The Question

by J. Ferguson a.k.a. Timeless A-Peel

Disclaimer: I don't own The New Avengers, nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, John Steed, and Larry Doomer. Sadly. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. This story is for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended

Timeline: Takes place from the end of the final season one episode, "Dirtier by the Dozen," all the way through the entirety of season 2.

Beta by rabidsamfan.

Author's Note: I know what you're thinking: Another chapter? Already? Yes, well, due to popular demand (all right, two people. They know who they are) I'm posting the final chapter of this fic. This story really was an experiment, and I'll just say again how pleased I am at how it was received. It was a real joy to write from Gambit's point of view, and to see if I could successfully weave a Purdey/Gambit romance during the series out of little clues. It all turned out better than I could have hoped. Thank you again to everyone who reviewed, and let me know if you enjoy the wrap-up! Keep an eye open for another update to "Life on Mars" in a few days, too.

I blinked. "Come again?"

"That's the general idea," she said huskily, crawling up the bed toward me. My jaw dropped as I watched her, as I felt her straddle my lap and watched her hands plant themselves on either side of the headboard. I didn't know what to think, what to say. My mind was spinning and my body was shaking, but Purdey didn't make me wait too long for an explanation.

"Purdey, what are you--?"

"I made a mistake," she said simply, looking deep into my eyes. "A horrible, horrible mistake."

I swallowed hard. "You did?"

"Yes. Mike, those few weeks we had together were some of the best of my life. I don't know when I've been so truly happy. Certainly not since my father died. And that was because of you. You were the reason I got up smiling every morning. You were the reason I started to really relax and let my guard down for the first time in…well, it may sound overdramatic, but it's been years."

"So I was right," I said quietly. "I thought—I thought we were good together, good for each other."

"We were," she agreed. "We are. And like an idiot I walked away from it all and let you go. And I've been regretting it. I thought I could get past it, get over you, the way I forced myself to get past Larry, although I don't seem to have done too well in either case, have I?" She looked down, eyes bitter with self-recrimination.

I shifted uncomfortably, not sure how to react. Was Purdey looking for me to put the brakes on, or did she genuinely want me back?

"Are you saying you want to try again?"

Her head snapped up excitedly, eyes bright with hope. "Yes, Mike. That's exactly what I'm saying. I want our little bit of conventionality back. I miss it terribly."

"What about Larry?" I pointed out, not unkindly. It was a fair question. After all, he was the one who tore us apart to begin with, made it so hard for us to get together the first time around. "You said…you said you couldn't…be with me, because of him." I couldn't say "love." Her words still hurt too much, even paraphrased.

She shook her head. "Larry's already taken enough from me—youth, happiness, confidence. I can't let him take you, too. One of the best things that's happened to me in years." Her eyes went soft, and she leaned in to kiss me, but I turned away, reaching up to grab her wrists and pull her hands off my face, push her away.

"I can't do this," I said quietly, gentle but firm.

Her eyes were huge and moist, blinking at me in disbelief. "What…?"

"Purdey, you can't do this to me. I don't know if you noticed, but I didn't take our last parting very well. You broke my heart, Purdey-girl. I know you didn't mean it. I know you had your reasons, and I respect that. But it's taken me months to not let my imagination run away with me and get my hopes up every time you look my way and smile. It's taken me this long to be able to enjoy you as a friend again without wanting scream about what we lost. I just got over you as best I can, Purdey-girl, and it nearly killed me. If we start up, and something happens to ruin it all a second time, I don't know if I can survive it."

She gaped at me for a moment, then shook her head and started to laugh, although there wasn't much humour behind it. "I can't believe it," she half-chuckled, half-sobbed. "We've switched places. I used to be the defensive one who couldn't let her guard down, and you were the one who was always ready to go at the drop of a hat. Now I'm here and you're putting the brakes on. How ironic! It'd be funny if it didn't make me want to cry."

I felt sick, but I couldn't help what I felt. "I'm sorry, Purdey-girl. Like I said, you broke my heart."

"So now you're going to break mine? Tit for tat? Is that it?" she asked angrily, tears spilling down her cheeks.

I can't win. I really can't. "You know it's not. Purdey, look at it from my point of view. You know how I feel. I'm just trying to survive."

"I never really got over you, either," she shot back. "I tried. I told you to go with other girls, but I took one look at Dr. LeParge, and I knew I couldn't stand it. But the real moment of truth was the argument from last Tuesday. You were right. It had to happen one of these days. No man would up and leave a woman he cared about. And you didn't. After Larry, the easiest thing to do would have been to run away and leave me to stew, but you didn't, did you? You came back. You stayed, and you held me, and you listened. And at the end of it all, I left you. That's when it came to me. You've done everything right. You've been…perfect. Or as near as you can get with our relationship, and I've been hiding. I hid when my father died and I hid after Larry. Hiding kept me away from you. And now you've finally decided to follow my lead, but you've no idea how wrong it is. It doesn't work. Hiding only makes you sad and lonely."

"Maybe that's my lot in life," I said miserably. "Maybe we were never cut out to be together. Maybe we're one of those star-crossed pairs who were fated to be apart forever. Maybe we're not meant to work."

"Yes we are!" Purdey screamed back angrily. "I know it!"

"How? How do you know it?" I shot back, feeling angry myself.

"Because I love you!"

She froze. I froze. We stared at each other for a moment, trying to digest what had happened. Then:

"You do what me?"

She remembered the reference, bless her. The target range. Me being an "old mother hen," as she called it. And she laughed a little.

"Love," she said finally. "I may need to be committed for admitting it, but I do. I don't blame you if you don't believe me. I mean, I didn't exactly give you much reason to, the way I responded."

"Purdey, it's all right."

"No, it's not. The only reason I never said what I felt was because I was afraid. Because I was a coward." Her mouth twisted bitterly, angrily, with self-recrimination.

"Hey." I put my fingers under her chin and turned her head toward me. "You're not a coward. You're one of the bravest people I've ever met, and that's saying something. You've got more balls than most of the Ministry's agents combined."

She actually laughed that time, really laughed, and I pulled her into a hug, because I thought she needed it.

"You really do beat all, sometimes, don't you, Mike? And here I thought you had no instinct for metaphor."

"I have my moments," I murmured in her ear.

"Don't I know it," she replied, and her voice was a little husky that time.

"Anyway, metaphor or not, just because you were hurt and don't want to be hurt again doesn't make you a coward. You're a great girl, and you deserve better than that."

"I don't know that I deserve much of anything," Purdey said quietly. "But I know what I want." She pulled away from where she'd buried her face in my shoulder, and met my eyes. "You."

What are all the clichés about moments like this? My heart stopped? My mouth went dry? The world spun? I couldn't breathe? Can we say "all of the above" and move on, because I'm not terribly good at waxing lyrical, particularly when it makes me sound like an idiot. All I'll say is Purdey saying she wanted me was something I'd only dreamt about, tried my hardest to reach, but never had much hope in getting there. But there she was, dead serious, and I knew I couldn't just turn her down because I was feeling a little bruised and battered. She was all I really wanted. I knew that. There was no point in trying to resist.

"Well, I'm a big believer in giving you what you want…"

She smiled, one of her best, brilliant smiles. "What I really want is to try again, without either of us being afraid this time. That would make me happy. But it all comes down to you. What do you want?"

"I think it's safe to say our wants coincide," I told her, and I kissed her. Properly. For a long, long time.

And then I made sure to remind her of all the lovely perks that come with the Mike Gambit package. There's a good selection, if I do say so myself. And I think the customer was satisfied.

All right, so maybe I have some fond memories of Canada after all.

And that's how it's been. We flew back to England and we've been having an indecent amount of fun ever since (I'll leave it up to you to figure out whether the emphasis is on "indecent" or "fun").

But I have to admit, despite how good everything is--how happy I am, how happy she is—there's still one little question that hasn't been answered, and it keeps nagging at me. Won't let me alone. And while it may not matter much in the end, I still want to know the answer. That's why I'm here, staring at Purdey's front door, waiting to knock. I'm going to ask. You're welcome to listen in. If she gives me one of those roundabout answers of hers, I may need help decoding it.

Here goes. I'm knocking.

She's home. I know she is. I saw her car out front, and her bike's in the shop. She's being slow, though.

Wait, here she is. The door's opened. Ah, she's in her leotard. I've interrupted her workout. Damn. Should have thought of that.

"Gambit!" She smiling. She doesn't look annoyed, but you never can tell with Purdey.

"Hello, Purdey-girl. Sorry to barge in like this, but, uh…have you got a minute?"

"I've got two. I'm feeling generous."

"Right. I don't need to come in. I can tell you're busy, so I'll ask what I want to ask and get out of your hair."

"All right." She crosses her arms and leans against the doorframe. "Ask."

"Right. Ask. Um, this may sound silly."

"I'm used to your questions, Mike. I doubt you can top yourself."

"Thanks ever so."

"Well, go on. Before we both die of old age."

"All right, all right." Deep breath. "Why did you decide to sleep with me, that day after the Miller assignment?"

Purdey smiles. "Why not?"

"That's not an answer. That's another question."

"You never specified how I had to answer." Cheeky grin. She really is infuriating sometimes.

"Well, I am now. Come on, Purdey. We've been in danger dozens of times, and I never got farther than a peck after dinner. There must have been some reason you decided to try me on."

She sighs and lets her head rest against the doorframe with a gentle thunk. She's looking down. Not at anything in particular. Just down. I know that look. She's thinking it through. How to answer. If she should answer.

"I think," she says suddenly, slowly, quietly, as though she's trying out the words, gauging what they say. "I think it was because that was the day I realised you were my hero."

Erm, what? "Come, again?" Maybe I'm being thick, but more likely she's jumped ahead on me again, and she's going to have to backtrack. If I don't tell her to, then who knows where we'll end up.

She doesn't look annoyed this time, though. She smiles, looks up again. "Oh, I know it sounds corny, but it's true. You saved me that day."

"I don't mean this to sound boastful, but I've saved you plenty of times. Never seemed to make much of a difference."

Knowing smile. "Ah, but this time was different. This time…well, it started when you got me out of the cell—"

"Half out. You finished the job when I started getting the stuffing beaten out of me."

She's shaking her head. "It doesn't matter. I wouldn't have known where to go even if I had gotten out on my own. After all, it was you who led the way. You who got us away from Miller. And I think you may have even been able to capture him without a distraction. Even if you weren't, you never would have let me play decoy, would you? You told me to stay where I was."

I swallow hard. I don't like thinking about how I let Purdey roll me over and play me like the predictable idiot I am, so she could run off half-cocked.

"I should have listened." Purdey's sounds upset now. Not sad, really. Just…emotional. "When you started shooting at me I could have sworn you'd lost your mind. But when that mine went…" She shudders. "I swore I was going to die out there. All it would have taken was one step to the side, or someone else to shoot at me and set one off. Maimed or dead. That was what was going to happen to me."

"I get the point." I don't want to talk about the minefield more than we have to. That little slip of red. Blood red. Against army green.

"Do you? I may not have been able to hear, but I could see. You handed your gun over. You made a deal."

"Yes." The wrong deal. The irresponsible deal. But I didn't care. I still don't care. I'd do it again in a minute.

"You were going to trade yourself and the world for me. World War Three. And they would have killed you. All for me."

I swallow again. "It seemed fair at the time…" I try, but my voice is shaking.

"You saved me."

"No." I shake my head. "Steed saved you. Saved us all. He got you out."

"Steed had the cavalry. It's not that I'm not grateful. Of course I am. But Steed had everything. You had nothing. And you gave what little advantage you had for me anyway. You saved me for me. You were willing to sacrifice yourself, and you never asked for anything in return."

"Neither did Steed. He's saved you loads of times."

She laughs. "I didn't say it had to be logical. When have I ever had to be logical?"

She has a point.

"Besides, I didn't love Steed." She's smiling again. "It wasn't an epiphany or anything of the kind. It was more that I couldn't ignore how I felt any longer. If what you were willing to give up for me didn't prove that you actually cared, that you weren't going to hurt me, nothing would."

"Then why did you leave the next morning? Why didn't we talk about it properly way back then?"

She shrugs. "Still scared, I suppose. I had to buck myself up to do what I did, and I lost my nerve the morning after. Too many old wounds. But whenever I felt vulnerable again, you were there, and the way I felt about you…I felt safe." She brushes hair out of her eyes self-consciously. "You know the rest. That's the whole story. That's the answer to your question. Satisfied?"

Am I? "Yes. I think that's the biggest compliment you've ever paid me."

She snorts a little. "Is it really? I would have thought it would be something unprintable, but I suppose we all have hidden depths."

I smile. She knows I mean it. I know she meant it. I'm happy. She's happy. We can do things properly for a change. It's going to be brilliant.

"As you're here," Purdey goes on, "you may as well come in. I was just about to break for lunch."

Come to think of it, I'm hungry myself. Been too distracted to notice until now. "Sounds good. There's a pub just around the corner."

"Lovely. Just let me change." She turns and heads inside, leaves me to close the door. This is as far as you go. Purdey's changing. I have to protect her honour, don't I? That's my job.

I'm glad for it.

End