Remember how I said my muse has ADD? I meant it.
I don't mind so much this time, though. I have been rather neglecting my DEBS fics. Hope this makes up for it at least a little. ;)
Title: Anything
Rating: R. You'll see why soon enough.
Comments: I know I've been horribly negligent in updating my DEBS fics - it doesn't help that the muse has been seduced by the 2010 Alice in Wonderland movie and turned into a huge Alice/White Queen shipper - so I thought I'd try a little experiment and see if I could try and get back into the right frame of mind. This is a very, VERY AU take on Raquel and Kali (since I know people are missing her presence over in Prometheus Unbound) and how things could have gone after the fall of The Centre.
Legal Disclaimer: I do not own 'D.E.B.S.', as I am not Angela Robinson. 'The Pretender' - whose characters and concepts are mentioned in this fic more then shown - was created by Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle. I do own Raquel and Kali (and Raquel's squad), and am very glad of it.
Summary: You'd do anything for her. Anything.
You don't hear her come in. Of course, you never do.
You still know she's there, though. You always do, somehow. Neither of you can really explain it - though, truthfully, you haven't been trying all that hard to figure it out, have you? - but fortunately, she seems okay with it.
You don't turn to look at her. Not out of any fear that she'll be upset with what she sees on your face - on the contrary, you know that, even though she doesn't say anything, she secretly loves the way you drink her in with your eyes, how you can never get enough of looking at her - but because you can't bring yourself to move.
You've been sitting in this stupid hotel room for thirty-five minutes, now, and in all that time, you've barely done more then shift position a little. You haven't really been seeing the wall you've been staring at, haven't given any thought to the bed you're sitting on, haven't been thinking about anything, really. You've just... been.
You have no idea how long she's been watching you sitting there, thoughts drifting.
Probably not too long. She'd have gotten bored or impatient if you just sat there ignoring her for too long, wouldn't she?
You're okay with that, though.
You don't feel ashamed, anymore, being there with her. In the beginning...
Well. That was then.
Now...
"How'd it go?" you ask her, still not moving.
Now...
"Well enough," she tells you, and you enjoy the way her voice seems to slide into your ears and coat your insides with liquid velvet. "I believe the government will be all too happy to forget that I even exist."
Now...
"Good," you reply, and it is, because you prefer having her all to yourself.
Now... Well, now you don't wrestle with guilt and confusion when she's gone. You barely feel anything when you're not with her, beyond a gaping hole inside yourself that hurts worse every hour you're apart. Only when she's there do you feel whole, complete.
On some level, you feel that it should scare you, how much you need her. It doesn't, though. It's simply a fact, like the sky is blue, or water's wet. Huge, unchanging, and obvious.
She wasn't sure what to make of your feelings for her, at first. She's a sociopathic assassin, after all. She's not good at dealing with emotions, but even she knew there was something wrong with you falling for her. It took some time for you to make her see that good or bad, right or wrong, your feelings for her weren't going to change.
You do think there's a part of her that never objected all that much, though. Because, really, if she wanted you gone, you'd be out on your ass before you knew what had happened, wouldn't you? And if she wanted to leave you, you'd never find her. But she's still with you.
You can forgive her for needing to take her time in figuring out how she feels about you. The Centre did their damnedest to beat each and every emotion out of her, after all, so working out what's left, what can be replaced or rebuilt, what's gone for good... Well, that takes time. You don't mind giving her that time, though. Not in the slightest.
You'd do anything for her, after all.
Anything.
It didn't take long for you to decide that you were going to have to leave the academy.
Classes had become so indescribably tedious, every hour feeling like a year. And, really, what did any of it matter? Studying, theory... You'd been going on missions for years. You'd gone to other countries, helped changed the course of events on a global level, made a difference in the world at large. How could they expect you to go from that back to just being a student? It felt like such a huge step backward to you.
Of course, there was also how it kept you away from her.
She didn't say anything about it. She didn't have to. She probably could have left you behind without a second thought, but the set of her jaw whenever you mentioned school, the slightest hint of irritation in her eyes when you'd said you had to go back... She hides it well, but you'd learned to read her well enough to know she she wasn't happy about it.
She didn't actually say that she thought you were being wasted with the DEBS. She definitely didn't tell you that she missed you when you were gone.
You knew, though.
And you couldn't stand being away from her, either, could you? The way you glared at the clock, willing it to go faster... The way you fidgeted, like a crack addict in withdrawal... You'd started getting a number of odd looks, and more then one person had asked you what was wrong.
You could only feel irritated with them. Like they could ever understand what you were going through? Even if you'd had the words to explain, you'd never have wasted them on that crowd.
Never in your life had you been so glad that the school year was almost over. You could already tell that, barring some major change in your life, you wouldn't be going back for your senior year.
Not unless she asked you to, for some reason.
Because you'd do anything for her.
Her arms slip around you possessively, and you lean back into her embrace, closing your eyes.
You don't object to her attitude. As far as you're concerned, you do belong to her, so she has every right to treat your body however she wishes. If she wants to hold you, she can. If she wants to hit you - though you know, you know, that she never would, outside of sparring - that's okay. If she wants to lay you down and bring you to one screaming orgasm after another...
All right, so you've actively encouraged that. You do your best to return the favor, though, and you know she definitely enjoys that. Despite your current mood, you can't help smiling at the thought. She chuckles softly into your hair, as if knowing the direction of your thoughts - and part of you is certain she does - and just holds you.
It's moments like this that prove to you - as if you needed any convincing - that everyone who says she's terrible for you is wrong. It's not their fault, though. They don't get to see her the way you do, not being privileged enough to see behind the mask.
Because she's not completely dead inside, no matter how much she might wish to be.
You're glad of it, of course. You do everything you can to try and help her heal, and the fact that she lets you get away with it despite knowing full well what you're doing tells you that part of her wants you to try and make her whole.
And if you have to carve out pieces of yourself to give to her, well, that's what you'll do.
You skipped the last day of classes completely.
You didn't even care if anyone guessed why. It just seemed so stupid and pointless to go sit there in class when there wasn't even anything for you to do - finals were long since over, not that you even gave a damn how you'd done - lessons were over for the year, and you did not feel like going in to be social.
There was only one person you'd wanted to see, and her opinion was the only one that mattered to you.
You could tell that she was only a little surprised to see you, but far from displeased. You melted immediately into her embrace, claiming her lips with a passion that would have terrified you before you'd met her.
Sex with her could often be wild, and that time was no different. (Later, you would be just a bit embarrassed at the damage the two of you managed to inflict on the hotel room, even though you never could quite pinpoint just when you'd managed to rip the shower curtain half off its rungs.) It was almost two full hours before the two of you collapsed onto the bed, exhausted.
Really, why on earth would anyone have expected you to go to class instead of that?
Anyone who knew her would say that Kali did not cuddle. That she always had with you, even in the beginning when she hadn't known you all that well and it had kind of annoyed her, told you that she cared about you.
Now, though, you didn't need to try and talk her into it. She pulled you to her, sighing in contentment as your face settled against her neck. The sound melted something inside of you, and sheer joy made your eyes prickle with tears.
You didn't say anything. She knew you loved her. You hadn't said so aloud, yet, but somehow that just seemed like a formality.
You drifted off for a while. It didn't surprise you, given how much energy you'd just expended. She'd sat up in bed so she could work on something on her PDA, but either she'd taken the time to rearrange you against her side or you'd done it in your sleep. Either way, the important thing to you was that she'd stayed. She could have sat at the table to work, after all. (You were pretty sure there was at least one chair the two of you hadn't broken.)
You were certain she'd known the moment you'd started waking up, but you kissed her side in greeting anyway. She paused in her work long enough to reach down and stroke your hair, then resumed.
"What are you working on?" You knew from experience that if she didn't want to tell you, she wouldn't. You were okay with that, and she knew you'd drop it if she told you to, so she never got upset with you for asking.
This time, though, she was willing to talk. "I'm trying to track down a certain data module that was recovered from one of the Centre offices. It has enough sensitive information on it to let me convince the government that they've never even heard of me."
The idea that she might want to leave Los Angeles - maybe even the country - didn't alarm you. You'd been expecting it, really. "Would it be enough for them to let me go with you?"
She paused, stylus poised in the air above the screen, and pinned you with a look. "You do realize that I'm hardly likely to just find some corner of the world to hide in and retire, right?"
"Although you could," you pointed out. Between the money she'd already had in her accounts, and what she took from the Centre and their bosses, she didn't really need to work, anymore.
She inclined her head, conceeding the point. "I'd get far too bored."
It didn't escape your attention that she still wasn't saying 'no'. You allowed one hand to slide over her silky smooth skin and grinned at her. "I promise I can keep you distracted."
She chuckled. "That only goes so far, and you know it."
"Just like you know that not every form of excitement is illegal."
"And if it was? If it meant betraying your country?"
Didn't she get it, yet? "I don't care. All I need is you."
She gave you a skeptical look. "Then why don't you go pick up the data module for me?"
"Where is it?"
You could tell she didn't quite believe you, probably thinking that your priorities had changed just a bit too far too fast. Of course, you had been doing your best to play down your frustration with the academy and the DEBS in general, so that was really your own fault.
She slid out of bed and walked over to the table, and you followed her... after taking a moment to enjoy the view of her sans clothing. (You are only human, after all.) "I think I know where it's being stored. Security should be fairly light, with only one team guarding it until someone arrives to transport it to a more secure facility. Even if I give you the tools to disable security, you'll still have to deal with them. And leaving witnesses would be a bad idea."
She was telling you that if the DEBS there saw you, you were going to have to kill them. You didn't want to do that, of course, but you couldn't help but feel like the idea should have horrified you more then it did. "I understand."
Her eyes narrowed. "Really? Just like that?"
"I'd do anything for you," you told her honestly.
She studied you for a long moment, then reached down - and you would fully admit to watching her chest as she did so - and righted one of the chairs. (Ha! You knew at least one of them had survived.) "Sit down," she told you, and you immediately obeyed as she walked over to the dresser and pulled something out of a drawer. "Put your left hand on the table."
It was there almost before she finished speaking.
She came back to the table, and you could see that she was holding something that looked like a machete. She gave it to you, looked you right in the eyes, and said, "Cut it off."
You couldn't help but blink at that. "That would make it a lot harder to get the module for you."
"I'm sure you'd manage," she told you, and you felt a flicker of pride at her words, despite everything. "You'd do anything for me, hmm? Prove it."
You looked at your hand for a long moment, then raised the machete high in the air. You could only hope she had enough supplies to keep you from bleeding to death, as then you'd never be able to do what she asked of you. Then you swung the blade at your wrist with all the force you can muster.
You were honestly surprised when she caught your right wrist, halting the blade just before it came into contact with your skin. She looked surprised, too, and not just from the amount of effort it took to stop you. "You really would have done it, wouldn't you?" she marveled, eyes wider then usual.
"I'd do anything for you," you repeated. She just studied your face for a while, processing that.
Then she smiled. "I think I can work with that."
"You were thinking about them again, weren't you?" she asks softly, though whether she's being so gentle because she cares that much or because she knows that's what a normal person would do is anyone's guess.
It doesn't matter to you. You know how she feels about you, even if she doesn't, or can't quite admit it to herself, yet. "I don't know," you reply with a shrug. "I was kind of spacing, I guess."
"You know, you are allowed to do things when I'm not around."
You smile again. "I know." And you do. Never once has she demanded that you turn your control over to her, let her make all your decisions, or act like some kind of robot. It would never even enter her mind. You know she likes your spirit, and you know she doesn't want a plaything.
She wants an equal. A partner, in every aspect of her life. She hasn't said so, yet, but you can tell.
And that she believes that can be you...
Frankly, you take more pride in that then you ever did from anything that happened during your time with the DEBS.
"Did they say anything about me?" you ask, because you kind of wonder, now that she mentioned them.
"They weren't happy letting you go scot free - for obvious reasons - but I convinced them it would be in their best interests to do so."
You're not surprised by either part of that, really. You never doubted she could pull it off, of course. And why would the DEBS be happy to let her go?
They didn't exactly like agents who committed treason.
You couldn't help but feel a flicker of annoyance when you realize that it's your squad that was assigned guard duty.
Really, she could have mentioned that beforehand. Not for a second do you believe that she didn't know. She's far, far too good for that. Maybe that was part of the test, but it was still annoying. Not to mention that, had you known, you could have planned for it, even used it to your advantage.
You ran into Monica first, and cursed silently when she saw you. Really, though, the storage room was smaller then your old dorm room, so how were you supposed to have avoided being seen? The gadget Kali had given you hadn't registered anyone inside, and it suddenly occurred to you that that might not have been an accident.
Prove it.
Monica's happy to see you, of course, glad that you managed to get the message about your assignment despite not showing up for classes. (All right, so maybe there was something you would have been doing besides sitting in class, talking. You still didn't regret blowing them off.)
You played along, though you told her that you hadn't been told who to expect, or when they were getting there. Monica didn't know who it was, either, but she did know that whoever it was would arrive within the next ten or fifteen minutes. (She seemed to think you'd been watching the perimeter, and you hadn't seen any reason to convince her otherwise.)
That didn't give you a lot of time to work, and even though you were pretty sure that the rest of the gadgets you'd been given had done their work, you knew there was no real way of convincing Monica she hadn't seen you. Oh, she might well cover for you, but it would weigh on her, and eat at her, and she was far too easy to read for her to hide it.
Despite knowing it wouldn't really matter, you were happy that she'd walked past you and was facing away from you when you put a bullet through her skull. You knew you would have been seeing the look on her face in your dreams for a while, if she hadn't.
Kathleen didn't even notice you as she rushed through the door to Monica's side, and you winced as her babblings of disbelief turned into heartbroken wails.
You fired several more times. After all, they belonged together. You waste no further time in collecting the data module, which - unsurprisingly - was exactly where you'd been told it would be.
You turned to find Bethany in the door, watching you in shock. Her gun was out, but not aimed at anything. "How... How could you...?"
"You know as well as I do that Kathleen could never have lived without her," you told her. "They'll be together forever, now."
You could see her reluctantly admit to herself that you were right. "Even so..." She shook her head. "You're doing this for her, aren't you?"
You didn't need to ask who she was talking about. Nor do you even think about denying it. "Yes. Because I understand how Kathleen and Monica felt about each other, now. How powerful and overwhelming it is. That's why I know I did the right thing. I couldn't live without her, either."
A tear slipped silently down Bethany's cheek, and you could see agonized understanding in her eyes.
She knew how it felt, too.
"And suicide is a sin," she whispered.
And while you both knew that she'd sinned plenty in her life thus far, that was obviously in an entirely different league, as far as she was concerned. "You're my best friend, Beth," you said softly, raising your gun one more time.
She didn't even try to stop you, allowing her own gun to fall to the floor. 'Thank you' she mouthed, smiling sadly, and you cut her misery short, too.
"I hope you and Mark are happy, together," you told her corpse, then stepped past her and headed out of the building. Why the DEBS had a storage room in an empty office building, you never did find out, but you suspected it may be soundproofed enough to have kept your shots from attracting any attention.
When you ran into Amy down near the front doors, though, you knew that there was precious little hope she wouldn't figure out what had happened. And why.
You just stared at each other for a full minute of silence. You didn't even think about trying to pull your gun on her, knowing all too well how futile that would be. "You gonna try and stop me?" you finally asked her. It was a fair question, given that you were standing there holding the data module that she'd obviously come to collect.
She clearly knew why you had it. "You love her?"
"Yes. To a rather alarming degree, really," you admitted.
Her lips quirked up into a curious little smile. "Good. She could use that. And you may well be the only one who can get through to her." Her smile widened. "And I do know that feeling, so no. I'm not." She stepped out of the way.
You paused just a little longer. "So, does this mean you're going to be my sister-in-law?"
She snorted in amusement. "Get going before I hurt you."
You decided that was good advice.
You don't regret it.
That's what bothers you most, sometimes. You haven't had a single bad night's sleep after killing three of the best friends you ever had, whom you'd lived with for the past several years.
If anything, you're glad you severed your ties with the DEBS with such finality. There's nothing to lure you back, now, no one there you especially care about.
As you sit there, safe and secure in her arms, all you can think is, "I hear Fiji's nice this time of year."
You can hear her smile in her voice. "I suppose a little vacation won't kill me."
You open your eyes and turn around to face her, allowing yourself to get lost in her eyes. She pulls you into a kiss, and you hardly object, instead reaching under her shirt. Not that you expect it to be there for long, but you can't wait any longer to feel her skin.
So you'll go to Fiji. You'll relax, you'll have fun, and after that... Well, who knows? If you end up just settling down somewhere, great. If she wants to go back to work as an assassin, you'll help her. She's not the world conquest sort, but you know that if she had been, you'd happily help her out with that, too. "I love you," you tell her softly.
She doesn't say anything back, but she doesn't need to. When she smiles and pauses in the act of removing your bra, and you feel a single drop of water hit your neck, you know that even if she can't articulate it, yet, she loves you, too.
Which is why you'll do anything for her.
Anything.
Title: Anything
Rating: R. You'll see why soon enough.
Comments: I know I've been horribly negligent in updating my DEBS fics - it doesn't help that the muse has been seduced by the 2010 Alice in Wonderland movie and turned into a huge Alice/White Queen shipper - so I thought I'd try a little experiment and see if I could try and get back into the right frame of mind. This is a very, VERY AU take on Raquel and Kali (since I know people are missing her presence over in Prometheus Unbound) and how things could have gone after the fall of The Centre.
Legal Disclaimer: I do not own 'D.E.B.S.', as I am not Angela Robinson. 'The Pretender' - whose characters and concepts are mentioned in this fic more then shown - was created by Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle. I do own Raquel and Kali (and Raquel's squad), and am very glad of it.
Summary: You'd do anything for her. Anything.
You don't hear her come in. Of course, you never do.
You still know she's there, though. You always do, somehow. Neither of you can really explain it - though, truthfully, you haven't been trying all that hard to figure it out, have you? - but fortunately, she seems okay with it.
You don't turn to look at her. Not out of any fear that she'll be upset with what she sees on your face - on the contrary, you know that, even though she doesn't say anything, she secretly loves the way you drink her in with your eyes, how you can never get enough of looking at her - but because you can't bring yourself to move.
You've been sitting in this stupid hotel room for thirty-five minutes, now, and in all that time, you've barely done more then shift position a little. You haven't really been seeing the wall you've been staring at, haven't given any thought to the bed you're sitting on, haven't been thinking about anything, really. You've just... been.
You have no idea how long she's been watching you sitting there, thoughts drifting.
Probably not too long. She'd have gotten bored or impatient if you just sat there ignoring her for too long, wouldn't she?
You're okay with that, though.
You don't feel ashamed, anymore, being there with her. In the beginning...
Well. That was then.
Now...
"How'd it go?" you ask her, still not moving.
Now...
"Well enough," she tells you, and you enjoy the way her voice seems to slide into your ears and coat your insides with liquid velvet. "I believe the government will be all too happy to forget that I even exist."
Now...
"Good," you reply, and it is, because you prefer having her all to yourself.
Now... Well, now you don't wrestle with guilt and confusion when she's gone. You barely feel anything when you're not with her, beyond a gaping hole inside yourself that hurts worse every hour you're apart. Only when she's there do you feel whole, complete.
On some level, you feel that it should scare you, how much you need her. It doesn't, though. It's simply a fact, like the sky is blue, or water's wet. Huge, unchanging, and obvious.
She wasn't sure what to make of your feelings for her, at first. She's a sociopathic assassin, after all. She's not good at dealing with emotions, but even she knew there was something wrong with you falling for her. It took some time for you to make her see that good or bad, right or wrong, your feelings for her weren't going to change.
You do think there's a part of her that never objected all that much, though. Because, really, if she wanted you gone, you'd be out on your ass before you knew what had happened, wouldn't you? And if she wanted to leave you, you'd never find her. But she's still with you.
You can forgive her for needing to take her time in figuring out how she feels about you. The Centre did their damnedest to beat each and every emotion out of her, after all, so working out what's left, what can be replaced or rebuilt, what's gone for good... Well, that takes time. You don't mind giving her that time, though. Not in the slightest.
You'd do anything for her, after all.
Anything.
It didn't take long for you to decide that you were going to have to leave the academy.
Classes had become so indescribably tedious, every hour feeling like a year. And, really, what did any of it matter? Studying, theory... You'd been going on missions for years. You'd gone to other countries, helped changed the course of events on a global level, made a difference in the world at large. How could they expect you to go from that back to just being a student? It felt like such a huge step backward to you.
Of course, there was also how it kept you away from her.
She didn't say anything about it. She didn't have to. She probably could have left you behind without a second thought, but the set of her jaw whenever you mentioned school, the slightest hint of irritation in her eyes when you'd said you had to go back... She hides it well, but you'd learned to read her well enough to know she she wasn't happy about it.
She didn't actually say that she thought you were being wasted with the DEBS. She definitely didn't tell you that she missed you when you were gone.
You knew, though.
And you couldn't stand being away from her, either, could you? The way you glared at the clock, willing it to go faster... The way you fidgeted, like a crack addict in withdrawal... You'd started getting a number of odd looks, and more then one person had asked you what was wrong.
You could only feel irritated with them. Like they could ever understand what you were going through? Even if you'd had the words to explain, you'd never have wasted them on that crowd.
Never in your life had you been so glad that the school year was almost over. You could already tell that, barring some major change in your life, you wouldn't be going back for your senior year.
Not unless she asked you to, for some reason.
Because you'd do anything for her.
Her arms slip around you possessively, and you lean back into her embrace, closing your eyes.
You don't object to her attitude. As far as you're concerned, you do belong to her, so she has every right to treat your body however she wishes. If she wants to hold you, she can. If she wants to hit you - though you know, you know, that she never would, outside of sparring - that's okay. If she wants to lay you down and bring you to one screaming orgasm after another...
All right, so you've actively encouraged that. You do your best to return the favor, though, and you know she definitely enjoys that. Despite your current mood, you can't help smiling at the thought. She chuckles softly into your hair, as if knowing the direction of your thoughts - and part of you is certain she does - and just holds you.
It's moments like this that prove to you - as if you needed any convincing - that everyone who says she's terrible for you is wrong. It's not their fault, though. They don't get to see her the way you do, not being privileged enough to see behind the mask.
Because she's not completely dead inside, no matter how much she might wish to be.
You're glad of it, of course. You do everything you can to try and help her heal, and the fact that she lets you get away with it despite knowing full well what you're doing tells you that part of her wants you to try and make her whole.
And if you have to carve out pieces of yourself to give to her, well, that's what you'll do.
You skipped the last day of classes completely.
You didn't even care if anyone guessed why. It just seemed so stupid and pointless to go sit there in class when there wasn't even anything for you to do - finals were long since over, not that you even gave a damn how you'd done - lessons were over for the year, and you did not feel like going in to be social.
There was only one person you'd wanted to see, and her opinion was the only one that mattered to you.
You could tell that she was only a little surprised to see you, but far from displeased. You melted immediately into her embrace, claiming her lips with a passion that would have terrified you before you'd met her.
Sex with her could often be wild, and that time was no different. (Later, you would be just a bit embarrassed at the damage the two of you managed to inflict on the hotel room, even though you never could quite pinpoint just when you'd managed to rip the shower curtain half off its rungs.) It was almost two full hours before the two of you collapsed onto the bed, exhausted.
Really, why on earth would anyone have expected you to go to class instead of that?
Anyone who knew her would say that Kali did not cuddle. That she always had with you, even in the beginning when she hadn't known you all that well and it had kind of annoyed her, told you that she cared about you.
Now, though, you didn't need to try and talk her into it. She pulled you to her, sighing in contentment as your face settled against her neck. The sound melted something inside of you, and sheer joy made your eyes prickle with tears.
You didn't say anything. She knew you loved her. You hadn't said so aloud, yet, but somehow that just seemed like a formality.
You drifted off for a while. It didn't surprise you, given how much energy you'd just expended. She'd sat up in bed so she could work on something on her PDA, but either she'd taken the time to rearrange you against her side or you'd done it in your sleep. Either way, the important thing to you was that she'd stayed. She could have sat at the table to work, after all. (You were pretty sure there was at least one chair the two of you hadn't broken.)
You were certain she'd known the moment you'd started waking up, but you kissed her side in greeting anyway. She paused in her work long enough to reach down and stroke your hair, then resumed.
"What are you working on?" You knew from experience that if she didn't want to tell you, she wouldn't. You were okay with that, and she knew you'd drop it if she told you to, so she never got upset with you for asking.
This time, though, she was willing to talk. "I'm trying to track down a certain data module that was recovered from one of the Centre offices. It has enough sensitive information on it to let me convince the government that they've never even heard of me."
The idea that she might want to leave Los Angeles - maybe even the country - didn't alarm you. You'd been expecting it, really. "Would it be enough for them to let me go with you?"
She paused, stylus poised in the air above the screen, and pinned you with a look. "You do realize that I'm hardly likely to just find some corner of the world to hide in and retire, right?"
"Although you could," you pointed out. Between the money she'd already had in her accounts, and what she took from the Centre and their bosses, she didn't really need to work, anymore.
She inclined her head, conceeding the point. "I'd get far too bored."
It didn't escape your attention that she still wasn't saying 'no'. You allowed one hand to slide over her silky smooth skin and grinned at her. "I promise I can keep you distracted."
She chuckled. "That only goes so far, and you know it."
"Just like you know that not every form of excitement is illegal."
"And if it was? If it meant betraying your country?"
Didn't she get it, yet? "I don't care. All I need is you."
She gave you a skeptical look. "Then why don't you go pick up the data module for me?"
"Where is it?"
You could tell she didn't quite believe you, probably thinking that your priorities had changed just a bit too far too fast. Of course, you had been doing your best to play down your frustration with the academy and the DEBS in general, so that was really your own fault.
She slid out of bed and walked over to the table, and you followed her... after taking a moment to enjoy the view of her sans clothing. (You are only human, after all.) "I think I know where it's being stored. Security should be fairly light, with only one team guarding it until someone arrives to transport it to a more secure facility. Even if I give you the tools to disable security, you'll still have to deal with them. And leaving witnesses would be a bad idea."
She was telling you that if the DEBS there saw you, you were going to have to kill them. You didn't want to do that, of course, but you couldn't help but feel like the idea should have horrified you more then it did. "I understand."
Her eyes narrowed. "Really? Just like that?"
"I'd do anything for you," you told her honestly.
She studied you for a long moment, then reached down - and you would fully admit to watching her chest as she did so - and righted one of the chairs. (Ha! You knew at least one of them had survived.) "Sit down," she told you, and you immediately obeyed as she walked over to the dresser and pulled something out of a drawer. "Put your left hand on the table."
It was there almost before she finished speaking.
She came back to the table, and you could see that she was holding something that looked like a machete. She gave it to you, looked you right in the eyes, and said, "Cut it off."
You couldn't help but blink at that. "That would make it a lot harder to get the module for you."
"I'm sure you'd manage," she told you, and you felt a flicker of pride at her words, despite everything. "You'd do anything for me, hmm? Prove it."
You looked at your hand for a long moment, then raised the machete high in the air. You could only hope she had enough supplies to keep you from bleeding to death, as then you'd never be able to do what she asked of you. Then you swung the blade at your wrist with all the force you can muster.
You were honestly surprised when she caught your right wrist, halting the blade just before it came into contact with your skin. She looked surprised, too, and not just from the amount of effort it took to stop you. "You really would have done it, wouldn't you?" she marveled, eyes wider then usual.
"I'd do anything for you," you repeated. She just studied your face for a while, processing that.
Then she smiled. "I think I can work with that."
"You were thinking about them again, weren't you?" she asks softly, though whether she's being so gentle because she cares that much or because she knows that's what a normal person would do is anyone's guess.
It doesn't matter to you. You know how she feels about you, even if she doesn't, or can't quite admit it to herself, yet. "I don't know," you reply with a shrug. "I was kind of spacing, I guess."
"You know, you are allowed to do things when I'm not around."
You smile again. "I know." And you do. Never once has she demanded that you turn your control over to her, let her make all your decisions, or act like some kind of robot. It would never even enter her mind. You know she likes your spirit, and you know she doesn't want a plaything.
She wants an equal. A partner, in every aspect of her life. She hasn't said so, yet, but you can tell.
And that she believes that can be you...
Frankly, you take more pride in that then you ever did from anything that happened during your time with the DEBS.
"Did they say anything about me?" you ask, because you kind of wonder, now that she mentioned them.
"They weren't happy letting you go scot free - for obvious reasons - but I convinced them it would be in their best interests to do so."
You're not surprised by either part of that, really. You never doubted she could pull it off, of course. And why would the DEBS be happy to let her go?
They didn't exactly like agents who committed treason.
You couldn't help but feel a flicker of annoyance when you realize that it's your squad that was assigned guard duty.
Really, she could have mentioned that beforehand. Not for a second do you believe that she didn't know. She's far, far too good for that. Maybe that was part of the test, but it was still annoying. Not to mention that, had you known, you could have planned for it, even used it to your advantage.
You ran into Monica first, and cursed silently when she saw you. Really, though, the storage room was smaller then your old dorm room, so how were you supposed to have avoided being seen? The gadget Kali had given you hadn't registered anyone inside, and it suddenly occurred to you that that might not have been an accident.
Prove it.
Monica's happy to see you, of course, glad that you managed to get the message about your assignment despite not showing up for classes. (All right, so maybe there was something you would have been doing besides sitting in class, talking. You still didn't regret blowing them off.)
You played along, though you told her that you hadn't been told who to expect, or when they were getting there. Monica didn't know who it was, either, but she did know that whoever it was would arrive within the next ten or fifteen minutes. (She seemed to think you'd been watching the perimeter, and you hadn't seen any reason to convince her otherwise.)
That didn't give you a lot of time to work, and even though you were pretty sure that the rest of the gadgets you'd been given had done their work, you knew there was no real way of convincing Monica she hadn't seen you. Oh, she might well cover for you, but it would weigh on her, and eat at her, and she was far too easy to read for her to hide it.
Despite knowing it wouldn't really matter, you were happy that she'd walked past you and was facing away from you when you put a bullet through her skull. You knew you would have been seeing the look on her face in your dreams for a while, if she hadn't.
Kathleen didn't even notice you as she rushed through the door to Monica's side, and you winced as her babblings of disbelief turned into heartbroken wails.
You fired several more times. After all, they belonged together. You waste no further time in collecting the data module, which - unsurprisingly - was exactly where you'd been told it would be.
You turned to find Bethany in the door, watching you in shock. Her gun was out, but not aimed at anything. "How... How could you...?"
"You know as well as I do that Kathleen could never have lived without her," you told her. "They'll be together forever, now."
You could see her reluctantly admit to herself that you were right. "Even so..." She shook her head. "You're doing this for her, aren't you?"
You didn't need to ask who she was talking about. Nor do you even think about denying it. "Yes. Because I understand how Kathleen and Monica felt about each other, now. How powerful and overwhelming it is. That's why I know I did the right thing. I couldn't live without her, either."
A tear slipped silently down Bethany's cheek, and you could see agonized understanding in her eyes.
She knew how it felt, too.
"And suicide is a sin," she whispered.
And while you both knew that she'd sinned plenty in her life thus far, that was obviously in an entirely different league, as far as she was concerned. "You're my best friend, Beth," you said softly, raising your gun one more time.
She didn't even try to stop you, allowing her own gun to fall to the floor. 'Thank you' she mouthed, smiling sadly, and you cut her misery short, too.
"I hope you and Mark are happy, together," you told her corpse, then stepped past her and headed out of the building. Why the DEBS had a storage room in an empty office building, you never did find out, but you suspected it may be soundproofed enough to have kept your shots from attracting any attention.
When you ran into Amy down near the front doors, though, you knew that there was precious little hope she wouldn't figure out what had happened. And why.
You just stared at each other for a full minute of silence. You didn't even think about trying to pull your gun on her, knowing all too well how futile that would be. "You gonna try and stop me?" you finally asked her. It was a fair question, given that you were standing there holding the data module that she'd obviously come to collect.
She clearly knew why you had it. "You love her?"
"Yes. To a rather alarming degree, really," you admitted.
Her lips quirked up into a curious little smile. "Good. She could use that. And you may well be the only one who can get through to her." Her smile widened. "And I do know that feeling, so no. I'm not." She stepped out of the way.
You paused just a little longer. "So, does this mean you're going to be my sister-in-law?"
She snorted in amusement. "Get going before I hurt you."
You decided that was good advice.
You don't regret it.
That's what bothers you most, sometimes. You haven't had a single bad night's sleep after killing three of the best friends you ever had, whom you'd lived with for the past several years.
If anything, you're glad you severed your ties with the DEBS with such finality. There's nothing to lure you back, now, no one there you especially care about.
As you sit there, safe and secure in her arms, all you can think is, "I hear Fiji's nice this time of year."
You can hear her smile in her voice. "I suppose a little vacation won't kill me."
You open your eyes and turn around to face her, allowing yourself to get lost in her eyes. She pulls you into a kiss, and you hardly object, instead reaching under her shirt. Not that you expect it to be there for long, but you can't wait any longer to feel her skin.
So you'll go to Fiji. You'll relax, you'll have fun, and after that... Well, who knows? If you end up just settling down somewhere, great. If she wants to go back to work as an assassin, you'll help her. She's not the world conquest sort, but you know that if she had been, you'd happily help her out with that, too. "I love you," you tell her softly.
She doesn't say anything back, but she doesn't need to. When she smiles and pauses in the act of removing your bra, and you feel a single drop of water hit your neck, you know that even if she can't articulate it, yet, she loves you, too.
Which is why you'll do anything for her.
Anything.