wry amusement, "I'm not what you were expecting."

"I don't know." He answered honestly. "I don't know what I was expecting." He'd read the brief on her shooting, had heard the truth from Nadia in a hushed conversation on a plane from Belarus, but hadn't allowed himself to form a mental image. He hadn't quite convinced himself that any mother, even the infamous Irina Derevko, would believe any prophecy enough to deliberately paralyze her own child.

He was convinced now. The evidence sat before him in a gleaming wheelchair, the reflections from the screens flickering in her glasses.

Sydney held out a hand, waggling her fingers, and tilted her head slightly. "Give. You want intel. I want pizza."

"Fair trade." Tom agreed, handing over the box. "How goes it?"

She slanted an annoyed glance at the computers. "I've got nothing. Marshall's got nothing. There's a lot of nothing so we'll have the location within the hour."

He didn't understand but then, he didn't understand much where the Bristows were concerned.

Sydney's annoyance turned to amusement and she dropped the box on a bare space, flipping the lid back. "It's crazy, I know, but we have a system." She helped herself to a slice and then nodded at the box. "Grab some and pull up a stool."

He did as instructed and watched her. Sydney ate with one hand holding the slice, the other flying across the keyboard at a speed that could quite possibly give him motion sickness. The idea that a woman who'd been in her element in the field could make a switch so seamlessly to a support role had seemed farfetched at first but . . . she looked happy.

"You actually like this gig?"

She wasn't surprised by his question. He had the feeling she'd been expecting it.

"I thought I'd hate it but . . . yeah." She tucked a hair away from her face, eyes staying fixed on the screen. "When Dad suggested it . . . I thought he was crazy. Me doing this? I told him no. Weiss tried, I said the same thing. Vaughn, Nadia . . . even Sloane. I told them all no. It was out of the question. I couldn't come in here day after day, sit in this damn chair and pretend everything was fine when it never would be, so everyone should just shut up, leave me alone."

Which, Tom knew, would have been like violating the law of gravity. Sydney Bristow's friends would take flight before they'd ever be able to leave her to her misery.

"What got you?"

"Marshall." She looked over finally and he saw the faint sheen of unshed tears hiding behind her glasses. "He came in one day with baby pictures and then started babbling to me about Batgirl becoming Oracle and how he had everything almost ready for me here . . . " She smiled again. "He seems sweet and innocent . . . but no one says no to Marshall - The Godfather - Flinkman. No one, not even me."

finis