H is for Honor

By Dragon's Daughter 1980

(Written for the 2007 Summer Alphabet Challenge)

Disclaimer: Other than being a devoted fan, I have nothing to do with Numb3rs.

Spoilers Alert: Everything up until 'Robin Hood'

-Oath of Enlistment, United States Army

While the crowd mingled, he quietly slipped out onto the outdoor balcony, doing his best to disappear into the shadows of the Washington evening. Through the open glass doors, he could see the members of the upper echelons of the American government and its law enforcement community amicably mingling with each other. Most days, the people in the ballroom room were either at each others' throats or trying to gain favor with each other. Tonight, with a 'truce' called in the face of national pride, they were taking advantage of the opportunity to make political connections that would become helpful in future. On the other hand, he almost wished he was anywhere but here.

I'm Michael Kirkland, Counterintelligence.

Today, FBI Special Agent Michael Kirkland had posthumously received a Medal of Meritorious Conduct, a decoration that had been somberly received by his brother on behalf of himself and their distraught sister. He had learned to trust Kirkland, as much as he could trust the person who threw his life into complete chaos (besides Dwayne), and a part of him still grieved for the murdered agent. He was a good man with a dogged persistence in searching for the truth and endless patience, which he counseled often. The man was his confidant, and along the way, handler and agent had become quasi-friends. He knew Kirkland, and just like he knew that Kirkland hadn't broken under the torture that killed him, he knew how the man would have reacted to today's ceremony if he had been there — with dignity and modesty. Kirkland saw himself as counterintelligence; that was his job, nothing more and nothing less.

Dwayne, I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to do that.
Come on man, what's the harm? It's just a manual.

Two hundred and sixty-seven minutes. That was how long it took before his entire life and career was turned into a chaotic mess that cost one agent his life, and nearly cost him his as well. A single offhanded remark by a good buddy, and he refused to let it slide. By the end of that day, he had his feet set firmly on a path dictated by his family and his honor — against all enemies, foreign and domestic. When he had said yes to Kirkland's plan, he had no delusions about the difficulties that were ahead of him, but he had seen it as merely another extension of an oath he had already sworn and the oath he would swear. He just hadn't been able to fully predict the cost.

If I'd wanted to be a spy, I would've applied somewhere else.

Did he regret reporting Dwayne? No. The man who had pulled him out of that burning jeep had died in Afghanistan. The man he reported on, spied on, betrayed and exploited was someone else, a stranger he didn't know anymore. Dwayne was a traitor in so many ways that it was personal — personal because Dwayne hadn't just betrayed their country, but also him as well. They had been brother soldiers, each looking out for the other, and Dwayne had broken that trust in the worst ways possible. He didn't feel regret, just anger and resentment. But he did regret betraying his team, even though he had no choice.

I guess the right thing to do is to take that D.C. job…

Fidelity

When you're a part of a team, you stand up for your teammates. Your loyalty is to them. You protect them through good and bad, because they'd do the same for you.

-Yogi Berra

His team had become his family, the people he didn't just trust with his back on the job, but with his life off-duty. Don was like a tough, older brother who switched between being a taskmaster boss and a friend with a willing ear. Megan was like a sister to him, someone he could wheedle and tease mercilessly and be mystified by whenever she went off on one of her profiles. And David…David was more than just his partner on the job; he was as close as a brother. He had told David more than he had ever imagined he would tell anyone, confided things that he had been warned not to do for his personal safety — details about himself, his family, his time in Afghanistan and more. With his teammates, he had forgotten that he was lying to them every day, that he was looking for traitors while pretending to be one. With them, he simply was himself, just another federal agent.

Okay, you don't trust me. I get that. But you have to understand that I trust you. The fact is, you are the only person I can trust right now.

Calling Charlie had been a desperate move, made by a desperate man who had nowhere else to turn. He still wasn't precisely sure why he made that call. Maybe some part of him knew that despite the pain he had caused with his undercover work, his team would still save him because he had broken the cardinal rule of espionage: he had let them see himself without the lies. He had been honest with them when he could, lying only when he had to, lying only to protect them from the quagmire that had trapped him. He had let them know him, not just the special agent who did his job, but the son who had lost his father, the brother who looked out for his sisters, the soldier who had seen too much, the man who always tried to do the right thing. He didn't want them involved because he was afraid it would get them killed. He was almost right.

The entire time he was on that boat, what tormented him the most wasn't the physical pain, but the thought that the people who deserved the truth — his mother, his sisters, his nieces and nephews, his team — would never know the full story because Kirkland was dead. As the hours dragged on and his certainty grew that he wouldn't survive to sunset, secondary to his desperate prayer that he would not break under torture was the hope that his team would pursue the truth to its end, that he had given them enough hints to investigate and discover that he hadn't betrayed them in the ways they thought he had, that he had done his best for as long as he could to serve and protect. He wanted them to know that he hadn't broken their trust.

Before they knew the full truth, they had rightfully trusted him with their lives — he would have gladly taken a bullet and given his life to protect them — and he trusted them with his. All those weeks in prison, his faith in them had not wavered in the slightest. They were his team, and he hoped that they would know that he did tell the truth, and that he would always have their backs, would always protect them, no matter what. Some would probably say that he had made an ultimate leap of faith when he made that phone call to Charlie by placing his life in the hands of the people he had hurt the most.

Still, they came for him. Regardless of what had happened, they still had his back, and in the process, had saved his life.

Bravery

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear

-Mark Twain

Neither death nor fear was a stranger to him. He had experienced both while on the front lines in Afghanistan. There was nowhere in the world like a war zone to teach a person what it was like to live with constant fear, to breathe in air that was thick with terror and suspicion. He had lost his friends to IEDs, ambushes, and RPGs. He nearly died himself in the explosion that killed his best friend, the same blast that Dwayne had saved him from.

By any definition, he wasn't suicidal. He had gone into this operation with full knowledge that he might die…with a heavy emphasis on might. Ideally, the goal of the mission had to been to uncover the Chinese spies in the DOJ with a minimal amount of fuss before it got to the point of sending him into the field without backup. Of course, when Dwayne had Taylor Ashby assassinated, the original 'ideal' plan had gone straight to hell. He still remembered Kirkland's tense voice over the phone, telling him the two of them needed to meet now. Obviously, he himself was not happy at the change of plans, particularly the part where he would be without immediate backup for an unknown amount of time in enemy territory. Kirkland wasn't thrilled either, but the two of them had agreed: there was no other option, not if they wanted to catch the ringleader of the espionage network.

I know Kirkland. If you tortured him, he didn't tell you anything.
That's right.

Learning about Kirkland's death had been devastating, but it had also given him strength as well. His handler hadn't broken, so neither would he. It was that determination that kept him lucid for so long, clinging to silence when he could not hang on to reason. He was a soldier, trained to withstand interrogation techniques as well as apply them; he could endure pain, to block it out when it became too much, focus his attention elsewhere. Unfortunately, he couldn't quite resort to reciting his name, rank and serial number, but he fell back on the only defensive weapon he had left: his wits — when he had them — and when he didn't, he resorted to sarcasm or silence. Needless to say, it had pissed off Lancer quite a bit, but when you knew you were going to die regardless of what you said, taunting the Grim Reaper wasn't that terrifying. It was just…slightly less terrifying. It might have been insane, but the situation itself was hardly sane and he had one too many nasty drugs in his system to think logically anyway.

Do you want to spend your last hours in unholy pain just so you can die?

He had watched the syringe being filled, and he had found himself oddly resigned and relieved when the needle of potassium chloride stabbed his chest. It was the end of the game for him, and he had won. He hadn't betrayed his country, and in the end, that was all that counted.

Waking up in the hospital, every muscle screaming in agony and every breath a struggle was a bonus — a second chance he was relieved to have.

Integrity

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

-John 8:32 Bible

The official debrief could have been a tenuous process — an interrogation intense enough to rival Lancer's — but it had been, instead, surprisingly swift. He could have credited the incredibly protective hospital staff who literally escorted the debriefing team out one day when his oxygen stats had fallen too low for their liking. He also could have credited Megan's intense glare every time the debriefing team kicked her out of the room to talk to him. But in truth, he knew it was because Lancer had been given enough rope to hang himself with.

The video recording of his torture alone would have vindicated him from all wrongdoing, not to mention Lancer's clear attempt at murder. Those two factors, combined with Kirkland's notes and two years of painstakingly gathered evidence, were enough to guarantee his freedom. The conclusion that he was not a double-agent for the Chinese was one that brought immense relief to the Bureau, who had feared another negative media storm. It hadn't quite brought the same degree of relief to himself, or to those who were hurt most by his deceptions.

His family — his mother, his sisters, and his in-laws — were the fastest to forgive him. They had been stunned by the news of his arrest and the charges brought against him, but when he explained that he couldn't have told them the truth because of the nature of the case, they had understood and forgiven him. Mostly. There were a few glares from his in-laws and looks from at least one of his sisters that promised a good long rant later on about taking on insane, dangerous cases and doing stupid things (like taking on insane, dangerous cases). His nieces and nephews had been kept completely clueless about the events surrounding their uncle's arrest and imprisonment by their parents, and thus merely thought that he had been 'busy' with a case and was now in the hospital because he "got an owie." He chuckled softly to himself, feeling his ribs twinge a little at the action. David had broken a few ribs while performing proper CPR, while saving his life. He wasn't going to complain about it.

You want me to do what?
We need you to cooperate. There's a mole in the Department of Justice; your friend Carter's the only lead we have right now. The fact that he approached you makes things easier for us, in the long run.
But I'll have to lie to my team, wherever I'm assigned to! I could be compromising any case I work on!
It won't affect any of your cases unless they happen to tie into this case, and then you'll just have to lie when you have to. Look, this might be our only chance to take this network down. Are you in or out?

He sighed. As for his team… that was taking time. They were rebuilding trust in each other, but it hadn't been a smooth road. There was progress being made, fits and starts that came and went with every case.

Megan had forgiven him first, probably because she knew that he wasn't abandoning her in that beach house, that he was actually moving the witness like he had said he was, or maybe it was because she knew what it was like having to keep secrets that burned away at you. Charlie, Amita and Larry were probably the second: Charlie probably because he knew what undercover missions meant from his consulting with the NSA, Amita probably because she was glad that he wasn't an actual traitor because that would have shattered Charlie's faith in humanity, and Larry probably because Megan had forgiven him and the quirky professor somehow did understand the choices he had been forced to make. Alan was probably relieved that he hadn't welcomed a traitor into his home, and that his instinct for entrusting his sons' lives to the right people hadn't been wrong.

Don was a harder case to read, but the two of them were working out their issues as well. While he knew his boss was relieved that he hadn't been wrong to trust him and technically understood what undercover meant, he also knew that Don hadn't been thrilled with what had transpired either. It would take time before Don would fully trust his back to his hands out in the field. Did that fact sting? Yes. But was it understandable? Completely.

As for David… Their partnership was gradually returning. It wasn't perfect and it wasn't the way it was before (and he doubted, some days, that it ever would be), but the banter and wheedling was slowly becoming normal for them again. There were moments when they hit a particular bump in the road — such as that one spat in front of Walker during the 'Robin Hood' bank case (he always wondered if that was the reason why Don had uncharacteristically stormed into the briefing room and chewed them out a day later) — but they were becoming rarities as well. His partner still hadn't quite let go of the pointed 'spy school' remarks, but most of them were now edged with a dose of good humor as opposed to anger. It was like starting over again, building up the trust between them, but it was simultaneously easier and harder this time around: easier because they knew each other's personalities and quirks so well, harder because they knew each other's tempers and buttons so well, but they were getting there.

Well, that depends what you want.
Yeah, what I want, I mean, is to go back, start over, have a regular job at the Bureau — no lying, no pretending.

Everything would be all right, in time. He could put this case behind him now, make it into the memory it deserved to be, and move on with his life. It wouldn't return to the way it was before, couldn't, (and in all honestly, he didn't want it to, especially if it meant a return to that mess), but it would hopefully settle into the vague vision he had had when he applied for the FBI. He would have a regular job in the Bureau, working with a fantastic team who were not only his coworkers, but his friends/quasi-adoptive family, and know that he was upholding the ideals and traditions his family had supported for so long without having to hide his actions.

He carefully removed the medal pinned to his breast pocket and placed it in its rectangular leather case, quietly closing it and slipping it into his pant pocket. A cool breeze caressed his cheek and he heard the crisp snap of cloth fluttering in the light gust, accompanied by a soft musical clinking of metal against metal. Leaning against the marble parapet, he looked out at the glittering lights of Washington D.C., taking in the sight of the American flags flying proudly in his country's capital.

I come from five generations of duty, honor and following orders.